Skeleton and skin of an alien

So this is the part of the process that was the most complicated for me in an over all view. From the beginning having to think where the joints go sounds easy as we can reflect the joints that we have, but it is pretty easy to over look at some other movements that normally I wouldn't even consider as important (for arm roll and the clavicles for example).
At some point here I got left behind from the rest of the class as I understood something completely different in one lecture. Luckily I was able to catch up thanks to the video guides we had made.

After making the skeleton, we had to constrain them one another, think of a hierarchy in which the react in relation to the whole structure and identify key joints for certain movements. All this at the same time as making sure that everything was properly named and organized as any mistake at this point would be pretty dramatic and complicated to come back later on to fix it. After the joints where orient and parent constrained, we then moved to create some controllers or handles to avoid having to move the skeleton itself. Master control, jaw and a large number of NURBs circles where created and placed on position, making sure the pivot points were set on the appropriate joint.

The whole process itself was pretty intimidating, specially for the amount of detail that you have to put on. Also knowing that the next step was skin weight painting and that if anything was wrong with the rig, the only way to come back and fix it is to delete all work done in the weight skin process; now that put a lot of pressure to make everything right on the first go.

So after soft binding the skin to the rig, the big job of weight paint the skin come into place. This is basically to determine  how much influence each joint has over each vertex of the character. So it is a case of try and test; paint a bit, bend, see how react and modify according to the elasticity of the skin in relation of the deformation desire when animating. Long story short, it is hard work, and from this depends a lot of the final look of the character. This is why, after doing a big work on the weight skin painting it's really painful to find a problem with the rig that will cause you to unbind the skin, fix the skeleton, then bind it again and repeat the long process.

Albus Model

Finally starting with the modelling. I finished the final art work of him that helped me out to use it as a reference for the modelling stage. The reason why is on a blueprint form is because it is intended to be around the environment as a blueprint of his creation.

Making the model was a lot of fun. I think this is one of the part that I enjoyed the most, as is just eh idea of making something in the most poly-efficient and and that will eventually work with the rigging. 

Albus is compose of many many small parts, as any robot I assume. So I didn't combined them as he needed a more mechanical way of move and even thought we wanted a cartoon style, him bending like an organic character would look just wrong. 

This is the final model and a break down of its pieces. I did my best to keep him low poly as possible. but being a main character to the animation I probably could have used a bit more without compromising the rest of the scene. 

The concept of Albus

The character that I was in charge of modelling was the main robot. My initial idea was to make a "female" robot. Something that is not massively done, feminine, and agile.

By decision of the majority of the group we decided to stick to the "male" version of it, and we had ideas of different sizes and possible functions to it. Part of what we plan from this point was to just give it one arm; some point of focus that would cause it to be shut down and that the purpose of its function or existence would be part of the plot. For all we know we could have a massive cannon arm or shifting weapons that could lead to a very playable and dynamic game. 

                   

Also, being a steam robot that would ignite with a wind-up key give the main girl the connection, dependence and importance to another lever: he depends on her.

From this point we decided we wanted something way bigger than her, friendly looking and we like the idea of it having the a big tank on his back. From that point we came up with the final design of him.

This became his final concept. Here's and early stage of what could have been the first moment of interaction with the girl. Also we came out with names for both characters; the girl would be Tabitha and he would be A.L.B.U.S. (Automatic Lifting Bipedal Unit Solution)    

Moodboard of ideas

With some initial concepts that went from spies, mermaids, chinese zodiac and a few others, we decided to go for a steam punk theme but also with a stylised concept for the art.
Our main inspiration I would say, was the game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It has an iconic style for the saga, really heart-warming graphics and not mention the epic gameplay.
These is the moodboard that we came up with. It's a mixture of Machinarium, FF: four heroes of light, Lost winds and other few ones.

From there we looked at several other games in the same range. Knowing that we planned to add a robot character and a Victorian girl . Something characteristic of Steampunk is that is trying to imitate the functionality of a modern life without having the developed electricity to the actual stage and having coal and steam machines as their mayor source of energy. This can only mean one thing: loads of details.

