Chris Lacey's Art Blog

Good.Boy - Animation production

2012-01-21T21:59:00.000Z

My 'Dogbot' character has now been completely finished. All that remains now is to complete the final animation. I've kept my set for the animation fairly basic as I wanted to have a stronger emphasis on lighting instead. This creates a lot more atmosphere and focuses attention on the character. I've kept the lighting dark and gloomy as I'm trying to create a very cold mechanical feel for the animation. This is so that I can really reinforce the fact that the dog character is a robot. I've found animating a quadruped pretty challenging but definitely worth while. I think the most difficult part of this project so far was making sure the skeleton was rigged properly. Fortunately I think I've succeeded in making a rig that is capable of flexing in all the ways I need it to. It's not 100% accurate to how a real dog moves but I reckon this is a good thing considering the character is mechanical. I really looking forward to finishing this production now as I'm really happy with what I've achieved so far.

DogBot - Test Renders

2012-01-16T01:10:00.000Z

I've pretty much completed my robot dog model now. All that needs doing is some final touches to his character rig. I'm really pleased with how my knowledge of Maya is coming along. I now know all the basics of the program and I'm starting to get to grips with the rendering system as well. The above image was entirely created using Maya (no photoshop was used!). Below is an example of my character running. The model seems to hold up under extreme gestures which is defiantly a good thing. I still need to add some constraints to the character before he animates properly though.

Finally here's a turn around of my final character with all of his textures and effects added. I'm really looking forward to completing this project. If I can achieve everything I'm planning for this animation I think it will look pretty decent for my first real Maya project.

Contextual Design

2012-01-10T23:53:00.001Z

Over the last few months I’ve had to attend lectures which contribute to my contextual design module at university. I was tasked with taking notes down and then writing a reflective journal. Not all the lectures were entirely relevant to me, so I will only write about the lectures that I found useful or interesting.

Beautiful losers

In the first lecture we watched the documentary ‘Beautiful Losers’ which was released in 2008 and was directed by Adam Rose. The film follows a group of young artists during the 90’s and early 00’s. The film initially illustrates how artists’ who were initially struggling becoming successful from using inspiration from the underground culture that they surround themselves with. They hold massively popular gallery/ party events were anybody is free to create and present their work. The events continue grow bigger and bigger which begins to attract the attention of big corporate commissioners. The film portrays a huge emphasise on art being personal to the creator and that art should be your own. It’s inspiring to see a group of creative individuals do well by just doing what they love, especially considering the hardships they had to go through to get where they are today. The artists in the film do not have same luxuries that we do today such as the internet. Their fame had to be obtained entirely by bonding with the community around them rather than being able to instantly connect with people around the world like we can today. That said the sense of community that films presents is definitely desirable. It would have been great to work alongside the artists in such a positive environment. I can only hope that my career path allows me to work in similar creative environments. I think it’s safe to say every artist wants to be able to work in environment where they can leave an imprint on the things they love. ‘Beautiful Losers’ draws more attention to street art although there is a thin line between this and pop art. But the artists admit to being mainly influenced by music such hip-hop and punk rock and the culture around skateboarding and graffiti.

Design thinking

The basic premise of this lecture was to get us to think that design splits off into many different categories. I.e. graphic design can be applied to more than one thing e.g. posters or even road signs. The same can be said for other forms of design such as fine art and photography. It is useful to be familiar with different aspects of your trade if not all elements of design. Being a ‘T-shaped’ designer not only increases your skill base but also expands your employability and creativity. I definitely agree with the points put across in this lecture as I like to think I have been practising being a ‘T-shaped’ designer myself. I have sought out varying commissions from employers raging from web design to animation and also graphic design. I have found this has helped me carry skill sets into different applications which has greatly expanded my confidence and ability to complete work. In today’s working environment, it is not wise to specialize in only one subject area, as to work in a team environment you need to understand the requirements of your peers to be able work efficiently. This is true of anything, not just design. The beauty of design however is that art is all relative to the creator. The tools we use merely help us create our ideas, theoretically the more tools we have the better the potential of the final piece.

