Categories
Just another myblog.arts site
Month: January 2023
Categories
Paraphrasing
Paraphrase the following passage:
The authenticity of a documentary is ‘deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality’ Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paraphrased version:
The semiological connection between image and reality is exemplified in documentary virtue as authentic: the existence of the images inside the documentary is a tautological representation of reality.
Categories
Critical Report
Categories
Audiovisual presentation
Categories
Final Research Topic
After, considering where I want to continue doing research for this academic year, I decided to choose something that is closer to my discipline and professional interests. My aspiration as a VFX artist is to work in environment design for films.
Therefore, I will research the following topic: How does architecture feature in film and what roles does CGI play in the creation of filmic space.
Keywords: CGI, Film, Architecture, VFX
Categories
Research Topic
Orientalism in Otaku Culture: The construction of a pseudo-Japan in western Anime fandom
Establish themes and aesthetic qualities in anime that constitute “Japaneseness”.
Research marketing strategies for western audiences.
Debate whether creating a simulacrum of Japan through animation qualifies as Orientalism.
Sources:
Michal DALIOT-BUL, Japan Brand Strategy: The Taming of ‘Cool Japan’ and the Challenges of Cultural Planning in a Postmodern Age, Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 12, Issue 2, Winter 2009, Pages 247–266
Kelts, R., 2006. Japanamerica: How Japanese pop culture has invaded the US. St. Martin’s Press.
Patten, F., 2001. Anime in the United States. Animation in Asia and the Pacific, pp.55-72.
Azuma, H., 2009. Otaku: Japan’s database animals. U of Minnesota Press
Keywords:
Otaku, Orientalism, Anime, Animation Industry, Consumerism, Postmodernism
Main Characters:
- MAX – (hero)
- VINCENT – (shadow/mentor)
- ANNIE – (ally)
Narrative stages:
ACT I
- Ordinary World: Max is a regular taxi driver of Los Angeles. He drives Annie, a beautiful lawyer, to her office. They get along and plan to see each other again.
- Call for Adventure: Vincent, a hired killer, enters his cab and asks to be driven for the rest of the night for an irrefutable amount of money.
ACT II
- Crossing the Threshold: Vincent kills a man and the body falls on Max’s cab. Vincent makes Max as hostage.
- Set of Trial: Max and Vincent drive at night in LA going from place to place killing people of Vincent list. They are stopped by the police and are able to pass through and later Max receives a call from his mother looking for him. Vincent makes him go visit her. During the visit Max steals and destroys Vincent’s briefcase where the list was.
- Crossing the Second Threshold: Max enters the club of Felix and gets the list of people Vincent still has to kill. The FBI follows Max cab thinking he is Vincent.
- Set of Trial: Max and Vincent makes a new stop for a new victim. The FBI finds Max and tries to arrest him. A shooting happens and Fanning is able to rescue Max but Vincent kills Fanning.
- Belly of the Whale: Max and Vincent escape. They fight in the cab about the murder of Fanning.
ACT III
- Set of Trial: Max crashes the car. Vincent escapes and Max is arrested by a cop who finds the body of a victim in the truck. Max sees that Annie, the girl he likes, is the next victim of Vincent. Max takes the gun of the cop and goes to Annie.
- Approaching the Inmost Cave: Max calls Annie from the street in front of her office and warns her that Vincent is after her. The cellphone battery dies and Max enters the building.
- Resurrection with Elixir: Max shots Vincent and saves Annie. They are chased by Vincent in the subway and Max kills him in the train.
- Freedom to Live: Vincent sits down and dies. Max and Annie leave the train and walk down the street.
Ten years before his seminal work Ghost in The Shell (1995 was released, Mamoru Oshii created Angel’s Egg, a surrealist art film that is now seemingly forgotten and by the artist’s own admission, prevented him from getting work for years. It was a time of trial and transition for Oshii: not only he had recently left Japanese animation giant Studio Pierot but had also confessed to have been questioning his Christian faith. The result was the director’s most experimental work and one of the most beautiful anime films to date.
Anime, as a genre, is characteristically rigid both formally and conceptually. There is a set list of formal ingredients and strict conceptual recipes for each sub-genre. Angel’s Egg radically rejects this formula, opting instead for a circular narrative and a near-complete absence of dialogue. The rich symbolism sticks out of the ambient and eerie environment and inviting the viewer to derive meaning from the experience or simply enjoy its aestheticism.
Categories
Balloon Festival
For this project we were tasked to incorporate a 3D model we built on Maya class into a composite and freely built a concept around the resources we were given.
Since the plate we were given was a shot of snowy mountains, I thought it would be a good idea to turn into a scorching volcanic scene, as it would be technically simple enough but it would also invert the aesthetic quality of the original completely.
I started out by using a luminance key to replace the sky:
After I added a volcano to the scene:
I found a free smoke effect online and added that as well:
Now I wanted to change the color of the snow to make it look like lava. However, none of the conventional methods I tried achieved the result I was after. After starting to experiment with different things I stumbled upon the dodge tool inside the RotoPaint node. I found that I could essentially burn the pixels into the color that I wanted.
I know this is far from the best method to achieve the desired result and I will continue looking into ways to do it properly.
A side effect of using an improper method like this was that my scene became almost impossible to work on as the render in the viewport was now taking ages for a single frame. To rectify this I rendered the scene and used it as a plate on a new script.
After this, I wanted to add a heat distortion tool. I found the IDistort node inside of Nuke to not provide a very realistic effect and therefore I followed this tutorial on how to create a proper heat distortion effect:
In addition to that I added the balloons and added depth of field by using the ramp and ZBlur combination Gonzalo showed in class, as well as text and a fire sound effect. This is the final result:
In conclusion, I recognize the end product is far from technically sound but it was a great exercise in adding new tools to our toolbox while also working with what we learned in class. Although my problems with rendering the file prevented me from adding more interesting things (for example balloons falling into the volcano causing an explosion) in order to create a small narrative, I am pleased that I achieved the visual theme I was aiming for.
This was the largest project of the first term. We were tasked with retopologizing a 3D character which we would later wrap, rig and animate.
For some reason I found the process of quad drawing over the 3D model very difficult which is reflected in my first two drafts:
As the wrapping process was unnecessarily difficult due to my bad geometry, I decided to repeat the process and be as meticulous and time intensive as needed to get an accurate result.
I was very satisfied with the end result which almost identically resembled the original model.
After that I found rigging, to be manageable as I coincidentally had some previous experience with rigging hard surface objects in 3DS Max.
I also found a tutorial on youtube for creating facial shapes that luckily used the same model as us:
The process was therefore a little smoother than I expected for the degree of complexity and level my level of skill.
This is the rendered lip-synch video:
Sadly, due to a crash in Maya I has lost my scene and cannot provide more pictures of my work.