Week 11 Demolish those pesky buildings with OfficeBro!

Hullo friend, it is April 2013 already. How time keeps flying.
I hope you’ve been well and you are enjoying your week!

Okay. I am terrible at small talk. But I’m trying and learning (:
Anyway, let’s get to it…

Let’s go crazy! Journal Time!

27th wed

• Train adventures

Mostly to do with one person today; couldn’t get any good view of any of the the other passengers due to me trying to be careful from the same frequent starer from the other occasions.

• Animated the holographic “mX” & “EVACUATE” balls twice over due to pacing/timing issues while I kept playing with the lighting direction of the building to get it matching with the live action scene, accordingly to feedback. (Disclaimer again: the basis of the model by Theo Pandolas, the model is by Tonko (David Tonkin) and the camera angle is by Tony Nguyen.)
  

  This is composite version 12b. Amazing how it went from version 5 to 12b in one day. Thanks to the feedback of Tonko, Tim and Heath on the lighting direction, colour of the shadows and pesky anti-aliasing issues respectively. Quite happy with the frosted glass & concrete shaders I made, or at least for now. Not sure how well it blends with the scene still.

• Composited the live action footage, the above render and the rotating holographic orb and out comes the following. Better than I would ever expect it to be…as this is not my forte so the feedback from the aforementioned people helped tremendously! Perhaps this is the final building. But it’s actually not, as it is still progress!

28th thur

• Train adventures…somewhat!

Didn’t have a good seating arrangement but did what I can! Features many quiet and perhaps tired passengers.

• Update on the feature building shot so far: turns out the above render is still too cool in colour temperature relative to the live action background; thanks to Heath’s feedback, Tonko successfully found a way to fix that in post production and did some creative building frankensteining to give the building some depth. You will know what I mean when you see the finished film v1. The film as a whole is progressing but not as fast as we’d have wanted it to and since it’s at the post production side of things (not my area at all), all I can hope for is that things work out for our post production team members.
• Made a weather holographic presentation (the only thing I didn’t make are the clouds via free cloud stock photos and used an old report of stock market data for their numbers). This was composed into the feature building shot you saw in the video above onto the brown building’s side by Tonko.

Tonko later did his own temperature forecasts and made his own numbers, but still used the rest. Kept it real simple accordingly to Tonko’s “brief” and looked at some mobile weather displays for some pointers.

• Developed a 3D building sign based on one of the thumbs I did, chosen by Victor. I did the brand name 2-3 weeks ago, essentially a fictional company called “OfficeBro”. Victor’s angled it and composed it extremely well that it successfully blended completely into the scene. I’ve got other made up brand names that won’t be used…but someday they will!

Simplistic with sticky note, as per Victor’s “brief”.

3D modeled version I made for him to put into his scene. But you won’t notice the sign in the scene due to Victor’s sweet skills in composing things together (as he intended!)

29th fri

• PD session; don’t think I’ve gotten anywhere with it though since I haven’t dived in yet 🙁

30th sat

• BAL reading others’ updates, articles & started to read a book
• Getting my head around the Nuke assessment…because I had to. Did some Maya prep so I could do just do the Nuke portion of the assessment after the break as I do not intend to get NukeX on my computer.

31st sun

• Decided to take the leap and get it done and over with my slight dread/reluctance. Watched a bit of the documentary Anatomy for Beginners: Movement and drew some things

Practiced someback muscles whilst referencing the documentary. After seeing skin being taken off in its complete form was…indescribable. In literal terms, it’s just a dangling flesh coloured body suit with sprinkled hair where you expect it and yellowy fat underneath.

Not accurate but I needed to get some life drawing in while I’m watching!

1st April mon

• started to skim through public art forum online communities a bit more regularly and was feeling bad as I felt that I should post or comment at those inspiring places. Though on second thought, I fare better not spreading out myself too thin (as that’s why I stopped posting everywhere in the first place and retreated back to this main art blog and only a few selective forums). The “maybe I should…” thing has come back to haunt me again!