Innovation

I found Dan Berry’s lecture to be very informative. The lecture mainly covered how technology has affected art and design. The encouraged way of thinking was whether or not we should like the way technology has a hold on our lives, is the amount connected information that we have at our fingertips good or bad? Of course there is no simple answer to these questions as technology can be used for great things as well as bad. Take for example the internet. The internet allows an artist to easily publish his or her work online, communicate with employers and receive payment. However say that the employer wanted to know more information about said artist, they might be able to find social feeds on that person which give away unprofessional and personal information. As the internet becomes more of a social norm, it is more likely that we are to become less careful about what we post about ourselves online. Sometimes (especially on social feeds) you might have damaging information posted about you which you have no control over. It is obvious to say that with higher exposure there is greater risk of negative publicity. But the more relevant concern is the amount of personal information that we give away. Every single moment of our lives can now be recorded and published solely by using something as small as a smart phone. We can see the places a person has been, we can even see their current location if they allow it. Companies collect information about their users via their users’ interactions with the companies’ services. Those same companies are then legally allowed to sell that information on to whomever they want; be it advertisers or otherwise. I find this reality quite disturbing. That so much information about myself and others is being collected. All so that maybe I can’t get a more personalised advert next time I log into a social networking site.

Visual Music

Music and visuals certainly go hand in hand. Animation can simulate the sound of music. Making objects react to rhythm implies that maybe those objects are making the sound, or that sounds can affect objects kinetically. It’s a very believable effect. Reacting to music is almost the same as producing music; both require movement and energy. People dance to music as if the music is directly affecting them; certain dancing techniques are more applicable to different genres of music, as the visuals of these dances tie directly into the rhythm of the music. In animation different ascetics can be used to better suit the music. It is debatable to say whether different sounds can be applied to certain colours but I do definitely think that the more percussive elements of music effect how the movement in an animation should be portrayed, as is in dancing the animation must follow the beat of the music. It is fair to say that tone and colour have an effect on our emotions. So brighter colours generally suit more upbeat music and darker colours suit more moody music. But I wouldn’t follow this as a rule.

Dogbot - 3D Maya model

2011-12-28T20:03:00.001Z

Here is a render of a model I recently completed modelling in Autodesk Maya. I aiming to use this character for 'the message' brief I'm currently working on at university. I'm yet to rig the character with a skeleton. I also need to texture the character. I've been having a lot of problems with Maya crashing on my computer so I think I will try texturing my character in another modelling program, most likely 3Ds Max. Otherwise I'm really happy with how this model is going as it's the first full character that I have modelled in Maya. (I compiled the above render using a combination of 3Ds Max and Photoshop).

'Al' The Alien Walk Cycle

2011-12-13T01:30:00.001Z

At first this started off as a basic walk cycle for a
character I created earlier on in the year but I decided the finished walk cycle didn't have enough character. Instead of starting the walk cycle again, I decided to edit the walk cycle in Vegas to see if I couldn't make it look more convincing. The below video shows the result of my experiment. Using Sony Vegas, I successfully morphed the character's shape and movements. Not only could this help me animate the character but I could also make an entirely new body shape for the character without having to draw any more footage. The effect isn't completely perfect as there is some loss of quality but otherwise it acts as a brilliant quick fix.

Billy Boyce Website

2011-11-25T10:02:00.001Z

Over the last few months I've been doing a commission for clothes designer Shaun Akanbi, founder of Billy Boyce clothing. I've been working on the latest version of the brand's website. I made the entire site using Flash CS4. This required me to learn actionscript 3 (being the base code flash runs on). Once I worked out the necessary code, I could make the site dynamically re-size so that it could fit any browser window. I also had to work with basic html and php code to allow the site to communicate with other servers. I've learnt a great deal from building this site, mostly from doing code but also a lot about design. I had to keep the site easy to navigate and also attractive to look at. I'm likely to keep working on this as there's still a lot of room for improvement, especially with compression. The full site is now live and can be viewed here.

Nikon D3100 Black & White Test

2011-11-23T02:48:00.001Z

I today got my hands on my new Nikon D3100, I'm pretty happy with camera so far. It's pretty simplistic to use and has a tonne great features. It even shoots video! Which I will definitely will be taking advantage of.

Bird Head - Maya Model

2011-11-02T22:23:00.000Z

Using what I have learnt so far in my Maya tutorials at University. I have created the above model which I have been playing around with today. The model is made up of three different meshes being the head, eyes and eyelid. These meshes have then been mirrored to create a full head. Once I had a full model I played around with different ways of rendering feathers. On the right I've used a 3D feather brush preset. While it looks quite effective, it makes the character more expensive to render and also harder to animate. I then tried using an inverted bump map on the head on the left. This method is much less expensive and is commonly used on models for video games as characters can be rendered in real time. What the bump map does is creates a seemingly 3D texture by overlaying two images on top each other and shading them independently. The bump map on my character uses the same texture twice but with one of the textures uses inverted colours. I'm pretty happy with what I've managed to do in Maya so far. My modelling skills still need a lot of work, plus I still need to learn how to rig my characters.

