Evaluation

So, we have now finally finished the project and have put everything together using Premier Pro.

This project has been quite interesting and fun to do, although stressful at the same time! I felt that the overall video turned out quite well, it is clear that it could have been better, but I feel we have done our best. There were some lack of communication within the group, particularly with 1 member who seemed reluctant to take part with ideas and meetings, which meant some parts of the animation didn't flow correctly into the rest of our scenes, but there was not much we could do to solve this problem.

I enjoyed making the toy train move along with the light shining, I felt this was quite enjoyable to watch so should be no problem to entertain children with this advert! I know some parts in my scene such as the chairs and table being FAR too big looked a bit odd as it was far too big compared to the children, I only realised this near the end of finishing the animation so I couldn't do massive changes except shrink them a little, otherwise everything else such as the door and toys would be out of proportion.

If I were to do everything again, I would definately try to improve on my room by adding more animation in and learning new techniques, such as lighting, as well add more objects since it does appear to be quite empty at the moment. I would also correct the mistakes as listed in the final version.

I have never been confident with animating in 3DS Max, however I do feel that I have gained more out of this project seeing as I have learnt how to use the reactor tool (not perfectly, but almost there!), as well as using the Biped (again this could be improved on had I figured out how to fix the envelopes problem).

However, I am quite pleased with the amount of new techniques I've learnt this semester, and hope to continue learning more new skills within 3DS Max.

Final Group Video

The final group video is shown above. Some changes have been made to each of the scenes:

- As we all created our silhouette's differently, some of us were unable to put a question mark material onto the body, so we came to the conclusion that it was best to take the question marks off of Rich's scenes so that it would flow with the rest of the scenes and be consistent throughout instead. Rich also changed the speed of his camera so that it went slightly faster.

- Maria has changed her room so that it didn't start from left to right, but started so that it flowed from my scene into hers. She also changed some of the camera angles.

- Luke added more tables and chairs into his scene because it would look better and took use of the spare space.

- Changes to my scene includes the ball actually falling correctly and bouncing (achieved by simply scaling the ball down a little when it hits the floor). However, after rendering it, I noticed that the ball seems to stay up in the end once the camera moves away, but it's too late to change this. The hoop throwing is a little faster, although it seems to jerk halfway through, but still looks effective nonetheless. I have also changed the camera angles a lot so that you can only see certain silhouettes at a time, so that they don't appear static throughout, and so that you can see their movements better than the last video (you can see once the train hits the blocks, the silhouette playing with the hoops pays attention to the crash by turning his head).

- Music added in.

Premier Pro

After all the members of the group had completed their scenes, it was time for all the scenes to be joined up together with music included. Luke, Rich and myself managed to edit the videos in Premier Pro. Techniques used were cutting parts of videos and fading music to match the scenes appropriately (animation movements in time with the music beats etc).

The music that we decided to use is a song by Franz Ferdinand called 'Take Me Out'. We chose to use this song as the lyrics 'take me out' can relate to taking someone out to somewhere fun, such as bowling within the YMCA.

Final Nursery Scene Video

Above shows the completed Nursery scene video. I have had several problems with some parts of it being too slow (shown in the previous post), but have now corrected them. There are still some parts which don't look quite right, and could have been tweaked a bit more for perfection. However, I realised that I was unable to correct some parts as it would mess up the rest of the animation if I had moved the key frames around. So this was the best that I could do!

First Group Video (Draft) & Presentation Thoughts

The first group video that was prepared for the YMCA presentation is shown above. We did not get to show this video as my scene only finished rendering after the presentation, and some of the files that had been saved on Premier Pro didn't seem to work properly which was a shame. As you can see there are a lot of mistakes and tweaking needs to be done to my scene, as well as other members' of the group.

Mistakes/changes needed to be made:

- Rich's room (4th scene) is the only scene to have silhouette's with question marks on them and others don't. At the time we thought this would be a good idea as it shows that anyone could join the YMCA, it gives the impression that the person 'could be you'. This meant that it wouldn't portray a certain stereotype; backgrounds they're from, gender or dress sense for example, so anyone is welcome to join. We will need to all have question marks on our silhouettes for the final version, or take Rich's off. His camera angles also seem a bit too slow but this will be easy to adjust.

