There was the option for all design departments to go on a field trip to vienna to visit the many gallerys there.
however only the modelmaking departments students signed up… and of course, me.
I will be holding up the flag for digital design!
in a nutshell, vienna was strange and gray, i amy update this post later on…
i did manage to take roughly 1000 pictures, uploading them to here would take all year however.
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In note: This project should be exelent, i am really looking forward to not getting a referal for anything in this brief, now I have discarded renegade I believe that is truely possible.
The way phil worked this was to cut up words into three piles and have people take one word from each pile at random, the piles were
1. character
2. location.
3. object
this way people will not go crazy on there writing or try and do somthing that is way to complex and has already been done.
because I am going to Vienna I decicded to go and speak to phil so that i am not losing a week, i picked my three words and i got
my character is a “contortionist”, <– ill definatley have to research this
my location is a “Life-boat”
and my object is a “Skeleton key” (a key that can open any lock)
using these three I must create a story arc with a; Beggining, Middle and End this means that i must create a problem, experiance the problem, and solve the problem.
I started off by sketching the parameters out in my A3 sketch pad, I knew from vienna that there was a particular thing I wanted and that was for the key to have an eye on it somewhere, to signify that it “could” have sentience.
this is a concept of the Skeleton Key, it is an evil object, evil because i just wanted to be, and the word skeleton can imply so many things; death, undead, etc.
I liked the top section of this Key,but nomatter what the key shaft never looked right, the above is as good as I could get it, this took me 2 – 3 hours.
This is a Concept of the Door the key belongs in, it too has an eye to give a visual hint the two are linked, unlike the Key the door only possess the power to link to any object the key unlocks, only when the fear of the Key holder reaches a certain level does the unlocked object link back to the door.
this one was done second, and after spending an enourmous amount of time doing the Key, the door wasnt so difficult, took me around 2 hours 🙂
the art of contortion is the result of vast body conditioning and flexability training, contortionists can bend there body into seemingly impossible poses, either for personal exercise or to be able to wow audiences, some contortionists work alone and others work in groups of 2 or 4.
http://www.lvcontortionist.com/video.shtml
What I found interesting is that from an early age of my life I found myself to be able to do alot of this kind of stuff, because I im said to be “double-jointed” which is just a term to describe the look that apears when a joint is seemed to be moving further that it should be able to. I am not so much now but I still have a relatively flexible body for my size, (which is goddamn lucky). my mum claims it is down to me being “such a big baby!” weighing 11.7 at birth you could say I was forced to contort into my mother from the start of creation, HAHA because my mother is not a big person.
also, nearly 95% of all the videos I have watched only showcase female abilities to contort, so iwanted to break that trend, and also still be truthful to my own childhood 🙂
1. boy finds key
2. boy has to hide and contorts himself onto a small crate)
3. boy ends up on ship
4. boys boy gets scared and with the key’s power accidentally destroys the ship
5. boy scared of being alone adrift and key begins to destroy lifeboat senses danger to itself (because of now sinking lifeboat)
6. boy accidentally touches a box with the key
7. he contorts into the box and puts the lid on just as the boat sinks crushes itself and ends up walking out of the door he found the key at.
My actual story is perhaps much more complex than it needs to be, I was trying to grasp a uncanny /nightmarish experiance.
my contortionist has ran away from the circus,
he finds a suspicious door that nobody else seems to notice,
there is a key in the lock,
now that he is homeless he takes the key in the hopes of sneeking in later, but before he open the door it opens to meet his hand,
bizarrly the door opens outwards towards him,
he looks inside and it is odly black, so black nothing inside can be seen, the door closes and the boy takes the key with him,
just then the circus folk come chasing him,
he hides in a pile of crates,
[new] the key touches one of the crates as he hides
the boy looks back to see the side of a crate completly off [new]
squeezing himself in to hide he scapes the search party
the lack of air makes him lose consiousness.
he awakes on a ship
the ship is miles out to sea,
[edited out] inside the captains cabin , their was a large boxlike object on the table in the center of the cabin
the child became worried about his predicament and his leg hurt for a unknown reason
the ship creaked a little then resided,
the captain walked in through the doorway and approched the boy,
[edited out] another man came in and took the covered object on the table away,
[edited out] the boy paid no attention to the captain and watched the man take the box away,
the captain snapped his fingers infront of the boy and the child jumped and moved back into a corner,
the captain asked the boy questions [edited out] to comfort the boy but it was no use the more he tried the more frightened the child became
suddenly there is a man at the door shouting that there was somthing wrong in the underdecks,
[changed]the captian urged the child to follow and he did, the captain held the boys hand as they went down the metal stairs to see the comotion[changed],
the boys leg really hurt, he believed it to be from the box trick he had to pull,
[New] he followed the captain onto the main deck and
[New] down the metal stairs
they reached the place of question and there were large horrific scratches on the inside of the main storage area aswell as unnarural morphing of the iron hull, as if a giant animal had been clawing and punching the ship,
the boy looked at the scratches and
gripped the captains hand as
the ship creaked loudly once more and
then suddenly silence,
the captian called back up the stairs at the men on deck, but there was no response.
