10 posts tagged “gradschool”
In some ways, I found it rather odd that I've worked as an animator, called myself an animator but never really actually understood how to animate. First off I've never actually studied, learn or researched animation techniques, whether it was Flash, AfterEffects or Maya. I stuck to what I've figured out in Flash and did everything solely fixed key frame based. In terms of motion graphics, that technique carried over well. Since at the time I started as an AFX animator the "Flash Look" was in, the blunt, abrupt, cutty style worked and generally for most title and type work that still holds true.
The challenge came when I started working with virtual cameras where I actually have to create smooth animation that doesn't look like someone just kicked the camera half way through a push. So moving away from keyframes, I've been really trying to get a hang of animating with curves. It's different and difficult to visualize as how a curve on a graph relates to speed and movement in space. Practice, practice, practice...
Scene one camera move test.
Beyond all of the obvious Bladerunner and Brian Wood graphic novel references (which I'll get to later), I want to start my reference material discussion with the work by Edward Burtynsky, more specifically his China series.
My first exposure to his work was at his show at the Brooklyn Museum, I became quite emotional after seeing pictures of the towns that were being torn down to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. I personally don’t remember ever becoming emotional after seeing a piece of art work, (there were unsubstantiated reports of me crying during the ending scene of E.T. but I’m pretty sure my mom was imagining things.) and for awhile I didn’t quite understand why those pictures affected me so much.
Only after reading more about the project and looking at the photos again did I start to understand the reason I felt so emotional about these photos was because of how helpless these photos made me feel. Seeing huge parts of my country’s history purposely being destroyed and literally put under water in the name of progress, one can’t help but feel a massive sense of loss.
I began thinking about China’s manic urge to reinvent itself based on western ideals, where material gain is seen as the key to fulfillment and joy. As such development will lead my country to one that is about mass consumerism, one have to question what will become of the country when this transformation is complete. Will the people see through the hollow promise of fulfillment and joy mass consumerism brings? Or is the development of the dam and the demolition of the cities the signs that the population have already accepted the promise and are now simply participants in the degradation of their culture and their minds?
Statement
A CG narrative short exploring the suppression of one’s individuality via commercial manipulation.
Synopsis
In this commercialized society, the corporate message dominates the social and cultural landscape. Through repetition, the message of conformity slowly manipulates it’s population into submission. The individual no longer exists, they only serve to carry out their prescribed tasks. The successfulness of the message is such that, it’s population becomes willing participants in their very own suppression. Stripped of their individuality, their aspirations is to become the message itself. Does the population become wise to the messages that manipulates them? More importantly, do they care?
This is a visual narrative that explores such an environment. Via a virtual fly through of a media saturated metropolitan city created in 3D. The narrative begins in an apartment, showing a very neat and organized room, the camera then guides the viewer through a window, revealing the city outside that is visually bright and intense, full of commercials and messages. The camera explores parts of the city in more details, the viewer is introduced to countless advertisement featuring one person. As the exploration extends further, more images of this person appears, on posters, on billboards, on televisions, on magazines, his image is inescapable, establishing that he has attained a status beyond the common person. The camera continues, moving past the glitz and glamor of the signs and billboards and down a back ally, at the end of which is a door. The camera travels through the door, into a large indoor space filled with rows of people producing goods. The camera continues into the space, closing in on one worker, he looks up revealing that he is the same person as the person in the images the viewers saw around the city.
This piece is about the lost of identity, it’s about forgetting who we are. Where in our rush to succeed and to improve according to structured paths, we are forgetting about ourselves. When we are told happiness can be purchased, when fame becomes the ultimate pursuit, beyond all of that, what is left of the person at the end of it all.
Statement (Rough 09-13-06)A CG digital short exploreing societies' obsession in fame and the realities behind the advertised image, via a fly through of a media saturated metropolitan city using computer generated and live action elements.
Synopsis (Rough 09-13-06)The corporate message dominates the social and cultural landscape, in a media saturated society, the message bombards it’s population into submission. They tell you what to think, and how to act. They say your unbridled trust in the message is the only way to salvation, truth and happiness.
They offer you a role-model, they show you what success is, they say aspire to be like this person and all your hopes and dreams will come true. You will be rich, beautiful and free.
The population submits to the advertised image, their obsession on fame distracts them from the truth.
