Major Project: Voices Ready and The Base Starts

  I decided to take a minor break from making Orthographic drawings after I received the recording for Smithston-Wessex's opening advert last night. With all the recorded assets, and some time spent polishing the Wessex Representative's voiceover file the voice-overs are at a stage where they can be considered ready for presentation.

  Largest drawback so far is while my goal in the initial pitch was a 3-4 minute video, the monologues totaled around six minutes 30 seconds, and that's with only momentary breaks between dialogue sets. I can mark this as inexperience with using voice-overs but it did validate the rule-of-thumb I was using when writing the screenplay where one page equated to one minute. I might be able to trim off some of the spoken words (two examples are I decided the year can be told though the scene, not David saying "year 5/year 6" several times and I cut out his speculation that Four was only a grub when it emerged form the soil). Still, all part of the development process.

  As well as voice-overs today I decided to make a start on the locations. These are only loose frameworks for now to confirm possible camera angles, so at present I only need outlines of the rooms, hence the extremely low-poly furniture in the stills provided.

  The roof is a separate piece for now largely because it makes modeling the rest of the room far easier. When it comes to shooting with the camera, it's position is likely to be more permanent. I plan to use this principle when assembling the other rooms.

Major Project: Updated Bios

With a more confirmed script I went back and updated the character bios I have written

Smithston-Wessex

Hundred and ten year old company
Formed from merger of two companies - Wessex Biowonders and Smithston Frontiers.

Wessex Biowonders is a subsidiary company specialising in biotechnology and genetic engineering. Its stake on the planet is the creation of various biotechnical products from local plant and wildlife that can be used to enhance terraforming efforts on the planet. While it is a company with a strong public image, even appearing enthusiastic about establishing mankind in deep space, Smithston-Wessex is a public company whose board of directors are dedicated to the bottom line and appeasing their shareholders. This puts them at odds with their science staff as the board's demands can be unreasonable at times.

Despite a popular public image, Smithston-Wessex's board are aware of several rising deep-space companies that could surpass them. Some of its board are deeply worried that if things start becoming problematic, the terraforming project could potentially remove Smithston-Wessex from the top spot of the deep space development industry.

The base itself was developed by Smithston Frontiers subsidiary Grayston Frontier Engineering, who specialise in constructing offworld habitats. Grayston also run the base's engineering department. During the story, Grayston take an interest in the material of Four's cocoon. Its lightweight but rigid composition make it a material of interest for construction, body armour and vehicle assembly. Grayston engineers would be fascinated in analysing the creature and how it produces this compound for hibernation.

David Easton

Name: David
Age: mid-fifties
Occupation: Lead biotechnician, Outpost Wessex-Choris
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

A senior biotechnician working for Wessex Biowonders, David Stensson is the lead biotechnician for Smithston-Wessex's efforts to exploit the features of the planet for terraforming. David has worked with Wessex since being offered an apprenticeship after graduating from university. Initially a talented researcher who developed a number of organic petrochemical compounds.

In his later years however his career has fallen into stagnancy. Five years prior to the events of the story, David was working late when his child passed away in hospital. David had been kept at work throughout the period his child was in hospital and after they passed away he took up an opening for a senior position at Wessex's Ceti-821 outpost on the far-off planet. He felt that he was not suitable for caring for a child due to company pressure and decided to fully dedicate himself to company efforts.

Although he was a man passionate about the possibilities nature provides for new technologies when he graduated with his doctorate, David has become more jaded as the excitement of his earlier projects become a more distant memory and his reality is of projects he might never gain recognition for. He is wholly professional in his behaviour. He is cold, focused and indifferent to the problems of people around him, but approaches his efforts with a cold enthusiasm. Never smiling until his paternal instincts are awakened in his care and excitement for Four.

Amelia Easton

Name: Amelia
Age: late forties
Occupation: Professor, Tharsis University
Marital status: Married, but relation estranged

The wife of David, Amelia is a professor of exoplanetary studies at the Tharsis University on Mars. She met David at a conference on the use of micro-scale technologies for exploring and colonising outer space.

Amelia raised a child with David when she was in her thirties. When the child fell ill, she attended it in hospital, comforting it while David was working on a project for Wessex. She has felt mild resentment for David abandoning his responsibilities as a husband and father by moving to the outpost. By the time of the story she has contemplated a divorce, falling for a colleague at the university but still tries to keep in contact with David.

Unlike her husband, Amelia has a more positive outlook on life. She still enjoys her career but feels uneasy talking to her increasingly distant husband. By the time of the story, she is considering a divorce, something she feels uncomfortable doing as it is as she is well aware of the pain it could cause, but hides these feelings aside as David's distance from her eases the pain.

