The concepting phase has begun for project 2!

Check out my work in progress blog for more frequent updates:

Otherwise, wait/check here until some more substantial renders, bits and bobs turn up! 

Project 1 Rational

The steampunk chess robot project asked us to design, build and animate a Chess robot and its environment in the steampunk visual style, and whilst the brief asked for a limited “set”, I made the decision to use a slightly more versatile street setting, as I felt that an alleyway could feel more industrial and contemporary to the brief.

I took in a number of inspirations, and thankfully steampunk was a theme I was vaguely familiar with already thanks to films such as “9” and “Howl’s moving castle”. Other inspirations included an unusual piece “future forms of life”- David Lance, which featured a strange shuffling biomechanical beast, and somewhat influenced my animation angle regarding my steampunk spider.

During the project I came across a number of challenges and issues, each of which was overcome through problem solving and internet searches. For example, the scale of the set required me to create separate instances in which I could efficiently render separate scenes without having to worry about extra lights and artefacts slowing down the rendering process.

Another technique that I used to maximise productivity was to only render whilst I was asleep, I’d check the first few frames, then when I woke I’d have the full collection of stills from which to make an animation.

However this worked against me at one point as I’d accidentally selected the “perspective” render view, and wasted 4 hours rendering the entire animation from one angle. Thankfully, I learned from this mistake.

Another approach I took to make the scene more cinematic, but avoid overcomplicating the scene for myself, was to only use a single camera, and to use key framing in such a way that to the audience it would seem that the shot had cut to another, separate one.

Similarly to this, I struggled with a certain linking constraint- where a chess piece refused to be unlinked from a hand constraint, so I made the decision to splice it out of the shot at a certain point, and stitch in a copy in its place. This worked well.

One issue that I would like to overcome is the way that I textured my objects, I’d like to be able to map textures onto surface in a way that looks entirely convincing, rather than just adding bump maps and using a simple UVM map modifier. I hope to achieve this by practising with the Unwrap UVM modifier.

Secondly, I believe that despite the cinematographic aspects of my final animation, my use of pacing and timing could use some refinement, I’ll look to address this through practise and exploring other examples to see how they tackle this.

One aspect that I would like to improve on is the way that a character has ‘character’, after seeing other examples I realise that there are certainly ways of effectively adding depth and strength to a character profile, in similar ways to Pixar and Dreamworks.

Overall I am pleased with the outcome, though next time I’d like to aim for completing the project well before deadline in order to add more post-production time to refine and polish the work into another level.

Project 1 completed!

Here are my latest creationa, the steampunk chess robots.

Spider robot introduction shot is done!

I've completed the intro section to my 'Steampunk chess robot' animation, It's currently rendering and the 20 second animation should be on here within an hour.

Feeling handy

based on an efficient human-like design, thumbs incoming as well as a controller for gestures!

(thumbs up for forgetting to turn on smoothing >.<)

I've also remodelled the robot's torso, as I'd made the silly mistake of scaling the entire object instead of scaling its vertices (one of the first notes I'd made was to "Only ever scale sub-object stuff")

Playing around with textures and bump maps is rather interesting too!

ImagineFX is amazing!

In between creating robot designs, I've been reading and downloading tutorials from a bunch of IFX magazines that I bought a couple of months back, the info and resources are highly recommended!

I've already found a bunch of perfectly suited textures for my steampunk animation, and am in the process of ripping the data across from all of the disks (over 40 to get through!)

Website update is live

Check out the revamped site, now with a Work in Progress (WIP) section, fresh graphics and simple UI!

http://jbmcbride.com/

Refurbishment of JBMcBride.com underway.

Here's an inital comparison between current and new, expect plenty of nicer graphics and design choices by Thursday!

Early iterations for my robot in 3dsmax

Heres a screenshot of my workspace, including the beginnings of a robot head+ref material.

And beginning to work on a torso, going to take a break from that and build some arms/legs

Inspirations, and getting the designs made.

Here's a mind-bending short from David Lance, looking at 'future forms of life' which blends mechanical with biological.
http://vimeo.com/46175751


Some awesome steampunk jewelery

A deviantart take on a chess robot 

This one reminds me of the japanese 'Gundam' style robots

A blog full of reference material

A bunch of robot inspired artworks 

Spookypop, steampunk inspired stuff 

^this

And some concepts for my robot- next task is to build it in 3DSmax, and get some storyboards nailed!

Here's some concept sketches for steampunk'y chess pieces

As you can see, I've had a few nice ideas for the lower ranked pieces, but found it hard to steampunkify the King/Queen, since their distinctive features are their height and top adornments- I don't want to push the concept too far incase it confuses viewers.

And here's how the look modelled and quickly rendered in 3DS Max.

There're 2 versions of the Bishop because I got to a point where I could've gone 2 ways with the design, I found the second design much more aesthetically pleasing, hence the unfinished look of the 'tubby' Bishop.

And here's a little animated flythrough.

STEAMPUNK CHESS ROBOTS!!!

Possibly the most exciting project proposition ever in the history of my education!

Check out a couple of my old steampunk'y sketches from last year, time to get inspired!

 Yes, one is upside down, blame blogger's buggy image uploader >.<

Work Experience

I've been on work experience in the graphics/marketing department at Molson Coors Burton this week.

I've been given the task of creating a new flavoured alcoholic/non-alcoholic beverage, giving it a name, a logo and design POS in the form of an A4 flyer or A3 poster to help promote/create awareness of my product.

If you'd like to see what I've been getting up to, check out my (mostly) daily sketch blog at joshessketchaday.blogspot.co.uk

Thanks!

My daily sketch blog

Hello, just a quick post today, i'm going to start a daily blog where i submit a sketch/digital painting daily in the run up to returning to my course!

here's the link:
http://joshessketchaday.blogspot.co.uk/

First year passed!

I got the equivalent of a 2:1 for my first year, so here's to going onwards and upwards next year!

Proof that my internet sucks, and that I've submitted my work!!

Here's the link to the video on YouTube Here

Clowning around, final edit.

Uploading finished film

My edit of our film is complete, and is currently being uploaded onto Youtube, the current file is too big for vimeo so I will have to re-optimize it for web at a later time.

Filming Completed, on to editing.

Over our weekend in Gloucestershire we managed to get over 12Gigs of footage for our 5 minute film, it looks like we're all going to be busy over the next couple of weeks!

Risk assessments.

In my role as Producer, I've had to complete a risk assessment for the group.
http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/336321/kLLzPLih4TM7I34n/risk_assessment_doc.docx

As well as the callsheet.
http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/336341/oXJivs5mwXhjugwr/CallSheet_Word_Template.docx

Film module

Hello again, it's now easter break, but that doesn't mean 3 weeks of doing nothing!

I've been assigned the role of 'Producer' for our film, so I have to essentially oversee the production, and help the director with implementing the vision as well as planning things to run as smoothly as possible!

Over the holidays we've decided to produce a script between us, from which I will attempt to create a storyboard, as well as some character concepts for our clown.

My final animation "My Secret Lair"

3D animation render 2

Another preview of my "superhero lair".

3ds max test 1

Heres a short anim of some stuff I created in 3DS max over the last week, hope you like!

Bradford Media Museum!

Images and stuff incoming..

Early website designs