Monday 29 November 2010

Maya - Town Scene (In Progress)



The scene is not yet finished but I am getting close to it. I didn't have enough time to start on it and also, the UV Texture wasn't on the house as it's all white, including the front and side house images weren't there either. =/

Thursday 25 November 2010

Unit 2 - 3 Final Pieces

Concept 1



Concept 2



Concept 3

Unit 2 - Concept 3 Preparatory Study



The image that is around a red box is what I thought on what my 3rd concept piece would look like.






Tried to make it look like your looking at a position of seeing the grating but not the surfaces of the cliffs.





Added the crystals and experimented on adding the glow effects to the Crystals and it's reflections.






When drawn something to see there's something beyond the gratings, it didn't look right at all so I changed it to make the angle of the scenery look like it's looking at that angle.





Forgotten about the rock textures so I quickly added them in.

Unit 2 - Final Influence Maps

Final Influence Map Part 1





Final Influence Map Part 2

Unit 2 - Influence Maps 3

Seed Influence Map







Mountain Influence Map

Monday 22 November 2010

Unit 2 - Avatar (2009)



Directed by James Cameron. This film was the one that changed cinema for life on how it views 3D. The graphics are beyond amazing, seeing how realistic it was. The enivironment is absolutely georgous in its own aspects. I can't think of a word to explain about how great the movie is. There seem to be more people who like Avatar is not because of the storyline but the amazing graphics. Those who complain about Avatar because of the storyline just don't get it's amaziness.


"Now this movies graphics are gorgeous, everything is so real, the 3D just adds to the effect beautifully without distracting you."
(miruleyall: 2009)

"I was lucky to see Avatar at a pre-screening a few hours ago. It completely blew me and the whole room away and i dare to say it will do so to 80% of any audience anywhere. The remaining 20%, who always finds something to complain about, will whine about character development, dialog, story or the pop-corn."
(Balazs Jedovszky: 2009)




The storyline is boring, like the Dark Crystal but the graphics and technology used is brilliant. It's like they used every bit of technology we have to offer to create this fantastic film. Like how Metropolis (1927) managed to get the technology needed to create their film.



The storyline is somehow related to Pocahontas, like when the Human Beings/English Soldiers came to a new world/land and met with the America Natives/Na'vi there. It's also the same with the romance involved, like Pocahontas/Neytiri falls in love with John/Jake. The personalities suit them as well. Neytiri cares for nature while Jake doesn't until he becomes dear to it.





The effects used are brilliant. Without these effects, it wouldn't look realistic at all. These effects are the only thing need to create a fantastic film like Avatar. The same how Metropolis uses the effects s well.

Not to be confused with a sensational bravura performance from some of the centuries best such as Marion Brando, Tom Hanks, or Diane Keaton; these actors along with the director inhabit these visual transformations with special effects as if they are have lived these beings all their lives.
(Clayton Davis: 2009)



Tuesday 16 November 2010

Unit 2 - Dark Crystal (1982)




Directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz. The storyline of the film was not so great, but the environemnt and character design were absolutely georgous seeing how dark they are. The environment also includes vegetation that seems strangly alike with the environment in Avatar (2009) as well as the boring storyline. Also, by looking at the film like you are watching it when it first came out, it seems to have cost quite a lot for making the puppets and getting hold of special effects needed. Similar to what Avatar needed to make the movie.

"But the Level of sophistication compared with the technology of the time is astounding. This movie must have been for the eighties as AVATAR is for today. Must have spent a huge budget on this one."









The characters were designed very nicely with the details and also with the dark feeling to them. Possibility that Frank was influenced by the work of Tim Burton, who always give his movies that type of creepiness. The castle environment where the dark crystal awaits has a dark touch to it also. The Skeksis however, seem to look more darker than any other character that is featured in the film as they are the evil masterminds in the whole plot. Also, they seem to be quite more familar to Tim Burton's characters than the others are.







