Stuff for Tasha.............

Some stuff I started moddelling for Natasha's environment (Scene 1) but didn't carry on with as time went on and they were not needed so much......................

This staircase was quite tricky to make, its a part of Tasha's concept design for scene 1..... we thought it might be cool if we had the graveyard within a building ruin, like with just the walls and some of its structure in tack to surround the area. In Tasha's design she had this strangly shaped staircase where it starts off straight but then carries on in a curve, with the edges further curling outwards.............

Blockout of Scene 3...............

After we sorted out the story for JUNK FOOD the group got together and started planning out the environments and shots. I created this blockout environment for scene 3, considering the angles and distances of the landscape in proportion to the characters and zepplin in order establish some of our key camera shots, and thus make it easier having an accurate guide to model the proper final environment from................

Below are some screen shots...............

New Story Breakdown............

Seeing as we have changed the story for 'Junk Food' I thought it might be a good idea to give a detailed outline of what happens now.................

Ok, so like I had established in a previous post, we managed to keep the general outcome of the story the same and most of the plot development is still very similar, it's just waaaay more simplified and less of an 'epic'..................

There are essentially 3 scenes that make up the story..............

Scene 1 - This scene establishes the characters, their purposes and how they meet. The story starts with a radio transmission (1950s style broadcast) which will explain how humans left the planet in large ships to explore the stars, we will then see a starry sky fade in with our main character Sophie holding up a toy zepplin/ship to the sky while in deep thought. [For the sake of being brief Im gona leave out explaining every shot and just run through the story] Sophie then turns to a grave stone she is sitting next to and ask her father if she will ever got off the planet. This will all establish that Sophie is a girl stuck on the planet (not sure if we want it to be Earth or not yet) with the ultimate goal of getting off/'escaping' the way humans did so in the past, and also identify the grave she is sitting next to is her father's.

After she asks the question another radio transmission cuts and to say somthing like "never in a million years...", something on those lines. Sophie then shows her firey character and throws the toy away in anger, the toy zepp in a way also showing her in anger giving up on 'escape'. The toy will then hit and wake up an inactive Junk Robot (these robots being partially explained in the initial radio transmission at the beggining). Through a small sequence of interactions (maybe also Sophie pulling a jammed object out of the Robot which is preventing him from being operational, thus helping/saving him first) the Robot notices the toy zepplin in Sophie's hand points in the direction of a dark valley and walks off as if to say "follow me". Hesitant at at first, Sophie looks back at her fathers grave and decides to follow the Robot. [FADE]........... Sophie looking back will also suggest she is affraid to part with her father or maybe seeking some guidence of what to do.

Scene 2 - This scene's purpose is to show a journey and passing of time between the graveyard and their final destination. Not much will happen in this scene.......... maybe a few interactions like the Robot picking up Sophie if she falls over or give her a supporting push when she gets tired. It will be short shots of them travelling through the valley, which the sky gradually becoming close to sun rise, but not quite.......... Fade in at the beggining and a fade out at the end to show passing of time.

Scene 3 - After the fade in we will see our characters exiting the valley and approach what looks like the edge of a crator or a large pit. When they stop we will have a close up of Sophie's face as she is looking down at the floor from being tired and now unhopefull...... when she looks up to see why they have come to a stop she will burst out in joy. The camera will then sweep round them zooming out and tracking from behind and above them to show what has excited Sophie so much, and there the audience will see a huge Zepplin/Ship on a launch platform in the crator with the warm morning sunrise gleaming behind it. She looks at the Robot and storms down the steps leading to the platform, the Robot follows.

When the group was thinking of how everything will start operating on the platform, I had a suggestion that maybe once the Robot crosses a certain line or barrier the platform will engage and power up, suggesting that it was these Junk Robots' purpose to launch these huge space Zepps/Ships........ 'our' Robot being the key to Sophie's 'escape'.................

We also thought maybe we could show lots of inactive/dead Robots around and on the launch platform, making it sort of a graveyard for these Junk Bots, but then decided it would make the animation too 'dark'........... However our tutor Dan Dalli gave us the go ahead for it and suggested that we could just show forms that looked like brocken down Junk Bots which the audience could identify but Sophie couldn't.... especially with her over joyed state.

