Sorry. I've been busy, alright!? Here, it's a big'n.

There's a lot of ground to cover.

Fentil: Another Life

So after the sweatbox, I have found out that Fentil: Another Life wasn't picked for production.
Sort of.

Instead of green lighting the entire film, we've been okay'd to produce one shot - one extremely realistic, detailed shot. The issue now is to decide which shot will be the most profound.

Fentil: Another Life - Production Bible

While I understand that Another Life was probably too ambitious, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to add to the animatic (using feedback from James Henry, a helpful script writer who came to talk to us). These additions would have added the much needed drama and tension to make the 'baby needs to eat' story tangible.
While they may not be used, here are those extra frames in context.

This would probably have been a much more ambitious project, and the production bible includes the spear dropper and octopoid information.
As for deciding which shot to choose, I really like the Spear Dropper swooping down. The problem is that we have none of those aliens rigged or even modelled. From a realistic standpoint, it has to be one of the Platehead shots.

Oh well.

I've lately been following a guy named Greg Broadmore, who does lots of cool art and works for Weta. He has worked on concept art for District 9, King Kong and other films.

He's basically amazing.
He also has a project called Dr Grordbort's Which is a steampunk vision of old-timey hunters going to other planets to hunt for trophies. Recently, Media Design School in New Zealand has taken on his world and designs and have made a short film of it.
_{"The Deadliest Game" poster An 'Aether Oscillator' used by the huntsmen This is probably my favourite of his aliens. Look for it at OO:16. I really like its legs.}

Here's the teaser.
This is what I want Another Life's shot to be like. Pretty.

Rigging

On the same topic of work, I've been doing some rigging for Olly's project: Kernel. I only really have one character to rig (Leonard, the old man) so I can really focus on making him spectacular.

_Fabulous
So far we have:

• Leg IK's
• Heel Peel
• Tip Toe
• Heel pivot
• Toe Pivot
• Toe Tap
• Back rotation controls

I'm also planning on putting in foot roll (side to side) and toe splay (as Leonard is barefoot). I'll also be implementing my lovely eyelid flicky mechanism.
I'll also be looking into rigging his luscious beard. _Gorgeous

This is what I'll be working on until I go back to the parents' place for christmas, where I have no access to fancy animation software. Then it'll be more dissertation work.

Dissertation Business

Somewhat under-represented on this blog (and I suppose many other animator's blogs) is my Dissertation research (the capital 'D' shows how fearful I am of that word).
My basic topic is horror, and my argument is something like "Video games are the perfect medium for Horror, and are much more capable at scaring us than Film."

Rolls off the tongue, I know.

So that's the basic premise, and my goal is to try and prove that video games have the capacity to scare us in ways which film never can and never will. I'll be addressing topics such as immersion, the psychology of horror, why we love to be scared, and the history of Horror as a genre. I will be analysing various horror films and games to get a decent scope. My major case studies, however, will be Silent Hill 2, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Dead Space 2, as I feel that combined, these games cover most of the horror spectrum. They are also pretty scary.

The most recent book I've been reading is "Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture" by Kendall R. Phillips.

It discusses how Horror is very much a contemporary genre, feeding on the fears and unrest in the society it is born from. Be it immigration of Eastern Europeans during Dracula's theatrical release in the '30s, or the fear of advanced military flying machines during the '50s, where most alien invasion movies were born.
The Dead Space series also has this cultural resonance, as it deals with the repercussions of the separation of church and state, a fairly big issue in America at the moment.

Unfortunately, I've been neglecting this written work up until now, so I'll have to work my buns off over the holidays to get this under control.
Wish me luck.

_{Pictured: Buns}

Demmy's Doodles

Despite being busy with all this work, I have also got some nice doodles to show:

Evil Butterfly

Monsters

Just Hanging Out

FlagHunter

Tree Face

King Giblets

Shankbat Taxonomy

I haven't really had time to do any digital work lately.

Theatre.

Watch things:

Story of Genki???
Fun nonsense from the amazing David O'Reilly.

