Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (: Straightforward title this time; yep. Thanks so much for the encouraging feedback last week, friends! I did not expect it at all and it means a lot! Welcoming you to the bumpy ride of my life-long learning. Let’s do this together!
Let’s go crazy! Journal Time!
8th Wed
Train adventuuures…!
You have seen the first half last week but not the tsking gentleman here. He was surrounded with loads of paperwork in the train while his strongly furrowed forehead was stressing out.
Then the tsking gentleman rushed off and in came a yawning teen/early 20’s lady you see on the top left. She left too as she got another seat when a family took over the seats. The baby of the family is pictured quickly sketched in profile on the bottom right.
Environment painting continued. Heath (as expected) pointed that the colour plan (from previous week’s) was too saturated and had no indication of camera depth. Glad to hear that his thoughts matches mine. Still it’s all placeholders and in progress!
Title card for Cooking with Rex (CwR) project: collecting references and inspiration and sketching ideas. Looking into old cartoon and animation title cards for inspiration especially Looney tunes, Disney shorts and Pixar shorts.
Round 1: getting the obvious title screens out of my system
9th Thurs
train adventuuures:
Early thumbnails for the title screen. Some still life and a lady I didn’t get to finish as the train got cramped again (to the point I can’t see good view of faces, at least without blowing my ninja cover).
What happens when I draw things at an angle like a ninja. I give distorted surgery to people’s faces.
Environment painting continued and moving onto colours: Heath now says it’s too muted in terms of colour so far–interesting contrast in feedback! The violet tree is still in progress, which is why it stands out so much at this stage. Struggled to stay awake late in the day due to sleep deprivation. But I managed to finish the colours by going through another semi-late night!
Matte Painting lighting, tones and values finally done!
WIP: Starting colours on the distant layers of background
Finished Coloured Matte painting done! Recieved a lot of encouraging feedback. This is not bad for my first matte painting. There’s probably room for improvement though but at the time of writing it blends really well with the 3D elements in front. The waterfall and clouds will be giving the illusion of movement.
Learned a bit about home made Motion Capture with 6 cameras
10th Fri
train adventuuures:
A lot of tired passengers and I also gave someone youthful surgery.
It’s been so long since I’ve been able to manage a more complete portrait!
Environment matte painting: got very encouraging feedback on the matte painting from Heath, my team and classmates and Will did an excellent job in making sure the 3D elements and my matte painting blended seamlessly together. Things seem to be working out! (: You will see it in action when the film is done, don’t worry!
Title card thumbnails: been working out more ideas on a cool CwR animated title and allowing myself to have fun in my little creative playground as I look up inspiration and draw out many ideas. In spite of what my classmates and Heath may say, I stress that I’m not doing too many thumbnails! This is one of my favourite and fun parts of the process actually.
Round two thumbnails: trying more different things out. Thumb 2I seems popular on this page.
Round 3: Based on feedback, text from thumb 3D and silhouettes from 3H were popular. 3A was also eye catching. 3E was meant to the the interface of the oven but it’s not at all obvious here.
Round 4: 4A and 4B had some interesting elements I was experimenting with. I didn’t fill up this round because I got told to stop making thumbnails haha
CwR project organisation & feedback: sorting out 2D effects, planning what needs to be done over the weekend with Will and Victor, giving and getting feedback from the team, finishing the production packet for the group. One week left as of this date! Exciting times!
11th Sat
CwR props: First I needed to UV unwrap 2 of the 3 props while Will unwrapped the remaining milk carton before texturing could happen (took a bit longer than expected as it’s been a while since I actually used Maya for this project). Collecting ref for designs as I will be painting textures for the table, flour bag and the milk carton. Struggling with the table as I had to design the patterns and figure out how best approach painting as well!
My Table Texturing on the 3D model (by Will): Waiting for approval and to see whether it fits in the scene but it’s done for now! Unwrapping this manually was surprisingly tricky to the point that I opted for the automatic way and edited it after.
Table sides Texture: At first I wasn’t sure what I was doing but I eventually had fun doing these stylised patterns!
Tabletop Texture: Lots of trial and error got me drawing a lot of patterns to composite them into one big one. I had some writing still there to remind myself which part is what.