- My room (1st scene), has several errors. The whole camera movement was too slow, some of the angles were not right, as it showed too much of some of the silhouette's just standing there until they were key framed to animate which didn't look good! The ball at the very beginning also doesn't animate well or fully as it just seems to drop on the floor. The silhouette playing with the hoop also does a 'matrix effect' when they start to throw the hoop, it is also far too slow and does a weird movement. All these will be changed in the final version by making the camera move faster, as well as editing the animations of each silhouette.

- My nursery room goes from right to left into Maria's (2nd scene), however, Maria's room then starts from left to right which doesn't flow at all. The camera speed is also a bit too fast, and the reactor tool for her bowling pins falling over doesn't seem to work, they seem to fall before the bowling ball even hits the pins. We have also noticed one of the silhouette's hand goes through the guitar when it is playing, so these mistakes will need to be changed.

- Luke's room (3rd scene) is missing some tables and chairs. However apart from that minor issue, everything seems to be flowing fine.

- There is no music!! This will be added in the final.

Presentation Thoughts:

I have to say I feel that our presentation for this went terribly. We had it all planned out what was going to be said, but this didn't work out as we had major issues with some of the programs not working/loading properly, some scenes didn't render out in time and some of the work that was meant to have been shown for the presentation didn't seem to save onto the memory stick, so we all felt let down with ourselves and was completely thrown off with what we were going to say.

Testing Movement

This is one of the silhouettes created and has been put into the final scene, however I thought I would take this video to show it's movement as it is not that clear/visible in the final product. The silhouette is 'controlling' the toy train, and watching it move at the same time. If you look closely, you will be able to see the arms and head move.

My Silhouette & Biped

Here is a silhouette I have created of a child, seeing as the models Rich and Luke made were not able to be scaled down to size to portray a child's height.

This silhouette was created by using several boxes (for the body, arms, legs, hands and feet) and then modified by extruding polygons with the 'soft selection' tool. A 'turbosmooth' modifier was then applied to it for a more rounded finish. The head that I created from last semester's module was also added on, as I felt it had quite a child-like appearance. The legs, arms, head etc. were then attached to the body so that it was one object. Finally a black coloured material was applied as the default black colour wasn't dark enough, and with using the material colour instead, it made the silhouette actually look flat, which was what we wanted to achieve in the first place.

After modelling the silhouette, I then went on to learn how to use the Biped tool which I found extremely useful.

First of all, I had to select the Biped tool and drag out a Biped in the Front view to the correct size of my silhouette. I then had to adjust parts of the silhouette and arrange the positioning of the arms, legs, hands and feet to match the Biped.

Once this was done, I then had to add a 'skin' modifier to the body, and then select all the biped parts which meant that the biped was now connected to the body.

Now when I move the hand of the biped, the silhouette will move too - BUT, I have had major issues with the legs, and a bit with the arms, as I could not edit the 'envelopes' properly. For example, whenever I move the arms, some of the ear/head moved along with it, this was because the envelope was VERY big unlike how it should be, and no matter how much I tried to edit it, it just wouldn't work.

Reactor Testing

I have now learnt how to use the 'reactor' tool (after many frustrating hours!) following a tutorial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbVIu61fQcA, (link found through Abby's blog). The reactor tool basically allows you to have objects fall randomly when hit by another object. So I thought this would be extremely useful for my scene, instead of animating each block on its own which would be very time consuming.

I ran into many problems and difficulties whilst trying to animate the train to bash into the building blocks. Problems that occured were:

- I had to link all the parts on the train and the building blocks (letters linked to block) together instead of having them grouped because reactor didn't work otherwise.

- For some reason, even though the blocks aren't touching, they seem to still be falling through each other, and the 'L' block even falls through the floor. I have checked the properties properly for the floor and the blocks making sure they have the correct boxes ticked etc, yet they still seem to be doing this. As I can't seem to fix this I have left it like that for the final animation, (some people who viewed the clip didn't even notice the blocks falling through the floor so that's a good sign at least!). To make it less obvious however, I plan to 'disguise' the error by making the camera angle view it in a way where it is not as visible.