Destructo Box
Destructo Box is my new favourite series. It's clever and funny. Watch it.

First Contact

First Contact from Media Design School on Vimeo.

These are the same guys making/made the 'The Deadliest Game'short.

Now I am back off to swim. Splash.

It's been a long time...

...So long, in fact, that the Portal 2 reference is probably a bit old.
(Although, if Portal fans have taught us anything, it's that Portal references never get old)

^{DON'T you even say it}

Since Easter, I finished doing rigging for The Little Helper. My final rig was the old man's face.

^{He seems happy about the result}

Although rigging has been a pain in the spine, I've enjoyed learning about it, and I've definitely improved since I started.

Now I'll be working on Inbetween. My first shot is the Gypsy King being carried through a crowd, throwing petals at the swarms of people.

Rough lines


Clean Lines


I'm really happy with the way his body sways with each throw of petals.
I've still got some hair, petals and a feather to stick on the Gypsy King. I'm looking forward to doing some lovely overlapping secondary animation. My favourite.

Also since my last post, I've done some digital doodles.


This is Mr Geraldine
Mr Geraldine is an unfortunate fellow. He's tall, awkward and unusually yellow.
But that's not the source of his bountiful woes, the origin of that is down to his nose.
Growing from his face is an arm with a claw. At the base of said arm is a hungering maw.
Everyone he meets comes to sad ends, as the arm on his nose eats all his friends.

Not sure how I came up with him, but he doesn't like that thing on his face.


Poot Cloud.


This guy appears in my sketchbook multiple times. I liked his design so I gave him a Photoshop upgrade.


Rough design for a spacesuit/EVA suit. I've got some better designs on their way.

FINALLY here's some of the best bits from my sketchbook so far:













I haven't done enough 'proper' drawings, most have been little doodles and ideas. It makes me happy to make some decent art in my sketchbook.

Finally, some stuff to watch


A lovely short film called "The Silence Beneath the Bark".
It has a wonderful, graphic style, letting the creatures mesh with the painting-esque backgrounds.


This one, Nuri, is just disgustingly cute.


This. Creepy. The stopmotion is beautiful, though. Especially the morphing.


A trailer for an old film "Triplets of Belleville", which looks really interesting. I like how they made the cyclists look a bit like horses, emphasizing that racing spirit. Also, that song is really catchy.


Girl Wallet

So there you are.

Dead Space and rigs

Once again, blog is lacking due to just being busy and not having much to show.
But now I do. Hoorah.

So, firstly, I FINALLY got Dead Space 2 (after a month of email back-and-forth with Visceral). It was totally worth the wait, however, as not only did I get the game, they kindly sent me a few other goodies too:

Yes, that box was signed by the Dead Space team.

Now that I've -finally- played it (I'm already near the end, unfortunately, though I have been playing a lot over the last week) I got to see myself and meat cello in action.

This video shows both me and the move:

(I'm the guy scrambling into the lift at about 1:40, meat cello is at about 3:45. It's weird hearing someone else referring to it by name)
They ended up shortening the move, which I'm fine with - I think it looks better - but instead of the leaper jumping back onto Isaac once it's punched off, Isaac grabs it and does the 'cello business.

A here's a close-up of me pulling a weird face.

I'm known affectionately on the Dead Space wiki as 'elevator man'.

So the game itself looks really nice. The lighting is wonderful and the holograms look beautiful, character and environment textures are detailed and sharp, I've stopped on numerous occasions just to take a break and admire the outer-space scenery.
Playing it feels fresh and streamlined compared to the first game.
I love the new zero-G thrusters mechanic, it feels like a tangible and believable method of moving through a weightless environment.
The one problem I have is that we're never really told about them until they're used for a completely different reason, see here:

