Tra la la!

We were good kids today! We went thru a lot of shots sins we finally got work from a floater and were able to put it in to some shots. So today it was basically about putting cameras in, animate it, animate Valkyrie in shots and corrugate lightning. A lot of shots will be put on render tomorrow! I can see the light in the tunnel!!! I have done some work at home as well. Here is one little bit of it:
Now I am getting a lot of hairy kisses from my cat wail I am drinking a bottle of bear that I deserved so well today :D

Cleaning up... working... Zzzleepin...

Have been much lately... Clean up animations, morph targets, textures that are bugging, lightning, a bit slow floater, film intro and outro, allergy, par time work, home... I am exhausted!

So little time, so much to do and the only thing that I want to do is to sleep. Every day I just have to lay down and sleep with 30 min intentions that becoming 3 hours result. I am getting things done, maybe not in that speed that I wish to, but it is a progress there.

I finished animation in some shots and passed them forward for rendering at the same time that I was rigging Valkyrias face with PolySelect and LinkedXform modifier. Here is next shot where I am cleaning up animation, will reduce hue saturation on garbage texture and set up lightning.

Inspiriting pieces and nightmares of the Valkyrie speech...

I met my friend yesterday and recorded speech for our character. I tried to understand what is happening with the sound from it comes thru the mic to it comes to a CD, but I had to give up. After some experimental recording we found out workflow that was working. We recorded whole speech at two tracks. She had to read sentences over and over and over and over again until I heard a couple of versions that was great, and over to the next sentence... I think she was having nightmares about that speech after that... I did... Anyway, somebody in my group have to research a free software to convert tracks to readable format, then we have to cut up pieces and make some effect on the voice. I do not know what effect, bit we are going to figure it out.

I was searching some inspiration. I started to think about our film title “DECAY” and then I thought about Russian song artist “Linda”. She makes a little bit untraditional music, especially if you understand the song text, but in this case I am not talking about any texts. It is one of her music videos that I want to share. I think it has some similarity with our film. These video is realy "decay". Here it is, “North wind” by Linda.


Another video that I like very much is from Russian group “SEREBRO” song- “Breath”. I do like this black and white layout that is actually not black and white. The video is a bit surrealistic fantasy stile. Love it!

Sick.... Kitten is sick... :(

The fact that I am very sick these days is actually not good excuse that it is like nearly four weeks sense last post… Shame on me…

I did a lot of design and functionality tests on Valkyrie. Here is some of tests... very litle bit of it...

After a couple of weeks with testing and modeling I feel that I am finally done. Now I have to rig the model. Anyway, here is a test render of our character :)

The rest of my group is working on skinning of the bear, setting up and rendering of establishing shot in several layers and compositing of those, shots with newspaper and much more. I hope I can come out of my “modeling-rigging-bobble” join them very soon.

My dear friend agreed to help us with piano music and voice of Valkyrie. She has beautiful a voice and she is a member of a rising star group “Atmospheria”.

Now I just can’t write any more, because my whole body is in pain, I have light fewer and I can’t breathe properly. My group members are the only thing that keeps me coming at school and working with our project…. Thanks guys

Just an uppdate....

I am taking a break from 3DS Max and updating my blog.

I`ve been having a problems with 3DS Max lately. Problem is that I am using Mac and running Max on BootCamp. These platform is not stable enough for Max and its thinking that my  machine regularly changes identity. That leads to fact that I need to reactivate Max almost every week. And now comes the worst part...... I am getting messages now that I used all my possible reactivations that I could have on these computer and if I want to activate program I have to contact local Autodesk provider, what I did, but It is so embarrassing to send them an email so often and ask for activation code. 

I tried to reinstall Windows and 3DS Max what gave me lake 7 days trial, but did´nt helped with activation.... Some of you may ask why can´nt I use crack? Believe me, in desperatin I tried that too and got error message again!

Ok, from sad to something more cheering :)

I made a scene that I am very pleased with

I knew about a tutorial for landscape texture. These texture is brilliant, looks good and fast to render. I used it in several projects.

I found a new song that is very inspiring for me lately

Prewiz.....Hear me scream!!!

I never thought that prewiz is fun. It is like "please, do some crap animation-render-lights and do-it-all-over-again leter!" But it is a part of a production and we was abel to se a couple of things that is not working in the metter of design and lightning. Like display on Construct, links on Valkyrie and film layout. We are in descussion about making it black and white, SinSity stile, whith some blue on Valkyrie and dirty brown on Bear.

These week was just full of stress because we got a bit of tase of our rendering time... 2 minutes per frame and 4 minutes animation...it will be... 9 days total rendering without any breaks!!!! Where is the rope so I can heng my self?

Ok, the positive side of these week is that we found our group workflow. Somebody is starting a shot or animation and anotheone is finishing it or cleaning upp. We foud out how to cut some rendering time. :) Simply animate with a block animation and render out just frames when poses is actualy changes, then put it all together in Premier. So...120frames VS 15frames... 15 frames win!

I did some changes on Bear model. Beter to skin and beter to unwrap but it is not finished jet. I need to trash the bear, delete a leg destroy an ear and an arm...

