Intro
In this unit we experience working with client on a live project. This unit will give us the opportunity to use our animation skills, creative thinking. We explore the effective way visul to tell a story to a specific audience, need and purpose. We had three clients to choose from BBC, BFX and Covi. As a group we have chosen Covi because we left we could make something great work.
Covi - Client presentation and meeting
After the presentation of Sara and Caroline, the two themes stood out for me and my group was 'Weekend to the moon' and 'My job, My life'.
'Weekend to the moon' is about how things will change in near future 50 years from now in 2066. Here are few things will grantee happen by 2066:
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'My job, My life' is about how in 2066, we work for our satisfaction. We work to benefit ourselves and our communities. We don’t work to live or live to work; we work and live simultaneously.
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We have discussed our ideas with our client and they seems to be open with how we interpret the brief. Before pitching we have underlined few keywords that stands out to us and came up with a concept based on that. We had two initial ideas that we had pitched to them.
They have suggested that we can take a keyword like transport and make an animation based on that. They also suggested that we combine our idea, and show how raise technology made a normal person's life different.
Here are few questions that we asked:
- My idea - How technology has improved and how it will improve in the way we live our life in 50 years time. E.g. driverless cars, a bed that fixed it self, automatic tea maker
- Josh's idea - he wanted to make a animation where a person travels to space easily.
They have suggested that we can take a keyword like transport and make an animation based on that. They also suggested that we combine our idea, and show how raise technology made a normal person's life different.
Here are few questions that we asked:
- 2D or 3D? They are looking for 30-60 second of animation 2D or 3D, as long as it gets the story across
- For sound should we use music or voice over? They do not mind, they have suggested we can also use dialogue.
- Are you looking for realistic work? They want us to have realistic work but use our creative mind to come up with a lateral ideas. But they did want us to do research on the new technology we might have in 50 years from now.
Time management
Since we are doing a 3D animation we want to spend as much time as we can on the 3D side of things. So we need to have the final concepts, research and the storyboard done by the first week.
Week 01 (13rd April 2016) - We have set our-self a few task to complete by next week. Due to we want to spend more time on our final piece.
Week 01 (13rd April 2016) - We have set our-self a few task to complete by next week. Due to we want to spend more time on our final piece.
- Come up with ideas
- Do some drawing/concepts to explain our idea
- Research on different style of animation that we might do our final piece like.
- Research into new technology that are coming out by 2066
- Story development
- Moodboards
- Presentation of initial idea
- Concepts further to discussed ideas
- Further research
- tested animation and how it works
- Further concepts
- Start to create models
- create models for final animation negative future (many as possible)
- anamatics
- Attempt to finalize as many models as possible
- begin learning animation techniques
- start basic animation
- Assisting on animations however proceeding with final environment design
- Rendering
- Editing - After effects, Nuke composition
Research into existing animation
Here are some animation styles that I like. This may influence the way we come up with ideas and do our storytelling.
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I really love the style of the this animation. Simple yet effective! I like how the buildings and the roads unfold into a city. I also like the camera angle how it follows the car on a journey.
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I like how the VFX Artist has integrated his drawing with live footage. This is a very interesting idea. I really like the night time shot, where the artist has used lights effectively on the cars. If the group don't use this concept as my final piece for this animation, I will use it for a personal project.
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This is a low poly animation, which is done in high standard. We as group was thinking of having low poly environment and character which will give it clean feel to it. The environment and the lighting is magnificent.
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Story
Initial ideas
- A person wakes up and goes to brush his teeth. As he is brushing his teeth, there will be a hologram on the mirror with all his notifications and news. He will receive a notifications his services are needed in Mars. One of the robot has malfunctioned. We will try to show how easy it is to get to Mars.
- A life of a future delivery man. Using drone to send packages.
Initial presentation idea
Final idea
Person cycles and the environment changes as he cycles through the environment . We will try show how the environment will be if we don't do nothing about it. They continue using coal and energy that pollutes the environment, the environments pop up portraying a negative atmosphere. Time then goes to where they have created a new energy and the buildings pop up differently, showing the audience a nicer environment that they may want to live in. We will use voice over as he cycles through the city.
Roles
Akram - Concept, Modeling, UV Unwrap/Texturing, Animation
Josh - Concept, Modeling, UV Unwrap/Texturing
Jiten - Concept, Modeling, UV Unwrap/Texturing, Animation
Lukas - Concept, Modeling
We have chosen what roles that we like to do. I have chosen to bits of everything because I want to a part of it and I like to push myself to the limit. I feel like if my group is counting on me, I will be more motivated.
Josh - Concept, Modeling, UV Unwrap/Texturing
Jiten - Concept, Modeling, UV Unwrap/Texturing, Animation
Lukas - Concept, Modeling
We have chosen what roles that we like to do. I have chosen to bits of everything because I want to a part of it and I like to push myself to the limit. I feel like if my group is counting on me, I will be more motivated.
Research - New technology that is coming out in next 50 years (2066)
I have created a moodboard on the new technology that will be coming out in the future.
- Wireless Energy Transfer - Transferring large data of information wirelessly.
- VR and AR
- Artificial Intelligence
- Robot with AI
- 3D printing
- Driverless cars
- Wearable electronics - like contact lens
- Smart houses
- Biofuels and renewable energy
- Drone delivery service like Amazon
Research - What could happen due to global warming?
what could happen due to global warming
What can I do?
- Water expands when it's heated and oceans absorb more heat than land, so sea levels would rise.
- Sea levels would also rise due to the melting of the glaciers and sea ice.
- Cities on coasts would flood.
- Places that usually get lots of rain and snowfall might get hotter and drier.
