BDm206 Blog Research

Fred O'Neil

Fred O'Neil is one of New Zealand's very first animators, he specialized in stop motion movies. His work appeals to me as he is the inspiration that helped stop motion move forward in New Zealand.

Plastiphobia (1962)

Plastiphobia was one of the first stop motion animations made and produced in New Zealand. It was often played before big movie screenings or in classrooms all around New Zealand. The nine minute short film is the very essence of stop motion, using clay to morph characters and simultaneously break them down again. Fred O'Neil's work inspired stop motion movies such as Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run.

BDM226 Character design

 More Inspiration

My Drawings

Dreamworks Exhibition visit

At  the start of this year I was fortunate enough to go and see the Dreamworks exhibition at Te papa in Wellington. It was a very exciting and inspiring experience for me, there was original storyboards and sculptures used in some of my favorite childhood movies. I enjoyed seeing the same processes that we have learnt and applied over the year related to big feature length productions.

BDM226 BDM225 - Inspiration

Silhouettes, character designs

BSA225 Material Shading Maya

The Hypershade window helps edit the models colour and texture, today we tried multiple different textures on our three models with the candle being copper and the wine glass a transparent texture, these can be found in the presets of the Material attributes

Mirror view 

A problem I have had continuously is the use of the render view not working properly, I need to remind myself to change the render view from Maya software to mental ray, otherwise the object will not be visible in the render

BSA226 Concept art Inspiration

3D Characters and concept art

This art in particular has interested me, it is a piece of concept art for the Dreamworks animation The Croods. Earlier this year I took a trip to Wellington to the Dreamworks exhibition, it was an inspiring experience and I was particularly captivated by the concept art for the Croods. The drawings were beautiful and unique and although the depicted a prehistoric the exhibition explained a lot of the inspiration came from underwater settings which gives the movie a surreal feel. 

 Currently I am exploring the possibility of a small child as my main character, I am not decided whether it will be a boy or girl as of yet, however the setting I am working with is prehistoric cave men.

BSA225 Maya Tutorials

The first two days of BSA225 we have learnt how to model a coffee cup, candle holder and a wine glass.

Along the way we have learnt skills including extruding, moving, duplicating and importing reference images 

The Coffee Cup was our first model, using space bar you can select different views from isometric to front,side and top.

The Candle Holder was our second model, using the hot keys 1,2,3,4,5 you can change the view of the model from polygons to smooth and wire framing

The Wine Glass is the last model we have done in class, I am starting to get used to extruding and manipulating models into curves that represent the model I am trying to achieve.

BSA206 Ten Favourite Movies

In no Particular Order...

1.
Fight Club (1999)
Director: David Fincher
Thriller

2.
Lord of the Rings (2001)
Director: Peter Jackson
Adventure

3.
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Gil Junger
Comedy


4.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Emile Ardolino
Romance

5. 
Lion King (1994)
Roger Alters, Rob Minkoff
Family/Musical

6.
The Departed (2006)
Martin Scorsese
Crime Thriller

7.
Se7en (1995)
David Fincher
Crime/ Mystery

8. 
Donnie Darko (2001)
Richard Kelly 
Sci Fi

9.
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Baz Luhrman 
Musical/Romance

10.
Secret Window (2004)
David Koepp
Thriller





From analysing my top ten favorite movies I have found that my tastes are diverse, however, Thrillers tend to appear more commonly, I appreciate the deeper well thought out story lines and captivating mysteries, in particular movies by director David Fincher. I've also noticed that all the movies were  made around the 1990's, as this is the era in which I grew up with it makes sense.