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.

Tarri's Wild 2014 Ride on the Academia Train

Tarri's Wild 2014 Ride

on the

Academia Train

December (2013)

3rd Year Personal Project

In anticipation of the 3rd Year Personal Project for the following year, I began keeping a visual diary, compiling ideas for my future animation.
On December 10th, I began by listing what works I had already achieved:

Cascade and the Storm King (Year 1 2D Animation)
Tarri the Sky Dragon Pup (Year 2 3D Animation)
Dreamspace / Splash - Volume 1 (Year 2 Graphic Novel)

I also made a list of characters I had initially wanted to model during the summer:

Splash (from Dreamspace / Splash)
Tarri (a fox/fairy creature I had in mind)
Autumn (an Earth Sprite, from the Dreamspace story universe)
Zephyr (a Wind Sprite, also from the Dreamspace story universe)

I also had other potential ideas which I jotted down:

Deer (stag) - Forest
Fennec Fox - Forest, Unknown/Supernatural
Something with steampunk, airships
Sail ships, dragons, pirates
Meteors/Apocalypse
Ice/Snow planet (Earth)

I immediately began my sketches - I attempted a deer-like creature, which was not part of my Dreamspace story universe.
I then sketch Splash, followed by Autumn, and then Zephyr, which are all part of the same story universe.
On December 12th, I made my first sketch of the Fox/Fairy, which I also designed for the Dreamspace universe, and began to settle on this character as my protagonist for my 3rd Year Project.
On the 15th, I made a few light and quick sketches for an antagonist - since I had designated my fox character as a fairy, I decided the antagonist should be designated with death.


February

Advanced Animation

The first week of the year brought us straight into Advanced Animation, at least, the day after O-Week started, where free food was the main priority (and rightly so - the limits of a student's hunger knows no bounds). We started off with getting straight into learning about Cloth Simulations, creating basic polygon shapes and turning them into cloths with different presets.

The second week brought everyone's childhood past-time of kicking a ball through your mother's bed sheet, which was hanging on the line to dry. This meant attaching one edge of the sheet to the pole, so that it would not fall, and creating sections of the sheet to tear as the ball passed through - if not for the tearing segments on the geometry of the sheet, the ball would not rip the sheet, the sheet would react instead with the momentum of the ball, letting the ball past before continuing it's response to gravity.

Gaming Cinematic Project

We began discussions for our Game Cinematic, and we had to come up with our own ideas. Some ideas included post-nuclear worlds with a protagonist that could use abilities such as telekinesis, teleportation, and telepathy. It had mutants, and was Avatar: The Last Air Bender-esc.
Another idea talked about utilising the five elements (earth, fire, water, air, and ether), with four nations, good vs evil, combining elements, prophecies and sub-elements... so basically, Avatar: The Last Air Bender.
Another talked of mushroom forests with dinosaurs, giant insects, mammals, and... fish? And Laura also suggested somewhere in the discussion that you should be able to eat babies for power-ups.
My idea centred on a young tribal girl, in which her village was attacked, and the spirits of the people were were stolen by an antagonistic entity, in order to gain greater power. This results in the victims being turned to stone without their spirits in their bodies.
The girl, teenage to young adult, only had half her spirit removed, however, without her full spirit, she would not survive long. In order to free the spirits, she herself needs to borrow spirits from various creatures to prevent herself from turning to stone. When extracted, these creatures turn to stone, however she only holds onto these spirits temporarily. Once finished, they return to their original bodies. While using the various spirits of these creatures, she gains special abilities and traits attributed to the spirit in question, and in other cases, she can literally fully transform into the creature.

3rd Year Personal Project

In the visual diary I had began keeping for this project, I drew up a few more concepts. From trying to come up with a decent antagonist (which I felt went no where), to the inclusion of a fairy-bird, as well as a fairy-deer, which would be part of the same world as the fairy-fox's world.
I also created a digital painting of the fairy-fox in Photoshop.


March

Advanced Animation

Initiating the process of virtual slave labour, we kidnapped an unlucky chap (which is hereby referred to as a model, as is the term we have been taught to use) to use for our cloth experiments. This lucky fellow, who goes by the name Theseus, was given a cape, first connected to his shoulders and let drop with gravity to see how it would react with his body, and then by making him using an invisable monster (at least, that's what I told him).

After these, we began work on clothing the poor guy (because he was naked, and winter is coming - we can't have him... stark naked (oh yes, I went there).
The Cloth Report in this regard was ditched for a long time due to a sudden phone call, where I had to drop everything and rush back home, where soon after there was a family death.


Gaming Cinematic

We began creating biographies for ourselves in order to be put on the Physical Realm website. Oh yeah, we're called Physical Realm, which I personally am not too fond of, name-wise. I agree with Laura that it sounds like we are a gym.
Dammit, people! Animators don't know the meaning of the word "exercise!" I supported, and will always support, Sky Manatee. Now that is a name you can be proud of, blubber and all. Sea-cowabunga, dudes!!
Anyhoo, my initial biography, which was to list our name, who we were, and where we would be in five years time, read as follows:

Name:       Tarri GJ Marinkovich
Who:         Student at SIT, studying the Bachelor of Digital Media.
5 Years:     Grazing in a meadow of flowers.

