Maya Exercise: Do it Yourself

For the study task Do it Yourself, I decided to make a model of a mug. I made the main body of the mug first, with the ring tool, and cyclinder for the bottom of the mug, with a smaller radius than the ring. I added the ear afterwards by bending a cyclinder with a tiny radius.

Title: Idea Development

Firstly my initial idea was to show the main characters' faces, while they all have different expressions on them, due to the personality that the author has create them as. However I've changed my mind that rather than shows the whole face of the characters, just show the eyes of them, because it demonstrate the expressions better. On the design sheet I have tried a few way of drawing the eyes, to indicate the different characters.

Title: Development

To process to the making of the animation, I started with planning the storyboard. As it is a title sequence, it should consider what the novel is roughly about and the key elements of the story, also have to match the main tone of the story as well.

I decided not to make a specific character sheet, because the sequence would not have a main character but relatively abstract. I changed my mind on the animation from the original idea of showing the characters' faces one by one as it can be dull to watch.

When I looked at the resources, I got interested in the opening of the title sequence of the TV series Archer. It reprensent a range of similar title sequences that used the same technique. After Effect inductions helped me to understand the method of how this kind of animation were done, and I decided to include it in my animation.

Title: Cover Study

And then there were none, the novel has been adapted to film before, in the form of a movie and a TV series as well. I found some of the covers of the films and a few editions of the book.

the poster of the film And Then There Were None. The scene of the main characters travels from the main land to the island where the story take place. It is a visualized photograph that demonstrate one of the main scene, which shows a tone of mysterious atmosphere, that captures audience's interests.

An old edition of the book, with a ancient look image of a island. Again with dark colour such as grey and black.

Strike a Pose

In this task we are required to strike a pose for 20 minutes for the others in the group and spend that time to do a more detailed sketch of the model. This practice has improved my ability of find the balance and where human's weight lies when they stand still. It also improve how I interpret a life drawing, which is from the whole body and work towards the details in each part of the body.

Like a Puppet on a String

Like a puppet on a string, we are supposed to express the squash and stretch of the body, producing a series of poses with each held for 10 sec. As for media I used coloured chalks, fine markers.Theses two materials are suitable for quick sketches like this, as it flows fast on the paper and create nice texture. I did the bottom one overlapping all the poses together trying to make the movement and the stretch of the body more obvious.

Rhythm is a Dancer

This requires us to show the flow of the body when making a continuous movement. I did both of these two set of sketches by coloured chalk, but some of the other ones in other materials as well.In both of the two our model made a turn around during the movement, which is a good example if we are presenting the flow of the body.I found it's very hard to capture the shape during only 10 seconds, therefore I used the simplest style I could.

Ah, Push it!

In our group we did two set of pushing poses, these are two of the sketches I did, both of them are pushing against the table, but one with the body facing us and the other one with back facing us. I found it extremely interested to observe the muscles of human body when pushing or pulling stuff. If in animation, the principle's of animation would be considered as well, such as squash and stretch when giving force.

Title: Initial Ideas

And then there were none, with the other name Ten little Indians, is a fiction novel written by Agatha Christie, who is one of my favourite writers. It is inspired by a nursery rhythm named the 10 little Indians. In terms of producing an animated title sequence for the novel, I came up with the idea of showing the main characters’ face one by one and the title unravelled at last from a dark background. During this time the background music should be considered the beats with the graphic to fit the change of the character. So the length of each scene should be considered carefully.

As this novel has already been adapted as a TV series, so it has already got a title sequence. After referenced the original one, I developed my own version of the title sequence. It was originally a pretty dark opening due to the background of this book. It is about a dark story of a well-planned series of murder, so the opening scene should fit the context of the novel which is mysterious and a flavour of horror.