- At one stage, the train wasn't even visible when previewing the animation and the blocks still fell (I then realised it was because I hadn't added all the relevant parts of the train into the 'RB Collection Properties') so that fixed that problem.

Below is a video of the reactor tool being tested out.

(Note: I mentioned previously how I was planning to animate the wheels on the train moving/rotating, however I have now decided not to animate the wheels as I figured this wouldn't be noticeable at all, unless the camera view was zoomed in really close, but this will not be the case).

First Animation Test

Here I have animated (roughly) the train moving along with lighting being shon out of the front of the train. The movement of the train was done by using path constraints and the line tool (creating a curvy line to where I want it to follow and end up). The light was achieved by adding in a 'target spot' light into where the yellow part is, and then targetted the light to shine on the floor by rotating it till it looked right. I had also added in 2 omni lights in the room to enable the room to have a better atmosphere, and so that the light from the train can be seen. The opacity on the yellow part of the train had also been altered so that it appeared slightly see-through and glass/plastic like.

Once this was done I had grouped everything together (the shapes to make the train) including the target light, so that when the train moved, the light went with it.

Please excuse the dodgyness of the train moving (it looks like it's sliding at one point!) but this was just for testing. When it comes to the final thing, I hope to animate the wheels rotating as well as having the train moving in the right angle, and then knocking the building blocks over with the reactor tool.

New Models

I have been creating more objects as I have found my room seems to be too bare and empty, but I figured this was also because the objects made are for children and so they are tiny compared to the other rooms where they include huge objects! However I feel that once the models of the children have been created and put into the scene with animation, the room will come to life!

New models made include:

-Table

This was basically done using boxes and chamferboxes. To get the triangular shaped part on the table, this was simply a box which were altered by dragging the vertices at the top of the box 'inwards'.

-Books
I have also learnt a new skill, using the 'Multi/Sub-Object' tool found in the Material Editor. This basically allows you to apply more than 1 material or colour to an object. For example, I have used this for the books on the shelf, and has proved very useful. It's a very simple tool to learn, but very handy at the same time!

The books were simply 2 boxes with a 'boolean' tool used; this enabled me to create a look of pages within the book. Then the appropriate images were applied in the Material Editor.

-Plastic Chair
This was made out of one box and then modified by extruding certain polygons to get the legs and the back of the chair etc. The bevel, chamfer, inset and bridge tools were also used when creating the chair. I did find the bridge tool to be quite useful as it allows you to join up polygons together easily (this was used to join the back of the chair together).
The tutorial for this model can be found here: http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Modeling-a-plastic-chair/27080.

-Lego Bricks

Made out of a box, basically used extrude tool to drag out the 'circle' parts with 2 modifiers applied (shell and meshsmooth) to complete the finishing touches.

Characters - Silhouettes

Richard has managed to make the body for the silhouette and has also included my head that I modelled from the first half of the module. However, there has been a few problems with this body when trying to animate for some reason; some parts didn't work properly as they didn't move the way people wanted (Maria and Luke), so Rich and Luke had to make a new one which allowed the biped to fit. Luke also had trouble with having the biped being shown when rendered even though it fitted, but this problem has now been solved.

I have also tried to use the person that has been made by Luke for my scene. However as my scene will have children, I had to scale the person so that it was smaller, but yet again, there was another problem! The biped could not be scaled with the model, so I will be creating my own person instead.

Below are images of both Rich's and Luke's models:

Room Appearance - so far...

The modelled room so far:

I had been experimenting on the wall colour/wallpaper theme so that it will be appropriate and appealing to babies/toddlers. In the end I decided a rainbow coloured wallpaper with bubbles could be seen as friendly and playful. The wallpaper was made myself using Photoshop. I may also add some fish images in there also just to add to the 'fun factor'!

