Learning Maya: Building a truck

For the animation module we have to model and animate a 3-D model of a toy using Maya. To start off, we practiced by modelling a truck.

We used a step by step guide to create this, using a variety of modeling tools to create the shapes and connect them together.

We created the front of the truck by creating a cube and splitting the face using the insert edge loop too, we then altered the edge to go inwards, making the front shape.

We then created the back of the truck by creating a cube and using the scale tool to make it smaller. After that we snapped it to the front part of the truck using the translate tool. We then used the bevel tool to smooth out the corners of the back, making it curved.

We created an axle by making a simple cylinder, translating it so it is thin, and snapping it onto the chassis of the truck. We then make another cylinder and snapped it to the end of the axle to act as a wheel. We then duplicated the wheel and translated it to the other side of the truck.

Finally, we grouped together the two wheels and axle so we could duplicate them all. We then translated the copy to the back of the truck and snapped it together. We then lengthened the back wheels for better design and we finished!

I learnt a lot about Maya through the making of this truck, It is a lot harder than I thought and I found it a little stressful to work with, however with due time I am sure I will get used to it and speed up my working speed.

The Binding of Isaac: A game review.

So hey! Let's review a game! Something I have never done and have no experience in! And hey my first review will be in The Binding of Isaac! What could possibly go wrong!?

Oh, wait.

Before we enter the terrifying world of amateur reviews, I feel obliged to mention how I actually acquired this game. It is nothing so petty and bland as just buying it, oh no, that is far too predictable for the amazing life of RYAN LANCASTER!

I got this game from the brilliant masterminds behind The Humble Indie Bundle, specifically, The Humble Voxatron Debut.

The Humble Bundle is a care package of games which become available for a limited period of time. You can pay whatever you want for all the games within the bundle, even 1 cent!* All the money can be divided by you to go straight to the developers, charities or the company behind the Humble Bundles themselves.

Not only can you you pay any amount for these games, they are all cross platform and all DRM free, you own the games forever on purchase. Basically, it is amazing.

I am a huge fan of the Humble Indie Bundle; It gets a lot of lesser known developers and there games a lot of attention, it is good for charity, it bypasses a lot of middle men so you don't have to worry where the money is going, and you get a while bunch of games for a bargain price (or however much you want to pay)! It's a refreshing breeze in a world of cold calculating business and totally deserves all the positive attention it is getting!

I purchased The Humble Voxatron** Debut before The Binding of Isaac was part of it, it was only later when  I received an email that The Binding of Isaac had been added retroactively as a bonus did I actually acquire it. So I technically got it for free!

But enough about The Humble Bundle (as awesome as it is), let us actually get back to the main topic at hand, that being The Binding of Isaac and why I've been playing in addictively over the past couple of days.

The Binding of Isaac was created independently by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. Mcmillen was the mind and artist behind Gish, Super Meat Boy, and Time Fcuk, his art style and sense of humour is instantly recognisable in all those games and the Binding of Isaac is no different. The graphics are very 'cartoony' and the humour is pretty dark.

You play Isaac, a naked child who has chosen to flee into the monster invested depths to escape your Mother, who has received a message from God to kill you in sacrifice. Naturally with a title like The Binding of Isaac, there is a lot of references to Christianity and Religion in this game, it certainly doesn't pull the punches when it comes to the 'dead baby humour', so people who are quite sensitive to such topics might want to give this game a pass.

The Binding of Issac is an odd mixture of game genres to say the least; combining the old NES Legend of Zelda dungeon crawling with Rogue-like 'Permadeath' and random generation. There is certainly very few games similar to it, you go through each room, killing a variety of monstrosities using your tears to fight them off. Occasionally you will pick up bombs, keys, pills and tarot cards to help you on your journey and improve your stats.

You will also pick up a variety of items throughout the game, which the vast majority change the appearance of Isaac quite drastically, there are over 100 items available to collect, including your Mother's Bra (freezes enemies) and the Necromonicon (Kills all enemies in the room). 

