Thursday 17 March 2011
Creating the Snowman
- Using Geospheres rather than Spheres because all parts of the Geosphere will remain the same size. As theres going to be no materials theres going to be no stretching due to triangles and not quads.
Friday 11 March 2011
Mood Board
I created a Mood Board of a range of Images that all outline the kind of impressions that I am aiming to achieve. Some of them are characters that do not talk and just use animations to show feelings whereas others are using objects and turning them into human like characters.
*Edit - I was unable to upload the image of the mood board due to the site suffering "Technical Difficulties" last night.*
I will attempt to re-upload it later and see if it is fine.
I went through and gathered a selection of images that all are animated characters able to show feelings and emotions. I then brought these together to create a mood board of all possible ideas in an attempt to give me some more inspiration for my own animation.
I selected characters from films/programmes that I had seen before and had found them to be effective. Animations such as Kung Fu Panda, The dog from Up, Little Mermaid all use animals and give them voices. This makes them more human like and allows them to use their emotions and feelings to show the interaction with other characters as if they were human.
Animations such as Toy Story, Luxo and Cars use objects (Toys,Lamps,Cars) to turn them into characters.
-Toy Story allows the viewer to feel as if the toys have come to life by the way they interact with each other and the humans in the film.
-Luxo is a series of short animations created by Disney that all started with a simple opening scene animation for a film. Here they have made a Lamp come to life and carry out actions that humans do but in the lamp's own way using the physical features he has available to him. Disney have now continued this for Luxo to hae a child (Luxo Jnr), which definitely gives viewers the feel that Luxo is human.
-Cars was a hit Blockbuster for viewers of all age because it had humour and action that appealed to the older generation whereas still having the typical Disney/Fairytale feeling to it making it appealing to the younger audience. In this film Cars have come to life and speak and interact with other cars in the same ways that humans do. Tasks are carried out by particular cars that would be what humans are doing such as Tires being changed by a special forklift/wheel jack car.
I have also included images of two of my favourite animations, Morph and Pingu. In both of these the characters never talk in a language that we can understand but interact with other characters in the animation in thier own language giving it the feel that they are like humans. The actions that theyc arry out are always relating to similar actions that can be carried out by humans
*Edit - I was unable to upload the image of the mood board due to the site suffering "Technical Difficulties" last night.*
I will attempt to re-upload it later and see if it is fine.
I went through and gathered a selection of images that all are animated characters able to show feelings and emotions. I then brought these together to create a mood board of all possible ideas in an attempt to give me some more inspiration for my own animation.
I selected characters from films/programmes that I had seen before and had found them to be effective. Animations such as Kung Fu Panda, The dog from Up, Little Mermaid all use animals and give them voices. This makes them more human like and allows them to use their emotions and feelings to show the interaction with other characters as if they were human.
Animations such as Toy Story, Luxo and Cars use objects (Toys,Lamps,Cars) to turn them into characters.
-Toy Story allows the viewer to feel as if the toys have come to life by the way they interact with each other and the humans in the film.
-Luxo is a series of short animations created by Disney that all started with a simple opening scene animation for a film. Here they have made a Lamp come to life and carry out actions that humans do but in the lamp's own way using the physical features he has available to him. Disney have now continued this for Luxo to hae a child (Luxo Jnr), which definitely gives viewers the feel that Luxo is human.
-Cars was a hit Blockbuster for viewers of all age because it had humour and action that appealed to the older generation whereas still having the typical Disney/Fairytale feeling to it making it appealing to the younger audience. In this film Cars have come to life and speak and interact with other cars in the same ways that humans do. Tasks are carried out by particular cars that would be what humans are doing such as Tires being changed by a special forklift/wheel jack car.
