Isaac
The Adversary
Angel Gabriel
Easy.
Friday, 25 December 2015
Feeling the Cast [Define]
Simple post, Concept Art for my 3 main stars.
Isaac
The Adversary
Angel Gabriel
Easy.
Isaac
The Adversary
Angel Gabriel
Easy.
Character Sketches [Define]
Looking at my characters, out came the sketch book while I got the hang of their style and how they animate and such. Then I went in and did a quick painting for the 3 of them, capturing their personalities while keeping their similar base throughout.
Paints
Sketchbook Dump:
Rough things to give me a better idea of how things will all move and animate together in 3D. Preparation ~
Paints
Sketchbook Dump:
Rough things to give me a better idea of how things will all move and animate together in 3D. Preparation ~
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Thursday, 10 December 2015
Week 12 - Update Compilation [Presentation]
Week 12, last week. 4 Weeks until hand in! It's a compilation of my work up to this point and where it's going to go from here...
Friend or Foe?
The brief I'm doing is my own thing, and because I see myself a stronger character artist I decided to bring a 3D game to life.
Started by looking about different games, mainly 2D Isometric, usually pixel styled, with fewer details so I can have more freedom with creating the setting and the characters.
My game of choice is The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. For those unfamiliar it's an indie developed, action adventure game with randomized rogue-like elements. Visually it's quite creepy with a twisted story.
My first idea was a big montage of characters, but the work involved would have been shocking. So, I picked a 3 man main cast and got used to drawing them in my style before creating concepts. Here we have Isaac, the Angel Gabriel and The Adversary. Quite the contrast.
Concepts of the 3 just help me with the 3D build for the characters, having a proper reference image allows me to form solid topology so it animates well and avoids deformations.. I hope.
I did some rough storyboards you can see above, at this point I was struggling with a stage so I decided to at least plan out a full story. It's got a lot of focus points so that I can chop it up when I found a location to suit.
But where was the location? It was quite a problem for a while, I couldn't think of a suitable place to capture the games eery feel in reality. Mark suggested some places, so off we went.
We went to fort Dunree in Buncrana, and an eventful day resulted in some neat environments. Various assets of the rooms actually fit the same assets within the game, which was just what I needed.
To make the scenes suit the game a little more, I had to edit them in post. Following these sort of examples from Anime: Blood C and Silence Night. Movies - Predator, The Ring, Woman in Black, The Book Thief, and the Corridor. And Game series Crysis 3.
Which added up to make my anamatic! Showing the general movement and character interactions (important areas), a better visual cut up of my original bloody long storyboards.
My video wont have a narrative. So, knowing the visuals, the second important feature is music and sound effects. I'll take various footsteps, breathing, door and creature effects from the game and implement them faintly to create ambient noise as isaac explores his fate.
The 3D aspect is simple, they run off the same base model you can see the start of here. The main focus is skinning and rigging which I'll need to spend some time on. After one character, I'll be comfortable to shape up the remaining two.
So my outcome is a 3D Digital Composite, animation focused. There will be two versions, a full version and a shorter one showing the more important scenes and effects - more like a showcase.
My only real concerns are getting the lighting right, and the Adversary's laser attack. The length can be handled by having a short and long version, and the wings won't be too bad since the Angel doesn't have any close ups.
It's definitely a project I'm rather excited about.
Friend or Foe?
Started by looking about different games, mainly 2D Isometric, usually pixel styled, with fewer details so I can have more freedom with creating the setting and the characters.
My game of choice is The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. For those unfamiliar it's an indie developed, action adventure game with randomized rogue-like elements. Visually it's quite creepy with a twisted story.
My first idea was a big montage of characters, but the work involved would have been shocking. So, I picked a 3 man main cast and got used to drawing them in my style before creating concepts. Here we have Isaac, the Angel Gabriel and The Adversary. Quite the contrast.
Concepts of the 3 just help me with the 3D build for the characters, having a proper reference image allows me to form solid topology so it animates well and avoids deformations.. I hope.
