Moon Tea - Final Edit

Heres the final edit of my 1 minute video.






I definitely think I'm going to go back to this at some point to fine tune it and make it look more professional.

2 minute video - The Chase

For the 2 minute video I worked with Matt Taylor and Robbie King.

The story we decided on was based on something that happened to Robbie and his friend one night. It focuses on two main characters who are walking through the park and are feeling pretty paranoid due to them being high. They then see two shady looking characters point at them and start running in their direction, which causes them to run away. This then escalates to a whole chase scene, which comes to a halt due to a busy road. The two shady characters draw closer to the main characters cowering at the road, and begin jogging on the spot. When the traffic clears the joggers continue with their run.

This changed slightly when we were filming in Hyde Park. As we were walking around scouting good filming locations, i saw a bit of a hill, and decided it had to be incorporated into the video somehow. After a quick break while discussing changes to the video, we decided to have Robbie and Luke, the two main characters to jump over this hill to add a bit more action into the scene. This resulted in Robbie's hat falling off which made us decide to change the ending. The new ending would involve Robbie losing his hat and running away, and the joggers see this and pick up his hat to give back to him.

Heres my final edit:

1 Minute Video

For the 1 minute video brief I wanted to do something humorous, which involved both live action, and 3d animation. Basically I wanted to make an instructional video on how to make a cup of tea, but with a twist. I wanted it to be done on the moon. The reason behind this, is because one of the most standard videos people tend to make is instructional videos on something simple. And i wanted to take that something simple, and turn it on its head, to add some edge to it. I wanted the audience to start watching it and think to themselves "oh no, not another instructional video on how to make a cup of tea...how boring" and then by the end of it, completely shattering their minds. Well that was the plan at least.

In my head i knew exactly what i wanted it to look like, so i drew up a storyboard and came up with a script. As for the actor, there was only one person who could bring this video to life, and that was Thomas McCoy, due to his passion for tea.

Heres my original script:

"Hi there, today I will be showing you how to make the perfect cup of tea. We'll be doing it a little different today so we have to hurry. (running into garden)"

"(arrives on moon) That was a fun ride, ok so firstly we need to boil the kettle. (sped up, tom bouncing around on the moon in the background.) Next we add the tea bag and  boiled water. We then leave this for a few minutes and stir. (as he pours the water it starts floating around, tom attempts to get it back into the mug.) "

Ok so while filming the scene inside the spaceship, tom accidently dropped the mug off the desk, so i thought to myself "ooh that would be a nice twist" so i put a note down, basically incase all else failed.
After we finished filming and i started editing the footage together, a few problems began to arise. First of all was we filmed at night, so when tom ran outside you couldn't really see much. Second problem was again with it being night, the 3d rocket didn't really fit into the scene. I tried fixing this by lowering the brightness of the rocket footage. This method sort of worked but still looked a bit sketchy, which was also due to when the rocket blasts off, the surroundings don't light up. I had a solution for the ignition, which was to put a bbq in the middle of the garden, in the rough area where the rocket would be placed, and then squirting petrol on it to cause the surroundings to light up as if a rocket was taking off. (sounds very dangerous, but it would have been very controlled) In the end i decide to reshoot some of the footage during the day, which fixed the problem of the rocket fitting in, and the visibility.

Another problem i came across was the fact that my main actor also had his FMP to finish, so I didn't want to take him away from that too much, so some things were done very last minute. I decided to go with the mug breaking idea, due to time constraints, but i think it added a bit more humour to it, and made it less like a boring instructional video.

Untitled Animation

So lately I've been working on this animation for the Northern Design Competition. The story is, put simply,  about the end of the Earth. Its a simple story, but I think it works quite well, what with all the global warming and natural disasters going on nowadays. The animation is set on Earth, at a launch site. and in space, which features all the planets, the Sun and even the asteroid belt ;) The launch site has been used from an animation I made earlier called Leaving Earth, but has been adapted to fit with the size of the new space shuttle.