Citadel

With the Leeds Film Festival taking place I couldn't resist to go and see as many films as possible, but unfortunately, because of work and other reasons the amount of screenings that I could actually manage to see was extremely limited.
Despite that, Citadel was a film that a friend was really excited to see, and being on of the highlights of a 12-hour marathon of horror films I grew a lot of interest on it.
Before the screening, there was a brief introduction where a man explain a bit of the directors reasoning of making this film and how it was inspired by being victim of a vandalic act when he was young causing in him a severe case of agoraphobia.
The man also mention that among the several horror films he has seen before this was probably one of the best ones; now talking about growing expectation? Well he did a good job on that.

Directed by Ciarán Foy, the film started with the right foot: Tommy and his pregnant wife are about to move out from an undesirable building to move to a new council house but on the process she gets brutally attack by a gang right in front of him. The baby is born, but a few months pass and his wife still in a coma in a hospital. At this point his is suffering from a terrible agoraphobia that follows him in a tormenting way. When his daughter gets taken away from him, he has to face a big task to try to get her back.

Up until this point I found really impressive how they manage to transform and transmit the anxiety and sense of fear that agoraphobia was tormenting the character and not to mention that the actor was doing a fantastic work. I also like the fact that they didn't go for fancy shots or lenses for many of the inner scenes, instead they keep a realistic and simple screen play.
Roughly around half of the film is when all the suspense and horror vanished on me as the the agoraphobic fear represented with this gang suddenly seems transformed into a zombie film.
Weird whining sounds, twitching slow moves and poor makeup really put me down to what could have been a good psychological thriller.
From my point of view, the film went too far and too solid on the representation of this phobia which is a shame for such a good start and performance. I keep blaming the guy who builded up my expectations of the film from the beginning but still Neither me or my friend thought was worth to recommend.

http://www.leedsfilm.com/films/citadel/

Psychoanalysis review - Un Chien Andalou

Surrealism, described by some as a work with elements of surprise, described by others as poetry, embodies in the film industry as Un Chien Andalou, a short silent film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and the artist Salvador Dali released in 1929.

Despite the fact that the film could be described as ‘uncanny’ or beyond the ordinary, it begins with the phrase “Once upon a time” ,a phrase that would automatically bring up the idea of it being a fairy tale, and as such, that the narrative will eventually lead to a “and they lived happy ever after”.

The film starts with a man sharpening the blade of a razor and tests it on his own thumb. With a cigarette in his mouth the steps out on a balcony and stares at the moon. Just as a cloud passes in front of the moon a face of a woman appears looking staring at the audience. Followed scene: a close up of the woman’s eye being cut open by the razor blade.

This instant aggression summarises most of the transition of the film in many ways. From the rest of it it’s easy to recognise that the main characters are one man and one woman, but even saying that it becomes difficult and nearly impossible to define these characters and the tracking of their motivation and their relationship is ambiguous as they’re not giving; therefore the idea of a conventional plot or narrative is destroyed. Not only it’s difficult to follow chronologically but it also relies on the audience’s ability to grasp on details and symbolisms.

The interpretation of the film it’s based around the main unquestionable concepts within it; obsession, desire, insanity and sexual tension are some of which the audience recognises a certain level of “familiarity” in relation to inner fetishes and therefore multiples interpretations can take place regarding the director’s original intention. This creation of an internal conflict between the inner self and the rationality mixed with the symbolic value within society is what can either create a personal interpretation of the film while on the other hand refuting to create one can be caused for a notion of self-denial. Taking it from a Freudian point of view, the whole film is represented from the male point of view or perspective, and there are several aspects that could be connoted as having phallic origins that would explain the general dark feeling of the film.

