June the 9th to June the 13th

Aims

Finish the film and sort out all my folders.

I just have to do the after effects and Rob has already said that he can help me out with this so with two of us I don’t see why we can’t get it done. All the journey sequences are ready to go. As I said last week I’ve already prepped Holland and Egypt. So we need to go through the others to make sure everything is in the correct layers to be transported into after effects.

This week will be composed of compositing for me both in premier and after effects.

Goals Reached.

This week has been such a mad rush. Over the weekend I had to finish off and tweak some animations that were looking a bit stiff. Luckily I got those done and Andrew and I were in on Saturday and Sunday to get the film rendering over the weekend. Having finished the animation when I went back to check on it for some reason Maya had not saved the files. I was back to the start with one of my scenes. It was frustrating but I just had to sit down and do it again. But faster.

Andrew has been having problems of his own with the lighting but he’s working them out. We’ve had to settle for a simpler render than what we originally planned but I hope we can fix the other one for the degree show.

My laptop has really struggled this week as I’ve pushed it’s limits having Maya, Photoshop and Premier all running at the same time and it’s held up pretty well.

On Monday Rob and I sat down and started the after effects scenes. I gave him Holland and I took Egypt. First I imported into After Effects the stamp border so we had a size to work to to keep them all the same and made sure our compositions were set to 720 by 576 as I didn’t want to double stretch anything.

We then scaled all the layers that we needed so for example I imported Paris’ border separately then the background so that George would look like he was in the stamp. We also animated him riding on the bike in Maya and rendered it out with no background so we had just George on an alpha channel. I had to also apply a mask onto the layers that moved so that they wouldn’t show outside of the stamp border. The finished result looks something like the one below. I also had to animate the stamp’s flight through the locations and render that out and import it back into After Effects again. All the stamp movies had to be rendered lossless with alpha so that they we just had the stamp and no extra image around the border when i imported it back into After Effects for the final version.

Once finished this process and I had all the little movies I could start compositing them together again. This I was a little confused about at first.

I originally had to zoom into the first stamp in After Effects but after realising that the resolution would be far too small and all you would see was a blurry image I had to go back to Maya and change a few things. I had to make the texture on the book a much higher resolution so that all the little stamps could be seen even if up very close. This worked a charm and I could then go back to After Effects and complete Scene 3.

In After Effects I imported all the little movies of the stamps and then a background the same colour as the stamp collection books pages. This meant that the two images would blend together without a huge jump. I also imported flat pictures of the stamps (not the movies) so that I could make the films play and then stop when I wanted them too just by switching a still image with a movie. This worked well although there are jumps between some images as Rob had to adjust some pictures so they would work in after effects and I did not have the updated files in time for the final submission but they’re something I can add for the degree show.

My last task in After Effects was to make the background move off shot so that it runs smoothly into the film. This was a lot easier than expected as all I had to do was key in the background (the book page) to move off of shot and then when rendering make sure I set it to render “lossless with alpha” as this renders an alpha channel under all of your layers. So therefore when I removed my final background layer you can see underneath shot 1 of scene 4. Job done.

I think this worked really well, there are bits I want to change, mainly changing the flat stamp images to match the moving stamp images better and to try and get the page of the book to move off shot better. Maybe draw the edge of the book too.

The most important goal this week was to make sure all the renders were done and composite them. Seeing I’m not really in charge of rendering as that task has fallen to Andrew I had to composite everything together in premier. That sounds easy but with the journey the way it was mixing after effects and Maya renders and making sure it all fitted the Sound Mark and Alex did for us it was a lot of maths. I had particular problems as I had changed the zoom in to be rendered from Maya so I had to work out exactly how many extra frames we needed on the beginning and on the end. 44 to the end of Scene 2 shot 18 and 73 to the beginning of scene 4 shot 1. Luckily my Maths was correct and the sound was still on time.

I also made the credits in After Effects simply by keying in a frame for 2 seconds then keying in another with the credits written onto it until I’d mentioned everyone. This is another thing I would like to be able to change as I think it would have been a good opportunity to show off some of the concept art that we did. I hope I will get a chance to sit down and do this.