More objects

-Toy Train
As you can see from the image, the toy train was made all from boxes, cylinders and spheres. Most of the objects were given a 'meshsmooth' modifier added to it so that they had a more rounder appearance. I am planning to animate this toy train moving across the room when the Intro scene transitions into my nursery room. Then the camera will gradually move around the room zooming closer to the kids playing with toys etc.
The toy train will also have a light flashing out from the front to add to the atmosphere.

-Hoop Game
This was very simple to make, just 3 simple shapes (chamferbox, capsule, sphere and a torus). Then the text tool was used and extruded to be placed onto the chamferboxes.

Modelled Objects

Below demonstrates how I made each model, some were complex whereas others were very simple to make.

-Pin

Very simple, just a cylinder shape with the middle part pulled in to create the shape for the ends. The soft selection tool was used to create a smoother finish. The same process was followed for the actual pin bit. This could have been better as you can see the edges aren't very curved, this was because I had forgotten to set the sides to a higher amount, however this isn't too much of a problem since it won't be seen close up in the animation.

-Pinboard & Letter
Just 2 boxes squashed so that it was quite flat, one on top of the other. Then a suitable material was found on the internet and applied onto the middle box to create the correct texture. Even though this was very simple, I felt this looked very effective. The paper was simply a box with a material applied on top. (The material was a picture of a lined paper, which was then edited in Photoshop with the text included on).

The pinboard was created as I thought it would be good to show certain notices of events etc that took place within the Nursery or the organisation itself as a whole.

-Building Blocks

Again just boxes with the text tool and extrude modifier used.

-Piggy Bank

This was one of the more time consuming models to make. It was created from following a tutorial found online - http://www.oktutorials.com/3d-studio-max-tutorials/modeling/smooth-piggy-bank.

To start off, a box was used with certain parameters chosen, and then converted into an editable poly with 4 of the front polygons being selected. This part was purely to create the pig's head, and was achieved by beveling those selections several times, adjusting the 'outline amount' each time. The same was also done to the back of the box. Once this was done, I had to go into vertex mode and resize the shape to gain a smoother round appearance for the body by selecting the correct vertices on the diagonals.

For the legs, certain polygons were selected and the 'inset' button was used and then extruded. The bottom of the vertices (legs) were then and resized. The ears was also the same process as this except the bevel tool was also used.

Finally, before I used the meshsmooth modifier to make everything a lot smoother and round, the bottom of the legs (edges) were edited using the 'chamfer' button, this would make them go 'inwards'.

The hole for inserting money was created using the boolean method with a box.

The outcome of this model I think looks great and will be suitable to use in my scene, reasons are as described in my previous post.

Nursery Mood Board

I have gathered around some pictures which I think represents a Nursery room well. This will give me ideas on how I should plan where everything will be, such as where furniture can go, as well as what atmosphere should be created with the use of different lighting effects and bright, fun colours that are suitable for children etc.

From this mood board I have come up with many ideas for models/objects which can be placed in the room.

Updated Storyboard - It REALLY IS the FINAL one now!!

Here is the FINAL (It really is) storyboard!!

YMCA Update

After discussing what each of us had to do, we started to get to work on modelling. Following the final storyboard shown previously, we decided it was best to change a few parts of it as some parts were just too time consuming and not do-able. These new changes will be shown later on.

For the moment, I have begun modelling some objects for my nursery room. All simple objects (toys) such as building blocks, trains and a piggy bank (this piggy bank will be used as a donation 'drop off' box).

My Aims:

- I aim to learn new skills in 3DS Max, which includes using the 'reactor tool'. This will be for the building blocks for when the baby knocks them over. The letters YMCA have been coloured black with white letters so that they can be distinguished easier.

- Learn how to use the Biped

- Improve on my animating skills overall

- Develop modelling skills.

Face - Finished..

Well, I gave up on the mapping as that would have taken forever, and it wasn't going right anyway... So here's the finished thing!

I'm very pleased with how it turned out as it looks quite like me, especially from the sides - not too sure on the front view though!
I really did enjoy this module very much even though it caused a lot of stress! It's a shame I didn't get round to completing it fully with the map on my face as I was running out of time, however I'm sure I will mess about with it after the module has been handed in. If I was to redo this module again, I would definately sort my nostrils out so that it looked more realistic as it doesn't match up. I would also spend less time on other things which are not important so that I would have time to complete it fully.

