Reflection-

Starting this module did take me a bit to get my head around there has been times I haven’t liked the module but times where I have as we are doing group work which helps me to talk to more people in the classroom that I haven’t gotten the chance or to nervous to go up and chat to.

We have been put into groups and have been told to analyse a short animated film in groups we were given the short film called ‘The Hunter’ a small gist of the short film….a detective is on the hunt to killing dear looking creatures. We get to see different intense scenes while both characters fight.. we find out the detective has telekinesis powers which in the end helps him defeat the creature which then turns into a skulled zombie human sort of creature in the end.

We decided between us to take certain amounts of the short film to analyse… my timeline to analyse was 1 min 31 secs- 2 mins. Some things we talked about on the discord were-

Camera:
> Close up shot – opening
> Long, slow takes
> Dolly & Tracking shots
> Low angle wide shots
> Framing the character using windows and door frames
> Handheld camera during fight scenes – shaky and realistic, adds tension and drama
> Camera zooms out, centrally framing monster – menacing, dangerous, further tension
> Close up of character’d face, camera dollys left, showing the monster – one in the same

Editing:
> Slow pacing, mystery, and tension
> Cut on action – adds impact
> Faster pace to indicate climax – follows the action and fight scene
> Repeats shot to emphasize the hit of the monster

Lighting:
> Low-key lighting
>Lighting frames the character
> Character shrowded in shadow, compliments the mystery of the scene
> Director uses lighting to direct the eyes and highlight key aspects
> Warmer tones within the scene – old timey feel, adds onto noir-esque theme.

Mise en scene:
> Stereotypical detectice – noir archetype
> Mystery, action, action and crime
> Trashed ruined apartment
Old abandoned gas station
Spooky old mansion
– Gritty visual texture
> Dead bodies, blood, cigarettes, guns
> Magic, shapeshifting characters
– Adds onto mystery of the world, adds intrigue and interest
> Main character is the only living person apart from the monster, Creates a sense of isolation and loneliness.

 

After we all analysed and learned more about camera settings, Editing, lighting and Mise En Scene we then decided who would then do which title. We couldnt decide so we let  a wheel online decide for us so we out our names and the titles into the wheel. When i spun the wheel my name landed on editing. I was quite glad to get this to start off with as i thought it wouldnt be too hard to discuss but was I wrong. I didn’t want to only talk about camera angles, lighting and Mise En Scene but then i soon realised all of these elements all come together to make editing.

Once we did more research about our topics we then needed to create a powerpoint to present to the class to show off what we know and to show that we understand what we have been told to do but not only that us giving a presentation to the class helped the class understand and know more about our animation we had to do research on. Here is some screenshots of our presentation below-

When it was out turn to present we were all nervous as it is quite terrifying to stand up in front of everyone and talk about something but I have grown to feel comfortable in the class that im in which I’m very glad about as it helps when doing presentations and I don’t feel so afraid to stand up in front of everyone. When it came to my turn to speak i was unable to talk about the editing part as we ran out of time which we were then given feedback to add less writing to the slides and to shorten it down so we would have time. This helped me to feel a bit more relief as i didn’t need to speak in front of everyone but m slides did show up onto the board for a bit so if anyone wanted to the could read what was on the board for a short amount of time.

Overall I have enjoyed researching and being in the group that I’ve been in I’ve had some good laughs and good chats with the people I’ve been grouped with. I’ve also learned more about editing, lighting, camera angles and I found out what Mise En Scene was as I never heard of it before. I really have enjoyed the weeks I’ve had in this group and in this project and I’m looking forward to more group work in the future and to build on my presentation skills throughout completing tasks like this one.

 

This week we were introduced to an artist called Genndy Tartakovsky. We were given a classwork activity by our lecturer to do some research on this man. I found out more than I thought about this creator there was so many shows that he did the art style for that I didn’t even know he was apart of such as Hotel Transylvania, Power puff girls. He was also in various animated television series on cartoon network and adult swim!. Including Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack which I didn’t know existed. Star wars: Clone Wars, Symbiotic Titan, Primal and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal. I looked at some of his art work throughout his productions and they are phenomenal. I love how he made every individual character with their own personality. Even the Power puff girls ( Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup) look nearly the same but they all have their different quirks that give them so much life weather if that’s adding different props to the character or colours) that makes the audience so intrigued in the shows and series they are watching.