Autodesk Maya Tutorials

2011-11-02T22:06:00.001Z

Recently I've started taking tutorials in Autodesk Maya as part of my University course. So far we have covered the basics of modelling. This includes using NURBS and being aware of sub divisions. I'm now capable of using tools such as the cv curve tool (creates a path which can be used as track for a model to animate on or allows a model to take shape of) and the sub div proxy tool (tessellates and creates a second smooth copy of the model, also allows model mirroring but this can be done independently). I have also learnt how to texture models in Maya. I can now either just use Maya's in house 3D paint tool (fairly basic brush tool but can also so be used for painting 3D objects such as hair) or I can use UV texture maps which allow me to import textures over from programs like Photoshop.

We briefly covered the basics on keyed animation in Maya which works very similarly to the keying system from one of Autodesks other packages; 3DS Max, which I've been using for a while now. The above screenshot shows a demonstration of my work being animated. The hair on the ball character is automatically animated with simple physics when the character moves. This saves a lot of time when it comes to animating, as I don't have to worry so much about the hair if I make a mistake or have to go back and correct something.

Summer Brief Character Designs

2011-10-14T13:33:00.001+01:00

Here are some character contact sheets that I have created for one of Uni briefs set over the Summer. I most pleased with the small purple character which I have decided to call Midge. Midge is definitely inspired by watching a little too much 'Adventure time' over the holidays.

Polar Bear Vector

2011-10-10T04:44:00.000+01:00

Penguin Vector Edit

2011-10-09T10:18:00.002+01:00

Penguin Vector

2011-10-09T03:42:00.000+01:00

This depressed little fella took far longer than I expected. Mostly down to little design choices regarding colour. Originally the character was entirely made of white lines but this didn't make it clear enough that the character was penguin. So instead I decided to use solid colour limiting outlines to the ones on the gun. I then made two final designs for the vector, one close up and another full body shot. I prefer the larger blue design as it seems more bold to me.

Re:Vision

2011-10-02T18:42:00.000+01:00

Got a little bit of a buzz today seeing a logo I designed a while ago for Re:Vision (a drug policy organisation) in all its printed glory. Re:vision had a stall just outside the Arndale in Manchester with a selection of pamphlets and other merchandise.

Vector Bird

2011-08-04T02:24:00.003+01:00

Mouse drawn vector artwork.

OC.TOP.US two tonal Logo

2011-07-28T16:05:00.002+01:00

OC.TOP.US Brand design and Vector octopus

2011-07-28T15:35:00.001+01:00

Thought I would try making some brand designs today. I would quite like to start selling t-shirts at some point, so naturally I started designing a logo for a brand that I may potentially want to use myself. I also went about designing a vector character that would identify with the brand. I'm pretty happy with what I've come up. I did a mixture of colour designs, including inverts. I'll post some two tonal designs later.

Fish Head - Photoshop techniques

2011-06-16T23:57:00.000+01:00

Here I've attempted two different shading techniques on the same illustration. I'm happy with both styles and I don't really know which one I prefer. All I can say is that I've been watching too much Spongebob!

The Gman - Photoshop painting

2011-05-21T08:50:00.001+01:00

After enjoying my last Photoshop painting so much. I decided to have a go at painting something else. I decided to draw the character 'Gman' from the Half-Life franchise in a lucid way to emphasise the creepy nature of the character. I took a different approach to creating the template of the character. I first drew a pencil sketch and then scanned it into Photoshop.
I'm really happy with the final image, especially the shading on the characters hair. I'm definitely going to continue doing photoshop paintings.

"Time to Choose"

Creative Futures Week

2011-05-20T11:09:00.000+01:00

During March our university had a 'Creative Futures' week. During this week a host of different professionals from the creative industry gave a selection of talks and workshops. I had to decide on the most relevant talks to go to as they ranged from animation to crafting jewellery (not something I really do). The week definitely proved to be useful. Mostly in the aspects of building a portfolio of work and being able to present it correctly for different potential employees. The week got me motivated to start work on my new website which is near completion now ( I have a registered domain name and last touches to make to the site before it goes live).

I will briefly cover the talks which I found the most useful and inspiring that I attended during the week.

