Project Finished!

VImeo URL

Here is the link to my final project, ready for the assessment!:

Planning for this month

Planning

This is what I expect to do this month in Wales:

• First Week: Finish al 3D scenarios.
• Second Week: Paint the characters with volume and shade, and integrate them into each scene (now the color is flat).
• Third Week: The same as above.
• Last Week: Research and do the audio of the short.

I haven’t got to much 3D rendering to do so I will render during the progress, I don’t need specific week for rendering.

Working here in Wales is going to decrease the quality of the project, in Spain I had several computers which are enough powerful to handle the project, also I had big screens to work properly. Here the computers are not enough powerful and almost all the time I have to work with my laptop, which isn’t powerful and has small screen and resolution.

I was working to much comfortably and flawlessly in Spain, but here no.

Definitely these aren’t the conditions to handle a project of this magnitude. I will try to do my best with the tools I have here.

 

Complete Short – Adv. Layout Finished

Advanced Layout Finished

Here is my advanced layout finished. I’ve done all the drawings and all the editing. As you can see the drawings have flat colors and are a bit sketchy. Also some 3D scenarios need to improve.

Tomorrow I’m leaving to Glyndwr, so now I’m transferring all the files needed to work there. I’m doing all the 3D part of my short with Cinema 4D, and I don’t know what is going to happen because in Glyndwr there is no C4d. I have to do some work with C4d in order to finish my project, and my laptop is not powerful enough to handle this work flawlessly, so I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Transfer a great project such this when is in the final part of the development is really a huge mess. A big project It’s enough hard to do when all is ok, so with messes like this all the things gets quite harder.

Now I’m not really enthusiastic about all this because it’s going to represent lots of headaches in order to complete the project as I expected.

Here is a list of what I’ve got to do now in this last month in Wales:

• Finish the 3D part of some scenarios.
• Clean all the drawings and paint them with volume, integrating them into each scene.
• Do the audio of the short.

The Animator’s Survival Kit

Really helpful Book

I’ve bought this book on Christmas and It has helped me a lot for doing all the drawings of my project: specially with the walking animations and the information about the Horses and other animals. Horse poses are extremely difficult to do without reference (if you haven’t done it before) so it has been a great help.

 

It’s a really nice book and I’m sure I will continue using it lots of times in the future.

Advanced Layout nearly finished

Working Really Hard

These weeks I’m being really busy working on my final project. It’s a non-stop working. As the animation in my project is based on 2d layer movements over 3D environments, my layout is becoming nearly in what will be the final animation.

I mean, when doing the layout, I realized that every scene was approaching to it’s final result. Except for the modelings (some things are definitive, but some things need to improve) and the characters (now they are sketches) every shot, animation and camera movements is almost definitive. That’s why I called “advanced layout”.

All the external modelings (referring to the kingdom) are done, and nearly definitive. I’ve also made some trimmings on the last part of the short, as the teachers in Glyndwr said to me last year. There’s no time to produce the whole original storyboard/animatic. Fortunately the plot isn’t being affected by this trim.

So, in summary, my advanced layout will only need an overall improvement over modelings and drawings, to become the final result. Also I expect to correct a few shots and movements when reviewing this advanced layout finished.

I expect to finish this advanced layout in a few days, but maybe it will take a bit longer.

Creative Futures – Ending

Summary and conclusions

All the projects of my Creative Futures are now closed/finished! So in this entry I will summarize and conclude all of them. It has been a lot of tough work, lots of hours and so much experience acquired.

UAB Project:

The UAB project consists in the creation of different science fiction shorts for the the physics department of UAB, related to different physic environmental energy problems. In this project, I had the role of Art Director, but we have done all together lots of different tasks.

This was a very huge project, it is still in development, but it’s stopped. Due to re-arrangements on the teams involved, and the disposal of the different teams, the project has is in pause.

From this project I’ve learnt that big projects requires full disposition. It’s something a full functional studio can do, but as we are students we don’t have the full disposition to accomplish a huge Project like this in a normal time period. And is harder if all the people that works on the project are coursing the last year of their degrees. We’ve already done a lot of work for the project, so this is going to be taken in the near future. In this project I’ve worked with Aleix and Sergi.

3D Wedding Cards:

The 3D Wedding Cards project consists in the creation of digital 3D Wedding cards for a wedding cards catalogue.

This has been a very successful project, and a great experience, at the beginning I thought I wouldn’t upload my work here, but finally I’ve uploaded all the work and experiences I had here in the blog.

Here you can read my conclusions about the 3D Wedding Cards project I did when it finished:

 https://raulreyesfinalproject.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/creative-futures-week-viii/

Pirates Videogame:

The Pirates Videogame Project consist in the creation of a Videogame based on “Premia de Mar” village legend. I shared this project with Sergi Petit, he had been the programmer of the game, and I’ve been the designer. We both have done the testing and gameplay aspects.

