Life Drawing - Session 12

2 Mins

2 Mins

2 Mins (Under-Drawings Only)

2 Mins (Under-Drawings Only)

5 Mins

5 Mins

5 Mins

5 Mins

10 Mins

10 Mins

10 Mins

20 Mins

10 Mins

5 Mins

5 Mins

Toolkit 2 - Depth of Field

Starting this tutorial with this clean render.

Camera Attributes

Arnold

Enable DOF: False

Focus Distance: 5

Aperture Size: 0

Aperture Blades: 0

Render Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 2

SSS = 2

Volume Indirect = 2

Camera Attributes

Arnold

Enable DOF: True

Focus Distance: 39

Aperture Size: 0.5

Aperture Blades: 3

Render Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 2

SSS = 2

Volume Indirect = 2

Camera Attributes

Arnold

Enable DOF: True

Focus Distance: 39

Aperture Size: 0.5

Aperture Blades: 3

Render Settings

Camera (AA) = 5

Diffuse = 5

Specular = 3

Transmission = 1

SSS = 0

Volume Indirect = 0

Life Drawing - Session 11

5 Mins

5 Mins

5 Mins

5 Mins

10 Mins
Continuous Line

15 Mins
Form Lines

15 Mins
Form Lines + Negative Space

20 Mins

8 Mins

Premise - Ideas V2

Since my focus and my storytelling has been called into question, I decided to back through my ideas. I used this as an excuse to rethink and rework my old ideas.

“The Pit / Rock Bottom”

Type/Theme: Character driven, self-reflective piece 

Premise: I reflect on my life, visualised through me being stuck in a near bottomless pit, being attacked by shadow people.

Characters:

• Myself
• Narrator
• Avatar
• Shadow People
• Slight variations between them, to signify different personal problems

Environment:

• An incredibly deep, sandstone pit. It has cracks running down the walls, and all other the floor.

Story:

• My avatar wakes up laying on a cracked stone floor. They look up, revealing that they are stuck in an enormous pit made of sandstone. Narration begins, speaking in the 2nd person.
• The avatar has several attempts at climbing the walls, but each time they are stopped and pushed by down by different shadow people.
• By the end, the avatar manages to best each of the shadow people and they climb to the top, finally escaping the pit.

Thoughts:

Honestly, the more I think about this one, the harder it becomes for me. In my opinion, the basic idea could work, but because this is a reflective piece on my mental state, the story is sporadic. It changes every single time I think about it. The basic concept of a character stuck in a pit, getting attacked by shadow people that represent their issues and insecurities doesn’t change, but the actual story does.

If I was to continue this idea, I’d have condense it down into tackling only one issue, rather than a few; and with it being a self-reflection, I feel like it could end up being quite mentally taxing. So in conclusion, this idea seems unlikely.

“A Trip Through Time”

Type/Theme: Character driven short; Comedy

Premise: A messy person finds an hourglass that can travel through time, hi-jinks ensue.

Characters:

• The Time Traveller - An unfortunate person that accidentally discovers an hourglass with the ability to travel through time.
• The Romans - Two roman guards. One tall and lanky and the other short and blocky. These two soldiers have been tasked with standing guard in a coliseum, they had no intention of having an adventure through time.
• The Megalosaurus - A large predatory dinosaur. Would love to make a snack out of some time travelling humans.

Environments:

• The Time Traveller’s Flat - A normal, modern day flat. Needs to be cleaned.
• The Roman Coliseum - A large arena. Built for fighting gladiators and lions, not dinosaurs and 21th century people.
• Jurassic Coast - 166 million years ago Britain was an archipelago. These islands, ruled by the mighty Megalosaurus, should’ve remained untouched by humans. 
• Future City Platform - A floating platform in the middle of a giant neon megacity. Don’t question how it floats.

Story:

