Reflection Semester B

Some of the practices that are forefront on the industry and applied in my projects were Arnold Solid Angle, Dynamesh, Zremesh, Storyboarding, Mari.

Arnold is a render engine developed by Marcos Fajardo and Sony Pictures, he decide to create his own software to render 3d images for feature films and visual effects. One of the great attributes that Arnold has is the ray tracing to illuminate a scene, this technology allow to 3d software environment behaviour as in real life. In the past when a scene was illuminated only an object radiates light, with ray tracing every object on the scene is able to reflect and produce light as real objects. In this semester project I try to apply Arnold to my development, due to last semester was asked to experiment with render software to improve my personal pieces. As result my project has finished looking, with couple of lights I have got a professional result and the render time was pretty faster than previous exercise rendered in “MentalRay” that is the engine for default in Maya.

Dynamesh is a tool in Zbrush, that permit add new pieces to sculpture that is being done. It is a simple process however, the benefits to work flow is huge since Zbrush is able to work with millions of polygons whiteout crashing nevertheless when the model need to attach one or more pieces was the moment when Zbrush had limitations. With Dynamesh the sculpture process is similar to traditional sculpture way with clay, due to this the artist can focus in creative idea rather than technical issues. In my project a use Dynamesh to model the base mesh to my main character in a faster way, and help me to achieve more detailed results.

Zremesh is other tool in Zbrush that help to do an automatic retopology faster and accurate. In last semester I was experimenting with topology that is the process to create a mesh to be animated, this process could be very slow and time consuming. With Zremesh and its settings the retopology is done in seconds, in my last work the retopology took me 3 days in comparison is an advantage to use this new practice making the process more efficient to the artist.

Storyboard is a method to organize every shot in an audio-visual piece, and is very used worldwide to check if the story and the image is working for a public. The idea is simple use very fast sketches with important information such as camera plane, dialogue and sound in order to every member of team could understand what they have to do in every shot.

Texturing is the method used to put colour and materials to 3d models, in past usually this process was done in software like “Photoshop” where the artist used a plane from model to paint it. Regularly, this texture maps were not completely accurate and they have cuts that the artist intelligently hide in parts that were not important. However, nowadays due to “Mari” artists can paint over the 3d model without concern for anything since the algorism that use Mari do not permit any incorrect finish. For my project I use Mari to texturing my main character resulting in better finishing and more smooth details.

Some artists whom inspirited my work were Headless studio, Jonathan Russ, Heidi Smith, Tsutomu Nihei.

Headless Studio is a Spanish animations studio that make productions for television. This studio is particularly interesting in its character designs, they stand up from others for its special aesthetic, the colour palette is varied, bright and each character is unique making Headless studio always on vanguard. It inspire to develop the Thief character for my final project making the aesthetic more cartoon, stylized and different from my past projects.

Jonathan Russ was a student from Hertfordshire University of 3D animation for its final project he made a short animation where the characters interact in a big city. To solve the time versus effort issues in the project he developed a set of model pieces that join together created the environment. For my final major project we have the same issue and we are going to use a similar technique than him to create different pieces of environment with a pattern of model pieces.

Heidi Smith was the design character for Paranorman film, we used as inspiration the Norman character for our project, taking as reference the colour palette and the corporal expressions resulting in “Kid” main character.

Tsutomu Nihei is the writer and creator of Blame comic, is a Japanese comic based in an underground world where the main character has to cross different world levels to get a girl to the top level. I inspire my project in this underground world to give life to my environment.

Finally, some artefacts or pieces of work that have influenced my work and are in the forefront in the industry are Backwater Gospel, Rotar Park, ODD and Between Bears.

Backwater Gospel is a short film form the Animation Workshop; this piece inspired me for its use of shaders that gives the illusion of comic despite of being developed in 3D. Rotar Park is a South Korean series created by Tuba, the history is very crazy and fantastic we used as creative inspiration to start brainstorming of ideas because the animation worlds is limitless. ODD is a teaser of a short animation, it has a simple aesthetic with a strong idea, it inspired us in the creation of a simple and entertainment history.

In this semester I improve the efficiency of my process through applying new practices as Dynamesh, Zremesh, texturing in Mari and finally using Arnold; improving in that way the relation time versus effort. Also I improve my planning process using storyboarding which helped me as a guide in production development. My personal goal was improve my character design proposals, I achieved looking more reference and inspirations from different artist to enrich my personal idea.