Work Experience ~ The Office of John Cheese

First of all let me start of with a link to their youtube page: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeOfJohnCheese

So ~
where to begin ...
well, i've been at John Cheese for 5 days now from 9.30 till 5 everyday ~

On monday, I mainly took notes ~
because i was being shown a software called Smoke ~ its a software made by Autodesk, and its a compositor and editor ~ so, in other words, it's sort of like Premiere Pro and After Effects smooshed into one.

(This isn't a shot from Cheese, this is just something 

i found when i typed in "autodesk Smoke" on google haha ~ 

just to give you an idea of what it looks like.)

Also on monday I was shown a few new things about Maya ~ they have a hair and fur plug in called Yeti and it looks pretty awesome ~ as well as a renderer called Arnold ~

These are the photos that Peregrine Labs (the place selling Yeti) has up: 

As you can imagine, i was given tons of advice on Maya and my modelling, lighting, texturing etc. I learnt Heaps on Monday haha

On Tuesday I was introduced to a software called Da Vinci Resolve ~
omg... i love this software ~
and the best part is ~ the lite version is free~! yay~!

Resolve is a basically a colour grading software that has a very very basic editing ability ~

Here's a shot of the software (another shot from google) 

For the second half of the day i re-did an add that John Cheese had done a while ago ~
it was for Collie ~ and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it ~ so instead ill post some screen shots so you can get an idea of what it looked like =P

I also learnt TONS of short cuts for AE on that day

as well as a few helpful codes/expressions =P 

On wed I was in Maya again, and was shown tons of things ~ 

but one thing that stood out was a studio I was shown called psyopn 

~ http://www.psyop.tv/ ~

I highly recommend giving their webpage a visit and watching their stuff ~ its awesome to say the least xP 

Thursday i got an opportunity to use a program called Mocha ~ apparently there's two types ~ one that comes with AE and another that doesn't =P 

and its basically a tracking/masking software ~ 

I got to remove two people from a concert =)

here are some screen shots ~ 

 (before)

(after)

Also, i got an opportunity to do some colour grading in Resolve ~ of my own ~ i was given an old clip and then let loose on the software ~ it was lots of fun haha

Unfortunately i don't have a shot to show =/ 

Friday was ... well, friday ~ and there wasn't really that much going on but i was given lots of tips on where to study, what to look for, where i could go with my career ~ some awesome artist's  

like this guy ~ 

(his website - http://www.minart.net/) 

Or this Guy ~ 

(his website : http://www.androidjones.com/)

So, in summary, 

This week I used After Effects, Maya, Smoke, Davinci Resolve and Mocha ~ 

I'm extremely happy and grateful for the opportunity ~ i definitely enjoyed my time at the office of John Cheese ~ and appreciate all the time they took to show me so many things ~ 

With that said,

Until next time, 

Ariane ~ 

Upcoming

So in this last week I haven't done much in the way of assignments,
and there is a reason why ~

I'll be going to Work experience next week ~! =P
I'm going to The Office of John Cheese  ~ http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeOfJohnCheese/videos

They've done things like the animation for the
Cash 3 lottery draw's,
the smarter than smoking add's,
the graffiti removal/prevention adds,
QBE insurance add,
and this add -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAqw0DkroN0 (i didn't know how to describe it xD haha

So i've been busy preparing my portfolio and showreel and resume

~ For my portfolio i've decided to keep it to 5 or 6 really good pieces ~
this is what i'm going with, as well as the order i've decided to put them in ~

If you happen to know what my gallery looks like, let me know what you think of my choices ~ in terms of pieces and order

I've also almost finished my pre-vis, i'm hoping to finish that before i go to work experience but we'll see what happens xP 

Until next time 

~ Ariane 

fixing the old, furthering the new

Hey Guys, 

Today's going to be a bit of everything ~ its basically an overall summary of what i've done this week =P

