Rather a Lot of Things

So, muggins here has been working in the dark again, even though she promised not to.

To begin with, here's my definitive influence map. I've been on a bit of a Daniel Danger kick lately, and it really shows in my lighting.

 Composition and colour thumbnails. Those last three were where I really hit my stride with the lights.

A little .gif testing how I might animate the glow effect, which I ultimately scrapped in favour of the light-fixed-to-camera idea.

A couple of paintings with which I got into arguments.

And some concept paintings of, from top to bottom, a centrosome containing two centrioles, a group of vesicles approaching a mitochondrion, and the nucleolus within the nucleus.

Commission Script by megleslie

One script.

A rough, not-quite-finished storyboard that's finished enough for me to know what I'm doing.

And an utterly unfinished animatic; there's no sound, and it's almost completely un-timed. The fades are to indicate that the film will be made up of a single continuous shot, with no hard edits at all to suggest a continuing movement through the cell. The animatic will be complete by my pitch on Tuesday.

So there you have it. And only 15 minutes after Sunday ended, too.

Commission Thumbnails 1

 I have two minutes to make an audio-visual revision tool (try saying that ten times fast) on the structure of eukaryotic cells. I won't be going down the heavily stylistic route or the 'whee look how cool science is' route (science is already cool), instead I'll be making my animation for people with a degree of prior knowedge. This is due in no small part to the fact that I am a terrible teacher.

 Studies of cell components. There will be more of these in the future.

A very simple map of the cell. Nothing is labelled, but I know what everything means.

This is one possible 'route map' for the animation. Not this particular camera move, obviously, but the 'itinerary'; nucleus, nucleolus, smooth ER, rough ER, ribosome, Golgi complex, vesicle, mitochondrion, centriole, lysosome. This path roughly follows the movement of RNA and protein through the cell, with some license taken to fit everything in.

As I'm not going to be stylising the structure or anatomy of the cell, I have a different problem in creating visual interest. Therefore, I'll be focusing on my screencraft, particularly lighting. At this point I have two possible 'gimmicks' for my lighting, one being lighting inside the cell components themselves that switch on and off, and the other being a light locked to the camera to give the sense of an explorer carrying a torch, or a submarine and its light. I have no doubt more light setups will follow.

Mostly-Blind Study of 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet' - Carlo Bonavia

Did something a little different today. In the vein of the Technical Challenge in the Great British Bake-Off, where the contestants are required to use their baking knowledge and instinct to replicate a bare-bones recipe, I decided to make a very quick study from a painting - in this case, Carlo Bonavia's 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet'. From there I no longer looked at the original, instead relying on my early sketch and my painting knowse to highlight what I did and didn't know.

Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet - Carlo Bonavia, 1757

My initial sketch, the only part of the painting that actually referenced the original. Observe the absenve of the ship - this continues the whole way through, because I was more interested in the overall landscape than the fiddly details of the ship.

 

Attempting to come to terms with that rock.

Ehhh... let's add 'rock' to the list of things I need to study.

Let's throw 'clouds' onto that list, too.

And my final, with distinctly absent shipwreck and a lighthouse that was definitely not there in the original. It needed something to be sitting there, and that whole side was dark, so a lighthouse seemed the obvious choice. Oh, and just for good measure, put 'water' on the list as well.

And here's the original again, for comparison's sake. Goddamn, did I lose track of it. Nevertheless, despite not having a technically brilliant outcome, I learnt a lot about what I don't know, which in some cases is far more important than actually learning something objectively useful.

Opulence, Mountains and Prisons

First off, an unfinished Leyendecker study, per the suggestion of Phil.The text is there purely for my own peace of mind. The colour on this is fun, and I'll definitely keep dinking around with it until it's a bit more resolved. I'll tackle the fancy ironwork some other day, however.

'Couple Descending Staircase' - J. C. Leyendecker

And a photo study from a photograph by a gentleman going by the handle of 'Footleg'. Super loose first sketch...

Marginally less loose, trying to fix the shape of the peak...

And the final study. I learnt quite a bit about the structure of mountains (or at least, this particular mountain) and how snow sits on them. I left the figure out because, while it contributes to the original photograph, it's not much help in a study.

'Valley Frances Bridge' - 'Footleg' - Original


And now for that Piranesi thing. I've decided on the four plates I'll be using; I may not finish all of them, so I've ranked them here in order of priority, first being highest. I feel plates III and XIV best encapsulate the feel of the series, particularly XIV, so if I can only manage one then that will be the one I make.

 XIV. Carcere, with a Staircase Ascending to the Left

III. Carcere, with a Circular Tower.

 VII. Carcere, with Numerous Wooden Galleries and a Drawbridge

 VI. Carcere, with Arches and Pulleys and a Smoking Fire in the Centre.

I initially considered a panorama, but attempts at stitching the images together were unsuccessful; this was the best panorama I could make, and, as you can see, it doesn't work. The pieces are simply not created to sit flush next to one another, and out of respect for Piranesi's work I am hesitant to improvise connections between them. Thus they shall probably be separate rooms, with the camera travelling between them.

Photoshop Speedpaints

Photoshop Phil had us working at ludicrous speed today - 15 minutes on each set of three sketches, or 5 minutes/sketch. It was pretty fun, and you can see my work loosen up with each sketch.

 

We then grabbed our favourite of the panels and worked into it for ten more minutes; amazing the difference a deadline makes! Phil showed me how to make crisp snow shadows with the lasso tool, which not only sped me up but immensely improved the final outcome.

Clockwork Soldier Initial Thoughts and Thumbnails

Upon talking to Phil, I've reached the conclusion that this clockwork soldier is a weapon of war, a 'person of mass destruction'. I'm alternating between it being purely a clockwork automaton that has somehow developed sentience and a human brain (or part of one) piloting a clockwork body. Either way, the clockwork soldier has become outmoded and is no longer an effective weapon, so his creators want rid of him. Unfortunately, he is very well-made; so well-made, in fact, as to be completely tamper-proof, so deconstructing him is out of the question, and simply setting him free is too risky given his weaponised nature. As a result, he has been locked away and forgotten in some vault or bunker somewhere, to wait for the day he finally stops.

Phil and I discussed the possibility of the soldier being a reluctant warrior, not wanting to harm anyone but, being what he is, having no other choice. I imagine him as quite a gentle soul, not naturally aggressive but with a truly impressive in-built arsenal that makes him a danger to be near. Locked away in his vault he tries to hang on to the human soul he either has or developed, surrounding himself with personal treasures and trying to make the dead, empty vault into a home. Despite being completely alone and isolated he still tries to live as well as he can.

A not-so-quick concept painting where I just noodled with  design and tried to force myself to design in perspective and on the fly, something I really struggle with (check out all the isometric drawings in the thumbnails for proof of this). Not fond of the actual rendering, but design and perspective-wise I'm not unhappy at all.

And, just to finish, a super-quick study of Al Capone's prison cell, to get a feel for a 'home-y' prison.

Anatanatanatomy

Because I really need to study it.

With thanks to the most excellent folks over at posemaniacs.com.