Four

A native to the planet outpost Ceti-821 is established on, Four is raised within the base's biological studies department overseen by David. As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four resents her confinement, becoming bitter at the staff until David starts being kinder to her.

As a creature growing up in an alien environment, Four is highly observant of her surroundings, and becomes known for staring at new things and people to understand them. While still a beast, Four is intelligent, good at solving puzzles as the researchers discover, but always longing for the chance to explore the outside.

Although David comes to refer to the creature as 'her', the alien physiology potentially blurs as to whether she really is female or if the affectation of 'her' is something David used subconsciously to recall his lost child.

Wessex Representative

Name: [Pending]
Age: Late twenties
Occupation: Liaison-Officer for Wessex-Chlorin colony

A rising star in Smithston Wessex's executive boardrooms. This representative assumed the responsibility of chief liaison opfficer for Wessex's Chlorin colony, which includes overseeing the activities of Ceti post 821. A smooth and charismatic conversationalist, he found himself in regular contact with Dr. Easton due to the latter's reputation as a loyal and dedicated scientist.

His life isn't all parties and coffee chats however. As a senior liaison, he has a direct connection to the Board of Directors. And it is his job to relay policies and and requests from the board to stations and branches in the region. When David's affections for Four start jeopardizing the work done on Ceti 821, this representative is the first to hear what the board has to say about it. As charismatic as he is, attempts at resisting the board because of the erratic behaviour of one man is a danger to his promising career.

Sculpting Worshop: Head Progress

  I had not posted it while in progress aside from orthographs of the head, but Garrus has come along fairly well during the sculpting workshop. The only drawback I think is I made the head slightly too large, as it ended up using a lot of clay to get a finished result.

  I have considerations for finishing him over the summer, I have more clay on the way and aside from detailing and a bit of smoothing, what remains are his eyepiece and the three horns that rise from the top of his head. I plan ot stick ot slow cooking him, only 115 degrees in the oven, trying not to think too hard on the worst-case-scenario of him exploding but a low heat might help offset that risk. If he does, at least I still have a record here.

He's come out fairly close to the source design, the lower face might be slightly longer than its supposed to be as he has a very deep head. But I have sculpting tools to rectify that as it likely jsut means raising the mouth-line..

Colo Colo: Crit Day Submissions

Colo Colo Final Presentation

 

The Art Of Colo Colo

Colo Colo: Better Running Animation

  With the deadline looming I feel I am almost ready to have something presentable. Most of today was spent improving my run cycle animation which thanks to tips from Alan and Julia looks much better than it was. So far I quite enjoy what I have turned out, This feels like a huge step up from my previous projects, and so far I feel confident I can produce something effective by the presentation day on Thursday.

  I don't plan on showing much animation, but I can easily make up for it with turntables and an effective presentation I am sure. As along with the running animation above, I have also planned for an idle turntable and below the footage includes a few seconds of it demonstrating what it does when under threat or acting aggressive.

Colo Colo: Correcting Anomolies

  Along with making the eye, much of this afternoon was sepnt correcting my shader networks. As it turns out, my decision ot lay all UVs one on top of the other was indeed a massive blunder. After some suggestion, including moving the UVs and working with layered texture nodes, asa result things are much cleaner. Instead, the UVs are laid out onto two grids, paired together using a layered texture node. One of the UVs - in this case the UVs for the head and feet - were moved to the side. The UV maps were set to not tile, witth the head-and-feet UV set moved to the side with a UV offset parameter.

The eye has so far fit well. There's a slight geometry concern with the cornea but it does not show up on the model unless the camera is really close or the light shining on the eye is very intense. While the cornea does dull the eye itself slightly, It is still useful for that reflective spot that can give an eye life. I am considering intensifying the colours for the eye itself to make it stand out a little more, a simple matter of increasing the colour saturation. I also migth look into the technique used for the x-ray shader to give the cornea some presence but there's not much priority for this as the likelihood of seeing the cornea's form away from the iris is very rare.

  One minor issue that is coming up a little bit is with one of the mila shaders. Although unlike the last few times, this one is perhaps ignorable: Above is what happens when I try and tie two texture nodes together using the scatter and diffuse reflection nodes, setting the texture into the colour nodes. While it adds soem brightness, it messes with the lighting and shading. The rest of the body in the above picture is working with a flat colour for the diffuse reflection but I don't think it matters as the normal maps work fine with a flat colour parameter for the diffuse reflection. I could in theory go into the diffuse maps and brighten up or add some saturation to the skin to compensate for the desaturation that is occuring. But it is of no major issue.

