Thomas Mayfield Uca Rochester

Adaptation Part: B, has been somewhat of a mixed bag. On one hand, I think I had quite a good idea that was well thought out and had serious potential but executing the whole idea needed to have gone better. I'm going to split this into the good, bad and ugly to get an understanding of what could be done better for the future and then reflect on the feedback I was given. The Good In my opinion, I've come a long way artistically, being able to look at a piece of work I made in either Photoshop or After Effects and say "Hey, that looks pretty nice!" is a big leap for me. I've always felt I have been limited in my creative potential due to my lacking of artistic talent, but I can definitely say I have improved significantly over these past fifteen weeks, as well as take what I have learned and applied it to this project. The Bad There is a lot to be said on the negative side of this project, the main sin being not asking for help when I needed it. There was...

Adaptation Part B Presentation by Thomas Mayfield on Scribd  

 So at the moment, I've been working out how to make the water look good with my current art style, and I think I've finally cracked it. The moon looks pretty good in my opinion and the depth test works pretty well as well. As for audio, I've almost finished one of the mixdowns for my project, I just need to add a couple more sounds and edit a really odd scream that seems to pop in? So hopefully this will be up soon as well.

Original Art Influences  So right when this project started I had a rough art style I wanted to follow, and how I was going to make this thing. I would have been using a hybrid of some of my old techniques used in Fugitive (creating loads of assets to be put in scenes, to give the illusion of depth.), so I would just be a case of creating the assets and getting them ready for AE. This was just a rough animation test, but I figure I show off one of the new effects I have been working on and how it will feed into he animation. Tank Development Zepplin Development I'm still currently working on assets for the boat fight and the knight conflict, so expect those soon, as the next week is the final push for this animation. I did have a slight issue with getting work out for the past little while and now that this problem is resolved I'm going on the full attack in terms of production. Storyboards have been created so now all I need to do is tra...

So the Pitch for Adaptation Part: B has come and gone, but there a few things I want to reflect on for the future. So after feedback from my pitch there are a couple things to take note of the first being is the way I actually presented the presentation. I've done a fair amount of testing in regards to this animation, however, I didn't even mention any of these things in the presentation. Things like hard surface modeling, projection mapping and how the animation actually works. There is still a lot of work and Re-Working that needs to be done, but I do believe that what I now need to achieve is a lot more achievable that I had previously thought. The thing is I had done a fair amount of work but didn't mention it. What I do know to still do is stick to my current art direction, the feedback I got for some of my choices artistically were quite nice! However there is still a lot of work to be done and I'm ready to tackle it head on.

Adaptation Part:B by Thomas Mayfield on Scribd  

Samsung Music Hub "Sizzle" from Seagulls Fly on Vimeo . The idea that the whole scene blends seamlessly is very interesting. Giving the illusion that the whole animation would be one sequence rather than separate would be quite crucial. HORIZON - from Mickaël Forrett (MEO) on Vimeo . Horizon is an amazing example of how projection mapping can give an impression of depth and scale. This should be used in the final animation, but this a cool use of this technique nonetheless. HORS CHAMP from GOBELINS pro on Vimeo . Hors Champ uses colour and screen effects very effectively to give a sense of realism and believability, despite the art style of the animation. COIL from GOBELINS pro on Vimeo . The animation in Coil is very well done, some scenes use a large amount of animation, whilst some areas only need a small amount, but it's enough to emphasise an emotion.

Rough Knight Environment Concept The effect should just be popped into the animation when it is all done, and this is just a small taste of what to expect. Turns out the pixel physics isn't as complicated as I originally thought.

So I've gone and re-worked this timeline I had, so now I can start posting my storyboards and environment designs. Before I start producing all of my assets (And there will be a lot of them), I wanted to experiment with different technologies. Recently I have been messing around with ncloths and nconstrains and I've been able to get a good idea of how they work. With this technology, I could create things like ships, capes and maybe a couple ribbons. I still need to keep final compositing in mind when creating this because I don't know how long these will take to render, or how long it will take to composite. I've also been trying to get a theme down for my production and so far I'd like to think it looks pretty clean. My style is pretty minimalist already so I will have to see how I can build off of that and gain a couple more tricks under my belt.