Now, I do like the idea of this sequence, but there's no explanation that he has little jets on his suit, he just jumps out of the train without warning and we just have to accept it and do the sequence.
I think that if they'd had just a short zero-G sequence beforehand, just to let us know that Isaac has these jets and what they're meant for, then we can take them out of context for this emergency use.
Or even a simple "Hey, I can use the CO2 thrusters on my suit to get to that carriage" would suffice.
Oh and perhaps adding the air meter to show that we're outside in space between carriages.
(I know I'm nit-picking, here, but the overall game is good enough, it's only little bits like that which I can pick out nits)

I'm still not sure if it's as scary/less scary/scarier than Dead Space. I've heard and read a wide spectrum of reviews, each with their own different opinion. There are definitely scary bits and possibly the necromorph which instills the most fear is the Stalker; On their own, they are relatively easy to dispense of. But they're never alone. They are always in packs of 5 or more in rooms where they have plenty of cargo crates to hide behind and sneak up on you and surround you from all sides, poking a head out just long enough for you to catch a glimpse in your torchlight before they retreat behind cover again. Taking them out requires some strategy, as one of them might come out of cover to distract you, while another creeps up behind you and tears your face off.


Clever girl...

There are also some well crafted scripted parts where the combination of sound cues, music and lighting make you scared to carry on because you know that there's going to be something ahead, and no matter how much you mentally prepare yourself, you still crap your RIG when something jumps out. They do mix it up by having some of those moments completely safe, giving you false positives and just generally screwing you around. These moments are well separated and the game is much better paced than its predecessor, having intense bursts of limb-cutting action separated by calm puzzle time and reflection time.
Some of the scariest moments are still, by far, when you've been stabbed, sliced and bitten down to a last, flashing red segment of health, gasping inside your helmet and limping through the dark in a panic to find the next save station or store because you've only got 5 shots left, no med packs and your stasis meter is empty.
It's this survival-horror aspect that makes most horror games so frightening; being weak and vulnerable, knowing a sudden and gruesome death could be waiting round the next corner. This was a big talking point when Visceral announced that DS2 would be more actiony than DS1 (and it is in isolated parts) and as such, would remove that feeling of vulnerability and lose the horror aspect. Olly wrote a good little bit about Amnesia: The Dark Descent (which I'm sure he's glad I introduced him to) talking about the same sort of terrifying weakness. And that game IS horrifically frightening.

There are some clever uses of Isaac's psychotic hallucinations and flashbacks in DS2.
(SPOILERS)
One of the best examples was when Isaac returns to the Ishimura, walking down some of the same corridors from the first game, although now the walls and vents are covered in plastic and decontamination equipment and the occasional UV light (making all the blood glow a pretty purple)
There's a sequence in this part of the ship in Dead Space 1 where just as you leave a centrifuge room, a huge drag tentacle lunges out of the darkness and drags you into its tunnel, and you have only seconds to shoot the tentacle in the weak spot before it pulls you in forever.
Well as you leave the same centrifuge room in Dead Space 2, the drag tentacle returns and grabs Isaac, once more, by the ankle and reels him in. The same terror and tension from the first encounter is brought up in me again, ready to take it down. Only, it suddenly disappears. silence. Isaac is fine.
(this explains it better)



For me, this is where I empathised with Isaac's flashbacks and hallucinations the most, as they were sort of flashbacks for me, too. It almost made me sad that they couldn't have done more similar ones through the game before this point.
So far, they were used to show his late girlfriend, Nicole as a manifestation of Isaac's guilt and bereavement (although they don't quite hit the mark in the emotive sense.)
(Those videos are also great to compare how much better DS2 looks)

Overall, I love the game and I'm looking forward to how the story will unfold. I'm yet to try the multiplayer, but I'll report on it when I do.


Right.
Real work.

So I've finally finished rigging Sally the spider, and I'm pretty proud of the result:



Controls include:
Body segment control.
Eyes controlled by moving an 'aim box'. Scaling this yellow box makes Sally blink. Inside the box are the 4 individual eye controls, which are parented to the aim box. Above it are the eyebrow controls, which can be rotated to give the eyes more expression.
Individual IK control and pole vectors for each leg.
IK/FK switch for the front two legs (also used as arms).
Direct on-mesh point control of mouth (with cheek raising).