I did some rough storyboards you can see above, at this point I was struggling with a stage so I decided to at least plan out a full story. It's got a lot of focus points so that I can chop it up when I found a location to suit.
But where was the location? It was quite a problem for a while, I couldn't think of a suitable place to capture the games eery feel in reality. Mark suggested some places, so off we went.
We went to fort Dunree in Buncrana, and an eventful day resulted in some neat environments. Various assets of the rooms actually fit the same assets within the game, which was just what I needed.
To make the scenes suit the game a little more, I had to edit them in post. Following these sort of examples from Anime: Blood C and Silence Night. Movies - Predator, The Ring, Woman in Black, The Book Thief, and the Corridor. And Game series Crysis 3.
Which added up to make my anamatic! Showing the general movement and character interactions (important areas), a better visual cut up of my original bloody long storyboards.
My video wont have a narrative. So, knowing the visuals, the second important feature is music and sound effects. I'll take various footsteps, breathing, door and creature effects from the game and implement them faintly to create ambient noise as isaac explores his fate.
The 3D aspect is simple, they run off the same base model you can see the start of here. The main focus is skinning and rigging which I'll need to spend some time on. After one character, I'll be comfortable to shape up the remaining two.
So my outcome is a 3D Digital Composite, animation focused. There will be two versions, a full version and a shorter one showing the more important scenes and effects - more like a showcase.
My only real concerns are getting the lighting right, and the Adversary's laser attack. The length can be handled by having a short and long version, and the wings won't be too bad since the Angel doesn't have any close ups.
It's definitely a project I'm rather excited about.
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Friday, 4 December 2015
Treatment + Proposal! [Define]
As I think about this module, I can't help but remember the Moving Image projects we used to do in College. All the documents we had to plan out. Lots of words.. Sorry Mark, I did wordy things! Lengthy Post Warning!
As I couldn't quite nail down my idea, I decided to do these things for my Digital Composite. If the idea is laid down then I won't change it as much as I have been. Firstly, a Proposal.
Proposal
I plan to make a fan-video for the game The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and it's DLC Afterbirth. Combining the areas of 3D and Moving Image to create a short 1:00-1:30 minute long video of the conflict between Isaac and his Demons. Isaac is trying to find his holy-ness but the demon tricks him into a deal.
There's no emotion in the video that I want the audience to feel specifically, it's all dependent on how they take the story. I do aim for a creepy, scared vibe for the child character Isaac, and a mischievous feel for the Demon "The Adversary". With the Angel Gabriel watching over his endeavors, disappointed at his fall to the demons tricks.
I list a Target Audience of 16-31 due to the nature of the game, and my research into who plays the series as a whole. And the Unique Selling Point of my project is the 3D Design elements, if I can capture the characters and vibe of the game then I think it's a success.
Treatment - Eh oh.
A more.. Lengthy break down of the idea and technical details. It's a bit too much to list fully here. I looked at the project like a moving image piece, so it would be easier to simplify into easy standing shots if I needed to (which I do). Having all the areas covered, even those I might not need, just allows me to have fall back if I needed it.
I don't look at Narrative because it has none. I also added areas about Animation and 3D Design to suit the project. I look at:
Mood - Focusing on bringing the feel of the game to the video. Looking at The Depths levels, and Sheol. Giving that creepy, run down feel.
Style - Making the scenes look darker is an After Effects job, but the creepy environment is a must. Something similar to the basement layouts I touched on in the mood section would suit well. Run down.
Camera - Fighting scenes tend to move quickly, fast paced. It creates tension between the characters and suspense for the audience.
Lighting - Low key lighting will be ideal for the video, for that creepy horror feel to it. Cold lights to give an unwelcoming vibe. The lighting can be recreated on the models using the HDRI lighting technique with a chrome ball!
Sound - Taken from the game, and an important area to convey the same feeling from the game. Mostly soft and ambient with notable sound effects.
Location - Uncertain to start. A run down ruin would be ideal, preferably indoors to capture that same game vibe. No Sunlight, dim lights, old, cold and forgotten about.
Characters - I'll cover this in another post.