Having imported the sound and all the renders I just need to add sky to the background of all the Maya scenes. This was simply getting a Photoshop image that measured 1024 by 576 and importing it into premier and putting it on a layer beneath that of the film. I think it looks pretty nice. In this screen shot you can see the sky layer in the left window and the film in the right.

I’d just like to say well done to everyone and a big thank you to everyone who helped us out. I’d also like to say thank you to all the tutors and friends who have supported me throughout this year. It’s been really hard and thank you for helping me through it all.

2nd of June to the 6th of June

Aims

There are many things to be done this week and they all need to be completed or we’re in serious trouble.

Firstly I have to finish all the animation that isn’t already done. I also need to get Holland all coloured in and set up ready for After Effects. I’d like to have rendered a good portion of the film by the end of this week to so that next week we will have finished rendering by Wednesday and we have the rest of the week to get ourselves together and composite.

Goals Reached?

I finished Holland this week it looks really nice and I’m really happy with it. I used coloured pencils to give it a really 2D feel and hope that George will look ok up next to it for the windmill fans instead of using straight lines I made huge circles to get the feel for a turning motion, it’s just something small but I thought it was a nice effect. I’ve even gone over all the stamps and cut them all up you can see them all here. I’ve added print marks to them to make the look more authentic and it adds a nice touch.

We’ve only just started rendering which scares me. Rendering in general scares me as I don’t know much about it although I’ve learnt an awful lot this term about it. Andrew is really in charge of rendering as he has to adapt the lighting as he goes about doing it. I keep nagging him so I’ve promised that I won’t next week as I think I’m being a little too irritating he knows as well as I do that this has to be finished.

We have also had a little crisis this week regarding sound. Basically the sound guys, Alex and Mark came and told us that for their show reel and work they need a higher quality version of our film. We have had to go through the whole film re playblasting everything in a bigger resolution and putting in all the animation to the correct environments. To be honest it’s not too big a problem. We would have had to do it anyway but this way we had to do it and a lot quicker than we would have. We have to come in this weekend to do it and hand it over to them but I’m so pleased it’s done. It’s more or less like we’re killing two birds with one stone and I’m glad it’s done now. The biggest problem for the Sound guys was that they couldn’t clearly see where George’s feet were hitting the ground as the film really was tiny and they couldn’t re size it. I think this experience gave us a real kick in the right direction to get things moving faster. It was good to have the pressure put on looking back.

This also meant that many scenes were all up and ready for rendering as they had their animation and environment.

To do all this I had to first open up the animation file, delete all the old environment pieces that I had used for reference while animating then import the new environment. We then set the playblast to full resolution and I composited all of those playblasts together in premier over our existing animatic.

Now that Alex and Mark have our movie we can’t change anything so I have to be really careful with each shots length so that it’s not too short or too long.

The animation is now done except for a couple of shots at the end of scene 4 but they’ve got their basic animation I just need to sit down and tweak it.

It is hard to upload all the animation that i've done as i have done the vast majority. Instead it is easier to tell you what shots i did not animate.

Rob continued to help with the animations this week and did a really nice job. I had to tweak one of the animations and for some reason the constraints I set up on George and the book didn’t work properly but I’ve fixed that now so it’s not a problem at all.

Here are the shots from scene 4 that i have improved. It's taking forever to upload them and i can forsee having problems uploading next week as it will hopefully be the final movie. I'll try my best.

26th of May to the 30th of May

Aims

Get as much Animation done as possible.

Give the final animatic that has been blocked out to the sound guys, Alex and Mark.

Goals Reached?

I’ve been doing solid animation all this week and am really getting on with it. All of scene one is animated now and finished and I have given Andrew quite a lot to do as well. It’s really now a matter of just sitting down and getting it done. I also managed to talk to Dave about putting a curve in the stamp so it’s not flat all the time and he did that for us. I also asked him about putting two different textures on one plane and he managed to do that too. Now I can go through doing the animation on the stamp properly. I’m half way through scene 4 now and that is composed of 20 shots all of which I have already blocked out.

Rob has asked if we need any help animating and I’ve been pleased to give him a shot to start with and will give him more if he wants them.

I’ve had a horrid time this week trying to make George’s book stay in his hands while he holds it and moves. One way to solve this problem is to key every frame but this still looks bad and is not a good solution as we have countless scenes in which the characters hold items.

