Been a while

I just checked and ... I haven't blogged since September. Scary.

Since we have to have up-to-date blogs for mid-term and I can't post-date entries (I don't think), I'm just going to do a quick synopsis of all the exciting things that have happened.

1) September 7: Shortly after my last entry, I met with Patricia, explained all of my many problems and was very happy to hear that I don't actually have to DO animation for my thesis. Thank goodness. That means I might pass after all.

2) September 14: Story revisions. Vasilisa walks through forest looking for lost goose, gets eaten by house. Baba Yaga shows up and growls at house, prompting it to spit out Vasilisa's skull. Story at this point involves complicated thing with Baba Yaga taking the Hut for a walk. This will be cut by October 8th.

3) September 21: Look and feel. I'm presenting a 3D animatic by this point, and I painted some placeholder trees. I put them on NURBS planes and stuck them into the scene to give it some mood, thinking that if I use planes, my painted trees will have to be far more intricate. I have a painted tree with approximately the right level of detail. But surprise! Everyone in class loves my placeholder trees. I can keep them. Just means I have to paint everything else to match. They're kind of blotchy. I think I can do this. Making things blotchy shouldn't take as long as making things neat, right? ... Someone tell that to my OCD ...

4) September 28: Story. Am adding camera moves to my 3D cameras, have added mid shot to opening sequence. Have put border around frame, like a stylized page. Have also added page turn transitions. Story still isn't working and I'm starting to get nervous about production. Haven't done anything on production since summer. Wrote up production schedule and almost cried. Have not posted production schedule here for obvious reasons.

Also, watched Snow White. Curse Disney, the animation in there is beautiful. There's a nice camera move, with Snow White lying in the forest crying, where the camera pulls through some 2D trees. It's lovely, and I think it's a good reference for the look I'm going for.

5) October 4: Made model of skull. Have to change it up a little for Vasilisa's skull and the skull fence, but for now, have skull! Yay! Have redone animatic. Story still isn't working, but camera angles are starting to feel good. Workflow is also improving. Have made background file to reference into all of my scenes, so I can make sweeping changes to, let's say, skull fence. Or sky. And everything will update all at once. Have started sky painting, since I can do that while things render. And I need to render things, because Faculty Review is coming up. SCARY.

6) October 8: FACULTY REVIEW. Omg, so much better than I thought! Finally took out stupid thing with leash. Story seems much clearer. Panel all got everything except for the end when Baba Yaga comes out, but I think positioning characters differently will help. Useful suggestion: have Baba Yaga and Vasilisa on screen at same time, so we know they're not the same person. Have to find camera angle for that.

Other useful suggestion: my border is pretty but not useful and page turn transitions are cliche. My border should animate. It should move and it can help tell the story, since I'm not moving the characters. For serious, why did I not think of that?

Other other useful suggestion: Add sound. Have been using stupid song from previs that I don't intend to use but like. Should add ambient noises, chewing after Vasilisa walks into house. HAVE to do this.

7) October 16: Haven't made many changes to animatic. Changed a shot of Baba Yaga and added Vasilisa's feet sticking out of Hut when Baba Yaga enters. Bad camera angle; they are barely visible. HOWEVER. Have started recording audio. NEED TO DIGITIZE IT. Also, have started animating border. Am using tedious 2D cell animation-y things. Is tedious.

Sadly, everyone in class seems to like it. Must continue. Have to get whole border to swirl. Is there any chance I can do this within the next two weeks? I'm feeling the necessity of getting my 3D and 2D to match now.... Have to add that to production schedule, animating swirls as well.

8) October 20: Am animating border. I think I might switch to a black background behind the border -- looks like the painted boxes I was using for reference at the very beginning of this whole process. Purely coincidence! ... erm ... It's good to work with your reference in front of you all the time. Sometimes you end up with what you thought you'd get at the beginning. :) Still, border animation tedious. Also, can't tell if it's good or bad.

Have painted new face texture for Vasilisa to relax. I don't think it's blotchy enough to match my trees. We'll see. I'm thinking about running a quick test with surface shaders instead of the phongs I've been using. This is probably a horrible idea. I tried toon shaders over the summer and didn't like them, but that doesn't mean I won't like them again, does it?

Also, a friend sent me to look at the opening sequence of an anime called Monster, where a woman reads a storybook about a Monster With No Name. It's a great look for storybook style animation, with very little movement on the characters. Still more than I am going to do, but the style of the animation is interesting. It looks very collage-y. Which is interesting for me because of my blotchy trees. Maybe I can use this with toon shaders. Gah. Also have to finish up the second part of my story so that I can move into production!

I didn't think I was going to have this much trouble with story, honest.

In talking about my characters and my basic story problems with my friends, I mentioned the example story I got from Gavin during that last session we had last semester. Gavin's story idea was:
There's a girl walking alone late at night. It's dark. Everything's scary. She walks up a path lit with skulls to a seemingly quiet house. Suddenly, something makes a loud noise. The hut stands up on its chicken legs, squawking, and lays an egg. The egg rolls down a hill to the girl, who puts it in a basket and takes it home.

My variation on this story was to have the hut, instead of lay an egg, eat the girl and spit out her skull (I was playing with having Baba Yaga come out and whack the hut until it spits the skull out, but that adds a whole nother character, which, phooey). Here's an animatic for that: Animatic 1

My friends and I liked the egg thing, though, because ... eggs imply baby houses on chicken legs. And that's adorable! Here's an animatic where the girl winds up with a baby house: Animatic 2

They both start out the same way. And I use a lot of medium and wide shots. But my main character is a house. What's a close up of a house?