I have also included images of two of my favourite animations, Morph and Pingu. In both of these the characters never talk in a language that we can understand but interact with other characters in the animation in thier own language giving it the feel that they are like humans. The actions that theyc arry out are always relating to similar actions that can be carried out by humans
Friday 4 March 2011
Storyboard Write Up
After changing my idea from the penguin to the snowman, I decided to create a storyboard of how I want the animation to finish. In most cases the animation finishes up being lightly based on the original storyboard due to issues and problems that arrise throughout the creation process.
1. Snowman wakes up with head on that only has eyes. Sleepy eyes until he wakes up properly.
2. Snowman changes his head by throwing the other one away. new head has all the facial features on and Snowman smiles at the end of it. Gives the impression of the snowman putting make up on.
3. Looks out the window and sees a sunny scene. Looks Happy. Window appears to fall down but it is actually a blind or picture that falls down. Reveals the normal outside, which saddens the Snowman as it is boring.
4. The Snowman hears some music and looks back at the window to see a Penguin skating by. Penguin goes by twice playing his music and camera checks back to the Snowman who is smiling because he thinks he could make a friend.
5. The Snowman gets his skis on and heads outside to meet the Penguin at the top of the cliff. He looks very worried about going skiing and is really not happy about it. The penguin slides off the cliff with no trouble before the Snowman begrudgingly moves off the cliff.
6. The penguin is skiing down the hill with no problems. He has his eyes closed and starts doing a few tricks. Skiing on 1 foot and doing spins.
7. The penguin hits the bottom of the hill and theres a small ramp for the penguin to run up. He slides up the hill and does a little flip and lands it on the ice. He turns to the Snowman as if he is showing off.
8, The Snowman drops off the hill in a cartoony way with him heading off the edge, waiting for a few seconds and ten dropping down.
9. The Snowman flies down the same hill that the Penguin although he is a bit less stable on his skies. He is shaking his head as he goes down and waving his hands around wanting to stop but he has already started going.
10 The Snowman hits the bottom of the hill and slides up the ice ready to jump over the hill. He has lost all control and slides up the hill. As he is in mid-air the 3 balls of the Snowman come apart with the top piece going through a basketball hoop and landing on the other pieces of the Snowman.
11. The Snowman moves towards the Penguin and shows him that he is very happy with what he did even though he had no control. The penguin turns around and slides away on the ice because he is not impressed.
12. The camera pans to the Snowman and he is very sad . The camera fades to black with the Snowman being sad.
As you can see from the storyboard, I want to try to show a range of emotions by the Snowman. This could be quite hard to do all of them but I would like to achieve as many of them as possible. The key ones that I have mentioned are:
Happy
Sad
Sleepy
Impressed With Himself
Upset
Worried
Shocked
There are a lot of different feelings here. Some that will be easier to animate and show in the animation than others. I will try to show as many of these as I can in the final animation.
1. Snowman wakes up with head on that only has eyes. Sleepy eyes until he wakes up properly.
2. Snowman changes his head by throwing the other one away. new head has all the facial features on and Snowman smiles at the end of it. Gives the impression of the snowman putting make up on.
3. Looks out the window and sees a sunny scene. Looks Happy. Window appears to fall down but it is actually a blind or picture that falls down. Reveals the normal outside, which saddens the Snowman as it is boring.
4. The Snowman hears some music and looks back at the window to see a Penguin skating by. Penguin goes by twice playing his music and camera checks back to the Snowman who is smiling because he thinks he could make a friend.
5. The Snowman gets his skis on and heads outside to meet the Penguin at the top of the cliff. He looks very worried about going skiing and is really not happy about it. The penguin slides off the cliff with no trouble before the Snowman begrudgingly moves off the cliff.
6. The penguin is skiing down the hill with no problems. He has his eyes closed and starts doing a few tricks. Skiing on 1 foot and doing spins.
7. The penguin hits the bottom of the hill and theres a small ramp for the penguin to run up. He slides up the hill and does a little flip and lands it on the ice. He turns to the Snowman as if he is showing off.
8, The Snowman drops off the hill in a cartoony way with him heading off the edge, waiting for a few seconds and ten dropping down.
