The life of Tobias.

Kid model - pre-head modeling.

2012-02-17T14:45:00.002Z

You can see in the background the template for it.
I'm surprised by how well this is turning out. If you saw my last modeling work, the dojo scene video I made, you'd understand. Hahaha!

The kid model

2012-02-16T17:03:00.004Z

Progress so far on the character model.
This should be finished tomorrow!

Client characters

2012-02-10T21:37:00.003Z

I'm alive. Here's some pictures that prove I've not been doing nothing :)

Long time no post

2011-11-18T00:07:00.001Z

Lots to do this term!

http://vimeo.com/30931231 My Simulated Client project.

I'm currently enjoying reading books about composition.

I'm also happy to report things appear to be developing with my client.

The context assignment is on the backburner at the moment, but that's not to say I haven't thought about it. I saw a shot I drew in my uni notebook that would be perfect!

Twisting wrist rig

2011-09-17T23:51:00.001+01:00

This is my solution of how to create a lifelike twisting motion on a wrist.

It means the wrist shouldn't collapse when twisting. The down side is it uses an attribute holder instead of the old orientation constraint, so wrist rotation is controlled by spinners.

Design Practice 3 Complete!

2011-05-28T00:59:00.002+01:00

The Dojo Scene from Revolver on Vimeo.

To celebrate finishing this project, I'm actually embedding it into my blog page.

This project was interesting, it was quite fun.

It was good to work with something that was quite specific. Having a massive blank canvas can be tricky. The idea changed slightly since its conception. Originally set in a cave, I was persuaded to have it set outside because caves are dark and lame, and the characters are insects that typically spend a great deal of time outside in the grass.

The project didn't start moving properly until I had knuckled down and figured out what to do for the music. I genuinely tried to record my own stuff but I'm good at making song-type stuff, not solo type stuff, and I'm not really a very clean guitarist so it was taking a long time to get a clear recording. In the end I went for a modified dragonforce song, I heard it and realised it was about the right length, with a break in the middle I could split it at.

Figuring out how to do the background was good, I wanted to use ink and paint which gave me the advantage of being able to use a layered background. The question was, how to produce this in 3d?

I was originally going to make a background in after effects. I tested this out but I found it didn't produce the result I want, and it was more difficult than using 3DSMax, and it would've made the process lengthier.

I settled with creating a series of rings meaning I had 360 degrees of potential camera direction to operate within - a flat one would give me only a very small amount.

I chose this idea because it fit the brief - I interpreted it as a scene that needed some conflict between a student and a teacher. The idea of using insects was the whole kung-fu student grasshopper thing. Praying mantis are also associated with kung-fu, hence the choice to use those two insects.

The idea of an air guitar battle, ha, that was simply deciding what kind of funny thing I could have the characters do that could still be an obvious battle. My brother suggested tiddlywinks. This would be funny, but it would be difficult to make it funny for a longer amount of time. Air guitar lends itself to humour!

Ready to go!

2011-05-11T00:32:00.000+01:00

Three trees!

2011-05-10T22:37:00.002+01:00

I'm a busy gardener today, I've already planted a hedge and three trees.

Background test ver. 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0

2011-05-10T15:39:00.005+01:00

Remodelled hills and now featuring distant bushes!

Further improvements include near trees and grass.

Updated bushes.

Bushes are tiled, making them appear less stretched.

Now featuring cardboard cutout trees!

Slight grain on the tree makes it look paper textured.

Here is a better pose.

Background test

2011-05-10T11:45:00.001+01:00

Depth of Field Enabled

Depth of Field Disabled

I've ditched the super-compositing technique I was thinking of before. After playing with it it seems like I'd end up using more time than if I relied more on 3DS max.

This is only a draft copy of my environment! There's more to come.

After seeing it without DOF, I think I'll stick to that. That's a relief! It saves time AND looks better. Now that's the kind of thing we're looking for.

Sneaky Peek

2011-05-09T01:41:00.002+01:00

I haven't posted anything for ages because I've been cracking on with the project.

Jonny posted a test render so of course that means I have to too.

Vimeo link right here.

I thought of a tricksy way to do the background and environment, and I have to say... thanks to Simon for the idea.

One more thing. After completing the enveloping stage in max, I feel like I've walked through hell and come out only fainly smelling of smoke.

