Everybody Wants to Rule the World

I'm going to be working on an animation that I'm thinking of calling Everybody Wants to Rule the World as the title of the blog suggests. And this blog post will tell the story of  Everybody Wants to Rule the World. So um enjoy the process and learning about what I do! Hopefully you will also learn from my mistakes and know what not to do. Or just learn how to fix random problems that come up as I will surely run into some issues along the way. I always end up running into some problem.

This is part of a duo project. Torn To Pieces will be the companion to this project. Have fun cross-referencing these blog posts.

Ok this is going to be very weird. This animation and post are about depression and depression is not a happy, fun, or great condition but I will use exclamation points and most likly be using more jovial language and this may be confusing. I'm not trying to make light of depression or have contradictory tones or language (I realize that I may not succeed in this and I hope no one takes offense). I'm happy about this project because this is something that I'm excited to be making and to be doing and I know several people who battle depression and I want to make something that will inspire hope(let's hope I my goal is met. I will be getting feedback in case I don't succeed the first time.). I feel like I should say that I do not mean to offend anyone.

The Project BEGINS
 So at the end of my junior year of high school (2014-15 school year) my animation mentor says, hey all of you should think of awesome ideas to make animations from next year. You should have like 3 ideas that somehow relate to each other. So I did. And sadly one idea has to be let go due to time restraints. Darned deadlines!!! But hallelujah graduation! This one gets to survive! So YAY!

For this project there will be a person with depression. Depression will be a shadow that comes from their mind. Depression and the person will battle for control. Person will win. At the moment the song I'll play in the background is 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Lorde (FYI, this paragraph was taken from my earlier post Triad Project. Look at it for more info. I shall try to transfer all needed info to here but I might forget stuff. Good idea to read that post, but if you don't that's ok too.).

SYTYCD-Jim and Ariana

I found inspiration from the show So You Think You Can Dance(SYTYCD). This from season 12 Top 16. The dancers are Jim Nowakowski and Ariana Crowder. This routine is choreographed by Sean Cheesman (awesome last name right?). Click here to watch the routine.

Because of the content of the animation, this definitely a piece for an older audience.

Pre-Production
I did a little bit of research on depression to gain some knowledge and not be guess what it'd be like to have depression, as I don't have it. Some of peers are willing to give me insight and give me feedback if I ask for it. So thankful that they are willing to open up to me like this.

I was thinking of using the song 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Lorde. Why? They used it the SYTYCD routine. You don't need to. Well I like it. I think it will help send the video home to people. I know that music effects people in ways that nothing else can. I want think that this song will further my story.

I have some concept art for this project!!!! I have drawn depression. This was hard in the beginning. Over the summer when I was originally thinking of what I could do for my duo project, I struggled to come up with a way to create depression. I wanted it to be tangible and real and it felt like it was just so abstract. As I am a person who has never dealt with depression I had and will never know how to best visually represent depression and to best show viewers what depression is and the battle that it really is.

Story Boards

page 1

page 2

When I storyboard I watched the Sean Cheesman routine to get an idea of when certain things should happen. I timed everything out on a piece of paper. Then I got my storyboard paper. I filled it out with my ideas and some rough sketches of how I wanted things to look. I always have a digital copy of my storyboard just in case I lose my physical copy. I try to keep my physical copy somewhere I will always remember it just in case my file management on my computer fails. Luckily I haven't, well, actually I have. Never mind. Um during the Stop Motion Project last year, my group didn't scan our storyboards in at the beginning of the project when we first made them. So when we went to do it at the end we found out that we lost them. Then at the end of the year, right before graduation, I found them. Karma hit. Kinda funny, but not going to happen again. Don't be stupid with your storyboards. They are your friends! Gosh I'm going to be relying on my storyboards so much.

Modeling  
I have modeled this project as well as TTP. I'm a lot less worried about EWRW than I am with TTP. Maybe because the rooms are a ton simpler than TTPs. I actually only have one room for EWRW. It is a bedroom for the girl in the bedroom. I tried to use lots of blues and darker colors when texturing as I thought that for depression, sadder colors such as blue and black would help with the tone of the animation. I a simply decorated room. There is her bed which is made, a dresser, and a clothes hamper. Like I said, really simple. I like it and I think it will be easier to work with than having more things in it.

