Six*1

A fully-fledged stlyeframe!

This is just how it sounds - a prime example of what the final film will and effects will appear. Please click on the image for a full view.

Six*0

Some work on the 'money shot'. Building sketches and impressions etc.

 

Five*9

Some WIP on the dream sequences. First two are from the pyramid-based dream. First is obviously a progress on the character style of the camels, the second is a colour guide for the sequence.

The two below are WIP for the Leprechaun-based sequence. First is a colour guide to the leprechaun figure. The second is the final design for the ute, which will be mocked up in 3D (as a reference point for the animation.)

Five*8

More work. Some rapid examples of crowd/environment interpretations.

 

 

The above (final) image is an example of how an entire environment may be transformed.

Five*7

Got a bit slack again. Catch-up posts on concept, then some posts on styleframes! Some further sketches on possible Inner's as well as mouth shape and style studies.

Five*6

Some more concept work as it comes. Some very sketchy, some more refined - so is the nature of the beast.

Click on the second image for a proper view. These are for one of the dream sequences based off some really creepy nightmares that I use to have when I had just started high school. I lived out of town so I would catch the bus home, during primary school the bus would drop me at the bottom of the street but in high school it dropped me at the end of my driveway. The driveway is a decent length so the dream would start with me getting off the bus, cross the road and start up the driveway, then I would be stopped by a leprechaun that would jump out of a bush and try to give me coins. I wouldn't take the coins and then a old holden ute would suddenly scream up the street and veer off, hit the leprechaun and then chase me. That's the point where I would wake up. Weird I know. So for part of the dream sequence intro I was going to include snippets of this. I am taking the approach that it is alot easier to make the sequence in it's entirety and then cut from that when cutting the film. So I have the storyboard and the style, so that's on the way. I figured I may as well start it now and get the ball rolling on the dream sequence early. All 2D except for the ute - will make a basic 3D model as a reference point and use that for angles etc for the illustrated version.

Another dream sequence - a pyramid taking off into space. This relates to several things; my interest in ancient egypt, my intrigue with the notion of other life in the universe and also a dream which I had once about who built the pyramids? Personally I like the Stargate theory of aliens but that's just me.

WIP sketch of the monster train. Trying several different approaches, with several key similarities. I really want the train to appear to be a mixture of organic and mechanical - like the 'monster' has been born of a machine. This particular sketch is obviously a clown approach. Personally I don't have an issue with clowns but I know that alot of people are quite scared by them. Mind you, they can be rather fantastically creepy in films.

Octopus Moon WIP - an octopus stuck in the moon. For one of the dream sequences. Click for larger view (& the notes).

Some concepts of what the transformations between real and INNER will appear like. Initially I had the idea of having the INNER's appearance flicker in, which I still may include in some way but I think that there is a far more visually appealing way to approach it. A few ideas that I have had since then is having the INNER's appear through several different means - a violent transformation that appears more like a mutation that a subtle overlay. Other approaches include a tornado-like effect reminiscent of the transformations in The Mask. Also, I have thought of using keyed footage of ink drops and splatters to reveal them in a very fluid way. I plan on using a mixture, but the majority will be the mutation and tornado-like effects.

Five*5

Worked through the Particle Shadows tutorial over at VideoCopilot. I figured that it could provide one approach to creating the shadows for the  INNER's in an efficient way. I'm right, but it will take tweaking. It was a reasonably quick tutorial to get the basics of the technique down-pat but it took a fair while to play with the details so that I could achieve the right volume to the shadows.

This was the raw result of the base tutorial. The objects cast the shadows correctly and according to plan, but there were issues with some of the shadows being to close to the ground in the sense that they were far to dark in comparison to what they should (in reality) be. I played with the settings further and improved on the issue but it was by no way resolved. I kept going and it frustratingly refused to improve to any degree that I would deem acceptable. Then I had a thought, which was something that I should have thought of at the beginning;

Yep. The objects had collided/passed through the floor plane which had created said abomination. So very frustrating that I had not thought to check earlier - I would have saved myself some serious time. But we learn from these mistakes. When creating the emitter I had tested and checked it thoroughly but forgot to recheck when continuing with the tutorial, when I made changes to the emitter. So I tweaked the settings on the emitter and moved the emitter higher and you can see comparison to a couple of attempts and the final attempt in the following video. The shadows aren't dark enough in my opinion, but I think that has more to do with the render than anything..

