Avatar stages

I tried out some targat lighting and mr.sky lightning to see what best highlighted the avatars features. The mr.sky lighting turned out to be too bright. I also lost some of the detail in the face when I changed to this lighting.

Matching the head to the body. So far so good.

I had to create my own hair from a sphere instead of using the hair and fur application as I don't have 3ds max at home (mac.) I liked the way it turned out as it unites the cartoony body and the slightly more realistic face.

Started off with extruding and making kinks in the hair.

I made the eye with 3 spheres. I would've liked it to have been more realistic but it work with the other features.
I made the face out of cloning the polygons and using the background pictures as references.

http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/3d/3d_modeling_of_a_human_head_3ds_max_01.html

Final stages of my pixilation

This is my pixilation about the start of my uni life. The focus for the animation is about how this new people in my life have added to my identity and by being put in a situation where no one knows who you are you created a new, slightly ultered identity that merges in with your new friends.

Since I created this version I have have faded in the start and slowed down the first few frames to introduce the audience gradually to my production. Whilst I haev been creating the pixilation I have been watching other pixilation of a similar style to see how important the music is to teh overall effect. Since then I have decided to try to create my own music to make it more about my identity... whether or not it'll be good will be another story (I am tone deaf.lol.) I wan the music to be upbeat and emphasis the pace of the pixilation so it will replicate my pace of life/my positive attitude.

Also I have realised that if I was to create this again I would have to change the compostion so that the drawing is more centered so it attracts the audiences attention in a better way. The only way I could solve this problem is to add some draing to the bottm section of the pixilation but that will make it look too cluttered so I think it will work out best if I leave it.

I have now added in the fade in and outs but I need to think of some origianal credits to some up the piece and what front etc will fit in with the style.

Finished Flash Game

This is the start of the game where I have kept it a simple questionnaire game. I have tried to built on points that I could've done in my narratives game such as animating it to keep the audience engaged in the game. I have changed the background to black as I think it makes the pictures stand out. I choose those particular pictures to represent different aspect of myself. The distortion picture stands for how peoples perception of me may be distorted though first impression but they will learn more about me throughout the course of the game. The wooden pot holds many memories of travelling that have changed the way I think about life. The drawing is also important to me. It is a life drawing that I have created that represents my creative desire to improve my artist talents. 

In this part of the game you have to pick a persons comment that you best think describes what my identity might be.

To finish the game I have created a drawn animation of myself and made the eyes the focus to portray that the audience has found my identity. They find my identity through the comments that my friends and family say about me. These are people that have known me at different stages of my life therefore have seen the way I have changed and grown so their comments can paint a picture of who I am. The end animation is about the audience gaining an insight to my identity and one of the key ingredients to knowing some one is through their eyes ('the eyes are the window to the soul'). I emphasised this in the drawn animation above (worked over in photoshop/flash) by only using colour around the eyes.

Finished Flash Elements

These are a couple of screen shots of the introduction to my identities box. It starts with childlike game to present my version of the exquisite corpse. It works my moving the mouse over different sections of the image to change therefore you make your own version of me. The three section represent three characters of me (although there are more.) Passionate, happy and reflective as all three trait's I can relate to the rest of my life passion for art, family, friends, travelling etc, my happy/positive outlook and the reflective nature that unites my character.

I also thought the exquisite corpse is a good introduction to my box because it reflects how we are introduced in real life, by face value we interpret some ones looks and make a prejudgement on them. I want to give my audience a prejudgement and show them the inner depths that make me who I am.

My identity shuffled. I experimented with different focuses (close-up etc) to provoke different reactions and emphasis certain part of my personality. For example the happy character is in a close-up form to grab peoples attention because it is the first photo you will see.
First scene of my box. I am my identity box.

Before I placed the pictures of me onto the box I experimented with boxes to work out the code. I admit I found it hard at first but with some help with the code from David I was on my way.

My code.

My original plan was to repeat the pictures 3 times to make more options to enter the box in but with the time scale I am working with I haven't been able to produce that many. If I have time at the end of the project I will add in more exquisite corpse characters.

Her Morning Elegance

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k5ZWwouQXsgNZXVhdf

This is a really cool pixilation that I found. It has a really good pace to it that creates a strong visual relationship between the man and woman. I like the way that the video captures the song and bring it to life through the subtle movements of the woman. One of my favourite qualities of the pixilation is the lightning effects that highlight her movements, for example the sun moving down the bed and the transition between light and dark later on in the pixilation. In my opinion it makes it more realistic. 

My avatar so far

So far the hardest part about recreating myself as an avatar is getting the curves right but all was fixed after hours of frustration. I ended up recreating all of the hoody as there was too much geography within the jacket. I created the boobs the same way I created the hoody. I used the polygon and extrude tool and gradually altered the direction of the polygons to create a subtle curve.
The pink hoody is teh original that I am going to get rid of.

3D Max Avatar Up Date

My main goal when it comes to the avatar is to make it look as spot on as possible so I have found a tutorial that uses photographs of my face to create the structure. I created a plane to place the photos on and changed the dimension to suit the bitmap.

The planes were put in place to start creating the structure.

I began by creating the mouth with a cylinder and deleted the edges so one face was left.

To begin making the lips I made the cylinder into a doughnut shape and added in extra geography where the corners of the lips will be.
I have started to alter the vertexes to start making the lips. The most important part of the face to express my identity is my eyes. I plan to emphasis them to connect with the audience and get them thinking about who I am. So far this method has been a bit arkward when I have been trying to reshape the doughnut shape. I have found a better tuitorial that uses polygons instead.

http://www.secondpicture.com/tutorials/3d/3d_modeling_a_mouth_in_3ds_max.html

flash animation!

About a weeks ago I had a sudden brain wave to recreate my final idea. Instead of creating a question and answer game I am in the process of making a flash animation. It is based on a haunted house that a character of myself explore through discovering objects that tell a story within the house.

I made some hand drawn sketches and worked with them in photoshop. I intensified the colours  to make it quite playful and bold. 

It took about a day to sort them out and arrange them within the time line in flash. I really enjoyed working with the layers in flash. I feel like I can make it more my own than I can in 3D max as I have created my own illustrations by hand to make an imaginary world.

One of the finished layers in photoshop/flash. I am going to animate the moon to change its expression into shock when the character discovers an item that reveals my identity.

 
The original house

How Is this my identity?

The concept is for people to explore my identity in a hand drawn world that represents my imagination. No two peoples drawings are the same. There will be objects such as books, music, toys etc that represent dreams, emotions, relationships and everyday life.

Another idea is to create a series of animated landscapes to represent different aspects of my personality.

flash animation

I am enjoying playing with the different elements of flash at the moment. My flash game us developing quite rapidly so I want to try out different forms types of images I can put in my flash game. I can see the animated image above working quite well because it will conclude the game with an image of me, my visual identity to every one but they will feel like they can add some emotional identity due to the interactive identity with the friends and family within it. To finish off this animation I am going to add some text to it and music (need to think what music will suit it.)

Flash Game Update...

I am now in the final stages of finishing one of my flash games. The structure is working well as I have chosen to use the coding from our interactive narrative due to time issues. (Simon advised me to simplify my ideas).

I am thinking about arranging my images at the bottom of the page so that the user can still interact with them as a game but also have some more imagery to relate to the people. The main reason I am going to try this is to liven the page up but it might become too cluttered.
This is the simple code I used to produce the structure. It's amazing more much easier it has become to use than when I was doing the narratives project but it's going to leave me time to add animation.
These are the pictures I am going to use for people to choose who they think knows the most in about my identity.