Moodboards

From my research boards I have now made several decisions about my idents. Initially I decided to have a consistent character and environment throughout, but after some more thoughts I slightly adapted my choices. I am still going to set all of the idents in one environment, for which I have chosen the park as I believe this will be something which the majority of children relate to and would enjoy. However, I was initially going to have one character throughout the animations, but now I am not sure this will be appropriate as I could not think of a character which I could aim at both genders. Instead I am going to include two characters so I can aim them at the majority of the target group, therefore I will now include a robot and teddy bear.

The colours I plan to use will be bright as I believe this will attract the child’s attention as it will appear to be more interesting. Also, as an attempt to make it more exciting I will try to add a slight surreal feeling by including events which a child would not normally experience, for example the characters flying through the air unaided.

I also plan to use a stylised but legible font for the lettering so it is not dull. This style will be consistent throughout the idents.

As the idents will be aimed at children I am going to include actions within the animation as a way to illustrate good behaviour, such as sharing and playing together.

Below are the moodboards I have created using inspiration from my research boards. Under each I will explain what I am trying to show.

In moodboard 1 I am trying to show the excitement which children feel when they are at the park. The ident this moodboard represents will be fun and exciting and based around the play equipment in the park. The characters will be playing together, but it will end in an unusual way as one character flies through the air from one piece of play equipment to another. I am not completely sure of the exact pieces of play equipment I am going to use, but the character could land on the helter skelter and slide to the bottom, with the logo being displayed down the central column.

Above I have incorporated other childhood elements within the park area, in this case a bunch of balloons. To add a more interesting and unusual aspect to this ident I plan to make one character float up with a balloon. Here I focused on the idea of flight and what the world looks like from a bird’s perspective as I believe this may be something which the target group finds exciting. From this point I originally could not decide whether to have the letters of the logo in the air and the character floats up to them or for the character to look down to the ground and for the logo to be visible in the roads and land shapes, but after some thought I decided the character will land on the channel logo in the sky as I am not sure if all the children will spot the logo on the ground.

In this ident I wanted to make it as exciting as possible and so created moodboard 3 around the theme of magic. For the moodboard I tried to create an atmosphere which was slightly eerie as I wanted to suggest the element of surprise which the characters, and hopefully the target group, will feel. This will still be incorporated within a park as this will be where the magic set will be found and where the characters make things change using the magic wand. This will finish with the wand making the CBBC logo appearing in the air at the end of the ident.

From these moodboards I will now go on to produce a storyboard for each ident with details of each step in the animation.

Research Boards

At this point I am not sure which television station I want to create my idents for, so I have started my research boards by creating one with a collection of idents from different channels. I hope from this I will get some inspiration of possible idents I could create later this semester.

By creating this research board I have noticed several things about current and past idents. I have learnt that there are a lot of similarities in the way they are designed. Firstly, the subject of the idents are chosen so that it is aimed at the channels target group, for example Cbeebies and CBBC's idents are aimed at children whereas BBC2 idents are plainer and basic as it is a more serious channel with an older age group. Also, there is the use of a consistent character or characters throughout a set of idents, such as the BBC 3 blobs and the Cbeebies blobs. Other channels use shapes within their idents and incorporate them into different environments, such as channel 4's use of the number four and BBC 1's use of circles linking to the shape of the letter ‘o.’ There are quite often consistencies in colour schemes, for example ITV1's colours are black and yellow and BBC 3 idents are blue. Lastly, I found that there are quite often idents created for special occasions, such as Christmas idents.

From this research I have decided to create a set of idents for the CBBC channel. I have chosen this channel as I feel that there is a lot of potential and hope it will inspire me to create good idents.

All the idents I found for the CBBC channel are aimed at the target group as they are quite fun, have a lot of activity and the ideas are creative. There is a consistency of colour, with mainly the use of blue and green. All the letters which spell out CBBC are bright green and stand out from the background. There are no consistent characters used in the idents, but the letters are animated instead. The font is also important as it is quite interesting and would appeal to children.

Now I know what channel I will create my set of idents for I will now look at the target group's interest. I hope this will give me ideas on what I can include in the animations which will allow me to aim them at my target group.

I have selected all of these images as I associate them with childhood and got the ideas from the internet, catalogues and my own childhood memories. I tried to include things for both genders and a range of items other than just toys.

From my research I hope it will inspire me to create exciting idents for my target group. I will now use these research boards over the next few days to think of ideas.

