Collateral

Really enjoyed the film Collateral. Like the previous film we watched again this one was all set in one night, however the difference between Collateral and Identity was that the setting wasn’t limited. The opening scene was the cab driver (Max) is driving a woman (Annie) to a location in which by the end of the scene he gives her a picture that means something to him and tells her to keep it, by that alone I assumed that the film is going to end up being all about the woman in the end and I was right. Just like in the last film I was right from the start. It’s a very dark setting again because it’s set at night throughout the film so I think that in terms of Art direction it was important to make use of the city lights. Tom Cruise plays the role as Vincent who employs Max drive around the streets of L.A. all night killing witnesses at various locations, in which they make use of the streets of L.A. by going to different buildings scattered around encountering various problems. The typical streets of major places in America like L.A. and New York etc. have bright city lights everywhere you go (or at least that’s what I’ve seen on TV and movies) so I think that it was important to make use of them in different scenes and shots simply because it’s dark all the way through and they need something to lighten the atmosphere up and as the plot unfolds the main characters make their way through the concrete urban jungle that is Los Angeles.

 

The colour pallet like all previously had a limited amount of colours used varying from greens, blues, reds, yellows and more paler but light colours I think again were used to add but to also capture the feel of the modern street of L.A. as the film is set in the year 2004.

After driving around all night it gets to the point where (as I predicted) Annie is one of the witnesses that Vincent needs to take out as he is hired to do so, and so it’s Max to the rescue.  Luckily he keeps the phone number given to him by Annie so he can call and warn her about that Vincent is coming for her. Max and Annie eventually escape, though however they are chased onto a metro rail train by Vincent in a desperate hope of getting away it ends as Max kills Vincent and then I guess they all live happily ever after? I’m being sarcastic, but it reminds me of L.A. confidential not in the sense that it’s all set in the same place but because of the plot is all about murders and crime etc. moving in and around the city. I remember the scene where they are in a night club and the lighting is very blue and they captured the feel of what a modern day night club in L.A. looks like though then again it’s not as hard to capture the modern day feel because we are living in the modern day… but they got it right! It would have been harder to produce L.A. confidential because they trying to produce a setting from 40 years ago at the time of production. The costumes and environment to be honest was very different but that is simply because one film is set in 1950’s L.A. and the other 21^st century L.A., and you can tell the comparison between both dates. I for me they captured right. it was a great film and I’d definitely watch it again.

Identity

Identity was all about environments. From the off I noticed the colour palette straight away, which is becoming something I’m always noticing straight away in all the movies I watch now. It was very dark as per usual with any film, I think it’s a big cliché to be honest but every film I watch seems to have darkness everywhere, even in games everything is dark, it’s probably to add a more dramatic atmosphere but I get kind of fed up with seeing it over and over again however this film is set all in one night so I’ll let the concept off with this one... Without getting too much into that though the colours used were again limited. Different tones of green, red, yellows here and there and blue were all the colours I noticed mostly. Another thing was looking at the greens in particular; they varied from a darker green to a higher saturated green in different scenes giving a varying contrast all the time which was interesting. I thought that these colours tend to draw my eyes straight to them more rather than focusing on the characters and what they were saying or their facial expressions as with it being a horror movie the actions of the characters are important to how the story unfolds I think.  Though being an Art student I tend to focus on what the aesthetics look like for example different shots and camera angles etc more than the story itself.

 

The environment was very limited, the whole film is in just one place and it all takes place in one night. The story and script have an effect on the Art direction I think in terms of it being all set in one motel in one night, it’s constantly pitch black outside and all around and it’s flooding around them therefore the characters cannot physically get away from the motel because of the constant rain and the danger of it and so they are forced to stay in the same place the entire film, there in which it asks the questions to the Art director of what can they achieve with this? The Artists are basically limited to the scenery; there are only so many rooms they can work with so it has to be well planned out. I guess the script to the story will help them realise what rooms are needed and what parts of the set will be used by the characters and what purpose they are used for. So based on that it kind of all boils down to reading and working with the writers (I think) closely to describe what will be going on in each individual scene and then from that work out what is required and how they are going to shoot each scene.

