Computer Animation Arts

What follows are instructions for your crit presentations and reminders of what you need to present and submit on Friday, 23rd October.  Please use your network of creative partners to ensure that everyone has seen this information and understood it.  Any queries, please leave a comment and I'll clarify. A new CG animated adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is in pre-production. In response to the source material allocated to you at the briefing, you have been commissioned to produce 3 fully-resolved concept paintings of one of Calvino’s fantastical cities. You have been asked to visualise your chosen city in three different types of shot: 1) Exterior Establishing Shot 2) Exterior Low Angle Shot 3) Interior Establishing Shot Your concept paintings should be 16:9 and painted digitally. You are asked to maintain a comprehensive blog archiving and annotating your creative development for the duration of the project. You should use the ...

As part of your Invisible Cities submission requirements, you're being asked to produce an 'Art Of'. You'll be asked to submit an 'Art Of' document for all your forthcoming projects, so there's no time like the present in terms of getting the hang of them. What is an Art Of?   What are we expecting from you in just two week's time? Perhaps it's better to begin by stating plainly what an Art Of isn't! An Art Of isn't your blog made into a presentation. An Art Of isn't your OGR presentation re-cycled. An Art Of isn't to be confused with your Final Crit Presentation* An Art Of isn't some last minute scrapbook. Your Art Of is a curated exposition of your pre-production, production and final piece. curate: 1) to take charge of (a museum) or organize (an art exhibit): 2) to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation exposition: 1) a comprehensive description and explanation of an i...

For all you first years pondering the art of composition, give Roger Deakins another watch and see just how well he auteurs each shot. Truly one of the masters. Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, Balance, Symmetry, Framing... it's all there. DEAKINS: Shadows In The Valley from Plot Point Productions on Vimeo . His IMDb page shows possibly the best range of cinematography work out there. And for an example of his work in full, check out The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford .

After a few computer hiccups in Monday's Photoshop class, I wanted to keep you all updated with some of the more important points. And so, here is the video from artist / illustrator Sterling Hundley in which he talks about his process for idea and concept exploration.  Plus another video of his process for fun. Sterling Hundley Demo from The Art Department on Vimeo . Whether ideation works well for you or not, trying to find new ways of generating ideas is really important to keeping your work interesting. If you'd like to see more of Sterling Hundley's work, check out his site here.

In preparation for the kick-off your Space Oddities film programme, I'm featuring here the 'Do's & Don'ts' of academic writing for your reference.  Ideally, you will have already taken the opportunity to take a look at the advice on offer here.  If not, be sure to familiarise yourself with this style guide before attempting your first film review of the year. Your brief asks you to use the Harvard Method in terms of referencing your published sources. Please note - this is a mandatory aspect of the presentation of your film reviews, so I suggest you take some time to investigate the 'How To' resources available on myUCA .   We don't want to waste valuable time (yours/ours) correcting these more technical elements of your writing.  Using the Harvard Method and proper bibliographies and illustration lists are something you just need to adopt from the outset as part of the new terrain of your undergraduate life.   To begin with, you...

Wednesday, 7th October is your Invisible Cities  Online Greenlight Review (OGR) Your OGR is to be presented as a single Scribd presentation on your blog, beginning with your name, date, and project title. If you are still yet to get to grips with Scribd go here for some easy-to-follow instructions.  Save your documents as PDFs before uploading to Scribd , as this should mitigate against formating glitches. When pasting Scribd embed code into your blog, you must first select the HTML mode tab, then switch back to 'Compose' to view the embedded presentation. Your OGR presentations should be uploaded to your blogs on Wednesday 7th October. Written feedback will follow as comments on your OGR post and will take between 1 and 3 days. Invisible Cities  2015 OGR: What do you need to present? 1) Your 100 thumbnails exploring all cities  (minimum). 2) Your chosen city, its key descriptions and associated thumbnails. (Please include t...

The audio recording of Friday's Invisible Cities b riefing presentation is available now @ myUCA / Space and Environment / Invisible Cities. 

And so it begins, ladies and gentlemen - your first undergraduate project brief, and your first foray into the fast-paced, high-energy culture of Computer Animation Arts! I'm not alone in looking forward to seeing how you respond to the challenge of your Invisible Cities project, but before you get stuck in, just take a few moments to take a look at these examples of previous student work. By clicking on their names, you'll be able to view all blog posts associated with their respective Invisible Cities projects.  Don't get preoccupied with the polish of the final paintings, give your attention instead to their methodology - that is, how they arrived at the final three paintings. Review their research and reflect on its presentation.  What impresses about their work?  What might you do differently?  Take time to think about the ways in which the students have organised, presented and published their bodies of work.  Happy browsing! Julien Van Wallenda...

As you explore Calvino's  Invisible Cities for your first project, it's time to start gathering visual reference and inspiration to enrich and fine-tune your imaginings. At the briefing, I'll talk about Influence Maps - digitally produced 'mood boards' that we use as a means of collating and curating image research.   A single project idea might generate multiple influence maps - and should do - as early impressions give way to more definitive directions. You'll find the Influence Map template on myUCA in your Invisible Cities folder.  Below is an example of an influence map at work.  Here, the size of the image in the grid relates to the hierarchy of importance; in simple terms, the bigger the image, the bigger the influence.   A properly useful influence map isn't decorative or image-rich for the sake of it, but rather an exercise in distillation, reflection and clarification.  They are also a very economic way of ensuring that...