When Sophie enters the Zepp/Ship out of excitement the Robot carries on with his bussiness calmly, knowing what is about to happen. He makes the door close on Sophie upon entry, makes his way to a panel on the Zepp/Ship that seems like a power grid or plug in socket for something...... while Sophie is pressed up against the window wanting to know wats going on. The Robot will then open his chest and pull out his energy source (his heart in a way) and place it into the panel on the Zepp/Ship. The audience will now fully know that the Robot is the key and power source to making the craft launch off, and that he must sacrifice staying behind in order to help Sophie be free.

A count down will start, maybe represented with sequencial lights on the plaform, notifying Sophie that the craft is about to take off...... without her new friend in it. She cries and pleads for the Robot to get in the Zepp/Ship, but the Robot knows it must stay behind. When the Zepp/Ship takes off we will see the robot burning (but not damaged), then, the cable connecting from his chest to his heart now in the Zepp/Ship will tear out............ putting an end to the Robot's life.

The animation will finish off with a medium close up of Sophie crying from outside the Zepplin/Ship's window as its blasting off, then cut to a final low shot from the ground where we can see the Zepplin/Ship firing off in the distant sky and the radio close up in the corner of the shot............ a radio transmission kicks in with a braodcast that seems like a message to Sophie to now be free and happy............ making the story come round in full circle to end how it started (with a radio transmission) and suggest that maybe her father was somehow in the radio or controlling the radio making the events of the story occur for his daughter to be free...............

Work for Anja Before the Easter Holidays.........

Before we broke up for Easter holidays when we (the JUNK FOOD crew) had to put all our focus on the film I had managed to get the Bamboo bridge scene done and dusted for Anja (not textured though). I sorted out all the shape issues with the bamboo and reduced the poly count (as Anja wanted) in the scene to more than half by deleting lines by hand. After duplicating everything and re-arranging, I did a few test renders which you can see below...............

Pre-JUNK FOOD Rebirth..............

Before JUNK FOOD had to be re-written and we started the project over, I had managed to create a few things (vaguely), so Iv jus posted them up here even though I highly dount any of it will probably be used after this point............

As you can see these models are my attempt to create something out of the sillhouette designs that Chris had made earlier (on the right of the maya scene window in the screenshots)

I have to say moddelling these organic-esc environmental structures were fun. Each object was moddelled from a basic cube using a variation of tools and techniques

Below are the smoothed and rendered versions...........

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A 'Moon Gate' that was added to the arches from the original valley idea...... the gates were to be entrances/exits to the paths along the arches..............

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The grave yard entance block moddelled from Chris's rough designs...............

Situation Update...........

I know I know, I havn't posted any updates for MONTHS!!!! lol....... Dissertation work got in the way of everything else the last few weeks before deadline, everything went hecktic with the production of my main chosen film (Junk Food) and alot has happened in regards to how it stands. Basically the film was going nowhere fast!!..... and at the end of our second term our tutors told us that the story was just not going to work due to the length and scale of events (which was probably why we were not making hardly any progress) and gave us a week to completely re-write the story.

We basically managed to maintain the outcomes of the story but highly reduced and refined the events, giving things alot more meaning and connection. I think the work I did for my dissertation really developed my mind as a film maker, which in turn was extremely useful when we were re-creating the story.

We did manage to pull out a story and enough work in that one week for the film to still be in production, but we were kinda back to quare one....... we litterally were to restart our project with just over a term to do it. So we came into uni nearly every day of our Easter brake to work.

Though we are still tight for time, the production for Junk Food is going ok and it looks like we WILL finish this film......... I have been taking screen shots of my work progress since my last update, so I will post them all up after this :D...............

Alchemy.........

Chris has shown me this great alpha software called ALCHEMY, and its freakin awesome for generating ideas and concepts. Thought Id post a quick doodle........ my edition to Chris' Machine Gods :P..................

Learned Something New...........

Although I highly doubt I will ever use this method for any of the film projects Im working on, I found this really useful tutorial on normal mapping in Maya.... something I had no idea how to do. Thought it was really interesting so Im embeding it on this post for anyone who wants to take a look................