- Lakes and rivers could dry up.
- There would be more droughts making hard to grow crops.
- Less water would be available for drinking, showers and swimming pools.
- Some plants and animals might become extinct because of the heat.
- Hurricanes, tornadoes and other storms which are caused by changes in heat and water evaporation may get more common.
What can I do?
- Re-cycle glass bottles, jars, newspapers and magazines and tin cans. Save them and take them to local re-cycling centers.
- Re-use plastic shopping bags and envelopes, don't get new ones
- Persuade you mum or dad (or whoever does the gardening) to have a compost heap.
- Put a brick in a plastic bag into your toilet cistern, then the toilet will use less water each time you flush. Don't worry that's plenty of water to get rid of...
- Use paper on both sides.
- Try and buy products that don't use much packaging.
- Give unwanted gifts and clothes to a charity shop.
- Only fill the kettle up with the amount of water you need to boil that time.
- Don't leave the TV or video on standby.
- If you get lift to school in a car, take your mates along for the ride.
- Ask whoever does your washing to use the machine at 40 degrees, this helps conserve power.
- Switch lights off when you're not in the room
- Get a clockwork mobile phone recharger
- Cycle to places!
- Have showers instead of baths.
Types of renewable energy
Wave power
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Wind power
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Water power (hydro electricity)
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London's air quality
Here's few facts about London's air pollution. London's Pigeon Air Patrol, a flock of "superbirds" measuring nitrogen dioxide in a city with some of the highest levels of air pollution in the world. Teams of 10 trained pigeons is taking to the skies strapped with 25-gram sensors to measure the harmful emissions not always visible to the naked eye- anding tweeting their results.
Almost 9,500 people in the English capital die prematurely each year due to long-term exposure to polluted air, according to a report last year by King's College London. Reference: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/16/europe/pigeon-air-patrol-pollution-london/index.html |
Concepts/Moodboard
2016 - How it looks now!
This is a concept of how London might look like in 2066 due to pollutions. I think it looks bit too extreme. But I think when we are modeling we can take some inspirations from this.
Moodboard/Modeling trees
Animation test
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Here I have experimented with how we might have our buildings/tree pop up.
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I have created a looped animation of the person on the bike for our animation. This is one of the vital piece to our project. Due to the tight deadline I can not spend too long on this as we got lot to do.
Before import
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After import
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We had a serious problem with the animation of the bike. There was glitch when you import the animation in the environment. The bike animation doesn’t work, after import. To find solution I have shared the files to my group members via Dropbox. They all had a go at fixing it but no solution was brought forward. I have spent over two extensive days experimenting and trying to come up with a solution. As soon as I emailed Sanjay, I came up with a solution. I had to export each building’s/props individually and import them back in, which was a lengthy process. If I did not find a solution, we would have had to change our idea. And that would have been a disaster because that would postpone rendering and there would be nothing to show to the client/Mike. I was praised by the group.
Modeling assest
I have modeled a oil pump for the dystopian environment.
Since Covi is a UK based charity I have decided to focus on the landmarks of UK. Here are a few of my models above.
World for start of animation
Our team had the idea of the world spinning at the start of the animation. So I experimented with google map to create it. Everyone seems to like it.
Creating water
Animation of Building
I did all the animation for the dystopian environment where the buildings are popping up. Which was a long process, I had to select each building/props and animate them individually which took long time to do. Animating one building/prop took about 5 minutes to do and we had over 50 buildings and over 30 props. I did the animation because I knew how to do it and I had the animation skills. To create this animation I made the building into a nCloth then GEOcache and reversing the animation. So it pops up instead of going down as a cloth. This was one of the hardest thing in this project. and also getting the timing correct, was very important.
Here's our final animation for now, Covi has extended our deadline for extra two week just to tweak a few things. To add sound to our final work we have collaborated with a sound student, who will add sound as soon as we finish our work in two weeks. And we also got our client (Covi) to provide audio voice over to match the animation.
For rendering I shared the final files to my team mate to get it rendered. Since it was bank holiday Monday we couldn’t use the Ravensbourne computers, we had to use our own computers. I did about 1,000 Frames and my team mate did about 600 frames. We all couldn’t render because when rendering it makes your computer unusable.
It’s been a challenging experiences collaborating with others. Everyone had different ideas on what they wanted to create and not thinking about what might the client want. I this projects I have learnt a lot, like choosing someone who you can rely on and choosing someone who has the skill you need. In this project you needed modeling, animation and editing skills. Which I had whereas not all the group members did not have.
The problem I had with the group is that they all wanted to make something big, like big environments etc. Whereas me I just wanted to create something small and meaningful. If I was working on this project alone, I would focus on either global warming or just the cyclists. Overall the group did great, it feel like we have accomplished something. The client was pleased the work we have created.
For rendering I shared the final files to my team mate to get it rendered. Since it was bank holiday Monday we couldn’t use the Ravensbourne computers, we had to use our own computers. I did about 1,000 Frames and my team mate did about 600 frames. We all couldn’t render because when rendering it makes your computer unusable.
It’s been a challenging experiences collaborating with others. Everyone had different ideas on what they wanted to create and not thinking about what might the client want. I this projects I have learnt a lot, like choosing someone who you can rely on and choosing someone who has the skill you need. In this project you needed modeling, animation and editing skills. Which I had whereas not all the group members did not have.
The problem I had with the group is that they all wanted to make something big, like big environments etc. Whereas me I just wanted to create something small and meaningful. If I was working on this project alone, I would focus on either global warming or just the cyclists. Overall the group did great, it feel like we have accomplished something. The client was pleased the work we have created.