Five*4

LADYTRON - TOMORROW (OFFICIAL) from Neil Krug on Vimeo.

Found a high res version of Neil Krug's music video for Ladytron. Can't believe I forgot about Vimeo. Anyway, thought I would throw that up.

And now we have some more concept art, which I am slowly getting uploaded to here. I'm still scanning all the various sketches in so when I finish that I'll be putting them up all in one post. Possibly just as a pdf to download, that may be easiest. Still have a fair bit to scan so that might be a little while yet.

The final image is one of the final styles. I will be putting up more sketches of it later but as I finish this particular styleframe for it I figured I should put it up. I'm refining the shading more, so that will be up tomorrow.

Five*3

Quick post. I'm planning on the dream sequences at the beginning of the film being quite simple in animation, but striking in imagery. They are not going to be seen for too long but I would love them to be highly detailed so that I could reuse them as prints or something of the like. I will be putting up sketches tomorrow, it's a tad late at the moment but I thought I would throw this up while I thought about it.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Although I plan on having more animation than there is here, so it's not the perfect example but it will do until I hunt through my bookmarks for something spot on.

Five*2

Audio-driven Particles from Dane Kirkland on Vimeo.

Testing out AE Particular as well as experimenting with audio driven animation.

I've been itching to get into Particular for ages now and so I've been playing around with it's various looks and functions. There was one video that I stumbled across which particularly (pun intended!) inspired me to have a closer look at the more complicated applications of the plugin;

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

Isn't it beautiful? And at the same time soooo ridiculous?? That's what I thought. As you can see my attempt is not nearly as grand. The basis of the technique is not all that difficult, but understanding how the movement is driven and applying the various effects to create a look better than brightly coloured sand takes a fair bit of time, effort and research! A fantastic resources to get you started that I would highly recommend would be the tutorial at RGTV that I used. I am yet to attempt it with my own music, but that's coming! As is attempting it with sound fx.

But as far as a look that I like from a first attempt I like to think that it was pretty decent. The example was actually far longer, but the epic rendering times (even on my shiny quad core imac!) were extravagant - so I've restricted it to 8 seconds. I've thought about applications for this within my MAP work. My current thought so far is that it could be incorporated into the 'monster train' - the idea of having 'smoke' coming from it's nostrils, or even 'sparks' coming from the tracks that pulse with the sound of the train tracks clacking along would be great! You know the chooga-chooga-chooga part of the movement of the train? That part.

In my head it looks good anyway.

Five*1

Bridge Comp Test base track from Dane Kirkland on Vimeo.

Bridge Comp Test 1 from Dane Kirkland on Vimeo.

Bridge Comp Test 2 from Dane Kirkland on Vimeo.

AE Motion tracking WIP.

Exploring motion tracking in After Effects. The base unaltered track that it gave is the top video. As far as a stable track it was rubbish, but that's to be expected when you haven't tweaked the settings what-so-ever. Mind you, it kept it in the general area of the tracking point reasonably ok-ish so that was enough for me to work from. I linked the position of the comped character through the use of an expression to link it with the tracking data. That way when I changed the track layer the character's position would be automatically updated. Sure I could have copy and pasted the relevant data but this was just far more efficient.

The second video is a more refined track, but as you can see it still slips here and there, particularly with the larger camera movements.

The final video is that same track again, tweaked further - with touch up's done by hand. It was a bit painstaking to do it this way but still worked out pretty well. It's still not perfect, I'm going to continue to play with it to see if I can get it perfect - but this isn't too bad as far as it goes I don't think.