• A normal day, where our hero is walking into their living room. Due to the room being messy and stuff being left all over the place, they trip over and fall. 
• As they catch themselves, they notice an hourglass under their coffee table. They reach under and grab it.
• Upon standing up, they inspect the fancy looking hourglass. The spin the glass around, but as they do a flash happens.
• After they open their eyes again, they quickly notice that they are no longer in their flat. They are in the middle of an arena.
• They look around panicked, as two Roman Guards approach cautiously.
• The Time-Traveller looks terrified, as do the Romans. The hero screams, causing the Romans to do the same, but they also draw their swords.
• A chance sequence starts with the Time-Traveller running away from the two Roman Soldiers. 
• During the chase, the hero turns the hourglass again and another flash happens.
• The Time-Traveller and both of the Romans have now landed on a beach. One of the Romans is in the water. The chase continues.
• Eventually, the hero and one of the Romans stop running to catch their breath. They then realise that the other Roman is missing. They look back down the beach and see a Megalosaurus cough up a Roman Helmet.
• The chase continues with the last Roman and the Time-Traveller trying to escape the jaws of the dinosaur.
• As the chase continues they teleport between the flat, the beach and the coliseum.
• Eventually they teleport to a floating platform in the future. The two humans are standing on the edge as the hungry dinosaur approaches.
• In an act of fearful desperation, the Time-Traveller pats the dinosaur on the nose.
• Noticing that they haven’t been eaten they look at the dinosaur to see that it is now crouched down and wagging its tail.
• The Time-Traveller quickly swipes the Roman’s sword and throws it to the other side of the platform. The Megalosaurus quickly stomps over, picks up the sword and returns it.
• The two humans look kind confused and surprised. The Time-Traveller shrugs.
• After a cut, the short ends with the Time-Traveller and the Roman sitting on the sofa back at the flat. The dinosaur is sleeping next to them.

Thoughts:

I understand that this idea may be a bit action intensive, and may require a good amount of planning and possibly cutting. But I like it and I think this has potential.

“A Jurassic Journey”

Type/Theme: Character Design/Character Story

Premise: A young Iguanodon gets separated from its herd and must go on an adventure to get back while facing the many predators prowling the ancient forest.

Characters:

• Iguanodon - A large herbivorous quadruped dinosaur
• Young - Main character
• Adult - Herd animals
• Neovenator - A large but nimble theropod dinosaur
• Baryonyx - A large dinosaur with a snout similar to that of a crocodile’s. Eats fish.

Environments:

• The forest - A dense forest that a young Iguanodon could get lost in.
• Forest clearing - A small clearing in the middle of the forest.
• The river - A river cutting through the forest. Baryonyx territory.
• The beach - A beach just outside of the forest. Easy and relatively safe to traverse.

Story:

• A herd of Iguanodon travel through a forest. However in this dense wood, a young Iguanodon gets lost.
• The Iguanodon wonders through the foliage, trying to get back to its herd, however it is being pursued by a Neovenator.
• The Iguanodon finds its way to a river. The herbivore decides to run along the riverbank in hopes that it can find its herd. However the Neovenator isn’t far behind.
• As the predator catches up to the Iguanodon, a much larger Baryonyx stands up from out of the river, scaring the other dinosaurs.
• The young Iguanodon continues running as the two carnivores confront each other.
• The small herbivore follows the river all the way to its mouth. From there, it spots the rest of its herd and runs over to join them.

Thoughts:

The story itself is simple, however actually creating this would not be. I imagine modelling, rigging and skinning would be a nightmare, with 4 non-human characters models. Also taking the environment into account, I don’t see this concept happening.

An alternate idea would be a character design presentation, showing various species of dinosaur walking through a clearing in the forest. But this idea isn’t enough for all three projects (Premise, Minor & Major) as it is more or less just a character preview.

“Dino Hunter Dan” - Version 1

Type/Theme: Character driven short; Educational

Premise: A dinosaur expert travels back in time to educate people about dinosaurs.

Characters:

• Dino Hunter Dan - A dinosaur expert.
• Camera-Operator
• Dinosaurs
• Velociraptor mongoliensis - Small carnivorous dinosaur. Looks and acts like a bird.
• Protoceratops andrewsi - Small herbivorous dinosaur. 

Environments:

• Cretaceous Mongolia
• Desert
• Oasis

Story:

• After a short intro, the audience follows Dan as he shows and explains the dinosaurs in the immediate area.

Thoughts: This short will be purely educational about dinosaurs. Justin advised that I aim this idea at young children because of my artstyle, but truth be told I don’t really want to make this solely educational, as I find children’s educational content to often be quite condescending. I do however think this could be viable as a back up idea.

“Dino Hunter Dan” - Version 2

Type/Theme: Character driven short; Parody

Premise: A fake dinosaur expert goes back in time to find the legendary velociraptor, however the animal turns out to be completely different from how he imagined.

Characters:

• Dino Hunter Dan - A dinosaur “expert”. Legitimately has no idea about actual dinosaurs.
• Camera-Operator - Honestly tired of Dan’s stupidity.
• Velociraptor mongoliensis - Small carnivorous dinosaur. Looks nothing like Jurassic Park. Loves a good BBQ.