 

A bit of Genndy himself and his art style-

Born-

Gennady Borisovich (Genndy) Tartakovosky was born 17th January 1970

Family-

Genndy has Jewish parent his father worked as a dentist and was a very strict old fashioned man but they had a close relationship. His mother, Miriam was an assistant principal at a school. He also has a brother called Alexander who is to years older and he is a computer consultant in Chicago. Before coming to the United States him and his family moved to Italy which was where he first drawn to art he was inspired by a neighbours daughter. It is sayed online that he later commented saying “I remember I was horrible at it. For the life of me I couldn’t draw a circle”.

Education-

Genndy went to Chicago’s Eugine Field Elemtrary scolli the third grade. He found school difficult because he was seen as a foreigner. He then went on to attend Chicago’s prestigious Lane Tech College Prep High School and said he did not fit in until his sophomore year. When he was 16 his father sadly died of a heart attack. So afterwards Genndy and his family then moved to government- funding housing, and he began working while stil attendning High School. To make his family happy which were encoutaging him to become a buinessman Genndy tried to take an advertising class. But signed up late and tereby had little choice over his calsses. He was assigned to take an animation class and this then led him to study at the California Insitite of Arts. He studies there with his friend Rob Rensetti and met Craig McCracken. After 2 years at Calarts Genndy got a job at Lapiz Azul Productions in spain and worked on the animated batman series. He learned the trials of tv animation. While he was away in spain his mother sadly died of cancer.

Genndy Tartakovsky’s art style-

Genndy  art style is well known for his distinctive visual style that features exaggerated anatomy, thick, blocky shapes with sharp angular outlines, and characters drawn in a  flat, graphic style. His style is one of the most instantly recognisable pieces.

Here are some drawings of his art work below-

                                    

 

 

                             

I’ve noticed in his art style that the characters have a blocky looking style to them, as you can see in the photos above he makes his characters jaw lines sharp and pointy (angular). In this photo below which I’ve show above. I’ve realised that this character and the character Johnny from Hotel Transylvania (which is the one to the right of the one below) have a simular body style they are both slender and have droopy shoulders and arms, their legs and shoes are also the same.

 

                                     

 

 

Lets break down some of the photos-

 

                                     

 

Like I said before this character from Samurai Jack has a blocky but sharp jawline and chin (angular), his eyes are also boxy looking as does his hair. His shoulders are broad which most male characters do have as males anatomy usually do have broader shoulders that woman. This is because males have more muscle up in this areas than females do. This is great to have in an art style as this helps the audience even young ones to understand and to know that this character is a male as male characters are more buff looking to show that they are big and strong. Samurai Jack does start with a blocky looking head, to broad shoulders to then a small waist, then bringing out the box look again at the bottom to show of his robes.

 

 

This one really caught my eye. He has made the characters jawlines are angular which could indicate that the character is evil. He has also made the eyes look dark and baggy , with the characters nose also angular which gives of an unsettling look.

 

              

Although that’s not always the case as this character Dracula from Hotel Transylvania also have an angular chin, jawline, is slender is one of the nicest characters. But since in this film Dracula s a protective father and also the owner of the hotel the style is fitting as it shows that he is in charge and he isn’t one to mess with. It later down the story we start to see that Dracula is a kind loving father but this style still fits him very well as since he is a vampire this is how you would imagine a vampire. Tall, skinny, broad in the shoulders. Genndy kept the angular look throughout Dracula’s style as in his cloak the collar of it is pointy and sharp, with his ears and fangs.

 

Overall Genndy’s art style is amazing! The way he does his style with all of his characters really brings them to life that makes the audience fall in love and feel and bond with the characters. With the facial expressions and the body attitude it makes the audience laugh, feels sympathy and relate to the characters. His style also helps the audience to remember the certain movie or character too!. With his lifestyle and growing up I cant help but sympathise for him since he was a foreigner and going to schools and finding it difficult must of been really tuff on him and losing his father at a young age while still in school, then to lose his mother while away in another country its heart breaking. But he has worked very hard to get to where he has come, to think from him nit being able to draw a circle to award winning movies and series is astonishing. He really is a talented man.

 

How I’m currently finding the course-

Today was our first lesson everyone in the course that I’ve talked to have been more than welcoming and I’ve thankfully made some friends which has been helpful as I don’t feel so alone in the classes. I also have some people to hang out with at lunch and to talk to or ask questions if I get confused about anything. The lecturers have been so kind to us, introducing themselves to us. We have been given some group assignments which I enjoy as I get to talk to more people in the class which helps me as I wouldn’t have gone up myself to talk to them but since we are in a group it gives me more confidence to chat to them. I enjoy seeing everyone’s artwork that they have been working on in their own time they are all so talented and I’d love to learn a thing or two from them.

