Kay and Milo Modelling update

Hey Guys,


Just thought you might like to see how the modelling of Kay and Milo is going. Any critique, comments or advice is most welcome :D

Thoughts On The Jungle Environment

I was thinking about how we're going to do the whole colour change with the star in the forest and began to think of alternatives to it. 

We've got milo and kay having a cold relationship at the beginning of the story and by the time they reach the big tree they're friends - could we build and texture the environment to reflect this? 

In the clearing perhaps we could have the cold blue/purple colours together with spiky, hard edged, straight, sharp and dangerous looking plants like this:

and then gradually change this from blue through to green and yellow and finally into orange and red with the plants becoming softer and more curvy symbolising their friendlier relationship. A change of colour from green/yellow to red during the chase could look cool too - symbolising the increasing tension etc.

My main thinking behind this is it would be an simpler task to do and wouldn't rely on some time consuming post production trick which we still don't really know how to do and could go tits up. Also applying that masking effect to ~30 shots will take some time which we might not have come the end of the project and of course it would mean one render of the environment instead of two - halving render time that again we might not have come August/Sept. We'd be able to get it right in maya just by changing the textures gradually. It also kind of goes back to the idea of a different colour scheme for different areas which was one of the first ideas we all liked but kind of lost along the way?

I know this changes the role of the star but it can still be a magical object - it could emit pixie dust type particles or a glow or something and that's what draws barry - and at the end the star could still bring colour to kay's bedroom.

I'll think about this some more and talk it through with you all on monday.

J

FFS! Have Pixar been spying on us??

http://www.fubiz.net/2009/06/09/partly-cloudy/

I've no idea how they did this? Rigged Fluids! :S

;)

actually they probably used something like this:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/texturing/3D-Cloud-shader-356.html

cloud shader! This could be the answer - polygon modelled clouds and then given a fluffy animated cloud texture - i think it could be more dense than the example given then a Physical Sun/Sky setup with a pinky/orange light could look good. Could even look at using the RGB lighting Pigeon Impossible technique to get the shadowing right...(i'm thinking out loud)

Will look into this more end of Week2/Week3

How Pixar create a forest

Big broad leaves facing the camera to fill space.

Final modelling done after layout and camera finalised.

Awesome lighting.

easy ;)

Turok Forests

Here some occlusion rendered animation tests from turok. Aside from the really nice animation I though that the forests looked quite rich and detailed. See what you think.

Also lots of nice animation stuff at http://fliponline.blogspot.com/

CamAnimation08 from Cameron Fielding on Vimeo.

Forest designs

There's a post here about the art design in Up and there is a good section about the forest, I really like the stylised shapes of the trees so maybe we could use this as inspiration for our own? There are also some videos of lighting tests which are interesting to see.

http://louromano.blogspot.com/2009/05/art-of-up_3697.html

Dungarees

I just saw this video, perhaps we could do something like this for Kay's dungarees so that the straps move?

Some of his other videos are pretty good too although I'm not sure if they would be helpful to us.

Bedroom design

Hi

I like this bedroom design. Notice the bookcase and the chest of drawers are not square. The Wallpaper stripes are nice too.

From an analysis of the use of colour in hero:

Depending upon its context, color has symbolic meaning in Chinese culture, and is associated with the five elements in traditional Chinese lore. According to Chinese ideology, red is the color of fire, and is associated with celebrations and all things auspicious. Yellow symbolizes earth, which promotes growth. It is also symbolic of power and authority, since the Chinese word for yellow is a homonym for the word royal, and the use of the color yellow is therefore limited to royalty. Green and blue are both associated with the element of wood, representing growth, harmony and longevity. The Chinese use the same word for sky blue and the green of natural flora. White represents metal, and symbolizes sorrow, grief, death and mourning. Black is associated with the element of water and symbolizes darkness and evil.

In many of his films, Zhang Yimou has used the color red as a means of making a vibrant symbolic statement. However, according to the fact file on IMDB.com, the spectrum of the color motif in Hero has been expanded to include red as a symbol for imagination, blue for perceived reality, white for truth, and green for enlightenment and peace.

Link: http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/3054

PS - I'm not suggesting we go anywhere near "Asian" themes

Some character concepts. I like the idea of realating the greys/desturated world of the main girl to her personality and character --> EMO!

Massive Black Concept Art

I found some interesting concept art on the Massive Black website:

I like the colours used in this classroom, thought it would be quite nice for the childs room.

The greens and purples really stand out in this piece and i love the idea of northern lights.

Forest pictures

For the forest I like the idea of it being hot colours instead of blues and greens because it is more unusual and perhaps it could be so hot it almost seems to be on fire, or it starts off golden and gets redder and redder as the character goes through it?











For shapes maybe a bamboo forest would work? I imagine it would be easier to pull off than having regular trees which would probably be quite hard to get looking decent:

Some ice photos

Here are a few photographs of ice and snow which have a lot of nice colours:







And I thought this black and white snow cave picture has a nice feature if we are using a cave as the portal to the ice world because a hole in the ice might give us the chance to do some interesting lighting.


Purple and blue look pretty good together:


As do green and blue- this is from Lou Romano's blog, http://louromano.blogspot.com

Blue. Icy. You get the idea.

another concept. Slightly less icy. More aquatic?

Ice World Concept

Ice world concept image

JR

Start

Okay, so we have to start somewhere right?

This is the project blog for our Team Project running from March to the End of August. Its a bit sparse right now but hopefully next week once the ball starts rolling we'll see this fill up with lots of juicy ideas.

Just a couple of things guys. When you post remember to add Labels to describe what it is your posting so that we can filter it later when we start to get lots of information. Put your name and a simple identifier i.e. Character for character ideas, environments for environment, story for story etc.

Okay, thats all for now.

Stay Creative :D