3D Design - The 3 characters run off one base model with simple textures. Isaac is 'Naked', The Adversary needs a leathery-skin texture to add to the demon appearance and the Angel with his wings, and rags.
Animation - Under the same base, a similar rig and skin method can be used for each character. Get it right on the base then it's set for the rest. Isaac is a child, with limited movement - mostly walking. The Adversary floats and has more cat-like gestures and the Angel Gabriel merely stands tall over the scene and disappears.
Editing - The main focus is the fight scene and the deal at the end. Slow movements and cuts at the start will build up some fear in the audience, then the creepy mischievious nature of The Adversary can be focused on after. Angel Gabriel will stand his high ground at the end, giving him a powerful look and feel as an Angel of the Lord.
The Game - Gave the idea of the story, how it plays out and what the focus is.
Shot List/Storyboard
Done more as a storyboard. Without any idea of the actual staging, trying to work out how the story should go was quite difficult to the extent of detail HOWEVER I did manage to get a rough idea for the story concepted out. I did it roughly so that depending on the location I finally decided on, I could cut and adjust the story as I needed to.
Pictures taken with my camera, because my sketchbook will not go in the scanner.. I have to do proper ones on paper anyway, I'll post them up at a later date.
Sound Effects plan
I bought the game soundtrack so I have background music throughout to choose from. Thinking about sound effects, I will need to go into a game play through without background music and try to grab the ones I need via recording. Surprisingly, Youtube doesn't have the up-to-date sound effects, or the ones I'm specifically looking for:
Boss title music, door closing, Isaac getting hurt, a lasor firing, the holy item effect. Are the main ones.
As I couldn't quite nail down my idea, I decided to do these things for my Digital Composite. If the idea is laid down then I won't change it as much as I have been. Firstly, a Proposal.
Proposal
I plan to make a fan-video for the game The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and it's DLC Afterbirth. Combining the areas of 3D and Moving Image to create a short 1:00-1:30 minute long video of the conflict between Isaac and his Demons. Isaac is trying to find his holy-ness but the demon tricks him into a deal.
There's no emotion in the video that I want the audience to feel specifically, it's all dependent on how they take the story. I do aim for a creepy, scared vibe for the child character Isaac, and a mischievous feel for the Demon "The Adversary". With the Angel Gabriel watching over his endeavors, disappointed at his fall to the demons tricks.
I list a Target Audience of 16-31 due to the nature of the game, and my research into who plays the series as a whole. And the Unique Selling Point of my project is the 3D Design elements, if I can capture the characters and vibe of the game then I think it's a success.
Treatment - Eh oh.
A more.. Lengthy break down of the idea and technical details. It's a bit too much to list fully here. I looked at the project like a moving image piece, so it would be easier to simplify into easy standing shots if I needed to (which I do). Having all the areas covered, even those I might not need, just allows me to have fall back if I needed it.
I don't look at Narrative because it has none. I also added areas about Animation and 3D Design to suit the project. I look at:
Mood - Focusing on bringing the feel of the game to the video. Looking at The Depths levels, and Sheol. Giving that creepy, run down feel.
Style - Making the scenes look darker is an After Effects job, but the creepy environment is a must. Something similar to the basement layouts I touched on in the mood section would suit well. Run down.
Camera - Fighting scenes tend to move quickly, fast paced. It creates tension between the characters and suspense for the audience.
Lighting - Low key lighting will be ideal for the video, for that creepy horror feel to it. Cold lights to give an unwelcoming vibe. The lighting can be recreated on the models using the HDRI lighting technique with a chrome ball!
Sound - Taken from the game, and an important area to convey the same feeling from the game. Mostly soft and ambient with notable sound effects.
Location - Uncertain to start. A run down ruin would be ideal, preferably indoors to capture that same game vibe. No Sunlight, dim lights, old, cold and forgotten about.
Characters - I'll cover this in another post.
3D Design - The 3 characters run off one base model with simple textures. Isaac is 'Naked', The Adversary needs a leathery-skin texture to add to the demon appearance and the Angel with his wings, and rags.