 

Work I have been set-

In my first class for 3D Animation we were given videos to follow of a snowman to make in Blender, then to animate. I’m glad I have some experience in Blender, so I know the basics. I’m glad our first project in class was blender as I really enjoy blender and learning something new on the software. I did have some questions throughout the making of the snowman which I then asked one of my lecturers about. He sat down with me and explained what I had to do which was very helpful to me. The videos that we follow through are explained very well which has helped me tremendously. For classwork we were needed to make table and chairs which we could be groups for which I enjoyed as I got to talk more to people in the class. Our idea was to make a Beetlejuice themed room. We made a table with a cake on top. We then UV mapped a photo on top of the cake of Beetlejuice. We then made chairs which we added to the rooms walls and roof to give off more of a strange, odd effect which was perfect to explain Beetlejuice and Tim Burton who created Beetlejuice.

 

Week 1-

Snowman-

Like I said before I have some experience in using Blender and I’ve also created a snowman before which was very useful to me as I know what shapes to use. The only thing I’ve never done before in this project is animating it. The videos that were sent are very helpful and help me understand what I have to do step by step. I’m glad that there Is a voice over on the videos as it helps me to understand what is going on in the video and what certain things I would need to press. Creating the snowman still had its challenges as there were some things I’ve never done before like adding limbs to the arms, adding libs for the snowman’s body to help it move later and making the top hat shiny. I was looking to do more animation to the snowman but since I’m still new to animation I followed the video and kept it simple. Although later on in my assignments I would like to add more animation fundamentals from my own imagination to make it more unique. For the background idea to give the snowman more of an atmosphere I added mountains with snow on them with a frozen river which I made when I was in college last year. I’ve added this landscape because I think it fits well with the snowman. I have added some snow around the snowman, and I made the river that was originally there frozen.  For the animation like I said above I wanted to keep it simple so I’ve made him sway from side to side and wave to give him more character. When making this character I did find it stressful as i had to remake this snowman about 6 times or more but in the end if finally got what I was looking for.

 

 

I’m really glad on how it all turned out I’m proud of myself to make this snowman with the limbs and rendering it and seeing the final product as stressful as it was with certain parts such as creating the arms and adding a parent to them so they move like an arm would which took longer than I wanted but I did learn a lot of different skills throughout this experience.

 

Week 2-

We were given videos on how to make a skateboard, pull cart and a tie fighter. When making these on blender I’m learning new controls and how to do new things on blender and I’m really enjoying it. It can be difficult at times to do some things on blender but like I said there is videos which is very helpful as I can rewatch the videos as much as I want over and over again which helps me to realize what I did wrong or what I was confused on and if I was still confused I could ask the lecturers and they would try their best to help me which I’m very appreciative for. I have lost a lot of motivation for making these.

I finally got the skateboard and the tie fighter made. I added colour to both. I thought of adding blood splatters over the skateboard using UV mapping on blender. I also added red to the wheels and the rim of the skateboard to make it look like the skateboard went through the blood. I enjoyed adding this touch to the skateboard.

Link of where I got the blood picture- blood splashes – Search Images

When making the tie fighter it wasn’t so bad but it did take me a while to make. I did try to animate the tie fighter but I was having trouble with it so i decided to leave it the way it was and to ask about it in class.

 

Week 3-

This week settling in feels a lot better, using blender is getting more easy to use. Today we made a milkshake which i found very interesting as I’ve never made something like this on blender so it was very interesting to see how to make it and to make it so life like such as thickening the cup base and lid to give off a plastic cup effect. We also added a liquid to it which was very fun but quite difficult to do. Next we made a flower in a wonky plant I enjoyed this one more as I found it easier to make. Lastly we were needed to make a bat which I still need to complete.

I didn’t get all of the milkshake finished but i did enjoy making as much as I did.

Week 4-

Today I learned about UV Mapping. UV mapping was a bit difficult for me to grasp but I will be looking back at the videos and PowerPoint to get a better understanding. This week we were told to make a sword. I made silver chariots sword from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures. This wasn’t too hard for me to make but I have realized when making the point for the sword it goes hollow on the inside so ill ask Mike on what I should do or someone in my class for advice as I used scale to change the shape of the cylinder to make the point of the sword which I may have to use a different technique. I need to add texture to the sword still which I think I’ll use Adobe Substance 3D Painter to give off the metallic look.