I also modeled a girl. I have her in a long sleeve blue shirt and black pants. I don't have shoes on her as she isn't going anywhere except around her room. Her hair texture doesn't want to stay so I will faf with it until I figure out how to make it work or get fabulous new technology.

I made a shadowy figure to signify depression. As I won't be animating until after I get back from Christmas break, I will do more research on depression so I can get an idea how he should behave.

You Fish?

This may sound like a Naturalist sort of question but it is NOT! This relates to animation. I mean, this is an animation blog after all. And if you didn't already guess, WE'RE MAKING FISH!!!

The point of making a fish is to be able to get back into Maya. Get the feel of modeling again and to rig the thing. I've attempted to rig a human with a human IK, but I didn't get very far. I think I started blogging about it. I don't know how up to date it is. I'll check and if needed I'll update. But that is kinda the purpose of fishing in Maya.

So first I obviously modeled. Well actually, that's a lie. I drew a picture to base our model off of. I couldn't use a picture off the internet because it isn't MY fishy. So I drew my own fishy. I based it off the structure of a goldfish. I say the structure of a goldfish because it certainly isn't going to be normal colored by one.


Now I modeled. I started from a box. Well cube. Same diff right? I added divisions to my box so I could have more vertices. Vertices are life when it comes to modeling. You need shape. Then from where my box was compared to my fishy, I moved the vertices to make a oval shape. I didn't want to make any fins quite yet. Then I extruded two faces from the back end to get the tail fin. Sounds easy enough right? Well not really. You have position stuff right so that when you add more polygons to it, you can easily shape it to look like a tail fin. Not as easy as it first sounded. I fished alright. Not the best but not the worst. But I'm getting right back into Maya.

Next was texture! Fun times. NOT! UV texturing IS NOT THE SAME as adding a blind or a phong texture. I basically took a screenshot of my fish and brought it into photoshop and painted it. Then I applied it as a texture. Then I tried to do planar mapping stuff and Maya doesn't like me and my fishies, but hey Maya, deal with it. Me fish. I called Danny over and Danny helped me fish. My fish wasn't facing the right direction. Once my fish was facing the right directionI did planar mapping and went into the UV editor. Nice awesome button! Using the UV editor (I am in UV mode instead of object mode or vertex mode or face mode) I "moved" vertices around to place the texture on my fishy! Then Maya CRASHED!!!! UGH! Maya has favorites problems, actually it's more of a hatred problem. I had to do all the texturing AGAIN! Not fun. Let me tell you. SAVE YOU WORK PEOPLE!!!!! Because Maya hates everyone and you never know when the school district will decide to strip you of all you computer power. But anyways I fished and my fish looks pretty! But it took FOREVER! And the modeling ENDS! I defeated that monster.


Boss battle now. Monster: rigging. First part of that is boneing the fish. Or adding bones to my fishy. I know absolutely nothing about fish anatomy, so um, great start. And sadly there is no Fishy IK unit that I can use. So I went to lynda.com (aka the site of all e-Comm knowledge from the pros in that field). And guess what? There is a fish tutorial that talks about boneing it! So lucky, I know things (Ok, this is sarcasm as my teacher has been watching these videos and basically been teaching us the videos in about half the time the video takes and says, if you don't got it go watch the videos in lynda for they will help you. Just an FYI for all of you.).

Ya, um, rigging a fish is NOT fun. Maya's wrath was upon me. My geometry flipping crashed!!!! Every dang day!! Like five times EVERY DAY!!!!!! Every day can't be a wrath day! So that was a struggle. SAVE OFTEN PEOPLE SAVE OFTEN! It saves fishy lives! And your animations. So save your projects and all will be well when your geometry cashes making Maya wish to crash as well ultimately giving you a crash report. Great way to start your Monday morning right? That was some adventure time with Maya. So glad that Maya hates absolutely everyone and not just me. Eventually I got to the point where my fish was fully rigged with all my geometry intact. It was great!


