Life Drawing (semester 1)

Lets get rowing...

Our friend Dan decided to help us picture the motion of rowing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kP5wnJeeQ&feature=youtu.be





Using the footage I tried to understand and break down the movements...

I focused mainly on the outstretched movement, watching him pulling back and bending his arms towards himself. I feel more focus on him leaning back is needed to highlight the power behind the entire movement. Additionally, the wrist movement needs more attention.


...note to self - more rowing research needed.

Fire studies

Sketches and notes from my sketchbook while studying Joseph Gilland's Elemental Magic, Volume 1: The Art of Special Effects Animation.

I found all of the images and notes in the book very useful in helping me gain an understanding of the nature and physics of fire and its movement.

Water Research

We decided to do a little research at the pool to study how fabric and hair under water and the movement of water and splashes.

Here we are trying to act out the scene when Murdo is thrown from the boat

A little splash study:

Trying to study fabric movement in water:

More splashes and trying to create wakes

                     

Indoor scene

So after the team decided to concentrate on the indoor scene before Christmas I decided to have a look at creating the Fire and the light of the fire in the room.

The environment (by kirsteen) was already really homely and has a warm feel to it and I really wanted to emphasise and exaggerate that element. I used a series of layers and masks to create the light and particles for the fire shape. I then set key frames for the opacity of certain layers to create the feel of the light flickering and moving.

It was felt that the fire needed to be more than a simple suggestion of fire, but an actual fire...I tried to create a simple fire in after effects using a few fire shapes and changing the opacity and blending the layers onto the above test. However it just didn't come together, so we decided that the best way to achieve the result we required was to animate it by hand.

So after the last test I decided the water layer had to go through a series of alterations to blend it more with the environment.

With a combination of Ps and After effects filters I have the ocean a more flattened appearance...
I duplicated the ocean frame layer and applied the Palette knife effect on in PS on the top layer and turned the opacity down. In AE I added some grain and and darkened the scene to create a more night-time/dark setting for the storm.

The light layers were a little too bright and distracting, however, this will be easily altered once the layers of the ocean are rendered out separately so that I can control their brightness in post production.





In this test I removed the light reflections in PS and placed them back on top of the layers post filter, but I feel the first test had a more stylized appearance.

Water and Background Tests

Erin rendered out a section of the water she made and I tried to comp it into the test background that Charlie  designed :

I colour-corrected the ocean layer to fit the purple colour of the background.
The water still looked too 3D so it was suggested we play the render in twos instead.




Once the ocean was in twos we felt it was too jumpy and slow....Back to the drawing board.