Set Design

Here are a few set designs I have done for my Mayfly idea, I most like the 3rd one with the willow hanging over the stream.  This is because it looks most natural and fitting to a Mayfly.


I'll use these set designs to show examples of the style I'm thinking of and help you to understand more how I want the animation to look like.

Mayfly Finals

Here are the more accurate looking but simplified characters for my Mayfly Idea.  I'm very happy with how they have turned out because you can tell by the main features that it is a Mayfly, for example the shape of the head, the double wings and long tail-type bits.

I finally have all of my ideas down now and just need to tweak them slightly, most character designs are underway and I have started a little set design for my Mayfly idea, I'll post some later on today.

I've nearly finished my Mayfly idea now, just need to do a bit more research into the style I want and blog some examples, then finalise my set designs and make a character profile...not much when you think about it right?

I have made myself a strict production timeline for then next week and hope to have all of my 3 minute ideas finished and ready to present...I'll let you know how thats going in a few days.

More Inspiration

Here are a handful of animations that have influenced and inspired me as I have been plumbing the depths for inspiration.  I hope you can see where I have taken my inspiration and applied it to my own ideas, through storylines, styles and character designs

I like the mix of style and the storyline with this animation show reel from Cristian Cardenas. the style is similar to what I had in mind for my Mayfly idea, with some over exposure and an overlay of sepia tones.

This is also an animation I studied when thinking of my Mayfly idea, I like the roughness and focus on the one main character.

I like this animation because it is a really original idea, if a little strange. I also think it has been very well animated and characterised, giving the guy a desperate and almost pathetic feel to him. With the style adding to the effect.

And this animation is just plain freaky! It is so unpredictable and you are constantly unaware of what is going on, I still feel at the end that you have to decide your own storyline for it.

The Spaceman Development

On a totally unrelated note...I don't think I've mentioned my spaceman idea, so I guess now is as good a time as any...


Here are some head/helmet designs that I did last week, I guess I should give some of them a body, that can wait till a later post.

'The Girl is Mime'

Here is a great inspirational piece, the standard of realism is definitely something I would like to achieve.  The full animation has not yet been produced (at least I don't think so) so this is just a teaser trailer.

Just a Quick one...or two

Just quickly wanted to blog this animation, its a great piece and gave me the inspiration for the mime idea.  I love the style and how it's almost interactive and how fast paced it becomes. Also how it mixes so many media and makes you think its an old fashioned film, like when the film reel runs and at the beginning where the disks spins with the title. The whole feel of the animation is just great, really inspirational!

And I love the style and character designs of this animation, the texturing makes it look so tactile and inviting with the slightly blue hue over the greyscale.

Another Idea!!

So I've been struggling hugely picking an idea I want to develop for my 3 minute animation, I surprisingly have quite a few ideas; from sasquatches to spacemen and fish to cavemen...but I don't feel that they're really up to par, but in a moment of inspiration I just had a great one! 

Mimes!

It looks great in my head but now to convert that to paper.

I've done a bit of research yet again and haven't found anything with a similar storyline, I have however found a few mime animations that I feel I can do better than. After furiously scribbling down notes and possible story directions I'm getting pretty into it. Expect some sketches in the coming days.

It is about 2 mimes fighting over a spot to work...maybe just beneath the Eiffel Tower but maybe that's too cliché. Lets just say in short, that they argue and fight with mime objects...that can only be funny right?


I'll leave out most of the details for now, but Mat, you will be receiving an email shortly!

Mayfly Development

Here are some developmental sketches of my Mayflies, I like the top centre design as it has the main features of a Mayfly whilst being simplified. I'll sketch up some more poses using this design and post them soon.

Mayfly

Similarly to 'Thought of You', I really wanted to make my designs and entire animation very simplified.  Taking the references of the Mayfly and really stripping it back to its basic shape.


Here are the references I used and drawings I made from them

And here are some initial ideas I had to simplify the characters

However I feel that they may be slightly too simple so I am going to add a little more detail so it is clearer what it actually is.

Pike Attack

An idea I had a few weeks ago was a fish-based underwater storyline, this was because it is a new challenge for me as I haven't done any underwater animation before. It was an idea with an evil pike or two and an unfortunate fish.
To help me to draw the characters and understand how they move I did some image research on Pikes. I drew them out so I can characterise them and develop the characters with an understanding of their main features.

Here are the anatomically correct drawings and images

And here are some characterisations I did, focussing quite a bit on an underbite for the fish. I thought this would help to give it more character

The Mayfly

After watching Ryan Woodward's 'Thought of You' it sparked inspiration for an idea, in short, the life of a mayfly. This idea is solely in 2D and hand drawn so I think this might be more down Mat's street :p and it's something that I have always wanted to do but never felt confident enough doing.  However because my idea is quite simple I feel we could definitely achieve this to a high standard! I'll email Mat with the full rough storyline and some sketches.

Using either photoshop or just pencil, I want the whole thing to be hand drawn with the backgrounds and characters being on different layers to give the animation depth.