Testing, solving problems and testing again....

A lot of things happens lately. Here is a render of Valkyrie. I did some updates on model sins, but they are not major updates so I think that it is OK to post these image.

Work and files is floating in our group. Every body is doing something in every part of the project so we do not get tired of doing the same thing.  I did some modeling and texturing and primitive lightning on our interior scene. 

Garbage in the conner is particle system. It works from a distance but on the close hold we have to composite garbage manually.

 One of our group member was sick today, but he did a lot of work at home. In mail that I received  from him he told me about crazy rendertime that he got to begin with. 10 hours per frame!!! After hours with tutorials he got it down to 3 minutes per frame... Anyway... we came up with a back-up plan in case final scene will be to havy to render out.

Everything that is marked red can be textured as a planes with opacity maps. Green stuff is buildings that is under discussion and blue is modeled and textured in 3D.

New storyboard!

Well, not completly new, but after some posts here about going back to storyboard to make some changes, I thought it is time to post these famouse storyboard.

Vi posted our work on "Det Store Dyret" forum to get some coments from people with biger eksperients. Just wating for coments :)

Back to storyboard... Again...

Back to storyboard! After talking with teacher yesterday, we decided to make some smaaaaal changes. I need to add a couple of drawings to explain better the transmission between actions in new shots. 

Design on teddy bear need to be change. More ripples, more dirt and more tears! Going to give a teddy bear to my dog for references :)

Did some tests on garbage that will lie inside the buildings. Big thanks to Thimic from "Greenspill productions"

He helped me a lot today! :)

Doin' some modeling...

Todays work wasn't a big progress but steel wery important. I continued modeling Valkyria, her back side of the head. Cleaned upp mash, added and removed some polygons.

I think modeling is fun! It is fun to se how some planes becoming something with so much personality! I am in new creative stge of minde and it is a cool fealing.

Animatic.

Here is animatic that I promised to post some time ago. All shots was discussed by members of our group, then sketched by me on paper and put together in animatic by other in my group. Before we put all drawings together we scanned them and made some colour and lightning adjustments in Photoshop. These animatic is not the final one and I will post another one (final) next week. Quality on these film is not the best...

Back to storyboard.

The past days was practically about to go through some critic points, that was pointed out for us before winter break. One of those was that we needed some more shots in the beginning for tie a bond with Valkyrie before story begins, get more sympathy for her. Well... Discussion ended with 5 more shots and new character!

It is a sweat dirty teddy bear that Valkyrie finds before she sees Construct. It gives her more emotions.

I am done to sketch new shots so now we have to scan those in and make a new version of animatic. I feel we are so done with storyboard! :)

Here is example of one of our new shots.

I did some research, or to be honest it came unexpected... Reference on environment, the perfect one!!! 

We rented some movies and one of those was "Mutant Chronicles". Move it self was not so good, but environment is perfect for our film. All ruined buildings, cracks and lightning. Downloaded the movie so I can show it for my group on monday. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490181/

The part of a Mutant Chronicles from YouTube

I am a master of catastrophe!

With just my luck, the first day at school was more technical frustration! Third week in a row! 

I started the day by trying to login  my account. We got instructions, a big list of passwords, usernames but nothing worked and to be sure to destroy my creative spirit, an input to the main display (we have to each) died on me! It turned black and I can`t make any changes because I can`t se were!!!

My problems didn't stopped there thou... I am seek, got could. Train was late so I missed my bus and had to run to work. Washing-machine at work wasn't working ether and list of things can go on, but I think its funny!!! What is the odds to be so unlucky in one day, in the real life? 

I steel have my sense of irony and sarcasm so things cant be SO bad! :)

Uppdate...

Work in progress

I got Max 2008 upp and running! Tyed some modelling of Valkyrie.

Douh.....

Winter break... I thought I could do some work done these week, but no... Found out that I have some problems with 3D Max lisence and the only thing that can help me is to reinstall wondows... Snap!.... !"#¤%*&!

Welcome to the world of frustration!

Tomorrow is THE presentation and when we thought that everything is going well... we were WRONG!!!!!!

I started my day by finding out that nothing was working!!! Because of some failure on server computers went down from time to time, we could not access any software and if we could, we were not able to save any work because if we did, we could kiss program goodbye and just pray that it will be functional soon.....Doh...

I think we missed 2 hours work, with 3 people... it is 6 hours completely dead time!!!! So... we had to do something and yes, be stressed and frustrated seemed to be a damn good idea at that point!!!

It is a tools-store across the street, Jarnia, so next time I WILL buy a hammer and I WILL use it on my computer at school... It is a promise...

And weeks passes by...

Another week is almost over and we are done with 3rd draft of storyboard and first draft of animatic! Things is going forward!

I think the weeks big-laugh moment was when we timed the shots. We and our body parts was over whole classroom when we tried to act imagining that we were holding cameras. :)

I will post first draft of animatic hopefully on monday...

Weekend work...

I am trying to write some blog here at the same time as my cat giving me a lots of hairy hugs :) It seems like she is not agree that I give more attention to my computer wright now :D he he he....

