Week 13 Comments

This week was spent mostly by doing Maya tutorials. I'm a little behind on them as of the moment and being absent a day didn't help, but I should get them done eventually. What made me happy this week was my storyboard for the Chicken short. I think it came out pretty good and I hope it's do-able for when I start working on it. What made me frustrated this week was actually something not having to do with the class itself. I've been trying to figure out how to do Character modeling outside of class and haven't had much luck. Most of the available tutorials I can find aren't very good, at least what I can find. This is the thing I have the most interest in out of anything in Maya, and I'm kinda disappointing in myself so far. So if anyone has any knowledge on some good source of tutorials or tips on this stuff, please let me know! I'm currently looking forward to working on my 3D Short which I really don't know what I'm going to do as of yet, but I'll start thinking of some ideas soon. Anyways on to the link of interest.

This is here is gameplay for the upcoming video game "Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain". This is without a doubt my most anticipated game of 2015, with maybe... I don't know Batman Arkham Knight being a close second. But not too close mind you. I recently played Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes which is basically a short Prelude to this game, and I freaking loved it! Only one problem though...It's really short. But this game is feature length and looks tight baby. The technical achievements for this game are pretty mind boggling, and I really can't wait for it. But anyways that's all for today. Until next time...uh see you later.

One studio, Five Armies.

This article was about how WETA Studio went about bringing the last Hobbit movie "The Battle of the Five Armies" to life. WETA showed off some of there tools they used to create the army sequences. This including their render engine "Manuka" and a lighting tool "Gazebo". Using these tools they were able to create some humongous army sequences. And created tools to help Director Peter Jackson decide how thing would play out. Next they explained how complex the Smaug sequence was. Pretty much 90% of the scene was CGI and made with WETA's tools. Theirs even complex systems for stuff like Smaug's wings. And the article even states that their Army tool was built inside Maya. So when will we get access to that tool eh?
First of all I just want to say how hilarious it was how upset that guy was that the movie wasn't nominated for the Oscars. That just goes to show you a pretty film, doesn't make a good one. I have actually seen this movie and I thought it was alright. The CGI was pretty good and the story was....acceptable. But there where a few things wrong with it like how freaking perfect Legolas is, which is stupid. ( I don't really like that guy) But yeah good job WETA on the effects. If the effects where bad on this movie, then it would have been pretty awful I'll say that much.

Micheal Bay: How he does it

This Article was about how Micheal Bay does his action scenes in his movies. He starts by explaining how he wanted to do a shot where a car flys by some guys and the tire hits one of them in the face, but none of his crew knew what he was talking about. So he told them to just trust him and do what he says, and in the end the crew was amazed by his vision apparently. Next he explained how he likes Hong Kong as a filming location, and how he immediately wanted to film at a building that looked like a good opportunity. He had to deal with "p*ssy" actors though apparently as they didn't want to do the dangerous stunt stuff. So he told them to put on their big boy pants and do this. Next he talks about how he filmed at Detroit before it was cool, and thinks its cool. And later he also explains some of the new camera techniques technology has made, and how to film at nothing so they can put CGI in later.
I got to admit I love Micheal Bay in a way. He never fails to give me a few good laughs. Especially at that tire scene, that was hilarious. But yeah really all his movies are really just explosions this and crash boom that. You got to admire him for that, but it's a shame his movies suffer from just horrendous writing and unlikable characters. Though if this stuff is for you go nuts.  

Week 12 Comments

This week we started to learn Maya and 3D for the first time. I have been excited to use Maya for some time now, and I am very happy about starting this unit. What made me happy this week was seeing that everyone enjoyed my 2D short. A lot of work went into it, and it's good to see people enjoy it and supply some justified critique. What frustrated me this week was making the helmet in Maya. Some of the instructions aren't very clear and I had to ask for help more times than I usually do ever. I kinda hate making the dumb helmet but I have to get through it to get to the more fun tutorials and I hear it's the worst one so that's a relief. I'm looking forward to finishing the helmet and also starting more character based modeling which is the thing I've wanted to learn the most forever now.
Now here's the link of interest.

I was close to putting the the Ant-Man trailer (which I think looks good but some people are tending to differ) but I decided to put this instead. This is a full remake of Super Mario 64 (one of the best games of all time in my opinion) created by a bunch of fans who are passionate about Mario as much as I am. It looks great so far and now that Nintendo is not shutting down non-profit fan projects, this is definataly something to look forward to. Unless Nintendo shuts this down anyways for no reason, and if you do Nintendo I'll still buy all your games and love you forever (But I won't be happy about it!)
Also probably something worth mentioning is that today is my Birthday. So now I can officially see R rated movies and buy M rated games, even though they let 12 year olds get away with that anyways....

Size Matters

Sorry about that title but it fits for this article so I'm using it. This article was about how the manipulating of camera angles and of actors is important to make the audience feel emotions. There are a few examples of this. First being filming an actor from a lower angle to make them seem taller and powerful. There are techniques that also relate to this being, filming actors with less head room than normal and also not showing the contrast in heights in the shots of the actor if in real life isn't very tall. Then there is the opposite of this being filming actors from higher angles to make them seem small and not very powerful. The same techniques are used but now are adjusted by filming the actor with more head room than usual and filming other actors larger. And another technique is shooting with a wide angle lens to make things in the foreground to seem big and up close, and things in the background seem small and far away.
I think this is an important technique that should and is being used by filmmakers a lot. It is important to help the audience feel emotions through camera angles to reinforce what's going on in the scene.

Disney's Peepers

This article was about how Disney Research Zurich, has been making recent advances in creating realistic human eyes for Computer Animation. They discovered while studying to do this that like a snowflake, all eyes are genetically different. Not only that but have there own imperfections, asymmetry and tiny details hard to notice. To do all this, they developed a image capture system that scanned the persons eye. There are many exciting things that can come out of this. More realistic characters in Movies, Tv shows and Video Games, and making more realistic doubles of actors too.
I think that this is very interesting to hear about an I'm excited to see how Animation studios implement this in the future. One thing I think this will definitely lend itself nicely too is Video Games. A big problem as games try to make themselves more realistic, is dead eyes syndrome. This has been a big problem in all forms of Animation, but is especially noticeable in Video games because everything needs to be rendered on the fly, and it breaks emergence entirely which is very important in games. But anyways I'm still excited to see how well this technology is used in the future.