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 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:

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! :)

!!!!

In animation have been for about 2 hours & all I have managed to do is this:

Ha it looks like crap, I need to animate it still, ADD SOUND?! & render it to put onto vimeo.

It looks nothing like my design ( on previous post ) as I have given up trying to draw a heart.

NOT a happy child right now

Bonjour :)

I'm still really ill & fed up of visits to the doctors now! Context wasn't on today so have only got animation seminar 3 - 6 but have come in early. Planned to come in for 11 and get some animation done as I missed last week but my train was delayed by a nice two hours so slightly later than expected..

Now going to attempt my tv ident with no help from Andy until my seminar. I could be very angry / frustrated by the end of this seminar. Last animation lesson before it is due in & tbh I am pretty behind :(

Tv Ident Ideas

Decided to start researching ideas for my tv ident animation..

The fact that it has to be based on my twitter, blogger and facebook rolled into one makes the topic very easy to create around.. me :)

My blog is very pink & feminine and decided this is how I want to portray myself in my ident too. When looking at the bbc idents ( on previous blog ) the problem is that bbc is a very general tv station male, females, young, old, gay, straight. So to give me some ideas I thought of tv channels that are aimed at women so I could have a look at the idents they use. For example living tv has programmes such as Americas Next Top Model, Dating In The Dark & Four Weddings. Here is the link to the website.. www.livingtv.co.uk

By looking at idents aimed at women it would give me ideas on how to make my ident feminine.



I absolutely love some of these such as the balloons lifting the "living" text. The colours offset well together, white text with bright coloured balloons. The ones with the light shining on them to create a shadow are quite simple but effective to look at. The lanterns are very girly and have a warm feel to the ident which I like. The slow motion of the text being blown apart is really good & interesting as an audience to watch however the fact it's being blown up & quite full of action goes against the convention of being feminine as such although it does work well. The glass shattering and revealing another laver is possibly my favourite & may have to ask Andy if this would be possible to do on 3dsmax.



This was a link when looking at living tv idents, never heard of diva tv but I enjoy some of the idents such as the first one which is very simple and attracts the audience due to the fact it has the main colour of pink standing out. I love love love the wine glass one & would want to do this on my ident! The liquid in the glass swaying around is quite calming and makes you want a glass of wine to sit down with for the programme. The spinning paint brushes are good but I don't like DIY in anyway what so ever so couldn't apply it to me :)

Diva idents are different to the living ones in which the text is quite small & focus more on the design / colours. Living Tv bases the ident around the text which takes up the tv screen. I think I prefer this in which you can work around the text of the ident.

On the living tv idents I do really like the one where the woman is in fancy dress with crazy make up on a swing for one of the letters. I can't use people in mine but I like the text used which is white but when you see the side in 3d it's crystals / diamonds & I love this effect!

I think i'm just going to keep the text simple of my name or intials - HTF with a heart. I want to use glitter / diamond / crystal text if possible with a pink shading background. I like the idea of using balloons to lift the text or maybe shattering text/screen. I don't really have an idea about sound yet as we haven't been told about it and what we are and not aloud to use for example if its not aloud to be copyright.

The genre for my ident is aimed at females & I think it will hopefully attract the audience as as feminine person I know what will work. ( I hope haha )

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. ( I think?! )

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.

These are tutorials to help me when i'm on 3dsmax so I can always look at them :)