Animation - Under the same base, a similar rig and skin method can be used for each character. Get it right on the base then it's set for the rest. Isaac is a child, with limited movement - mostly walking. The Adversary floats and has more cat-like gestures and the Angel Gabriel merely stands tall over the scene and disappears.
Editing - The main focus is the fight scene and the deal at the end. Slow movements and cuts at the start will build up some fear in the audience, then the creepy mischievious nature of The Adversary can be focused on after. Angel Gabriel will stand his high ground at the end, giving him a powerful look and feel as an Angel of the Lord.
The Game - Gave the idea of the story, how it plays out and what the focus is.
Shot List/Storyboard
Done more as a storyboard. Without any idea of the actual staging, trying to work out how the story should go was quite difficult to the extent of detail HOWEVER I did manage to get a rough idea for the story concepted out. I did it roughly so that depending on the location I finally decided on, I could cut and adjust the story as I needed to.
Pictures taken with my camera, because my sketchbook will not go in the scanner.. I have to do proper ones on paper anyway, I'll post them up at a later date.
Sound Effects plan
I bought the game soundtrack so I have background music throughout to choose from. Thinking about sound effects, I will need to go into a game play through without background music and try to grab the ones I need via recording. Surprisingly, Youtube doesn't have the up-to-date sound effects, or the ones I'm specifically looking for:
Boss title music, door closing, Isaac getting hurt, a lasor firing, the holy item effect. Are the main ones.
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Similar Suggestion? [Discover]
A fighting video between two characters, that doesn't fit a small 30-60 minutes video that I was hoping for. It feels more like a short film but I'm thinking if I make a specific part more iconic then it can be made into a short compilation - like a trailer.
Similar Concept, Different Game.
The sort of thing that I thought of first hand was a video about the League of Legends champions fighting as Stick figures, the link will be below. Various champions fight against each other 1v1 until a second one comes to help, and these characters will follow a pattern and rotate as required to fill a narrative similar to the game lore.
How can I put this into Isaac? Well the game has so many different mobs it would be easy to have them fight against each other like that, but there's no story between the mobs. They're all against Isaac and represent different sins and personality traits that is somewhat 'resented' in religious concepts.
Another video for reference was Dead Fantasy by the late Monty Oum. A similar concept to the Stick Figures but a more set character pool, fighting it out until one wins. It's got more a narrative behind the fighting.
My Idea Now
So at this point my idea was to stage the playable characters from The Binding of Isaac fighting against the mobs swarming them. It felt a little over doing it, and pushing a little.
Where on earth am I going to stage this?
Similar Concept, Different Game.
The sort of thing that I thought of first hand was a video about the League of Legends champions fighting as Stick figures, the link will be below. Various champions fight against each other 1v1 until a second one comes to help, and these characters will follow a pattern and rotate as required to fill a narrative similar to the game lore.
How can I put this into Isaac? Well the game has so many different mobs it would be easy to have them fight against each other like that, but there's no story between the mobs. They're all against Isaac and represent different sins and personality traits that is somewhat 'resented' in religious concepts.
Another video for reference was Dead Fantasy by the late Monty Oum. A similar concept to the Stick Figures but a more set character pool, fighting it out until one wins. It's got more a narrative behind the fighting.
My Idea Now
So at this point my idea was to stage the playable characters from The Binding of Isaac fighting against the mobs swarming them. It felt a little over doing it, and pushing a little.
Where on earth am I going to stage this?
Make it Rain! [Discover]
Game Cinematic's make me so happy. They look so cool, but I never actually go and play the game. I just want to make them. That was my idea. I wanted to make something 2D, virtual, come to life. I wanted them game to become part of our world.
I looked into various games to try and get an idea of how that would work:
Binding of Isaac/Don't Starve
These two games are built at an isometric viewpoint. I wanted to take this 2D world and give it depth. Make it real, make it 3D. My main star was The Binding of Isaac. I was surprised that nobody has even attempted to make a animation of any sort for the game series in 3D (Bar the recent teaser) the style of this game would be difficult to portray in reality but it felt like the best bet considering the surroundings.