I discovered that rigging a model isn't complete until the animation is done, as little glitches occasionally pop up which need fixing, especially because this is the first proper rig I've ever made and I've learned on the go.
I've had a week off of rigging to let my sanity coagulate before I begin rigging Frankie, the old man in The Little Helper

Also, there's post production, I'm working with Loz to make little doodles pop out of a sketchbook.

We had to reshoot at the weekend because our last clip was just so poor that MatchMover was too busy tracking noise to follow the markers.

So the new tracking is under way. It's going much better.
I'm happy with the idea, but in the back of my mind I still want to make holograms.

Final of my stuff, here's some sketchbook stuff:

Life drawing.
I figured I'd use some different media in this session, I went for coloured pencils and my new markers, which haven't gotten as much use as I'd hoped.


I started with rough shading, then refined the shape with fineliner. I'm quite happy with how it looks. We were also told to draw the model in a more stylised way for one of the drawings.


Markers are no good for sketching, and they cause other pens to bleed like hell.


Here I broke the model down to constituent polygons.


Different music was played during these to see if the type of music would affect how we drew and the styles we used. It's a surprising result.


Just ordinary black colouring pencil. Could be done better.

I've been neglecting life drawing this term, which is a shame because we've had a different model to draw, and she's much more interesting to draw than Shaky McShakerson we've had so far.
While trying to draw spacesuits and more recently, scenes for the Inbetween project, I've come to the conclusion that I may have forgotten how to draw people realistically. None of the poses hold any weight and are all slightly anatomically off, and it's quite a concern. I guess spending the majority of one's time realistically depicting alien anatomy affects how you draw real body stuff.


At least these guys look muscular and shapely.


A new anatomical feature I've refined in Fentil Vertebrates is the 'spur' which has a soft pad on the end, allowing grazers to 'sit' comfortably while feeding.


Observe this with post-modern eyes.



Here's a sci-fi gun I designed (poorly) for a first-person reload animation thing (because they always look cool) in Maya. It taught me that camera settings can be a tricky beast - you can't just make a model of a guy, pose it all right then slap a camera in his face - it jsut doesn't work - you can't see anything. The only way to make the hands visible is to set the focal length so shallow that it looks like the scene is being sucked into a black hole.
I think some clever trickery is at work with FPS makers. I shall have to discover their secret.


Better quality version of those doodles I put up last time. Oh, and a dinosaur I doodled whilst practicing in Composite.


I saw Princess Mononoke the other night at the Poly - I forgot how good that film was. It made me want to watch all the Ghibli films again. While I was waiting for the film to start, I decided to sketch the DVD menu (that's right, I payed to see it on DVD - though it was on a nice big screen)


Oh, and more dinosaurs.

Now some cool stuff I found for you to watch:









Now, to bed!

Busy busy busy

Holy balls, where to start?

I've been working hard on 3rd year projects.
My roles as of current are the (sole) rigger of 'The Little Helper' and an animator on 'Inbetween -A Fable'

I've decided to work on these two because I wanted to stretch my Maya muscles, and I want to be able to rig better, so I'm learning as I go - but I didn't want to exclusively 3D work - I want to stay varied.

I've already rigged a jack-in-the-box, which caused me an insane amount of hell to finish, and I still don't think it quite works properly - I think there are some hierarchy problems that breaks one thing when I fix another - leading to a never-ending spiral of fixing.

Anyway, here's the final rig - no textures.


1. FK hat controls
2. Head rotator
3. FK arm controls
4. Lid control - limited to 'open', 'closed' and only between those two angles (except for some give for animation overlap)
5. Body spline rotator
6. Handle control
7. (a) Arm compressor (b) hat compressor - for when the jack is inside the box.
8. 'Spring' control - Dragging up/down extends/retracts the Jack's body. It has limited top/bottom values for clean, intuitive control
9. World control - controls the rotation/translation of the entire model

Besides making it work properly, the major change I would make to this is to perhaps link the spring control to the body rotate control, so that changing the length/rotation of the body could all be done by dragging a single control. That might perhaps be more intuitive.
I think having a bit of a past in product design makes me constantly want to improve anything with human interaction; making it easier to use and more comfortable to use. I;m pretty sure ergonomics can be applied to rigs. Right?