Overall, I have learnt a lot of new techniques from this module and now have a wider knowledge within 3DS Max.

Face - UVW Mapping

I have attempted to do the UVW mapping, however everytime I click on the cylindrical tool and the 'Align Y' button, I seem to have a weird green line on my neck and on the side of my face. So this mucked up the rest of what was meant to happen!

Face - Attached Ear & Finished Eyeballs

Woo! Finally finished attaching the ear to the head. It all looks very smooth on the join, side and back of the ear. This was achieved by simply creating more polygons in order to get more points so that everything could join up on both the head and the ears using the 'create' tool. (Thanks to Luke for the help guiding me on the back of the ear as I kept finding it hard to see the points and kept getting confused with where the points were meant to snap to!)

I am very pleased with the outcome of the face! I am going to attempt to try the mapping part, however I don't think I will get that finished in time, but I will still have a go and post up what I have managed to get done.

Face - Finished Ear

The ear has been completed, all that needs to happen now is to attach the ear to my face.

In order to create the deep 'dip' in the ear, this was simply achieved by using the 'inset' tool. This made extra edges which were than pulled into the direction of the inside of the ear, resulting in a more shapely appearance. I felt this made the ear a lot more realistic since it gave different depths within the inside of the ear.

Although the ear wasn't particularly easy to model, I didn't think it was as hard as people made out. I am quite pleased with how the ear turned out as well, it seems to match my ear pretty accurately shape wise...

Face - Stage 8 - Ear Creation

A topology was done for the ear, and from here I began to model. The process for making the ear is the same process as when making the face. (Drawing out the grids using the line tool making sure everything snaps in place, then dragging the points to where they should be positioned to match the ear etc).

I had a slight problem after I had made the simple outlines of my ear, as you can see there was a hole in it...

I realised the reason that I had this hole was because I had a polygon that had 6 sides, so this was fixed by dividing that polygon into 2 four sided ones instead.

Face - Finished Head

I have finally finished modelling the whole head - what a relief! I came across various problems during this stage, the big problem was having trouble with the points. Basically I had too many polygons and some had nothing to join to when snapping/attaching together the face to the head. This meant I had to go through deleting the edges/verticies which weren't needed (those that had nothing to attach to) so that I could snap all the points together with the face. I thought this would result in a less smooth/rounded head on the sides, however it seemed that it made not much difference and in fact it had actually made my head appear with less 'ripples' when rendered.

Face - Stage 7

The next part of the face modelling was to make the head shape including the neck. This involved using a sphere shape for the base of the head, and then editing the shape by dragging out the edges and the vertices on the side and front view to the correct positions, so that everything comes out smooth and not all flat. The soft selection tool was used to align and snap the top of the sphere shape to the forehead, so that they all connected.

I found this stage to be quite difficult too as I had to guess the shape of my head since my hair was covering it up in the photo, so the shape of my head is just a rough outline and may not be correct, however I matched it up as close as possible. Also, the main problem for this stage being difficult is because the man teaching us this tutorial doesn't actually tell us how to do it, so it's all guess work! But I think it's going okay for the moment.

The process of me modelling the head so far...

Face - Stage 6

Stage 6 consisted of editing the nose and adding in the lips.

By adding more quads to the nose (creating copies by selecting the edges that follow around the outside of the nostrils and holding shift at the same time), we are able to complete the shape. To do this we drag the edges and vertices about to make the nostril and realistic as possible. Using the 'connect' tool, this also enables a more flowing structure by adding additional geometry all around.

Firstly I had a very big problem when it came to changing my nose as I didn't have enough sides on the nostril to get the exact shape, size and position. So at the moment I have very tiny nostrils, but I will hopefully be able to fix this later on. If not then that is the best I can get it to look.

The lips however went more smoothly, following the same process when editing the nose. I feel this turned out looking far more realistic than my nose! So I am pleased with the outcome of this.