To solve it I have put constraints onto many objects. The stamp book has been one of the biggest problems because it is not only Dave’s model for his film and we have had to turn it up the other way round and that has been super confusing when texturing but it has also had to be passed from one character to the next. In this way I have had to use the invisibility key option so that as one constrainted book is passed it quickly disappears but another appears just like I had to do with the scenes in scene 1. This screen grab above shows the drop down menu that enables you to use the constraint. I had to use the parent constraint as i found that this worked the best.

There are have been instances where i have had to change some shots from our original animatic as the animation was too complex to do in the time we had. When george sits down in scene 4 and hands Lani her book back was riddled with problems and i had to cut away in places as you can see from these two playblasts.

19th of May to the 23rd of May

I have just begun the animation this week but thanks to the blockout that I did it’s not taking too long. Some of it is not as good as I would hope but we really don’t have a lot of time and I want to get the whole film looking relatively good. I don’t want any bits not animated. Scene one has been finished this week. I particularly like the shot in which George tries to catch the stamp with his tweezers. I also blendshaped the tweezers after Andrew modelled them so that George can pinch at the stamp. I’m quite proud of this shot. The only really big problems I encountered were placing the box George has on the table. I had to turn off the box’s visibility and duplicate an identical box, turn off it’s visibility until George places the first box onto the table. What you are seeing are actually two boxes exactly the same.

This weekend I also went to the London Expo as I wanted to ask Tokyo Pop and other companies about a job over the summer, I discovered that there aren’t very many but they would like to see a CV so I need to send that to them.

This week i also gave the sound designers our final block out with almost all the animation complete. They were pretty happy and we should have the sound by Monday the 10th of June.

In this final picture below you can see the glow on the stars being altered as i opened up the layer options. The effect was really nice. There is a progress screen grab and the actual background layer as well. I like this effect as the glow is softer than the one before. You can also see that the eifel tower has moved to behind the trees.

12th of May to the 16th of May

This week I have been able to completely dedicate to making the 3D blockout. It’s going really well because of Anton taking on China now. I’ve received the China file from Anton this week and it looks lovely, much better than my version of China. I’m so glad he took that on and it took a whole weight off of my shoulders. I was also really pleased to hand over Paris to Josie this week as now I don’t have to worry too much about that either.

I had originally planned to ink in China in blue ink so that it would look like those white and blue China plates but Anton's version is much nicer. Here is my started lineart before Anton took over.

I have received the final copy of Paris from Josie too over this weekend which i'm really happy about although i wanted the colours changed a little so Andrew said he'd fiddle with that a little.

I also over heard Mike Hirsh saying that the Eifel Tower was horribly out of proportion so i have changed that and put it behind the layer of trees. I think it looks more believable now. Thank God i decided to do everything on seperate layers in preperation for After Effects.

The blockout is going well and i've had to learn to put IK handles onto George's rig in his arms so that when we attach him to the bike we can parent his hands to the bike's handles and his arms will move as they would in real life. This makes the whole process much easier as if i hadn't made the IK handles and parented his hands i would have had to key every frame for each animation on the bike. Dave very kindly made the bike for me but i put the Ik handles on myself.

In this blockout i've been setting up all the cameras. They may change before we finish the final film. However on some it has not just been a matter of placing the camera but actually changing the focal length on it too. In this shot the stamp lands in the road. We wanted to show the house in the background but still have the stamp close to the lens so i had to play with the focal length to make this effect work.

This week i also managed to draw the images for the beginning of the film that Andrew wanted to put in. The idea was that we would begin on a picture frame and see a couple of photos the first being the stamp collector, George and his assumed wife outside a very nice neat cottage. the second of him and her in a wheel chair indicating that she had fallen ill. They both hold stamp collections in these photos to show it was something they did together. The last photo however is of him alone holding two collections to suggest that she has died. Morbid i know but we wanted to show that he did have someone once and he cared about her but hes become lonely and let the cottage fall into a mess.

Here are the pictures.

