Wrapping up WordPlay

I was working on animating the cameras today. I'd like to use more than one cameras to capture different scene when the word "FAST" traveling down the path.

The problem that I have during this phase is that I couldn't switch between the cameras in order to make it capture different part of the animation.

I'm going try to get it done in class after I figure out the solution to this so that I can actually work on my typographic animation.

Creating Sound Effect

I've just realized that I forgot to blog about when we learned to create our own sound effects in class. It was during the beginning of my WordPlay project that we had a chance to play with the program Soundtrack Pro in class. I'm glad that you introduced us to this program although we don't have enough time to go through the program in depth.

I was trying to make swooshing sound for my WordPlay piece but I didn't use it since it sounded more like whistling wind than swooshing sound effect. Most of the swoosh sound effects that I found didn't fit my WordPlay animation because they were all too short and very fast. Finally, I came across this site audiomicro and got a couple car sound effects that work better with the animation. ^-^

New Idea for Typographic Animation/ Factory Project

As I was working on finishing up my WordPlay project, I came up with an idea for my factory project that I want to create a factory that turns Arabic numerals into Thai numerals. This idea came from my research on the typographic animation. The idea of my factory is to make it function like a converter.

I want to start the factory process by having a receiver taking information from the outside world in to the factory. The information will be passed to different sections inside the factory (supposedly the machine will represent the idea of mechanism of our brain). Once the information is processed and converted to different language, the output will be ready to be delivered out.

My plan for next week is to work on my typographic animation in flash. I'm thinking of using the kid's drawing in this project because I want to present his thoughts on Thai numerals the way he really sees them and relates to them.

WordPlay Technical Issues

In class today, I was working on the WordPlay project on the road section again. With your help, I learned a couple simple ways to create a path by using spline and loft and sweep NURBS. Although I could create the path from those methods, the path was not clean. I failed to model just a simple road because once I applied texture to the road, the texture was broken into sections according to the polygons created in the path.

Another issue that I had today was when I tried to animate the word "SLOW". My intention to animate "SLOW" was to make it wiggle out from the ground and I want it to imitate how a worm moves. This was very tricky for me to do. So, here's what I did.

I attached the deformer "bend" to the object (the word) so that I can make the word wiggle while it moves. The problem was that I couldn't animate the deformer at the same time that I animated the object from one point to another. I tried to animate both the position and the deformer strength on a simpler object like a cube in a new document, still it didn't work!

I think I have to bring this issue to class next time and ask you look at it later.

Meanwhile, I decided to make it easier by just creating another spline, then attach the word to the new spline and make it move very slowly for now.

Spring Break

I have to be honest that I didn't get to do much on my project during the break. Although, I watched some tutorials on Cinema 4D but most of them are just for how to model stuffs not animating objects. I'm very anxious about this semester because I'm not in a good shape in class I have never been far behind in class like this ever in my entire school life.

It feels like there's so little time for me to get everything done and I know that I just have to get it done now. At this point, I'm suffering from being a bit of a perfectionist. The idea of sacrificing quality of my work in order to just get it done in time sounds easy to do so but I don't seem to be able to do it. I usually spend a long time on each project that I have done although I know that it's also crucial to make the deadline. The more I think about the deadline, the more tense I become and eventually, I can't be productive.

I spent most of the days during the break packing up, clearing things and preparing the documentation that I have to bring back to Thailand since I'm going back home right after finishing this semester. I figure that I won't have time to do all those things after the break, so I just had to do it now.

I will try to get the WordPlay done right after the break so that I can catch up with everyone on the next assignment.

Oh God! I've just realized that we have to make a plan for the factory project before starting to work on it. (=_=; I've never felt so worried like this before. Everyday feels so tense and I'm starting to wonder if I made the wrong decision to attend the art school at this point. But I don't want to just quit now, so I'll do what I can to get through this semester.

Problem with flipped object attached to the spline

During the class today, with your help, we managed to fix the problem with the flipped object attached to the spline! Hooray!

