Props and Street Lamps

I think the only modelling I have left is one or two bits of piping, and then it's just UV mapping. Anyway, the kinfe handle needs to be remodelled so that it's less complicated, but I included it it this progress update anyway because, well, it's still /technically/ progress

(Base Knife Model - smoothed)

 (Showing off the movable blade)

 (Upscaling the Alley so that the knife and the cigarette are the right size)

 (Adding Street lamps to the Scene)

More progress on Layout

I plugged all of the empty holes with archways and doors so that if the camera catches any of them in shot accidentally then there won't be any problems with people being able to see outside of the layout model, and it will give me a lot more leniency when I start reworking the storyboard.

I still need to add street lamps and a few other minor props, but aside from that the only thing left to do is mapping and texturing, so it's coming along really nicely.

(Remodelled Archway to match the reference picture I had.)

 (Modelled the base for a wooden shop front from the main reference.

The shot wasn't perfect though, so I had to wing some of it.)

 (Shot taken from the back of the scene to show all the -now plugged up- doorways)

Progress on Layout

I forgot to post in progress updates on my layout, so here's a bunch of screencaps I took to give you an idea of where I'm at currently and how I got there.

Stage 1: Base idea for floor plan

Stage 2: Fixing floor and adding bases for the house fronts

Stage 3: Adding windows, an archway and roofs

Stage 4: Finishing main archway and door,

starting on additional archways.

Problems with the new storyline idea

I mean to make a post about this earlier, but I got caught up in modelling and forgot to do it. Truly my dedication is professional.


So anyway, I abandoned the idea of using Lupin in the plot for 3 main reasons.

> Firstly: In order to include him in the plot, I needed to have something valuable that he could steal from Norman/ Morpheus/ the other rig in the scene. There's no way to explain how the rig got this item between the 2 shorts.

> Secondly: There are a number of issues I was having with where he starts in the scene and how he moves about. Given the time we have, it would be difficult to make this work well.

> Thirdly: It would have made the entire scene needlessly complex, especially considering how small the scene actually ended up being.



Even if I decided that the original idea was a lot better, I still need to rework my storyboard to fix some schizophrenic camera direction and needless inclusion of arrows.
Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Changing the story

I suddenly remembered a series of stories about a French Thief called Arsene Lupin, 'the Gentleman Thief'; an incredibly notorious character in the world of literature.
Seeing as I set my story in France, and involved a thief character in the plot, I thought that re-tweaking the story to include this aspect would be a very good idea.

Here's a link to the Ebook library so I don't forget about it;
http://www.goodreads.com/series/41315-ars-ne-lupin

Animatic

1st draft of the animatic is done.
I already have a bunch of ideas on how I could improve it floating around, but I wanted to get this out before I started doing anything extra.

The animatic seems to jump a few frames towards the end in this video.
I guess that's to do with an export error.




03/01/2014 EDIT:

Here is the animatic that I stuck to for the actual animation, and sorry it took me so long to upload it. After speaking to Hilary, I realized that my storyboard was filled with schizophrenic camera angles, so I fixed it over the course of a day and came up with this.

Note that I cut the following things out of the final animation that are still in this animatic due to time constraints and a better idea about how the piece would flow;

• There is no smoke in Scene 4. 
• Morpheus doesn't get startled by the sound of the door slamming shut.
• After the second rig gets kicked, the camera doesn't jump back to a 1st person view, and instead stays locked in the same spot for the last 2 scenes. As a result we see the second rig react to the kick from an outside perspective in the final animation.

Pocket Watch Model

This has been overdue by about 3 days.
Time to fix that problem.

Modeled in Maya
About 4hrs, give or take.

Storyboard

I just finished the 1st draft for the storyboard. At this rate, I should have the animatic done by tomorrow afternoon.

The red arrows indicate fast movement, and the blue arrows indicate slow movement.

The Plot

The research on the setting has been completed, and I know for sure I want it to happen in a Dark Alley somewhere in Annecy. As for what will actually happen, here's a very basic script;

A Cold Night Out (2)
- Rig 1 walks into an alley at night. He enters from an archway that's too dark to see into. 

- Rig 1 shivers, then starts walking slowly down the alleyway.

- Rig 2 is leaning on a nearby pillar, having a smoke.
- Rig 2 starts slowly following Rig 1, pulls out a knife and attempts to mug Rig 1
- Rig 2 pushes Rig 1 up against a wall and starts threatening him.
- Rig 1 says something like 'Look over there'
- Rig 2 blinks and turns his head away for a few seconds, laughing at how he thinks Rig 1's ploy will actually work.
- Rig 1 has replaced himself with a cutout of himself looking shocked
- The cutout falls over
- Rig 1 is seen slinking away, then realises he's been spotted and sprints off into the distance.
- Rig 2 gets really mad, throws his knife on the floor, hits himself in the foot, starts screaming unintelligibly, bounces around for a bit then storms off in the other direction, muttering stuff under his breath.

Setting

After looking at Hopper's paintings and taking into account the amount I love C.D.F's work, I decided that I wanted to use a street setting for my piece, so I immediately got to work looking at photos and paintings. It wasn't long after this that I remembered the Annecy trip and I started to give my research a much more solid direction.

Edward Hopper

From this point the research started to get a tad convoluted as I didn't really know what angle I was going to take. I looked at a number of paintings that had a lot to do with colour and light in an attempt to understand how I wanted my scene to work, but they all felt slightly off, then I looked at Edward Hopper after Hana decided to talk about his representations of indoor light.

Thinking about it now, it wasn't his lighting that I found so striking, but rather the way in which he was able to simply render the areas outside of the light in a way that made them believable without getting too caught up in the little details.

Starting point

The first thing I wanted to do was look for inspiration, and given that our tutors had told us to try and take it from paintings, I decided to take a look at a handful of painters whom I find to be particularly striking, in particular Rembrandt -for his skill with representing dynamic light- and a personal favourite of mine, Caspar David Friedrich, for his stunning representations of Outdoor scenes.

Attached are a few images that I gathered while doing this research. I feel that they inspired me the most out of everything that I looked at.