Amidst the loud, colorful and powerful images lies the reality of the message. But their apathy will keep them sedated and their thoughts under control.
keywords:
Media saturated society
Corporate controlled
Police state
use of media to control
keep people happy
sedated
fame vs identity apathy
obsession on fame vs reality of the advertised image
Semester two: Lighting & Rendering 1 / Maya 2
Project: Thesis concept
I combined the final projects for two different class into one. Since both the maya 2 and lighting and rendering class final was to create a scene in 3D that is textured and lit in a photo real manner. I decided to spend my time on creating one refined project rather than two rushed ones. The maya 2 requirement stated that I needed to model the scene as well, to I took this opportunity to build models where they can be reused for my thesis as well.
Modeling for this project is based on a photo I took in Wan Chai, Hong Kong. The initial plan of this project was to project the image onto the model as the texture. But I quickly realized the angle of the shot and the lack of detail in the image made this approach unfeasible. Plus the lighting condition in which the photo was shot created a lot of shadows and uneven lighting.
Since I didn't have to actually match the buildings brick for brick, I took a lot of liberties in reinterpreting many of the details. On that note, I feel that I might have worked in a little too much detail for what I was actually using it for.
Approaching the texturing using procedural texturing proofed to be the right move as I was able to quickly repurpose textures for different use. All three buildings in this scene used the same basic building texture. The glass texture for the windows was the most difficult texture of the whole group to get right, it took quite a few different tries for me to arrive at the one I used. For my thesis, I will choose to not work with a transparent texture as that in itself creates a lot more work to deal with interior details.
Of the many difficulty I encountered with this project, rendering times was one where I could have worked harder to reduce and it is something I really should research further for my thesis. One of the key reason for the long render times was the fact that rendered with ray tracing using Mental Ray, I chose ray tracing rather than rendering straight with maya software was mostly due to the amount of reflective windows in this project. I tried a few different textures and had a really hard time making the windows look like glass without ray tracing. This I can also say was partly due to time limitation, as the modeling phase took longer than I'd have liked.
This project is a good test run for my thesis, I'll most likely still render in Mental Ray, I might have to rethink my wish to produce this project in 1080p or even 720p. I want the size, but just don't think I can pull that off within the timeframe and equipment access I'll have.
Semester two: Digital Matte Painting
Project: Thesis concept
Semester two opened up the options in terms of the type of projects I can approach. The Digital Matte Painting course was one I was very excited to take. This was the first course in this program I took where I didn't have to struggle with learning the tools and just focus on the concept and techniques. And naturally I decided to use the final project as a proof of concept and a style frame for my thesis project.
This matte painting project was a lot of fun to make and also helped me a lot in figuring out time and assets management.
The premises of this project is to create a New York in the not too far future, where Chinese has become the official language. Architecture and city planning has taken on the direction of many major Asian metropolitan cities, as population density increased exponentially after major immigration reforms.
From the get go, I want the flat iron building in this matte painting assymbolic feature of this piece, I wanted it to show New York, but didn't want to push the over used image of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building. Plus getting clean and useable plates for those two buildings are practically impossible without access to higher ground close to these two buildings.
Not that the choice of the flat iron building didn't create it's own problems. Having access to a location that had gave me the correct angle to get a flat plate to work with proof to be difficult. The density ofthe city made it difficult to get a complete image of the sides of thebuilding, and a head on shot had it's own difficulty as street and traffic lights obstructed a lot few angles that would have worked well.
I began with a concept sketch that mapped out the type of buildings I need and the coverage of the shot. The framing choice was mostly driven from a photo I took of the Flat Iron building a few years back. Inhindsight I should have chosen a tighter shot, the wide angle framing I picked created many production difficulties that could have been avoided if I approached this with a more traditional vanishing point/ lowdistortion shot. Plus such a shot would have reduced the amount of details I needed to create.
Maintaining consistent perspective with each building was also difficult, due to the varied locations I shot these from.
Overall I was very happy with the result, but one thing I definitely want to figure out a better way to do is cutting mattes for the windows, I think that task by itself took a good ten hours worth of work.
One of the biggest problem I’ve in regards to all of my creative endeavors has been my inability to articulate ideas I have. I’m very much a visual person, if something can’t be visualized in my head, I’d most likely have a hard time understanding it. In the same sense, I have a very hard time putting into words ideas I can clearly visualize in my head.
It’d be easy to blame this squarely on my language skills. Even though I started learning English from age ten and have been using English almost exclusively for the past ten yeas, I still find myself much more comfortable and confident with Cantonese. My failed attempt at trying to being a writer during my first two years of college as a journalism major, confirmed my weakness in articulating ideas and concepts.