 

I remember the scene where the injured woman is lying in bed, you see that room quite a lot for a while but afterwards we start to see more of the set. It’s as if they don’t have a lot to work with so they were trying to make scenes last quite a long time in one area and then build it up to seeing more and revealing more to the story as time goes on (again I think). The scene where the woman is hit by the car is quite a long scene, as it repeats it over twice. When I heard that it was a horror movie and people started to get killed, at the scene with the young boy in the car and his mother outside gets hit by a passing car at the start of the film, I immediately assumed that they boy was the cause of her death and knew it was going to be him from the start and I was spot on. Maybe I’ve seen too many cliché horror movies? With most of them you know who it is from the start and this was one of them. In terms of environment it’s great, Art direction good, story good too but it was quite predictable to be honest (and again this is what I personally think!).

Year 2 - Week 5 - October 31st - November 04th

This week has been a pretty quiet week; we started out week 5 by doing a project that we did last year again: Imagineering a vehicle. This project for me last year didn’t turn out that great; I designed a car based on organic objects in nature. It turned out okay but I fully know well I could have done 10 times better if I put my mind to it. I ended up redoing this project again at Christmas, the final design I though looked better and I had drawn down a lot more ideas though I still knew I could have done better. This time round I understand perspective a lot more and using it in just about everything I do, I believe that anything can be drawn in perspective as some people don’t, I apply perspective to everything now if people like it or lump it. I’ve noticed lately how some people are submitting work on FaceBook were everything looks good and rendered and the perspective looks right as you first see the image but when you analyze it, it’s wrong... I won’t name anyone or post any images however...

I’ve turned into a complete perspective perfectionist, if the perspective I even slightly off I’ll rework it. Anyway this time round I have thought that the brief for my vehicle design can be (if I’m not mistaken) that there is no vehicle that can allow you to fully navigate on top and underwater as high speeds, thus I wanted to create a vehicle allowing the user to do so creating a submarine that can be used as a boat for fishing etc and that can be used as a speedboat also.  Doing so in which allows the user to travel though harsh vast waves of the seas without being in danger of getting thrown overboard or drowning pretty much, if you were to hit dangerous crashing waves you can simply turn the vehicle from a normal boat into a submarine thus avoid danger. It allows you to also explore the sea bed and nature within it at high speeds if you wish however on another occasion you can simply travel the sea in ‘speed boat mode’ or travel at a slow steady pace and use it for fishing if you wish. My initial idea was to allow it to do all 3 things giving the user more option when travelling on water. I think it’s a good idea and I’ve drawn down quite a few plans, this vehicle project I must say is 10 times the idea I had last year and I’m happy with how it’s gone, being more ambitious about it I’ve gone and made a white box model of it.

I thought it turned out really well, it took about an hour and it is really high poly may it be noted. I’ve drawn a lot of ideas and using perspective has really helped in the development, I’ve learnt that perspective does apply to everything and with it you can just about design everything. I probably do a blog in the near future about perspective and talk about my vehicle project more.

Not sure of a name for it.

In 3D we continued with the trash project, I have to say it’s way too easy, I’ve other things on my mind that I want to do and I also want to move onto the next project which is the... dare I say it? Self portrait project! I‘m definitely going to need more time on that as I struggled like crazy with the gladiator project, the rigging was a bitch to say the least, in fact the whole thing was thus I want to get on with it quick and forget the whole thing. I’ve got the trash done and unwrapped which took (and I am in no way am kidding) took 2 days... Just 2 days to make the thing, we’ve been given 500 triangles for it but I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, mine is about 160 triangles, but what more can you do with boxes, they are just squares that take up about 10 triangles each! Maybe I’ll come back and improve it later.

Year 2 - Week 4 - October 24th - 28th

After having watched the year 3 ideas pitch, I’ve been quite scared to pitch my ideas if/when the time comes. It’s got me thinking about it quite a lot, with it being a year away there is time to think but I shouldn’t be worrying about it just yet. This week we started out with returning to Bradgate Park for the 3^rd time.  Now I’ve previously said that going to the same place is okay for the different times of year as it the colours and scenery changes but we went there just a few weeks short of this time last year, so it’s basically just drawing the same time of year at the same place, but just picking a different area to draw for a final piece...

