Chess Game!

Chess Game

Our task was to produce an animation of two robots playing a game of chess within 3D Studio Max. I thought this was an exciting task to do as it would give me a change to use my creativity and incorporate it within my work.

First off I researched into the game of chess as I have never played the game before. Once I mastered the techniques I could put these skills to action by animation them. I started by sketching a story board of the moves that I was going to do and which player was going to win.

I attended Andy’s seminars so that I could learn how to build the robot arm in the lesson. I did this and also used his tutorials that he gave us that where extremely useful. I learnt how to build the arm and how to rig it and how to add fingers so that the hand can pick up objects.  

Once I built the robot arm I created the chess board and the chess pieces. I researched online on how to do this and also used some of Andy’s tutorials. Once I had created all of the objects I merged all of the files together so that they are in one file. Once I had done his I started to look at different textures I had been looking on the internet and researched various once. I decided to go with an old dim warehouse theme for the environment with low lights, and a rusty texture on one of the robots and a futuristic chrome feel to the other. I think that these textures worked well together and gave the overall animation a great effect.

After I applied the textures I started to animate the robot arms and made them pick up the chess pieces to play the game. The robots complete the game of chess and the modern robot arm wins the game and boasts about it.

The final thing that I did in 3D Studio Max was placing the cameras. I decided to use one main camera alongside two other ones which I would use to focus on an important scene. I done this because I didn’t want to confuse the audience with many camera angles as the animation isn’t very long

 I had enjoyed this project because it gave me a chance to learn new techniques and explore further into 3D Studio Max. Also this task has helped me get my head around the actual animation side of the program. Using such things as rigging, key frames, attachments.

RabbitHoles 3D Motion Holograms at Gnomon Gallery

Kalima - Gnomon Rabbitholes

Murakami ART

"Kaikai&Kiki Movie Trailer" by Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami

Iv been reasearching into Takashi Murakami and realised that i have been looking at his work for the past year, and i didnt know it was him that created this video for kanye west! He has made cartoon animations for louis vuitton few years ago that i thought was quite good and different

Kanye West - Heartless

Directed by Hype Williams, the animated music video for "Heartless" pays tribute to Ralph Bakshi's 1981 film American Pop.^[11] It features use of rotoscoped animation, in which actual people were filmed and visual effects studio Opticflavordrew over their every movement, and references various scenes and backgrounds from the film. The video portrays West wandering through a city alone at night, with scenes of various women shown throughout the video. Cartoon characterAstro from The Jetsons can be seen in several scenes of the video.

Visual Essay ideas....

For my second practitioner of animation im looking at animated music videos and doing in depth research on the background of the music videos here are a few of the best ones in my opinion:

The music video for "Good Morning" is essentially the result of Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami bringing to life the various designs he had composed for Graduation's album artwork through the use of cel-shaded animation. Its story takes place within a futuristic metropolis called Universe City, whose inhabitants are anthropomorphic creatures. The protagonist of the video is "Dropout Bear", West's longtime mascot, who – as with previous albums – appears on the cover of Graduation. The story chronicles Dropout Bear overcoming various obstacles in an effort to reach his college campus in time for his graduation ceremony.

An edited version of the animated video was used as pre-release promotion for the album.^[2] In April 2008, the video was shown in its full length during a tour of Murakami's work at the Brooklyn Museum.^[3] The video was also featured in an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.^{[citation needed]} The video was made available to the public upon its release in the iTunes Store on August 26, 2008.^[4]

Visual Essay

Iv been carefully looking at different practitioners to talk about in my visual essay and i must say that i have come across many different people with many different types of work. i must say i always like things that are out of the ordinary and things that i haven't seen before, not only because it looks good, but also that it inspires me and gives me ideas of my own.


The 1st practitioner im looking at is Pascal Blanche


Iv been looking at his work and i havent seen anything like it before, i like the concept that he creates 3D objects then adapts them in photoshop. He also works with video games and for sony  on the first French/Canadian full CG movie "Kaena: the Prophecy. He is also the art director at ubisoft 


Some of his work:

My 3D haunted ride is almost complete! :D

After weeks and weeks of creating and coming to grips with 3D studio max i have almost finished my animation and i must say i am quite proud of it and can say that i have taught myself many new things on the software... heres a little preview of some parts of my ride, thought id give you a little taster if it before i add sound and edit it

Personal Update

Haven't used my blog in awhile, i feel that iv been neglecting it even though I have so much that i want to show.. i will be posting work that i have been doing now since my last post... hope you didn't miss me too much :)

Progress of 3D haunted house ride

After a few weeks of working on my project, i think im about half way complete, here is a preview of what i have done

Devil/freemason moodboard, 3D

Freemason pyramid,

One of the first objects im building for my ride  (still working on this)

Cart for theme park

The cart so far for my ride, early stages still. Still getting use to the effect of 3D studio max, i must say that it isn't as hard as i thought!

website design

Cartoon Box

something that i am currently working on, it is a cartoon shoe box, it isn't finished yet, once created i want to make a 3D animation version of it

Quick sketch of website layout

just a quick sketch of what the layout of the website im going to create, will be changing and adding to it as i think of more ideas, 

Looking at other websites

www.nike.com

Currently im looking into other websites and look at ideas that i can follow to my own website. I have been looking at the Nike website and i thought it was quite good as it was quite divided into different parts clearly for example at the bottom of the home page there are 9 hotspot to click on and it is a quite simple interface which is what i am also aiming for as people wont struggle using the website and then more likely to stay on the website for longer and also enjoy the experience of the website more.

John Coltrane

I made this as John Coltrane is someone i highly admire, listening to his music truly inspires me and gets me thinking about new ideas. when i was making this i was listening to John Coltrane - My Little Brown Book which is one of my favourites