First lets start with the setting of my short story, I already had a base to go off from a previous course, but i've gone through and fixed it up. The only thing i have left to do, in terms of modelling for the setting, is the tree (which is the brown cylinder at the end of the hallway) the reason i've prioritised that this week is to get the pre-vis underway and lock-off camera moves etc. 

the cupboard my guardian will be getting out of ->

the soon to be stained glass windows->

the flags at the top will be 'family crests' and other such things

This next one is something that we did last semester, but for some reason i couldn't render without having gold sparkly dust everywhere - 

realistic 3D interior design ~ or, my castle/mansion library ~

i'm finally able to start rendering it again without gold sparkly dust ~ yay =D 

It turned out to be a bug in the arc & design texture

 Also, this week we had a meeting with the Film students, or rather the Director and Producer of the 'Kindred' project and we finally settled on an idea for the title sequence ~
Its rather exciting that we can finally start the animatic and animation of this project =P

This is the start of the one they chose ~

Also, i've finished my character concept art from last week (if you can remember) ~ 

So these are my two final characters for my short film =P

Also i re-did the frog jumping thing ~ because NukeX's 3D tracking didn't work with 3Ds Max, so instead we used SynthEyes for the 3D tracking

Lastly - Ivan's walk cycle - 

the comment i got for this was that i have to check my curves but other than that it looks good =P 

Thats all for this week ~ 

Until next time 

~ Ariane

First Week Back at TAFE ~

So even though technically its the second week of tafe,
i was sick two of the three days from last week ~ so I'm counting this as my first proper week of tafe.

Lots has happened this week -

At the very start of this week, or end of last week i started a re-design of my second character in my short story.
And although she's not finished as an artwork, I'm happy with the over all idea of this sketch so i worked on my storyboard and animatic first. I plan to finish this drawing this week.

Expo talk has started ~ 

This year it's been decided that the adv. diploma will be mentoring the dip. students in what to do and what not to do for the expo. 

I've been put in charge of funding, budgeting and I'm helping out with making a webpage for the expo. 

I've already organised a 'profile page' word document for students to fill in, and we can then add that information onto the website. 

I've also had a VERY long conversation, via email, with Ashleigh (the leader of fund-raising in Diploma) about Fund-raising ~ and i'm glad to say that fund-raising is under-way!

Lastly, budgeting, I've asked every team to get an estimated amount of money they will need as well as, where they get that figure from (or rather, what they are planning to spend it on) 

I've organised an excel sheet for budgeting but i have yet to sit together with them and explain everything, i'm hoping to do that next week ~

This is an example of the spread sheets for the groups, the 'budget' is their estimated, or desired budget and 'Actual' is how much they actually get from fund-raising, the 'difference' is just so the group gets an idea of how much they have to cut back on.

And then, of course, the outgoings ~ or where that money is going ~

This is for an over-all view

This won't have any details in it like where each group is spending money etc.
This is simply to get an overall idea of what each group wants (i.e. budget),
how much they actually get from fund-raising (Actual)
and How much they need to cut back on (Difference)

as well as, how much we currently have in fund-raising, and any sponsorships.

Next is 3D ~

We're in our last semester of Animation and we're finally learning about rigging characters, character animation and how it all works ~

This is the standard mesh we were given, we were then shown how to add 'bones' in maya 

This next one's about orientating all the joints to face the correct way ~

 Next is about my short story,
I can't remember if i mentioned this in a previous blog or not,
but I wasn't happy with my storyboard that i did last semester, because it was rushed.
So i took the time to go back and do it again.

I've only added two of the pages ~

I then took that and turned it into an animatic ~
I've decided that i will still call it "Eye of Gyron" but i will add a sub-title something along the lines of "First Encounter"

the other thing i've done this week is a walk cycle ~
Yep a walk cycle, but this was done in Maya ~ the first bit of character animation in Maya ~ I must admit, it was pretty exciting haha ~ and a lot of fun

So yeah,
I feel like i could have done more, but overall I'm happy with what i've accomplished this week, because i feel it brings everything up a notch

so until next time ~
all the best
~ Ariane