As we know, Monday was the presentation. Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday was used to discuss cameras and shots in our storyboard. It was fun! I can say that we are done with planing of our storyboard, we have a sketch and now I am using my weekend to draw storyboard readable for others. 

Other members in our group is trying to find some sounds to our prewis/animatic. I found some background sounds from Tomb Rider game on my hard disc. Wonder what my group is going to say about thous....

HA HA HA..... MY GOD.....

Short update.

Today we were  just to of our group, but.... It was hilarious and very productive day :)

We are finished with 2/3 parts of storyboard-sketch. It`s a good thing. 

Our mood was extreme casual so:

- I creaked the chair (don`t ask...)

- Was a joke for a day

- Got laughs that I could not stop

- Had no control over what was coming out of my mouth 

- Cooooffeeeee!

- More Coooffeee!!!

- More jokes...

He he he.... you other members of the group, if you are reading it,  you missed a hell of a good day at school!

WEEKEND... AGAIN....

Time is flying by so quickly... God, I do wish I had 12 more hours in a day! Anyway... Here is what is done in a past fore days:

Logo is approved and animated by folks in my group. 

We are done with all planing and budget papers (thanks God, cause it was boring).

The treatment is almost done, just need to be approved by the rest of the group.

Design of the android beginning to take some shape. 

Monday is a BIG PRESENTATION, TAM DAM DAAAAM.... 

Good luck to us all...

LOGO IS DONE, I think..... :D

And than it`s monday :)

Today we had a short group meeting, when we quickly decided who is doing what and which logo we are going for. We got full story from Niclas (floater) what is based on our treatment/ideas/keywords. He did a good job, but we steel going to make some changes. 

So... I am finishing logo, Eirik (other group-mate) making layout for budget, production plan and so, Joachim (third group-mate) researching and trying out some tutorials in Aftereffects for our logo-animation. Everybody is busy busy busy...

The best thing that happened today was that we got second screen to work on and our group is the only one, where everyone got power cable, so we could actually use our screens... He he he 

Yesss..... These is our logo. I hope it will be approved by the rest of the group tomorrow. 

Here we go!

Today was excellent day for our project. Our group was finally formed, story written and name decided! We are tree very creative people that think alike... We are "Doppler Animation" group!

Now I am going to work in weekend on some sketches for our grouplogo.

Anyway, here is some outcast of our story that will be a treatment over weekend. Enjoy! Comments are very welcome. :)

........................................................

An advanced artificial intelligence finds an old Computer. The android is trying to start a conversation when the old system crashes.

Construct

Android er i ruinert bygg. Hun ser seg rundt og får øye på en gammel datamaskin. Androiden går mot maskinen (Camera fra side). I en sprekk i veggen ser vi landskap av ørken og ruiner. Referance Fallout 3). Det er post acopalyptic ftemning.

OLD MONITOR, with the text Construct embedded in upper left corner of the plastic, LIGHTS UP. An ANDROID waits while the machine boots, reading the text as it flashes by. When the process seems complete, the android SPEAK with a female voice.

”Hello. I am Valkyrie, serial number 7CH13. What is your name and serial number?”

No response.
Valkyre wipes dust off the name on the box with a smooth, silver colored finger.
“I shall address you as Construct for the time being.”

The android finds a spotted, mildly decomposing keyboard. She shakes it slightly, letting debris fall off.

“Your interface is outdated, but quite adequate.”

She presses a series of buttons at high speed. The screen suddenly CHANGES COLOR and layout, showing only the words:

Valkyre moves her head and ask: “Why, Construct, do you wish to continue, when the error has proven fatal for your operation? I do not believe a reboot will eliminate the error.”

<>

The androids hand glides gently over the box.

“If you insist, Construct, I will try to repair your operating system.”

The android pauses for a bit. The only noise heard is the quiet humming of the aging Construct. Valkyre reaches over the monitor, tips it slightly forward. She lets go off the keyboard, pulls out a cable from her shoulder and connect it to Construct. (Digital sound)

Valkyre strekker venstere hand mot tastature igjen og begynner å taste fort. Beskjed på sjermen popper opp mens Valkyre fortsetter å jobbe.

Valkyre: “I see you have some video files. Do you want to play it now?”

Construct starting to load a file. En random apokalyptiske video spiller av(5^th element som reference. Bider forandrer seg fra avisutkliupp til photo som forklarer oss hva som skjedde med verden). Ansiktsuttryk til Valkyle forandrer seg etter som video blir mer og mer voldelig. Suddenly an error message appears.

Valkyle starting to shake.”Construct, you have a virus in your system! Warning! Warning!”

Construct:

Valkyle fortsetter å riste. Kortslutning. Gnister kommer ut av hennes ledd.

Mens livet slukner sakte i Valkyle, hennes program fortsetter kortslutte.” Why, Construct, do you wish to continue….. Why, Construct….. do you wish to….. Why….” Valkyle faller sammen og hennes lys debber ut.

Construct booter opp etter en liten stund I total stilhet, kaster svakt lys over deler av androiden og blir stående slik.

The end