Harriet Buckley, a freelance animator gave us a short talk on her work for the recent film 'The Illusionist'. Certainly the most stunning 2D animation I have seen in the last couple of years. She explained that it had been the highlight of he career but not necessarily her favourite project that she had worked on. She worked on cleaning up frames so that they could be fully coloured afterwards. We she described as difficult be important work. She then followed on to give a talk on how to find work as an animator. Unfortunately she didn't give a particularly enthusiastic portrait of the animation industry which definitely was a little off putting but at the same time she did give some very useful advice for creating showreels, stressing that they shouldn't demonstrate editing skills but should just focus on animation.

The next talk I found particularly interesting was from Paul Gravett. He gave a really enthusiastic talk about the state of the comic and graphic novel industry. He listed some of his favourite examples of work and also gave us a insight into different international comic book events, he stressed his favourites were in Paris and Japan rather the much more well known comic con hosted around the world. He also gave an interesting opinion on the state of 'Web Comics'. He had a love hate relationship with finding that they are creating a throw away attitude towards comics but at the same time delivering constant innovation in artwork and humour. It was really refreshing seeing Paul talk about the industry, he clearly had a passion for it and he definitely knew his stuff. I could quite easily listen to more talks from him.

The last talk I want to mention was from Lee Carter, a freelance concept and illustration artist. He had built up a incredibly impressive portfolio of work from working at the now sadly shut down 'Bizaree Creations' (which are responsible for a couple of my favourite gaming franchises, Project Gotham and Geometry Wars). He enjoyed his work at Bizaree but he stressed that it wasn't his proudest achievement understandably. As he is now lucky and talented enough to be now working for 2000 AD on a new Judge Dredd comic. Which he didn't fail to mention was his favourite comic book hero. He gave a brief tutorial on how he worked in photoshop, combining digital painting with 3D modelling, using models as reference. After the talk he showed his physical portfolio, which was surprisingly only A4 size (a good thing in my opinion). His work was ridiculously cool and impressive. I can only hope that I will be able to draw like that some day.

Overall the biggest thing I took from the creative futures week was presentation of my work. I need to make it easily accessible and varied to show that I'm not a one trick pony. But also only show work I'm proud of, because if I don't think it's good, it's likely a employer wouldn't either.

Stoke Your Fires - Animation event

2011-05-20T09:43:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately I don't have much good to say about this event. It was definitely a complete contrast to the BAF event that I attended. The event was hosted over several days however we were only able to attend for one of them. That said the day we went wasn't strictly speaking bad, rather quite uneventful. There were screenings of a few international films in the morning, none of which I particularly enjoyed. After that there was a discussion panel with a few professionals from the industry. However none of them were really animators. In fact one the guys on the panel was responsible for taking heritage brands like 'Thomas the Tank Engine' and 'Fireman Sam' and then converting them from beautiful stop into some plain ugly C.G.I. animation I would be embarrassed to show children. Not to say I'm anti C.G.I. That's definitely not the case however I am very anti of clear cash ins such as continuing a brand as cheaply as possible.

Fortunately the day ended on a particularly good high note. A speaker from the London based visual effects studio 'Double Negative' gave a very in depth insight of the making of the visual effects for the recent film 'PAUL'. An incredible amount of detail goes into the main character (an alien called Paul) to make him look as realistic as possible. Most of the details you would never notice without being told. For example the gooey texture of Paul's eyes, down to the fact hes a full working muscles system that reacts appropriately when he flexes. The talk also revealed that literally none of the scenes shot in the camper van the characters travel around in during the film were shot on location. Instead the interior of the camper van was created and then the moving backgrounds were then keyed in outside the van giving the illusion of movement. Now this may sound like standard industry practice but the 'green screening' has been done so effectively in 'PAUL' that you actually would never realize that it wasn't shot on location. And no I'm not joking, I saw the film before the presentation at 'Stoke your Fires' and I was shocked when I found out 'Double Negative' had achieved. I don't I would want to work on something like that though. Literally the visual effects artists on 'PAUL' were trying to make sure you never realised that they worked on the film. Quite ironic really.

Bradford Animation Festival 2010

2011-05-20T09:05:00.000+01:00

Last year I was lucky enough to attend 'BAF' (Bradford animation festival). The festival lines up all of the best animation from the year, ranging from professionals in the industry to student productions. There are awards given out in several different categories. For example : Best student film, best commercial and best short film.