This has been also a great project, lots of meetings, lots of corrections and changes, but a great result. Finally we only did the playable part of the game, the programming and the design. The cinematic, music, and other aspects are being charged to other people that will work from now on.

I’ve never done a project like this, it’s great to see how with the collaboration of two different parts you can achieve a great product. I’ve worked with Sergi in a very effective and efficient way, it was a really satisfactory process. People of Premia de Mar were very happy with the results, we are really proud about the work done.

Here is the last entry of the project:

Creative Futures – Week XIII

Animation Festival – Animac:

We wanted to assist to an Animation Festival, so we (Aleix, Sergi, and I) finally managed to did it, here you can read all the information about the journey:

Creative Futures – Animac 2013

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You can read all the process from al the projects under the “Creative Futures” section of the blog:

https://raulreyesfinalproject.wordpress.com/category/creative-futures/

You can found all the designs, information, results, and a whole bunch of details about all the projects I’ve been doing for the Creative Futures during so many weeks.

That’s been a great experience, I’ve produced a lot of projects, and I’ve worked a lot under the requirements of the differents people who have ordered me the different projects. In some projects I had a bit of freedom but other projects had been very bounded, as I had to do exactly what they are demanding. Sometimes is better to have freedom in order to create what you want, but sometimes is easier to have a limited task, because by this way is easier to offer a product that will fit the appropiate preferences and likes.

Referring to Academic projects, I’ve done two CINEMA 4D courses in Barcelona (from november to february):

Cinema 4D – Motion Graphics – 40h

At the begging I thought that C4D was only able to do motion graphics and 3D related to typography and this kind of design. But after doing the course I realized that this program is extremely powerful. The school and the teacher were really great, they also accept doubts through e-mail even after finishing the courses. I’ve done this course with Aleix and Sergi. Nuria have also done this course but not with us.

This is the course I’ve done:

http://www.madcenter.es/cursos-integracion-y-3d-barcelona/cinema-4d-para-motion-graphics

At the end of this course, I nearly learnt how to use Cinema 4D better than Maya. That’s why I decided to do the Advanced Course of Cinema 4D in the same school.

Cinema 4D – Advanced – 24h

This was also great. After finishing this course, I really have an advanced control over the program. After doing this course I’ve totally learnt how to use Cinema 4D better than Maya, that’s why I’m doing the 3D part of my final Project with C4D (if you remember, I’ve also did the tests for my Dissertation with C4D). I’ve also done this course with Sergi and Aleix. And they both are also doing their projects with C4d, we have learnt a lot. With Maya I can do a lot of things, but I done have that level of control. And is great to work controlling every point of what are you doing. Also mograph is a very powerful tool.

This is the advanced course:

http://www.madcenter.es/integracion-y-3d/curso-cinema-4d-motion-graphics-avanzado

With 64h hours of courses in C4D, I really feel very comfortable with this program.

Creative Futures – Week XIII

Last entry of Creative Futures

The last of the projects has ended:

Pirates Videogame:

As I said past week there’s only some last few things they have requested to us. And now all is finished. This Friday Sergi and I had the last meeting with them, we shown them the full game joined together with continuity. They love it. All was confirmed so now all joined is obviously great for them.

Here is the complete Game Play in HD. This is the one which corresponds to the Easy Mode:

And this is the complete Game Play in HD, which corresponds to the Hard Mode:

(as we are not doing the music of the game, I’ve selected some songs I like from different games in order to make the game play more entertaining)

As we said on past entries, the hard mode consists in less time to complete the levels, it is really hard to beat, we have a lot of practice but it’s not that easy!

As we said on the last entry, they told us that they have contacted with a Graphic Illustrator, who is going to make the drawings of the game for them (cinematics, scenes of the game, etc). In this last meeting we have talked with this Graphic Illustrator, we have share with her all the designs, all the information, and all the data. She was already informed of a lot of aspects of the project, so all the process was clear. They are contacting with the person who is going to do the audio, so he wasn’t in the meeting. All the designs of the characters and the game are spread through all the entires of the Creative Futures.

Here is the new storyline and the new game scheme, adapted to the actual structure of the level and rewritten. And here is also the Storyboard, the order is indicated in the documents:

PirateGame_FINAL-STRUCTURE

Storyboard

We have also talked about the whole project, closing all the aspects. It is not planned to be finished since so far. Once they have all the material, they will search how to apply the project and how to execute, so it is very far to it’s conclusion. But our work in it is now completely finished! We are obviously open for any request or doubt they could have in future. But our work is done!

With this, all the projects of my Creative Futures are closed/finished! I will do an entry in a few days in order to summarize and close the Creative Futures project.

