These are my main influences on the style of animation that I want to incorporate when developing the slime cycle, with the combination of painterlyness and the use of 3D silhouette's.
It's clear you have a strong, instinctive sense of the mood you're seeking to create and I can see absolutely how your expressive, painterly style could be used to striking effect. I suppose, in purely aesthetic terms, I wonder if the fern life-cycle might not play to your style choice more effectively - in so much as the vocabulary of shapes and forms might be more, in themselves, striking? Just a thought.
I don't know if you've seen this work by Anita (year 3) already, who is literally importing her Photoshop paintings into Maya and using them, not simply to inspire production, but *as* production:
In terms of creating dynamic, shifting and parallaxing backgrounds for your silhouettes, I can see how working in layers in Photoshop, and then bringing those layers into Maya (or indeed After Effects) and animating them (as Anita has) could start to yield some striking effects.
You mention the inclusion of 'glowing text' - I don't know why, but this sounds alarm bells; if you've got a voice-over and great script, then text might be unnecessary - especially if you create this fogged, painterly and poetic world. Of course, there's probably ways to make text elements work, but tread carefully... (On a side note, Ant, just go back and take a look at your spelling in your post titles - you've got some school boy errors creeping in - and while I'm being picky; you should revise your understanding of apostrophe use, as you're using them incorrectly in your OGR, for example *because of it's style* actually means 'because of it is style', which you don't mean; you mean just 'because of its style'. I'd think more carefully about your graphic design too: notice the sad little orphan 'after' all by itself on page 3, and the way the text size changes throughout the document, as does the line spacing? I'm picking up on these imperfections and clunkiness now, because of the expectations around your Deluxe 'Art Ofs' - spelling, grammar, graphic design, layout and typeface must all become much more important to you now, and you've got to stop rushing your project documentation - tough love, but it's letting you down).
So - yes, excited to see you work up more of your world; think about the cycle, think about Anita's example, think about the text elements, and keep an eye on your publication/promotion skillset too.
OGR 05/03/2014
ReplyDeleteHey Ant,
It's clear you have a strong, instinctive sense of the mood you're seeking to create and I can see absolutely how your expressive, painterly style could be used to striking effect. I suppose, in purely aesthetic terms, I wonder if the fern life-cycle might not play to your style choice more effectively - in so much as the vocabulary of shapes and forms might be more, in themselves, striking? Just a thought.
I don't know if you've seen this work by Anita (year 3) already, who is literally importing her Photoshop paintings into Maya and using them, not simply to inspire production, but *as* production:
http://anita-gill.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/major-project-maya-experiment.html
http://anita-gill.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/maya-experiment-2-wip.html
In terms of creating dynamic, shifting and parallaxing backgrounds for your silhouettes, I can see how working in layers in Photoshop, and then bringing those layers into Maya (or indeed After Effects) and animating them (as Anita has) could start to yield some striking effects.
You mention the inclusion of 'glowing text' - I don't know why, but this sounds alarm bells; if you've got a voice-over and great script, then text might be unnecessary - especially if you create this fogged, painterly and poetic world. Of course, there's probably ways to make text elements work, but tread carefully... (On a side note, Ant, just go back and take a look at your spelling in your post titles - you've got some school boy errors creeping in - and while I'm being picky; you should revise your understanding of apostrophe use, as you're using them incorrectly in your OGR, for example *because of it's style* actually means 'because of it is style', which you don't mean; you mean just 'because of its style'. I'd think more carefully about your graphic design too: notice the sad little orphan 'after' all by itself on page 3, and the way the text size changes throughout the document, as does the line spacing? I'm picking up on these imperfections and clunkiness now, because of the expectations around your Deluxe 'Art Ofs' - spelling, grammar, graphic design, layout and typeface must all become much more important to you now, and you've got to stop rushing your project documentation - tough love, but it's letting you down).
So - yes, excited to see you work up more of your world; think about the cycle, think about Anita's example, think about the text elements, and keep an eye on your publication/promotion skillset too.