Week 2-Path Constraints

During today’s tutorial I learnt how to use path constraints to guide an object during the animation. To do this I began by drawing a shape, in this case a sphere. I then selected a circle spline and drew this around the sphere. After this I selected the sphere and then went to the animation menu, down to constraints and across to path constraints. The last step was to draw the line between the shape and the spline.

I then repeated this process using different shapes and splines. The last thing I tried on this animation was to add a camera to a path. For this I used a circular spline and attached a target camera. I did have some trouble with the target point of the camera as to begin with it appeared that some of the shapes were not moving, however with some slight changes to some of the paths and also the cameras focal point I resolved this problem. I am quite pleased with this animation as it was my first attempt at using motion paths. Here is the final animation.

When I had completed the first task I went on to create another animation, once again using path constraints. For this I tried to create a virtual walkthrough of a building. To start I created the building itself, firstly by using a plane for the floor and then boxes of different lengths to create the walls. On a couple of the walls I used Boolean to create doorways as I felt it would create a more interesting animation than if all the walls just had gaps. Also, I used different colour boxes and placed them on the walls to imitate pictures so the animation was not too boring.

I then drew a spline for the camera to follow and added a free camera to the path. Until this point I felt it had gone very well, but once I played the animation back I found the camera was travelling backwards and too fast, as well as the camera appearing to travel through the walls. To overcome these problems I increased the number of frames in the animation to make it slower and clearer as well as using the rotate tool to position the camera correctly. Initially I drew out a spline with pointed corners, but when I played the animation I found this was unsuitable as the camera appeared to go through the walls. Due to this I drew out a different spline, but this time I used more vertex points so I could create curved corners when I wanted the camera to change direction.

At this point I watched the animation again and was much happier with the outcome, however I still felt it needed some more alterations as the camera did not follow the line completely. To solve this I went to the motion panel to the right of the screen and checked the ‘follow’ tick box. This kept the camera facing forwards throughout the animation.

After these alterations I am much happier with my second animation and so have included a copy of this below.

I feel I have learnt a lot during today’s tutorial. Firstly, I found using paths to be an easy task to complete. It is much simpler and quicker to animate objects and cameras in this way and I feel I will be able to create a much smoother path using this method than auto and set keys. I also learnt the difference between target and free cameras and how each would be a benefit (or disadvantage) when placing them on paths. Lastly I found out how to make the camera face the direction the spline takes, this being by selecting follow.

Week 1- My First 3D Animation

Today is the first time I have attempted to create an animation in 3Ds Max, and with this in mind feel I have managed to complete the tasks quite well.

To begin with I just added key frames along the timeline and adjusted the position of the content at these points. At first I did occasionally forget to click on the key button, but after some practice I started to remember this each time.

When I went on to look at the Curve Editor I found understanding it quite difficult. When I was just concentrating on the shape moving up and down I found the graph in the Curve Editor easy to work with, as when the object went up so did the line and vice versa, however when I added movement along other axis’s I did find the graphs quite confusing to understand, but I hope with further use of the software for animation I will be able to work with these more easily.

I also looked at the dope sheet during the lesson. I did not use it to make any alterations as the animation I was creating was very simple, but if I ever need to align more complex movements I believe this would be very useful.

Lastly I went on to practice attaching and using a dummy. During the tutorial I only tried a simple movement of a single object, but from this I feel it will be a very useful tool when animating several objects at once, especially if they are close together.

I feel I have understood how to produce a basic animation during today’s tutorial well and, along with the notes I made, I believe I will be able to create another animation in the future using these techniques. I hope to build on these skills in future tutorials so by the end of the semester I can create a more sophisticated animation.

Week 11- Finishing touches to my image of October

So far this image has come quite a long way; however at the start of the week I did feel it needed some more changes. Firstly I increased the intensity of the light in the background to draw the viewer’s eye to this section of the image as I want this to be the main focus point. However, I made sure not to make this part of the image too bright as I wanted the lights in the Diwali candles to be the brightest so these objects are not forgotten due to their size. By setting the candle light intensities to 1, the foreground light to 0.2 and the background light to 0.65 I feel I created the effect I was looking for.

Next I changed the material I used for the trunk of the tree as I felt the current one was too dominant in the scene due to the shade of brown. I found an image of bark on the internet which was a more suitable and applied it as a diffuse and bump map to get the uneven texture.

