NC: Narrative: Animation for Crit

NC: Narrative: Pre-Viz - Assistant's arrival during Knife throw

I have done this playblast for the Assistant's arrival during Oliver throwing the knife. This is a little jumpy and so will need to be fixed, and obviously as this is a pre-viz of this sequence, it isn't properly paced. I am having some difficulties with Mental Ray rendering, at the moment, as it always shows a black screen when I try to render a frame. I, therefore, am using the Maya hardware render settings.

NC: Narrative: Poster in Maya

In a separate Maya file to our environment, I have made a stand for the poster. I have created simple shapes and added the poster through a UV. I didn't go into too much detail into the design of the stand, as it's only on screen for a few seconds.

NC: Narrative: Poster Design

In the montage section of the animation, there is a shot where one of the knives hits a poster for the circus. I have designed the poster, as you can see below. I tried to keep it as basic as possible, but with it still looking like a proper circus poster. I will need add this to our environment in Maya.

 

NC: Narrative: Fully rigged Assistant

Through the help of Alan, I was able to bind the skeleton rig to the model. I had some trouble with this at first, as I was unable to bind the arms/head joints to the model. However, it is now fully rigged and ready for skinning.

 

NC: Narrative: Rigging the Assistant

By following the rigging tutorials from last year, I have created the skeleton for the Assistant. It took me longer than I'd hope and due to the shape of the model some things are a little irregular, like the shape of the spine, but it does still work.

NC: Narrative: Revised Animatic (No Sound)

This revised animatic still has some problems with pacing as I am unsure about some things, like speech and speed of movement and they were hard to visualise in my head, so some scenes and shots are either too fast or too slow. Overall, like the storyboard, this is an improvement on the original, I think, as it easier to understand.

NC: Narrative: Revised Stroyboard

At long last, I have revised the storyboard in accordance to Alan's feedback in last week's tutorial. It proved to be quite a challenge, for me, to make the story make more sense, and so there hasn't been many changes. I think it is still an improvement, however, and so it is easier to understand what is happening. I had some problems trying to think of the ending and so I left it open to interpretation as to whether he throws it successfully or not.

NC: Narrative : Knife prop models Idea 1

As our main character is going to need some knives to throw I have modeled a knife and duplicated different forms of it. It has a chrome reflective texture and a wooden handle. I will probably improve on the design as the rest of the environment is built as it may not suit the environment I will adapt it.

NC: Narrative: Animatic (No Music/Sound)

This is the animatic that I have made from the storyboard. I think there are some issues with timing, as some shots need to be a little longer/shorter. I wanted to add the camera pan to the first shot, but my Adobe Premiere isn't working at the moment, so that is something I will look to achieve when sound has been added. As a group, we will discuss suitable music and sound effects.

NC: Narrative: Storyboard

I have created this new storyboard which is based on our new script draft, but isn't completely the same. The reason for this is because I felt that it should be more of a shock to discover that he isn't the knife thrower and is just the apprentice. I haven't shown this in the storyboard, but in the animation there will be visual hints, like posters, that suggest he isn't the knife thrower, and so will make the real knife thrower's appearance more understandable. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, while still trying to show a convincing story.

Assistant design: Line art + Orthograph

The assistant is the new character that we are introducing to replace the father we originally had. As we are changing the story, it was suggested that we ditch the father in favor of something a little different. 

This is the new character's design. I looked into the costume's for circus assistants in the 1920's and most of them had this kind of swimsuit, design with frills and bow's around it so I thought it would be interesting to try and include them in the design. 

As with Oliver, I will be refining theses designs after the color stage. (I will also add the feet back in when I get to that stage as I ran out of room when drawing them) 

NC: Colour Experiments - Frederick Caro

Using my previous Frederick drawing, I have done these colour experiments to see what ones with work best. I used similar colours to the ones that Julia used in her Oliver colour tests as that will show a link between the characters. We will continue to explore Frederick's design and see what colours we shall use.

NC: First Character Deign - Frederick Caro

By reading Julia's character overview of the father (Frederick Caro) and looking at the clothing/appearance of men in the 1920s, as well as trying to create a character similar to the ones in the influence map, I have created this design. I have tried to make him look like an unfriendly person, and one that the audience wouldn't like, through his treatment of Oliver. I demonstrated that in his expressions in his face and his pose of his arms being folded. 

NC: Silhouettes - Frederick Caro's character

I have made these silhouettes to demonstrate Frederick Caro's personality. I didn't try to create a final design from them and rather tried to get the right poses. I took photos of myself in these poses and then drew silhouettes from the photos, while trying to make them look a bit older and larger than myself.

Final script: errors fixed.

There where a few errors in the original script so this is the newer version.

Year 2. Narrative Script

NC: Thumbnails - Circus (Exterior)

I have done some thumbnails for the exterior of the circus. As you can see, I have used a lot of bright colours, this is because the circus should, obviously, look appealing and a fun place to be. They are all fairly similar and quite generic. As a group, we will continue to discuss designs and style before Friday's OGR. 

NC: Influence Map - Father Character

I have made this influence map as it shows gives a rough idea of what the Father will be like. I have looked at films, in particular, where the Father is very commanding and doesn't show much respect for their child/children. As the Father wants his son to be what he wants to be, he needs to be aggressive and "pushy", and this should obviously be shown in his appearance.

Narrative Script

A rewrite of our original script. I have tried to take into account some of the things Alan spoke to us about in our tutorial last week.

There may be some things that I need to rewrite but for now this will the base for the storyboard. 

Year 2. Narrative Script.

NC: Influence Map - Main Character

This is a quick influence map that demonstrates how the main character will act. As the main character is not fully suited to his role as a knife thrower, he is quite clumsy and not too sure about what he is doing. Following on from Alan's suggestion of looking at Jim Dales' character form "Carry On Cowboy", I have looked at similar characters across films and cartoons. Characters like Inspector Gadget and Inspector Closeau, From "The Pink Panther Show", are very careless and get themselves into a lot of tricky situations. Such characteristics can be portrayed in our knife thrower character as he lacks the ability to be perfect at his job, and that is clearly not what his job should be.