Morpheus Morphing Morpher Expressions.

2011-05-02T13:24:00.003+01:00

Angry face

Happy face

What face

Neo is complete!

2011-04-20T14:01:00.000+01:00

That's an in-joke right there on the T-shirt.
The question now is, does the mohawk look too detailed to suit the ink 'n' paint texturing? This was a live-trace of a picture I took myself, but I might make it from scratch yet.

Morpheus - UVW mapping complete!

2011-03-29T20:38:00.002+01:00

This is how Morpheus will look.

Morpheus in clothes.

2011-03-29T15:27:00.002+01:00

I am very pleased to present to you my UVW mapped and coloured in Morpheus!

I think I'll tone down the colours a bit, add some shadows inside the shirt and so on.

The Art of Seeing

2011-03-24T00:43:00.002Z

Ah!

I have to post this link up to all the pictures I took!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/revolverc24/sets/72157626309990788/

I've not been back from work long...

I took some pictures of some cool buildings. The advantage of
putting cycling and photographing together!

Whew, it's due in on the 24th.

Website screen captures

2011-03-22T22:36:00.000Z

This is the prototype for my personal website.

I don't like the way it works, so I'll try and change it before.
I might even change it altogether.

Displacement maps - making creases on clothes

2011-03-16T18:17:00.003Z

So I was telling Jonny how to make a displacement map for creases in jeans, but it works for anything with creases, such as terrain.

So, I found a texture of denim, and I picked one with creases already in it. That way, you can use them for a reference to draw on.

Open your denim texture photoshop, then create a layer above that.

Now get the brush tool, select a soft edged tip shape, and half the opacity or so. The colour will be black but we want it to darken as you layer it on.

Now set the brush size to the size of your crease. If you're copying creases you have a guideline, but if not, you will have to make it up. Try to be as realistic as possible, and remember it will be layered.

Draw over the crease in one click of the mouse.

Next, shrink your tip size and then draw down the middle of the lines you drew, and repeat this step maybe once or twice more.

When you are done, delete your denim texture layer and it will leave you with a greyscale image.

This method produces an inverted map, at this stage you might want to invert the colours, but you can also set the displacement value in max to a negative number for the same effect.

Save the image, transparency isn't necessary so JPG will do fine.

All there is left to do is to apply the textures to something in 3DS max. Your displacement map is entered as a bitmap to the displacement map slot in a standard material. The default displacement setting is 100. You will need to make it a negative value if your creases are done in white. You might also want to lower the value to make the creases more subtle.

Below is the texture I used and displacement map I produced.

I tried to make an even better one, so you can see what happens if you put more effort in.

Here I used the smudge tool in PS to create even softer edges to the creases, but you can see it doesn't necessarily make it look better!

Finished room render

2011-03-16T13:23:00.002Z

The beauty pass took 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Now I can work on turning it into a website!

My room even sneakier peek

2011-03-15T22:18:00.001Z

Shadows are off, they drastically increase render time.

Textures are go! The window frame needs colouring in, and sensible stuff needs putting on the screens, and then we're done! Maybe an occlusion pass and a bump map for the carpet.

My room sneak peek

2011-03-14T22:26:00.001Z

This will be the basis for my website design.
Texturing and lighting comes next!

Connect.me

2011-03-09T15:33:00.000Z

A friend of mine informed me of Connect.me.

You might be looking at it and thinking, 'But I already have a facebook, a blog, a youtube account, I don't need another networking account.'

Connect.me appears to be the solution to that! It promises to work as a hub, a central point that you can keep all your existing accounts under.

This way, when you meet someone, perhaps a potential client, rather than handing out a list of addresses, you can give them this single one that connects them to everything!

At the moment you can only reserve a username.
Get in there early! Reserve your username now!

Morpheus ver.2

2011-03-07T12:31:00.001Z

Here is my turbosmoothed version of morpheus. Completely modelled from scratch!

And he's done in ink 'n' paint, and as you can see, despite being turbosmoothed ink 'n' paint still puts the outline in ridiculous places. Yes indeed, and for those in the know thinking 'why don't you turn off those weird MatID and SmGroup settings on the outline?', well, I did, and this is how it turns out.

There has to be another solution!

