18 Nov 2012
Paris, Hitler & Jazz
Last week we watched Win Wyman's Paris, Texas. We were shown it to help us understand and think about composition and visually communicating emotion and story-telling.
The cinematography and directing told the story for the first forty-minutes. I rented the film from the library to see its conclusion, but unfortunately I was visually distracted doodling so I don't think I reaped the Benefits of the visual awesomeness. The story was told backwards somewhat and led towards the reason why Travis was lost to the world and behaving odd. I got a little emotional at times, but the last scene made me ill, most of us have had tough breakups at points and it seemed a little "emo". I basically got the impression the writer never got over his girlfriend and cried into his script, so the end was a bit of a cringer, but uplifting too. The main actor Harry Dean Stanton, is the guy out of a film I used to like in my youth – Repo Man, it's similar in a way as it supports a dystopian ideology, and everyone seems to be cool and has strength in their own ways… It also has an alien in the car boot which burns up anyone who sees it. Harry's character is on a similar journey as in Paris Texas, but instead of returning to his family and love he follows a blind faith & an attunement with this alien. Is worth a watch. The feel to it also reminded me of Happiness and Little Miss sunshine – These are all kinda "mainstream" alternative cinema and use the same kind of subversive direction, palette and pacing... Seems common in foreign films
Colour seems a bit of a tough concept for some of us students. I have seen quite a lot of digital fails when attempting to colour, along with a lot of colour picking from reference. I actually did a little exercise to see how to "rip off" pallets from pictures, here I did a couple of ten minute thumbnails. I just took what I thought were the main colours (keeping a small palette, no more than 6 colours) and blocked out the image like a thumbnail. The picture in the middle is a doodle with an extreme palette - looks a lot like eighties graphical art .I have also been reading Colour & Light, which was surprisingly awesome, I actually prefer the artists studies over his Dinotopia stuff. I would recommend it to every art student; it's very thorough and informative. I've never really spent hours on end thinking of colour, light & shadow. I actually thought the thumbs looked pretty decent considering was only ten mins, it just goes to show that strong composition and colours make all the difference. It's a lot quicker and more natural using a limited palette, I favour mixing on the image and you can colour pick locally while using the flow and opacity, then undoing the mix. Anyways...
I've been doing a lot more 3D than 2D recently, there is simply more to learn and not a lot of time to learn it. UDK is a bit of a treat, it seems really flexible, yet a little ugly and takes time to navigate and learn. Zbrush on the other hand makes me laugh how easy and intuitive it seems to use its functions – seems like cheating after using 3DS Max. Anyways I was looking into UDK and watching the tutorials, I actually thought I was awesome how you can import a library of assets (along with the other libraries there) and make a scene, much like Lego. It got me thinking about how to make my own efficient sets. The trick is to make a lot of modular bits (walls, pillars, vents, trims, furniture, decorations and the like), this should be made to work together. For example instead of making a whole building in 3DS max we can import different floors and elements and then stick them together creatively in UDK.
Early in the term I was doing small personal projects regularly, I have to structure this better… To learn and apply 3D it can take days of slogging to do the whole process, along with a lot of trial and error. So I have set a couple of longer projects.
Character:
I have been drawing up ideas for a character, I want to do a female as I need the practice. I want a lady with a lot of different swords.
I want it to look good, so will need to bake with Zbrush, I have also been looking around and see you can bake down further in 3DS to make a really low poly version too – I want to learn this also. I have to get a balance as I want to create an unrealistic character, but make her believable, starting anime and going realistic.
[ABOVE] I have decided to try and pin down the general details - I know I want feminine features, but have to refine it a lot more. The main feature is to be her weapons and her holster, something to contrast against her female bits, thinking about weapon belt/holster shapes here
Environment:
I've started a simple tower in a scene, and am using it as a learning tool. How to modulate and share map space, making efficient maps for this and making asset sets for UDK.
Also an opportunity to fill gaps in my 3DS learning, and to try out new scripts to improve workflow.
So far I have actually been going back to the drawing board a lot and trying to visualise and rationalise the assets. This is also great for practicing concept art – I will try and get it to a standard where others can read it too! :D
I have realised that to learn everything properly to do them well it takes a while and re-iterations, and while I can throw out some crap every day or two I wouldn't be learning or progressing myself as much. I have set deadlines for Christmas, and realise the outcomes won't be perfect, but is good practice and helps me not to "faff" between uni projects. From these projects I have also been building up my vision and reference library and adding more and more links and books to my collection.
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