My Haunted House Animation

Here is my video of my haunted house, which Andy helped me to render :) it's not great / finished but I will improve it for the presentation. Just wanted some evidence of my progress over the last 5 weeks in animation.

Rendering Animation

Today is the deadline to submit the animation work, I have completed my animation but my 3dsmax anaimtion won't render I have been trying for hours :( Going to try again tomorrow and upload to my blog.

Animation Evaluation.

For my first project of 2011 I started with animation. The brief was to create a haunted house with 3 scare scenes. We were told to think of a theme for the haunted house, I had the inital idea of either a halloween theme aimed at young children or a death/murder theme aimed towards an older audience - such as young adults. I decided on the halloween theme as scare scenes were easy to relate to this theme - pumpkins, witches, ghosts and skeletons. It could also be quite a fun / amusing ride as the audience was younger. There was the normal convention of the ride entrance having the sign entering the haunted house will say "Enter If You Dare.."

My main ideas and intentions that I was trying to express in the project were that the theme came across well, the name of "Trick Or Treat" related to the halloween theme. The scares such as the pumpkin tunnel, witches and skeletons in graveyard created the mood for a haunted house which also fit well into my theme, scary yet an amusing ride for young children.

The methods I used to develop my ideas can all me seen on my blog posts over the duration of the project. I created a 3d model with wire on a theatre plan of the waverley building to give me an insight of ideas for a track. I made a few moodboards of theme ideas which helped me decide which theme idea to have for my final idea. I created drawings of the cart, ride entrance and scare scenes. I made a storyboard for the ride - including entrance, scare scenes and exit. To develop my ideas I also looked on sites such as youtube at other ride animations & looked at previous haunted house rides (such as the Pasaje Del Terror in Blackpool) to help with ideas.

I took a risk by trying something new, most people in the group were doing quite a deathly theme and had more of an older audience. I thought the theme and audience was different to everyone else & although it may not seem as "scary" as some of my peers work, the young audience should be taken into consideration.

Some of the unexpected problems I had to solve while working were that I really found the software 3d max hard, some ideas I had - such as a sweet cart to go with the trick or treat title couldn't be done as I was unable to make the cart so had a basic square cart which looks no where need as good. The scare scenes were't as good as I had hoped, although I did really try to make them as effective as I could.

The decisions and choices I made to help solve these problems were that although sometimes I did feel like giving up as mine looked pretty poor compared to my peers, it wouldn't get me anywhere. When I had done the basics such as making the track and plan for the ride I went onto youtube to look at online tutorials. Some of them weren't the best but I did find a few good ones which can be seen on my blog which helped me to produce scenes such as my pumpkin.

The things I have learnt from this particular project were that research is important to produce a good product. Last term i also struggled with animation but throughly reasearched into female idents such as living tv so I had a good idea of what to produce - even if the end product wasn't brilliant the idea was there. I researched everything for this product from the cart to the music. Producing moodboards and storyboards helped me with specific ideas for my theme.

Areas for improvement , If I were to do this project again I would change or do differently would be to have a cart that fits my theme I would also really have liked my track to be more interesting / thrilling for the user. I am hoping to add music by the end of the term.

A new project that might grow out of my experience maybe not so much to do with 3d animationn but maybe whiteboard animation which we did in induction week of a haunted house or ride.

Updated Pumpkin..

Andy has just helped me with my pumpkin as I struggled to put him onto my track due to his mouth being higher up than my track. Also smoothed the edges off & added a stalk.

My Pumpkin :)

Coming along okish...

Pumpkin Videos..

To hopefully help me later on. Look pretty complicated but better than nothing!

Animation Update..

Tuesday is my last seminar on animation haunted house. I have planned my cart - pumpkin shape although is hard to design on 3dsmax so may have to keep the basic square cart I have, Could perhaps have a sweet cart to go with the "trick or treat" theme. I have made a basic cart on 3dsmax which animates by moving along my track attached with a light & camera.

The scare scenes are a pumpkin in which the cart goes through his mouth on the track - his mouth moving up and down. A room with witches and sound effect of a cackle. The last scene is a graveyard in which arms come up from the grave. I need to do all these on tuesday which I am slightly worried about as it will be so complicated & I stuggle to draw a box on the software let a lone a pumpkin.

Will be pretty happy when animation is overrrrrrrr :)

Haunted House Storyboard

Had a seminar with Yelena & made a storyboard for my design:

worst person at drawing in the world.

Also had the idea to add an animating hand from the grave for a scare scene:

Pretty worried that I have all these halloween ideas & tuesday is the last animation lesson and I have to design and animate all my ideas on 3dsmax.

:(

Animation Lighting

Seminar about using light on 3dsmax.

Also made my cart I did want the pumpkin design & attempted many times to create one on 3dsmax but it didn't work so just stuck to a square cart. Also managed to animate it around the track.

Tried to add a camera to follow the cart but will continue with this next week which is the last week of animation in which I also have to add scare scenes and render. :(

Animation. Mardy. Depressed. Want To Quit Uni.