I did a little research and found they begin life in a larval form known as a nymph.  Whilst in their nymph form they like to live under stones in fast flowing water or among plants in slow streams.  They usually stay in this state for around 1 year before all hatching out together and only living for between a few minutes and a day, this is because their mouths seal up as soon as they hatch from their nymph shells...weird! During this time they over run some towns and become a huge pest for people for a very short amount of time. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could show their life from a Mayfly's point of view, instead of seeing them as pests. They have to hatch, find a mate and lay thousands of eggs in just hours.

I have a more detailed storyline but don't want to blog it now...just in case.



I'll post some initial drawings I have made later on...

Inspiration

Here's a hand full of inspirational animations that I have found over he last few weeks, they're either funny or I think that they have been well produced.  Hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

A subtitled link is here

Realism

After being put off cel shading I have done some research on realism and have found it to be very interesting and have found some inspiring work


Round 6 

This being a particular favourite of mine. The suspense created and information held from the viewer makes it a great teaser.

Sintel

Bang Bang You Are Bread

Ryan Woodward

I also found this series from Ryan Woodward and I again like the style and it has inspired one of my ideas that I had yesterday, I love the style and hope to reproduce something like it with CG and 2D backgrounds.

Ryan Woodward

This is a really powerful and moving animation, the moves are so fluid and natural. It's incredible work like this that inspires me to try something new, and hopefully will inspire a new storyline and new approach to animation for me.

Why Are the Good Ones Always Taken?

I thought I had a great idea...


I was trying to think of something that I haven't done before and something that would hopefully be funny.

So, I came up with this idea for a caveman who is trying to start a fire and things keep going wrong and whatever he does it goes wrong.

My initial idea was with the caveman starting a fire and setting his beard alight, then running to some water and throwing his head into it to put it out.  Then when he lifted his head up, a piranha would be biting his nose. He would then grab a stick and go to smack the piranha but it would jump out of the way and he would hit his face with the stick and all hilarity would ensue! 

At this point I did some research into existing cavemen animations for some inspiration to be brutally honest I found some very weak examples, but then I stumbled across this little gem

I think I can pretty much say it's been done...and well! Except the piranha has been replaced by leeches.


Back to the drawing board...how about dinosaurs...

Inspirations

It's also about time I started putting up some inspirational animations that I have found, so here goes...

This is a great little animation that makes me laugh every time! I love the simple style.

This has a great narration t start that leaves you in the dark as to what it's about, but i like the realism of the rendering and the storyline.

This is another that makes me laugh every time I watch it. The style and colours are great and the story is so simple. The animation is also great as they really understand the weighting and balance of the character.


There are many more so I'll add them in the coming posts

Not my Style

Ok, I have done a little more research and I don't think Cel Shaded is the way to go.  Simply because it isn't the style I want to achieve.  It seems to be used more for anime characters and designs and this isn't something that I am interested in. 
I might try and focus on a more realistic style and get my head around Vue 9 to achieve some great results.

I think it depends a lot on the storyline and characters as to the style I decide to go for. And at the moment I don't have many strong ideas.

I think I'll get my ideas more solid before deciding what style to use.

Cel Shading or Toon Shading

So here's how to cell shade in Maya...

you can do it with maya renderer and toon shader or mental ray and contour shader (whcihc is a bit more complicated but gives better results...

Using the standard Maya Renderer, not Mental Ray

- First light the scene with a standard three point lighting system so you have good lights to work with as opposed to Maya standard lights.  Then duplicate your geometry and rename one 'Cel' and the other 'Outline', then group these together so you can move them together and they won't become misaligned if you move them or rotate them.

- Assign the geometries to a new render layer each, named 'Cel' and 'Outline'.  This is so that they can be rendered separately and composited in After Effects giving you more control over the outcome.

- For the 'Cel' geometry assign a 'Fill Shader'.  Do this in the Rendering menu set ⇒ Toon ⇒ Assign Fill Shader ⇒ then choose Shaded Brightness Tone 2 or 3. In the Attribute Editor adjust the colour in the ramp shader to whatever is it you need the colour to be, and add more if you wish to give a wider tonal range. This is done by clicking in the colour box where you can slide the current colours left and right.

- Once you have the desired colour, you need to add an outline to the 'Outline' geometry.  First assign a Surface Shader and make it white. Then in the Rendering menu set ⇒ Toon ⇒ Assign Outline ⇒ Add New Toon Outline.  You can then edit the outline and crease lines in the Attribute Editor, it's best to adjust settings under the Common, Profile Lines, Crease Lines and Border Lines tabs to achieve the best results.

If you are making an animation, not just a still, all you do is composite the 2 layers in an editing software like After Effects and because of the alpha channels you can overlay the outline on top of the coloured layer.  Then play around with the hue and saturation and what not until you're happy with the results.
To get a nice outline you need to create your model in pieces, this then gives the outline shader more to work with and produce a better result.

I will go through rendering in players/passes and 3 point lighting in another post. 

I also need to research more about Cel Shading with Mental Ray, but when I know how I'll let you know!

I'll have a quick go with the Toon Shader and a model I found on the internet, then blog it up.

A lot of it is explained briefly here by Christophe Desse.