HEre is the animatic so far

5th of May to the 9th of May

This week i got the Egypt file from Josie and made a few little changes to it so that it had an overall more muted yellow look to it. I also put some filters over it to make it look a little grainy like papyrus which is what the Egyptians used to draw on.
Here is the finished edit
i'm looking forward to putting all these images together now.
i've borrowed the book Dave made for his film and turned it upside down for George so that it looks like he's looking at the last page. I've just adapted the textures Dave had a little so that it doesn't look exactly the same.

I've started to do an animatic in 3D so that i have a really good idea of how the film is going to look but I've only started it half way through the week so its not very well done yet.
Its pretty bad because Lani haas no rig so shes just a block character that can't move.

These two notebook images are some of the many note plans i have so that all the timing stays the same and Andrew and i know how long each shot is. It takes a very long time to work all this out but its worth it and we've had no problems with it. The numbers on the right are where the shots begin on the timeline in Maya. I always save it in the right place sio that if Andrew needs the file the timeline is in exactly the right place already.

I've finished Lani's texture now i found a great Hawaiian print to put on her top. I was trying to put a flesh layer beneath her skin but it was coming up really nasty on her model when i did test renders so i left it off. I added some pink to her cheeks to make her seem more alive.

28th of April to the 2nd of May

We’ve recently heard that Asa’s group, The Day that I Died has been cut. It’s a real shame because the film was going to be really lovely. I wish I didn’t have as much work so that I could help out. Mike has sent us an email asking if there are any groups that need help as the members of The Day that I Died now need work. I’ve managed to get Josie to do some background painting for us on the 2D stamps which is a huge weight off my shoulders. I’ve handed Egypt over to her as this has been penned in already and simply needs colouring. I gave her what I had started and told her what I wanted it to look like. The task is quite easy but just time consuming. I made sure when inking that there were no open spaces so that colouring is simply a matter of paint bucketing the selected areas with the magic wand tool. Luckily Egypt can be done this way as the hieroglyphs were quite flat simple colours. Beneath is the in progress version of what i gave Josie as i had started it to show how i wanted the picture to be coloured.

I have also included a version of the line art as i had to do this by hand and it took a long time.

Dave has also given me the George rig now and I need the environment so that I can put him in and start animating him. I’ve also given him the Lani rig and I hope that I won’t have too long to have that although that’s not as big a deal. I can animate without Lani at the moment. Next week I want to start compiling the blockout in 3D so that it is easier of Andrew to animate on it and I can get the animatic the same as the drawn one I gave the sound guys Alex and Mark.

21st of April to the 25th of April

Dave definitely now has George, i checked with him and i'm now just waiting on the rig. In the mean time i have begun to ink the linearts of the journeys tht i have completed and started to texture Lani. I and my sister chose her colour palette the other day from this selection.

Dave and i also went through my film and cut all the scenes up and made parts of it a lot shorter.
We've also written a shot list with all the things to do on it and Andrew and i have divided it up between us. Theres a lot to do but hopefully we'll be animating soon.
Here are the Scenes

Scene1 composed of 7 shots
Scene2 composed of 19 shots
Scene3 the journey with 5 different stamps within it
Scene4 composed of 20 shots.


I had a horrible Migraine from last Sunday to this weeks start Monday which knocked me out for quite a while but still managed to show for our degree show fund raiser which was really good.

14th of April to the 18th of April

Lani Blend Shapes send Dave George model but thwarted by attachments. Migraines attack this week on Monday and Tuesday. Monday is very bad but Tuesday’s disappeared after a while although I had to wear my sunglasses throughout the PPD lecture and had to apologise to the lecturer afterwards and explain that I wasn’t asleep just had migraine.
Most of this week has been spent trying to avoid Migraines but i've managed to work some more on China just to keep away from the screen as it just seems to be making me worse right now.
Here is a picture of how i would like China to look like. I've put in the Coy carp but everyone thinks it would be better if it was a dragon or butterfly.
I've also done a little more to the PPD and thought carefully about what i want to do.
I'm starting to think that if these migraines persist then i'm going to have to find something else that isn't sitting in front of the computer all day.

I organised a meeting with the sound design students Mark and Alex this week and i've finally given them the rough 2D animatic so they can do some research and get to grips with the basic story.

