Creative Sheep *Biology of Animation*

Hello, sorry for the long delay. I know I said my posts would be more frequent after the previous delay and I didn’t keep my promise 🙁 I’ve been working on a few things, and I hope you will enjoy the final results, but in the meantime I will show the work-in-progress that I’ve been doing. While I’m creating other things, I’m also creating other things 🙂 I’m practicing digital painting and I thought I’d show you a rather crude but abstract little painting that I did within Photoshop, it’s a symbol maybe it’s a symbol like Prince 🙂

I wanted to post the story board I did for the Maxtor Drive Animation a while ago which you can find on the web page. As you may or may not be aware that the blog is the child of the web page, the web page being the parent.

Welcome, well I was suppose to show you some finished images of an animation that I’m just about finished, unfortunately I ran into a few minor road blocks that I will have paved out for sure this week as well as some employment opportunities in which I’m seeking.

In the meantime I have a Photoshop Action Tutorial for automatically creating a resize this is especially useful for web images where you usually have to keep the size of the image to a specific width and height.

Creating a Resizing Action in Photoshop

1. Open an image

2. Create a new action and start recording

3. Go to File > Automate > Fit Image

4. Set Constrain within to Width <XXX> Height <XXX>

5. Click OK

6. Go to Image > Canvas Size

7. Set the Width to the width you entered in Step (4)

8. Set the desired Anchor point

9. Make sure Relative is unchecked

10. Click OK

11. Save the file

12. Stop recording the action

13. DONE

Now onto another Photoshop Tutorial.  In this tutorial you will learn how to scan a magazine using Photoshop, this is useful for your own blog or for emailing to someone a magazine article in which you scanned and you want to show to whomever.

How to Scan a Magazine using Photoshop

1. Scan the image at a resolution approximately 150-200% higher then what you need for final output.

2. Go to Filter > Noise > Median

3. Use a radius between 1-3.  Typically the higher the quality of the source, the lower the radius can be. Use your own judgement, but you will probably find that 3 works well for newspapers, 2 for magazines and 1 for books.

4. Go to Image > Image Size (Image > Resize > image Size in Photoshop Elements in-case your not using the power horse Adobe Photoshop)

5. Make sure you are zoomed to 100% Magnification.

6. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask

7. Exact settings will depend on the image resolution, but these settings are a good starting point;

Amount 50-100%, Radius 1-3 pixels, Threshold 1-5. Use your eye as the final judgement

Tips: If you still see a pattern after applying the Medium filter, try a slight guassian blur before resampling.  Apply just enough blur to reduce teh patter.  If you notice halos or glows in the image after using Unsharp mask go to Edit > Fade. And use these settings: 50% Opacity, Blending Mode: Luminosity (Some features are not available in Photoshop Elements)

NEXT WEEK I hope to give a brief tutorial on something in Autodesk Softimage the 3D visual effects animation software that I use for my animations.  I also use on occasion Autodesk Maya but my primary is Autodesk Softimage.

Last week much went on and I didn’t get around to updating.  This week I’m back again and I want to show you the final work in progress of my current animation project that I’m just about close to finish there is one or two things that I’m trying to get to make it complete.  Here you can see a image of what it looks like at this stage.

Also while I’ve been animating I’ve also been doing some painting (digital).  I’ve never done any painting before but it’s something that by learning helps me in creating master pieces in my animations or in pictures.  This picture that I created is showing simple shapes but the key here is my study of painting shapes and lighting and shadows.

I’d also like to share with you, something that is not my area but which I did a few years ago.  I had been trying

this audio creation software and some of the audio files you can here I created for animation(s) years ago.  I haven’t since created any audio sound bits as you will hear for many years, and I won’t in the future either as it’s not my area.  I thought I’d share these with you to listen too.

(there is a slight problem with posting the audio files, this post will be updated soon)

And finally, for those of you that own a iPhone or (maybe) iPod Touch. You may be interested in this amazing program
which allows you to sculpt in 3D on your iPhone using your finger, really awesome you have to
check it out SculptMaster 3D 1.0 for iPhone

I want to show a project that I’m currently working on, you can view the wireframe of the current phase of the animation below.  In the video scene you see is a wireframe of the animation, using Softimage ICE for some particle work.  I will show pictures of what it looks like soon.

current-project

QuickTime file

(I plan to add a video previewer directly on the blog)

While animating I’ve also been doing some Painting within Photoshop.  I will be adding my recent work that I’ve finished to the web site.  Photoshop is an amazing tool, and I enjoy using it.  I also use Adobe Illustrator on occasion which I enjoy the gradient mesh feature although you must have alot of patience to use it. The results can be almost if not realistic. Those are just some things I do when I’m not animating or reading to give myself a bit of an animation break.  If you are a Softimage user I would recommend Bradley Gabe’s excellent ICE Master Class from 2009 SIGGRAPH, Bradley’s knowledge in ICE is just superb I envy what he knows !

I dug up some older images that I had created a long time ago and I decided to share with everyone.  These pieces were when I used Lightwave3D, and if you are aware I’m currently using Autodesk Softimage, I just love Softimage.

This image is of a Mech Machine, that I created in Lightwave3D.  I would like to create a Mech again.  Hopefully

when I finish the current projects I’m working on I will create something wild 🙂

This was a preying mantis animation, that I never completed.  And what you are seeing is a image of one of the finished frames.

For those of you using Mental Ray as your primary render or those new 3D and rendering or if you are courious as to what I do and how I do it.  You probably are aware that transparent materials have different Index of Refraction levels, you can download the PDF file at the end of this paragraph, and view the different IOF (index of refraction levels) for various materials for Mental Ray mr_notes-ior.

Mental Ray was created in Germany, and was used in many feature films including Panic Room with Jodie Foster and many other movies. Although Pixar uses Renderman for there primary engine and there are many other rendering engines out there used for animation and visual effects.

I will be adding some recent work soon again to stay tuned. I’m also re-reading Mental Ray for the Artist for Max, Maya and Softimage.  Having a understanding of the standard render engine Mental Ray has helped me in creating my animations to achieve the look that I want. It’s a must read and it’s a great foundation to help understanding rendering in general.

Speilberg admires Animators

The Great Steven Spielberg, describing how directors could learn a thing or two from Animators. Well this is my weekly update, as you may not know until now I update my blog on a weekly basis and unfortunately I don’t have anything new or anything in progress to tell you show you this week. Stay tuned next week, as I will probably have something to show you that I’m working on 🙂

For now talk to you later, and stay thirsty my friends 🙂

It has been a week since “The Creative Sheep” web site has launched, time goes by quickly doesn’t it. I want to mention that I’ve just finished a second version of “The Creative Sheep” motion graphics logo and I’ve put it on the web site. I’d also like to mention that, for anything new posted on the web site this blog is where you would find out, unless you frequently visit “The Creative Sheep” site. I’m working on a few other things so stay tuned more to come.

Christopher “The Creative Sheep”