Trailer Project - finnished!

We have finally finnished our project! I hoped that i could have updated my blog weekly but suddenly all my energy was spent on the project. However now we are finally done and i have time to update my blog :)

After the character modeling we had environment modeling with Jericho Green. It was a lot of hard work since we had so much to model. It was great to learn a new things and we had a great week.

When all the modeling was done it was time for the rigging. We had Nico Sangrejka and Nicolai Slotshuus. I would never had thought that i would like rigging that much but they made it understandable and fun! I can't thank them enough :)

At last we had the final 3 weeks with texturing, lighting and compositing. For this we had Max Böhm. It was actually very stressfull and i spent all my time at the school. It's always the last part of a project that's the most busy. Luckily Max was really fun and he gave a great mood in the class. Eventhough a lot of us was under time pressure.

Jules ét Jim - Trailer Project from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

and again thank you all for making this happen!

Jim - turnaround from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Props from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

CG artists:

Nikki Starostka
Martin Hjelholt Brun Pedersen
Me (Anne-Sofie Tholander)

Animation:
Benny Søhave Sørensen
Kenneth Ladekjær
Stine Agerskov Frandsen

Special thanks to our teachers:

Uwe Heidschötter (character design)
Christian Puille (storyboard)
Cyrille Caron (cameras and layout)
James Stone (character modeling)
Jericho Green (environment modeling)
Nico Sangrejka and Nicolai Slothuss (rigging)
Max Böhm (texturing, lighting, render and comping)

Also thanks to:
Anja Perl (coordinator)
Lana T. Nikolic (coordinator for the animators)
Alex Williams (tha animators teacher)
Magnus Møller (supporting animation teacher)

Character Modeling with James Stone

In week 39-41 we had 3 weeks of character modeling and texturing with James Stone.
We each modeled the same characters as in our blockout so i did our grasshopper Jim. It was really fun and we had a great time.

I made a short turntable with Jim

Trailer Project Character Jim turnaround from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

3D animatic with Cyrille Caron

The next step in our project was the 3D animatic. We had 2 weeks to block out the sets, characters, layout and cameras with the help from Cyrille Caron.
It was really fun and Cyrille was very helpful.

Trailer Project 3D animatic from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Back in school and Trailer Project

We have finally started school again and we have a Trailer Project that will run untill december 2010.
The assignment is to re art-direct the movie and make a trailer in 3d. My group have been given the french movie Jules ét Jim.

“Jules and Jim” is about two guys, whose friendship is put to the test when they both fall in love with Catherine. In the beginning all was well, Jules marries Catherine and Jim promises to keep his hands off of her. Everything changes when they all reunite after WW1 where Jules and Jim fought on opposite sides. Jules and Catherine’s marriage is now falling apart, and in attempt to keep Catherine in his life Jules asks Jim to become her lover. However after a while Jim rejects her and she becomes desperate. When she realizes that she will never have Jim, she drives them both into the water. (And they drown)

Our analyzis of the 3 characters:

Catherine: Dominant, attention seeking, selfish, drama queen, manipulating, control freak.

Catherine is naïve and dominant. She thinks that she can have it all, and she has many men caught up in her web.

Jules: grey, queer, introvert, heavy, goofy, reasonable, dependent, forgiving, naïve, self-destructing, weak.

In the beginning Jules is a cheerful and happy guy, but as time goes on he gets addicted to Catherine and he becomes more and more concerned about losing her and their child.

Jim: Proud, French, self-secure, outgoing, selfish, player, strong.

Jim changes character as his and Jules friendship is at risk. Throughout the story Jim gets more mature in his decisions as he realizes, that his and Catherine’s relationship can’t work, as he will never get her for himself.

We have chosen to make it an action movie and have turned the characters in to insects. In our analyzis of the 3 main characters we found that Catherine was very similar to the female insects.

The first two weeks we had character design/concept and storyboarding. Our teachers were Uwe Heidschötter and Christian Puille.

I mostly did storyboarding though i would have loved to do some character design. However it just wasn't my week but luckily Nikki and Martin from my group had better luck with that.
It was a great start and we had so much fun and generally a very good mood in the class. Both teachers are very talented and are so nice.

Here's our animatic:

Trailer Project animatic from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

sketchbook

Some random pages from my sketchbook

Summer 2010

It's been a while since i've last updated my blog. I've haven't been in school for so long. However we start up again on monday and i just can't wait! In my opinion the summer holiday has been a bit too long.

I've recently started making jewelry again. I haven't really been drawing that much to be honest.





I've also made a set of invitations for my mothers birthday in september. It doesn't show here in the photo but the paper with the printet text has an iridescent shine to it. The white butterfly is also covered in iridescent glitter.



I spent a lot of my summer at home with my parents so i haven't really touched a computer for 2 months! However i had some great days in the wonderful sun at the beach and spent time with some of all the friends from Copenhagen that i've neglected since i've started school.
Also it was great to see my to beloved cats again :) Here's Mille sleeping.