The next part was moving my fishy. This was relatively easy. Once I got my geometry to stop crashing once I touched the timer slider. Bit of a problem. What was happening is that at time 1, everything was fine, but every other moment on the time slider, the bones were twisted weirdly on the x, y, and, z axis'. So I had to clear the time slier of all keyframes it had. Once I did that, it was smooth sailing. I set a start and end frame on the x- axis for my fishes movement. Then I moved the tail on the z-axis. I haven't rendered it yet. I will not until I absolutely have to because I hate that horrid, rebellious, stupid, piece of POOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why should you care about my fishy? Because it reminds you of Maya and what things to keep in mind when working with Maya and doing projects in general. What are those things again?

• Have a source image. Do your own work.
• Create your own textures/colors.
• Save your work!
• Have as much detail in Maya as you absolutely need. No more.
• Work on the smaller side. Don't overload Maya.
• SAVE YOUR WORK! Did I say that already? Yes, BUT YOU NEED TO DO IT OFTEN!!!!!!
• Need help? Lynda.com probably has something on it to help you.

*I apologize to any who may be offended by the lack of grammar in parts of this post, but this is how (most of) my animation class, and how I, spoke during this project and our fish skills.

** And no I'm not a gamer. Plenty of friends do and talk video games to me so I hear about different boss battles, boss levels, and the like.

Newer Blog!

Hey everyone! I have a newish ( I created it over the summer but I just customized it. That is why I say newish) blog. It is called Artfully Laura. Check it out! I haven't added to much to it yet. I need to go home and take some pictures to upload to it but here is a link to it so go have fun! : artfullylaura.blogspot.com

Triad Project

Over my summer vacation I need to come up with a theme to make a triad project. I will be making 3 different videos that share 1 thing in common. I need to figure out that 1 thing in common and the basic idea for the three different storyboards. If I can flesh out one really well by the time school starts, I can start on the project right away. And that might be really beneficial knowing how into it I can get with my projects. But I need to figure out my theme.

Ideas so far:

• Light vs Dark
• Friendship
• Good Friends are like stars. You don't always see them but they are always there.
• strong feelings ex: passion, love, hope
• music - lyrical interpretation
• inner battle
• grief
• excitement

What I've finally decided on  a theme guys!! So proud of myself. My theme revolves around 'You can overcome the battle', 'The battle can be won', 'Rising above the challenges' sort of thing. Here are the basic story lines and my idea for the three stories so far. 

• For one project there will be a bully. The bully will be black. He will bully the green student. Green's friends, Yellow, Pink, Teal, Purple, and Neon Orange, will notice Green's change in attitude and demeanor. Green thinks of suicide. Eventually Green goes to the bathroom and is about to drown himself in the toilet. Neon Orange comes and stops him while all his other friends deal with Black. Green will always have company when walking to class to make sure Black stops bulling Green. Black eventually stops and Green doesn't feel like suicide is necessary anymore. I don't know what music I want to play to this.
• For a different project there will be a person with depression. Depression will be a shadow that comes from their mind. Depression and the person will battle for control. Person will win. At the moment the song I'll play in the background is 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Lorde.
• And the last project there will be a child whose parent or parents have been murdered. They feel guilty and the death(s) replays in their mind continually. I think I'll open with the child walking to the grave(s) of his parent(s) and sees them die and can't help but feel like it's his fault. For the moment I want to have 'Wicked Ones' by Dorothy be the music for this, but it is very upbeat so this might change.

Music isn't set in stone, but I feel like I have an idea of what I want and how get there. Still open to ideas and change to details in the story line. Knowing my music will help a ton when it comes to story boarding and how I actually will tell the story. But because I plan on having music playing in the background for all of the stories, I don't think I'll have m characters speak. I'll rely on body language and color to tell my story. So this will be an giant adventure.

School has been in session for like three weeks or something. I've worked on the Fish project to get back into animation and Maya and all. And while doing that I've looked at the school calendar and seen that I will only have time for two projects instead of three. Dreamed big, but it ain't going to happen. So I'm doing the depression video, look for a post titled Everybody Wants To Rule The World for updates. I will also be doing the dead family, look for a post titled Torn To Pieces for updates on that project.

I'm a bit disappointed that I might not be able to make my third project but I just might not have the time. So sad.

Personal Character

I've started a new project! I was bored of being bored in class so I started a new project. I am rigging a character. This is like 2 or 3 weeks before the seniors graduate btw. The graduate May 17th.

