Digital Skills Development - Sultan Efe: February 2015

Digital Layout Work

Week 1

The short story I decided to go with is called, 'The peculiar life of a lonely postman'. A recent story I read and enjoyed a lot. I decided that I would use a particular page of the book for this project.

For this week we were asked to create a storyboard with 4 drawings of events that take place in the environment that's described.

-The first event that takes place in this room is when Bilido, the main character walks in with the Land Lady and is shocked over the obviously Japanese inspired furniture.

-He then accidentally knocks over a small table that he recognises instantly.

-He asks the Land Lady what she plans to do with the now deceased man's furniture.

-Finally he discovers a bunch of letters he had hoped to find when he entered the room.

We were then asked to choose a scene to take the room from and draw up a layout for it. This is the first layout drawing I did.

I decided that I didn't really like the composition in this layout and re-drew the image how I wanted it down below.

It is set in modern times but the resident of the room has re styled the entire place themed on a traditional Japanese house. So I drew some props in to make this evident.

Week 2

For this week we were told to do a colour version of our layout so that we can get the idea of colours, time of day and what the props will be like.

I've decided that from what I have read from the story I imagine it is set at the evening just at sun down so I plan to have a very orange colour scheme for the lighting.

I'm happy with my use of colour here, this is the kind of colours I'd like to use in the final texturing stage.

Week 5

For this week we are starting our modelling stage. I made my own folder full of reference images that are Japanese furniture, props and decoration ready for modelling.

I started off easy with some lanterns that will be turned off lights in the room. The main work for this model is going to be in the texturing stage, trying to get the paper effect of the lanterns.

I then started modelling a big Dresser. It has drawers coming out from it that I tried to recreate.

However I tried this twice and it somehow messed up to the point where I couldn't really go any further with it or I would just make it difficult for myself when it comes to UV mapping the object.

So I decided to try again and leave out any of the drawers, and instead just make it look like they are there with the textures in Photoshop.

Here is my new version of the Dresser:

I'm much happier with the shape of this object. And am ready to start modelling the desk.

I thought it would be much easier to model the desk separately, in parts so that the UV mapping and texturing would be easier. This is the finished model without mapping.

Today I started building a side table for the scene. I'm really happy with the shape of it. Like the dresser I'm going to leave the drawers until I start texturing.

I also started to have a go at modelling a cushion. In Japan they sit on cushions at the table instead of chairs, so I wanted to have some cushions next to the centre table. To model the cushions I saw a video on modelling with ncloth for things like pillows and beds and curtains, so I wanted to try incorporate that into my cushions. I had to do this a few times because I didn't realise I would have to UV map the model before using ncloth. I am pleased with the result though.

Since I had to Map this and texture it before using ncloth, I already have the finished model here.

I'm really happy with this, I used a wool texture on top to give it a more realistic look and I think it's good.

Today I started modelling some vases for the room. I thought it would be good to texture them later with some traditional Japanese artwork. I modelled two different vases, and this is them finished:

I also started modelling the main table to go in the middle of the room. In the story it says that the table was really low down, so it's a short table the right size to go with the cushion I made. After researching into Japanese furniture so much I decided to try style this table the same way, and I'm actually really happy with the look.

After finding a really cool reference picture of this Japanese stool, I really thought it'd be perfect for my scene, since in the story the resident of the place collects Japanese artefacts, so it's like a cool ornamental stool to go in the corner of the room. This stool was one of the most difficult things for me to model as I really struggled with the legs of the stool, and UV mapping it's structure too. Here is the finished model.

Week 6

For this week we are beginning to add textures to our models, so I went back in order that I modelled them and started from there.

So for my first model it's the lantern, and I really wanted to get the right paper texture and how it overlaps on lanterns, and I think I did a good job of it.

I used a paper texture from google images and created the pattern and colours myself in photoshop to get this. I think it looks especially good from a distance in the scene.

I then added a texture to my dresser. I spent a long time on this to try my best to make the drawers look real. I also added some traditional Japanese artwork onto the doors, like I had seen on a reference image, which I think works really well with it. There is a slight distortion at the bottom but when it's placed in my scene it won't be noticeable.

This is the final result.