Morpheus's modelling is complete!

2011-02-25T14:17:00.001Z

Here is my Morpheus.

Rendered with falloff, although only trying it will tell if it works with a map.

He's also been tesselated and smoothed, which I think does look better than without. I shall be sticking with it.

Brief Interruption

2011-02-23T12:28:00.002Z

Well, my computer wasn't doing very well so I gave it a fresh install of windows.

This means I have to get 3ds max again, which is taking a long time...

Falloff Cel-shading

2011-02-18T12:26:00.005Z

This is the result of using falloff to get a cel-shading effect.

The problem with this method is it's difficult to get the cel-shading's typical outline. However, you can get a bit of outline, which with this method doesn't appear on a highlight, but appears in the shadow.

You can add levels using the falloff tool. If you keep the darker colour as black, and set it so the black level is very small, as in the picture above, it creates a black line in the shadow area. If you make the level bigger, it makes the line thicker in places.

The problem is the background. This method uses self illumination, and self illumination doesn't lend itself to shadows. To cover this, you need to put a falloff shader on the floor too, which will work with shadows.

Pro tip: Why can't I delete anything on 3ds max 2011?

2011-02-18T12:09:00.003Z

According to Autodesk, there is a bug in the slate material editor that prevents any kind of delete command from workin whilst it is open. So you must maximise it and close it, or open it again and close it, and then it work!

Cel shading shortcut

2011-02-17T16:22:00.002Z

Second picture Cel-shading

A tutorial on how to create a cel shading effect which promises to be faster rendering than the ink n paint shader.

According to the tries in uni, this technique works, but the technique for creating the outline doesn't. It does produce a cleaner and faster rendering painted look, but getting the outline to work might need a bit more playing with.

Morpheus with hand

2011-02-17T15:07:00.002Z

I made a hand! Which means thanks to symmetry I made two!

Always.

2011-02-17T14:22:00.002Z

Lunchtime

2011-02-16T16:24:00.005Z

Q&As:
Where can I get that delicious meal?

That's Chilli Chicken Ramen, adapted from Chilli Beef Ramen in the Wagamama cookbook.
Seeing as it's theirs, with little input from myself, I can only recommend you buy the book. This meal alone makes it worth it.

What's that video in the background?

That would be the Inspired Brakeless 2010 roadtrip video.
Get yourself over to Cleanzine to watch it for yourself. I couldn't do half that stuff, and I have brakes on my bike!

Morpheus sneak preview

2011-02-16T15:10:00.003Z

Here's Morpheus, pre-hands and head.

I'm using an ink n paint shader. The ink is weird though, you can see it's inked all over the feet, but not in the folds on the clothes. It doesn't change when you move the view around either.

If I can't fix this with modelling, I shall have to draw my own ink in on a map.

Terrain render mk. II

2011-02-16T00:43:00.003Z

Ok, I had a little look for what to do for outside lighting, and found the answer in the form of a direct light. It worked!
Now with a light positioned correctly I can slap some lens flare on there, and complete the effect. I'm pleased with that, for a quick mess-around.

Terrain render

2011-02-16T00:04:00.003Z

Here is a quick render of a piece of terrain.
I've applied DoF using a camera. I know I could make it look even better if I could get it lit nicely with some lens flare in the background, but what can I say... lighting is a nuisance.

Update

2011-02-15T00:25:00.003Z

Uni work -

I want to use the ink and paint shader for my animation.
I know that a low poly model will look better cel-shaded than a high poly one.
I know that a high poly model, or at least a turbosmoothed model will bend and animate better than a low poly one.

Jonny mentioned a modifier called tesselate, which he said puts more polys in without also smoothing the model. This could be the answer I'm looking for!

Also, as for soundtrack, I realised I could make a reasonably convincing guitar using Reason 4.
Now, this could save me the effort of recording countless unsuitable clips, but it would also take away from the magic of a completely home-made piece of animation. Decisions...

Guitar-wise-

I finally got round to giving Unholy Confessions by Avenged Sevenfold a proper go. A friend suggested I learn this back when I had been playing for 6 months, and I never really tried.

Bike-

I am really enjoying riding my Ciguena. It's like meeting an old friend, only you sold your first one and bought someone else's later.
I worry that I might not like the feel of my Because. I might even be tempted to get rid of it!