  This is the diffuse map for the eye, based on images of eyes from varying types of small lizard and a few chickens. I am considering yellowing the sclera that makes up around 3/4 of the map. There was some consideration if the pupil would be slitted or circular. But i nthe end I decided on a circular pupil, as it would dit more closely to the rooster motif than a slitted pupil, which while beneficial for an unnatural feel, the creature is intended to be a mix of endearing and unnerving; looking cute to an extent, but hiding some really horrid qualities. A circular pupil, I concluded, was the better option for this effect.

Colo Colo: Diffuse and Normals Done

  Much of today's priority was finishing the textures. And at this stage I believe the only thing left is a specular map. When I completed the textures I imported the model into Mudbox, using the clone tool to clean up the seams between the various parts of the core body. While I think this has certainly helped the quality of the model, I ended up hitting a stumbling block with painting the textures in Mudbox as I was using two textures on a single body. I compromised by tiling a sample of the skin from aroudn the feet and transferred it to the body UV where I copied it, blended the copies using the clone tool and then used an eraser to blend the layer to the base of the legs.

  In the right light, the normal maps really define the roughness of the skin. The addition of specular maps may be what is needed to make the skin definition pop out and give it some moisture.

  There's still an issue with the line running down the leg. But cleaning up the model I think cut it down slightly, I attempted a clean projection on an alternate file to find that this version (planar projection, cut at the same point as on the main model) looped its edges around as well. Fortunately it seems ot be just the edge, if I move the cut-line down the model, the seam moves.

  I didn't get to shape him in Mudbox like I initially aspired to but I'm not disappointed. The texturing works out fairly decently and given the inspirations were cats and rats, whose skin tends to be loose enough to hide a lot of the muscle definition. I added some definition where it might be seen though.

  I feel certain a specular shader would really make the tongue pop. Something is needed to give it some nice, slimy gloss to sell it as an organic object, same goes for the skin itself. I'm sure with the right diffuse map I can make the tongue glossier than the body. The completion of the texture maps done however (aside from the eye but this is simple compared to the other skins) means I can put priority on the specular maps. Which might not take too long given the current state of the texture and normal maps.

Acting Workshop: Ninjas and Interviews

  Today's acting class is the penultimate for this term. A shame because I have been really enjoying it so far. The photographs here are of an exercise that Ryan (far right in the below picture) introduced to our instructor last week. The aim is to tag out the people next to you until there is only one left by way of performing a martial arts move to strike at their hand. Things get incredibly tense when the game is down to two people and looks like something out of a martial arts film.

  I enjoyed it, and while I was often outed early on, I can see it as a good awareness, improvisation  and reflex exercise, especially when the game gets extremely tense near the end when there's only one person left to be sent out.

  After this exercise there was more character building. Like in a previous session we had to walk about the room with random motion, a clap from Dan the instructor signified for us to freeze, while a second clap demanded we perform an action that corresponded to our poses. We were then to pick our favourite pose and build the character, who would be interviewed by the rest of the class. These interview sessions were very deep, with lots of questions and emotion that helped build a complex character out of what started as a single pose. But due to the amount of time taken we were only able to get through half the group, the other half (which includes me) may or may not do interviews with our characters until next week, although Dan the instructor says he has a plan in mind.for what will happen in the final lesson.

Workshops: Improvisation During Acting Week

  I've been neglecting mentioning these but lately I have had immense fun with the acting classes that have been happening on Wednesday afternoon. With the basics covered over the past few weeks, this class focused on improvisation. The images above and below were of the second group performance of the day. The first was we were to get into pairs although I was in a trio, and we had to say yes to continue a story. For instance "It's raining cats" was followed up by "yes it is, can I get under your umbrella?" then "Yes you can." I was paired with Lewis and Jack White, and after a few attempts we ended up with a story with Jack as a lemon who was a lemon salesman with a special lemon for a nipple that gave him a life-threatening side effect, and I knew because I was a lemon doctor.

 The task of the second performance was that we would improvise a scene that would be devised by someone else from the pose we took. When the lecturer clapped to single the end, the second person was to freeze and another person came up to repeat the process. It was interesting seeing how people responded to our poses, of particular note was one I did with Dan Reason, where he moved his arms about and I acted like he dropped an expensive painting. He pulled funny faces and whenever I said "wipe that smile off your face" he would pull and even bigger, funnier grin.