7th of April to the 11th of April

I've been UV mapping Lani all week so that i can start on her Blendshapes then send her to Dave to get rigged. I've made a bit of an error with the files for Dave so i've been correcting that too but am so busy trying to get Lani all mapped. I always forget how long and tedious this process is. The worst bits are always the hands and Lani has feet with no shoes so that makes it even more awkward. Below is a picture of my progress stage. You can see where i have mapped her as the black and white squares are evenly spread. I started with her head and worked my way down to her toes.
i got an awful migraine on Sunday and took a migraine tablet but couldn't leave work as my friend Steph fainted and had to be taken to Hospital so we were short of staff. The migraine went and I spent a long time working on the laptop when I get home from work which is exactly what i'm not meant to be doing. Here is a picture of Lani completely textured with neat squares to show this.

This is yet again a new term and although we didn't stick to last term's timetable very well i have yet again scheduled enough time to complete everything. There's a lot to do and i'm already behind because of Keiron but things can't be helped. Lets hope we stick to it this time. if not just hope we get everything done!

31st of March to the 4th of April

George's Blendshapes have finally been completed and i've sent the model to Dave so that he can rig it. George has an awful lot of Blendshapes and a very fiddly facial structure and i have had particular problems with his moustache as i have noted before. However, now he is done and i'm hoping that it won't take Dave too long to rig him. Once that is done i can start animating. I've begun Lani's blendshapes and am hoping to get her UV mapping done quickly.

24th of March to the 28th of March

Writing dissertation. Also my 21st which I spend in my room doing the stupid dissertation. I hate life. Dissertation has been handed in, it sucks, and I’m so ashamed of it as I know it could have been a million times better if I hadn’t been told to CHANGE MY TITLE!!!!!!! I ASK YOU? I am so angry about that I cannot begin to explain. I wasted a good couple of weeks trying to sort out the title. I was literally thrown back to the stage I was in at the beginning of the term but this time I only had a couple of weeks to write 7000 words. I’m furious. I have never felt so screwed over in all my life and that is no exaggeration my final year, dissertation project and someone tries to make me change my title even though I have a perfectly good one. I’m sorely tempted to mention something to the head of this unit Liz McQuiston.

17th of March to the 21st of March

Still writing dissertation.

10th of March to the 14th of March

Have to re do dissertation as Kieron says that what I’ve done is wrong. He’s also trying to make me change my title but doesn’t want to meet up with me to talk about the dissertation anymore for a reason un be known to me. I really am hating life right now.

3rd of March to the 7th of March

Aims
Draw out the China background and finish George’s Blend Shapes. Sort out the problems with the dissertation that have arisen.

Goals Reached
This week has been devastating. My dissertation has been ripped to shreds and I’m basically back to square one so now I only have a few weeks to do 8 weeks of work. I am one very unhappy bunny. The idea of doing China went out the window but I had a brain wave with Egypt and a little help from Dave and Adam and managed to draw up Egypt instead. At least that’s something I suppose. As for the dissertation I really want to just curl into a corner and die. Kieron has knocked my confidence and I feel like I’ve wasted all the time I’ve dedicated to the dissertation so far. I can’t understand why he’s suggesting changing my title. One minute it seems like a good idea the next a really bad one. I’m hoping to spend a while researching a bit more before I rush head first into any rash decisions because right now I have absolutely no room for errors.

25th of February to the 29th of February

Aims
Get Paris done! I know what to do I have all my research I just need to sit down, stop fretting over modelling for a minute and start doing some pencil work. You wouldn’t think this was hard for me as I hate the computer but it is starting to prove a little complex. Why? I do not know. Now on to the DRAWING!

Goals Reached
Picking up the pencil again I decided to tackle the scene from a different angle. Unfortunately that angle involved taking out Café de Beignet and using a much more obviously Mucha inspired landscape. In a very cliché twist of fate Paris’ central focus point is (drum roll please) The Eifel Tower. YAY! -_-
A HORRIBLE landmark to draw but I got a little help from one of the greatest children’s artists ever Richard Scarry! Tell no-one I just told you that. Seriously though. Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World has been so helpful. It has soooo many different countries with the specific landmarks in each and all of the drawings are so vibrant and colourful. Who would have thought my Christmas present from 1989 would have come in handy during my final year of University? Richard Scarry, I love you.
I’m sad to have to cut out Café de Beignet but it really wasn’t working and the scene that I have come up with now feels much better and I have a colour palette for it in my head already too.
I had no idea what to do about the background behind the Eifel Tower as it looked horribly bare and I refused to leave it the way it was. I had another look through the book on poster art that I had found and grew quite attached to the idea of putting trees in the background as it would be easy to make the scene look like it has some depth using layers. Nice idea, but, THERE AREN’T ANY TREES THERE! Ah well, Richard Scarry did it so artistic license, baby!
I love drawing from all these different sources I feel like I’m learning more about the world of art around me and pulling little bits of it into the animation.