T shapes of my characters

2011-02-08T23:24:00.003Z

2011-02-02T11:54:00.000Z

White top, jeans and a purple bandana!

2011-02-02T11:02:00.002Z

This is a t-shaped Morpheus character.
Undecided on the outfit colour, I could leave it white like a karate outfit, but I could colour it in like a hippie outfit, which would change how the character lends itself to the narrative.

2011-02-01T22:10:00.002Z

This is part of the development of my morpheus character.
He still looks reasonably like a praying mantis, I think.

Also the first real go of my new wacom bamboo tablet!

The Button

2011-01-19T13:07:00.003Z

It's been too long.

Here's the link to my robot slapstick animation: here.

Enjoy!

Robot Slapstick

2010-10-06T12:55:00.001+01:00

Parallel parking.. It's a nightmare when this happens.

Vimeo video

Moody lair

2010-03-15T17:12:00.002Z

Here's a couple of previews of my lair.

Abstract

2010-03-08T20:00:00.002Z

I've made it until march without posting a thing!

Here's an abstract -

The purpose of this visual essay is to explain which pathway I have chosen, and how I have come to choose it. Things I have looked at include second and third year's blogs, to find out more about what is covered on each pathway, which has helped me to decide which pathway I will enjoy the most.
I shall also be looking at practitioners, the work of which has inspired me to choose the pathway.
The essay is formed from pictures and captions, some pictures being of work I have done, and others of work by the practitioners I am relating to.

Writing task for Jools

2010-01-25T16:39:00.002Z

In the past when I have been creative, I only really create for myself. When I've been asked to produce things at college or uni, it would still be considered for yourself than for anyone else - you are really only creating to further your knowledge of creating. Even when playing the guitar, when coming up with my own things, I don't play it for anyone else, just myself.
Thus, I would say that the reason I create stuff is either to learn to create it, or to have a record of what I'm able to do.
I feel that this is the way I have always done it. It's a great feeling to step back from something you've been working on, and to feel that you have done a good job.
As a result, I want to be able to work in an environment where I am able to work at my own pace. I find it difficult to generate ideas without any inspiration, so perhaps a place where I can be a part of a team would be ideal.
I think I'd want to work in advertising, but this puts me in a difficult position in terms of which pathway to choose - choosing the pathway for film work would help with learning editing techniques and filming techniques for adverts with people in them. Choosing the animation pathway will teach me how to create 3D and 2D animated adverts. Choosing the web and flash pathway will teach me how to animate in flash, which I can see as being possibly the least useful, depending on how big flash becomes in the future, however I would much like to learn to use actionscript.

I suppose I would need to perform exploratory/descriptive research to find out more about specific jobs within creating adverts.
I like finding about new things, although I also like to find out how things work, which doesn't seem to be covered by those listed by Jools, although to categorise it I would probably say it comes under descriptive. I don't think I have a particular aversion to any of the types of research so much as I have an aversion of distancing myself too much from actually creating things. Nevertheless, research is a very necessary process, and often it can uncover something that you hadn't previously realised.
I can't say that any of the forms of research feel particularly irrelevant either. As much as asking questionnaires or looking at research performed by agencies is a vital form of research, taking a step back and looking at what you've done can also help to point you in new directions.

I fear I have followed the Q-A structure rather closely, but I was struggling to think how to structure it otherwise!

NIGHT SOUND

2009-12-08T14:24:00.003Z

NIGHT SOUND

NIGHT SOUND on Deviant Art.

There you go... Enjoy.
Yes, it has a violence/gore content rating.
Well, beating a burglar over the head with a bowling pin and being engaged in a knife fight are pretty violent!

Check out the credits page, lol. ;)

Interactive Narrative

2009-12-08T01:21:00.000Z

NIGHT SOUND.

That is all.

One shot film

2009-11-23T21:30:00.001Z

Typical youtube quality.

The E-sting

2009-11-22T18:46:00.000Z

My favourite piece of work.

Some college work

2009-11-22T18:37:00.004Z

The third picture is the film poster I mentioned a few posts ago - The End Of The World, which took me very little time, and produced surprisingly good results!

