Despite the fact that for most of us, Christmas 2013 is all but done-and-dusted (save for a few forlorn satsumas), today is only day seven of the total twelve days of the official festive period. According to the popular carol, I should be presenting to you, loyal reader, with 'seven swans-a-swimming'. I cannot, sadly, offer you a single swan on this New Year's Eve, but if it's mutant cats you're after, then yes, I can treat you! Welcome to the final PWTM of 2013, which begins this month with a round-up of some current year 3 projects. Enjoy - and as per, if you want to take a more comprehensive look at any of the work featured here, you need only click on the featured student's name to view their individual course blog. Happy browsing!
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| Kat |
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| Fat Cat |
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| Issac |
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| Shock Trooper |
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| Solitary plants |
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| Spadix & spike plants |
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| Plants misc. |
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| Plant 1 - Final Render |
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| Plant 2 - Final Render |
Barnabas Expression Sheets
Benjamin Expression Sheets
Young Barnabas Expression Sheets
Bernard Expression Sheets
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| Xerces Blue Butterfly |
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| Haast's Eagle |
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| Easter Elk |
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| European Sea Sturgeon |
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| Stellar's Sea Cow |
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| Sea Mink |
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| Sea Mink Rig |
Sea Mink Animation Tests
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| Tyler skinned & rigged |
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| Nat is combining physical stop-motion characters with a CGI set. |
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| Nat's ad-hoc green screen studio (with guest star, Kenny) |
Chromakey Test
Character design is central to what we do on CGAA, and our year 2 students have been preoccupied with giving life to imaginary individuals since September...
Lucy - Turnaround
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| Hero - costume studies |
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| Sidekick - sketchbook pages 1 |
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| Sidekick - sketchbook pages 2 |
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| Hero & Sidekick - size comparison studies |
Vikki Kerslake - Sidekick
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| Character thumbnails |
For our year one students, Term 1 concluded with a final crit presentation of their Secret Lairs digital set project, in which they had to be production designer, concept artist, modeller, texture artist and lighting designer. See below for a selection of their production drawings and digital sets:
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| Concept art |
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| Orthographic drawings |
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| Digital set |
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| Concept art |
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| Orthographic drawings |
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| Digital set |
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| Concept art |
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| Digital set |
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| Concept art |
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| Orthographic drawings |
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| Digital set |
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| Concept art |
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| Digital set |
Sam Cannon -
The Secret Lair Of The Amazonian Jester
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| Thumbnail studies |
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| Orthographic drawings |
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| Digital set |
CGAA alumni
Thomas Beg and
Jordan Buckner then created the animation from the digital paintings using
Autodesk Maya and
After Effects. About the challenge of producing the animation, Tom said
“This collaboration project has offered an exciting and fresh approach to creating animated visuals to work alongside musical performance. The task of bringing together an entire course worth of students, alumni and staff always felt like a daunting proposition. On reflection, it has paved the way for what feels like a pioneering approach to developing musical visuals. Every moment has provided a new experience because it’s impossible to predict how exactly you’ll be able take a flat-static image and turn it into animated magic.” Jordan agrees:
“It’s been hugely satisfying to collaborate in the creation of such an extraordinary project – a celebration of animation in its purest form; movement, shape and colour.”
La création du monde - An Animation
The July concert was a great success and the animation lauded by the audience and project co-ordinators - so much so that we were invited to participate in a second performance of Milhaud's ballet - this time at the
Maison de la Culture in Amiens, France.
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| Maison de la Culture, Amiens |
A little after 9.30pm on December 19th, after a very long day of set-up and back-stage preparation, the house lights dimmed and the musicians of the
Orchestre de Picardie began to play the first, melancholy notes of Milhaud's ballet. Behind them, rear-projected onto the theatre's pristine twelve metre screen, our animation began to play too - with an audience of 600 people looking on.
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| The orchestra is set up in readiness for the evening's concert |
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| Keith Burden of Clever Projections aligns the 2 projectors prior to the performance |
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| Testing the projection while the piano is being tuned |
Following the performance, Rose Bardonnet Lowry, executive director of the Orchestre de Picardie and ACT co-ordinator, had this to say: "Didn't have a chance to congratulate and thank you, as well as Jordan and Tom, for the wonderful performance tonight! The audience loved it!!! Listeners were quite stunned by the novelty of it all. We'll certainly have 2 more opportunities of performing the Milhaud piece with visualistion in 14-15, so I hope you will all be ready to come back to Picardie." It looks very much as if CGAA will be going on tour again in 2014!
The Final Word...
"Happy New Year!"
Great job everyone!! : D
ReplyDeleteWhat an impressive breadth of work, as always! At points I forgot that is students work (:] Happy 2014 everyone !
ReplyDeleteA great website with interesting material
ReplyDelete