18th of February to the 22nd of February

Aims
Lani needs mapping and George needs Blend shapes.

Goals Reached
This week was shortened by a day as I got a lovely migraine on Wednesday and had to stay in bed until it was gone. I was really frustrated by this turn of events as I had specifically reserved Wednesday to do some work. I always get migraines on days that I clear to do a solid days work it’s so annoying.
I haven’t done the UV mapping on Lani as George’s blend shapes are taking a lot longer than I originally planned. I keep messing them up. For example my most frustrating mistake was to forget to just blend shape eyes then do the mouth separately on one of the expressions. It had taken a long time to make the blend shape and I really didn’t have the time to go back and do it again. It shouldn’t cause too many problems but I was angry because it was such a silly mistake to make.
The blend shapes are also taking a long time as George (as the main character) has a lot of expressions especially when he gets to Hawaii and has to interact with Lani.
It is alos a long process to get his moustache to work the way i want it too as it's awkward trying to move and select all the vertices. Below is a picture of the different ways i have moved George's moustache.

11th of February to the 15th of February

Aims
Model Lani so that she’s ready to be UV mapped and then blend shaped. I’ve dedicated this whole week to modelling Lani so it’ll be a great shame if I can’t finish her. It’s not too complex but I can see that I’ll probably be having problems with modelling her face. I ALWAYS struggle with modelling faces.

Goals Reached
I finished modelling Lani! Wahoo! I’m really pleased that I’ve managed to hit this goal as a little part of me was worried that I wouldn’t. There are a few things that need doing over the weekend but they’re easily within my reach.
However this week has not been without its problems. As I said I did have problems with Lani’s face and trying not to have any three sided polys in the model. I literally sat for hours trying to work out how the contours on her face would look as I was really struggling. To help me with this problem I used a reference picture (provided by Dave) of a model’s head and tried to copy what I saw. This worked really well and when I got stuck I also imported Adam’s model of George so I had an example of a good model to help me along the way.
I made Lani by mostly extruding faces where I would need different parts of her body. For example, I started with her head as this was going to be the hardest task for me and then extruded Lani’s neck then her chest and carried on like this. I found this worked quite nicely. I also found that I could copy the hands from George’s model and attach them to Lani. I had to change these quite a bit though because I felt that the thumb needed to be further round the hand.
I also took on some advice from Aminata while I was making the arms as they should twist slightly so that when you rig the model and put the hands to the side they should deform properly. I don’t know if I’ve twisted them enough but I really hope so. I’ll be passing the model onto Dave to be rigged so I’ll have to ask him if it helped at all.
I was quite pleased with the model. It’s a hundred times better than the model I made last year; I took a look at it the other day and was horrified. I think I’ve improved here and hope that it is something that I can build on further even though it’s not necessarily something that I want to specialise in.
I struggled a bit on Lani’s feet as they looked really square for a while and somehow a couple of polys magic ked themselves onto the sole of her foot. I have no idea where they came from. I was really pleased with the way the bow on Lani’s back came out as it looks like it has little creases in it.
Ah well, onto the mapping.

4th of February to the 8th of February

Aims
Draw out Paris; I have a good idea of where I’m going with that now so unless I have some major hiccup it should get done. Adam should have finished George and UV mapped him too so I’ll hopefully have him this week and at some point I need to begin Blend shapes. Sooner rather than later as we’re really behind with the characters right now. I also need to check with Kyle to see if he can still model Lani for me.