When I have the time and skill to make projects and better art studies–I may post over at those public places for feedback. For now, I shall lurk sometimes and avoid getting distracted and overwhelmed by the countless oceans of many, many threads of like-minded artists out there (as it does get time consuming and you end up not focusing on your own learning!) At this stage I’m still a newbie so everything needs improvement and more practice and I think this journal-ing approach suffices in keeping myself accountable (despite the absence of feedback here though I know the expected feedback is essentially: “Practice more”). I know can get feedback from a small handful of art friends if I ask and at this blog I get the opportunity to self reflect on my own progress. There’s always that guilt at the back of my mind that I should be drawing everyday, but I’m getting there!

• Some neck & hands review once again!
• Watched some more Anatomy for Beginners: Movement, Circulation, Reproduction, Digestion. Then I started watching the Emergency Room Autopsy series: Minutes from Death, Blood loss, Violent Impact…

Was somehow able to overcome the ickiness/gruesome/gore factor (enough to watch it) despite all the real life people they dissect, saw and pump artificial blood into for demonstrations. At some points I wondered “why am I watching this?”, “why am I still watching this?!”, “I’m not a medical student…!” but I’m finding it’s the kind of thing you don’t really want to get too close and personal but you can’t seem to look away as you discover all these things you didn’t realise about the human body. Ages ago, I once saw this running on SBS and I avoided it after watching an episode in black and white due to fear. So I can’t believe I am watching this in full colour but…I am? I am not as afraid of seeing what’s under the skin but it the sounds of cutting, grating, slurping, sawing, drilling and whatnot into body parts still irks me (which is normal).

*Seeing* how he grabs the muscles to show how the fingers and lower leg work is not the same as reading about it. Seeing the Brain plus its trailing spinal cord to the end of the toes’ nerve endings compared to the actual human was enlightening (feeling sorry for the model to have body organs touching him just to see how it matches though).

Scribbly writing on how the lungs and heart work. I don’t even know why I’m writing notes down about these. It was amazing to *see* the lungs actually in action as they pumped air into real lungs.

I didn’t care much for donuts but I didn’t mind it if I was offered one. Now I am completely put off from donuts. They said that the donut was the simplified version of the digestive system where the hole is the mouth and the anus and the surrounding ring is everything else (organs, tubes, fat). And they showed the model eating a chocolate covered donut just beforehand! Blerghhh.

The funny quote that stayed with me from this doctor: “I will give you techniques to CHEAT DEATH!” No you can’t! We’re not immortal! You’re just offering first aid techniques to buy time before real assistance arrives! His introduction to the episode was deceiving.

Not sure why I’m posting my illegible notes as they won’t be of any use to you but I learned why people actually drown, humans are incredibly vulnerable in many areas and how fast blood loss leads to death depending on the pressure and the size of the artery being cut.

Turns out getting stabbed by *anything* at the torso (belly/chest) is almost always fatal dependent on the angle of the object/weapon due to how packed all the vital organs and blood vessels are within the belly and the ribcage. Bone fractures are bad news especially as you grow older.

The whole documentary did remind me back when I did science at school. My group didn’t want to do the gruesome stuff for the experiment so I had to be the one to dissect a cow’s eyeball and a brain of a sheep to look what’s inside and relate to how the human brain and eyeball worked. It was irksome but I did what I had to do (and perhaps you might have done something similar in your science classes). However, I got marked badly when I had to look and draw based on what I saw in the microscope because I got given what I feared: I was given a cross-section of a worm to look at. And for some irrational reason, I was incredibly squeamish and fearful of worms and so I only dared to look at the edge of the cross section, rather than the actual cross section itself. Am still squeamish today but it’s not as bad; they’re just wonderful creatures that I find slimy and envision as disgusting intestines sometimes.

I remember seeing a rainbow coloured filmy layer at the retina when I opened that eyeball. That, and a lot of watery jelly came out.

2nd tues

• Review on anatomy between genders and fat…and got distracted in watching Bioshock Infinite

Reflection for the week

There’s actually plenty of reflecting (text walls) above so keeping this section brief. Noticing that I am tending to read/watch, learn, type rather than draw this week. All part of the learning process. I guess my blog is turning out to be a lot of typing and not solely just drawing.

Looking forward to this Friday’s (today) and Saturday’s Pixar masterclass in storytelling and animation! 😀 Shall tell you about it next Friday.

Thanks for looking! (:
Until next week,
Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)