the boy was now terrified,
as they walked back upstairs there was an incredible creaking sound that continued until the captian and the boy stopped moving,
the captain started walking again and the noise continued even louder than before,
the captain stopped and slowly looked back down the stairs,
he saw the biggest hole in his ship he had ever seen, like a knife had been stabbed into the hull and pulled up along the stairs,
he looked down at the child
and shook his hand free suddenly pushing the child against the wall shouting “ITS YOU!”,
the wall bubbled as the boy was pushed into it,
the fear strucken captain tore up the rest of the stairs, the child quickly followed, not wanting to be left alone
holding his leg in agony he reached the main deck,
the captain drew his pistol and fired at the doorway as the boy reached it,
the ship suddenly lurched the front section buckled like tinfoil as if the ship had hit somthing, but in the clear sea there was nothing,
the boy flew onto the maindeck and the captain fell, dropping his gun[Edited out] and his leg began to hurtless [Edited out],
it hit the deck and missfired,
the main center mast was suddenly sliced clean off, it fell crashing onto bridge then the deck
the back of the ship also crumpled unexplainably,
the boy was in a complete panic zone, he jumped of the ship and into the lifeboat, he jumped as another loud gunshot came from the gun,
the entire front section of the ship separated clean at that moment and the ship rapidly began to sink,
the boy landed on somthing in his pocket
he put his hand in and found the key he stole out of the door on the quay the pupil was glowing red
[the captain yelled over the side at the boy,]
[the ropes were suddenly sliced free]
the lifeboat dropped serveral meters and hit the water the boy took a oar and paddled as fast as he could from the haunted ship and its insane captain as it sank quickly,
suddenly he shivered at the thought of being stranded at sea forever, the life boat began to crimple behind him, [spring a leak]
the boy jumped up and dashed across the boat [covered it and another appeared]
[the boy looked back and saw somthing he couldnt believe]
[inside the box was the port he left from],
[he slowly turned round and the boat began to flood rapidly]
he took refuge next to a small box as the lifeboat crimpled horribly towards him
the key touched a crate that was on the lifeboat and side of the box simply fell off
he quickly got himself inside the box and closed it hoping the same thing happened as before,
he closed his eyes and suddenly he [was at the place he saw in the box, he uncontorted himself and] walked forward out of the doorway,
the door slammed shut behind him, the boy was amazed to see the same door behind him when he turned round
the boy was also shocked to find the key in the door already, he checked for his own key but didnt find it,
the boy then ran back the way he came.
The main object in this story is the Key. The key is actually a sentient object that manifests fear into phsyical form, the ship he accidentally snuck aboard was also accidentaly destroyed by his fear of not knowing where he was, or why he was there, and also not being able to get back. The events that take place, the disapearance of the crew, all the strange things that happen for seemingly no reason happen because of the Key, the keys power also causes the boy pain in return, not a very nice trade, but because the boy was scared in a very general way the things that happened happend all over the ship at random.
(I wanted to aviod any gore or anything happening to the characters that would be unbecoming of a U certificate…… basically I just wanted to avoid needless use of blood)
the pain is stronger the further away from the box or the door the key becomes. (now edited the box has been removed from the story)
I really like this story, there are however problems with it.
1. the story doesnt show that the child is infact a contortionist, it is implyed by his circus clothing, amongst other things related to the circus, other than this its not displayed.
2. the Key is supposed to be a skeleton key, and there is no evidence of this in the story
3. the story is a little too long
4. quality of storyboard drawings.
5. WHAT SHIP AM I GOING TO USE :O
1. the child contorts himself into a box that is incredibly small at the start, this is known as Enterology and can be seen here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHhfo4ooC80
2. the box that I had as a similar artifact to the Key and the door is now no longer in the story, this is to add to the magic power the key has by being able to open any old crate, and not just another crate with a similar design, the child opens the crate on the lifeboat without thinking and contorts himself inside as the lifeboat is sunk by his fears of being stranded at sea.