Also it’s worth mentioning that the first few scenes induce the idea of anticipation of murder and fear, and because it’s not under the category of “horror” film but under surreal can cause disturbance in a general audience, specially knowing that modern society understands rationally the primary process such as a fetish yet it remains as a taboo of something that needs to keep repressed and retained. Probably now a days a film like this would not cause much commotion, but part of its complexity relies on the fact that it was thrown at an audience more than 80 years ago, transforming it into an avant-garde masterpiece. 

enjoy

SWOT

So having a bit of a talk about framekors for business analysis the other day, we came across with the SWOT analysis which stands for Strengths Weakness Opportunities Threats.
It is basically a chart designed to measure ideas, business units or propositions, but we where assigned to target ourselves and work based on our abilities in relationship with the industry.
At the end this is what I came up with:

When I was thinking about what to fill it with it really makes you understand some of your internal aspects that,  on a professional environment, would make a difference between success and failure.
In my case, half of my problems refer to personal issues facing towards insecurities about my work; the other half is related to my lack of communication skills.
Deep down my lack of social interaction and approachability might be related again to personal insecurities, but rather than making a big internal change that might take forever, I decided to put on a professional mask that would allow me to interact in a level that is acceptable for the industry.
To help me out with that I started reading this book I got from the library:

Improve your communication skills by Alan Barker

I'll make a post later on about some of my ideas after I finish it. So far it seems very practical and intuitive, so I suppose the real challenge will be to put it down to practice. 

If anyone has notice any other strengths/weakness/ opportunities/ threats please let me know ;)  

I want it all...

As the second year begins more "pressure" and thoughts about what will come for the future start popping in many heads.

When we were asked what skills beyond this course we would like to develop or learn loads of things get to my mind: 

• 2d Concept art: Get more techniques and opportunities to try a more artistic conceptualisation and speed painting. Colour theory, anatomy and other softwares that could help me develop more this skill. I still feel the need to change styles and learn to be more flexible in my styles. 

• 3d Modelling: As much as I admire and get more and more attached to Maya, I'd love to learn a more artistic way of modelling. Over the summer I did my best at trying using Zbrush; many tutorials and tips from other artist helped me to get started and understand the basic ideology behind the software, but I still find it a bit difficult to work with. I just installed Mudbox which should have much more compatibility with Maya yet I haven't had the time to get into bigger walkthroughs as I did with Pixologic's software. 

• Rendering or Game engines: I've seen other shows reels of processionals that develop amazing stuff in open sources such as UDK. Unity3D is perfect for me as I know very little about programming, so I wouldn't dare at this stage to get to a software that could be less user friendly, but I'd love to be able to experience a more powerful game engine. I've also heard so much about CryEngine and other AAA game engines that makes me curious to try them. 

• Photorealistic Rendering: As much as I love a cartoonish/ stylised way of animation, I can help to admire amazing cinematics and games that have high quality CG. I know it all depends on the team work, ability and budget of companies, but I'd love to learn to make textures of high standards, bake shadows, creation of normals, etc.

There are many other things I'd love to get my head around like the modelling and animation of hair and cloth, more controlled 3D particles (water, controlled light, etc) and also I'd like to know how to be more social in the media, but now that I'm reading all this is just clear that I feel like I want to do everything and know it all. Understanding this still makes me want to try a bit of all this, probably with the purpose of understanding more of things and at the same time to manage to narrow down the path that I want to follow and therefore train more in a more specific area.

Starting a game cinematic

As for our assignment of creating a cinematic using Unity3D as a base game engine, I ended up forming a group with Sophie  and Ryan. It's pretty exciting to work with them again as I know they're really talented and creative people, which more than intimidating me, I feel like I have to give my best to achieve quality standards and also to manage to produce something worth it for a portfolio. 

The three of us are pretty much wanting to try a bit of everything; feeling confident with strong points and at the same time trying to explore the parts on which we are a bit insecure. So to assign the roles basically ended up being quite beneficial (or at least that's how I see it) as we all get to bring to the table ideas about the same points and we get to choose or mix some of them to create a better one. 

Down side of this: it creates an extra effort for all of us to be doing the same thing as at the end the work gets basically done twice (or three times in this case). At this stage of coming up with ideas it all works out for the best as the more ideas we have, be more we get to explore different possibilities. Could it keep working like this for other stages like modelling, rigging and even animating? Who knows? For the moment being I couldn't help myself to create an excel working plan to try to keep things on track and more important, on time. (this is some of the many remaining of my architectural studies) 

This is something that we're all working on and will keep cha. As none of us is really good with communication I thought it would be easier to have everything in a written form to avoid confusions or misunderstandings.  Therefore we created a Facebook group and shared a folder on our Dropbox account to keep files and information flowing as much as possible. 

