my first december post?

its been a little while since my last burst of blog entries, but rest assured that plenty of work has been completed. the gun for the added seventh scene is completely modeled and textured, the room is a fully modeled room, complete with attached hallway and bathroom, all textured. I do think that i am going to get more detailed, though, to give it that more "lived-in" feel that my real room (ie messy) has. I have a basic body that i am going to use for the creepy intruder character, i just need to model out a gasmask head for him. probably the only thing that is a little underdeveloped at this point is the 2d scene, but i am not worried about that, and with the ability to do it in flash, i am not really worried. hopefully over the upcoming 3 week break i will have time to get even further ahead of schedule and come into next quarter rediculously past where i planned to be. wouldnt it be funny if i finished my thesis piece a whole quarter early? i dont know if that will be possible, as i still have a lot of sound production to go through, but its a distinct possibility that i am going to be able to add that nifty CG intro that i had originally planned, and then put on the back burner. more pics soon, probably even tomorrow.

Concept Art, Basic Storyboard

I finally sat down and made hard copies of what i have been imagining in my mind, so these are the basic story boards, numbered to the scene that they take place in. below i have attached the revised scene breakdown, so that you can associate the numbers with the scene the boxes represent, plus it has the new 6th scene added in, which wasn't in the last scene breakdown.

Story:

Basic Premise: 60-90 sec feature “Fever Dreams”

Camera: First Person viewpoint the entire clip, scenes broken up by the effect of eyes “blinking” shut, followed by waking up into a new scene.

Scene 1: (3d)

Fully rendered representation of my room, accurately modeled to reality. Character (viewer) is in bed, sitting up, spoon with medicine brought into view and taken. Character looks at bottle of NyQuil which is sitting on nightstand next to bed, spoon sitting, empty next to it. Lower opacity of scene in bursts, simulate eyes closing and losing of consciousness.

Scene 2: (3d)

Viewer awakens in darkened bedroom. Everything seems normal at first; viewer’s hazy gaze is fixed on poster across room, which starts to have bulging, moving lumps. After a moment of watching the poster, the lumps burst out into full grown tentacles and whip around the face of the viewer. The scene with start to grow pale (simulating fear) and the viewer is starts to lose consciousness again.

Scene 3: (3d and 2d)

Viewer awakens in room, it is still dark, but the colors are a bit different than before. Viewer takes a look towards the window and notices a shadowy figure outside the window, watches as it comes closer, and steps through the closed window, limbs elongating in the process as it creeps into the room and towards the viewer. Viewer again goes unconscious.

Scene 4: (3d)

Awakens in room, dawn appears to be approaching, sunlight in room. Large bugs start to creep down the wall in front of the bed, across the floor and over the foot of the bed onto the viewer. Viewer hazes out again.

Scene 5. (3d and 2d)

Awaken in full on morning; there is active sound in the background of roommates watching TV. The dialogue creeps in to the consciousness and 2d animated figures start to appear in front of the viewer, vision gets blurry and warped behind the floating 2d characters. Viewer blacks back out again.

Scene 6 (3d)

Awaken in bed, but the surrounding room is dark, save for a giant gun waving around, gun will have lights and liquid spewing from it, and when the chambers rotate and the hammer falls, the screen flashes white and then dark, bleeds into next scene.

Scene 7: (3d)

Viewer wakes back up in the afternoon. Vision is no longer blurred, hallucinations are over, and it is evident that this is “reality”. Viewer looks to the side again at the Medicine, and states “I gotta lay off this stuff…” Fade out…

fin

Production Schedule

I felt that since my last production schedule was a rush-job joke meant to just cover a part of my grade, it was high time to re-make a REAL production schedule, complete with accurate goals and more thought out time allowances for the more complex areas of the animation.

Pics from Reality and new Scene...

here are some more pics. these are POV shots from my real room, so you can get an idea of what i am imagining as i create my room for this project, which is based, but not exactly replicated, from this room. I took these shots from the perspective of the viewer, in bed, lying down with the head propped up. On a second note, i have decided to add in one extra hallucination, which will be the final hallucination before the viewer is to wake up, and it will involve the viewer awakening in the bed as per usual, except the room will no longer be present, but rather you will be surrounded by darkness as an enormouse gun ill be pointed at the viewer, complete with lava pouring out from the end of the pistol, and as the chamber rotates and the gun is about to fire, it will bring in the next scene as the viewer is startled awake into reality. i have begun modeling the gun, it is a little early but coming along.

Today's Fever Dreams brought to you by this untextured bottle of NyQuil (working on the Label still). (bottom) (top) More advanced look at modeled room, temporary basic textures in place and standard omni light placed behind head where lamp would be in real life.

Here are some update pics on the modeling of the main room this is to take place in. Once i have all the proper models in place, i will post final pics as well as comparative real world and concept art shots. I also included a picture of "psycho mantis", whom i realized looked very much like the fiend that will be creeping arounf the window in one of the scenes... i thin it goes without saying that texturing is not yet in place, and only about half the models that i have pictured are present. expect more soon

first of many small updates during my thanksgiving cram-a-thon

work on modeling the room that this will all take place in has begun, i have a lot of the basics modeled out, such as basic room dimensions, my bed, the computer desk with computer stuff, chair, and i am working down the list to get the look of a normal lived in room. luckilly, since my texture II class is requiring me to build 2 rooms for my final, i get to complete this room, a major part of my set for this project, by the end of this quarter, which is a big help. it will actually put me ahead a bit of schedule. When i get a more complete room, i will throw up a few renders of it, along with a pi of the actual room, and a sketch or two of the concept, should hopefully have that up by tomorrow...