Monday 15 November 2010

Unit 2 - Space Essay

I have decided to do the essay on Avatar (2009), directed by James Cameron, along with research on specific things like Pocahontas (1995), The Winds of Altair (1973), Call Me Joe (1957), and Deathworld (1960) that properly might influenced him to create the world of Avatar. Also, what else may be influenced may properly be Roger Dean's yes album covers by what the environment looks like in Pandora.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Unit 2 - Research on the First Men in the Moon


The book was written by Herbert George Wells in 1901. Sixty years before Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon. So basically Herbert had no idea what the moon was like close up.

He was born in September 21st 1866 in Bromley, Kent, England. He began his literary career in 1895 because of his first novel called "The Time Machine". During London's Normal School of Science, he written "The First Men in the Moon" as well as many others. The book is about a story of mankind on a journey to make contact with life outside the planet Earth. Mankind are still trying to find life outside Earth now in the present. But thinking what the creatures would look like outside of Earth is that they combine them with existing animals on planet Earth. Like metamorphosis.



One of the creatures shown in a documentry called Hawking's Universe. This creature seems to be a mixture of a Scorpion and a Hammer Head Shark.







This creature seems to be a mixture of a Turtle and a Dung Beetle.


We don't know what aliens would actually look like so we artists just guess by combinding various of existing animals that we know into one. The background area of the two pictures seem to be like a desert with not much vegetation.

For the aliens mentioned in the book, they seem to be like humans with the machines they have and that they have hatchets to use to cut meat or if they are in danger. By the sound of it, the Selenites seem to be intelligent as well as meat eaters.


"Insects," murmured Cavor, "insects! And they think I'm going to crawl about on my stomach - on my vertebrated stomach!"


Also, what is mentioned in the book that the Selenites are like insects but Cavor doesn't mention on what insect they seem to relate too down on Earth. That is why we artists have to imagine what they look like, it could either be a human centipede, a cockroach, a moth and so on.

The environment outside the moon is suppose to be like a desert with some vegetation around with a tinge of amber. Along with that the shadows from the rocks/craters were purple, the fog is at a far distance of the sun, and the sky was blue and clear like it was down on Earth.

"The glare of the sun had taken upon itself a faint tinge of amber; the shadows upon the cliff of the crater wall were deeply purple. To the eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched and sheltered from the sunrise, but to the westward the sky was blue and clear."

The vegetation on the moon gave me a brief idea on what the plants would have looked like. The part when it explains about the plants act like a thermometer when the mercury reaches the top that looks like bubble that's gonna explode is where the seeds would be like what all plants have. Like it's swelling up.

"Have you ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep up the tube?"

"And beyond this fringe was the silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling visibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with air."


The environment inside the moon is like a damp cave, like the ones on Earth, but the colours are different. The moon cave would be like the moon would be on the surface without the amber light. On Earth, the caves have like a light brown colour, lighter than dirt. In addition to the moon cave, it has a blue light which the astronauts mention a lot about when they are inside. Also, they mention the crystals in the book. They also talk about the water, dripping down from the cave walls and ceiling.

"It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating machinery."

"And at last, far above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it filtered through a grating that barred our way."

"At times the cleft narrowed so much that we could scarce squeeze up it; at others it expanded into great drusy cavities, studded with prickly crystals or thickly beset with dull, shining fungoid pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at other times slanted down nearly to the horizontal direction."

"An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and again between the bars near my face."

The environment further in the cave, the book tells about the machineries around that are making the blue light and describes about the sweeping arms moving left and right above them, missing the astronauts and the Selenites. When leaving the area where the machines were, the cave opens wide and low, revealing darkness and cannot see what's beyond that point when the blue light fades within. In the darkness, you cannot see from any direction were no light is provided.

"And not only did the web of sounds that filled the air proceed from this mechanism, but also the peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole place."

"At first the thing seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the full immensity of cavern and machine."

"The cavern spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the weight of the vast thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no way out of it - no way out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures, confronting us, and we two unsupported men!"

Unit 2 - Concept 2 (In Progress)