Showreel Portfolio - Context 2 Assignment

This is the online Vimeo version of my showreel for the Context 2 portfolio assignment:

Portfolio Update - DVD Showreel

I have been working A LOT on my portfolio this week, especially on actually producing work and imagery to put in it (Maya skills, character modelling - see previous post). I have edited my original wireframe design for my DVD navigation menu today using Adobe Encore and Photoshop, to give it a more visual/graphic style - making it more appealing to the eye, I think.

Here is a screenshot from within Encore of my menu at the moment:

As I said before, I am also currently working on practicing working in Maya as well as 3DS Max, and producing some quick examples of skills such as particle and nCloth dynamic systems. So far I have done some basic examples of dynamic particle emitters producing snow, sleet and rain effects:

Rain - streak particles with splash effect

Sleet - small sphere particles with splash effect

Snow - larger spheres colliding with ground plane

More character progress. Been working on portfolio too!

Here is my character model (hopefully finished now after I possibly check it with Andy incase there are any problems with it), with the addition of very simple modelled hair shape (the rest will be painted on in mudbox) and geeky glasses! :)

Once I am sure I am happy with this and such, I will start to unwrap it so I can add some texture and colour in Mudbox and Photoshop. I am pretty happy with my progress so far, and think this process is a particularly good one to feature in my showreel/portfolio dvd...

Talking of which, I have decided on producing a DVD/video style for now rather than rushing a (likely to be) poor website before the deadline, as I think it will work much better if I spend more time on it after this. However, I am hoping my menu for the DVD will resemble my previous web wireframe design, and to produce a new website and blog design very shortly to match with this simple style - consistency!

Today I have been attempting (and failing a lot...) at getting to grips with Adobe Encore, as I seem to have it on my laptop from downloading After Effects last term. I am finding it quite difficult to get to grips with, and have no idea what image size or quality I need. I guess I may need to get a load of DVDs just to test out these theories! :P

Here is a screen shot of the menu I created (that is, if it does work, and I did do it right! haha) :

Context 2 Assignment 2 - Portfolio - Initial Ideas & research

For the next 5 weeks or so, we have our second Context 2 assignment to complete in conjunction with our lectures and seminars with Danny. This task is linked with the last assigment on networking with companies, as now we are making a portfolio of our work and development, which is a useful part of showcasing your work online, as well as being an often vital part of applying for work or placements in the industry or multimedia.

To start with in this project, my first idea was the obvious of just producing a demoreel/showreel of some of my work so far that would follow the assignment structure given in the brief:

- Title splash page

- Finalised work section

- Work-In-Progress section

- Design Development Process section

- Contact Me section

Now I have thought more about this and researched other practitioners in my area of virtual environments, I have found that is often more suitable to have a website containing a number of pages to show both stills/development and final work and showreel videos. Although, sometimes a Vimeo account with my work and showreels may be enough to show people my work, I feel that an update to my website is needed anyway, and that this could be the perfect opportunity to do this and to make my online presence more professional. As I am not an interactive media student, however, I think it is important to produce a simple but effective design, rather than making it too technical or busy.

Here are a few practitioners' web portfolios that I found in my seminar yesterday that I thought were pretty interesting in simple but effective styles:

David Astley - 3D modelling portfolio  ( http://www.davidastley.net )

This was my favourite of the designs that I researched - a simple colour coded, quite plain webpage of just links to different images of 3D modelling (textured and wireframe development). I think this is a very successful layout and quite simply coded webpage with a professional finish. I think I could produce something similar to this in layout and style, but that also shows videos/demoreels as well as stills and development to show I can do animation as well as just modelling (for now!).

Paris Mavroidis - 3D artist/programmer portfolio ( http://www.parismav.com )

This is another very simple design I came across in my research - a website consisting of one consistent layout, with only 3 separate pages showing off the artist's best and most recent work and demoreels in the main content section in the centre of the page. I also like the simple use of colour and font in this example, keeping it simple rather than too busy. It also features a sort of "title splash page" as given in the brief, where a still/promotional shot of his/her most recent work as the front page of the website.

