SIAN used FLASH! It's super effective!

...well, here's hoping the title is right anyway. I finished my Flash project and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.



I ended up making about 11 different mouth shapes for the squirrel, while the bird in comparison had maybe 8 and the owl about 3. I found I could make better mouth movements by stretching the shape of the symbol and key framing rather than using a particularly complex mouth, although I only really started trying this out with the bird for the singing section.

The owl was supposed to have a larger part and move more, but seeing as he was relegated to chuckling I didn't see the point of making the body and head two seperate symbols. This turned out to be a bad move once I tried animating the laugh, and got completely the wrong mouth movements and found that it ended up looking like chewing, which coupled with no blinks made the owl more threatening than anything.

So I studied this jolly video, because nobody laughs like the Joker does-



-and found that the mouth movement seems to be largely irrelevant, and that the laugh is all in the shoulder and head movements, so I had to make my owl wobbly and less dead-eyed.

I tried to choose a lot of little movements in the way that the characters talk to make them have a little more personality than just lip syncing on its own. I would've put a background joke in somewhere like most of the creaure comfort shorts, but with three characters in he scene already I didn't want to completely overload it.



Along with a lot of updates in the blogs. I'm not going to post the initial sketches as the scanner didn't take kindly to the coloured pencil I used, but heres the image of the final room.

I made quite a few objects considering how much I loathed starting this project at the beginning of it (I say quite a few, it's more than my initial plan) but I didn't account for them in the final view, so the toothbrush, soap, drawings and the inside render of a plughole are not visible. Which is a shame, I really like that toothbrush but it wasn't a particularly dramatic angle to do the room from.
The thing I liked the most is probably the mirror, although it wasn't a massive stretch of effort to make a cube and flatten it I really enjoyed making the textures to use on this piece (although make isn't quite the right word, more used ones on sites but edited them multiple times in photoshop with other textures too) but the mirror is my favourite texture on there. I'll keep a copy of it in case I get the opportunity to use it something else.

I learnt an awful lot about Maya with this topic, and now that I've finished this project I'd quite like to make other environments just to start slowly finding out more about the program, so maybe a project during the holiday for me.
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I don't often post stuff I find that I like mainly because I don't tend to think about it when I'm viewing stuff, but I will this week.

This is the new Gorrilaz song out, "Stylo". I can't put the embeded code down I'm afraid, but heres the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs

I can't tell if this video has something of the uncanny about it, seeing as the characters really don't look human, but Murdoc looks really weird. Also, Bruce Willis and an android Noodle with a shotgun.

Something else I like having on as background noise is the Silent Hill music video Usagi because I find it quite catchy compared to the more questionable Fukuro and Kinoko, which just disturbs me with it's growing legs...

But it's good to watch too, using the in-game models of Robbie the Rabbit (who thankfully never got off the benches in the amusement park). What I like about the video and also the game in general is the strange aesthetic of it, sort of like a dank industrial building. I was very tempted to make my Maya room in this style but its not healthy to keep making the same style things time and again so I just went for a dirty room. I would like to try something like this though.

SIAN used FLASH! SIAN is confused about MAYA! SIAN hurt itself in its confusion!

Continuing towards the steady count down towards deadlines, I'm still having problems with the essay, but may have finally made a decision on the question. A week too late I suspect.


As is in the title, I think Maya and After Effects are tying a close first with which is making me worry more (program wise, the essay is definitely CRITICAL HIT when it comes to my stress level)so I'll complain about those. As ever, Maya is like some great insurmountable barrier of commands the I need some kind of technical Rosetta Stone to translate. But I may have hit on the problem! Recently I had trouble trying to use the Vector interface, and it turned out the menu I'd dragged out was not the one for simple polygons but rather NURB's, explaining my fruitless days work.
The other time, I couldn't get the wireframe/solid short cut to work.
Turns out, I was pressing F5 instead of 5! (If thats a joke to you, theres no hope).

Aftereffects is sort of mingled with the worry of live at five, the hand in of which seems to change everytime I listen. My nails are going to get shorter very rapidly.


Something I am feeling relatively confident on is Flash, which I feel I'm actually understanding. I may be doing the beginners lessons, which I'm sure aren't taxing in the slightest, but I feel happier after coming out of the lesson. I have very short tests done in Flash but I saved them as swf, so they won't load on to this. So SUPER EFFECTIVE!

...Why the pokemon theme?

New Program Jam

The After Effects workshop went better than expected for me, as I thought my computer would crash horrendously before I had any chance to get the work done, but I found changing the file locations helped with loading the files on to the program. Although it's not very interesting, this is the banner I made for the surfing video.

Maya is still giving me problems by rewarding my noobishness with disdain. I spent hours trying to make stuff without being to access object mode, before I found out a day later that I was using NURBs instead of simple polygons, which ruined everything. Stupid NURB's, and stupid me. I did make a Doom/first Duke Nukem quality laptop though, and a Bomberman bomb which I am strangely proud of.

I have actual ideas for the background project! I'm quite surprised, but I have thought at least two of them through quite well down to which will be which in the colour category. I tend to do certain things I particularly like as practice, which isn't always the best for improving beyond my skill level if I draw the same old things again but I think I've chosen subjects I can stay enthusiastic about but which will be a challenge to draw and colour.

The pencil work I realised would be about strong contrasts in tone, so a picture with strong light and shadows. I'm hoping to do something rather like this

-which is an Inari Shrine. I'd like a closer view of the shrine though, and more foliage but I'd like to do stairs of some variety.

The coloured one (I'm thinking photoshop) is this kind of perspective, but warped towards the end. I want something slightly off-centre, kind of odd in the lighting, and I might have a lack of gravity to make it stranger.

For the specific colour pallette, despite not studying the other colour techniques we have to use I'm inclined towards a monochromatic colouring scheme using the very dark, dull blues of underwater scenery.