Design Practice 2: Animation: Development (2)

I have decided that my haunted ride will be slightly immersed from ground level in the water material, to adapt my cart to this I have decided to create a tribal boat which will move on top of the water. I have also now started applying bitmaps and materials to my props to make them look realistic, I had to choose suitable woods to blend in with my swamp/tribal area.
Collection of images below:

Transition between live footage and modeled, the tribal themed canoe

Finalised canoa with material added, bump map increases the age of the wood

Tiki Tiki hut with added wood materials, roof needs further work

Simple modeled tiki mask made form splines and bitmaps

I am also in the process of creating a space warp water section, I am able to create real life physics through the Havoc engine, My water detects the mass of and objects and produces the suitable waves when an objects impacts, It also detects wherever or not an objects mass will float in the density of the water. I'm quite confused to be honest but ultimatley I want my boat to float on top of the water across a path creating ripples as It moves.

Design Practice 2: Animation: Development (1)

I am currently working on tribal themed props and scare scenes for my haunted house ride, I have completed the track layout and motion for my my track through a mixture of motion paths and sweeping lines, I stuck to my previous sketches for the inspiration and for reference while modeling. I have learnt how to apply bitmap materials to 3D objects which will help drastically in making objects look realistic.
What I have Produced so far:

1st Tiki Tiki hut design, with hair and fur effect hay roof

1st design of spear, which will poke out of water

The virtual representation of my track layout

Sainbury's Brand

I have chosen to examine the Sainsburys.co.uk website

The type of brand this company represents is a ‘personality brand’ they have set of human characteristics associated with the brand. They link personality traits and emotions to themselves to determine what their consumer outcome is. This is done by targeting gender, age, class, race and moral values of the consumer through icons and celebrity’s

In particular Sainsbury’s use their image of Jamie Oliver to define their brand, his uninitiated look,  middle class status, views on healthier food for children and being a family oriented man all reflects on the brand image of Sainsbury’s.

This makes them distinctive from other rival companies as they have someone who is constantly in the media spotlight, campaigning for a better way of life, which serves as a powerful relationship devise between the company and the public, which other rivals just don’t have.

3 Example elements:

Design Practice 2: Animation: Inspiration and Brainstorming (Part 2)

 After researching I realise I want my theme to be a hybrid between zombie scare scenes and tribal props, with similar lighting to the old horror classics such as Dracula and Gotham city from batman. I can draw influence from the mine cart scene from Indiana Jones for my track layout. The below video is essentially the mix of culture and horror I want as my overall theme for the ride.

Resident Evil:

Below are some sketches for the cart, track layout and a scare scene:

Track layout with props and scare scenes

First design of cart, a mine style cart with rail like tracking

Scare scene #2, Crocodile emerging from water to attack the boat cart

Storyboard

Various designs for entrance

Design Practice 2: Animation: Inspiration and Brainstorming (Part 1)

Firstly I need to harness existing haunted house rides and existing media to construct the theme of my whole animation, This inspiration can be drawn from anything, from pirate and ninjas to ghosts and monsters, to get the ideas flowing I decided to examine visual styles of any films that seem relevant to me

The Dead Series

The dead series is a three part installment directed by George A. Romero, the whole series narrative revolves around a zombie Apocalypse, where re-animated corpses walk the earth and terrorise the remaining survivors. I am a huge fan of zombie films of any kind, they allure me with their themes of pandemonium, survival, excitement and even humour. Zombie films sometimes get bad press, as there are many that are low budget, poorly produced and uninspired, but if done right they present eerie moods and scares along with adventure. Because of my fandom I will be including aspects of different zombie films into my haunted house ride, I believe It will work perfectly as like the brief states "A few scares along the way, This is not usually met in a serious way but is more a mixture of silly a frightening" This is basically the basis for the majority of zombie films anyway.

 Ideas that are flowing around are inspiration from various media such as Indiana Jones, Dracula, Batman, Resident Evil games and tribal cultures, I have produced a mood board to collaberate these 
concepts and themes:

These also have some great idea's for track layouts and scare scenes:

Design Practice 2: Animation: Brief

It's a new years and with it brings a new design practice, I have progressed onto design practice 2. This module focuses on improving my skills and knowledge in a range of media, and ultimately influencing me to select a path to continue onto level 2. It's all about helping me realise the purpose of media and building up a portfolio. My first project is an animation one, I am to design, build and animate a amusement park haunted house ride, It must have the correct virtual space so that it would fit into the Waverly theatre, the aim is to provide the audience with a few scares and to draw from my own storyboards, ideas and sketches for influences, which can be anything I want.

I began setting up the structure of the Waverly theatre in 3DS max on Tuesday, we were enlightened to tools such as stretch and the custom line tool, this would allow me to create doors and windows where ever I desired and to free form a basic track to which my cart would move. The possibility's of the design are endless, I really don't have any concrete idea of my themes, concepts or scare scenes yet, but I will be drawing from existing media and haunted rides soon to start planning the layout and overall mood of my ride.

I'm already starting to think that this module will be a lot more hands on, requiring a lot more detail and substance to produce anything decent, here's to not falling behind and creating an excellent haunted house ride :)

Samuel Dobson

eXistenZ (1999)

My first task to kick-start the context one: assignment two: visual essay module was by watching the film eXistenZ (1999) , what can only be described as an acid trip where reality is messed with extremely. We weren't asked to write a review but explain how certain threshold concepts are visible through narrative, interactivity and convergence.

Firstly the narrative of the film is full of examples of transformative information, where the understanding of the subject matter is shifted to a different perspective. For example the film deals with the question of reality on multiple levels, we begin to realise as the narrative progresses that eXistenZ is more than just a game, It's a battle between realism and virtual reality. D'Arcy begins to feel that the real world is a mere fantasy and suggests living out his entire life in the game, this shifts the audiences perception of reality, we begin to realise that the pursuit of living out a fantasy's is a way of blurring out reality.

Throughout the film technology is represented as biological rather than mechanical, this could be seen as troublesome information, this idea may shock the audience as the game can be directly plugged into the human body, acting as an extension of the human body. It plays with the idea that technology is more than a tool but the product of are own consciousness. People may not want to accept the idea that technology is becoming a bigger part of human existence.

The final concept I can identify is that of free will, this can be characterised as 'bounded', the idea that humans choose there own paths in life which lead to different outcomes is absent in eXistenZ. Players are given a decision to make, if they go against the game programming they fail.  Life in the game is represented as just existing and progressing, with a pre determined dialogue and actions, this does not allow for free will.

Well that's all I have, It could be complete nonsense! as Jooles said he wanted us to leave the lecture without a clue what we had learnt and what we had seen, and it worked. Hopefully I can elaborate on the threshold concepts in the future and gain a better understanding of the subject. All I know for sure is that eXistenZ is a very unusual film where reality is warped, but is also very interesting and imaginative at the same time.

Maybe I just dreamt the whole film? Is this real?

Samuel Dobson