I have done a few other tests which I will upload as well, but this was the best one for this particular example. So after this little exercise I've realised that the challenge of tracking into unstable footage for the length of time planned and the complexity of what I will be doing would be... well suicide. I'm pretty sure it would be doable, but would not look as good as it would if it were stable footage. There will still be some handheld footage in the film, but the rest will be shot on a tripod and manipulated into appear as though it is handheld. I've thought of a few different ideas on how to approach this (keying, plugins etc) I think the route I will explore further is using handheld footage as a direct base for simluating the movement. Using the same technique that I did in the examples above and applying the tracked movement to a stable piece of footage. I'm yet to shoot any stable test footage but I've quickly mocked up an example using the movement of the footage above on a still image. I think as long as the footage which is to be used is of a higher res than the final export it should work. Tests will confirm this of course and it may mean double shooting everything that I want as handheld, but that's alot less time-consuming than the alternative. If not, I'll use a mixture of the techniques. (Video eg follows, ran out of my daily vimeo quota =p)

Five*0

3D WIP Compilation from Dane Kirkland on Vimeo.

First of many posts detailing my pre-production. Some WIP of my efforts to learn more about 3D as I head further into the project. I will detail my rigging exercises in another video.

Initially I was intending on the INNER's all being 3D. But I've since realised that my 3D skills are not up to the task and at the end of the day I prefer 2D for animating. Regardless I will be taking what I have been learning and applying it to modelling various elements within the film - but not all of the them will be 3D, the majority will in fact be 2D but I am intending on creating a mixture as well.

I have some mockup's which I have been working on which I will be putting up soon.

I'm happy that I have a decent understanding of modelling, uv mapping and texturing in Maya now. As well as a basic idea of how the sculpting in Mudbox works as well.

The models in question were done as a part of another project, which itself was an exercise in learning Maya for use in my MAP. I have been doing a number of projects for competitions and keying all the work towards what needs to be done in the pre-production stage of my MAP work.

Four*9

As I hunt through my test files, exporting for upload to here as I go and begin scanning countless number of concept art I thought I would do a post that gives final details on the style of this piece so that there will be no confusion later on.

Over the past 6 months my style and approach the project has changed and altered through varying thought processes, inspiration stumbled upon and finally - things learned.

As it stands today, I feel as though my processes are coming to a head (finally). Months of concept sketches and doodles whenever I had the time have allowed me to explore my varying and broad illustration styles. This has largely assisted in the development of those that will appear in the final piece as well as allowing me to explore my various inspirations for not only this body of work, but my inspiration(s) for pursuing animation and design as a career.

I thought I would run through these inspirations and reasons in detail (where necessary) so that hopefully by the time you finish reading you will see and know what 'Me Again, Again' is all about and what it will represent.

Firstly, as stated multiple times 'Me Again, Again' is a very personal project for me. It is an exploration of self and of the world and human nature. As a whole we are predisposed to think, act and appear a certain way. All of these are a determined by different factors; our environment, the people around us, the way we were raised, what other people think of us, what we think other people think of us, who we are and who we want to be. Isn't it interesting that the majority of people (myself included) will ask "Where do you come from?" and "What do you do?" upon first meeting someone new. For the most part it is an unconscious reaction to the unknown and awkward, but there is also the fact that there is the initial judgment of the person. The whole notion of 'first impressions are everything' is almost purely based off someone's initial reaction to how you appear, how you talk, where you're from and what you do.

I make these same assumptions (I will gladly admit that) but for the most part I will reserve judgment until I have spoken to the person. But yes, first impressions matter but they are not necessarily lasting impression. You can apply a similar method to judging films; you may be so extremely disappointed upon first viewing that you ignore what good qualities may be hiding in there.

This body of work represents this initial snap judgments, combined with what I imagine the person may or could be. These imaginations are represented by the INNER's in the film. There will be literal representations, appearing as caricature's - focusing on the obvious physical features of the individual in question. There will also be more metaphorical interpretations - the kind of creature I feel they are, or partial transformations based off observations. That is one side of what the will be experiencing upon viewing the film.

The second is my thoughts and my emotional state of being; overwhelmed by thoughts of the future, career expectations vs reality, reality vs dream, experience vs opportunity and an increasing sense of dying optimism and being total overwhelmed. As it stands I am at an interestingly awkward stage of life - fresh out of an undergraduate degree, hungry and actively hunting for experience and yet finding it difficult to find much of anything. This combined with the new experiences that come with living in a city, the frustrations of an inability to travel anywhere in what I deem to be a reasonable amount of time. When you look at the animatic and script I feel as though I have achieved a good sense of these issues. Ultimately the resolution comes down to acceptance of these as facts of life, something that I just have to deal with and struggle through.

