Banana Slip!

Robot Banana Slip from Sedarati on Vimeo.

A quick animation of a robot slipping on an a banana XD

Happy with it other than I just noticed the robot's feet are walking slightly above the floor. A little annoying but it didn't take me that long to create and I chose to render in 1280 by 720 so it's great quality; I think you have to go to Vimeo's website to watch into HD though. I should have another similar animation up soon too.

My First Ever Character Animation

Eyed and Seek from Sedarati on Vimeo.

I have finally finished my first character animation and it has been a very rewarding experience that has helped to improve my 3D design and illustrative skills. Looking back at what I have created I can see several things that I could improve upon and I plan to implement this new knowledge into my next project.

The main area I feel I need to improve upon is the overall animation in the piece because I felt that in parts it isn't as smooth and natural as I wanted it to be. I found it difficult to judge how realistic the animation was going to look when watching it in 3ds Max compared to when I imported the frames into Adobe Premiere. In Premiere the imperfections were clearer and for some of my early renders I rectified these mistakes in order to make the animation more natural. I still feel I can improve and with more experience animating I will have a better understanding of how to create realistic movement.

The narrative structure of my animation changed somewhat from my initial storyboard, most notably the removal of my rodent character that was supposed to steal the robot eye. I decided to take this character out of the scene so that I could focus my effort on creating a solid rig for my robot which I felt I did quite well. I feel the narrative was quite a strong aspect my scene that was clear and easy to follow; I've had some good feedback from fellow course-mates and friends in general regarding both the narrative and the overall presentation: and people thought it was actually funny! Humour being one of the main themes of the project with reference to Charlie Chaplin.

Another area of the project that took me a while to fully commit to was the environment. My initial storyboard denotes a landfill site as the location for my scene. However, when I began to model my environment I wasn't sure how I was going to able to animate so many falling objects like my storyboard suggests and I didn't want to merely imply that a pile of rubbish was collapsing onto my robot only to not show the implied action via a cutway.

With that in mind I augmented the environment into something more related to a car scrapyard; predominantly occupied with car bodies and tires. I felt this was a smart compromise as I felt more confident about animating large objects like cars falling however I would very much like to improve upon animating forces such as gravity in a more life-life way in the future: I enjoyed modelling the car too although I kept it relatively low in polygons to save render time.

Lighting is another element of visualisation I wish to improve upon because although I felt the lighting in my scene was appropriate I only used one light that acted as a Sun and would like to experiment with more advanced lighting techniques. I have been recommended the book 'Digital Lighting and Rendering' which I hope will help me with this.

This has been a great project that I have thoroughly enjoyed; it has expanded my skills with 3ds Max and opened my eyes to difficulties which surround the art of creating good animation. I look forward to my next project which we were recently briefed on where I hope make big leaps in all areas of my work; and I have to say I don't think I've ever been looking forward to a project as much as this one, which will begin at the start of term two after the holidays. A hint is in my blog title.

'Eyed and Seek' Animatic

'Eyed and Seek' Animatic from Sedarati on Vimeo.

Animatic Illustrations

HD Images

Gran Turismo 5 the worst in the series?

I don't even need to mention how long in the making this game has been but now Gran Turismo 5 is finally here, is it all we hoped it would be? I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of driving games but I've played a few in my time and felt GT5 could be the next big title to get me back into the genre. I am yet to have the chance to try the game but after scanning some of the reviews around the net it seems that GT5 has garnered mixed opinions. Many have applauded the core gameplay and believe it lives up its title of 'the real driving simulator' however there have been several negative comments about the game such as it having sloppy menus, inconsistent visuals and clunky online capabilities; perhaps most surprisingly CVG went as far as to say 'we reckon Forza III has the march on GT5 in overall aesthetics.' which is a huge surprise considering the hype surrounding how beautiful the game was going to be, largely due to the 'power of the PS3'.

You don't need to tell me that review scores shouldn't be the only thing to convince you to play a game but after 20 critic reviews GT5 has established a rather underwhelming average score of 86 on Metacritic. I thought I'd take a look at how this compared to past installments of the game and was surprised to find that the past four console GT games have all scored higher than Polyphony's latest effort and that GT5's main competitor Forza 3 has a score of 92 on Metacritic.

