TEXTURE TIME!

After creating my 3D plant, I discovered how much I love to texture. I decided to go crazy and texture several assets for our film. Here are all the models I textured for the film so far.

PLANETS

PLANTS

ASTEROIDS 

Concept Painting

Toward the end of our film, the celestial being character realizes he is actually destroying life in efforts to create a star. In shock he turns to see past creations that are destroyed and broken. Going off our color key I created a concept digital painting that depicts this scene.

Before and After:Asteroid

After texturing my plant I wanted to try to texture something less organic. Check out my first and second pass at texturing an asteroid!

BEFORE

AFTER

Texturing: Plant

After I modeled and UVed my plant I began texturing in Mudbox. My first texture came out like this...

This texture was mainly just a practice round since I had never used Mudbox before. I painted the plant freely without referring back to anything. I was trying to learn the different digital painting tools and varies techniques that the program software provided. 

After playing around, I then used our style guide and model sheet for reference and textured the plant accordingly. Below are my results. 

Modeling: Plant

This week according to the production schedule, everyone also needed to focus on their assigned assets/characters to model and UV. I know I am not the best at modeling and am fully aware that my first model most likely won't be useable, but with each rendition I plan on learning and getting much better so that I reach a quality I know fit for our film. Right now I'm currently working on a plant that will be located on a planet that the satellite character enters.

My first attempt at the model resulted in this...

INT014 001 AJM from Ashley Jane on Vimeo.

After watching a few tutorials I learned a better way of creating roots by creating a curve, placing it on a face, and extruding. From there I made some adjustments to the taper and twist to create a more natural and tentacle-like feel for the roots of the plants. Here is a work in progress update of my previous model. I also started to UV the asset, so you'll see that the plant is partially textured with a checkerboard.

MorrowA Pr1 PLA003 from Ashley Jane on Vimeo.

Animatic: FINAL TWEAKS!

One of the main elements of focus this week consisted around fixing story adjustments and final tweaks to the animatic. The feedback we received from our previous story reel consisted some of the following...

SPECIFIC ANIMATIC UPDATES

•   Add point of view or over the shoulder shot of Gan comparing crystal rock to star

•   Speed up title, cut black between shots and make Titan enter screen from the very beginning of the shot

•   Trim/speed up sequence of Titan flying through destroyed planets

•   Change egg plant Titan flies around to some other plant

•   When Titan is trying to get Gan’s attention, pull back to see his disappointed expression and change position of body (do not entirely cover face)

•   Holograms REappear after shot of Titan struggling

•   Add negative space to make Titan’s silhouette clearer in the shot where he notices him

•   Better silhouette in head cock scene [separate characters]

•   When Gan turns to look at destroyed planets [in realization] and turns back, make sure direction is consistent

•   Add close up of reaction when Titan dies

Shorten the scanning that Titan does initially

         Celestial logo is too long. Get to the story so we can grab the audience quicker

Speed up Titan's movements

During the intro of the film the time lapse needs to be more clear.

         -make city lights appear on the planet as it develops

Make Titan's death more dramatic. It happens to fast. Shot should linger so the audience has time to get "the feels."

      -flickering/sparking/smoking, and titan dies in his hands

Make the destruction in the holograms that Titan projects to Celestial being in color.

Destruction during the planet needs to be longer

         -didn’t feel Titan was in a dangerous position and needs to be emphasized.

Needs more cuts between the 2 characters during the climax for more of a buildup.

Too much time between Titan and Gan after Gan shocks with lightning. The timing should be fixed so it’s more apparent that Gan was the reason for Titans hurt.

         

Start Marketing!

Marketing is something I enjoy doing and what better way to start communicating the value of our short film and attracting an audience than to start with social media. Today I decided to create a facebook and twitter profile for Celestial. I plan on posting regular status updates and occasional concepts of the film and basically portray an overall sense of the direction we are heading in. Networking and getting Celestial recognized through social media will be a great organizational function and start toward creating, communicating, managing future donators, gathering an audience, and building long term relationships. 

Below are the social media links for Celestial. There you can follow and like our page and get regular updates from the team and I. 

Celestial Facebook

Celestial Twitter

Website!

Today I started to build my portfolio website. It's currently under construction but I'm excited to get it published and started up :)!

www.ArtsyAsh.com

Special Effects

Today I send a message to the Celestial team that revolved around looking up and gathering special effects tutorials to work on during Special Effects Sunday.

MESSAGE:
"Thank you for those who were able to post concepts on our concept days this week! Definitely appreciate that! I was hoping during our special effects days we'd start looking at tutorials and ways to maybe create some of the things in our film. Sunday is a Special Effects Day so I'd like everyone that is wanting to help in the meantime to search for tutorials to work on. Here is a list of considered special effects for the film. This list is also on Mega in an excel document. Good luck! Can't wait for us to all be working in the same room again!" 

This is a list of some assets that are going to be heavily acquired with special effects. The concept artwork is necessary to get visual ideas on how a certain assets from the film are going to look. Since my concept of the celestial being creating a star consists of a lighting effect, I wanted to find tutorials based around that.


VIDEOS OF LIGHTNING EFFECT:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZWNqowJRA8
2. http://vimeo.com/50988333

TUTORIAL:
1. http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/duncan/plasma_ball_with_paint_effects