Here are some renders, some of which are tests others are from the animation itself.

(Space Shuttle on the launch pad)

(Blasting off)

(Blasting off - camera attached to shuttle)

(Boosters detach, falling back to Earth)

(Earth and Moon silhouetted by the Sun)

(Saturn with Sun in background)

(Some of the planets orbiting the sun)

Ill be uploading the video soon so check back to see the final piece. Its looking good so far so im just hoping that it looks good when its all edited together. 

Steampunk Island

Since this project is coming to a close, I thought it best to upload some of the final screenshots of all the elements that make up our Steampunk Island, and write a little about the building process of them, and the ups and downs I had through the duration.

First up is the Market Place:

(Here we have the Fruit and Clothing Stand. The fruit stand is just for decoration, but the costumes displayed on the Clothing stand can be bought for a small fee of nothing,how generous am I?)

(As with the clothing stand, both the top hats, and goggles are available for purchase. In the background you can see the stairway to the Sky Bar, as well as the warehouse on the left, and a pit shaft in between the two)

(We even have Market stalls that are for rent. In the background you can see the "park" seating area, with a very 'steampunk' looking character lazing about)

Now onto the Navy Base:

(The navy base, with its high solid walls, which also features a floating, rotating cannon turret for defense of the islands)

(Here you can see the turret island, which contains 4 cannons, and the inside of the navy base.)

Islands:

(The islands themselves were created by me in Maya, then 'sculptied', and inserted into Second Life) 

Outfits:

(Here we have the Pilot character on his trusty flying machine)

(Here we have the Merchant at his Top Hat Stand)

(Heres the Adventurer having a drink in the Sky Bar)

Heres a shot of the whole island.

Steampunk Island

Just an update on the construction of our island, we managed to fix the problem of the islands being too small. This was due to Second Life's limitations wherein the maximum size of an object is 10x10x10. This was fixed with a pack of Megaprims which allows a maximum size of 50x50x50. This being said, we've ran into another problem. Even though we have an island of a decent size, the scaling in Second Life isn't very accurate.

The picture above shows this problem. The dock on which I'm stood is 2 meters wide in Second Life, but if thats the case, then how tall is my avatar? The problem with this, is that it appears that due to the large size of the avatar, everything on the island seems smaller than it actually is. I've tried editing my appearance to make my avatar smaller but it doesn't make me small enough. A solution I thought of  was to make an outfit which makes your avatar small enough for the island to look proportional. Hopefully this will work, but in the mean time, I better get back to building.

Critical Review - Just Cause 2

With the success of the Modern Warfare series of games, which are First-Person Shooters, a lot of sandbox games such as GTA and Just Cause don't get the recognition they deserve. A sandbox game usually consists of a very large playing area, and a general story that doesn't have to be followed. So essentially you can just run around doing what you want when you want. This is one of the more appealing aspects of Just Cause 2.

There are two sides to this game. First side is the shooting, which unlike an FPS its third person. This makes the gun fights less realistic and less accurate. You could be having a gun fight with ten enemies shooting at you, and your life will last quite a while, so realism has gone right out the window with this game. Thats not too much of a problem though because sandbox games don't have to be realistic.

The second side to this game is that size of the world and the amount you can do in it. The vehicles in the game range from different types of cars, bikes, planes and even helicopters. This diversity in vehicles allows for a varied game experience. Some people would rather go around the whole island on top of a car, whereas some prefer to fly from A to B, and then parachute (or even free fall) out. A major addition to this game that the first didn't have is the grappling hook. This doesn't just allow you to get to places quickly, but you can dual hook objects. This means that if you need to destroy a statue, you just attach it to your car then drive away to pull it down. Now of course you can use it for less moral uses, such as dragging a person around behind your car, or attaching two people together so they fly towards each other. Grim stuff, but very fun indeed.

On the whole, the story is very easy going, missions aren't too difficult but very fun. But most of all the extensive content and possibilities within the world of Just Cause 2 seem endless. Definitely worth a purchase.