Dreamspace/Origins: Concepts. And your boyfriend.

My personal project went into a bit more of a swing in the month of July, as it was here where we began to focus on the projects themselves.
Since the concepts for a few of my characters and creatures were done up over the course of the year, I already had a bit of a head start, although not as much as I would have otherwise preferred - this year so far really has been a hell hole and a half, and I feel it owes me cake and cookies.
Present them, dammit!
COOKIES.

While we wait for the delivery of said cake and cookies, I shall discuss with you the progress made.
So a recap, I think... with pictures!! :D

Tarri, the protagonist of the story, as I digitally painted back at the end of February/early March.
He is a young Fairyfox pup.

The Fairytails, fairy birds based on fantails, which I painted up in March.

A Fairydeer. I wasn't sure what really possessed me to paint a deer species of fairy, however I would suspect I may have had some influence from the pokemon Xerneas, a Fairy-Type pokemon that looks somewhat like a deer.
I have designated a personal name to him for the meantime, that being Andler, a bit on a play of the word "antler," just changing a single letter within the word.


Scary Friends and Co.


What my animation-to-be really needed was a problem, or obstacle, to overcome. I had already tried coming up with ideas for an antagonistic force, and always with the notion that it would represent death, as the fairies represented life.
Drawing on that notion, I was immediately reminded of some of my favourite adversaries in my favourite game series - and by favourite adversary, I mean that I find them effectively terrifying and they make me give birth to steaming piles in my pantaloons.
I drew up my first image of my redead-inspired antagonist back in March, and happily give cuddles to you all thusly~

As you can see, they are dark creatures who wish to be your friend.
If you aren't stupid enough to fall for that, yes, you don't want to go near them. They will literally suck the life out of yo ass.
The silent standing, as if on standby, followed by them becoming active by screaming and paralysing their victims, as they draw slowly towards them (with huge, gaping mouths) is actually inspired totally by the redead in the game Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
I swear to GOD those things are just terrifying.

In July, I decided to try a redesign, based on a sketch I had drawn up in my visual diary. I then decided to digitally paint the new versions of these creatures, resulting in the above image.
The difference here is that the mouth does not really open as horrifically wide, and the eyes are huge and round. They constantly are smiling, yet are not supposed to show any particular expression in the sense of dread.
They also have hair.
Rock on.

Fairyflies, in the skies

Another concept I decided that I wanted was the very idea of fairy-fairies, living little glowing beings with wings. I decided that the concept and design were quite simple, and the inclusion of them in the story to come seemed to be integral to the developing plot within the chaos that is my mind.
So, I present to ye, ladies, gentlemen, and nudists of all ages, the Fairyflies.

The fairyflies dance gracefully within the forest, higher and higher into the skies above.

July Pie (Poisonberry flavour)

Advanced Animation

Work continued with my beautiful Fire Simulation, as my design for a majestic American-style barn came to completion.
And, as with any American culture, I was going to blow it up.
Once the barn was completed, I had begun creating the extra props, such as the logs and sticks of dynamite. I also created basic UV maps for them, much in the same way as I had for the crates.
The barn itself I only applied colour directly to specific faces, rather than exporting a UV Map especially, since all I really wanted was basic colour.

At this point, I wanted to start a bit of animation, both for the character, and for the camera. I believed the best way to approach this simulation was by setting the animation itself up first, before testing the fire simulations, in case I ran out of time. If worst came to worst, I could render out the animation at the drop of a hat.
Note: Theseus had no hat.

Once I had the relevant cameras in place, animated, and the characters animated (as well as Theseus' joy of bringing dynamite to the fire), I began concentrating on the fire simulations themselves.
The first fire I began with was the simple camp fire - I believed this would be the simplest simulation, as well as set up the basic values for the extra fire to come (basically, I used the camp fire as a base).

From there, I also adjusted the settings for when the fire suddenly bursts outwards in it's initial explosion. It is here where I further animated Theseus as he is thrown back from the blast.

It was quite satisfying.

It was really satisfying. Man, I'm a sadistic bastard. :D

Generating fire for the crates after the embers of said explosion was relatively simple, and I duplicated the fires and spread them around the barn to coincide with the fall of said embers.
So says I.
Mwahahahahaaa~
Anyhoo, I then began work on the emberfall, which was a brand new game to play. Thankfully, there was a particle system described in an online tutorial posted on Facebook by the lovely Bex, who will thus beat me with a sack of bricks, thusly.

The initial test with emitters and particles resulted more or less as a single, large fireball. If you look closely within the ball itself, you can actually see the particles represented by tiny little specks. This would expand from the centre, continuously creating new particles, and thus result in a growing fireball, rather than separating into random embers flying about.
To get the effect I desired, it was time to play with values - including the speed of which the particles blew out from the emitter source, the amount of particles being emitted per second, etc.
After a number of attempts, and playing with values, I finally started to get what I was looking for.