At least from my part I'll try to do my best and avoid dragging the group down.... and that would be much easier if it wasn't for this damn cold

Looking forward to show some of the sketches / ideas! 

Creation of an Alien

So getting back into Maya, our exercises now is to model, UV map, rig and animate an alien based on a reference t pose that we all got.
We also got some pictures that gave us an idea of how a good topology should look like for this model (mainly because there's not one definite solution).

I think the hardest part for me is to actually begin. After losing the fear of making mistakes I pretty much modelled the half of the character without too much trouble.
There where a few places where I had to go over and over. I was trying my best to get my head around the junctions like elbows and knees where animating could become a problem if it wasn't done properly.
I suppose this is what scares me the most: Having done a lot of work just to find out that I've done something wrong and having to go back and redo it. More than laziness I believe is something irrational about insecurities. I hope I can get over that in the future, but at on the bright side, I think I'm paying more attention to many details as I go along and learning to spot mistakes in earlier stages. (I have to the take out the positive of EVERYTHING) 

After that I just mirrored the geometry (fix some minor issues with the crotch) and Voilà! we got a decent looking alien. It looks much better on the smooth version, but as long as it works along with the rigging the I'm happy about it.

After that and creating the bit of the inside of the mouth, I then moved to UV map it. Because of the Russian dolls project I feel a bit more familiar with UV mapping and I didn't struggle much other than splitting the head while maintaining the ratio of the eyes (for as bad as that sounds). 
It isn't mandatory to give it a texture in specific, as all that matters is to have a rigged and fully animated character by the end of this exercise, but I might give it a go just for the sake of it.

Back from a long summer...

When I try to think about my summer all that comes to my mind is work, work and more work (but at the restaurant, so it was boring).
Never the less, there where a few highlights on it.
Just at the beginning of it I had the chance to go to the closing gala film of the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival where I watch the European premier of the newest film from Disney Pixar: Brave.
Not going to lie, not only Edinburgh was beautiful and full of life and events, but the film was absolutely fantastic! A master piece in my opinion. Also, having the opportunity of shake hands with Brenda Chapman, Robbie Coltrane and Kelly MacDonald was just added extra token to it.

After my disappointment when I found out that my skydiving session was moved to the 21st of October, I decided to get creative and started a commission challenge with Sophie, Ryan, Sarah and Lija in which it gave me the chance to practice a bit in some aspects that I find myself lazy to doing on my own.
Created this character, made an expression sheet and started a modelling on 3D on Zbrush (this last one didn't go as well as the rest).
Also I made a background concept, and even though I failed at putting colour, the outcome thought me a lot that will be useful for future projects that require any sort of structural background. This one in particular ended up being too technical, but it only reflects my influence from architecture in which every detail is important. I'd love to try something more lose and sketchy for future projects; something that gets a traditional media feeling.

The last highlight of my summer was to join and attend to the first meeting of All Animated, a new network for animation up north. It was a good opportunity to gather around people who do animation on a professional level, to see where my work stands, to hear some news in the industry, make connections and at the end, to grow some balls and show my work to other people.
It was a good starting point and I believe I will continue to attend to them. Hopefully in the future I manage to get more contacts and possibles collaborations with people in the industry, and also an extra place to show up my uni work and get some feedback from a third party.

Game art

Over the years video games have improve and created a more dynamic way to tell stories within the same game. Trailers, intros, cutscenes and other cinematographic processes have been used to generate a deeper connection with the player. 

I still remember when some games will reward you with some pixel-still images back in my SNES days. Soon after pre-rendered scenes took over my attention and even now a days I still find them an impressive part of games even when it finishes and the real graphics come up again. 

My personal favourite for making me scream like a girl with trailers and cutscense will always be Square Enix (if it wasn't obvious). Their work with the in-game graphics is fantastic, but the quality, effort and detail put on cutscenes is just outstanding. As examples (plural as I couldn't make up my mind in just one) I have the opening of Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy Dissidia.