I made sure the maps were the same size and then set the bump output amount to 35. When I applied it to one of the trees and compared it to the original material I felt it was much more suitable and so applied it to all of the trees.

Lastly I made adjustments to the shape of the trees as in several cases the roots did not make contact with the ground while others were submerged. Instead of the roots being perpendicular to the trunk of the trees I changed the angle so each one sloped down into the ground slightly. This allowed all of the roots to be visible without the trees hovering above the ground.

I am pleased with the outcome of this image in general. The background of the scene has turned out well as the structure of the trees is quite realistic and the changes in the colour of the leaves are apparent. Also I am pleased with the lamps in the window as the shapes turned out well and the glow of the lights look effective. However, I do feel the material I used for the grass in the background does not work that well and if I had more time I would work on this.

I tried to base the theme of this image on the colours of red and orange and the feeling of warmth as these are the first thing which come to mind when I think of October. The two subjects I included in the scene which relate to October link to one or both of these themes, the subjects being autumn which link with the colours and Diwali which link to both.

Week 11- Finishing touches to my image of June

I am still not happy with the appearance of my image of June and feel certain areas need to be changed. I feel the main problem is sections in the background, mainly the trees. Due to this the trees were the first things I tried to improve.

I started by working on the lighter trees. I applied a blur to the material map to the value of 2.5 and changed the bump value to 18. It took quite a while to find this combination to be the best, but eventually I found this worked reasonably well. As this had improved the appearance slightly I used the same method on the darker trees.

Lastly as an attempt to improve this part of the image I applied mesh smooth in the modifier list to each tree to try to get rid of the edges which were created as a result of using the soft selection tool to modify the original shape. I feel this did help to some extent but I am still not completely happy with their appearance.

The last step I did to improve this image was to work on the grass on the plane. I increased the bump of the material map slight to 40 as I felt the slight increase would highlight the layers in the grass. I am really pleased with the way the grass turned out as the clarity of the detail is reduced over the distance and so gives the image a more realistic aspect.

Overall I feel several parts of the image went well while others did not. For example, I am really pleased with the material I created on the lake as this, along with the slightly rippled surface give a good suggestion of water. I was also quite pleased with the outcome of the heron, dragonfly and butterflies as I feel they look quite realistic. These parts do not jump out when the picture is viewed initially but are gradually noticed and so add to the scene. However, I am still slightly disappointed with the trees in the background as I am unable to get them to look how I had planned. If I had more time I would probably start these again.

In this image I wanted to create the feel of tranquillity as this is what I associate with the month of June. I feel I have created some tranquillity, especially as the colours which dominate the scene are blues and greens.

Week 11-Finishing Touches to my image for April

Currently I am reasonably happy with the appearance of my image of St George and the Dragon but feel it needs a few changes. From looking at my previous image I found that the lighting was too dark and too much of the subject was in shade. Due to this I moved the target spot light further to the left of the image.

I felt that the background to the scene looked slightly unfinished as the columns stopped randomly in the image. Due to this I increased the height of each of the columns so they reached the top of the image as though they were going up to support the ceiling. However, when I did this the size of the material maps on the columns also increased. I did feel that the blocks were slightly to large even before I did this as they were roughly the height of St George and so I reduced the size of the maps in the material editor.

At this point I was very pleased with the appearance of the columns, however I did feel the columns and flooring no longer worked together as they were no longer in proportion with one another. To solve this problem I then reduced the size of the material map I had used on this surface until I was happy with the size in relation to the rest of the image. At this point I was please with the background and so decided to go onto another part of the image.

When I re-looked at the zoomed out version of the image I was quite disappointed that the chainmail on George’s body was not visible as I worked hard on this. I edited the size of the material map to make the loops of the chainmail slightly larger but was careful not to make it too large in comparison to the rest of the armour.

The last step I felt was needed to complete the dragon was to add light to the flame coming out of the dragons mouth. For this I used an omni light with a rich orange colour of light and set the intensity to 0.5. I chose to use a slightly different colour for this flame than the torches in the background as I wanted to show this was a stronger and more intense flame. I was quite pleased with how this worked, especially how the light reflected on George’s helmet.

I am really pleased with the outcome of this image. I was able to create the atmosphere I wanted quite easily using some of the features of the software, such as the sphere gizmo to create the flame and the lighting affects. I am very happy with the appearance of the dragon, especially the shape and fierce look he has. I did have some problems completing this image, mainly when I tried to add some realistic materials, but feel I have overcome this with time.