Goals Reached
Adam has finished modelling and mapping George and he’s done a great job. The model looks so nice and I now have a UV map to start texturing the little guy on too.
That hiccup I was talking about, it happened. I asked Kyle how long it would take him to model Lani as he’d said he wanted to see Adam’s model before he made the little girl and he’s said it’ll take about until the last week of term. That’s way too long and I don’t have that kind of time. Therefore I’ve taken it on myself. It might not be as good as Kyle’s model but I need Lani soon and I’m pretty sure I can do it. I have to do it. I’ve spoken to Dave and he’s given me a picture of his mermaid’s head as I find it very hard to get contours right around the face. Ross has also been saying that it is not good to use three sided polygons so my aim next week is to try and make Lani with as little three sided poly's as possible, if any at all.
I’ve done a quick texture test on George to make sure the UV mapping is ok as Adam was a little worried about it but it all seems fine to me so it’s all systems go there.
Paris unfortunately has been put on the back burner as I begin to model Lani so I haven’t met that target this week. Hopefully, if I really power through this Lani will be done in the next week or so. It also means however that all the journey scenes from here on out will be running late. I’m going to have to use the holidays to catch up on them, no skiing break for me. -_- (I’m actually really sad about that) Above is the beginnings of Paris with the very Mucha inspired border. I think it's a huge improvement from what i had before.

28th January to the 1st of February

Dad has gone into hospital earlier than expected. For some reason he’s going in this week and it’s caught us all by surprise. He’s pretty nervous about it as it is his third bypass operation, he didn’t seem so at first but I think it’s getting to him now. I’ve been trying not to think too hard about it as it’s a pretty serious operation and dad is not as young as the optimum age anymore. My parents have been really playing me for the fool a bit about the whole thing. I nicked a book on the heart conditions dad has from their room so I’m really quite clued up about the whole thing. I’ve been having to travel up to the hospital by train a couple of times that has disturbed the work a bit and the film has been pushed to the side for a while as it is easier for me to write my dissertation on the train journey. I’ve got a fair amount of it done and my regime of doing an hour a night seems to be paying off as I have a large chunk done already. I’ve also spoken to Jared on several occasions and everything seems to be going ok. I’ve sent the basic summary and chapters I have completed to him for formative I just hope that what I’m writing isn’t complete rubbish. The sooner I find out the better.

21st January to the 25th January

Aims
Finish drawing up Holland and plan out Paris as I can’t put it off forever. I want to be ready to draw out Paris as soon as I’ve finished with Holland so that I keep the ball rolling. Mike has suggested this week that we go down to the library to see if there are any print books we can use in the environments so we must go down and check.

Goal’s Reached
Holland is going pretty well and I have all the drawings done so it’s now all planned out. I really need to decide how to colour it because I will have to get a new sketch pad of brown paper if I want to do it the same way as the test I did. I did go to the shop i bought it from but they don't sell them same thing in a bigger size. I thought about scanning a page of the book and stretching it but i think that will make it fuzzy.
Luckily the store at Ravensbourne had some big sheets of similar paper so i've bought some of those.
I’m really enjoying doing these environments, probably because it means I can avoid the computer. I don’t hate the computer…wait, yes I do. I certainly don’t love it.
The best discovery this week has definitely been Mucha the poster artist who has now breathed new life into Paris. Here is a horrible test in Photoshop of Paris. Having spent an evening trying to re-work the style I’ve been drawing Paris in and trying to incorporate the Café de Beignet into the scene I finally had a paddy and gave up. BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE!!!!!!
Andrew and I found lots of books that gave us lots of inspiration for the journey scenes I was particularly excited about Mucha (obviously) and a pattern book with a lovely Coy carp in it which I would like to draw into China. I KNOW it’s a Japanese symbol but I just can’t pass this opportunity up. I think it’ll look really good as a star constellation over the Great Wall of China. Do not question my logic, I will make this work.

14th January to the 18th January

Aims
Complete the boat and France’s scene.

Goal’s reached?

I’ve managed to finish the boat scene and I’ve made alpha channels of all the layers. When showing Dave he insisted that the whole scene would be much easier to do in after effects and part of me is starting to agree. I ran some tests in Maya and they look a little rubbish so I’ll have to spruce them up a little. If I do want to make the scenes in Maya I worried for a while about shadows as the alpha channels wouldn’t cast them if rendered normally (another reason to do it in After Effects) so I researched a bit and have discovered that if I turn on Ray tracing then the alpha’s will cast shadows so that’s that little problem out the way.
As for France. I’m having problems with Paris so instead of mope around about it I decided to swap it for Holland, as I know exactly what I want to do with Holland and have a good understanding of how I need to set out the layers as I did my little test.

