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Unit 6 - Commission - Final Animation - Infection by HIV

The HIV cell in formation

In the end I went with the ship design for the HIV cell and decided to rely on colour and bump map to improve the alien look.

The colour I went for was a rusty green, and I wanted the whole ship to be dented and scratched.

This was the render I got from adding the colour, but the ship gets lost in that background.

I applied the ship to its first position,which is the formation. I copied the ship five times to show a deadly force. I've used lighting to show depth and show up the area, however, my lighting skills seem to be limited at the moment.

To make sure this part of the animation didn't look boring, I added some movement to the ships.

The New HIV design

As I showed in my previous post, I liked the idea of having a plane to be the HIV cell but didn't like having something that was someone elses design. With this in mind I created a new plane to take up the roll of the HIV cell. The plane is original, technical and mechanical with a slight look of a alien aircrafts. I really like having this design as my HIV cell because it fits in very well with my technology look animation and would work perfectly for an action and flight for act 2.

The HIV modelling process

When it comes to the model of the HIV cell I wanted to make it fit with the rest of the animation. So far for a new design I wanted to have something that is known for being technical and mechanical. Also the design has to be shaped in a way that if it was to turn then it is highly visible, like a plane.

With this in mind, I modelled a stealth plane...

I also had a little practice with colouring and lighting.

After modelling the stealth plane, I started to think that this idea takes the originality out of my animation. So I want to re-design the HIV cell again. But seeing as a took the time to model it, I thought I could do a quick flight playblast for some practice for the final thing.

The White blood cell modelling

This model has been brought about via the concept I did earlier, my idea was to make a mechanical world that shows technology. The inner core will show constant moving energy effects as the animation goes on. The outer ledges make this area look like a technical base.

Last couple of days

In the last couple of days I've been modelling and attempting to colour the act one scene, that being the computer room. I wanted this room to look technical and scientific, this is what I managed to model...

Colouring

The colouring so far isn't going brilliantly, this will be the result of lack of focus in the year when everyone else was learning to do it. So far I have coloured the screens a shiny black and the desks a shiny silver. This will stay like this for awhile because I want to get all modelling done before I get deep into colouring and texturing. I want to improve the shine look because I don't think it shows to well and it looks fake, also I want to keep that colour pallet throughout the room. The blacks and silvers will show this room as a clean and rich facility.

Progress so far

I think that my modelling is coming along very well, I happy with how this room looks and can't wait to crack on with the other areas. The biggest problem though is time, so I have to have everything modelled, textured, coloured and animated by atleast the end of the weeks, because my problem is rendering, and it will involve a lot of time to finish.

New concept

After my feedback for the pitch, I realised that I could do a lot more with this project than I first thought. I was told that my acts don't link together, they look like they are parts of different animations. I previously re-watched Ironman and had an idea to link the acts via a style of technology. I want my main focus to lie on the white blood cell and what goes on inside, and I want to design the nucleus of the cell to look like the Large Arc Reactor in Ironman's lab. I want to keep this Ironman technology feel throughout, so for the first act, I want a three screened computer in a room that looks like the basement in yet again Ironman. These screens will display a 3d blood sample slowly spinning around with information sub-dividing from it ( like the head up displays and computers than are seen in the film.
Other feedback that I had was that the Act 2 wasn't showing the amount of action that was promised, I was told that it need to work on editing and camera angles to improve that action feel. I also need to have that act finish quicker than it does, so that act three has enough time to show the education.

This new turn around will involve a lot of work and to start off, I have done this concept to show how I'm visualising this nucleus in the technology style...

Feedback from the Pitch and my new To-Do-List

My presentation for the pitch could have gone better, as was seen the amount of work I've put in the last 5 weeks has been rather limited. The feedback I got from the panel will come in useful. I was told that my colour scheme needed to work throughout the animation. Also the acts don't link to each other, they all seem like they're part of different pieces of work. So my main problem to solves is I have to make sure I can make all acts link together. To solve this I thought about keeping the technology of the first act flowing though animation. For inspiration I took another look at Ironman and I came up with a few ideas. I now want the first act to show a couple of computer screens on a polished desk with the microscope and other scientific equipment. I want it to look like similar Tony Starks basement room. The computer screens will be designed around the screens in the film, so it will have moving downloads and renders of a bloodsample and HIV information constantly happening. This heads up information will continue as the animation moves to act 2. this act needs more improvements to it because it was said that the movements needed to be quicker, there needed to be better editing of shots and the whole act needed to be shortened down so that act 3 (the education) was longer. Inside the white blood cell (act 3) will look simular to Ironman's  research lab, I would like the nucleus to look like an extreme power source. The HIV and the White blood cell will look like its made from metal and still have the heads up display.