Environments:

• Classroom
• Cretaceous Gobi Desert

Story:

• Starting from a classroom, Dan is presenting the dinosaurs that he plans to find in the past, however the dinosaurs he plans to find are completely inaccurate.
• After traveling to the past, Dan and the camera person find a velociraptor, which Dan quickly refuses to believe is a dinosaur, due to it looking like a bird.
• After an argument with the camera, Dan storms off in search of “an actual dinosaur”. The camera follows the little velociraptor for a bit.
• A scream is heard and the camera runs toward it.
• After climbing a sand dune, the camera operator finds Dan tied to a spit roast above a fire, being operated by a pack of raptors.
• The camera operator decides to slowly back away and leave the raptors to enjoy their annoying meal.

Thoughts: I quite like this idea as I find the concept humourous. However I can also understand that this may not work as well as I would like due to my art style being too cartoony.

“Project Droppod”

Thoughts: There is no point in me explaining this idea here as it is simply too big to work as any form for premise/minor/major. 

Alan asked me to explain it in a sentence and I couldn’t. I also ended up spending at least an hour explaining the concept to Chelsea, and yeah, it’s too big and complicated to even have something like a trailer.

Toolkit 2 - Photometric Lights

Starting with this interior scene after downloading the appropriate .IES file, create some photometric lights from the Arnold tab.

Apply the .IES file to the light and then position it to where the light should be coming from. After that, duplicate the light to the next position, then duplicate both lights to the opposite side of the room. This creates all 4 lights needed.

Photometric Light Attributes

Exposure : 6 (Default: 0)

Samples: 3 (Default: 1)

Radius: 3 (Default: 0)

Cast Volumetric Shadows: False (Default: True)

Photometric Light Attributes

Exposure : 7 (Default: 0)

Render Settings

Camera (AA): 5 (Default: 3)

Diffuse: 4 (Default: 2)

Specular: 2 (Default: 2)

Transmission: 1 (Default: 2)

SSS: 0 (Default: 2)

Volume Indirect: 0 (Default: 2)

Toolkit 2 - Ambient Occlusion

Before doing this tutorial, I didn't actually know what the point of ambient occlusion was.

Starting with this car that Alan already made a beauty pass for.

Select everything in the scene and replace the textures with "aiAmbientOcclusion".

Here's the first ambient occlusion render.

Here's the second with the glass removed.

After exporting and opening in Photoshop, you combine the ambient occlusion pass and beauty pass to create a final composition with correct shadows.

Toolkit 2 - Mesh Lights

This tutorial showed how to create mesh lights using polygon geometry.

Starting with 5 polygon spheres with projections place on them.

This is the node editor that is used to texture the lights.

Here's the full work screen. To create a mesh light. First select a sphere from the outliner, the open the Arnold tab in the attributes. From there set the object to a mesh light. Once that has been done, middle mouse drag the projection from the node editor, to the colour attribute. This will set the colour and texture for the light. We also turned up the expose from 1 to 5.

Here's the first render.

Second Render.
This time turn on the "Light Visible" attribute and set the samples to 3.

Final render.
Repeat the process with the other 4 balls.
Also turn off Volume Indirect and SSS in the render settings, to assist in removing noise.

Toolkit 2 - Physical Sky Light

This tutorial showed how to create and modify physical sky lights.

Starting with a skydome light, one must open up the node editor, then create the physical sky. (Opening up the node editor makes selecting the sky light much easier.)

Starting Image

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity (Haze) = 3
Ground Albedo (Ground Light) = Dark Grey
Elevation (Sun Height) = 45
Azimuth (Sun Angle) = 90
Intensity (Light Intensity) = 1
Sky Tint (Sky Colour) = White
Sun Tint (Sun Colour) = White
Sun Size = 0.510
Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3
Diffuse = 2
Specular = 2
Transmission = 1
SSS = 1
Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1
Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 1

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 45

Azimuth = 90

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 10

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 45

Azimuth = 90

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = White

Elevation = 45

Azimuth = 90

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 45

Azimuth = 90

Intensity = 3

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 45

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 25

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 0.510

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 25

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 25

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = False

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 10

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 90

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 25

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = Green

Sun Tint = Red

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 2

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 1

Volume Indirect = 1

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 1

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 25

Azimuth = 215

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 4

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 0

Volume Indirect = 0

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 3

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 70

Azimuth = 30

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 4

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 0

Volume Indirect = 0

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 3

Exposure = 0

Physical_Sky Settings

Turbidity = 3

Ground Albedo = Dark Grey

Elevation = 70

Azimuth = 30

Intensity = 1

Sky Tint = White

Sun Tint = White

Sun Size = 2

Enable Sun = True

Sampling Settings

Camera (AA) = 3

Diffuse = 4

Specular = 2

Transmission = 1

SSS = 0

Volume Indirect = 0

SkyDome Settings

Samples = 3

Exposure = 1