I was having a look at a handfull of productions that have rooftop scenes in them. The one that stood out most was Pixars Ratatouille. The thing that got me most about the compositions was the lighting. As its set in Paris and Paris is meant to be the most romantic city the lighting refelcts this. Many scenes on the roof top are at night or sunset, giving it a romantic feel....well i think. So ive renderd my test scene with the same sort of lighting. It is called for in the animation.

Got bored with my project tonight so watched a film and did some sketches that ended up being a full blown concept that took 5/6hours....didnt really mean it to happen....but its done now!

This is the result.

Now back to the real work dang it.

composition benchmark

This is a static composition in photoshop using many of the elements that will be in the finished animation. I would love for my animation to be as sharp as this composition but we shall see what happens!

Starting to build my scenery from 2d concepts. I feel that it might look to realistic compared to the character but i also dont want it to be bland. The textures were created in photoshop and then applied to the geometry in Maya, the final renders are composited in photoshop also but when it comes time to animate i will composite in after effects.

Motion graphics for end of year show(just a test at the moment)

More tests!!

Spent most of this weekend pushing polys around and finaly fin my main character! The modeling was straight forward enough as the character( Ive started calling him Alf) is just a ball with legs and arms!"your legs are quite funny, they're like hosepipes propping up a bean bag" as Vince said to Howard.

The texturing on the other hand was the time intensive part. I want to texture my characters and some scenery as if it had been renderd in mentalray to give it a nice high contrast finish. As mental ray takes hours to render out 3 secs worth of footage i am aplying these effects straight to the texture file in photoshop. Above are the results....im very happy with them...but now im scared for the time i have left!

Main character head model with blend shapes. Have yet to build the body but shouldnt take to long.

This was just a test to see what the final composite looked like. The backdrop was created in Maya then rendered out in layers (shadows, occlusion and ambient), the same was applied to the character and then combined in After effects. To be honest this process took nearly the same time as rendering it all out from Maya but I had more control over the final product in After Effects.

I will hopefully gain a faster workflow as this was the first time i have ever done this on this scale.

As I would like to create the animation on my own ( ive been told that its a crazy notion),
I am going to cut some production corners. The main time taken in the production of animations is usually rendering out the scenes, so I intend to pre render still images and composite them along with the animated character in After Effects. Above is a matte painting created in Photoshop then exported in layers to after effects. The depth of feild is a wee bit off but it was just a test.

Some character concepts.

Here are some concepts for the animations set pieces. I will post a script for the animation later so the artwork will have something to relate to.

Welcome to my honours project diary blog.

My name is Martin McGregor and I am in the middle of my 4th year honours project at the University of Abertay Dundee, on the Computer Arts course. I am still undecided on my choosen topic but i do know that it will be in the area of matte painting, background art and visual effects for film and television. My intention is to create a short 4/5 min animation including all of these elements.

As I will be using this as a sort of diary I will continue to post artwork from my project and hopefully by the end i will also be sure of the topic area.