There were also a good selection of panels from professionals in the industry. My particular highlights being from the following:

Paul Mendoza (Pixar Animation Studios)
Paul Franklin - Double Negative (the visual effects on inception)
Tim Searle (Animation in the United Kingdom)
Nexus Retrospective (Interview with Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith and Jim Le Fevre)

The two more relevant talks to me were obviously the ones from Paul Mendoza and Tim Searle (I was also fortunate enough to acquire their autographs) as they both covered animation and its principles. I was actually surprised to hear Paul Mendoza say that most animators at PIXAR train in 2D animation before they even start to use 3D software packages. It certainly invokes confidence. Tim Searle (a famous British animator) briefly covered his own work but went more into depth about animation studios in The United Kingdom. Unlike most countries, the United Kingdom houses many different small animation studios. This gives us a wide variety of creative output. The Nexus Retrospective gave an insight into the advertising industry and the general way Nexus handles a contract. They work on a tight deadline so planning each part of a production is key to hitting their deadlines.

There was also a lot of screenings of student projects from around the world. All of which produced to a professional standard. Especially the C.G.I. short 'Loom' which personal was my favorite animation from the entire event. The animation combined elements of motion design, music and some ridiculously good looking character models. (check out it's concept art and trailer at Polynoid!)

One professional film in the same vain as 'Loom' was 'Love & Theft'. A 2D music video by 'Studio FILM BILDER'. It combined morphing iconic characters from the history of the animation industry using a very simple colour scheme and some very nice smooth frame by frame animation; all set appropriately to the animations music. (watch the full animation here)

There were also professional Music videos in competition. This section particularly got my attention as I take a lot of inspiration from music videos in generally. As they are generally very experimental and artistic. Although it wasn't the winner, nor the most technically impressive my favourite music video had to be Basement Jaxx's 'My Turn' directed by Tomek Ducki. The video demonstrated 2D animation, 3D animation and live action seamlessly playing together. Surprisingly this wasn't at all distracting this was especially helped by the subtle colour choices used.

It is also worth mentioning Ray Harryhausen received the Lifetime Achievement award at last years BAF awards. Unfortunately he couldn't be there to receive the award. But just seeing a video of him appreciating the award and also seeing some the actual models used from the original 'Jason and the Argonauts' was heart warming enough. I think most animators will tell you that Ray's work is one of their main inspirations. He showed an amazing amount of dedication for his craft. To put into context how amazingly talented he is; consider than he produced all of the visual effects for 'Jason and the Argonauts' by himself. Now it is normal for a film to have visual effects team of two hundred plus people. To see what one man could acheive with such limited means will always be a constant inspiration to me.

BAF was deffinately a lot of fun and also very helpful. I've taken quite a bit away from the event and hope to attend this years event. I'ts certianly made me persue more music based animation, as it seems to be a really great way of expressing myself without feeling limited.

Cutout Animation - Pizza Parlour

2011-05-20T07:46:00.000+01:00

Here is another animation that I have completed for my university course. The brief tasked us on editing audio we had recorded from the Internet or radio and then animating an appropriate short to fit around the audio. In theme with the 'cut' audio The characters in the animation also had to be made into several different cutout parts. To do this we decided to cut up photos of people and materials, then rearrange them to make our new characters which then could be animated. The only problem I found with this form of animation was that ridged edges were clearly visible on the characters limbs. Much like a puppet, they had limited amounts of movement they could achieve without looking unconvincing. Despite this I'm fairly happy with the overall animation. Visually it looks quite quirky and it doesn't distract from the audio; which in this case is more important than the actual animation. I animated both scenes in Flash separately and then exported them into Sony Vegas. I did this so that I could achieve the split screen effect across the screen. I did this by masking the two videos over each other. This draws more attention to the characters in the animation and also gives the animation a little bit of added style.

Phoenix head - Tablet painting

2011-05-15T21:28:00.000+01:00

Thought I would have a shot at doing some photoshop painting today. The result being the above. I used several pictures of eagles heads as reference mostly so I could get the shape of the head right. I really enjoyed doing this picture so hopefully I will be able to squeeze a few more paintings out soon.

Sockenstein Stop Motion

2011-05-09T13:41:00.000+01:00

Here is the final edit of the Sockenstein short that we made. The music was taken from a performance by my Mother's jazz band 'Hoot'. There are few inconsistencies with lighting due to lamps breaking on our set, but other than that I'm fairly happy with the animation. I'm definitely glad that we manage to add voice acting and sound effects to the final production, as the sound reinforces the characters actions. The music in the background helps carry the film forward, I definitely think the animation would be flat without it.