Despite it being the same old thing again, we got to explore more which was nice though we didn’t really get to see much more as the areas we were trying to get a good shot of were blocked off. Essentially Bradgate is a great place for colour, this week I’ve managed to do a few more pieces of fruit and I’m  glad to say that I’m getting faster, usually I’d spend about 2-3+ on a piece when I was first getting use to a tablet and pen but now I’m spending about an hour or less. One thing in Art is that a piece of work is never finished, it’s just abandoned cause you can always add more if you wish to change something, what I’m trying to say is you ‘abandon’ your work when you feel most happy with it and I’ve been ‘finishing’ my work once I’ve felt happiest with it which originally would take hours now the time is shortening. This week I managed to complete my dinosaur final. It was all about looking at rendering techniques so I thought grey scale would be the best showing positive and negative spaces. I've started to use a machanical pencil in my work which had made my rendering (I think) turn out better.

Prep Work.

Dinosuar Final

Inverted Version

In 3D I’ve finally ‘finished’ and submitted my Treasure Chest. I’m happy with the outcome, the bump and specular maps really made it what it is, I want to practise with bumps and speculars though to understand them a little more. Three weeks proved to be too little time to achieve what I really wanted to on this project however, there was a lot more detail on the chest I wanted to add but didn’t find the time, mainly due to the legs of the chest being quite a complicated thing to not only model but unwrap. The unwrapping took me 2 weeks to do on top of painting the textures, and I ended up pelt mapping all the legs in the end as it proved the easiest way of doing it but the good thing is I’ve learnt how to pelt map now as it’s something I’ve never done before. We’ve moved onto the trash project now which to be honest seems a little easy but I think it’ll be good to get it out the way to make a start on my self portrait which I’m not looking forward to. Having finished the last project is now given me a little more time to work on some of my own stuff I’d like to do like my football pitch, I’ve taken some references from some parks I’ve seen around Leicester and I’m on the way to modelling the full thing in my own way.

It’s something like this is what I want to do for my FMP (Final Major Project), but I’m asking myself the questions of will people like it etc... I’ll talk more about it in due time.

In critical studies we watched about 40 minutes of the film Paris, Texas. From what I saw it was a really interesting film, it doesn’t have much text to it’s like what was talking about last week how the Art can portray things sometimes better than words can. It’s a sort of very lonely film with the impression of wanting to get away quite a lot. The visuals are amazing with bright colour in literally every scene; I fell in love with it immediately. I definitely want to see the rest of it sometime and probably talk about it later.

L.A. Confidential

L.A confidential is one of those films were you have to watch it maybe a few times to understand it better. The first time you’ll try to understand the plot, the second time you’ll probably understand the environment and settings more and then the third time probably the characters is what you’ll understand more. What I mean is at first you’re always just going for the plot really but after this you’re looking for other things and asking yourself why all the time. As an Artist you would sort of questions things all the time just by looking around yourself, questioning the visual elements in front of you.

In this film, straight away like the Machinist, I noticed the colour palette, it was before the film described to us as very bleached and simply put, it was. The more notable colours in the film were yellows, oranges, browns and reds; it really gave it that 1950’s feel. The first few scenes were enough to draw you into the 1950’s decade set in Los Angeles.

It sort of felt like me as a viewer was there in the scene with them in the city as they captured a really strong interpretation of the time it is set in. When I heard the word ‘bleached’ and saw the different tones of colour throughout the film it felt as someone literally threw a lot of bleach over the finished outcome and what I mean is it felt as if they had captured the footage in a modern specific style with a limited colour palette and then the colours were faded to look less vibrant.

The Art direction was very good, this week we talked about how it’s hard to pull off certain things within a game but how because all the questions in film have just about been answered it a case of picking something you like or want to do and just film it from A to B. In gaming its quite different however, we don’t use real actors or environments or anything real, we have to take environments and characters and re-create them in 2D and 3D were there are certain limitations. In gaming for example it’s harder to re-create and make a character act to how we do in real life.

