jug and bowl with window

jug and bowl with window, originally uploaded by bernsul.

This is another 3d model work in progress. Not sure if I will put in a window and curtains, probably. Lots to do on the jug yet.

3d modelling

roomrender5web, originally uploaded by bernsul.

The modelling in maya is finally starting to come together. I am really enjoying texturing and lighting in particular. Still plenty of work to do on this and the whole process.

Overview of my experience of MPI104

I found the course interesting because my internet technology knowledge used to be reasonably good but the technology has changed and the way people use the internet is changing as well. I saw this as a first step to rebuilding my knowledge and professional practice. For me the best part of the course was getting together a reasonable blog, as well as starting flickr and delicious accounts. I can see how the blog in particular can be a useful platform for an animator and I notice that many animators have blogs for promotion and as information and general communication sites. Delicious is proving useful and I am using it for my assignments as well as other bits and pieces I come across. Flickr is great as I needed to get my photos together for display and this has been a good start. I will continue to develop flickr and step by step upload more artwork and photos. As well as the refresher on html, I found my own investigations into css and html5 something that I will use and experiment with in the near future. It was useful to delve into rss feeds as a means to enhance websites and this is knowledge I will use in the future. Iweb was a revelation in how flexible and straightforward it is to use. I would still prefer dreamweaver, obviously it can do more, but particularly because iweb recompressed the images I prepared, degrading them a little and made a couple of them considerably larger. I like how easy it is to set up a podcast with iweb. I would definitely recommend iweb to others without much internet skill. I particularly liked the work around of moving the domain file to make it more flexible. Using fetch after not using it for ten years was liking meeting an old friend (or pet really I guess). Technorati, seems to be a useful site for building a successful blog. (For some reason technorati is rejecting my blog at present, not regarding my feed information as valid, I spent a day trying to sort it out.) I joined technorati's blog critics and may come back to it in the future at some stage. The state of the blogosphere reports are interesting as well.
The course has been of great assistance in rebuilding my familiarity with the way the internet is operating. Looking forward to going more into this subject next semester.

About Facebook

For all facebook users. I came across this article today. There is a growing movement to quit facebook because of privacy concerns. I don't need to quit facebook as most people know.

Even someone as into internet openness as Cory Doctorow (fiction writer) has quit it.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2915364.htm


http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/31/2913982.htm

butterfly on bark

butterfly4, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I have added a few photos to my flckr site of these butterflies on a beautiful background. I took the photo in a village called La Mesa, on a plateau surrounded by mountains and beautiful view in Colombia. There were hummingbirds about the same size as this butterfly there, but they were too quick.

feeds added

Technorati state of the blogosphere feed and a feed to my delicious account are now on this blog at the bottom of the page. I put two feeds that kind of fit with the site.

Technorati

Technorati is a search engine that searches blogs and rates them with a value it calls "authority".

To have your blog considered register and submit it for inclusion at technorati.

To rate a blog Technorati makes use of analysis of the number of blogs linking to the blog, as well as tags on the blog which set up the way technorati categorises information. (from wikipedia).

Each year Technorati publish a report called "State of the Blogosphere" which aims to give a series of statistics, interviews and general information about blogging:

http://technorati.com/state-of-the-blogosphere/

A good example of the statistics is this article which suggests that to have a successful blog it is a good idea to post about 300 posts a month!

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-3-the-how-of-blogging1/


Bernard

cemetery statues

cemetery-ljubljana56, originally uploaded by bernsul.

Wherever I go I like to call in at the cemetery if there is one. I think it says a lot about a culture. These statues come from graves in Ljubljana. It is a very interesting thing to make a likeness of the person who has died on the grave. This adds a strange dimension somehow. I wish I had taken down their names.

I have an idea to do something with modelling and animating some statues in 3d at some stage.

animal textures

shila22, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I have been collecting all sorts of images as textures for 3d modelling. I think Shila is going to be an interesting monster one day. This is one of a series of texture images that I have just put on flickr.

More from Varanasi

arthi3, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I added some more photos I took in Varanasi. I only had a video camera with a still picture function, but I was stretching it out pretty well.

Now I am starting more 3d model making I keep wishing I had taken more photos there - of textures and the whole experience.

Bernard

vfx, high end, low end, or appropriate to the story

This is a link to a fairly pessimistic article on the vfx industry.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1990803-1,00.html
(via cg society)
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I need to make a living but I am seriously thinking about alternative ways of doing it with animation in particular.