What I've done so far:
I went into Mudbox and created a human. It wasn't that hard. Mudbox has premade stuff. Is the right presets or would stamp be a better word for it? Anyways Mudbox has a this human body already made. Mudbox also links to Maya. So I imported the human into Maya.
But to successfully do a Human IK rig in Maya, the human needs to be in the t-pose. The Mudbox human is not in the t-pose. So I have to move his arms and hands to get the human in the t pose. Not fun! Getting the flow zone to look right takes patience and time. Two things I don't have at the moment.

But awesome me didn't know that so I put a skeleton in (making sure everything aligned with the model I had) and did a smooth bind. Then I did the next step in rigging my human. I forgot what it was. It didn't look human anymore so I knew something was wrong. I called Spencer Lindsey over to help me. He's like, the human needs to be in the t-pose. I'm like, great. Not. SO I undo all the work I've done so I can put the dude in the t-pose.

I started to put on arm in the t-pose. The end. Well so far. I'll work on it again next school year! Until then guys!

End of Year recap

This school year has been something. Quite an adventure in the animation room.

I created a human in Maya that looks absolutely horrible. From this project I learned that animation requires a ton of time and patience. Maya is also a hassle but can be so much fun to work with! Ya I yelled at the computer a ton during this project. Check my five blog posts if you don't believe me.

Mage Wars. Stop Motion is annoying. The green screen room is fun to work in. Working with 4 senior guys that are close friends is super fun and isn't as bad as it seems. I learned that going out of your comfort zone can give you new friends and gives you fun memories.

While working on Mage Wars I did work for Modern Images. I loved making 2-D commercials for them. It was good to get some client work done and knowing how to work with a client. Even though I was here until like 10 pm sometimes. That was an interesting adventure.

Children's Storybook. I loved this project. It was fun to take a books artwork and make it into an animation. I thought it was a fun way to stretch my creativity. I got done with it so quickly that I didn't know what to do with myself. Voice acting can be fun, but I have no idea how to work some programs. So um never ask me where the record button is in a program I've never used before. I won't be able to find it. Unlike Logan.

I started working on a new human. I like knowing how to do new stuff in Maya. I didn't finish modeling. I need to put the dude in the t-pose. I didn't do that when I started doing the human IK. Ya so I haven't finished that project. Funny thing is that during this project, I broke lynda.com. Don't know how I did it or how I fixed it but I did. It happened. Jake and Logan have rubbed off on me!

Then I rushed the final green screen project. Where I learned absolutely nothing. I was to busy being sad about all the seniors graduating! So sad! I don't know what I'm going to do with out all of the seniors next year. I'm not that close with any of the juniors and we aren't very loud and I miss the loudness! I loved the loudness.

That is in short my junior year of high school! That is from the view of the animation room.

The Chase

A few weeks ago Netterville showed my animation class a tutorial about green screening in AfterEffects. Funny thing is that my stop motion project did this already. The 5 of us have had experience with the green screen room and keylight 2.0.

Netterville asked us to create a green screen project, so Jake, Alex, Logan, Andrew, and I all look at each other thinking we could do a project together again before all the guys graduate. Awesome idea except that we needed an idea to film and make into a animation. We threw ideas around. One idea was that we become a Smash Bros character and do a smash battle. Another was to do Call of Duty. Video games came up a lot. Most were shot down due to the amount of blood in them and the fact that weapons at school aren't allowed so actually filming it wouldn't happen. Smash Bros was a good idea but we couldn't meet the deadline we thought so we were going to think up a new idea.

I went to my computer and realized I had green screen shots. If I could think of a cool story with the shots I had, I could make a cool video. I realized that I had friends doing crazy crap with each other like putting on a magic show. And ending up fighting it out on stage with magic. I had had walk cycles so they could come on stage without a problem. I also had audience interaction if I so desired a magic show. But I could have these people jump all over the world and have them chase each other doing little tricks to each other along the way. Then wanting revenge following them all around the world. Maybe a evil robot army would come in and make the dudes work together? Combine live action/stop motion, green screen, 3-D animation, and special effects? There were so many ideas. Well beginnings of ideas. I needed something to complete one of them so I could run with it and create a project.