Exam 2010

Our exam this year is to choose one of the 5 given characters and model a bust of it. We will be judged in the translation from 2D to 3D and the ability to retain the character of the 2D concept. Also on the topology and ability to detail the character.

I've chosen to model the mother.






We wern't suppost to texture the model but i couldn't help myself :) I'm not completely satisfied with the result but i don't have the time to remake it. I think the mouth in my model is a little too big and the teeth are too small compared to the original drawing.



Besides the model we were given an written assignmetn and suppost to make a showreel. I will update this post when i've gotten my "grade" on Monday.

Peter Chan

The last week of school before the exam was Concept Design with Peter Chan. This was one of the best weeks of the year. He checked out our blogs and learned all of our names before having us. How cool is that!
We had a lot of repetition of the things we learned with Lawrence and it was really nice. Words can't explain how awesome Peter Chan is..

Our assignment was to make a concept with to given references and 1 or 3 references we found on our own. We were to make a character, creature and environment. In the end we were going to have a drawing of an event that showed a story. I have so much more to learn.

These two images were my references from Peter:


My idea was to make a desert like alien planet with robot creatures and destroyed cities. Peter really made us try to do something we find difficult and since i never draw techinal stuff i thought i should try it. However i didn't really succeed but at least i know what to do to fix it!

My event was that two characters had fallen into a pit and the parasite creatures were coming to get them. The parasites would live off the mechanical characters and then turn into butterfly like creatures.



If you try to google Peter Chan you will find a lot of art and that is not the Peter we had. Peter doesn't upload anything to the internet. He dean't even have a mobile phone.

However i have found a bit of his work for Brütal Legend.
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/01_Lounge.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/03_Bridge.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/04_TireRoad.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/05_Vista5.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/06_Cathedral.jpg
http://www.boingboing.net/oimages/07_Mountains.jpg

Matte Painting with Daniel Cocauoult

We've started on a week with matte painting and i'm simply loving it. One week is just not enough. I really enjoy painting and drawing. Sometimes i almost forget how fun it is with all the 3d.
This is my first matte painting:


I wanted to challenge myself a bit more so i started on a second matte painting. Daniel helped me a lot though and i'm far from done.



I've also worked some more on one of my drawings after briefly learning about colours.

character project process video

Finally i have the video of my process for the character project. :)
Special thanks to all the great teachers!

Character Project CGA09 from Anne-Sofie Tholander on Vimeo.

Modeling with Adam Dewhirst part 2

We've now had 3 weeks of modeling and sculpting with Adam. We were only suppost to have Adam for 2 weeks but he ended up staying a week longer because of all the flight cancellations. It was a real pleasure to have him as a teacher.

I only have some minor details left to do. Nothing much really so that should be a quick fix. I've started on texturing because i had the time for it but i also still have a lot of work to do on that.

Maya render with texture and displacement map:

Screenshots from Mudbox:

Maya renders of full character:

Modeling with Adam Dewhirst part 1

We've started on modeling our characters in Maya last week and i just wanted to show some work in progress. I still have a lot to do like all the clothes for example. I also need to do some more tweeking in the face but i'm going to do a lot of that in Mudbox.
We've just learned about Mudbox today and i'm really excited about it. I can't wait to get started on sculpting all the cool details!

Sculpting with Damon Bard

The second week of the character design project was sculpting. It was really fun and i hope to do more sculpting in the future.
We started out with printing the pose we wanted to sculpt roughly in the size it should end up with. Then we made a solid armature using the reference drawing. I had some difficulties with figuring out how to approach it with out having an extra support but with the help from Damon it turned out great. Damon was a great teacher and don't forget to check out his website: http://www.bardsculpturestudio.com/

My maquette is still really rough and i could probably work on it for ages. However i don't really have the proper tools.

Character Design with Craig Kellman

This is the result from a fantastic week with Craig Kellman! He is just an awsome teacher and we had so much fun. I really hope that he will come to The Animation Workshop again sometime.

My character is based on the naked Sphynx cats and i really love how silly they are. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Week 10 - Light, Texture and Render

This week we have been rendering from Maya and compositing in Fusion. Here are some frames from the animation.
I had a lot of trouble with the lighting and especially the curtains. I did not have time to fix it in Maya so i tried to fix it in compositing. Maya can be so strange sometimes and i still don't really understand what i did wrong.

Week 8 - Light. Texture and Render

Oliver is back to teach us about lighting, texturing and then render. 3 weeks in total. The assignment is to make a time-lapse in a room. This is my room. I still need to fix some stuff like the curtains.


Update:

Week 5 - Storyboard

Week 5 of our 2. semester was storyboarding with Tod Polson. I really enjoyed it and look forward to be doing more storyboarding in the future.
Our first assignment was a short animatic. We were to make a commercial for popsicles with a space theme. We were given the characters and some backgrounds. I worked with Ida and it was really fun :)



The other main assignment was storyboarding of "The Hound" by H.P. Lovecraft. My seaquence was when the narrator returned to Holland and descovered the amulet was missing. He was actually suppost to be on a boat but we changed it to a train.