Now for the visual side of things...

Looking at the project and how personal it was it makes sense the visual's provide this sense of self, as well as the story. It has taken me till now to make sense of what exactly it was I am wanting to achieve and that has admittedly changed a few times - as my thought processes and approach has.

It's hard to find a happy middle between my two main influences because they are at opposite ends of the scale. I am largely influenced by the modern trends, but also by the retro. I have always found it increasingly difficult to strike a happy middle, and will probably continue to have this difficulty. One side of me attempts something retro but the other screams that it isn't up to date enough and looks rubbish. It's a constant battle.

I'll focus on inspirational films first.

As an avid film nut I'm always downloading trailers to the newest, biggest, shiniest blockbusters. That's just what I do. I see as many of these as I can squeeze in and for the most part I enjoy them all. But I couldn't and wouldn't say that many film's from the past 6 or so years number in my top 10 films. I love them? Yes. But all-time favourites? No. The film's that I cherish the most and maintain that are of the highest quality are those that I grew up on. These are the films of the 70s, 80s and to an extent the 90s and they are timeless, unlike so many of the current films. I believe the quality of these films overshadows their modern counterparts. Even their vfx seem timeless, where as so many films from 2007/8 look dated now! Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Flight of the Navigator, Blade Runner, The Mummy, Men in Black, Independance and to an extent the James Bond films. More recent favourites include Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean and the films of Christopher Nolan, Edgar Wright and Zack Snyder.

My initial interest in animation, vfx and design began when my mother bought a mysterious golden box containing 2 VHS in 1997 and sat my younger brother and I down and told us 'watch these, you'll like them'. That was my introduction to the rich universe of Star Wars. Watching the rich characters, creatures, vehicles and worlds of this universe come alive was something I had never experienced. As I grew up I found out more and more about how the films were made and the painstaking methods used to achieve something which in modern times can be done so simply.

To this date my work represents far more modern trends, mostly because this is what will get me work - it is what clients and studios are looking for. So it is my intention that this body of work represent both my influences equally. A mix of both modern and retro techniques and design. It is all about representing myself visually, as mentioned earlier.

 

Other than film's there are other influences that include old slide and polaroid photos of my parents - there is something about the grittiness of a slide or film that I have always appreciated. I have had several conversations with a mate about bluray discs. I am not a fan and neither is he. I think there needs to be imperfections (like a minor amount of film grain) or otherwise it feels like something is missing. Take the work of Neil Krug as an example, influence and inspiration here. His work is created using old cameras (video and still). There are many plugins that may achieve these looks and I have been looking into them as well as many tutes detailing the process. I have been contemplating filming with film, but that is still something that may be too time-consuming and make several approaches to the vfx awkward. There are films such as 500 Days of Summer that have achieved an older feeling film very simply through costuming etc, which is something I will think about but obviously am restricted in. Other influences include classic pixel-based video games such as Apogee Software classics such as Pharaohs Tomb, Monster Bash and the like. Pixel-based artwork has always been with me, so expect an appearance by something along those lines there.

So there you have it - inspirations, ideas and intent.

Four*8

A quick little list I did up a while ago;

 Shot Summary

TOTAL NO. OF SCENES - 11

TOTAL NO. WITH VFX - 7

TOTAL No. WITHOUT VFX - 4

COMPLEXITY OF SCENES (descending order)

SC9, SC (6, 7, 11), SC5, SC4, SC1

notes.

Scene 1 is the dream-based sequence so the content for that can be started in pre-production and have it prepped for improvement in post.

Scene 4 requires dynamic simulation tests of melting & techniques to use for the zipper.

Scene 5's 'monster train' can also be prepped for improvement in post, must solidify the design in pre-production and have started work towards the final product.

Scene's 6, 7, 11require test footage but are reliant on shot footage for 'final' work to be begun/completed.

Scene 9 can have some prep in pre-production i.e. building designs etc, but is also reliant upon footage.