Now this opening is not only beautiful but it also works as a summary of the previous 2 games (Kingdom Hearts and Chains of memories). The way they combined it and made look like a music video without loosing any important parts of the previous stories is remarkable, but at the same time I wouldn't consider it as an introduction for someone who didn't play the previous entries; it was simply a quick compilation that clearly only satisfied fans of the franchise (me). 

When I heard they where making a fighting game using all the main characters and villains from the Final Fantasy franchise I thought Dissidia was going to be just a way to abuse the huge fandom of the characters and sell something badly made. Sadly I wasn't THAT wrong. 

The video above is the intro for the first entry of this new franchise, Dissidia. Again, beautiful pre-render graphics that in my opinion look absolutely fantastic, specially when you think that it will be an entry for a portable console. There was no way the PSP could ever run any graphics like this ones, but my surprise was that the game actually look really pretty. Way too pretty if you ask me and it didn't took long for me to discover the reason. The game was just like the intro; just the bunch characters from all the games you loved fighting together but with just a really forced story behind it. The fighting system was a bit odd and it contained loads of slow motion attacks that where only useful to feast your eyes with the gorgeous characters. 

Sadly I bought the game and loved it at the end. 

As for in built cutscenes I think my personal favourite at the moment is anything related with Journey for PS3. I still think that ThatGameCompany made a great job with the feeling given by the game and it is reflected in every point of the game. I couldn't find a video with my favourite part of the game (sliding though sand with a sunset in the background) but here is the trailer of the game that gives a good idea of the game's concept. This is a concrete proof that realistic graphics or pre-rendered scenes are not needed to achieve a majestic cinematographic product, and even when the whole world around you is a dessert. 

Pandore

On the clouds of the mythic Mount Olympus, a young girl unleashes a dangerous monster from a mysterious box. Is he match for the little devil that set him free? 

A pretty cute and funny animation produced at GOBELINS, l'ecole de l'image in 2009. The closest style I can think of is Zelda wind waker, but never the less, I'm a big fan of this kind of animation. The texturing matches the style in a unique way and the whole cartoony way is really charming.
The monster in specific is the character that I believe had more work on, as his movements are really well done, it has a lot of personality and the design itself is fantastic.

Credits: Created, Directed and Animated by Meryl Franck, Elen Le Tannou, Nicolas Caffarel, Marion Stinghe, Benoit Guillaumot. Sound design by Vincent Hazard. Voice of monster by Das Panzer Benz, Girl Voice by Kaycie Chase. Music by Pascal Franck (Mathilde Alloubert on harpe, Isabelle Hebrard on flutes, Gae Ascal (mastering and remix). Sound Effects by Andre Fevre, Sound engineer Clement Naline.

Experience :D

After getting quite engaged with some social networks where it's possible to publish some of your works, I got a note on my CGHub account.
It was from the company called Gameloft; a leading international publisher and developer of videogames for mobile phones, smart phones and downloadable games for consoles. They saw my profile and asked me to work for them. I was really surprise, as I haven't developed a proper game portfolio, but at the same time I was really happy to see that there's some potential for me in the industry, and not to mention that finally me being bilingual was paying off.
The happiness didn't last much as they where really eager to get me to start work asap, in their main office in Madrid, full time...
Obviously I had to turn it down, as I could't just leave my studies without even finishing the first year (I need to finish at least one degree lol). 
I asked them for a potential summer internship and we still in touch trough emails. At least I'll try to keep the connection in case they still have a space for me in 2 years time.

Even thought after that disappointment, a few weeks after I got contacted, through deviantArt this time, by a group of young blokes all around the world that where planning to start a project from 0. Being a small group of inexperienced people I thought about joining them so I could try a bit of different positions (mainly concept artist, but also can try modelling, texturing, animation, etc.)  and get the chance to get some experience without the pressure of failing for a AAA company.
So far I haven't contributed much, but only because I've been working on the final projects, but during the summer I'll make sure to update as much as I can about the concepts and contributions I make.
This team still requires a lot of work to be done, so even thought I haven't been asked I'll try my best to bring some of the organization that is missing.
At the moment if feels nice to have a weekly meeting with the whole group and see what other people are doing and enhance the communication within the different disciplines.
This project will be supported by the a German government's project once the game is 90% done and ready for some user tests.