  An interesting occurrence was that Vlad made several scenes with Andy when their turns came around, where Vlad would agree on a date with Andy. This culminated in the final scene of the exercise - Vlad remarking there's a meteor coming ot Earth while Andy pulled a horrified "we're all going to die" face. They then decided that then would be the right time for a date.

  After the break, Dan - our lecturer - scattered the floor with various objects. The task was that while one person stood outside, the group decided on a desired performance with an object, with the main condition that it had to be guessable and  unrelated to the object's real purpose. (such as using the belt as a towel). The task for the performer (who was outside the room and so couldn't here) was to try and make the action though guesswork, the only indicators they'd be on the right track is by the volume of an applause as they got closer and closer to the desired performance.

  This led ot some rather interesting situations such as Vlad passing around the silver ball around his body (his performance was to be "alas poor Yorick" from Hamlet), Dan Reason kept wrapping the belt around his legs and my performance was supposed to be that I was a mummy. The only indication of what the action was to be was however was that people clapped as a wrapped toilet roll around my head. So I spent most of my time covering more of my head with toilet roll until Dan the lecturer stepped in.

All-in-all it was an amazing experience. It felt good to attempt these things and reminded me of the term "weird is good" that I concluded on during a life-drawing class. So while it was peculiar to be put into these situations, I far from hated it.

Adaptaion B: Colo Colo Sketches and Silhouettes

   I spent a couple of hours today considering a design for Colo Colo, bearing in my mind it was some vicious, spiteful creature born from an egg nursed by a rooster. During my designs I struck upon the realisation that I do not need to stick to a feathered rat, and so looked at more bipedal designs alongside the mixture of rooster, rat and snake. My personal favourites though are 17, 19, 9 and 20.

  The idea for silhouettes came form some initial sketches done with pencil in my sketchbook. It was  by number 36 (I had done the sketches first) that I thought I could try a more bipedal route for the creature, with one possible idea being that it could alternate between standing on two legs and travelling on four. The main motivation for the silhouettes came from uncertainty as to whether give the creature a beak or a rat's snout. But I considered compromising by inserting a beak within its mouth.

Adaptation A: Character designs

  Provided are the planned characters for each of the scenes I have planned: Two general characters (1, 2), a surgeon (3), a policeman (4), a clerk (5), a teleportation technician (6), a bartender (7) and a squirrel (8). Each figure consists of multiple layers that can be used to as control systems for the various limbs and body parts. Nothing too complex, the policeman is probably the most complex with 7 controllable layers due to the peak of his cap.

Adaptation A: Investigating Character Silhouettes

  Because my infographic is very mobile-centric I considered looking into a simple, but bold look to the characters. The contact sheet above is a look for an 'average' appearance within the animation, because of the variety of scenarios I might be able to play with the shapes, such as giving more muscular characters a more triangular torso. About halfway though the creation os this sheet I wondered about looking into the mascot for Android as an inspiration. It's a basic, humanoid build, relates very closely to phones but has a flexibility to it.

  I took one of the Android-related designs and looked into how I could play about with body shapes to convey characteristics about any included characters. I think the use of an Android-themed character works well with the intended message of the infographic. So my next task would be, along with working otu a storyboard, how to distinguish characters.

Character Workshop

Today's workshop was unfortunately the final one for this term. So we signed off with a rather interesting scenario. We were given a brief that explains that we were working as content designers to make a re-imagining of a game based on classic 1940s and 1950s science fiction. We were put into groups of three and asked to make three environments and six characters. So most groups decided ot split the work into one environment and two characters per person.

  I agreed to design Kromar'zun and LX-ER, respectively the main enemy of the protagonist and the protagonist's trusty but snarky medical droid. The brief gave some advice on Kroma'zun's race; intelligent, good with augmentation and highly intellectual but emotionless. So I decided on basing his look around the sci-fi classic of a bigheaded wiry alien. This particular one had an affinity with genetic splicing so I had to find a way to fit that into his character. A bit of a morbid one but I had thought he could perform injections using needles on his fingertips. Pre-Trek science fiction had a thing with freaky use of genetics as DNA was only a few years from discovery.

  Two elements about LX-ER that I was given was that 1) he was a medical drone and 2) in the scenario the plan by the fictional game developers was for him to be voiced by Alan Rickman. So I looked into designing something that was snarky, grumpy but during the presentation I hadn't hit the mark with the sort of arrogance that you can get with Rickman's performances. LX-ER's design was affected by what came up several times in the presentation - sudden emails from the client asking for something to be changed. In LX-ER's case however I had the foresight to imagine a drone as something small and floaty, which the surprise email said 'flying robots are in, let's make him like that.' So I developed the flying drone idea further.