When looking at everyone's pitches, I realised that my animation was way to boring, it was to obvious to be fun. I was inspired by Dayle's concept art. I liked how out of this world it looked, and I now want to do something that will take the audience out of this world and warp them into a technologically advanced world, the asme as what the film Ironman did for me.

To-Do-List

• Create more and better concepts to develop the world I want to create - This needs to be dramatic, exciting and technological - More research would need ot be involved for this, looking at films like fantastic voyage again, Alien, and Ironman. - I will also need to look up tutorials on how to get the most out of these concepts. - Fix the colour scheme for the animation, make it dark/light/Dirty/Clean/Green (more alien like) but keep it running through.
• I need to research into more amaerican tv and action films - this was reconmended by Phil.
• Keep the original story as a basis but advance it into the new ideas - create a rough storyboard if needed.
• Find a better soundtrack, previous soundtrack got a lot of negative feedback
• Look for After Effects and Maya tutorials for inspiration and ease to help with this possibly hard task.
• Try experimenting with backgrounds for the Maya scene to extend the visual field.
• Find Videos and book tutorials of Dramatic Camera Angles to help with act 2.
• Re-model everything that needs to be done.
• Create the textures and colours for the models - keep the drama and colour scheme.
• Animate it all - keep in mind the the action, editing potentials and over all feel of the animation - make it look exciting.
• Take the animaiton into After effects and put those necessasary effects on - heads up display, etc.

It is a very big list to get thorugh in just 2 weeks, and if I look back at what I've done in 5 weeks, it becomes very daunting. But also at the same time it's inspiring, because I have something to prove to myself and everyone else. I know that I can get this done and I want to create what I see in my head. If I don't get the whole thing done, it could be a little disapointing. However it is a big list and involves 100% dedacation. I feel that this year I haven't done anywhere as near as what I could achieve, I know have 2 weeks to prove what I can do... Overall that Pitch has become very useful for me and I extremely glad we did it.

@ PHIL - TIME MACHINE ESSAY PROPOSAL

Sorry for the late post but I've finally come up with a couple of ideas for the Time Machine essay which I plan to get started on straight away. We all wish we could go back in time!

The ideas I've come across are slightly ranged and I like some of the ideas more than others which I wanted to run by you.

1. The movement of 2D animation to 3D animation - as you may remember for the unit 5 essay I wanted to write about John Lassester and his efforts of introducing 3D animation to the world. Well in the end I wrote about Winsor McCay which as you may agree is almost completely in the opposite direction. So I thought I could connect the two, investigating certain movements, techniques, discussion and technologies that allowed us to move the 3D world from the 2D

2. The effects of action in films - basically I wanted to discuss how action scene boost or possibly destroy a film.

3. Does the added influence of romance improve the way the audience perceives the characters involved? - This idea was just a little one that jumped to me, but could be very interesting to look into. I would imagine that different cultures, ages or genders for have different views on a romantic scene in the film they're watching. Obviously this would need a lot of evidence to strengthen the arguement.

4. (my favourite) With this idea I want to look into how different audience react to books vs movies. Which is better and why? What makes a book better? What makes a film better? Who is prefering which?
- With a little research I have noticed that there is a lot of dislike over the film versions of 'ERAGON' and
'Da Vinci Code', however the books were a huge hit. From what I've read, the people that hatted the film the most are the people that read and enjoyed the book. I think it will be interesting to look deeper into the lovers of books and how they see films and argue that point with what the lovers of movies think about books. Fortunatly I have read both 'Eragon' and 'Da vinci code' and loved the books, so I think it would be biased if I focused on that alone. So to back up an honest arguement I looked at the best movies that where created from some pretty bad books. What I found was the books that were the foundation to 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather', where actually bad. Which again I find really interesting because there is a strong contrast - Two of the best-selling books have been made into unpopular movies whereas two of the most grossing movies at the box office where created from some unpopular books.