Little Backed Up, What to Expect Within 2 weeks:

To Do List For Demo Reel Class: (2 Weeks)

Create Animatic of Scene
Pro Storyboard
Print out storyboard 11 x 17
Show list of Objects Used
Take Pics of Environment
More Finalized Production Schedule
Show Characters used
Textures Created and Used sheet
Whatever small examples of Visual Reference used for Inspiration (misc. Concept Art)

Work has been done on several of these aspects, but I am admittedly a little behind where I wish I was at this point. To prove my dedication to this project and the professionalism required, I will have polished versions of all the above catagories. Class meets up again in 2 weeks, i will have a few updates before then...

The Story Expanded (Fever Dreams)

Story:

Basic Premise: 60-90 sec feature “Fever Dreams”

Camera: First Person viewpoint the entire clip, scenes broken up by the effect of eyes “blinking” shut, followed by waking up into a new scene.

Scene 1: (3d)

Fully rendered representation of my room, accurately modeled to reality. Character (viewer) is in bed, sitting up, spoon with medicine brought into view and taken. Character looks at bottle of NyQuil which is sitting on nightstand next to bed, spoon sitting, empty next to it. Lower opacity of scene in bursts, simulate eyes closing and losing of consciousness.

Scene 2: (3d)

Viewer awakens in darkened bedroom. Everything seems normal at first; viewer’s hazy gaze is fixed on poster across room, which starts to have bulging, moving lumps. After a moment of watching the poster, the lumps burst out into full grown tentacles and whip around the face of the viewer. The scene with start to grow pale (simulating fear) and the viewer is starts to lose consciousness again.

Scene 3: (3d and 2d)

Viewer awakens in room, it is still dark, but the colors are a bit different than before. Viewer takes a look towards the window and notices a shadowy figure outside the window, watches as it comes closer, and steps through the closed window, limbs elongating in the process as it creeps into the room and towards the viewer. Viewer again goes unconscious.

Scene 4: (3d)

Awakens in room, dawn appears to be approaching, sunlight in room. Large bugs start to creep down the wall in front of the bed, across the floor and over the foot of the bed onto the viewer. Viewer hazes out again.

Scene 5. (3d and 2d)

Awaken in full on morning; there is active sound in the background of roommates watching TV. The dialogue creeps in to the consciousness and 2d animated figures start to appear in front of the viewer, vision gets blurry and warped behind the floating 2d characters. Viewer blacks back out again.

Scene 6: (3d)

Viewer wakes back up in the afternoon. Vision is no longer blurred, hallucinations are over, and it is evident that this is “reality”. Viewer looks to the side again at the Medicine, and states “I gotta lay off this stuff…” Fade out…

fin

small update

i also finally got around to throwing up a splash page for ronindms.com. i am hoping that i can squeeze in enough time in the next month to actually get at least a rough layout involving my personal flat art portfolio, and the next month to actually get a video cut and crunched of my work to stream from the site. my plan is to have a "work in progress" section, where i will post screenshots of whatever i am doing that deserves mention, be it personal or professional work. once this project is underway, expect a few shots of it going up.

Getting Started (finally)

its been a crazy week, and in all honesty i have way too much ideas for this project that are still in my head versus actually on paper, on rouch storyboards. I am finally starting to sketch out ideas, i can only hope that this coming class will actually give us studio time, as we are now going on 5 weeks in and we are sill doing portfolio stuff and watching videos. thats all good and fine, but to be honest, if our focus is on this project, we need to stop just talking about getting started and let us just get on with it. i am eager to really get going, and now at least i am finally putting pencil to paper.

from pipe dream to paper...

this doesn't have much to do with my thesis project, or any other school related project, per se, but I have finally re-registered www.ronindms.com, and am finally going to have a website up and running. i have probably said this about three, maybe four hundred times now, but i am finally organized and driven enough to get it going. I am going to throw up a splash-page shortly, and then, hopefully throught the next month or so, the beginings of my freelance studio will start to appear online again. if anything, it will be a place i can showcase a lot of my work and market myself for freelance projects. if that fails, there's always porn, right? lol...

sketchin' thoughts

one of these "dreams" that i had involved me waking up, my body completely rigid, and staring across the room at this Deftones poster. no sooner had i laid my eyes on it than did a whole slew of dark tenticles/arms fly out from the poster and start whipping around my head. i remember it vividly as being rather terrifying.

another dream involved me again waking up, this time staring face up at the ceiling, at none other, than a face. this face had no textures, but was rather a moving relief, contorting and mouthing some words that i couldnt hear or read. creepy.

later, i will go into details about the dream with thousands of insects pouring down my walls, shadowy figure stepping through my window, "seeing" cartoon characters floating above me as my roomates whated a dvd of said cartoon in the other room, and waking up in both a medival prison and an cave and actually running around what "was" my house, but seeing something completely different.

I swear I'm not crazy, well at least I'm not when I'm awake, anyways.

day 1 week 3

So yeah. Apparantly i am the only one who thinks that dead puppies are funny. i can understand that, i really can. it WAS going to be funny, but in a way that makes you laugh even though you feel bad. perhaps it was a bit much for a thesis project, and i can see that, so maybe i will remake that little number on my own time.

In the place of said "dead puppies" project, my thesis animation will be called "Fever Dreams". it will be a collection of animated sequences in the first person, each depicted in a seperate animated style, of 4-5 of these fever dreams i rememberred from the past. The basic idea is that i have been known to have very vivid dreams/nightmares when i am on cold medicine like nyquil, and i want to capture these as close to what i remember as possible in a very stylistic manner. my idea is that each of these dreams will be tied together by a moment of resignation to the fear, ie going back to sleep, and reopening my eyes (in first person) and be present in the new hallucination. The End product will probably be about 1-2 minutes in legnth, showcase a decent amount of 3d and 2d techniques.