I don't want to stay up all night on red bull and pizza - I would be dead in no time.

One of the things I see is that the bull is chasing its tail in relation to creating "realistic" visual effects. As technology changes over time it seems to me that most visual effects that are a few years old become more and more obvious. I have a feeling that the first step to a survival strategy is not to be interested in realism, but story telling within a unified style for each project.

This relates to the second point. Many of the flashest special effects are often extremely expensive to create, and unless you have access to meganmillions it is likely that there will be a need to work with a different sensibility or be seriously compromised financially.

Many special effects and a lot of digital animation tends to look the same. Seems to me that a survival strategy that would be interesting would be to use maya to create art that doesn't look like it was made in Maya, flash animations that don't look like flash animations and Zbrush monsters that don't look like they were made in Zbrush. I think part of the reason for many things looking homogenised is that there is a standardising of the way things are constructed in industrial production pipelines and this in turn contributes to conformity with a limited shared visual and technical vocabulary, which has advantages and disadvantages.

So anyway, I am thinking, concentrate on the stories and scripts that are distinct and stand out in terms of story and clarity, make interesting concept development art,go for the highest quality with characters and their interaction, and then, if all these things are in place, the appropriate technology is that which supports the story telling the best in the most efficient way.

Another thing that is on my mind. What are the odds of a small independent studio creating a series of little masterpieces as opposed to a big production company contributing to a megablockbuster.

I have a feeling that it is possible to make a living with a small studio with a high level of creativity and attention to detail that tells stories in an interesting way that nobody else is telling. It could be a lot more fulfilling too.

I would be interested in how others see themselves working in the future.

Bernard

website

I made a website about my animation project. As I am writing this what's there is a draft, but I am putting in a few extra things in time for the assessment. And I will update it a bit later as well - when I finish the project.
http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~bsulli18/iweb/Site/home.html
Bernard

Project Bluebird

http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/bluebird/
This online ABC series is an interesting experiment in a new form of internet based story telling that utilises on line video, social media real documentation, and even has the characters interacting with the audience. Bluebird is a fictional story about climate change and geoengineering. In my opinion anything like this requires an effort to get into, but one of these days someone will come up with the right balance to make things like this work. Still working out if this does.

Bernard

Bush images

flowers50, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I have added some references images that I took some time ago in a national park in Sydney. I am using photos like these as very loose references in my animation.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157624116099284/detail/

Ipad applications

And I think I really do want to make ipad applications. Iphone doesn't do it for me but Ipad, yes. I think it will appeal to a different demographic than the iphone and now is the time to think about making applications for it. This is not simply because I like the look of Ipad, though from a design point of view it is possible to do something quite beautiful and interesting I think. I think it is a whole new medium and I have an idea for something which will be something half way between a book and a game, with some animation and strong narratives, which is such a good idea that I am not telling anybody too much just yet.

Example links:

http://developer.apple.com/ipad/sdk/

http://mattgemmell.com/2010/03/05/ipad-application-design

Unfortunately, taking a deep breath, it means learning to program, and I have no idea where to start with that just yet.

Bernard

HTML 5

I am planning to research what is happening with alternatives to flash like html5. Though incomplete it seems pretty straightforward so far. I figure that this will be pretty useful in terms of internet stuff over the next year or two. I think this is at the core of the debate between Apple and Adobe. In the end the non proprietary thing will win I think, at least in terms of performance and quality, and you will be able to make it in a wysiwyg way in dreamweaver and flash anyway.

Here is a link to the first HTML 5 and CSS3 capability add in for Dreamweaver.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/html5pack/

And this link has code snippets for video and audio in the html 5 format.

http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp


Just click on the specific tags to get more code and information on how to apply it.

It seems that HTML 5 video, so that no plug in like flash is required will be well supported before too long, with options for it already in vimeo for example.

I understand that not all browsers have much support for the basics of html 5 yet. Still I think it is worth working towards where things are going rather than where they have been. Otherwise it is a matter of learning things that are obsolete before I have chance to work with them in a year or two.

It seems from this comparison that it is primarily internet explorer that is the prime problem (as usual).

http://caniuse.com/


Bernard

historic glimpse at Disney

I found this documentary about Disney is interesting from a historic point of view, especially as now Disney is doing 2d again. I think one of the most interesting things in animation is the culture of working collaboratively. I would like to do some research on that one day. This is an example of how to wreck that.