While I was at it I decided to do a very similar texture on the small side desk, because I thought it'd look even better if the furniture matched a little bit. I also found another reference image that looked really similar so I did a similar design. I spent a long time on this texture to achieve the same thing as on the dresser and I'm really happy with how it looks now.

I then started the texture for my big writing desk. I found a really good reference image for this and tried my best to recreate the wood pattern on it. I used some wood textures from google images and changed the colours and added a lot of effects to get it perfect. This is one of my favourite parts of the room I think it looks really good with the texture.

For the vases I decided to duplicate and shrink one so that it could be used as a little ornament to sit on top of the dresser. For this I needed to make 3 different textures with nice oriental patterns on them. These are how the three turned out.

I'm pleased with how they look and the different patterns add some diversity.

I then went onto doing the texture for The centre table. This was probably the quickest and easiest to texture, using a nice wooden texture that I found on google images, it's a nice dark wood that looks really good with the rest of the furniture.

Finally I went onto texturing my stool. I used one large light wood texture to get a nice diversity that wouldn't clash with the table too much, and I think it fits the stool really well. There are some parts that are distorted but not easily noticeable at all.

Week 8

I now started to model the room itself. I probably should have done this before modelling the props but for me it's easier this way around. I used simple polygon planes for the walls, the floor and the ceiling. Then a plane for the sliding Japanese doors, as well as a few tweaks to get the shape of it's frame.

This is how the room itself looks like with it's textures on too.

I was really happy with this set-up, adding the ceiling back in and then adding some details likes books and a coffee mug, and I'll be ready to start lighting.

Today I started working on the lighting. I first added the area light near the doors, because the sliding doors are going to be open in the scene.

I then added in the artificial sun set, and also some shadows to the scene.

I then added some highlights.

Finally I just spent a few hours messing around with the settings rendering it, and trying to find something I was happy with.

This is my final rendered room scene that I'm extremely happy with, it's a huge step up for me being able to do this so i'm very happy with how it looks. There were a few problems like the cushions have some problems when rendered that I couldn't figure out and there was an overall effect that makes the image look grainy. I'm really pleased with it though.

Final Render

Character Animation Work

To start this animation project we were all given an audio track different to each other and had to start off with drawing out source material for reference. For me the best way to do this was to write out each line or phrase and do a sketch to go with it. That way it plans out best what each pose will look like to go with the speech. I especially wanted to focus on the face expressions because, my audio track is just a really casual conversation between two people and I really couldn't imagine the characters doing much while they were talking.

These are picture of those source material that I drew out for each line of speech.

After receiving feedback on this, I realised that it's a bit over acted and needs to be more natural. We also noticed that one of the characters is eating something on the audio, most likely an apple. I needed to focus more on the poses too so I went back tried to fix some things like making him look a lot more sheepish as he's calling and re-drawing some poses ready to start putting it in 3D. I also decided to have them holding onto the banisters of the stairs. The second character would be leaning against something.

We started doing our key poses in maya in 3D, I did really struggle with this because I find it really difficult trying to adjust to a new program. I was learning a lot of new skills at the same time, but these poses didn't feel right for me so I had to go back and change them a lot.

I wanted to in particular change the poses towards the end so i went back and worked into them more.

I also went back and fixed the parts that looked the worst to me. I wanted the poses to look more natural so I looked at a lot of reference and tried to act it out myself to get a better result.

Adding a second character

I then started looking at the key poses for the second character. The second character is the more calm one in the conversation and doesn't seem too interested in what's going on. We also noticed that he's eating something like an apple, so I needed to make sure I include that in too.

By this point I was ready to go back in a start the inbetweens. I tried really hard to treat it the same as 2D but I still found it really difficult. By the end of it I think I have a good amount of inbetweens, enough at least to work with the audio, so people can tell what's happening whilst they watch it.

Lip Syncing

When it came to lip syncing, it's the first time i've ever tried it so I spent a really really long time trying to get somewhere with it. I used this http://i.imgur.com/MFvTKQU.jpg as reference for the mouth movements and another one too and went back through all of the poses trying to lip sync it as best I could. The images below show my attempts at it.

It's probably not done to what's expected of me, but I think I did pretty well with it for the first time. I found it a lot more difficult than I thought.