Knights 1100-1700 When Knights were around there was always a sense of honor and respect, whenever you saw a duel between two knights very rarely was there ever any cheating, it was a test of strength and skill. Technology in this era obviously existed but was nowhere near as advanced as we have today, the intention of the technology has carried over to our times but has become much more industrialized. The knights are meant to be the pinnacle honor and combat so keeping to smaller details will be quite important. Setting Theme: Honour Respect The Gunboat War 1807-1814 Gunboats are not like huge battlecruisers but rather pirate ships, the jump that intended for this section is showing how when we work together we become more efficient, and having some sort of crew on a ship is a very good way of showing this. This conflict was set in the Napoleonic wars back in the 1800's, now whilst this jump may be large from 1100 to 1800 t...

Right now I've got a pretty good idea of what I want this animation to look like, now its just a case of doing lots of color tests, seeing what does work, and what doesn't. Just wanted to show some small progress.

Art Style is something I would feel very passionate about, having a particular minimalist style at times I'm going to try and play to this strength with this decision. In terms of how the animation will look, it will be like a 2D game and will have much more detail even in small little things. Having designs where only minimal design is put in, however, the shape has enough character to it so it can be identified. The theme for the animation is ultimately about redemption and sacrifice. Britan has been in a few conflicts in its years, and corruption and power have always seemed to sneak their way in. However, there is always a sense of 'There is a job to do, and someone's gotta do it'. Having the main undertones be about honor, valor, anxiety, and fear will be crucial in some scenes and making sure the message is clear in each segment. The part that should make this project slightly easier is that there is a ton of references and key resources I can ...

The War Machine Time of Knights (1100) The Great Northern War (1700-1721) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_War French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars The Gunboat War (1807-1814) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunboat_War WWI, The Great War (1914-1918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I WWII, (1939-1945) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II Falklands War (1982) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War Gulf War (1990-1991) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War Iraq War/Second Gulf War (2003-2011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War Research and Observations So the Machine of War is the idea of using a whole force in order to have military seige, using tactics and number to make the battlefield unfair territory. At one point fights were fair, but over time this idea has corrupted because of money, land and power. T...

Idea 1: Animation Idea Take the idea of some of the greek gods and throw them into the real world so Either Hermes could be an office worker, and Hades is his boss. Hermes would do his job constantly and mess up somewhere along the way, being out sped by fat workers on Segways. The animation would end with Hades Clicking his fingers and Hermes bursts into flames. Idea 2: http://blog.ninapaley.com/ I would probably try some character creation along with rig & animation reel, this would help improve my character development skills as well as general knowledge of character design. Here are a couple ideas. The God of Cafes The God of Dog Walking The God of Reading The God of Monopoly The God of Risk Idea 3: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html https://vimeo.com/98122166 https://vimeo.com/97909660 The Third Idea is having Wilfred Owens most recognizable poem Dulce Decorum Est, having a visual adaptation of WWI, using strong stills that tran...

Initial Research & Ideas Master Sun, The Art of War Edited and Translated By: John Minford Chapter 1: Making of Plans Page 3 "War is A Grave Affair of State; It is a place, Of life and death, A road  To survival and extinction. A matter To be Pondered Carefully."  Ideas Sun-Tzu was a military strategist who lived in the 6th century. Renowned for his military strategy he is regarded as on of the top minds in military strategy, period. Knowing who Sun-Tzu is and the context of the words a couple ideas can be made, the first being an animation. The first line of the book is more or less the definition of war, and when he uses this quote he doesn't just mean war in china but war in general, so creating an actual depiction of war, some of the attributes associated with it (Courage, Fear, Loyalty) could be quite a powerful topic to talk about. Using layers upon layers the animation would play out like a Chinese paper puppet play, ...