I worked on the word "SLOW" and looked up for some tutorials of how to model a path or a road today at school. My idea was to create a road by making a path and then add the road texture to it later. First, I create 2 splines that define the edges of the path or the road but I couldn't join find the tool that join the 2 splines together in order to make a path. It took me really long to play around and try to figure out how I could achieve the result I wanted. I kept searching for more tutorials on how to create a simple road but I found a lot of pre-made 3D roads which I don't want to use for my project.

I became more and more frustrated during this project because I know that I want to create but I couldn't make it happen.

Update on Typographic Animation

I have an update on my typographic animation project today. Finally, I collected the drawings from Jesse (my subject from the experiment) and here's the result.

This is the illustration made by an 8-year-old boy. Each individual drawing created from the given Thai numerals reflects his thought on Indian and Thai cultures. For example, an elephant and a buddha image developed from number 1 and 6 strongly represent Thailand. A king cobra from number 9, surly relates to India because that where king cobras mainly live.

This drawing of the upside down king cobra actually reminds me of a Naga which is a serpent being from ancient Indian mythology. I really like the drawing that he made of Taj Mahal for number 5. It's really amazing to me how a little boy can be so creative that he could just create any drawing out of a specific given character.

Interestingly, when he was asked to rewrite those Thai numerals without looking at the example that I gave him earlier, he wrote down most of the numbers with very subtle mistake. It was surprising to me that he got most of them correct even though he only had a chance to look at those numbers once as a reference for his drawings.

Aligning object to the spline

I've just figured out my real "technical problem" from my last post now that the reason why I couldn't find any relevant tutorial was because I didn't use the right words when I search for the tutorial video. In stead of calling "spline", I actually refer to it as a "path" which is the way Maya calls it.

I managed to animate the object ("FAST") along the spline but here is another technical issue that I have. Somehow, when I aligned the object to the spline, the object was flipped backward. I don't know why it does that. This was very frustrating because I spent too much time trying to fix it but I couldn't. I decided that I would save this issue and discuss with you later in class tomorrow.

Tonight, besides trying to correct the animation of "FAST", I watched a tutorial video of how to make a realistic grass. I thought that it would be nicer to create realistic 3D grass and use it for the ground rather than using the grass texture. Unfortunately, I had to give up the idea when I was about half way through the process of making the grass because the tutorial requires a plug-in for "hair", which I don't have on my demo version.

Too bad for me because I had this idea of animate the grass while "FAST" is traveling through the path as well. Well, I guess I'll stick with the grass texture for now.

Continue on WordPlay

Tonight I downloaded the demo version of Cinema 4D to play around. I feel like the software is not too hard to use but I still need some more time to get used to it and learn all the cool things that we can do in this program.

I was working on animating the word "FAST" today but there were some technical issue that I had during the process. One of the problem I had was that I couldn't make the object travel along the path. I searched for some tutorial video online but I didn't find any tutorial made specific for this topic, so I put that aside and started working on the word "SLOW" instead.

For "SLOW", I picked the wood texture for it and I made it slightly thinner than "FAST" because my intention to present "SLOW" is to make it looks more calm and organic. I want "SLOW" to imitate the movement of a worm.

While working on "SLOW", I have an idea of making the word coming out from the ground slowly at about half way through the path. When "FAST" starts coming down the path to the half way point, "SLOW" will start popping out from the ground. At this point, I'd like to pause "FAST" for a while as if it was curious to see what it was that has just come out of the ground, then I would make it race to the end of the path.

My idea for the story changed a bit from the beginning. I was going to just animate it simply by making "FAST" zoom in from the background and making "SLOW" travel slowly across the screen. Now my storyboard changed to something similar to the story of the hare and the tortoise.

FAST/SLOW

I started working on "FAST/SLOW" in class today. I created the word "FAST" with the new material applied on. Originally, I'd like the word to look similar to the font used on "Fast&Furious" logo but I couldn't find the exact font, so I chose Incised901 Ndlt BT font which looks closest to what I'm looking for.