Week 5-

Today we used textures. I had some trouble signing into my adobe account but thankfully got sorted in the end. We got shown how to add textures to a war hammer using different textures that is in the software. I learned that if there was a texture I wanted to use but didn’t want the colour i could change the colour for that material. We were shown how to brush paint our object at parts you only want painted if you didn’t want the whole object painted you can paint it bit by bit. For example on the hammer example we were given there is a metal cage around the hammer itself which you can colour separately if wanted or you can colour the hammer and cage together. I do like the look of the texturing painting software as it gives your object more of a life like aspect to it. Not only could you change the texture of the hammer and the metal cage but you can also change the hammers handle. What I like about this software is that you can change any part of your object you want even the smallest details you have. You can give your object a metallic, harsh, soft, rough look. I like that you can add textures that look like stone, metal, wood to make it look more realistic. I was given a task to texturize a war hammer which I’m enjoying, I’m still trying to get my head around it but its enjoyable. We were then shown how to add rust, blood and an image to the hammer to give it more character. We also have to make a helmet which I think I will also use from Silver Chariot as he is a knight character.

 

 

Reflection-

 

Overall throughout the 6 weeks of work we have been set I would that that I’ve found it hard. There are some things I enjoyed such as learning new ways on how to create different objects. I’m very glad that there is videos on blackboard that we can watch as much as we wish. The most difficult thing I have made on blender would be the Zubat it was harder than I expected. It did take me a few good tries to complete. I enjoyed making the sword and helmet especially as it was from a show I enjoy which gave me more motivation. I did find it difficult to UV map and texturize the sword and helmet. The helmet did take me a few hours to make but I’m glad on how it turned out. When making the helmet I felt more confident on using the tools since we made different objects throughout class. The helmet did not turn out the way I hoped completely as i was unsure how to make an object curve which I’ll learn for next time. I did feel very stressed while making our projects and to leading up to the hand in date and time. Although as stressed I’ve been these few weeks I’ve enjoyed it at the same time as I never thought I would be able to make the tasks which to my surprise I did exceed better than I initially thought. When trying to UV map the sword and helmet I was unable to do so. For some reason once I had the Checker Texture and Vector on UV once i went to UV mapping tab it went away which didn’t happen in the videos I was watching so I’m confused on why this is happening. From all of these projects we have completed I do think that Blender is something I will still like to work hard on. Yes it is difficult but if i keep practicing and doing more task in my free time I will eventually get the hang on what I’m supposed to be doing and hopefully wont struggle as much.

 

Week 6-

This was out submission date. I got my feedback on Wed 11th Dec. I sadly did fail this unit but i an thankfully resit. I was told to try and UV Map, Texture the sword and helmet that I made as I did not do so when submitting as I found it confusing and hard. My lecturer showed me how to unwrap the helmet which helped me understand the fundamentals of what i was supposed to do and what unwrapping is. I was told to think of it like a toy with a sticker. So to explain that I was told to think of a company like McDonald’s for example, to think of how they make their toys. They have stickers placed on their toy to give it a more appealing look to give that toy more appealing. So to break it down you can’t put a sticker on the toy that turns, twists for example as the sticker wont allow it so you have to cut the sticker to fit that certain part of the toy. Which is what you do when you wrap and UV map the object you’re looking to on blender.

Week 7-

This week I made design of my character. We needed to make characters based on Genndy Tartakovsky’s style. For my character style I wanted to have a character that had a raven head, human body, deer legs and feet. I wanted to have the characters arms to be its wings of a raven, The outfit to be a cape that looked like ravens feathers like its tail, knee high shorts. For the prop I wanted to make a belt with a bag of seeds inside. For my characters body style I wanted them to have a dad bod. For their ears I wanted them to have elf looking pointy ears with ram horns on their head.

 

                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting work on blender- 

When staring this project I thought I would start from the head and move my way down.

 

When making the head I used the sculpt tool to grab the face I made before which helped me to make the beak for my character. I also use the tool to move the eyes close together to make it look more like a bird. I then started to sculpt the ears. I followed the videos that were given by our lecturer which I understood but I did find it a bit confusing on how to make the ear go in softly while I used the extrude tool which made the lines harsh but then I put on the subdivision tool which made it look less harsh thankfully. But next time I’m making ears of any kind ill do more research so I can make it more identical to what I’m wanting the outcome to be.

 

        

I then moved on to making the horns for my character I got the idea from ram horns and I used the photo to the right as a reference. I used the extrude tool, then scale to make it the width I wanted I also used the rotate tool to turn the horn shape I wanted.

 

 

Eyes was the next thing to create. I got a sphere and rotated it. I then selected the middle of the sphere and used the smooth tool to indent it, i then did the same for the other ring next to it. After I auto shade smooth the sphere which completed the eye. I put the eye in the heads socket and joined it to the head.