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Creative Futures – Week XII

Nearing the end

The last of the projects is coming to the end:

Pirates Videogame:

This week Sergi and I have met with Premia People, in order to show them the big progresses we have done in last weeks. We showed them all the levels of the game, with the design and everything. They liked all the levels, the structure an design, the different obstacles, etc. We showed them they new jump, and they liked. We’ve had to restructure some parts of the levels in order to make the character able to complete the levels.

We showed them also the last level with the boss, and they also liked. After testing the boss, they told us that is not necessary to include a second boss, with this is ok, they thought that the length of the game is perfect now, no need of more levels or bosses.

This is the design and structure of the boss stage. You have to activate the first lever in order to make the second lever functionally. With the second lever you have to shot the boss, you need to hit the boss three times in order to beat him.

Also, you have to avoid the water shots that appear from the cannons at the right of the screen. This is the cannon design and the pirate flag:

This is the water bomb of the cannons:

This is the new lever that allow you to shot a water bomb into the boss. You have to calculate when to activate it beacause the boss is in constantly movement!

Also, on this meeting, they told us some news. They have contacted with a Graphic Illustrator, who is going to make the drawings of the game for them (cinematics, scenes of the game, etc). We are not Illustrators so I understand the decision. Also, their aim is to make the project created by several persons. They’re also contacting with another person for doing the music of the game.

So in other words, they told us that for now all we can do for this project is done. But they asked us for two different last things. For next week, they want:

• The game with continuity, all the phases of the game joined.
• The last story board we did, but adapted to the current levels of the game.

So we have a meeting next week in order to finish and show them this two last things they’ve asked us. After this, all our job in the project will be done!

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Tests with Mountains and Environment

Needed research

Before continuing with the development of my project, there is a thing I had to research. My animated short is full of mountains, but I’ve never done mountains in 3D, so I’ve done lots of research in order to see how to do good 3D mountains and test which is the best style for the mountains of my short. At the beginning, I started doing some tutorials about realistic mountains.

This mountain is based on different layers of noises applied to a displacement map, it also have bump mapping and other effects. It includes some gradients in order to make the grass appear just in some areas of the mountain.

After learning the basics of doing mountains, I’ve created a basic scene for the castle surroundings in order to make different tests.

I applied the different materials to the scene, but the result was not the one I was expecting:

I started tweaking the parameters, but the result was too realistic for the cartoon style I am looking for:

Then, I started to test different artistic shaders, but with the basics I’ve learnt from the tutorials, this are the art shaders I’ve done and used:

I like much more this first results with the art shader combined with the basics of creating mountains. It matches a lot more the art and cel shader style I’m looking for my animated short. But it still need to improve. So I started tweaking with the art shader applied to a fractal modeling form:

After some tests, I’ve realized that displacement maps aren’t necessary for the style I’m looking for. Because increases the render time a lot, and it doesn’t make a real difference. So I’ve tried and applied different noises with bump mapping. This is the result after tweaking with the parameters, the noises, bumps, specular, etc.

That’s the style I was looking for my mountains, kind of cartoon but realistic at the same time, with brush style texture thanks to the art shader. It fits perfectly the  general style of the short.

So I’ve remodeled the scenario, with more fractal mountains. This is a picture of the process:

And this is the result:

As the background of the physical sky was not to my liking, I’ve painted a background sky in ArtRage and I’ve applied it to a background object in C4D. With this sky the scene looks better and it fits better the style of the short. The castle is not textured yet.

Sometimes it’s good to stop a few days to research for the things I need to know in order to finish the project. Then, the workflow of the production is going to be tidy and efficient. 

Creative Futures – Week XI

Keep working

Here is the progress of the week on the different projects:

Pirates Videogame:

This week we’ve been doing lots of testing with the different levels of the game. We played and re-played each level in order to see that all works ok. We also started to develop the hard mode of the game. In this hard mode, you have less time to beat the level. We want to create a challenge, this hard mode is addressed to people that plays games usually.

We have done lots of tests in order to adjust the time for each level, in this mode we want to make each level difficult to beat. So this week I haven’t so much material to show, because nearly all the improvements we’ve done are about playability.

I have also designed the 4rth level, we are still working on the moving platform, but I’ve done the design anyway.

We have modified the Jump of the character also, after lots of researching, Sergi managed to apply the jump animation. Also now the jump is limited, if you fall of a platform, you can’t jump until you hit the floor. We’ve also added a new feature, when you jump, if you push the down key,  you can increase the falling speed of the character, this is a feature for experienced players, and you have to use it in some areas of the hard mode if you want to beat the game. Here is a little video I’ve done showing all the improvements in jumping:

As you can see, this is a part of the 2nd level in hard mode. You have only 8 seconds to enter the door. It’s difficult, but it’s possible. As I said, you have to press the down key in order to fall rapidly and beat the level.

We are now working on the first boss battle level, it’s almost finished, but we still have to do some arrangements.

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