Playing through The Binding of Isaac is no easy task. Lose all your hearts and it's game over, which will happen often with the tough enemies and unpredictable boss patterns. However it never becomes frustrating as starting up a game is very quick and is different every time. With the random generation and the vast array of items avalible in the game, you never play the same session twice, this is probably why I've have been playing it a lot in my spare time.

 

I wouldn't consider myself a completionist as I don't think you need to finish a game 100% to fully enjoy it. However I feel compelled to continue playing The Binding of Isaac long before my first finished play through. All of the items are interesting and often morbid, changing the game style with upgraded stats or giving you a certain power-up, it is always fun to find a powerful combination and see how far you can go with it.

I want to find every ending and every secret in the game, I'm not quite sure why though. Perhaps I am morbidly fascinated with the grim story and aesthetics, or I'm compelled to find the best item in the game. It certainly helps that the game is really fun to play, the controls are intuitive and easy to learn, though hard to master. It is really satisfying to see Isaac progress and be victorious in his escape after many (many, many, maaaaany) deaths. Though it should to be warned that the multiple endings you can acquire are not exactly 'happy' to say the least.

 

The Binding of Isaac is a really fun and unique game that I'd recommend to anybody, the grim aesthetics and the 'dead baby humour' takes a little getting used to and may be a bit grim to some people, but once you get used to it there is a great game to be played here. The game can be bought on Steam for $5, which considering how much content is on offer in this game, is a complete bargain! Go play it!

* If you actually only paid 1 cent for any of the Humble Bundles them shame on you. SHAAAAAAME!

** Incidentally, Voxatron is pretty fun to play, for an Alpha at least. Luckily the purchase comes with all of the updates for free, but right now there is precious little content in the game. Still, looks promising.

The Man Eating Machine.

Corporate Cannibal is a music video performed by Grace Jones, directed by Nick Hooker and released in 2008. It makes use of a variety of video effects to make it look like Grace Jones’ body is twisting and warping in impossible ways.

The effects being used throughout the video are relatively simple; the colours have been de-saturated to leave only black and white and a mirror like effect in certain parts of the frame to distort shapes. Despite this, the end product this produces is quite eye catching, creating this bizarre, alien figure, shape shifting in a seemingly endless void.

The only colours on show through the whole music video is black and white, this adds to the ‘dehumanising’ effect that both the lyrics and the shape shifting visuals are putting onto the character. It also coincides well with the warping effect, as it makes the parts of her body which are greatly exaggerated seem smoother and real.

The camera never deviates from showing the top half of Grace Jones’ body; however the positions of where the warping effect takes place change throughout the entire video. Close ups and extreme close ups are also used, sometimes highlighting or even multiplying an eye or a mouth. The fact that we never see her body makes her seem more alien and keeps her the centre of attention throughout the whole video.

According to Grace Jones, she was "very obsessed with the subject" of the video. She takes the role of ‘Man eating machine’ which she describes herself as a “a corporate cannibal, a digital criminal”. This could be references big businesses in general and how ruthless they can be. The fact that she is portrayed in the video as such an intimidating, alien being seems to strengthen this.

Unlike other music videos, the music and the visuals stay together. Without the effects, the video would simply be Grace Jones singing to the camera. I personally feel that for such a long music video, someone may get desensitised to the warping figure after seeing it so much, however it may be for the best that she is the main attracting and there are as little distractions as possible.

When I first saw this video I was initially surprised by the warping figure in the video, but I quickly got used to this and got tired of it. In my opinion after a while, the effect looked quite cheap; it reminded me of the ‘Photobooth’ feature that certain Apple computers have built in using the webcams.  I was quite surprised to find out the music video was made in 2008, as I initially thought it was released much later than that, the visuals to me seemed more commonplace for something in the early nineties.