So does this mean GT5 is the worst in the series? We'll all have to play it to make up our own minds but I'm quite confident that it's a solid title worthy of the attention of any driving game fan.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=277364
http://www.metacritic.com/search/all/gran+turismo/results

Life Drawing 6

First Ever Walk Cycle

Robot Head Test

Arm Rig Animation

Robot Rock

Sorry if you were worried I'd recently switched to a fine art degree with all the naked drawings uploaded to my blog but I have been contiuning to work on my 3D designs. It has taken me a while but now I think I'm quite close to being fully happy with my final robot model. I will spend tomorrow rigging the whole thing which will likely lead to some design changes but for the most part I think it will be unchanged. I wanted to keep it quite simple and didn't want to have a super realistic look however the texture style may change but for now I have uploaded some images of where my robot is currently at. The images demonstrate how my rotate will have a rotating centre-piece that will enable its head to move around its body and also that my robot will have a missing eye which will be what it is searching for during the animated scene.

P.S I still need to add my robot's eyebrows which will be what conveys the majority of its emotion as the robot will not have a mouth.

Life Drawing 5

Life Drawing 4

Mary and Max

Mary and Max is a film about two very different people who communicate only through their letters to each other. Mary is an 8 year old girl living in Australia, whilst Max is a 44 year old man living in New York. Both have trouble fitting in and feel lost in the world. Their friendship is followed throughout the film and is an emotional journey to say the least.

I began watching this film with almost no prior knowledge of its narrative, only that it was a clay animation which followed the lives of two characters that wrote each other letters. This made the film even more surprising to me as I was totally caught off guide and found the film to be absolutely magnificent.

The audience is taken on roughly a 20 year journey of Mary and Max's relationship with each other that includes several serious themes such as; alcoholism, depression, religion, and obesity. Kids may find this film visually appealing due to its attractive art style however I really feel that it is aimed at a prodominately adult audience because of the overriding themes I have just mentioned.

This film is jut a sublime experience in every area; the animated art style is beautiful using colour scarcely in a way that to me made the look of the film even more memorable. The sound is also a delight using Penguin Cafe Orchestra's 'Perpetuum Mobile' as it's theme music which just added to the emotional power of the film. The quality of the characters was equally impressive, the voice work was brilliant and I don't think I've seen better; excluding Pixar's best work.

What I enjoyed most was the film's simplicity. The directors ability to make a simple interaction between two people so immersive and engaging was extremely pleasing and something that I wish was easier to find in contemporary cinema. Individuality and friendship are the qualities celebrated by the film, the real message I took was to not be ashamed of who you are and always try to put things in perspective; as well as trying to enjoy the little things in life.

Mary and Max is a diamond in a mountain of garbage that Hollywood is currently dumping onto the mainstream cinema-goer; you are missing an exceptional movie if you are to ignore it: See this film.

Life Drawing 3

Life Drawing 2

I just finished my second life drawing class and therefore have some more work to share. Again for these drawings we were given 20 minutes so they aren't fully complete however, I think they show a good understanding of proportions and also a high level of detail in certain areas.

GameCity5 Ends

Yes, the last day of the the festival has passed and although I have enjoyed the festival immensely I am glad to be relieved of my duties so I can assign my attention to other things (and not have to wake up at 7:00am anymore!).

The friday night was great as I got to visit a small bar I'd never heard of called Nihon which was really cool. I met some great people and even got a t-shirt as there were two designers printing t-shirt designs on the upper floor of the bar. After this me and some other GameCity staff headed back to the Tent to join in with the Crysis 2 tournament that had been arranged. The top prize for winning was a trip to Frankfurt to visit Crytek studios. Unfortuantely I didn't win but I did win a t-shirt for being the top player on my team in the first round. I also got to talk to the crytek employees that were managing the event and acquired one of their e-mail addresses.

Saturday was the final day of the festival and we were celebrating Mario's 25th anniversary by having a huge party with lots of great games, prizes and of course...cake! Mario and luigi were even there to party with everybody, have a dance, and pose for photographs. There was also a costume party with the winner being awarded a special edition Wii console. We ended the day with a steward meeting where everybody who had helped out through the week was duly thanked for all their hard work. All the stewards had a photograph together and then wrote their contact details down in order to be contacted for future projects.

The festival was a great experience and I will definately consider applying to work next year. I have met a lot of great people, played some fun games and acquired some valuable experience.

I've posted a few more photos below from the party on the Saturday.

Life Drawing

I was finally able to attend the free life drawing class tonight and it was a really great experience and something I'd never done before. We started by doing three quick, five minute sketches of the model and then did another three more detailed drawings where we were given twenty-five mintutes for each. I've uploaded the three more detailed sketches and I hope to add more in the coming weeks.

GameCity!

GameCity has begun and I was there!...as a steward. Yes I've volunteered to help out during the festival and the opening night has ended. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week and hopefully I'll get to meet some great people and play some awesome games, obviously. I took a few pictures but the camera on my phone is terrible but I managed to get some decent shots. Check them out below.