I also managed to fix the little bumps around the eyes a bit so it didn't look as 'dented' in as it did before.

Face - Stage 5

Stage 5 of the face modelling was a simple tutorial to follow through. The process was basically adding the other half of the face by using the 'symmetry' modifier, this then mirrored the left side of the face to complete the right side. The other task was to simply make the face appear smoother looking, and there were 3 different ways to do this.

-Using the NURMS subdivison tool

-Using TurboSmooth modifier

-Using MeshSmooth

All three resulted in pretty much the same smoothness and appearance, however I chose to use the TurboSmooth modifier as this created a better finish. The other two choices were useful also, however, I found that both created a stronger line down the middle of my face, whereas the TurboSmooth gave a fainter one.

I feel that my face is going pretty well, there are adjustments to be made to the nose and near the eyes (there are slight bumps which doesn't look good!) but I will do this at later stages.

I have to say, the side of the face actually looks quite like me (even though the perspective view makes me look EXTREMELY like a gorilla! Quite funny though - made me laugh quite a bit...), but from looking at the front, you can see that my face is a bit on the thin side and needs to be a bit 'fatter'!

I have also found that my face is actually quite symmetrical though as the mouth and eyes are nicely in line with the picture! That's interesting to know.

Face - Stages 3 & 4

Stage 3 involved aligning the pictures together making sure they were both in the correct place using 3DS Max, as shown above. Firstly I had to create a plane and add my picture (jpeg) into the material editor, then drag onto the plane. At first I had trouble with importing my image in because only my front view showed up and the side was missing, but I retried it again after several attempts and for some reason it worked correctly.
This stage consisted of a lot of editing of the picture, such as rotating and resizing my picture so that it would fit onto the plane. This wasn't to say that it was difficult however, just time consuming as I had to keep redoing it several times since some parts were wrong. Lastly I had to rotate the second plane (side picture) so that it was 90 degrees and placed in the right position next to the front view.

Stage 4 involved drawing on the grids in 3DS Max using the line tool. This was a tedious process as I had to make sure that the lines all snapped together when being joined, otherwise problems would arise later on (which did in fact happen, twice!). This was due to the points not joining as the corners/points didn't snap together, so when it came to weilding them, some parts were separate and not wielded! However, after several attempts of redoing the whole lines again, I managed to fix this problem and moved onto actually creating the structures of my face by dragging the points on the side view to the appropriate places in order to define my face shape. Again, this is proving quite difficult, especially once it gets to the eyes as the lines start to overlap each other making it very confusing to see what I'm actually doing.

Below shows what it looks like once this part has been completed.

Final YMCA Storyboard

The final idea for the YMCA promotion has been discussed as a group and been drawn into a rough storyboard, shown below.

Adjustments to Final Idea

We have now come to a final conclusion now and have changed the final idea slightly. What has been changed is that we are now doing characters in a different form; they will be in the form of silhouettes instead of 3D models now. The reason for this was because we felt the silhouette idea would be perfect to use as it fits in with the current YMCA design, found on their website (Chelmsford) under the 'youth' section. We also felt that this would work better as it would mean we do not have to model any specific personality, so people will not be put off by whatever clothing or hairstyles they have - this is because some people may think they have to be a certain type of person to fit in, and so this may prevent them from joining. However, the silhouettes could still have different styles to them to emphasise that they are entering a room which will match the mood of the activity. For example, one silhouette could be 'gothic' or 'emo' once they enter the Rock School activity.

Each member will have 1 activity each to model, and in total there will be 4 rooms (4 activities).

The order of rooms that the character will go to are:-

1) Nursery - Lisa

2) Baddow Youth Club - Maria

3) Rock School - Luke

4) Y Club - Rich

Group Project - Final Idea

We have now begun the YMCA group work and have now come to a final idea. We will be focussing on the YMCA as a whole and hopefully are able to demonstrate all the activities and services which take place in the animation. Though each service shown will be brief, we chose to do the overall organisation because we felt teenagers would rather know what the YMCA was about and what they have to offer all round, instead of one specific service. This was also because Craig Gough mentioned how the organisation was losing 'business' in all areas, so we therefore felt it was better to advertise all areas of the business so as to attract people to the YMCA as a whole, and once they have joined - it is then when they can find out more about specific services.