 I do not think it is not entirely without merit; the symbolism and the lyrics in the music video is very good, and the warping effects do an excellent job of making Grace Jones into something completely alien. Throughout the video I couldn’t help but be reminded of the sci-fi short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”. Perhaps it’s the line “man eating machine” that reminds me of it (the short story features a mad artificial intelligence) or that the warping visuals remind me of HR Giger, which the story uses his art as an influence.

Overall I felt Corporate Cannibal was more dated than it should be and went on for far too long, but it certainly was an interesting watch, to say the least. 

To Kill a Dragon: Don Bluth.

Don Bluth is a famous animator and character designer, best known for working on films such as Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986),The Land Before Time (1988), and All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). He also worked on the video game Dragon's lair.

As a child I really enjoyed the movies that Don Bluth helped to create, the characters he created were always memorable an fun to watch. I really like how through simple poses and 2 sentences, he has fully explained the character above.

I also really like the style of drawing that Don Bluth did; very simple and cartoony figures but with a lot of range for poses and emotion. It is quite close the to the style of drawing that I am doing for my character.

Don Bluth was excelent at producing storyboards and character sheets, I hope to be able to make something like this for my own character.

On Valkyries: Raita Honjo

Raita Honjo Is a character concept artist most notably known for his work on Valkyria Chronicles.

I am personally not a huge fan of the anime style, no doubt because I have seen it so many times and can look bad when done over the top. However I really like Honjo's work in the Valkyria Chronicles games.

I really like the use of watercolours (and how they kept this in the games) as well as the variety of character archetypes on portrayal for each character. The style is quite similar to my own cartoony stlye, though with superior colouring and more realistic proportions.

Location Location Location

I needed a location for The Witch-Doctor.  something that suited his rich upbringing but also demonstrated his evil character.

I began looking into mansions and elegant interiors. My plan was to take a very rich mansion and corrupt it with The Witch-Doctor's evil. I looked into haunted mansions and dark areas. Quite fitting considering it is Halloween!

I then produced some quick sketches of what the mansion would look like, also making a quick floor plan for the room.

  

I first made a very quick and rough sketch, mainly to be used as a general guide.

I went over this guide in a a lot more detail and using a cleaner line. This would be useful as I could colour this in very quickly and easily.

I then added the base colours for each element in the room, the majority of the room is white and clean.

I then produced the final piece. Adding more detail in the colours, lighting, rug details, blood splatters and evil smoke comming from cracks in the room. I think this came out alright and suits The Witch-Doctor very well.

 I also made cleaner versions of my floor plans, giving more details on measurements.

The Illusion of Movement

Here is a flipbook animation that I made for my ANIMATE module.

It is 20 frames long at 12 FPS. I tried to get as many principles of animation as I could, specifically anticipation and easing in and out.

Before I made this I made a small storyboard of the keyframes.

 I wrote small explanations of what was going on for each frame, I was going to use this on it's own but I decided to do something more detailed.

I produced another storyboard featuring all 20 frames. I did this because I wanted to make sure I got all of the movements I wanted in the limited frames I had. I am quite happy with this animation, though I would of preferred to have polished the drawings a bit more.

Seasons Greetings: Alphonse Mucha

I wanted to look into some artists that were working round the time my character is set (WWI and before), as before now I have only looked at contemporary artists and would like to see some more historic art. While looking into artists, my Brother suggested I look into the art of Mucha.

Mucha was an Czech Art Nouveau artist who worked during the late 1800's and early 1900's. He produced a lot of posters and designs, mainly featuring women. One of his most famous pieces of work is a poster featuring four women representing the four seasons (shown above).

I really like the style that Mucha draws; it is realistic but at the same, stylised, using large outlines and swirling patterns for hair and plants. I feel that the style shares similarities with classic fantasy, with the women pictured    reminding me of elves form Lord of The Rings.

The large outlines and flat colours remind me of my own character designs, albeit on a much lesser extent, I would love to be able to produce some character designs in this style but I am not skilled enough to even imitate it. 