Sarah Petherick - 3D visualisation portfolio ( http://www.3dmice.com )

I chose to look at this website due to how only two shades of grey and white typography can be used in a basic style, but can still look quite effective when put together. This website also features a flash feature, however, with rolling/animated images down the side, which is something that I wouldn't put time into doing when I don't specialise in web design, but think it can add interest to a simple webpage. This site is also quite small in size, centred in the browser, rather than filling the whole page, which I think is a quite interesting way of laying out a portfolio too.

Stuart Smith - Visualisation/web portfolio ( http://www.stuartsmithdesign.co.uk/portfolio )

This webpage is the least simple of the examples I have looked at, and seems to use many more complex web techniques that I am not quite sure how to use or produce (flash, javascript, etc.), but have looked at the layout of showing images as to links to information and more detail on that project, and think it is a design feature to consider if I was to produce a webpage with more pages in the future. However, the design of the navigation/banner at the top is still very simple with just shades of grey and white, which is something I would like to experiment with.

I am now going to produce a couple of quick wireframe designs based on this research to try and make a decision on what sort of layout and style I want my portfolio to have.

Updates.. busy busy! :|

As  the title says - very busy times right now!

I handed in my essay earlier today while I was at uni - finally! I haven't had it checked but have proof read it and edited it a few times in the past couple of days, so hope it's okay... Glad it is out of the way anyway!

Anyway, animation deadline - next Friday. So I have been working a lot on this project - practically ditched the other projects for a while until I start rendering this one.

So far I have done about 40 seconds of animation (so much for 30 seconds) and I would say I am about 2/3 of the way through my narrative. I haven't done my proper drawings of storyboards yet, so am sort of working from my head and random notes at the moment, but I will improve on the animation once I have got the main stuff sorted. By this I mainly mean camera shots and animation, which I find really challenging to be honest :(

Anyhow, here is a tiny render I did of the movement at the start of the chess part of my animation. As I said before, leaving cameras until last so it is just a wide shot to show how the movement looks without the use of link constraints (as they disagreed with me!) :





And here is a quick screenshot of what I am doing right now, in case you're curious... (:

GameCity stuff + general work updates

Today I feel rather rubbish so haven't been to my After Effects seminar or Context 2 seminar. I am glad I decided not to go at the last minute to be honest, my neck is now killing me and feel achey in general. I am gutted I did not get to go to this because of my illness:


"The folk from Media Molecule are here to give a tour of their most recent add-on for LittleBigPlanet 2, The Move Pack, which empowers gamers to create their own levels and games for the PlayStation Move. After a tour of the features and the brand new story mode, the Molecules will attempt some speed level creation LIVE ON STAGE *audience shrieks with excitement*."

Very fed up. I will probably still use Media Molecule in my assignment despite a lack of feedback, as I really do like their work, despite LittleBigPlanet being quite 2D in style, and they are actually a medium company! (I can't find many :s)

  

Talking of GameCity, yesterday, I went to the Capturing James Bond talk from the motion capture departmant at Eurocom - one of the companies I looked at for my networking assignment but have had no response from. The talk showed how they made the animation of characters in their newest adapation of "GoldenEye 007" for PS3 and Xbox 360 using their own motion capture studio in Derby, and explained what techniques are used for different actions, etc. I found it really interesting, and am really tempted to get the game now actually! :) But it also helped me with my research, from them firstly introducing their company and some facts. I didn't take notes, but I remembered they were established in 1988 and have approx 270 employees, so I will probably use them as a large company in my essay.

Here is a photo I took before the talk started (very blurry with heads in the way - I was being sneaky and am useless with my iphone camera since IOS 5 update... Baffling.)

And here is a trailer for the game that the talk was all about...





PLUS for the animation work, which I seem to have been solely focused on since I discovered its earlier deadline, I have been experimenting with materials. Mental ray ones obviously look so much better in the Mental ray renderer, but it will take probably days to render out if I use all these materials. Here's an example of how I might use metallic paint, metal and plastic/vinyl mental ray materials for the main objects in my animation anyway (this took approx 1:50 mins to render :s) :