I'm now in the process of rigging Sally, the spider. After shortened deadlines it's a frantic rush - I still have an old man to rig, too.

Here's the controls I've developed for her eyes.
It works in such a way that each eye is independently controllable, with Aim Constraints making the eye track the control circle, which itself remains facing its respective eye. The surrounding yellow box is a way to control all of the eyes at once.
I've made it so that the eye controllers aren't limited - so they can be physically placed by the object of focus - and if they get lost, then they can be safely zeroed back to their starting points.

Here's what her rig looks like so far

A lot of these don't work yet, but I'm just getting it all drawn out first.

As for the 2D piece, I've been already tasked with a transformation.
I immediately had an idea of a sort of flow of 'evil' traveling up her body, as if she can't contain it.
It reminds me of the transformation scenes in Ghibli films.
Trying to actually find clips of this on YouTube sent me down a spiraling void of crappy Ghibli AMVs to stupid music - the other kind of hell, way more frightening than Alighieri's, and was ultimately a failed cause.
I think pretty much anyone reading this knows the sort of forceful, gelatinous morphing (I can't actually think of a specific example - Dan fail)
Here's the sort of thing I mean:

Another aspect I wanted to include was to perhaps make her human form literally burning with her conviction as she transforms into her inner beast - so the wave of change could be indicated by ashes advancing along her body with the wave.

Here's the concept sketches I'm working with:

Lots of 'old master' style hands. Brilliant. I've been practicing this monster and I'm determined to nail this style before the real animation is due!
I haven't gotten a detailed one of the woman yet.

Next: Post production.

Well, I've got no scan-ins to show, but after changing ideas for the last week or so, I'm finally settled on an idea.
You'll just have to imagine
So I'm holding a sketchbook, then I slap on a disk-like lifegiver onto the front, let it glow, then open the book up.
The pages start blank, but doodles start creeping out of the paper into 3D space.
I keep turning the pages, and lots of my fanciful and surreal doodles jump and dance about, but as I keep turning, the doodles become more surreal and horrific, until I'm turning the pages so quickly that most doodles don't get a chance, until on the final page, something horrible leaps out at me, at which point I slam the book shut.

I'm thinking of doing it from a first-person perspective, only showing my arms. I'm going to do a quick test shoot next week to see if it's possible to do - and to see if the the tracking is easy.
I quite like this idea over the other ones I've had because it includes both 2D and 3D.
I'm planning on doing this on my own, so I'm going to be very busy. Hopefully it will be simple enough to manage. I know I'll have to ask for help at some point, though.

I've got a bit of new sketchbook work to show, but I haven't scanned it in yet.
Speaking of sketchbook, Hugh showed me some cool markers here, and I'm extremely tempted to get those grey ones - just to give my pen sketches a bit more depth and shadow. They're out of stock at the moment, so more waiting for me.

In Dead Space 2 - related news; The game is finally out. Do I have it? No.

I've been promised a free copy by Visceral - but I'm still waiting by the letterbox for it to arrive.
Pretty much everyone I know has seen my 'glorious' appearance.

I also did an email-based interview for a website called 'Asylum', which was also referenced in a Kotaku article.
Since these articles - that Meat Cello video got nearly 50,000 views - double what it had in the almost-year beforehand.
I'm practically a celebrity...ish.

And finally- here's some cool stuff I've found:





( I really like this song and the video. Double win.


(I remember being shown this earlier last year - it's sad)


Cool Viewtiful Joe-style animation


Really cool 3D animation short - really visceral!

Well, that's all for now. Expect this to be updated with sketches soon.

Oh, and this new thing by Harry Partridge:

His stuff is always amazing.