Mercedes Super Bowl Ad

     Robert Stromburg, was hired to create a sixty second commercial for Mercedes for the Superbowl.It included a twist on the story of the Tortoise and the Hair. The challenge was not only mixing the animated characters with real life environments, but condensing the whole story into 60 seconds while still keeping the human characteristics of the animals. 
     I really liked the article, because it shows how technical a 60 second ad can become. It really hits me as to what a challenge it must have been to condense but still have the audience understand what is happening. It became especially apparent when Robert stated "Rather than playing with multiple expressions and meanings in one shot, I have to realize what that frame is trying to say." I really think the commercial was very effective as to what it was trying to do, because it stepped out of the normal luxury car commercial and made it more fun! What I enjoyed the most out of the commercial was the amount of life that was given to the animals, similarly to the flour sack exercise we did in class.

Extra People, Without the People.

     A common mistake among film makers is the lack of extras in a scene, because its hard to get a large amount of people in a scene without a big budget or a lot of friends. But don't be in doubt you can always fake out the viewer! The first way is to group your extras together instead of spreading them apart, it will look more natural as people group together when they interact. Second, shoot with a long lens, it adds more depth and gives an illusion of more people being in the shot that there actually are. Third is to create a parallax effect by having people walk through the scene, crowded places are not still, so adding people moving on different planes of the shot makes it seem more lively.Fourth taking multiple shots and masking them onto one shot is a way of doing it with VFX. Lastly get close shots of your extras, it shows there are more people there than the main characters.
     I didn't know there were so many different ways to add more characters to a scene without actually gathering no more that a few people. I think this will be super useful next year when I am working on my project, I would definitely want some populated scenes. It seems that lots of TV shows use this technique for crowded bars,where they put pockets of people behind the character. I hope these techniques drives indie films to have more crowded scenes, because often indie films seem awfully vacant.

Weekly Comments

     3D is so much fun! Between animation, texturing, modeling there is so much to learn, and so little time! I cant believe we are already starting our chicken animation. I am almost finished creating the environment, and about to start animating the chicken. What made me happy this week that I finished all the tutorials, but what made me unhappy is I have been cut short on time because of my field trip on Monday, and me being sick on Thursday, I hope I can catch up on all the time I missed.
     My link of interest this week is to a tutorial series on modeling a bodybuilder, I myself am going to do this series next weekend, to hone some of my modeling skills. It helps to work from realism, so this would help me getting some proportions in 3D correct. This guy also has a bunch of really good tutorials like UV wrapping, I STRONGLY recommend you check him out!

Creation of the Battle of Five Armies

     The new Hobbit movie has seen quite a few amazing advancements in the Cgi Industry. The large amount of fighting soldiers required software that could simulate such a huge battle. Additionally the scene where the dragon attacks the town they made sure that everything affected everything. So wind from the dragons wings affected the fire, and the fire in turn affects the buildings, etc.

     I have never seen any of the Hobbit, or Lord of the Rings movies, but from the scenes in the video the Cgi looks absolutely fantastic! And from the software that was used to generate the battle is pretty amazing. The software behind the the battle "Massive" is also responsible for the zombie hordes in World War Z. This is very big news because of all the possibility that software like this is opening up. I cant wait to see what new action sequences this could bring about!

Michael Bay Explains His Action scenes

     Not everyone is a fan of Michael Bay, but you cant deny he can make some killer action sequences!One of his main objectives when he directs is to give the audience a unique view from where he places the camera. To give the audience a feeling of being in an environment he will take a large shot then go to small details like facial expressions. When Bay said "I just like moving big things close to the camera. To keep it real." I found it very interesting, because when you watch close up action it makes you feel like part of it.
     Personally I think Michel Bay is an alright director but I feel there is a little too much going on all the time that I cant focus on what is happening in his shots. I do think his movies are fun to watch just a lot of adrenaline fun! Its great that he uses practical effects over Cgi by doing this he creates an unparalleled feel of realism but it really doesn't feel cost effective.

Disney's Advances in Creating Realistic Human Eyes

  For the longest time creating realistic eyes was a challenge. Often key features are ignored due to their complexity and detail.  But now Disney research has made a breakthrough in the way eyes are designed. By capturing real eyes with multiple cameras computes can generate a realistic eye with the included dilation of the pupil! This is great news because there are so many different ways this can be applied in different fields like simulation, film, medicine etc.
     I feel that this is extremely important to the overall quality of future animation, because of how important a character's eyes are. Peoples eyes are all different, dynamic and expressive, this is often forgotten about when it comes down to money and time. Hopefully this will enhance the bond between the audience and the animated character through the eyes!

Weekly Comments

     Break is over, so now getting back in the daily routine is tough. Finally we got to get our feet wet in Maya so I am very excited to keep moving forward, the exercises haven't been crazy hard, but they show the labor required to model 3d. I learned how to proxy smooth this week, which is really cool! What made me happy this week was that we got Friday off due to the weather! What frustrates me about that though is that we have less time to learn Maya until our class competition. I cant wait to learn about nurbs, it is a whole area of Maya I have yet to explore!
     My link of interest is to a youtube channel called Animation Methods, this guy has a ton of videos for autodesk Maya, These are really good if you wanna learn on your free time, I've watched them in the past, I recommend them to anyone fooling around on 3d!