The embers went flying about, like pretty little fire ghosts, who seem to be hungry for TNT crates.
I can only hope they will find food in there.
All that was then needed was to make sure the crate fires began as the embers fell - that was easy.
The final task was to create a simple, yet devastating explosion. If you hadn't figured it out by now, you should never present me with explosives of which to experiment with fire.
Not unless you really want to.
You can trust me. :3
The final explosion triggered last, and basically, was just a flare-up of fire in an nuclear fashion, as was the style in the 1940s.
The final result? Everyone dies.
At least they went... together.

Goodbye, Theseus. May thy angels sing thee to thy rest.

Rest In Pieces

Fire, Maya, and Junestuff te Admire

June

Advanced Animation

Fire: Week 1

With the Cloth and Hair Sim Reports behind me, Fire Simulating was next. We began by utilising the fire effects in Maya, and created a simple log burning.

After that, we played a little, amping the fire up...

And then, for added awesomesauce, I played with the colours, which made for a pretty damn purdy fire.

Fire: Week 2

Instead of using the Maya Fire (try saying that fast over and over), we began using some basic FumeFX. I had a few problems in the fact that sometimes FumeFX just doesn't want to work, or during times where Maya may crash.

Ah, programs crashing, how I miss ye not~

Anyhoo, my initial file crashed and I lost data. No matter, it was only basic set-up stuff, which has been engraved into my brain and smells like fresh toast and kippers.

What I can show for you today is some of the effects that occurred by me playing with the settings, which have gotten some interesting reactions:

We also created collision objects, so that the fire itself would actually interact with the fire. It created a bit of a fire vortex, if you don't imagine the collision object being there.

Vortex is such a cool word, it's like combining the words vore and texting, culminating in the definition of "to eat one through text message."
It could possibly also be interpreted, tex being referred to as the state of Texas (USA), where the geographical land of the state itself is devouring it's citizens.
Houston, you have a problem.
...Houston? Hello...?

Anyhoo, I'm sure it's not important. But check out this cool playblasts, which I kept the collision object in one, but not the other (creating said vortexy-effectamajig):

Fire: Week 3

We played with lattice deformers, which is supposed to make fire follow a set path. I'm not sure if mine had the exact effect it was supposed to have, however it did have an effect, regardless:

Following that, we played with smoke. Colliding smoke, to be more precise - many virtually fine smoke particles died in the ensuing collision, and their smoke corpses were flung about to the wind.

It was beautiful~
I had also changed the colour of the two different smokes (two different smoke sources, to illustrate the mixing of the smoke during collision), and had it rendered out.

Fire: Week 4

We created two FumeFX boxes, where one was the master box, so to speak, and the other was the slave box.

All hail the superior box race.

Anyhoo, by making one box the master grid, and using N-Sims, the effects of the master box... oh wait, my notes happen to state clearly they are parent and child, not master and slave. Aww maaan...

As such, the Fume effects from the parent FumeFX box translated to the child FumeFX box, provided the child and parent overlapped.

For my second trick, we created an effector in order to influence the fire and smoke. I created a fairly flattened ellipse, and in order for this to work, the Fuel, Smoke, etc., had to have the option "Master Effector" switched on, and the effector itself effectively attached to be effective to have any kind of effect.

Get yourself a coffee.

And finally, this is the playblast:

Fire: Week 5

Relatively straightforward, I began building a set for my Fire Report. I decided on a barn, which went relatively quickly... it was a simple design, and for the most part, most of it was completed in the span of a single day. The rest of the assets (including the barn) were completed in a short time, on another day.

I shall thus leave you with something that will eventually blow up.

Game Cinematic

With our assortment of various body parts (in bone form), we began constructing various structures out of these bones for the cimematic's bone ship.
What a morbid crew we have...
We began with buttresses. Aside from the fact they contain the word "butt" in the word, they are not butts you can sleep on at all, which is probably very good, since it would probably make for a smelly bed.
My buttress in itself became famous for crashing the machine, as the polygon count would skyrocket, and Maya would freeze. Just turning the objects around in view proved frustrating.

I also built a tower which initially would attach to the end of the above buttress, in which some of the assets I created initially for the buttress (such as the "bone path", which also served as the side), made for excellent tower walls, and could be used for the roof as well.

After the tower, I turned my attention to the front of the ship. I decided to create a series of arches to form a more secondary central spire, essentially imitating the basic layout from the bone ship orthographic we had as a reference.
The single arch:

Put together with multiple duplicates, rotated at slight angles, eventually gave me an enclosed structure of arches:

By duplicating the above structure and adjusting the size of the duplicates, I was able to quickly put together a more or less bone-classy series of arches to form a tower.

Of course, each level of such a structure would have a floor/ceiling, so I modelled a simple piece of geometry to fit the structure and apply it to each level.
The final result (with added directional lighting):

3rd Year Personal Project

I hadn't worked on much during the month of June for my own personal project, given the amount of dedication needed for the other projects.
I had, however, attempted a start with my protagonist, starting with a basic formation of the head.
If I had to be modest, it was beautiful...

As you can see, the initial basic shape looked okay...

...well, okay, maybe doesn't look entirely like a fox... more like... a piggy...

Okay, I take it back. It's terrifying as f*#k.