Light Night

Light Night 1

My response to the Light Night brief was going to be simple. I wanted to show earth as a natural element, exposing what makes earth, earth. 

Air, water, fire and earth. The 4 most vital and important elements, combining to create the earth.

The visions I had of this animation were in a Motion Graphic. The spiralling of the 4 elements, then POP out grows the earth from the middle.

But how would I create a spiral effect?

I was hoping there would be some Spiral effect inbuilt into After Effects, after finding out their wasnt, I created a Vector spiral in Illustrator instead which I would paste into the Position module of my assets and have the assets (the elements) follow the vector as a motion path!

My colour scheme.

Obviously inspired by the colours of the graphic industry, I decided on this colour pallete. They all complement each other well and look like the typical colours you would see in a mainstream modern day Mograph.

My assets;

I was happy with how my element assets looked, they are easily distinguishable as elements. (I found out by asking people, however the 'earth' element was once mistaken for a faeces) 

For the wind element I was inspired by Zelda Wind Waker's symbols for Wind;

The style of the elements tie in beautifully with the earth.

The production was relatively efficient although I had trouble in creating the spiral animation, it was most time consuming and tricky and took a lot of rotation and position keyframes but I feel I achieved the spiral effect very well. Much better than if they were just rotating in a spiral but gradually decreased in size, they looked like they were spiralling together to form the greater mass of the earth.

I also found a useful effect called CC Spere, which meant I could map my earth onto a sphere and have it rotate at the end to really put the cherry ontop of my animation and carries it to its end;

I also like the white circle outlines that bounce out, that act as the light source of radiation created from the elements combining.

As an after thought, for that little bit more added, I made the sky go darker with the circle outlines and even added some stars which scale up onto the scene along with the sky. Using the graph editor I created an easy ease effect with the stars' entrance and it creates a 3D effect which I find very effective.

For 1 second of footage I am very happy with what I have achieved in a short space of time, it shows I wasnt just 'following' the motion graphic tutorials, I was learning. Learning enough to apply the knowledge myself to create something okay!

Light Night 2

I decided to do another Light Night entry but this time in my specialised medium of 3D.

I wanted to be stylized with my entry and have a go at the low-poly aesthetic which I will be applying in the module 'telling tales'..

This aesthetic was not only time efficient but it also looks really effective I feel..

This was my final outcome. I am very happy with how it looks and admire its simplicity which complements the aesthetic. I also feel my animation is very topical considering its autumnal vibe. I also like my application of colour; scarlet bushes in comparison to the black/grey sky go nicely together. It also sets quite a stormy atmosphere, complemented by the leaves falling signalling a wind starting, hinting at a storm and destruction. I also like the randomness in the animation of the leaves, I feel it looks really realistic.

Summer Blogs - Motion Graphic Test

Motion Graphics are a brilliant way to create effective and professional looking animations efficiently, because of their simplistic nature making them non-time consuming to produce. This is why they are a favoured animation medium of our century, a busy century where time efficiency is of the upmost importance. Slowly this medium has branched from being used mainly on short graphic commercials, to the industry itself and is becoming a mainstream trend of the animation industry. Obviously a direct correlation with the modern graphic illustration style trend...

The style where geometric shapes with bold almost contrasting colours (which often clash and aren't really complementary) still weirdly sing in harmony together..

Because of it being such an efficient medium I wanted to try my hand at it because of the chance to enter my work into more competitions in the responsive brief, and I also really like the simple aesthetic. 

Its a growing industry, why ignore it as a medium of animation??

So I followed a tutorial on After Effects and created this short Mograph;

I was extremly happy with how it looks! Especially the firework style explosions which looked really hard to create, were surprisingly very easy. I love the whole aesthetic of motion graphics and appreciate it as a medium of animation. Evereything looks so bouncy, clean, plastic, fluid and minimalist.

"Step Into The Page" - Glen Keane

Glen Keane – Step into the Page from Future Of StoryTelling on Vimeo.

When I was on my Tilt Brush, I came across a brilliant drawing of these dancing people, so fluidly and sketchily done. Walking round the drawing, I felt like I knew the work. So I found out the artist and I was so shocked to find out it was Glen Keane, a famous animator from Disney who worked on works such as Little Mermaid and Tangled.

I googled him and found this video, appropriately named "The Future of Storytelling", VR is the future of storytelling, I strongly believe that and am most enthused in the direction this could take the narrative industry.

Glen Keane talks about the immersion he experiences when he animates, how he becomes the character he is bringing to life on page. Like an actor of his own art, which I found most fascinating because often when I draw emotions, my face subconsciously displays the emotion Im drawing.

He described the act of drawing in VR like a 'dance', which is so true, your whole body is moving, it almost feels quite primal, going back to the times when people had no pen and paper to express themselves creatively and would express it on cave walls. Theres so much vigor involved, which adds another depth to the 3D artwork, your not just looking at something someone has sat down sketched with their hand and laboured over, your looking at something someone has sketched with their body, their movements, their spirit. Further reinforcing this is how Keane refers to the act of drawing in 3D space, as "sculpting".

He brings his characters to life-size form. The beast towering over him. You can get so much feel for your characters this way. Its like a way of getting to know them, their personality, all contributing to how they will be animated and effectively brought to life.

"The doorway to your imagination is opened that little wider"

Summer Blogs - VR

This summer I invested in a Vive headset, which I have been so enthralled in.

Im beginning to question of much of this summer I have spent living virtually...

My favourite game is Google Tilt Brush, the whole concept of bringing your drawings to life is amazing to me, and with that, being able to walk around and explore them. When you are immersed in your drawings, you get a whole new wave of emotions never felt before when looking at a 2D canvas.

The Vive has allowed my imagination to run wild with no limits, and I can't wait to be immersed in more new releases of games in the future. (As the list is sadly low at the minute)

With my Vive I was also able to explore the setting I made previously;

It was great fun and it made me also spot faults, previously unseen on a 14inch screen, by going INTO your creations you can see so much and observe what could possibly be in need of change.

When I was sat on my bridge, looking down, I got a sudden feeling of vertigo. Its weird, because even though you KNOW its not real, none of what you are looking is actually in the real world its all virtual, you still think it is? You can try so hard to convince yourself but your brain keeps saying its real... An example of this was when I accidentally moved my scene whilst in the Vive and the ground went plummeting from beneath my feet, my stomach went and It felt as if I had actually just experienced some theme park ride.

This aspect of immersion has given me some great inspiration to what emotions you can trigger from people with certain environments. I have always enjoyed involving people emotionally with my work, and with Virtual Reality there is another depth to this because people actually believe what they are seeing is real...

Summer Blogs - Maya Animation Practise

After getting my head around the basics and making an environment, I wanted to play around with a rig and practise doing some animation using the graph editor.

Here are some animation tests I did, I first of all did a run cycle;

Then I practised something more tricky and did the character throwing a ball;

Overall, I really enjoyed animating using Maya. It might not be as personal as drawing each frame, but I loved its efficiency and realism you can create.