 Then I heard someone say "run across the arch" and I knew these two guys were going to be meeting on top of the St Lois Arch and they were going to chase each other across dementions trying to find each other again and get their meeting over with.  I looked at my footage and knew exactly what footage was going to go with what scene. It was perfect.

 
Next I searched for backgrounds. This is a green screen project after all so I needed a setting. I knew I wanted to start on top of the St Louis Arch. I liked this picture. It had good lighting, and part of the city scape. The arch itself isn't the best lit but it'll work for a simple animation.




Now the question is: where do I have Andrew go? Paris, Rome, New York City? I like traveling, history, and art and these three cities catch my eye. Paris has the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and Versailles isn't to terribly far from Paris. Rome has so much history attached to it that it would be so awesome to visit! The architecture is amazing and I believe Leonardo Di Vinci is buried there. I'd also like to say that the statue of David is there. Lots of cool stuff is in Rome. New York City would just satisfy my wish to travel. I mean, NYC would be so cool to visit with Broadway and the Statue of Liberty!

But I felt like those places were way to realistic for a magician. I wanted something more mystical. So when I found the picture to the left, I knew I had to use it somewhere in my animation. It is from Google Images. I don't know who made it or if it is from a movie but who ever made it is awesome! That is just one picture I used as part of the whimsical places Andrew showed up to.

Logan disappearing in water.

Once I had the backgrounds I started pulling in the footage to put on top of the images. I took a walk cycle for Andrew and Logan sitting down. To get rid of the green screen for each of them I went to the effects tab of After Effects, went to keying and choose Color Key. Color Key got rid of most of the green. I went to a matte that allowed the green color around Andrew and Logan to expand. Once I expanded it, I went to the effects tab clicked on keying and this time I choose Keylight. Keylight is more powerful than Color Key and is more precise. Which is why I used it around Andrew and Logan. I used this technique whenever I got rid of the green screen during this project.

Andrew showing up somewhere

On the Arch I had Andrew and Logan approach each other. Then Logan disappears. I used a water effect for Logan instead of smoke. I felt like smoke was typical for wizards disappearing and Logan isn't a normal wizard as he's in a chicken hat, swim trunks, a e-Comm shirt, while wearing socks and sandals. Not your typical wizard getup. So he needed a weird was to poof out of the scene. I looked through the action essentials pack Netterville got from Video Copilot and I loved this water spray. I think it goes with character. The way the water was, the bottom half of Logan could be seen near the end when it should have disappeared. Not ok. I used the stroke tool to create a stroke over Logan. I made it blue so it would match the background. I messed with the opacity to make his disappear at the right time. I used the same stroke tool to make Andrew disappear. I had Andrew disappear in a cloud of smoke right after Logan left. Andrew first went to a garden maze place. It was a cool background. Andrew would leave to go to that awesome mystical place. I have him go to different spots there. I adjusted his size so it looked like he was receeding in space. Then I went back to the arch where Logan is waving to people from on top of the arch. Andrew shows up. Andrew isn't happy so he crates a fireball and sends Logan spinning off the top of the arch. Funny little act of revenge. Andrew disappears to start this little chasing game all over again.

Andrew's "revenge"

In my mind they won't ever seriously hurt each other. They are close friends and play around like this all the time and have done mock fights like this before at all sorts of different places. Some of them Andrew shows up to while chasing Logan.



 Learning wise, I didn't anything. I learned this on my last green screen project with Logan, Andrew, Alex, and Jake. I knew the technicalities of green screening. This was just a fun little project to do. I really liked it. It ended up being a silly little animation and I'm totally ok with that. It's good practice. I think that with practice you get better every time so I'll be a pretty good green screener by the time I graduate if I continue doing green screen projects! This project doesn't really have a storyline and I think that if I really wanted to do more green screen projects I'll need a story line. But I think I'd want to do more of a post production heavy project like this one and the Mage Wars project I helped with. I think that green screens give you so much freedom and creativity that you better take advantage of it. With that freedom and creativity you should have fun with it and enjoy it. I want to take the fun parts  making videos and animation that Andrew, Logan, Jake, and Alex showed me you can have while putting in the effort and time to make a quality animation or model. I hope I can do that.