Daryl-Rhys Taylor Design Journal

Friday, 9 November 2007

Pictures from Animation

Here are some more images from my previous animations. Enjoy!

Map

We need a map for our project, so Simon suggested I print one off and soak it in tea at home.

The first attempt didn't go so well. I think I left it in too long, but the second attempt went o.k.

And here is what it looks like in Maya.

I have also done a quick animation of the map folding down.

Tuesday, 6 November 2007

Here are some of the early animations of the character I did over the weekend. They have been tweaked a little since then, but I have the current videos to show you now. Above are just some drawings I did to help me figure out rough timing.

In this first shot of the character walking, I felt that he would be very excited as this place he has been searching for many years. Hence I felt he might be a bit peppy in his walk with his head held tall. Then he would almost be bursting with excitement to be here so would be shout to the heavens. To savour the moment I felt he would take his time and slowly open the door.

Here is old timing with the rough camera angles and the new timing.

The next video is of the bloke shocked. I felt that he would be stunned and crushed to see his restaurant that he has been searching so long for in utter ruins. He would be so disheartened. I tried to show this in the animation.

Finally, he would be so happy to see the perfect jar of pickles he would slowly, but with eager anticipation try to reach out and grab it, salivating in the process.

The History of the Future

Here are some images form a book the Jared so kindly lent us, called

"The History of the Future, Images of the 21st Century" by Christophe Canto and Odile Faliu.

The book serves as a time machine, where the authors comb the past to find images of the fabulous future people believed would happen from the 1850's to the 1950's. Of course, we are interested in the later part of this timeline, the 40s and 50s mainly, possibly the 30s as well.

Some of these images are of prototype cars from 1965, spaceships and cars designed by people from the 30's, with trains that look similar to the ones designed by Raymond Lowey. Other images show Utopian societies of the future as imagined by people from the 40's and 50's of what life would be like in the far-off year of 1980.

What all images share are a fun, perfect view of the future, where man is shooting towards the stars, with designs and architecture that reflects that belief. Curves, simple geometric shapes, colours and chrome all serve to envision this future. These are all the founding principles of Googie design.

Raymond Lowey

All images are obtained from http://www.raymondloewy.com , the official web site of Raymond Lowey.

Raymond Lowey is one of the founding father's of retro-futurism. He transformed countless items by streamlining, a concept he originated. He described it as "beauty through function and simplification". His simple shapes, uplifting curves, chrome metal and bright colours all invoke the fun Googie artwork that we are trying to obtain in our project.

Desert Research

Here are some images of research I did looking for deserts in animation.

First and foremost I look at Road Runner cartoons especially the earlier cartoons from the 1940's. Later into the 1950's the backgrounds in all Hollywood cartoons became more simple, stylized and UPA like. Even though I like those backgrounds very much I felt these more realistic backgrounds are better suited to our project. Most of these pictures come from the Road Runner cartoon "Fast and Furryous", as seen on Youtube.

The other animation I research was the movie Home on the Range. This, the last Hand-Drawn Disney animated movie has wonderful backgrounds, that really evoked the American Mid-West. It also shows that deserts can be quite colourful with blue cactus and purple grasses, so we can have fun with the colour scheme. Here is a clip from the movie.