Milk Carton Packaging designs v1: whelp back to Graphic Design here. Muted and minimalistic design and colours so to not take too much attention from the animation. I had to figure out designs first before actually texturing or I will spend too long struggling to design and texture at the same time. Font on the second one needs improvement, but these are rough ideas for team selection. Originally, I planned to have finished texturing all together today but it didn’t work out; texturing and designing takes time.
12th Sun
CwR Designing and Texturing continues. Gotten feedback from Victor and Will so far too. Need to do a version 2 for the milk carton design, the flour bag design got worked out while the table textures worked out fine after Will tested it in the scene, fortunately for me.
Flour bag packaging design: where number 2 is the clear winner and people seem to agree.
Milk Carton Packaging Designs v2: Made No. 1 less like a city skyline, arranged No. 2 so it’s making more use of the carton space, developed No. 3 more and No.4 is just for laughs. I didn’t realise how wide the actual 3D model was when I did these.
Flour Bag Texture: it took a while as Photoshop kept crashing 6+ times due to me working with 3D while I was painting. Also realised that the UVs I unwrapped could be done a bit better next time as there are two tiny places where I couldn’t paint properly.
Flour Bag turnaround: 3D model by Will Higgins and here is my hand painted diffuse texture in action. After much trickery, so glad this is done!
Milk carton Texture: I realised that when I applied the text within my texture onto the model it gets reversed. So I just did what I could with what I have and reversed my text instead to accommodate the model. The deadline is looming and there was no time to update models once again and animation was already in progress. So…Mirror mode!
Milk carton turnaround: 3D model by Will Higgins with my texture applied and readable now. I wished I designed it with the actual proportions in mind. It looks a bit weird to me.
13th Mon
CwR crunch time continues!
Quick camera Graphical User Interface I whipped up where the time counter is just a placeholder. Essentially the GUI I’ve been using for all my concept art so far.
Research into 2D effects and especially looked into the wonderful smoke effects The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has.
Smoke & Flour shapes: Studied how The Wind Waker did their smoke explosions by trying it out myself and studied how flour can behave in the air based on the Google images I could scavenge. The Wind Waker-esque smoke proved popular with my group.
Russian Meteor studies: I wasn’t too eager in studying complicated cloud formations. Then I explored how to extract simplified shapes from them. I’m not getting carried away; what are you talking about? Number 29 was favoured in the end.
Also started doing candle flames and eggs but I didn’t get to finish them.
14th Tues
CwR crunch time: involving more concepts of effects and got feedback from Victor and Will
Mudcake candle flame and egg goo: seeing how the flame will light up on the candle, explored some Wind Waker-esque flames and explored how to best represent the eggs. Variations of no. 23 was chosen in the end as there’s just the trickles oozing out to consider.
Milk splatter studies and shapes exploration. Numbers 2, 3, 4 and 11 were chosen by my team.
Visual Effects sprites!
Flour Smoke Sprites I made inspired by The Wind Waker game. EDIT: Do you want to use these? Would appreciate it if you could credit me and link directly to this blog post as thanks. EDIT here is the link to the 2015 transparent version.
Candle Flame Sprites
Mashed Egg Innards
Meteor trail sprites I’ve made using 128 layers. For flexible later use in compositing.
Meteor trail demonstration: to show how the sprites should be puzzled together to form the trail. Took me ages to piece it together though as I organised the sprites into categories based on the different cloud shapes they have. If you squint your eyes, it looks like it…yes.
Reflection for the Week
This past week was so incredibly busy!! Upon reflection, I can’t say I was stressed though, I was just sleep-deprived and tired throughout so far that it felt like I was quietly zombiefied and zoned out. Still I was having fun along the way! Things are beginning to wind down for the Cooking with Rex project actually.
But there are many, many things that need further work after the assigned deadline we were given so you won’t see the short film until that happens! Our team plans to make a polished version after this deadline version is done. Heads up that you might see random work being made for the project in between all the other things I’m juggling with.
In next week’s post, the Cooking with Rex project’s deadline happens and in two posts’ time I would be starting a new short film all over again with a larger group as well, let’s wait and see what happens! Keep going at achieving your own goals yourself too, dear reader!
Thanks for looking! (: Until next time, Leonie (UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