Sadly, after sending my bio in, it was returned to me, and I had to change the last statement to something else. Apparently, delicious flowers were not on the menu in my near future.

We continued to discuss the ideas, and we narrowed the ideas down. I liked Laura's idea: it was then discussed further, into a scenario of a small, sleepy town, surrounded by natural barriers on all sides - mountains, lake, forest, etc. In this game, you play as the protagonist, and strange things are happening; a demon-esc entity, which had been long since sealed away by layers of stone, wood, and bone. The town itself had "destroyed" the wood seal by exploiting the forest for timber, and with the seal broken, things start to deteriorate. It is later that the remaining seals would be destroyed, and as an additional bonus, an earthquake strikes, cutting the town off from the outside world, in both communications and any hope of escape (or chance of help reaching you from the outside).
You would be able to use your phone at first, however as the game progresses, there is increase static. Talking to some of the people would reveal that they are slowly being affected by something, although at this point you are unaware it is the effect of a demon. The situation becomes more and more dangerous as the game progresses.
I also created a quick digital painting of the town, perceived from the only road out of town.

3rd Year Personal Project

I drew up another character of mine, a kiwi, in my visual diary. And while he is not part of my Dreamspace universe, he is a central character in another story of mine. I also made a very light and incomplete sketch of the antagonist, a haast eagle.
I also created two new digital paintings, one of the fairy-bird, and one of the fairy-deer.
For the fairy-bird, I used a fantail as a reference, and as a result, I began referring to the bird as a "fairytail" (combination of fairy + fantail).
The fairy-deer required me to look up photos of stags, so that I might get the proportions and overall shape correct.
I also came up with some antagonist ideas, the most popular with me being a creepy humanoid undead creature, similar to the redead in the game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
They scare the hell outta me.
I also came up with a basic idea for a plot - and while there is no physical storyboard or thumbnail, it has remained prominent in my mind.


April

Advanced Animation

I rejoined Advanced Animation halfway through learning to use the functions of hair simulation, so I did miss a couple of the basic tricks, which I need to look up at some point - I heard that grass could also be simulated, and if that is true, it could be very useful for my personal project.
For now, I had to worry about catching up on my Cloth Report, and finishing my Hair Report on time. I seemed to catch on quite quickly to the hair simulations, however given the recent events, things seemed to chug along a bit more difficultly.


Game Cinematic

I had missed a significant portion of the project given events, so putting that aside, I began by helping source materials for production of props and sets. Laura and I were teamed up, and we sourced a whole heap of polystyrene, some metal (such as drums, and various metal parts), and even a few bits of alloy, as well as other various bits and bobs.
Over the Easter Weekend, I also contributed by cutting and smoothing bits of bone into finger-shaped pieces, to be used as the handle of a weapon. I have to say, it came out quite well, especially since it was the first time I ever worked with bone before. I have some photos somewhere, however not on me at this time. I will have to remember to see if I can find them.



3rd Year Personal Project

I sketched out one part of the scene I had in my head, where the fairy-deer lowers his head to sniff the fairy-fox's nose, who in turn sneezes. I also drew another sketch of the fairy-fox.


May

Advanced Animation

I continued working on my Hair Report first, given that it was the one with a still valid due date for myself, and that I would continue with the Cloth Report later. At this point, I can only work on one assessment at a time, since given my current frame of mind, spreading any kind of focus over multiple assignments will result in no real progress.
I managed to get my Hair Report complete on time, and handed in.
Yes, I gave my sky dragon pup hair.
The only issue with this version is that, unlike the previous test-render, the hair seems to buzz throughout the animation. This happened after I made the dragon's geometry a passive collider, so that his wings might interact with the hair, rather than pass straight through.

After I had the Hair Report handed in, I went straight into completing my Cloth Report. Using the file I had already begun with before I had to rush back north, I attempted to get the clothing working right with the Theseus model, however I had a lot of trouble with it.
I then decided to start over, and create some new clothing, which I felt looked quite smashing. I also had a lot of trouble with this simulation as well, which I felt was quite disheartening, given the successful progress I had made with my Hair Report - it mistakenly gave me the impression that the Cloth Report would play ball just as similarly... but no, the Maya simulations were a pain in the ASCII. I worked meticulously on the report, trying to get it right, with many problems. In the end, I had to give up on trying to perfect it, as it took far too long to get done, and I had many other assignments to catch up with.
So I fixed what I could, then finished the report.
I have to admit, my feelings towards the frustration in the amount of time it took me was taken out on the model, as illustrated in the final render.

Game Cinematic

Bones, bones, and more bones. I suppose that became the focal point of our production on our end, we began pumping out various bones, which we created in Maya, and using Mudbox to texture and colour them... it was rather fun, once I knew how to successfully do it in Mudbox, and then successfully pick the right settings in Maya.
I created a set of three leg bones - the one thigh bone (the femur) and two adjoining leg bones.

I also created a bird skull, which I have to admit has to be my best one, I just find it pretty damn awesome myself, and it is a testament to my continuing progress and abilities.
I feel so modest.

3rd Year Personal Project

I cannot say there is much, if not any, news to add at this time on my personal project.