All our ideas have been put into a brainstorm shown below. The idea that we are going for is the one about a child getting older, walking into different scenes. As the child changes, they will be walking behind obstacles, or they can change when walking through a door etc.

YMCA Visit & Research

Following the visit to the YMCA in Chelmsford, I and my group members gained an insight into what they provide to help support young people within the community; by offering many different services such as fun activities and setting up events like live bands nights. It is also a place which gives a good opportunity for those to meet new people and make new friends where they can share and relate their individual problems, as well giving advice to each other.

These young people's ages range up to the age of 18, and will all have different reasons for joining the YMCA. Problems can range from financial/work difficulties, to family/health and crime and safety issues.

From the information that was given to us about their services, it helped us understand and gain a better knowledge of what young people will want when it comes to us creating an animation to help promote the YMCA. The animation will need to stand out, be fun and most importantly appeal to young people in order for them to have an interest in joining and taking part in certain services.

At the moment, the YMCA includes various ways of promoting themselves:

- Networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace

- Word of mouth

- Small leaflets

- Visits to Primary Schools

- Emails and letters

Obviously from these types of advertisements listed, they do not have an advertisement which is in the form of a video, which clearly would help attract more people to get involved, especiall as teenagers are usually stuck indoors watching TV almost everyday. Having an animation would most certainly attract a few more of the target audience.

So, from this visit, my group have come up with several ideas with how to approach this task already. These ideas will gathered into one brainstorm for an easy overview of our thoughts.

YMCA Mood Board

The mood board above was created to represent what the YMCA should be about; it should make the teenagers feel a sense of fun, communication between friends and happiness.

For example, the sunshine in the palm of the hand image portrays a sense of warmth, the arms shows 'togetherness' - everyone is in the same boat and are equal, whilst the lock image displays security and safety when you're at the YMCA. The rest of the images are self explanatory; with the disco ball and lights emphasising an atmosphere when young people can have fun and to relax at the same time with no worries on their mind!

Face Work - Topology

I have begun to start work on the face project, and already I am finding this very challenging! I've had a few problems with getting everything to line up properly on the features of my face. For example, if i moved the side picture so that the mouth is in line with the front view picture, then the ears, eyes and nose will all be out of line and won't match up etc! So this took a lot of adjustments to sort out, but I got there in the end.

When it came to drawing the lines on to mark any creases out, I did this using both Illustrator and Flash (I found Flash to be even better than Illustrator halfway through!) as they created smoother lines and gave me more flexibilitiy in moving the lines to the shape I wanted. I personally found these two software to be a lot easier to use than doing it on Photoshop.

I did struggle with this exercise too as I ended up with a lot of triangles and pentagons in the cheek and forehead areas, (shown in the first picture) however this was soon fixed and resulted in a more flowing direction with the quads (last picture).

Virtual Environments - First Impressions

For this module, there will be two tasks to complete. The first one will involve me having to model my own face, and this will be done through using 3DS Max. Photoshop will also be used in order to help guide me on modelling different aspects of my face - such as marking out roughly any 'creases' and then turning them into quads. Other modifications to be done on my face before I go into modelling is to add a lens distortion to it so that my face does not appear as though it is looking up from a face on - view.

Going into the second task to be completed; this will be a group based project. In groups we will be focussing on the YMCA (Young Man's Christian Association).

The aim of this group project is to work for a client in the YMCA in producing an animation to help promote the service in such a way where it will appeal and attract young people.

This will also help each individual to improve on different skills that the individuals wish to improve on to further their knowledge, which includes focusess on either 3D modelling, animations or 2D designs.

My views on these two projects are quite split at the moment. I know that the face one will be very challenging but will be an interesting task to do. I will however get very frustrated if I am not able to do this properly and will get extremely fed up with looking at my own face all the time!
The group project I am looking forward to seeing how we all co-operate and decide on what will happen together.