The video I put up which has now disappeared from Vimeo which was a documentary by Dan Lund about how 2d animation finished at Disney less than a decade ago. I can't find another copy online and I didn't write down the title...

But Bec, if you are interested in the less sweet side of Disney you could start with this doco on Walt Disney:

character sheets for walking animation

charactersheet1, originally uploaded by bernsul.

After starting the animation I realised I didn't know the character well enough to animate him consistently. I have been drawing him repeatedly over the last couple of days until I came up with this. Still discovering him, but I should be able to draw him consistently now anyway.

Link to the set

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157623921221399/detail/

landscapes for walking animation

seascape2, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I posted a few samples of the backgrounds for the Walking animation on flickr. I am aiming to finish all the backgrounds this week while I figure out how to solve some problems with animating the character.

Click on the image to see the other images in the set.

FTP

File transfer Protocol is a protocol for sending files from one computer to a server or another computer.

One primary everyday use for ftp is for uploading files from a computer to a web server for display in websites.

Another use is for transferring large files (too big for email), particularly for graphic designers doing pre press work and sending files electronically to a printing company.

Another use is for transferring files from one computer to another (when they are configured to do so).

One of the problems is that it isn't particularly wysiwyg to use normally though it can be fairly straightforward. There have been concerns with a lack of security with the way files are sent using ftp.

Apple V's Flash getting serious

This post from Steve Jobs made it clear to me that I won't be developing apps for ipad with Flash

Thoughts on Flash

Bernard

CSS

The advantages to using CSS include:

That once set up it saves an enormous amount of time.

It means that, especially on a large site, the template can be designed so that there is no need to redo the styles for every page.

When page styles need to be edited or even just experimented with, various options can be tested very quickly.

With CSS templates site style and layout elements can be altered according to the template's capacity/design. It doesn't change the information content.

By customising the CSS all the design elements and layout of a site can be altered. It doesn't change the information content.

Accessibility is important because it enables people who have disabilities, particularly with sight to modify the information so that they can access it.

I customised the CSS on links within this site.

A good reference for CSS can be found at:

http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Overview of assignment 1

Okay so this is the wrap up for the first assignment:

Blog:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/

Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul

Blog post about flickr:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/delicious.html

Delicious:

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan

my post about delicious on my blog:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/delicious.html

I wanted to use the blog and the other sites we were asked to prepare so that they continue to be useful to me in "real life" - not just for the assignment. I couldn't get into the assignment for the assignment's sake. Taking this approach I have taken my interests and tried to depict and develop them over the length of the assignment task.

BLOG - 18 posts

I have had a blog before, but I felt this was a good opportunity to start again. Previously I was using my blog as a diary site without any expectation or wish for an audience. Now I am beginning to get a feel for the distinction between personal/private life and a professional/public profile that a blog is an important part of, and I am beginning to think of my blog in those terms. I have made a number of posts in my blog. I put up some video links to animators whose work I admire. After my initial enthusiasm for this I realised that there may be bandwidth problems, and from now on I will focus more on links only to external videos which seems more polite.

I have made a couple of posts about blogger. One was about discovering blogger in draft which allows for easy though still limited customisation of blogger blogs. Subsequently I refined the look of my blog with it. The post related to that is here.

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/03/better-template-support-for-blogger.html

I know in wordpress it is possible to customise the code for a blog a lot, but I have never been able to work out how to do it to any great extent, in Wordpress, or in Blogger. So I am looking forward to learning more about this later. In blogger in draft mode I did discover the page for editing the code for my blogger site. It is a little complex and not a lot of straight html involved.

I have also made a post in relation to flash and ipad which I think is relevant for this course - to me anyway:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/ipad-flash-and-interactive-books.html

I have made a post in my blog to some of my favourite sites:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-i-was-to-talk-about-my-favourite.html

I have also made a number of posts regarding flickr images that I have posted on my site. Which I have linked to below:

Some examples of links and images that I have placed on my blog from flickr are:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/photos-from-colombia.html

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/venice-shop-windows.html

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/india1.html


I have made links to people's blogs including as listed below. The blogs are interesting - the comments are not so much.

http://beckygsmpiclassblog2010.blogspot.com/2010/03/week-3-posting.html

http://mymel-odrama.blogspot.com/2009/01/beginning.html

http://nicholas-davlouros.blogspot.com/2010/04/tagging-pages.html

http://benwotton.blogspot.com/2010/03/walk-cycle-update.html


FLICKR - 54 items

My flickr site is at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul

My blog post on flickr is at:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/flickr.html

This is an edited version of that post:

I have found flickr good to use. I haven't used it before for my images. I have just come back from some years overseas. Beginning to organise some of the photos has been kind of therapeutic.