Next I moved onto the torso. I used a sphere and deleted half of it. I then used the extrude tool to make it longer. I deleted half of the model and added the mirror modifier which made it so much easier to do as I didn’t need to worry about the other side as it moved at the same time and it was also helpful with my time. I then moved on to the arms. I again used the extrude tool then scaled it to make it thinner then extrude it again to give it a muscle look. I then extruded the top of the torso to make a neck. I also coloured each part of the body so it was organised and different parts on the body which made it easier to keep track.

 

I then used the sculpt mode and use the grab tool to pull out the stomach to make the ‘dad bod’ that I wanted.

It was then time to make the legs. I added a cube and added loop cuts to add more edges for me to extrude, scale and move at. I then selected some faces at the hip to extrude out the legs. I then used the move tool to put then to the position I desired.

 

This is the legs finished I wanted to make the legs look like Mr Tumnus from Narnia. I’m happy on how it turned out thankfully it wasn’t too hard. I used mostly extrude, scale and moving tool when making the torso, legs.

For the hands I added a cube, used the loop tool and extruded it out. I then scaled it to make it thinner at the end. I extruded three more times which made the thumb. I added another loop to the model, moved 4 faces of the hand I wanted the fingers to be. I extruded individuals to make the fingers be separate I did that three times to create the base, middle and tip of the fingers. I moved and rotated the fingers to be the way I wanted so they weren’t all stuck together as it didn’t look natural. Once that was done I moved the thumb and rotated it to make it look more like a hand.

 

       

I then added the hands to the model and used the mirror moderator to get both hands on the model. This was so useful as I didn’t need to redo or rotate the hand on the other side which would of been a fuss.

Next thing I did was grab the edges of the torso and the legs and created bridge edge loops which connected them both together seamlessly.

 

Second last thing I did for my model was make the prop. First I made a belt, I added a circle and extruded it out to give it thickness, scaled and moved it where necessary until I was happy of what it looked like and added it to the characters waist. I made a bag for my model as I thought of having a bag of seeds added to the belt of the character since the character is half bird. To make this bag I added a cylinder and added loop cuts, scaled the edges of the cylinder to make it more bulky like a bag. I also added loop cuts to the top of the cylinder and scaled it in to make it thinner at the top to create the top of the bag. I deleted the top face of the cylinder to give the bag more realistic, I grabbed the edges of the top of the cylinder and moved them out to create the look of the bag being open. I added a Torus to create the band of rope around the bag. I scaled the Torus to make is smaller and not so wide. I then bevelled the vertices of the torus to make it more smooth as it looked really choppy. After I coloured everything and added Solidify to create more thickness to the bag. I rotated the bag onto the bag in an angle so it looked like the belly had an effect on how it sat.

 

Lastly I wanted to make a cape onto my character which would be his clothing on the torso. I copied the torso from before and delete the faces, edges and vertices that was needed to make the cape the way I wanted.  tried adding it to the character but it didn’t sit correctly the way I hoped so I deleted more faces hoping the way I made it next would sit correctly.

         

I tried to UV Unwrap I looked up some videos and I found one that sort of helps but it takes a bit more time for me to understand it but I’m getting there. I have my character unwrapped but still need to texture. I used this video- Blender 4.0: How to UV Unwrap Anything

 

Reflection-

Throughout this model, doing research and the sketches I enjoyed myself more than I thought I found it so fun drawing my thoughts and ideas for the character and adding more/less to what the last idea was to get a final outcome. It was difficult at times when creating my model but I watched the videos over the weeks which helped me so much to make the torso, legs, hand, clothing the way I wanted to. I’m surprised at myself on how I did I didn’t think it would be possible for me to make something like this and I’ve learned so much over the few months. I definitely feel like I know blender so much better now and getting faster at making things but I still have so much to learn. I’m so grateful I got to learn this much from my lecturer and from my classmates with their guidance and them explaining how they do things. I found it difficult to make the hands I did it about 9 times or more but eventually I got it correctly. I realised that I had the proportional editing object mode on when trying it the first couple of time but turned it off when I realised. I found it so difficult to UV map the character I made as I didn’t understand completely to do so. I looked up videos online and watched the ones our lecturer made but I still can’t grasp it completely I understand you need to seam your character to organise it all out for the unwrapping to continue to texturizing but I couldn’t complete it as it was too difficult for me to get my head around. I will need to ask my lecturer and look up for videos next time. For the research task I found it enjoyable as I got to learn more about Genndy Tartakovsky and about his life and where his inspiration started to do animation. I found his story heart breaking but also inspiring on how he continued to do his best.