Category: Virtual Principles

I created a pathway using the 3 point circular arc tool and the attached a camera to it with the constraint tools. “Attach to motion path”.

Then I changed the render settings and rendered it into png files to edit into a video, however the software wasn’t saving the images after rendering so I just had to make a screen recording of my animation.

My final model was inspired by this drawing by Mc Escher’s optical illusion building. There was a lot of them to chose from but this one looked like the most manageable to recreate. It was still a big task and doesn’t look 100% accurate but I think it’s because the building’s proportions don’t work in a 3D software.

https://medium.com/carinas-projects/building-an-impossible-structure-in-virtual-reality-5d275814c898

Building an impossible structure in Virtual Reality.

A VR puzzle game where players could walk into an optical illusion.

1. Squash and Stretch:

• Gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves.

• Useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions. 

• Usually broader in a short style of picture and subtler in a feature. 

• Used in all forms of character animation from a bouncing ball to the body weight of a person walking

• Most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.

2. Anticipation

• Prepares audience for a major action character is about to perform (eg starting to run, jump or change expression.)

• Backwards motion occurs before dancer forward leap action is executed. Backward motion is the anticipation.

• Comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. 

• Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation (eg. pitcher’s wind-up or a golfers’ back swing) 

• Feature animation is often less broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.

3. Staging

• Pose/action should clearly communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the character as it relates to the story

• Effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in telling the story. 

• Each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the overall story. 

• Do not confuse the audience with too many actions at once. 

• Use one action clearly stated to get the idea across, unless you are animating a scene that is to depict clutter and confusion.

• Staging directs audience’s attention to the story or idea being told. 

• Background and animation should work together as a pictorial unit in a scene.

In this lesson we covered Sound, Rules/Laws, Technological Capabilities, Architecture, Fashion, Music, Political Structure, Biological/Familial, Structure, Metaphysical and Dimensions.

The references I was inspired by the most were:

1. Sound

Notes on Blindness

Peter Middleton & James Spinney

2. Architecture

Avatar

James Cameron

3. Dimensions

Miegakure

Marc ten Bosch

They only stood out because those are the topics I am already interested in incorporating in my work.

We got assigned a task to try and 3D model 3 different types of chests all different difficulties.

We got set our first modelling assignment which was to:

I started my research off by making a mood board of a guide line of all the elements I wanted my fantasy environment to have.

Then on Procreate I played around with the hue and saturation to turn it into my preferred colour palette.

I also gave a short presentation to the group of all of my previous work so everyone could see each others art styles which was nice to see. I can’t wait to see how everyone’s work develop and was so inspiring to see what people already knew how to do.

While creating the mood board I came across 3 useful artists:

Syd Mead

Ralph McQuarrie

Craig Mullins

And finally we looked at an overview of 3D animation which I’ve never really had a look at myself. The sort of origin of animation. George Melies, Edwin S. Porter, Emile Cohl, Windsor Mckay and Lottie Reinige. We made a group pallet with a dump of all of the research that we found.