The characters in the film just sort of float onto the stage without even saying anything they give an almost immediate impact on the view telling you about them. For example the way Danny Devito or Russell Crowe just show up and just from the way they are dressed, their body language and the way they talk tell you their characteristics which again can be very hard to pull off in gaming. On which the costumes were really good in capturing the feel of what a L.A. police officer or detective would look like in them days, it shows that good costume design can show a lot add to how the character is portrayed. It had great Art direction and a great story line to go with it, one I’d watch again.

Year 2 - Week 3 - October 17th - 21st

Since missing it last year due to closure, this week kicked off with us going to the New Walk museum. It in honestly wasn’t as fun as I’d imagine, and what I mean by that is it was full of kids... screaming kids. We just had to go during the half term break didn’t we? Well my idea of what would have been better was if it wasn’t full of kids and was a more peaceful place to draw, it was too crowded, too noisy, too uncomfortable environment to draw in, I prefer something more peaceful where I can sit and concentrate, it just wasn’t possible though. On top of all that there really wasn’t much we were allowed to draw either, there was practically about 5 dinosaur structures we were limited to and a few dinosaur heads to. With it technically being first year work we were meant to look at rendering techniques as this would have come just after one and two point perspective it was nice to get back to a bit of basic stuff actually however since our heads have be bombarded with looking at colour a lot lately. I’ve caught up in visual design though after last week being stressful, my train prep sketches are complete, I’ve worked out the composition, blocked out the colours and ready to go in and detail my final piece, which is a digital final again.

In 3D this week, I continued to unwrap my treasure chest, it’s really tedious as the legs to the chest are annoying, I ended up having to pelt map them which seemed the easiest way to do so, and I had to look at a video tutorial on how to pelt map, to my surprise it’s really easy, I thought it was something complex. I’ve gotten the point where I’ve pretty much unwrapped the full thing and gotten most of my textures done and it’s just finalising it. I managed to even take out a lot of triangles from my previous model and got it down to about 1300 triangles used on the model itself, which in terms of trying to use as least triangles as possible, I’m happy with but I could of used the extra triangles to add more detail in, I definitely want to revisit this project soon. It will be nice to move onto the trash project next, just to do something different and maybe a little easier by the looks of it? I think the next project will be an easier one I think, so I think that getting it done quickly will allow me to catch up on other work and hopefully get more time to do personal work I’ve been wanting to do.

In critical studies we talked about planning and concepting again along with Art direction. Art direction is what is coming up quite a lot of recent. We talked a lot about selling things visually, for example how can we tell a story without actually saying anything/talking about what it is or what is going on. How can an environment have an impact on the viewer, how do we give an impression of what characters are like immediately without having to explain it. We looked again at how we manage time this week, looking at how much time we spend doing something and how much it adds up to, I think a lot of people found out in the end that they wasn’t spending enough time working in the week and was forgetting what they were doing at certain times. I myself am constantly working, even on the weekend; it just feels as if when I’m not working, I’m constantly falling behind. We was told how on a weekend we shouldn’t really be working and we should be having some free time to yourself, however for myself I get up and all I do is work though having a break every now and then. I’m not complaining or anything it’s just it feels like all I’m doing is working and not having the time I want to do some personal stuff.

Anyway I did manage to draw a piece of fruit this week. I’m using the fruit as a way of trying to get me to work faster, as in the past I’ve spent ages on drawing a single piece of fruit, this time I didn’t spend as much and I was really happy with the result. I’m also using it to improve my colour theory as well, one technique this week I’ve looked as is using darker tones of a colour to make shadows instead of always going for black which is what I usually do. I use black to darken things up in areas but I had again I used a small colour pallet for this.

Tangerine, not an orange!

After a couple hard weeks in visual design by the end of this week I’m glad that I’ve finally been able to get quite a lot of work done, I feel better for it to and ready for next week.

Working Time

After writing a list of allocating myself time to work, I’ve found that my working timetable comes up to about 60+ hours...

On a Monday I have visual design from 10-1pm then again at 2pm but usually we out and around so I basically just continue working with a few small breaks in between until about 3-5pm. When I get back home every day I usually take about an hour out for dinner, relax for a bit and get ready for some more work, though I might note this is what I usually do each day around the same time, 5-6pm is usually an hour break. I’ve planned my timetable to give myself something to do on the night. Everyday I’m trying to do some visual design weather it maybe just drawing a piece of fruit or an object to keep me going or getting on with my final piece for my projects. I take the time to also maybe write a blog if I find there is time.