Trials and Tribulations of The Modern Man

When most people think of modernism, they think of it as solely an art movement. This however is not the case, rather it was a reaction of Modernity and the vast changes in culture and society that came with it. Modernism wasn't just splats of paint on a canvas, though that certainly was a part of it.

Modernity arose during 1750s when Industrialisation and Urbanisation were starting to emerge.Where there were once small knit, rural communities there was now the great mass of strangers in cities, close physically but not personally. New technologies slowly made the world a smaller place; trains, telephones, convenient technologies that changed the worlds subjective conciousness.

Another driving force for modernity was the rise of philosophical and scientific thinking, religion, which was once the dominating 'explanation' for the world was being replaced with scientific reason, changing the outlook of everyone. Psychology is discovered for the initial purpose of finding out what effect the modern world would have on a man's mind.

The City had become the new social experience. To be modern was to be 'new', to be improved and superior. Naturally, countries began to compete for who could be the most modern city. Throughout the early 20th century, the city of Paris was the most modern city of the world. The city was redesigned, replacing the small alleyways with large boulevards. This could be seen as Modernity being used to better control the people; the large areas made it easier to move troops and the poor were forced to the outskirts of the city.

With such a new experience it was natural that artist would turn there attentions on the city. Throughout the history of modernism, the art has often followed the progress of technology and society. Artists learn the science of optics and begin using unique and complimentary colours in there paintings. With the advent of photography, art had to change and compete with this new technology.

New technology, such as the Kaiserpanorama, had become a barrier of actual experiences. People would rather pay to see something through a lens than see it for themselves for free. Modernism became a subjective response to modernity, painting an experience of the surroundings rather than a literal representation. 

Modernism is defined by many key features: It is anti-historicism, never looking back to take influences from past works, It works with truth with materials, making paint look like paint and wood look like wood, rather than trying to disguise it. With modernism, form followed function, this is the minimalist design that many people often attach to modernism.

Most importantly, modernism was seen as international, going through all cultural and social barriers to make a design which everyone could understand. All buildings would be the same and everyone would understand it. This lead to the rise of skyscrapers and buildings made of cheaper materials that anyone could use.

Modernism ended round the 1950's, where it was to be replaced with the less serious Post-Modernism.

Film was also inspired by modernity, film makers explored how it could be used to control people with the film 'Fountainhead'. It also often looked to the future of modernism and made predictions of what might come,  from these often bizarre films we can see the birth of the science fiction genre.

Both Charlie Chaplin and Dziga Vertov explored modernism in film, the former in a much more jovial way than others, he portrayed his character being literally lost in a gigantic machine, a feeling no doubt many people felt during the introduction of so many new technologies.

LEGITIMATE BLOG POST

The adventures of PHOTO BEAR!

For the last two weeks we have had photography inductions to get us used to the SLR cameras the college has. For this induction we had to bring a 'treasured item' to take pictures of, I chose the teddy bear I have had since I was 6 (Ted!).

In the Induction we learnt all about shutter speeds, aperture sizes, white balance, lighting and depth of field. Once we were taught about these technical terms on a camera we were told to take pictures of our items, here are the six favorite ones I took!

Here I used a wide aperture to get a small depth if field. I also used the cameras focus points to keep Ted in focus. Totoro looms in the background, waiting...always waiting.

Here I used a strong studio light on the left side of Ted to create some strong shadows on him.

I used a wide aperture and the camera's built in monochrome picture style to take this black and white photo. Ted is all alone. ;_;

I used a wide aperture to focus on the leaf in front of Ted, making him out of focus in the background.

I used a Narrow aperture here to get a lot of the foliage around Ted in focus. I also used a white balance suited for the cloudy weather outdoors.

Here I used a very slow shutter speed and shone a small blue LED all around Ted, the effect is a ghostly neon blur which looks really good!

I learnt quite a lot in these inductions, no doubt I will be utilizing these techniques for future projects.