  The environment I agreed to do was Kromar'zun's splicing chamber where he conducts all his genetic experiments. And here would be the big final boss - a Splicer Leviathan that thep rotagonist would have to beat ot reach Kromar'zun in an overhanging command pod.

  During development of the splicing chamber, a surprise email from the fictional company asked for designs for the Leviathan itself, which according ot the brief was a squid-like abomination. So that gave me something interesting to do. It was fun to look into a squid monster and avoid making Cthulhu in the process. He bears some resemblance (mostly because both squids and octopi and cephalopods but also the general theme of portraying Cthulhu is to have an octopus-head and a massive humanoid body) but, especially with the mouth, I think the leviathan might be distinct enough to make you think of Cthulhu but only loosely resemble him,.as the similarities were honestly unintentional.

Character Project: Developing One of the Strangers

  Today I decided to make progress with the character project. I've narrowed down the hero silhouette to flesh out for the final character bible to a warrior wearing a conical straw hat and wielding a bo-staff. I decided to experiment with  variations of how the armour and clothing were worn. The key thing I wanted to keep in mind while making the outlines is that the character is a wanderer, so his outfit would likely be an assortment of things he has bought or collected. With this in mind, I might keep away from the more soldier-like outfits (1, 6, 4 and 5) but perhaps the hero does wear at least a little armour to protect himself from bandit or wild animal attcks.

  When it came to the face I liked the style I had discovered when making the body outlines. And I tihnk it has helped in hilighting the core features of the face. WHen it came to a hairstyle my research suggested that among men there wasn't that much variation - many men in ancient China went for tying their hair in a bun on the tops of their heads, while facial hair often had a wispy quality to it.

  The style for the eyes were inspired by one of the Chinese artworks I had discovered during my research, which poretrayed two men in the middle of discussion. 1 and 5 attract me the most. Though I might do some exploration involving scars - if this wanderer is connected to Nian or the Sha, it's possible or perhaps likely he's had a few scrapes with them in the past. Confronting such a beast as Nian is unlikely to avoid some sort of struggle. So I might look into some facial markings later on.

Character Workshop: Environments and Some Previous Work

 Today's character workshop focused primarily on environments. How just like characters they can be defined by shapes, angles, lighting, mood and appearance. And can be just as crucial to telling a story as the characters that inhabit it, who are useful for conveying a sense of place.

  The workshop task was to design an environment (in the form of some sort of residence) that would fit a particular character. I was given Halo's Master-Chief. And my first thoughts were towards something industrial. But as Justin pointed out his armour also bears a huge number of more organic shapes. Nothing as extreme as Covenant armour or designs (which is all curves) and he suggested some components of his armour could be structures in their own right.

  So the first two were based on this idea he'd live something industrial, prefabricated. A military outposts that could look like it was dropped from space via an orbiter.

  Unfortunately I found they came out rather generic and not that serious. So I looked again at the components of Master Chief's armour.

  I feel much happier with this base than I did with the first two. There's a lot more going on and it feels more fitting with the Master Chief himself.

  The rounding-off task that was set near the end of the lesson was to make a scene out of two randomly-chosen words. The words given to me were "decadent tavern", which got me thinking a little. I ended up imagining a place of garish opulence filled with patrons who cared primarily about themselves or enjoying the moment. So a lot of fancy costumes,  sharing of drinks or all-round pleasure seeking. Stuff that more upstanding people may question. The narrative behind it is this could be a place where the protagonist of the story where this tavern is used is a place of temptation and danger. They are in the belly of corruption, so to speak, a dangerous place where if you are nto careful you could lose yourself forever.

  These drawings should have been uploaded last week. They were of a task where three of us were given a premise to a setting and our job was to draw three characters, one for each person, for that setting. The story my group got was about snake-based South American Vampire lords who had enslaved humanity. I decided to have a go at drawing the vampires, going though a few ideas like them being hybrids of snakes.

  One idea I had during the process was that vampire bosses could have some "super" form that could be used for boss battles. Which turned out a couple of interesting ideas.

Wednesday 28/01/15

    Today was another character design lesson where the importance and significance of camera angles were discussed. Directors are to treat cameras as the viewer's eyes so the position has to flow with the story as if you were there, darting around. For the workshop task we were given a genre and a situation. In my case I was given the genre of "steampunk" and the situation of an aggressive powerplay or a bullying situation. Designing the characters was kind-of fun and a nice break fro mwhat I feel may be generic characters in my current Script To Screen project due to its contemporary setting. Who knows, maybe I'll come back to this genre in the second or third years?