Des said he’d make our motor bike for the stamp collector to ride on and he's really good with vehicles so I must draw it this weekend and give it to him. Hopefully I can get him to texture it too.
The picture above is an original test i did for the boat scene as if i were to colour everything in a similar style to the Dutch scene.

I would like to explain exactly how i plan to do these scenes.
We have 5 locations

The Channel
Paris/France
Nederlands
Egypt
China

Within each of these stamps the environment will be made up of several layers. Forground mid ground and background. Each of these layers will move independently and i will render an animation of George on his motorbike that i will composite into each stamp as he journeys through chasing the stamp that will also be animated in Maya then composited into After Effects.
I'm hoping that i will be able to incorporate this into each stamp but some may not be possible.

7th January to 12th January

Aims

Here begins a new term. Time to re-write a new timetable and get down to business.Heres the timetable i think you can just about see it. If we stick to this everything should get done in time. It will be hard to stick to this this term because of dissertation but i've made strict rules for Andrew and i to do an hour a night and that should get us through fine.

This week, following my sudden brain wave having looked at the Zelda phantom Hourglass artwork booklet I’ve given myself a week to look into the journey background textures. I’ve set Andrew off on modelling the environments and I know that’s going to take him a while as he’s got 3 to do and they’re not really that simple.
There are 5 environments that I need to plan but I want them all to be 2D on planes so it’s not like I’ll be modelling complex environments. The idea is to make these LOOK nice.

Goals reached
I’ve looked in to the journey designs and am doing a lot of research. It’s going to be far too hard to make them all look like authentic 1930 stamps as these were all made in cross hatch and I think the whole thing is going to look pretty boring if we model the whole thing like that. Therefore I have devised an awesome plan. This plan being to make the stamps look like the work of artists.
I made a miniature test of Holland and I think it came out quite nicely although when I showed it to Mike I don’t think he agreed although Dave thought it looked pretty good. The problem with this style for Holland though is that it absolutely must be done on brown paper, putting it on white paper will look really naff.
When trying the boat scene in a similar style I realised that I couldn’t use this for everything the search had to go on for other styles that fitted each location specifically.
I have started the boat scene as I think this should be done in the cross hatch style I want there to be at least one scene that does use the traditional 1930 style. I don’t like cross hatching so you’ll have to wish me luck as this will go on for a while.

31st December to 4th January

Aims
Redesign George’s room so that it looks more like it’s from the 1930’s and accept that everything is not following the schedule. I also want to take another look at Lani and George’s colour pallets so that when it comes to texturing I know exactly what I’m doing, or if I have to pass the textures on other people know exactly how I want the character to look.

Goals Reached
Bits and pieces have been completed, I don’t know why I’m struggling so much to try and reach these simple goals. I’ve tried colouring George differently but I just can’t seem to shake the original design. Blue really seems to suit him. It’s not too drab but at the same time it doesn’t really stand out either and that’s exactly the look I’m going for. Just to refresh my Photoshop skills (or lack thereof) I’ve started to paint my favourite picture of Lani and George. I was really struggling for a while as I tried to use layers but just ended up getting frustrated as they overlapped and changed each other’s colourings so I tried merging the layers and found it much easier. I’m trying my hand at blending darker and lighter tones to give the effect of shadows and the picture has a rather rough sketchy feel to it but I like that.
Unfortunately while updating the picture during the week I have managed to delete Lani from the picture. I am NOT happy. I have an older save but not the most recent the one you see here is the older version. I’m really angry I hate it when Photoshop asks you if you want to save changes despite the fact that you already saved. I briefly got confused for a moment with another image that needed its changes saved and bam! There goes a lot of hard work. I’m so annoyed with myself.
I’ve sketched new furniture for George’s room and tried to theme it all as you can see from the legs of chairs and tables. I thought this was nice as it ties everything in together. The idea actually came from my Grandmother’s flat as mom is still clearing it out and I happened to notice the feet of a writing desk that I sadly do not have a picture of.