Anyway. I'm not sure how good either animatic is, or if either has the core of a do-able thesis, but ... they're all I've got. :(

Since the semester starts tomorrow

I'm having my traditional period of, "OMG, I don't know how to do anything and kind of suck at everything and shouldn't even bother going back to school!" pre-semester blues. But the semester starts tomorrow so it's time to put them aside and get back to work. Here's my latest Vasilisa render.

I've also been realizing that I don't have a story or anything. Which. Isn't good. I've been talking to friends and I have a couple of ideas, and I've made animatics, but I'm not in love with anything, and I still feel like I should be moving ahead with anything until I've got a story. How can you make a production schedule when you don't know what the production is?!

Also also, I just saw Renaissance, and without saying anything about the movie, it made me think about grey-tones. I really like them. I'm thinking about trying to do something with that.

I saw something else and it made me think about doing all of my backgrounds by hand, 2D. That's all. Also, I don't know anything about 3D, don't have a story, and am absolutely terrified.

More pictures

Having realized that it's just about the only thing I know how to do, I've been texturing my models. When school starts (in, what, a week?) I'm hoping that I'll get some advice. Maybe I'll even be able to keep some of the stuff I've done this summer!

Baba Yaga has no hair yet.

Long time, no see

Haven't posted since the end of semester. Now next semester is about to begin! Slacker.

I have been working though. My models are all polygons, and they're coming along. I post pictures. My texturing is sllllllllllooooooooooooooooow. You'll see in my pictures that I HAVE done some texturing. It's not going to look like much, but it's been a very long process.

I've been going over story with my non-major friends, to see what they think, and we've come up with a couple of ideas. I'll post about them later.

But that's what's been going on. I hate making hands, people!

Trees! And a realization about the green screen

Been doing a bunch of production design types of things. One of them is trees! What I want is for them to look kinda like gnarled hands. When I get a chance, I'll upload my reference for this design -- I have a lacquer box with a twisty tree like one of the sketches I've uploaded here. It's really stylized, but pretty.

Anyway, I'm going for something a little bit creepy, that will make an interesting silhouette.

But what do you think? Should I build real models? Or try Maya?

It's funny though. I'm thinking about building tree models because I know how to model (in real life) -- I've been doing that longer than I've been computer modeling, and I feel rather comfortable with it. And I've been learning about keying using Shake, and I feel pretty good about keying (I say this now -- HA!).

But I'm with Nicolette on this. I don't actually know HOW to organize a shoot or use the green screen. And that's really kind of an important step. Is anyone going to be working with the green screen any time soon? Who happens to need an extra pair of hands and will be willing to yell at me until I figure out what's going on?

Or does anyone know how we could organize a workshop?

Whether or not I build my trees in Maya, I think knowing how to shoot footage on the greenscreen would be really useful.

Erm. So. Long post. Unnecessarily long. Boils down to:
TREES -- 3D or model?
And: Green screen: HOW? Help!

Still no trees!

Also still no new title! Ahhhhhhh! I think maybe I'll just call it the One About The Hut On Chicken Legs, which is what I'll probably call it when I talk about it anyway.

I've added a closing scene to my 2D animatic, and if I can compress it enough for web viewing, I will do so and post it.

I spent some more time on sketching this week, to see if I could resolve some character design issues (like ... y'know ... getting my characters bodies). And having burned through another notebook, I've finally come up with a sketch I think I can use to get orthographic projections. For Baba Yaga. Still working on the girl. Didn't try the hut.

I also have a decent hand, so I'm putting that up here too. I'm thinking about using it as reference for her feet as well, although for those, I'll probably need to alter the profile.

Took a break from sketching to try making a gilt-edge shader in Maya. My results were disappointing. I want a swirly design that will flow around the border of an object. Right now, I have a swirly design that goes around Baba Yaga's face. I'm happy with the gold texture (ish). But the rest of it? Pfah. It looks kind of pretty from the front, but from the side, it looks awful. I tried using a facing ratio on it, but the facing ratio wants to pick up all faces around her nose, not just the ones around the edge of her head. So I've still got a lot to figure out there. (Any hints anyone?)

I also spent some time with toon shaders, and ... I have a lot to think about. I kind of think I don't like them. But I don't think I gave them enough time. So. A lot to think about.

But these trees I keep not talking about!
I had a really nice talk with John R. about trees, and I think before I really put my tree-ideas to rest, I need to build a model and just photograph it and see what it looks like. John suggested getting a fan, so I could simulate wind, and shooting them on a green screen.
I think that sounds like a pretty good process, assuming that I can build something heavy enough to not blow away, but light enough to move at all (my original thought had been a wire-and-clay maquette, but that might be too heavy). So I think before too much longer, I have to do a test there and see if I can come up with a good, manageable result.
I have some sketches of trees, but they're baaaaaaad, so no posting for them! Glad I did them though, since each sketch has been really informative in terms of what NOT to do.

Anyway! It feels like there are a million things left to do before the end of the semester! I've got a checklist, but I'm not quite organized enough to post it here. I keep forgetting about the Gantt chart. And the proof of concept.

One thing at a time though. Characters (sadly) need bodies. Should really work on that.