So the feedback from my last tutorial with John is that my storyboard is far too long and ambitious. I grudgingly admitted that he was right. So I’ve taken a lumberjack sort of approach to it, hacking away everything except the bare bones of the story. The idea being that I can add footage back in to it if I have the time.
So this is how it’s looking now:
Somewhat shorter than the previous one. I’m still loath to cut the part where the proteins are destroyed, but I can’t be too precious about these things…
I also put together a very rough animatic in order to get an idea of how this would play out. The timing is a bit all over the place at the moment.
Today I went to see a very special exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, called Cells: The Smallest of All Portraits. Pupils from James Gillespie’s High School and Penicuik High School had created a profound and thought-provoking laboratory installation, exploring the meaning of identity in a post-Dolly the Sheep world. A variety of media were used, from beakers, test tubes, petri dishes and mass spectrometry to traditional printmaking and sketching. Trying to gauge how these kids felt about cloning and cell biology research overall, the impression I got was one of mingled fear and excitement. This was compounded when I listened to a tape of audio samples of the debate they were having – some felt that cloning was fundamentally wrong, others said that it was no more disturbing to them than the idea of having an identical twin.
I thought the pupils did a fantastic job at answering some of the questions I’d been exploring – particularly whether art could be used to encourage rational debate and understanding in the general public. Based on the evidence of this exhibition, I would say that the answer is a resounding yes.
I was also lucky enough to meet Jo Mawdsley, the Schools Education Officer and one of the coordinators of the exhibition. She gave me her email address and told me to get in touch, which I will definitely be doing.
The installation was part of a larger exhibition called Pioneers of Science, featuring portraits of many famous scientists throughout history. I thought I knew what to expect, yet I was fairly stunned when I came up the stairs to find myself face to face with a portrait of Sir David Lane, one of the scientists that discovered the p53 gene (and from Dundee University, no less).
The portrait was painted by Ken Currie, who spent some time getting to know the scientists, even taking casts of their faces for reference. Currie said that the portrait was “unlocked” for him when Professor Lane said, “People see cancer as a darkness – our job is to go in and retrieve people from that darkness.”
While it’s strictly optional to light the NURBS scene, I decided to use it as a chance to refresh my lighting skills – with a bit of help from Gnomon Workshop: Efficient Cinematic Lighting with Jeremy Vickery. While many lighting artists are seduced by complex, render-heavy Mental Ray effects such as Global Illumination and Final Gather, Vickery encourages restraint, limiting his palette to the more basic Maya Spot Lights, Area Lights and Ambient Occlusion. The result is a far greater measure of artistic control and vastly reduced render times.
Also, while I was perusing internet forums in my search for “the perfect shadow,” I was made aware of the possibility of using Depth Map shadows with Mental Ray Overrides applied. This results in a very realistic shadow without the indiscriminate blurriness of Maya Software Depth Map shadows, nor the crazy render times of Raytrace Shadows. Definitely a good compromise for artists in a fix. Also it allowed me to have nice soft shadows like the ones in the reference image (bottom), rather than the very hard-edged classic Raytrace shadow.
Three days and nearly a hundred panels later, it’s finally starting to look like something. Will have to wait till an animatic is put together to see how long it turns out to be, and whether anything needs cut. I’ll get some feedback on it in today’s tutorial meeting
EDIT: Just realised that I spelled “fortunately” wrong. The perils of Photoshop having no spell-check… sorry about that.
Currently storyboarding, with a little help from House. Thanks to Ms Alanna Butchart for sending me this. I now have a better idea of how to do the “zooming into the body” shot.
Seeing as both John and Angus had told me to watch this film, I thought I’d better do it. This quiet Saturday morning, after much trawling of the internet for an HD version that didn’t break the bank (a quick skim of reviews made it clear that this was a film to be watched on the biggest screen possible, in the highest resolution possible), I finally rented it off iTunes. I must admit that after seeing the trailer I was a little cynical – could I really watch an 86-minute film made entirely out of abstract images, with no discernible plot?
I am happy to report that Koyaanisqatsi well and truly blew my mind. The cinematography is staggering – particularly given that it was filmed on a tiny budget.
It also opened my mind to the possibility of a documentary without words. The music – a sublime soundtrack by Philip Glass – and the title Koyaanisqatsi (from the Hopi language, meaning ‘life out of balance’), were all it needed to get its point across – in fact, I feel that the presence of a narrator would have greatly detracted from the message of the film.
It was also interesting to see where so many directors got their ideas from – Koyaanisqatsi made the use of time-lapse in film ubiquitous, from clouds to cars in cityscapes – yet even today I think the original is best.
The trailer for Koyaanisqatsi (I don’t think it does the film justice, personally)
I made a start on the research poster today. The colours are not final at all, but I’m pleased with the fonts and overall layout. Will start writing the text content tonight.
In what felt like an eerie repeat of my final year as an undergraduate, Mudbox decided to throw a giant tantrum. Nothing broke, as such… but it wasn’t liking the UV map (despite nothing overlapping) and was throwing errors and artefacts in everywhere. So I decided to cut my losses and start again, this time using Photoshop. Here’s how it’s looking.
Still something odd going on with the displacement maps (making the models “explode” – I took them off for this render), but otherwise I’m quite pleased.
Cell Shading 