9. The Snowman flies down the same hill that the Penguin although he is a bit less stable on his skies. He is shaking his head as he goes down and waving his hands around wanting to stop but he has already started going.
10 The Snowman hits the bottom of the hill and slides up the ice ready to jump over the hill. He has lost all control and slides up the hill. As he is in mid-air the 3 balls of the Snowman come apart with the top piece going through a basketball hoop and landing on the other pieces of the Snowman.
11. The Snowman moves towards the Penguin and shows him that he is very happy with what he did even though he had no control. The penguin turns around and slides away on the ice because he is not impressed.
12. The camera pans to the Snowman and he is very sad . The camera fades to black with the Snowman being sad.
As you can see from the storyboard, I want to try to show a range of emotions by the Snowman. This could be quite hard to do all of them but I would like to achieve as many of them as possible. The key ones that I have mentioned are:
Happy
Sad
Sleepy
Impressed With Himself
Upset
Worried
Shocked
There are a lot of different feelings here. Some that will be easier to animate and show in the animation than others. I will try to show as many of these as I can in the final animation.
Edited Idea - Snowman
I had a discussion with Richard Barnes about the progress that I had currently made with the animation and models. We had a bit of an issue with my main character model of the penguin. Unfortunately because I created it working closely alongside images of Pingu, the animated character, the final model ended up looking very similar to the character. This would be an issue because it limits my ideas of the development of the character because I am struggling to think of ways of editing the penguin to make it less like Pingu but still keeping the penguin character.
I spoke with Richard and we decided that this could be an issue when it came to marking the models. We decided that the best solution would be to create a new model to use as my main character and could use the current model of the penguin briefly in the animation. The main focus would still be this new model however using the penguin I could create the ability for the new character to react according to what the penguin does.
I wanted to stick with the snow/ice/arctic idea so that I could keep my penguin model and incorporate it into my animation. We spoke about possible ideas for characters that would fit well into this scene. One idea that we thought of that I liked the idea of was creating a Snowman as the mainc haracter. I had a fear that it would be a struggle to create and animate using a biped for a Snowman but RIchard clamed my fears by saying that the biped was not a necessity in the animation.
A snowman has very little manouverability because it is 3 blobs of snow with stick arms and no feet. This makes it impossible for the snowman to walk around and do most animations that normal characters could do. I thought that it would be interesting and a challenge to create an animation using a character with very little manouverability yet still be bale to show a great amound of feelings and emotions.
My next task is to carry out some research into the different looks of a snowman and the huge range of already created designs. I will also need to look at current examples of Snowman animations that have been made and see how different actions and animations have already been made. The final piece of research I need to do next is looking at other character/animals/people that have a similar body shape and characteristics and investigate how they move and carry out actions.
I spoke with Richard and we decided that this could be an issue when it came to marking the models. We decided that the best solution would be to create a new model to use as my main character and could use the current model of the penguin briefly in the animation. The main focus would still be this new model however using the penguin I could create the ability for the new character to react according to what the penguin does.
I wanted to stick with the snow/ice/arctic idea so that I could keep my penguin model and incorporate it into my animation. We spoke about possible ideas for characters that would fit well into this scene. One idea that we thought of that I liked the idea of was creating a Snowman as the mainc haracter. I had a fear that it would be a struggle to create and animate using a biped for a Snowman but RIchard clamed my fears by saying that the biped was not a necessity in the animation.
A snowman has very little manouverability because it is 3 blobs of snow with stick arms and no feet. This makes it impossible for the snowman to walk around and do most animations that normal characters could do. I thought that it would be interesting and a challenge to create an animation using a character with very little manouverability yet still be bale to show a great amound of feelings and emotions.
My next task is to carry out some research into the different looks of a snowman and the huge range of already created designs. I will also need to look at current examples of Snowman animations that have been made and see how different actions and animations have already been made. The final piece of research I need to do next is looking at other character/animals/people that have a similar body shape and characteristics and investigate how they move and carry out actions.
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