I have noticed some features which are useful on top of the obvious. One in particular I think I will use is posting directly to blog.
I like the idea of placing things in sets. I tend to think this way and it will help me show the images in a positive way. I am beginning to work out how to make blogger and flickr work together and I am looking forward to developing this as time goes by. I can see how flickr will become a professional promotion tool.

DELICIOUS - 58 bookmarks

My delicious site is at:

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan

I have book listed all the student mpi101 blogs that I could find. I got 32 counting my own blog and the main course blog.

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan/mpi104_2010

Here is a link to my post on delicious on my blog:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/delicious.html

This is the text to the blog posting:

I am taking the task of building up my bookmarks in delicious seriously. In the past I have just had a huge jumbled list on my browser and this seems to be much better as I may actually be able to find stuff in the future because of the tagging system. I think it will be particularly relevant for listing tutorial sites and examples of animation and illustration that I admire.

Other sites that use folksonomy include:

http://digg.com/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.propeller.com/

http://www.reddit.com/

Here is my bookmark for a few favourite/ most visited sites. Some comments are in the delicious description:

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan/favourite_sites

Here is my blog post on the favourite sites:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-i-was-to-talk-about-my-favourite.html

I have used tags for delicious and for my blog primarily based on my areas of interest. I look for tags that I will use more than once but not so often that they form too big a group to be useful. I think of it as a filing system. I also try and not have similar words so that tag lists are not split up in an arbitary way, and so difficult to find.

flickr

My flickr site is at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul

Some examples of links and images that I have placed on my blog from flickr are:

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/photos-from-colombia.html

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/venice-shop-windows.html

http://stepstoanimation.blogspot.com/2010/04/india1.html

I have found flickr good to use. I haven't used it before for my images. I have just come back from some years overseas. Beginning to organise some of the photos I have taken is kind of therapeutic. I noticed some features which are useful on top of the obvious. One in particular I think I will use is posting directly to blog. I like the idea of placing things in sets. I tend to think this way and it will help me show the images in a positive way. I am beginning to work out how to make blogger and flickr work together and I am looking forward to developing this as time goes by.
Bernard

Delicious

I am taking the task of building up my bookmarks in delicious seriously. In the past I have just had a huge jumbled list on my browser and this seems to be much better as I may actually be able to find stuff in the future because of the tagging system. I think it will be particularly relevant for listing tutorial sites and examples of animation and illustration that I admire.

Here is a link to my delicious account:

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan

three favourite sites?

Depends on my mood, but If I was to talk about my favourite sites as sites I enjoy the most and go to most often, I would have to say video based sites are at the top of the list.

These include:
vimeo
youtube
wwwatch
and even the ABC

If I had never lived outside Australia I would have a different list. This is because in other places I have lived, including South America and Eastern Europe, there are few restrictions on downloads and it is possible to watch video on the internet without going broke.

I find that these sites constantly give me inspiration, particularly for animation. I don't know how I would have understood animation if I hadn't found these sites. I am sure it has opened up amazing possibilities of what can be done.

I am certain that if and when broadband in Australia is sorted out people will change the way they use the internet and video will be a big part of this. It is a crime it hasn't been done already.

http://delicious.com/bernardsullivan/favourite_sites


Bernard

ipad, flash and interactive books

I have been watching what has been happening with apple and Adobe in relation to the launch of the ipad and CS5. I was hoping that they would get it together and flash would be made available to seriously create applications for the ipad and iphone. It hasn't happened. Apple have more or less banned flash from them. This seems to be because of how power hungry flash is - so that it overloads the phone or the ipad operating system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/apr/09/apple-adobe-flash-developer-row

I am particularly interested in this because I have a background as a book designer, see example above, and one reason I am back at uni is because I presumed it was probably a 20th century profession that will fade away and I better move along a little. ipads in particular and other digital tablets in general do seem to offer the possibility of a new and revitalised form of book reading and I think this could be interesting for people with my background. So I am thinking about what I would need to design ipad apps. I was looking for a way around learning some serious code, but that doesn't seem likely for some time now.
Bernard

Photos from Colombia

Red Rooster, originally uploaded by bernsul.