On Tuesday it game production, all day, literally. Second and third years are not allowed in the game labs on a Monday so we are limited to 4 days in there each week from 9am-5pm giving a maximum of 32 hours per week, so I am trying to use that time as much as possible. We’re there at 10am on a Tuesday from 10am-1pm then again at 2pm-5pm but I just stay there the full day. I take a couple of minutes break here and there just to have a rest from doing work as continuously working can be extremely stressful and take about 10-15 minutes for lunch, so maybe I’m losing a little bit more time there, maybe half an hour to an hour when you add it up? Afterwards I will work for maybe another 3-4 hours on a night doing visual design work and or doing blog work.

Wednesday pretty much works the same way as Tuesday except about a couple of hours out to watch our film at 2pm, usually the film will end about 3:30-4pm so I can make it back to the game labs for an extra hour of work until were kicked out. Again I repeat the same thing on a night doing visual design or blogging, though this is quite repetitive if I need to work on my game production making textures or just tweaking some geometry I’ll find the time to do that to maybe take a break from visual design.

Thursday again is just like a Tuesday/Wednesday though we have an hour for critical studies. Basically sitting in the game labs all day, I should also mention that I may take a few minutes out to scan some of my drawn work in. Again on the night I will go through what I need to, I’m attempting to balance it out almost.

Friday, again will be in the game labs all day which I should also mention that our FaceBook network does seem to get in the way, but however it’s not really in a bad way as we are looking and commenting on our and others colleagues, though there is some time taken out for that maybe up to an extra 20 to 30 minutes possibly? On the night I’ve allocated some time to draw a piece of fruit which is what I’ve wanted to do each passing week so being the last day of the week I’m drawing one piece and basically ending the week with that.

Its odd how this week we were told that we should be having free time to ourselves on the weekend however when I wrote my timetable I tried to make everyday count. I’m basically letting Saturday’s be my blog day; I do pretty much do nothing on a Saturday so it gives me time to think about things more. We were told that the internet is the biggest distraction ever created and I strongly agree, in 3 weeks I’ve worked out that I’ve spent about 60 hours on the internet alone which averages at about 20 per week which I’m quite astonished by. If that’s about 80 hours per month that’s about nearly a 1000 per year though these days I’m not using the internet as much as I use to, but in total that about 1 and half months a year spent on the internet alone which is quite phenomenal. If I try spending about 8 hours sleeping per night plus maybe extra on weekends, I have to take off about 60+ hours from my 168 hour week leaving me about 100 hours. I spend about an hour each day eating then take off another 7, now we’re down to about 93 hours. If I spend some time on our FaceBook network and have little breaks between working in the labs each day I need to maybe about another 3 or so hours off, so we’re about down to 90. If I take travelling or walking to University everyday it takes about 15 minutes each day there an back, I might go out into town to so maybe about another 4 hours off down to about 86 hours. If I take organising things and doing things such as washing, I might spend a couple of more hours do that so about 84 hours left, I maybe even also take out about another 10 hours for time spent on things I want to do in my free time, not forgetting our weekly film either which is about 2 hours extra so about 70 or so hours we’re down to. What’s amazing about all this is that I’m struggling to find out what I’ve been doing, but by the looks of it I am making about 60 hours a week, which is more than the average/standard 40-45 required of us each week, it just feels like I’m not doing much work when in actual fact I’m probably putting in all these hours to be more accurate and careful about my work.

On Sunday I originally wanted to spend this day doing some personal projects of my own but I’m sort of finding that instead I’m doing the mandatory work in this time. Sunday is suppose to be a day of rest but I’m not resting, it’s odd really but as I’m doing the work I don’t think about the time that I’ve spent doing work, it constantly feels like everyone else is working when I’m relaxing making it feel like everyone else is getting further ahead and producing more than me and I’m constantly falling behind. I’ll probably do another blog upon what time I’ve actually spent in a week maybe to be a little more accurate and further develop on what I’ve written.