Don't Starve is also unique, however at this time of year trying to get scenes of 'living' things and getting them to the decayed state and such didn't seem possible without a time period between the changing seasons.
Kingdom Hearts/Ori and the Blind Forest
Kingdom Hearts is a personal favourite of mine. A game from my childhood, I'd love to pull the fantasy and imagination Square Enix gave to KH into the real world but I didn't feel that I could pull the video up to the standard fans would expect from the game. I couldn't think of my own twist.
Ori and the Blind Forest, visual spectacular of 2015, was looked into simply because I wanted to make models that looked at stunning at the game did. More of a full 3D pile up then a Digital Composite, maybe I'll do that in my personal time.
3D Style
I needed reference for the 3D. Taking something not real and making it real has it's pros and cons but I want it to look realistic. I looked at games like The Elder Scrolls Online for an idea of how they made their models to fit a realistic-fantasy environment.
Other game models I aim to use for reference include Netherwinter and Final Fantasy. I picked these 3 specifically because of their cross between 'real' and 'fantasy' which would be my main focus area.
---
Feedback from Mark helped me finalise the route to go. He spoke about trying to do a fight scene between characters that symbolize my game of choice: The Binding of Isaac. With that idea in mind I looked at Angels vs Demons.
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Looking at the Brief [Discover]
Digital Compositing always sounded complex.. But neat.
The Brief - Thoughts
Looking at the brief, I wanted to do a monster. Some big weird creature that was all horrific and gory and.. Horrific. But I steered away from it after a conversation with Wesley from SpinFX.
Wesley explained that the better way to show people what you can do, is do their thing in your own way. So, I picked to do my own thing.. But someone elses thing.
Anyway, I didn't know what exactly to focus on. A game, a movie, a cartoon. I had no idea. My first thoughts were referring me to the likes of the Vindictus Character Trailer for 'Arisha' or the Demon Hunter from Diablo 3 (Links Below)Now it wasn't a digital composite, in any way or form. I wanted to take the idea and animate a character in such a way around familiar surroundings.
I was thinking creepy demonic characters scaling buildings around Derry and hiding in the shadows among normal living people. Giving a Legend of Zelda Shadow Temple vibe to everything.
I started sketching a lanky, skinny demonic character and how it would interact ontop of buildings and such. A really out there thing before I had any idea where I was going with this brief!
But that's just the first thoughts I had approaching this brief. Maybe looking on a much larger scale then someone could achieve in our short time span. Making it more difficult then it could be!
Equipment worries.
My biggest concern was equipment. I don't have the money for high end camera that sings and dances for me at the same time, neither a DSLR. A standard camera with high MP and ISO levels for days, with neat optical zoom would have to do.
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
Before the Digital Era [Video]
"It's kinda fun to do the impossible."- Walt Disney
I found this via a friend on youtube. They said it was 'right up my alley'
It's an interesting look at how the Master of traditional animation himself created the earliest idea behind 'compositing'. It was actually quite inspiring. I wouldn't mind giving this a shot, if I had the patience! Props!
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
Compositing is Digital! [Presentation]
As the sixth week strikes, a presentation day dawns!
Digital Compositing is becoming quite a hit in the modern world. It's something so many people desire but not many can actually get the grasp of. Guess what pond we lucky ducks fall into!
We've had some tutorials each week that I need to throw up here at some stage, but illness and 3D are not good friends. Vertices and Migraines? Please, god.
Either way, Week 6 is a initial look into our Brief! I'm going my own way, but looking at Creatures and Monsters over humanoids this time.
Digital Compositing is becoming quite a hit in the modern world. It's something so many people desire but not many can actually get the grasp of. Guess what pond we lucky ducks fall into!
I'm Kayleigh Singer, a student at Ulster University studying Design. This is my Digital Compositing journey ~
Either way, Week 6 is a initial look into our Brief! I'm going my own way, but looking at Creatures and Monsters over humanoids this time.
I'm a little bit excited for this..
Check out my Shadow on Social Media:
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