UNIT BA1b - INTRODUCTION

New unit, new blog! Today we were introduced to our new unit based around Concepts and Contexts. It's going to revolve around a few main areas and projects:

• Morphing & Metamorphasis
• CG Animation in Maya
• The Mystery Box - character performance
• 2 Research projects: Narratives and Media Roles & Practices (in essay and presentation forms, respectively.)

This session, we started looking at Morphing and Metamorphasis. 

Morphing is when one image or illustration flows and transforms into another. There's no rule stating how realistic the transformation has to be, just so long as it's smooth and seems SOMEWHAT plausible.

(La Faim, or Hunger, is a morphing animation that used computers to morph between images - credit: Peter Foldes)

Our introduction into making our own morphing animations was through a series of drawings we did. The exercise for this session started with us drawing our hands in various different positions and poses. For me, this would've ordinarily seemed quite daunting. But thanks to the life drawing sessions we'd been having, I was much happier to draw from life, even if it was just my hand. We did a few, and did one which involved constructing a wireframe on our hand, to show curves and general 3D shaping. A wireframe, in animation, is used on a 3D model before textures are applied, giving the person modelling the character, prop or setting a clearer idea of the dimensions of certain parts of the subject.

(A wireframe of Woody from the Toy Story films - credit: Pixar Animation Studios)

In the end, we ended up with a sheet that looked something like this:

After the hands, we all went up to a table covered with different items. I chose a small vinyl idol, something you'd find on an office desk. We did the same with that item as we did the hands, albeit without the wireframe. Positioning the item in interesting ways was quite tricky, given it's more awkward shape and curvature. I managed to get a few drawings out of it though.

From there, on that same sheet, we next had to draw what we thought a midway point between the two would look like. From here, we didn't have to strictly be realistic or "correct". It was completely up to interpretation, so it was admittedly quite a fun process! I decided that I wanted the ears of the idol to sprout from the hand quite obviously, and the thumb had to disappear from the hand first. Those two self-imposed criteria lead to two main ideas; one hand that could be somewhat achieved without injury, and one that would involve breaking two fingers and a thumb to achieve in real life.

After that, we had one final task: make the full timeline of the morph. In 5 frames, we had to make the hand turn into our item. It seemed like quite a large task at first, but the fact that we had 3 frames already done definitely made it seem like less of a big deal. It was interesting coming up with midway points between the realistic extremes and abstract inbetween, and I tried to come up with something that wouldn't lean too far into either side.

The final timeline I ended up with is something I'm fairly happy with, although I'd definitely tidy it up if I had the chance. Near the end, the drawings start veering upwards instead of staying aligned with the rest.

Overall, I was happy with this session! But what I'm most looking forward to is the rest of the unit. Especially learning how to do 3D animation in Maya; I've never done CGI animation before, so it'll be interesting learning if it'll be easy, difficult, or maybe even something I'd want to keep doing throughout all 3 years! The Mystery Box project seems interesting as well; I'd seen previous examples of it, and it looks like a lot of fun to come up with the ideas and execute them!