The second is a piece of typography I produced, with the words Misery, Victim and Ventilation. Most of it is made up of text. The blood and the person are made from Victim, the drips at the back are made of Misery, and the Ventilation is simply a vent. A bit of a cop-out maybe, but it works!

The drips and the water effect were both produced by experimenting with photocopying, specifically what happens when you move what you're photocopying as it's photocopying.

The first picture is a Saul Bass inspired take on a film poster for Iron Man. It's not got all the text on, as I never got round to finishing it.

The Meal Project

2009-11-17T13:01:00.003Z

If you've seen me wandering around with a camera taking pictures of lectures and things, that's because for today - tuesday 17th - I'm taking pictures for the meal project, which is meant to involve taking a picture every minute of each hour of the day. I say meant to, a picture a minute is a little impractical for me, seeing as 1 - I'd have to stop every minute on my ride to Uni up the big hill that is ilkeston road, which I don't want to do, and more importantly, my camera won't hold that many images.

I'll probably end up with around 400, hopefully 600.

I'll be sure to post a few up, some of them are quite interesting already!

2009-11-10T13:45:00.000Z

This is the single best commercial you will ever see. It was never allowed on TV, but you can't really see why. Give it a watch, you'll like it!

Hoverbike

2009-11-09T20:53:00.000Z

After much procrastination, here is my pixilation video:

Untitled from Revolver on Vimeo.

Youtube video uploading

2009-11-09T17:15:00.004Z

Well, I'm getting round to uploading my video to youtube. After the tutorial with Simon, he suggested looking at the proper sizes that youtube uses, to minimize the loss of quality youtube causes with compressing. I found a useful link - http://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_you_tube.html

It tells you about what codec youtube uses, and what size. To get the most from youtube, export your videos with the correct size and the appropriate codecs!

And here - http://www.vimeo.com/help/compression - is the same for vimeo. Vimeo's a little less mainstream than youtube, which is good because you get a hell of a lot less shit on there.

Finally - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=53c9daac1f8dde71&hl=en - this link tells you how to correctly embed videos on blogger with regards to the sizing. It turns out that copying the youtube embed code will produce a video that's too wide for your blog, so this link tells you how to sort that out.

Wet

2009-11-03T10:45:00.002Z

Dance or leave...

Well, I was never going to take the dance option whilst soaking wet.

Design Process - TL;DR - Idea = :D no idea = >(

2009-11-03T00:50:00.003Z

Another thing we were told to do... write up our design processes.

Well, one notable thing about how I work is, I need an idea. I can't do anything without one. I call it idea stagnation, because that's what it is - lack of motion.
I don't get on well with brainstorms. I don't like doing them because I don't come up with many ideas like that. It helps a little bit, a bit like one person pushing a car.
Where does the idea come from?
I don't just want to say, it turns up out of nowhere, but that's pretty much it. I can't imagine it working in any other way.
It's sort of a combination of what I know I can do, what I think I could manage, what's already out there, and a bit of je ne sais quoi.

An example would be the ident project in college.
My first idea was to have a sort of spoof of the simpson's Battle Seizure Robots. I decided that drawing the robots was out of my reach skills-wise, and then switched to another idea, which was a bomb-disposal squad/sort of parody of 24. I wasn't too sure about this idea, being that it was quite heavy on the drawing work again.
Then, I thought of my third, final idea, which I thought went better with the E4's mood, which is slightly dark and strange, but slightly funny too. The idea was to have TVs that had been thrown away onto a tip to turn themselves on and play E4 idents. I'll have to get round to uploading that to here, I think it's my best piece of work by far.

An example of idea stagnation is the movie poster project. This project had a huge run-up, where we had to research film posters beforehand. I chose to do a sci-fi type of film, but I think the brief was too broad, which is another cause of idea stagnation. I ended up pretty much doing the poster on the final day of hand in - it was called 'The End of The World' and was a photoshopped version of a picture I took from a plane of a view of Warsaw, to look like the whole place was on fire. I think it turned out well, considering I think it took me half an hour from start to finish, or something ridiculous like that.