The concept of Architecture

Architecture still is a very strong aspect when it comes to ideas and concepts that I've been generating along the year, and even though I never finished that degree, I still cherish the knowledge that I acquired during those 4 years. Specially now, regardless of the aspect of my future focus, I've started to understand the multiple uses of a game engine and endless limitations of concept art.

Is obvious that when it comes to making illustrations to base a scenography of a game, film or animation is always relatively easier to just draw a picture or perspective in which the building goes well with the style and it looks amazing in the background. But it certainly needs a lot of thought once an interactions with the environment is required.
For a reason it is a profession; the level of detail, functionality, design and materials have to harmonise in a whole composition. The aspects that probably a game designer don't have worry are the realistic factor and the costs, but even the physics and materials play an important fact.
The functionality takes a big role specially when a building itself is a game level. Places have to be logically functional, zoned and has to make sense with the exterior.

Maybe it's not very used now a days among actual architectural projects, but old style hand-made plans where certainly a piece of art, that if it was part of any media project could certainly be part of the concept art.

A part that has got me really interestes came when a friend from my old degree asked me to do her some renders to use in her final project. At the moment was kind of a joke as she was half way done it, but it did made me realize the potential that a game engine like Unity3D could have for the presentation of projects. Obviously someone has already thought of that... and I was amazed for the results of some companies and it was nice to know the effort that their putting to replicate a more realistic urban environment and an easy way to work with natural aspects.
Check out the video underneath where the company ENODO uses cryENGINE to create a really nice urban landscape:

Pixel Art

According to Wikipedia:

   Pixel Art is a form of digital art, created though the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobila phone games are mostly pixel art. 

Image filters (such as blurring or alpha-blending) or tools with automatic anti-aliasing are considered not valid tools for pixel art, as suck tools calculate new pixel values automatically, contrasting with the precise manual arrangement of pixel associated with pixel art. 

 Don't know if anyone notice before, but the current logo of my blog is made by pixel art. I'm not very experienced in making it, but I certainly have a big crush on people who know how to work on it. 

Sadly for me, there aren't many people out there that specialise in this form of graphics, and with technology evolving, even in mobile devices, I can see my fandom staying in memories of some of my favourite games like Final Fantasy advance or KH: Chains of memories. 

As a working process I must admit it requires a lot of dedication, as it requires a perfect idea of what you want to do and apply it in detail, pixel level detail. 

Most of this pixel art video games use an isometric view or parallel projection usually working on a 45°/30° ratio meaning that it's not a "true" isometric, but it had to be done like this due to the limitations of raster graphics that 8 and 16 bit games had. Now a days all of this can be corrected by using anti-aliasing. 

A complicated aspect I found when working on this style is that you have to have a extremely clear idea of the size of the final image. Because the work is done on pixels, the chances of stretching the image without getting weird looking or distortions are very low, so it does have a really high level of planing. 

The fact that people are using this style less and less every day doesn't take off the credit of some magnificent recent work some people have done. I hope I can manage to fit a future project where I can work with this technique and demonstrate that even with  an "old fashion" way of working the possibilities are and a good aesthetic of a game/animation can be achieved. 

Limitless Hiroyuki

 

Hiroyuki Takahashi (タカハシヒロユキ) is a Japanese designer that has no limits.
His work has clearly established his style as playful, colourful and over the top. His compositions are masterly composed and every design he makes he works in every detail on the character, for the character and around it, ending up with really dynamic yet simple piece of work where chaos and technology seem to be iconic of his.

The mechanical precision in his vector lines gives to his work the possibility of multiplying its effect and working along with his iconic patterns and his fashion sense the outcome of his work really stands out.
It is definitely a very attracting style, which like in the picture below, I think it could work very well as character design or even as a concept style for a video game. Would love to see more games with more colourful and surreal styles rather than just semi realistic. Make sure to visit his website as he does loads of other stuff and collaborations with other artist.