YES to success

I'm in the middle of my robot arm picking up a ball and throwing it to the wall, (Andy's Tutorial) and I have hit success, look.....

I couldn't be happier with it, I am currently now able to animate a robot arm and have it pick something up, also added jitteriness so it looks more realistic. I'm actually very proud of it. Although I know that either today or tomorrow I will have to begin my own project and arm, but now I have the tools and Knowledge I'm actually very excited for it!

Mini Update:
Very near completion of this task, tomorrow I think I need to begin modelling my own hands and chess board. I've got the basics down and the story is just about complete, there is no excuse not to start. Anyway here is the progress report, I have completed him throwing it to the wall now just to catch it and sort out the speed of the ball.

The Chess player

The inspiration for this animation came from a mixture of sources, mainly from research but a little from chance. Whilst reserching the physcology of chess it spoke of how a computer could not win against a grandmaster. I began to think of how a chess computer should look, should it have a huge sepereate screen, or be small and intergrated into the chessboard, and how would the hands play a role etc. Nowadays technology is becoming more compact, so I decided to have the chess board as a all in one futuristic piece. I beleive this would keep the chessboard as the main focus within the story. I didn't want to split the hnads up into two seperate personalities, because like in "Geri's Game" its important to focus wholly on the emotion in that scene. The audience feels more connected and is less complex to understand. Having two parts (hands and the screen) on the chessboards means I can focus primarely on the narrative.

I'm thinking of using the same kind of seperate shots and scenes in my animation like in Geri's game. It just makes it more visually interesting, and like the chess game I played few weeks back, no one wants to watch chess for 30mins. The shorted the better, as it adds to the frustration of the hands. I think 'Geri's Game' is a fantastic bit of narrative even though the story makes no sense, automatically you feel connected, I hope to do the same in my piece.

Also I'm very lucky and sooooo happy now that Andy has taught us how to make the hand pick things up and put them down again. This will really help add a few more scenes and depth to mine.

Quick render of my animated robot hand

I know the quality is bad, but this is just a quick render to show my 1st piece of true animation, I have never ever succesfully understood or appreciated what 3ds Max can do. Well till now, I couldnt be happier and so relieved, I must definitely start learning how to use premiere properly otherwise all my hardwork wont be able to be shown off. Anyway here it is, after hours of listening to Andy's tutorial, I am done and can enjoy the weekend a bit more.

Also this weekend I will be telling the story of my 'The Chess Player' animation indepth over next few days. I've come up with a humourous little idea of the hands being a seperate personality from the small computer screen on the side of the chessboard. Basically the little chess screen just keeps saying things like check in 5, check in 12 etc. The poor hands just becoming more and more agitated before finally throwing a tantrum! Hah makes me smile anyway.

Be gentle its my 1st time

Well Finally I have begun to understand and appreciate IK and FK's in 3ds Max, I just wanted to share my progress and small victory in the beginning steps of animation. This is something I have never been able to achieve before, I can see the importance of Dummies, i know what a reaction manager is and i understand the use of hierachies. I couldn't be happier, although I have had Andy's voice in my ear for the past 3 hours continously, I now have ear ache. Here is the progress image of my robot arm and hand.

I'm going to have a bit of a break and hopefully carry on animating the arm, for the very first time. Then I think I might just build a quick 3d image of my arena for the BURRBALL. The ideas are now just flying to me now. Also over the weekend I am going to create a story board for my chess player animation. Hands vs. Computer

Fantasy olympics - BURRBALL

  So here it is, all week I have been struggling to come up with an idea, all I could think of was COW HURDLING, yes that was my big idea for a week. BUT... last night before dropping off to sleep I was thinking of cow hurdling and I started to think about their black and white spots, should they be hurdled towards a massive target then imagined them to have velcro in the black spots, then I pictured humans dressed in velcro flying towards tragets, that got me thinking about gravity. Imagine if there wasnt any!! I started thinking about giant coloured balls different sizes as obstacles. Yet this led onto a point system each ball worth different points, Black 100, Red 50, Blue 25, White a measley 10 points. Now picture them floating in a giant white arena with the moons gravity. And someone dressed in a Velcro suite floating from one end to the other collecting the balls to their suits. BUT you need rules, so imagine the big points like the black ball and Red ball being heavily weighted, and the blue and white ball being lighter. The rule being if you touch the floor (by being so weighted down for example) you are disqualified. Also the 1st to cross gains an extra 50points or something maybe?!!

   I just love the idea that at the end these people are just covered in giant coloured balls, completely tangled up in them and maybe each other. So from cow hurdling I got this a awesome funny sport, definitely something I would love to watch on TV. Now to think about the characters and what angle I want the advert to take, something serious for the olympics or more fun and flashy like the sport is.