Oliver Castle - BA(Hons) Computer Animation Arts

Today's session was all about texturing and learning about the different ways to achieve said task. First, via photoshop; creating a flat texture from an unfolded UV. Not bad, looks nice, if a little flat. The second method was to use Autodesk Mudbox to "paint" the 3d shape (in this case a cube) with multiple layers to create the texture. For my layers I went with: The Diffuse (The "Base Colour" layer) The Specular Layer (Which affects how reflective and responsive to light the cube is) And the Bump Map! (To give the texture slight depth) All in all, it creates a nice little rusted metal looking cube. Looking forward to using mudbox for my city later on!

Today's session was the next step up from last week's walk cycles. This time we recorded ourselves doing a 'silly walk' (a la Monty Python). Then we sketched it out on paper. And animated it! To be honest, I'm not really proud of it. The walk was so odd it's kind of hard for me to actually figure out what the hell I was doing and that naturally made it hard to translate it into animation.

We spent today working more on the chicken coop, specifically readying it for texturing by fixing up the UVs.

Here's a couple of initial thumbnails I did in today's Digital Drawing session! Not really going in with the intent of creating buildings just yet, but more to try and break down and understand Nithiyendran's "Language" (Or how he comes up with his pieces) with the goal of then "Rebuilding" a city from those parts. As part of this idea, and to help me in the later stages, I tried to also do this with Nithiyendran's colours. Essentially taking the colours I can find on his pieces and slapping them on a spectrum. Hopefully this will help me decide on my cities colour pallette when I get to that point.

Trying something new with my work diaries, audio logs! I'd appreciate any feedback, since I'm really not sure if or how this is going to work! More Infomation on Nithiyendran Website Instagram

Just a quick picture of today's Maya work, getting started on digital sets and it's coming along nicely. Unfortunately I'm out of the tutorial system right now so I can't continue but I'll just have to come back to it once I'm all hooked up on monday. Still, I'm happy with what I got done today so it's all good.

Walk Cycles! That was the focus of today's session, and I was rather excited to get stuck in with it. I've tried doing walk cycles before in my own time, but I could never quite get them to look right. The stuff I did today finally does, even if it's a little rough. Nice and simple really, just have to get that curve right for the person bobbing up and down. It looks a little weird, but that's just because people don't usually move faster than most cars. Not the easiest image to actually decipher, since it's just a mess of green blobs, but it works so who cares. He's a little shaky, but I think he'll get there in one piece. Wherever there is.

Just a couple of drawings from the life drawing session from today, I 'decided' to go for a lower angle on some of the pieces, just to see what it looked like. I rather like how some of them turned out. I think I need to work on my proportions though, I still can't seem to get them right.

Today's session was spent working on creating structure based on shapes, for now only really working with simple/basic shapes (Squares, Circles and Triangles). We also touched upon using things like repetition and direction to draw the viewer's eye.

Invisible Cities: Zenobia Presentation by Oliver Castle on Scribd Additional Work Reflective Statement The Art of Zenobia Image Research Build Up Gifs

I would be lying to say that I think this project went well. Now that is not to say I think it went badly, only that I feel it could have been much better. In terms of the final 3 pieces I feel most proud of the Low Angle Exterior shot, even if it's not exactly what one would call 'Exterior', but I think that emphasises my problems on the project. I think I tried to push the brief, and the description of Zenobia, a little too far and ended straying off course. The idea of a city on stilts doesn't really show in the way I designed the buildings and structures of my  Zenobia and at first glance the 'cone-roofed belvederes' are barely there. I think I got a little caught up in my idea for Zenobia that I forgot what Zenobia is . The only way I can stop this from happening next time is to truly define my ideas early on and be clear with myself on how they follow the source material. Obviously this will entail a far greater emphasis on planning than I'm used to...

Zenobia: Research by Oliver Castle on Scribd

Zenobia: Art Of by Oliver Castle on Scribd

Here's my three final shots for the Invisible Cities Crit, along with their build up gifs. First, the Low Angle Exterior Shot: Then the Interior Shot: And finally the Exterior Establishing Shot:

Spending today working on the final 3 shots. But here is a few colour tests I did after digitizing one of my post-ogr thumbnails. Not sure I'll use this one for the final interior shot, but I like it anyway.  The first three just 'realistic' daytime/morning colours (well, close enough) and the third is my sunset pallette from last year. Top two are (I guess) a sunset variation, much brighter than the last with a lot less depth. Not a fan of them but some of the colour works in some places I think. 3rd one is my 'glowing interior' pallette from last year, I feel it works as a kind of 'moonlight reflecting off the green bamboo' idea. 4th is a variation on the previous one, as it's a yellower/dry bamboo-like colour instead of green/blue. Anyway, probably more to come today as I'll be trying out some of the exterior shots too.

Here's the playblast for the our vehicle moving then skidding. Nothing fancy, but cool nevertheless. Here is a far fancier version of basically  the same thing except not really. Possibly slightly less cool, I'm genuinely not sure. I like it though. In somewhat relevant news, I have made a twitter account . Since apparently that is a thing people on the course do and as I am on the course I guess I should do it also.

Today's session was adding little effects to our bouncy balls. I started with a fox tail, then tried some frog/flea legs and finally a very terrible at flying bird.

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger, born 2nd June 1899, was a German animator and pioneer of silhoutte animation, a style born from her fascination with Chinese paper cutting at a young age. Reiniger took great inspiration from the works of Georges Méliés and Paul Wegener to the point where she would attend a lecture by Wegener at the age of 16 and enrolled in the former acting group of Wegener, working backstage on props and costume, eventually leading her to returning to sillouettes as she made portraits of the actors in her spare time. Unlike most art of the 1920s, which used expression to portray emotion, Reiniger took her silhouette style to heart, creating characters that used intricate movements to express themselves. One of Reiniger's most famous works and one of the oldest surviving full-length animated films, The Adventures of Prince Achmed  (1926), displays one of the defining traits of her work, her tenency to work on fairy tale adapations. From her first film ...

Here's some more thumbnails I did on the train for Zenobia. I'm mostly exploring ideas for the low angle shot, thinking about having the actual building part of the city be these massive clusters of bamboo buildings, all arranged like cones or maybe bamboo shoots. Obviously I still have to get the connecting walkways, bridges and stairs in there. There's also an attempt at thinking about the interior shot on the bottom left. It's supposed to be one of the tunnels that connects the many 'growth chambers', the water filled ex-mine pits that grow the bamboo. I like it quite a bit actually, since the light would be filtering through the bamboo poles and leaves down into the tunnel but because of the angle most of the tunnel would be rather dark. It might contrast well with the much brighter above ground shots.

Today was 6 hours of digital drawing. We had a little bit of infomation on composition, and how to use leading lines to draw the viewer in, so I sketched out a redo of one of my thumbnails. Once we were done with that I spent the rest of the day doing thumbnails/sketches for the final 3 shots. I'm trying to focus on the idea of where the bamboo comes from, how it's grown, farmed, etc.  So far I'm working under the idea that the people reuse the old zinc mines and grow the bamboo in the pooled water at the bottom. Like how many quarries are turned into lakes once they're used up.