But blaming language skills is a little too easy and rather self-defeating, considering the fact that I’m writing about it here.
Rather I feel that it has a lot more to do with my lack of actual knowledge in the subject. I’ve never studied art history and my lack of interest in knowing about art (or anything else for that matter) also plays in on that. My references are purely visual, I’ll watch a movie and love it to death, but have no idea or interest in who directed it, what it referenced and why it was shot a certain way. Then when i try to explain said movie to a friend, I find myself unable to say why I felt it was so great. Maybe it's not the lack of knowledge, but lack of
understanding as to what and why I like something.
I admire people who are just amazing at articulating their vision and back it up with references. It really scares me sometimes when I sit down and talk with my friends who are just so certain about their vision. Spending any amount of time with Red, Eliot, Noah, Raul and Sean, leads me to rethink my goals in the creative field. There’s a level of confidence they have with their art that I feel I am unable to maintain. The ability to describe and then defend their vision, shows just how much further I need to work on and understand my own.
I guess the best way I can describe my predicament is that, I’ll use the word ‘noir’ to describe something but have absolutely no idea if it’s used correctly or what the word actually illustates.
As my roommate constantly say “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
What I’d do have a direct link from brain to google.
Semester one: Digital Production Process
Project: Recovery (quicktime link)
Following is the concept and treatment for this project.
:30 short - "Recovery"
Recovery is an motion graphic exploration into the memory of a machine, shown from the point of view of a decommissioned robot that gets reactivated. This short will follow the robot’s rediscovery of it’s environment, as it moves through it’s immediate surroundings of a science lab, focusing on spaces and objects that will help it orient itself and ultimately finds it’s purpose.
Aesthetically this project will focus on a feel of obsolete analog technology, using soft edges, warmer colors, type and layout style, that conveys a mechanical feel rather than a digital feel that one commonly associate with robotics.
Visually this project will explore the aesthetics of classic low end and degraded camera optics, think currently trendy plastic lens toy cameras (e.g. LOMO/HOLGA) where vignetting, soft focus and dirty glass plays a big part in the look and feel of the image.
Imagery treatment wise, this project will have an overexposed, blown out look to it. Colors will lean heavily toward the blue/green tone side, consisting mostly of colder colors.
Notice how maybe about a tenth of what was described was actually implemented, and not very successfully. Also my fixation on the idea of doing this piece purely from a point of view perspective really harmed the final piece, as I wasn’t able to show from who’s perspective we were watching from. (Now that I think about it, the robot walking pass a mirror could have done the trick...)
The idea of memory and identity in this project is very much a recurring theme in my personal motion graphics projects. I’ve always been fascinated with how we remember things and more importantly, how to make people remember things. I’ve always tried to use my projects to raise question about ones identity and self-worth in today’s mass produced culture, and then at the same time use that same piece to promote myself... yeah conflicted.
See two of my past projects that touched on that theme below (and also featured cute girls)
On to the technical side of things, I tried
a few things in this project that will influence technical decisions
I’ll be making for my thesis. Of the technical decisions I made for
this project, one thing I focused on was to make the final piece in
720p HD res, which when coupled with the 4k still images I was using
turned this into a rendering and production nightmare. So as much as
I’d love to have all of my work be in HD res, for now until I’m done
with grad school, I’ll work in NTSC SD and cheat 16:9 with letterbox.
The
other thing is the green screen we have at school. While the Reflec
Media Chromatte system we used was easy to use and a bundle of geeky
fun, it was in no way perfect. I may choose to shoot this project the
old school way by lighting my own screen.
First year in the program consisted mostly of classes that taught specific tools and skill sets in CG and VFX. I had a pretty good idea as to what kind of work I want to show for at the end of the two year program, so for most of these classes my final projects either explored technical or aesthetics concepts I want to incorporate into my thesis.
Semester one: Maya I
Project: P-852 (quicktime link)
This was first thing I’ve ever made with Maya, so this was mostly just to see if I can actually pull off a CG short. Character animation while fun, just didn’t feel like it was something I’d be interested in pursuing. Rather what I got most out of this project was working with the virtual camera, I still need a lot more work to better understand camera controls and movements in Maya. One of the most difficult thing in this project was controlling the speed of the camera when animating a dolly shot, there were quite a few failed attempts of a shot circling the character, which I ultimately left out of the project.
As for the visual inspiration, the set of this short was heavily inspired by the final scene of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. I tend to have an obsession with multi-stories parking lots and I’m pretty sure there will be one somewhere in my thesis.