5. this was a hard thing to pic! these are screenshots I took from SilentHunter4: Wolves of the Pacific’s Museum Mode (wow long title) When I started thinking about the middle of the story I was like, “wow! oh my god! im gonna need ships! which need captains! which need crews! speech, models AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!..
So I sat down head in hands and played my story in my head, and this is the ship that came to mind when I imagined the story in motion, the one in my head was a little different, but I can make that change easily. as shown below.
in the original ship there is a cargobay in the middle of the deck, and there is no lifeboat or doors on either side of the fore deck and the ship is higher up in the waterline. However I am god so I say what goes muhaha :P. plus I am already overdoing it a bit in how long this story actually is, and conveiniance is nice.
Its luckyI had a good resource for this subject (coz i was gonna turn too goop). Inside this museum are all the ships that were used at that time during world war 2. the captain of my ship has an old vessel too as it is set around that time.
our creative writing will be translated into a visual form
My story board was so long i decided to do an animatic of the beginning of my animation, it is on disk but also there is a direct download link below that is also available.
during this phase it was truly clear that these steps are completely necessary to fully resolving your story ideas, whatever they may be.
you can write down as much as you want, but it will never be as clear as a picture, you can draw as much as you want but the animatic helps the camera moves to become reality.
I originally thought about Pre-vizing my middle section, because that contains the most action, however I feel the end section works better camera wise, and relating to my storyboards it is the ending that I can get the most information from, which will make the process of the previz a much smoother one.
I rendered the Previs sections with the batch render option, uncompressed AVI at 24fps, 1280 x 720, I dont know why i did it such a high resolution, but oh well 🙂
the largest section of Previz came to 857MB :O, I used my noggin and converted the finished Pre-viz to .WMV format, same quality -10,000 filesize = win me 🙂
the previz was a relative pain to do, im still trying to get the hang of maya, i have severe “i love 3DSmax” syndrome. Because I know basically everthing basic in 3DSmax I have the freedom to do anything, whereas in Maya i feel shackled and chained up not knowing where the things i used in 3DSmax are and so on is really driving me up the wall. this needs to be addressed quickly, because i have started to find myself avoiding Maya, and on a Maya course that not even 1% wise. right now, to me maya is like…. a really cold toilet seat. uncomforting and not welcome, which is sad, to tell the truth th reason i use the toilet seat similie is because once I start using it I warm to it (haahahaahaha sick :P)
regardless I loved this project, it was great fun, my favourite part was the writing and the animatic, I had good fun doing them, the story boards took me forever to do :O was quite a challenge, i started off doing the same old “im hiding from progress” thing by doing everything in flash, so i immediatley stopped grabbed my pencils and metal ruler and sat in garys room, and i was particularly proud of page 2 image 5, the boy looked so ccute when i drew him, i couldnt believe it came off my pencil, too bad he never looked the same again, regardless of the grade I get for this project I have had the most fun doing it, I hope that my work refects my enjoyment.
the concept art is getting easier and easier to do, I still do it wrong by “concept art phil”s standards, because I use at least 7 layers in my pictures, I am just not confident or patient enough to make a piece of art one 1 layer, because its garunteed that ill make a unremovable mistake because i will have run out of undo’s, resulting in me going *POOF* and swallowing the monitor, if you see me with just a wire hanging out of my mouth, you can just say to your self “oh dii’s been at the concept art again”
It is a damn good thing i know how to use Adobe After Effects :O we havent had 1 decent class of Final Cut poop yet, so i was almost sweating about editing my previz sections intime for crit :O… thank you Anton 🙂
the crit was the worst I have had so far.
worse than being told off by phil, worse than hating the project, I forgot everthing i was going to say, my mind completely went blank after phil said “go for it, keep the energy levels nice and high and finish off nicely” i was so excited at finally telling my story and i couldnt remember it, it became phil tryig to remind me of things that i had just said, oh my god it makes me cringe to remember it, my mind actually went *POOF* and i just lost it, it was the most unfair thing and it has NEVER happened before, I just felt helpless on the stage, my slideshow was poorly constructed, i didnt think so when i was making it because i knew everything about my stuff anyway, but when you suddenly forget it doesnt help that nothing is explained on the presentation itself.
I was expecting to just be able to talk about my idea and the little loop I created in great detail and confidence as ususal, because i love talking about stuff and my ideasi can do it easily, but i just fell over and couldnt get back up.
Easily the worst crit ever. and as i type this all i can hear in my head is “ffs, ffs, ffs, ffs, ffs, ffs, ffs, ffs” 😡
ffs = for f**k sake
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