Final Post

Well this is it, the last post on the blog to my final piece of work for university
I finally got around to fixing the quality so i have uploaded it to youtube now
With all that’s said and done  it's been a long journey to get this far, at certain points using this new technique proved to be a pain so i thought i would never use it again once this was over, but it gets good results so i may reconsider that
So what next? Well obviously i go look for a job now, but what about me with this 2D/3D style? Will i used it again? Make a sequel with a different mythological creature? Who knows? only time will tell...

Post before final post

Aw man, I should have updated this sooner
But yeah, at this point my Final Major Project video and its other entire asset has now been finished. Which mean this blog will be coming to a close; I’ll use my other blog but not this particular one.
 I'll include my final video in the final post, I can’t do it now because I haven’t uploaded it and I have my viva for presenting it in less than an hour, plus after I want to relaxed a bit.

I also realised I never uploaded my concept sketches to this blog, so I’ll post them below now.
Looking at them now reminds me of all I went through to get this far, plus it makes me wonder what it would be like if I had gone with a different design.

Animation Finished

Well i have finally finished all the animation, however this unfortunately doesn't mean the video is finished, i saved creating the backgrounds for later and now is later so I'm working on those next.
I'm also working on rendering, which i have never done before instead i have gotten to this point through playblasting, the rendering is bringing up hundreds of new problems as well which i have to find my way through so that's another bridge to cross.
However i am glad the animation is finally done, it kinda felt like it would never get finished and the project was starting to feel like a trainwreck, but the pieces seem to be coming together.

Oh! i haven't updated this yet so I'll mention it now, i had some of the animation finished which i presented in my viva, and submitted it to youtube to show my progress, like i said the background aren't finished, heck the church is still a giant wedge-shaped cube. Also not all of the clips are there since this was submitted before i broke up for Easter, it was also submitted to keep me on track. At any rate, here's the video:

Animation Test and Church Model

First new post in a while, i set my FMP aside for a while to finish my dissertation, after it was done it was a matter of getting back into things. anouther reason for the lack of posts is that i wasn't confident in submitting anything since it was unfinished

Over the christmas hoildays i also worked on designing the church the gargoyle is pearched on, its loosly based on the church near where i live in prestbury, i have also been told about this rendering tool known as 'toon shader' which lets you render a image in a cartoony style (thicks lines, more basic colouring) which helps to better blend in with the cartoony charather as well as a stlye i feel more comtable with. unfortunatly i am currently having problems with it since the lines keep positioning themselves in front of the camera when it is rendered, hopefully i'll be able to fix that problem soon so i can progress

Model

The final video is to be produced in the 3D program 'Autodesk Maya'. I originally intended to do my video entirely in 3D, however, seeing as my character modelling and rigging skills are poor and my 2D character animation is better. So I have decided to a 'puppet' technique similar to made the character similar to the TV show 'South Park' which is also made in Maya, the character is made of different planes with textures applied to them. Pictured below is the different pieces.

The reason it is in pieces like this is so that each individual part can be moved. To animate it each point will have its centre pivot point moved to where the pieces is expected to move and will be rotated on that point, for example, the head's pivot point will be moved to where the neck would be. The finished model is below.

The mouse will also be made this way. Although the characters in the video are 2D, the backgrounds will still be modelled in 3D which includes things such as the church/cathedral and the forest. I realised this is a style similar to 'Paper Mario', however, something i want to avoid that is in 'Paper Mario' is when the characters rotate and look as thin as paper which is similar to 'PaRappa the Rapper', i want my video to be more similar to 'Who Framed Rodger Rabbit' where a cartoon character is in a realistic world rather than a paper man in a realistic world.

Storyboards

I have worked on storyboarding the plot, finished results are attached to this post above.



I also produced a Leica Reel of the storyboard, it was going to be the scans originally however i changed it to a computer animation since i was having difficulty bringing what i wanted to bring across, I took out the scenes about the 'evil' to reduce it for the timing and changed a gargoyle's post to something mentioned at the end, the cha rather is intentionally crudely designed since this is not his final design, also the music used it place holder music until i find better royalty-free music.
Disclaimer, the first minute and about half a minute on the end is just for the fans to tell them I'm buzy working on this project.

'Plot'

Due to being a documentary, there is no heavy 'plot' to the video since I learn that mixing a plot into a documentary really doesn't work, it is more based around showing 'a day in a life of a gargoyle'. Although it focuses on one single gargoyle its actual are based on the of the species as a whole just like in real documentaries.

The video shows that gargoyles are nocturnal creatures, during the day they sleep in their petrified statue forms upon old buildings such as churches and cathedrals. After sunset the gargoyle will awaken and de-petrify itself, after some exercises due to being stiff for so long, it’ll fly into the forest and obey its 3 instincts:
1st instinct; Hunting, gargoyles feed on small mammals such as mice, they sit on branches scanning for them scurrying on the ground, it will then take off, swoop down, grab it and then land on another branch to feed on its catch.
2nd instinct; Protecting humans, there is a creature known as 'Evil' (physically it resembles a purple mist ball that gets larger and larger) that is dangerous to human societies, it comes from another world (hell) and it travels to our world, gathering in forests (hence why the gargoyles come to the forest) to find and corrupt humans. A gargoyle’s job is to scare away the 'Evil' so that it will shrivel up and return to where it came from in order to protect humans.

3rd instinct; Avoid being seen by humans; although gargoyle protect humans, they must be silent protectors, for a human to see such a creature would really unbalance things, if a human sees a glimpse or hears one, then a gargoyle must hide until they give up searching.

The video ends with showing as the sun begins to rise, the gargoyle return to where it originally was resting to turn back to stone and sleep.

And those are the events I intend to show in my video. Some of it was longer but for timing purposes I had to cut a lot of it out. I still hasn’t timed all of this but I’ll work on that and see if I can fit it all in. I hope I can anyway, the last time i had a project and had to cut a lot out for timing purposes it really ruined the whole thing.