If I've got a good idea, I tend to work pretty fast. It's sort of consuming. It occupies my thoughts a lot, so I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve it. The E4 ident is the best example again - I work in a supermarket, and I actually came up with the idea for the TVs whilst sat at the till with nothing to do. I quickly drew a rough storyboard on reciept paper. It went through a couple of revisions, the original being that broken screens would heal like skin, and after being possessed by the E4 ident, would become broken again.
I was advised by my tutor to use AfterEffects for animation instead of flash, which was my usual medium for animation. This was pivotal - the finished product as it would've been in flash would've been no where near as good. However, as I had to use more still images, I found that making cracks in the TV screens disappear would be too difficult for me.

I think that storyboarding is an important part of designing something like animation. Without knowing where to go, I tend to head for the end too quickly.
Using a rough storyboard is good because it doesn't take too long to produce, so it allows you to change the idea without losing a lot of hard work.

I'm not sure what else to say at this point, other than look at the time!
I hope I'm not the only person who works this way, but at the same time, it would be cool as well :P

Jippii Golf

2009-11-03T00:43:00.002Z

http://www.jippii.lv/?st4w0ZE1XsQBavszuq7wTEbJb

And it is written, Tovijah 21:17, 'I am the lord of Jippii Golf, and all who oppose me shall fail.'

Seriously, it's in there, look it up yourself.

Update as of 17/02/2011

Jippii has since updated all of its sites to the newest format, thus removing the legendary Minigolf game. And so, I retire (mostly) undefeated.

Bad layouts

2009-11-03T00:22:00.002Z

Admittedly, I've not tried as hard with this as I could have... partially because I didn't remember to look until not that long ago.
Bad layout design is pretty tough to come across in the print industry because having good layouts is the whole point. However, I can think of a good example of layout design that's always nibbled away at me when I've seen it. Page spreads. Occasionally you'll get a magazine feature that covers two pages. I mean, with a picture that goes across both, or a table or some other type of layout, where it seems it's been designed as a page of a3 rather than two a4s. This always results in that annoying little bit of picture or text you can't see because it's right in the spine of the magazine. Frustrating, especially when you see a picture you want to scan in that covers two pages, and the part in the middle is always lost. I guess it doesn't relate much to typography, but it occurs with type too.

Pixilation update

2009-10-29T14:08:00.002Z

I finished my pixilation project.
The video is to the track Twice by Little Dragon.
Video to come soon!

Pixilation

2009-10-26T18:41:00.003Z

The project I'm working on at the moment is pixilation.

This is a frame from my project, entitled 'Hoverbike'.
Yes... It's not been easy. Bunnyhopping so many times wears you out, that's for sure. What's frustrating is the amount of time it takes to do it, the fact I've got not much time to do it in, the fact my brother's not avaliable much for taking the pictures, and most importantly the fact the first few photos have come out RUBBISH!

A song

2009-10-12T20:32:00.003+01:00

I wrote a song.. I still think there needs to be a couple more lines, though.
I've got the music to go along with it, but an attempt at miking up my amp failed - the microphone could pick up the sound of the metronome, despite the fact that sound came out through the headphones only. Very strange.
I'll post it up if I get round to recording it, but don't expect me to sing!

Edit: scratch that, I've blown my line in on my computer. No recording for me.

Video camera!

2009-10-07T00:46:00.000+01:00

I bought a video camera early this year... and it's taken me this long to get the piece I needed to let me upload my videos. Looking forwards to getting stuck in to video editing now. Keep your eyes peeled, expect some kind of riding video to turn up here soon.

Whiteboard Animation

2009-10-06T17:09:00.000+01:00

At Uni today, I found myself in a group of 6 people.
The task - create a 10 second 12fps animation using a whiteboard, a pen and a camera.
The plot - move a box from one side of a house to another.
The plan - we chose to have a large diglett shaped monster grow a hand, pick up the box, attempt to eat it and then spit it out to the other side of the house.
The result - I may post the video up at some point. It started off well, and decsended into chaos, with such additional features as a meteor that landed on the house, a plane that turned into a bird, that landed on the house... a car that rose from the ground, as well as a plant that grew into a flower that turned firstly into pacman and then into a yin-yang and then into a black hole.

Don't ask!

Welcome to my blog

2009-10-06T13:12:00.000+01:00

Hi, this is my blog. I might end up using this a lot, or not, who knows. It should be good for keeping track of the work I'm up to, we'll just see if to makes it into routine or not, ha.