This set of photos is from my time in Colombia. I have more photos I will put up later. Colombia is underestimated. It is a very beautiful and dynamic place.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157623868680610/detail/

India - Beside the Road

india1, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I have taken video and photographs from moving vehicles all over the world. I call the general framework for thinking and recording images when I am doing this "Beside the Road". Part of the challenge of course is to take photos from a moving vehicle that are still clear and interesting, and in the case of India, on a bumpy road in a rusty old car.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157623868539326/detail/

Venice shop windows

venicewindow08, originally uploaded by bernsul.

I've been putting up and organising my favourite photos that I have taken over the last few years. This series is of shop windows in Venice which I took on a trip there last year. I have some video of similar material which I will put up on vimeo sometime. I like Venice of course, and I have always been fascinated by shop windows.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157623868456466/detail/

Sylvain Chomet

This is from the guy who animated The Triplets of Belleville.



And here is theamazing smooth old style animation that begins the movie. It changes to a different very unique style after this.



He has a new movie called The Illusionist. I can find trailers and interviews about it in every language but English. Here is the Russian trailer. Looks amazing.



Bernard

Bill Plympton

This interview with Bill Plympton is kind of wild - with AlJazeera. I am amazed by Bill Plympton's productivity. He does a feature length animation every three years, doing all the drawing, with a very small support team.



These pencil tests helped me get an understanding of his process





There is also a live web cam of Bill Plympton drawing at his desk. We live in a different time zone of course.

http://www.plymptoons.com/anicam/anicam.html

Joanna Quinn

Over the last week or two I have been looking around on the web for inspiration on how to do my next animation project. I have been making quite a few bookmarks in different places and I thought it might be good to place them all on the blog and share them with anyone who is interested. I will focus on putting up interviews with 2d animators talking about how they work.

This is from the British animator Joanna Quinn. I like her drawing style, her wicked humour, and the ways she captures a particular angle of English working class life.



And here is an example of her work which includes the finished animation of the preliminary drawing she is doing in the video above. Lots more on You Tube.



Bernard

new walking animation storyboard part 1 - waking up

This is the first storyboard section for my animation on walking on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/sets/72157623712187271/detail/

Bernard

walk cycle project

Well here is my walk cycle assignment. I think it is a process not a product. I am humbled as I begin to recognise the skills that are needed to a good job of this stuff. Excited about the next project already...

better template support for blogger

Blogger is upgrading its support for a range of templates. This looks much better than the old range with lots of capacity to edit and make things look good.

http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogger-template-designer.html

I hope to have a play with it shortly.

I believe we will be doing our own customisation to the code, but still, this is a fun place to start.

Bernard

blur photos led to animation

These blur photos were part of the evolution for me towards becoming more and more interested in animation.

Bernard

flickr blur images

Here is a link to my new Flickr site. These photos are some I took a while back. As I have been travelling a lot over the last few years I became fascinated with movement. I started to take video and photos all over the world. These were taken mostly in NSW and Victoria Australia.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernsul/

FWAK address

A more current address for FWAK animation is at their more recent blog:

http://fwakanimation.wordpress.com/

Bernard

toon boom software

Here is a link to the toonboom software that Andrew was talking about in class last week as a professional 2d animation alternative better than flash.

http://www.toonboom.com/products/animating/?WT.mc_id=e_homepage_pdt_ANI

I have been thinking about it for awhile. It has been used on some interesting animations including the Triplets of Bellville.

There is a demo copy to download with lots of tutorials. It works well with a wacom. A lot of the people who started with flash when it first came out a switching to it - I am not sure how much is product endorsement related but some of them seem quite genuine with a few Australians including:

Adam Phillips:

http://www.biteycastle.com/

and Bernard Berriman:

http://www.squetch.com

and Eddie Mort and Lili Chin:

http://www.fwakanimation.com.au

So for 2d animation I am seriously thinking about it, though not rushing in to pay the money.

There is a new version of Animate coming out. But Animate Pro looks the business.

Bernard

Brand new blog

This new blog will document some of the projects I am working on as I develop my animation skills.

There is a lot happening as I have started a new course and I am learning lots of new skills. I will be posted regularly to the blog to show how things are developing.