Yesterday we had a seminar on materials & textures ( can be seen in previous post ) but I got so wrapped up in doing that & trying to do it right I didnt even get started on my haunted house :( so now i'm feeling more behind than ever. I've done the track & plan and that's it. I went in to uni today to do some but I just find it so hard to use the software I ended up doing pretty much nothing.

I have 2 weeks left in animation, the last week will be mostly rendering & adding sound so next week is pretty much it.

Big fat fail.


:(

3d Textures

Right now we are learning about textures & material editor on 3dsmax. I have started with a simple box in which I have changed the texture to bricks.

Also created this window imaged box:

I Hate The Feeling..

Of dread :( which is what i'm feeling right now as I have animation later & I feel so behind & like my design is so so bad.

Tomorrow is my day off & i'm going to look at the other tasks for the other pathways on the NOW to have a good idea of what i'll be doing when I finish animation.

I also need to look at year 2 and 3 blogs to look what work they do for film / interactive.

:(

Finding this so so hard :( creating the floor and walls to the haunted house:

Track:

Haunted House Track

Today we had seminar for 2 hours to plan and draw the track of the haunted house. We went to the theatre to get an idea of the size & what would work with the track and what wouldn't. Here's a model of my idea:

Animation, My Favourite! ;)

Term 2 for dp2 we now do 5 weeks of each project not 3. I'm starting with animation, boooo :(

I really stuggled with the software last term and the brief this term is so much harder!

Project title: Amusement Park Haunted Castle Ride

Task: "To design, build and animate an amusement park, terror,
haunted castle/house ride to fit into the Waverley Theatre with 2-3 scare scenes."

At your end of the module presentation: "You will be required to show your final 1 minute animation as well as evidence of your design process including mood boards, scare scenes designs, entrance, design of the cart, storyboard, photos of the model. PLUS sketch books/journal entries to evidence your research process and ideas development.

In your online journal: "Keep a weekly dairy of your progress to demonstrate your exploration and development of your design
research, ideas and process."

So basically build a haunted house animation! I decided to look on youtube at other people's work:



I will have to consider
- The Space & Track (Path) layout
- Entrance and Cart
- Scare scenes (static and animated)
- Experience of the ride (storyboard)
- Lighting & special effect

This week I will create a moodboard for this project, taking a theme,audience and name for the ride into consideration.

Animation With Sound! :)

Final animation complete with sound :)

Animation 300 Word Rationale Lalalaaa

Outline of my tv ident animation.

Over the past 3 weeks I had the task to create a 30 second animation of a tv ident using 3d Studio Max. The ident was based on myself for example your facebook, twitter or something about you, which then merged together to create an ident for your own TV station.
I did find the software difficult to grasp in the first week & it didnt help that I missed a seminar due to a driving test so I watched online tutorials which did help alot & found it a little easier to use when I had familiarised myself with the software. We were shown examples & inspiration ideas from the bbc idents but I wanted something that was more feminine as BBC has a wide ranged audience.
I researched into Living Tv idents as this is a tv station aimed at females. I found a youtube video with many living idents ( on previous post on blog) in which I got many ideas from. From researching and developing some inspiration, I came up with a few designs that I designed. Some ideas wouldn't work due to my ability of skills using 3dsMax, but I had a basic idea which I thought would work well.
To make my ident relate to me I simply used my name Hollie and although I did want a heart as the "o" in my name I had to change it to a star as i couldn't make a heart on the software. My text was bright pink to represent the femimine side of me with a white background to contrast the bright text. Most people decided to have a character in their animation although I found it quite tricky to make one on the software. I decided to have balloons lifting the "o" in my name which was shaped as a star to reach the other letters of my name floating in the air by balloons.
I used the "bomb" effect on the balloons to make them pop and the letters fall, except the star which floated back down. I then added sound using Adobe Premiere Pro. Sound was important for my animation to get the effect of the balloons popping.
The genre for my ident is aimed at females & I think it will hopefully attract the audience as as feminine person I have done what I know what will work. Semiotics is in which the signs relate to what the audience sees. For example seeing my pink ident will semantically mean to the audience that they are watching that tv station. Tropes from what I can understand is what TV writers, actors & directors use to control the audiences outlook. Tropes are often used to show fiction, which helps us to not just focus on the reality in life, which is why people think badly about different tropes they have seen.

First Attempt Video Of Animation (No Sound)

Animation Update...

Yesterday was the final animation seminar & i've pretty much completed it but need to render it to put on vimeo. I am going to do this tomorrow after tutor. I found animation really hard, I got the basics such as text and shapes but found it hard to animate it how I wanted it. Off to work now so will write up a 300 word post tomorrow on ittttt! :)

P.s after seeing this hot mamaaaa Rihanna last week on x factor....



i've decided to dye my hair red tonightttt ha, not sure how this will turn out!

An Hour On &

I've made about 5 balloons & started to animate. Hour & half left.. time to get Andy on the case! :)