chew chew fish food

so long time no blog well thats because ive been berring my head in this new chew tv ident project we got given about 2 weeks ago now, we had to come up with a ident for chew tv which was in tone with thier flyers, having a space like feel with glowing blues, white and black background with a slick look about it.

my first thoughts were animals chewing things but then i thought they probably wouldnt want the obvious, so i looked at other youth aged tv stations idents for inspiration mainly e4 as i have always enjoyed watching thier idents anyways. i noticed thier idents had lots of little charactertured animals and creatures that were eating things then becoming the logo or burping out the logo or laying the logo like an egg or an egg cracking open to reveal a egg. bearing in mind e4 logo had no relation to all these ident ideas they were all totally random but seem to be a popular theme when it comes to idents, burping, farting, laying eggs funny ways to make the logo apear as i think humour is the key factor in a youth age directed ident.

Anyway with this in mind i thought out possible routes i could go. not being able to help myself my first thoughts were cheese/toast/food chain/teeth/sheep and cows chewing the logo maybe like grass/ blob made up creatures from play dow morphing into the logo.

3d inspirations

I was browsing through net at cgi animated videos and i came across this video which i really liked reminded me of varmints and Les Processus. I like the idea that it shows a mass of canon and war torn city and ww1 uniformed germans and blood dribbling along the street to represent the soldiers and the tophat man resembling the general or "the man" in charge who thinks that its all fun and games and a ball dancing everywhere and when the last soldier dies at end it starts over as if to suggest all the death is just a cycle. if anyone else has any further thoughts on this i would appriciate it as i really like this film which is a student film btw. would love to make something like this for mine.

environment project

When i got round to my environments project after my essay and finishing my backgrounds i took inspiration from the games medal of honour and oblivion to create a creepy room of my own, which even though i had many little problems along the way i actually enjoyed doing more and more and it progressed. i started off with creating the polygons for the different objects i was making thinking about compersition and textures for the objects and the effect i wanted them to have on the room. i decided to go for a corridor with stone arch ways over the top which was the easiest to construct but the hardest to texture as i had to texture the faces of each stone and try get the render quality up, which i believe i did ok, but some of the stones look a little pixelated. i think i saved myself on that note by bump mapping all the stone on the arch and walls and floor but at the same time it was all a little to much, i feel i should have tuned down the bump mapping on the walls n floor. Also i was happy with the bump mapping on the barrels and the textures used for the wood tables as well, though the legs on the tables where difficult to get the correct pixelation on them, so they look like they are rotted which doesnt fit in with the table top. And the barrel i couldnt get the inside to follow contours of outside but i will look to learn this in time. other than that im quite happy with my corridor. i like the lighting and its positioning over the tables and how the mustard yellow i gave the light gave it just the right look of a candle lit corridor that i wanted.

back to work lol

first week back has been and gone like that, struggled with the readings i did over xmas to fully take them in and understand them, the uncanny one i sort of came to grips with and i think i just need to read more in general as ive always been prity slow at it but i will have to try pick it up for the essay. tuesday we did texture modelling and even though i didnt have a computer me and jess produced a pritty good piece on maya of a 3d model. this was a interesting fun new feature to learn about but im excited abt the rendering more but this should prove for some prity fun tuesday sessions to come. wednesday did the after effects tutorial and took me forever but got it done, if i was good at learning this kinda stuff i would probably enjoy it more but i have to say at the moment this isnt my thing but in relation to film editing for the surfing movies i look to create with my raw footage from my travels during my gap yr i would be interested in using after effects for that. thursday we looked at backgrounds and i have come up witha few ideas for my first background looking at tropical enviroments and rivers. i will post somethings up once i have drawn some ideas

more life drawing again!

in the last few weeks i think my life drawing has improved significantly as i have been using a looser material which was advised and i have been using my fingers to get the shading good to give the character more weight and sence of shape. the only problem is i havent improved on drawing faces that much and hands as i have focused of getting the body right at the moment, but this is something i look to improve as i draw more life drawing and people in general

3d walk cycle two

this week we were asked to do a walk of our own from a recorded walk of ours and to put some character into it, i stupidly chose to do a sanman creep which had lots of off balance poses in mine and overexadurated poses which was fun to do but i found it difficult to get the timing right and to give the walk weight by stamping the front foot down hard was a difficult thing to do, i managed to put some weight into the front foot coming down and get the general timing and overlap ok and put in some hip twist and foot twist to try and show when he goes off balance but i prob would have needed to play with the timing some more. i also put in the head movement and arms and hands and finger movements which i think all worked really well together even though he looks like he has a creepy camp walk before anyone says it. shut up its to san man massive. all in all its animation ive been most happy with but i feel i could have done better but also i feel i could have screwed it up so i decided not to play with it anymore. anyways see below

3 walk cycle one

overall i think the walk cycle had the movement of a creep but the head tilt and movement in the sholders and waist were not enough so the walk ended up looking more robotic also there was very little movement in the hands but i will take this into concideration when next doing my walk to add more minor movements to give the character more life.