I played around with the texture and the materials for a while before I got the right appearance. The final look of fast is meant to be metallic like a car texture. After adding color and texture to the word, I played around with the environment. The sky and the ground is added into the scene. Although I was having a hard time creating a path which I wanted it to represent a road or a path that "FAST" can travel through.

I asked some people for help on how to model the path but I didn't quite get it the way that I imagine it, so I think I would try again later when I have more time to work on it.

WordPlay Project

As I decided that I'd like to do the "WordPlay" project, I came up with a couple ideas of playing with "SOLID/LIQUID", "LIGHT/DARK" and "FAST/SLOW". As for the first pair, I want to present the process of "SOLID" being transformed into "LIQUID" by using a blending machine to break down "SOLID". "SOLID" will, then, be blended until it become smooth as in its liquid form.

For "LIGHT/DARK", I pictured the word "LIGHT" being toasted until it turned to "DARK".

Finally, for "FAST/SLOW", I'm planning to have the word "FAST" zooming in from the background while "SLOW" is crawling in slowly from the distance.

I started with "SOLID/LIQUID" but I was stuck during the process of modeling the blending machine and I couldn't animate "SOLID" the way that I pictured it in my head. I wanted the blender to cut "SOLID" into little pieces and in the mean time while "SOLID" is broken apart, I meant for the tiny pieces to start melting, so that by the time the blender stops, "SOLID" would be in liquid state.

The storyboard seemed like it would work but I guess I did not think my way through to when the word "LIQUID" will be shown in the scene. As I was working on this animation, I realized that when "SOLID" was already broken down and being transform into liquid substance, I missed the scene where "LIQUID" should be shown.

It made more sense to turn those small pieces of "SOLID" into liquid right after the word was broken down. But, when will "LIQUID" show up in the scene? It wouldn't make sense to reform the broken tiny bits of "SOLID" back into the word "LIQUID", then melt it later on.

So, I thought I would just move on to my last backup plan which is using the words "FAST/SLOW".

Method

Originally, I'd like to try creating my animation in 3D but after watching more and more videos, it sort of makes sense to me that creating a stop-motion video, using some cut out papers and clay, might be more interesting since I could also let the kids have fun during the production process.

However, at this point, I'm getting more worried about the project as it's taking longer for me to collect the drawings. My storyboard is supposed to be finished by now but I'd like to see the pictures that Jesse, the boy who drew an elephant from number "1", made for each number first.

Meanwhile, I'm taking this chance to catch up on Cinema 3D program to get more familiar with the interface. I'm very excited about the "word play" project that people start doing this week because I may want to use it for my typography animation later at some point.

Update on Thai numerals animation project

According to the results of the experiments that I did on different groups of kids, there was one result that I think I could use for my typographic animation. Unfortunately, I won't be able to collect all the drawings until the following week since the subject is not able to finish each drawing for all 9 numbers.

While waiting to collect the materials, I've been searching for more animation videos relating to typography and studying all types of stop-motion to help me decide which method I should be using to present this project.

Below are some of the videos that I really like, in terms of the story and the techniques used.

Continued from last week

This is what Thai numbers look like.

Yesterday, I did the similar test on a new group of children to collect some more ideas from different point of view. I followed the same research process but this time I asked the kids to come up with an idea that helps to make it easier for them to remember those Thai numerals that I showed them at the beginning. I also asked them to think about how they would relate those numbers to Asian culture. One of the boys pointed out that Thai numerals look a lot like written language from India which makes sense since Thai numerals follow the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. He related the culture to the appearance of each number by creating a simple drawing he thought representing such culture. For example; he made a simple drawing of an elephant starting with the loop in the number one character.

** This is the website that shows how to write Thai numerals. Note that all of the characters except "0" has loop which could be referred to as the character's head.



The results from the experiments that I did on the different groups of children vary depending on their perception and how much they relate themselves to the culture. Obviously, those who are more interested in Thai culture, link Thai numerals to Asian symbols such as elephant.

I'm interested in learning how each kid see each number and transform them into something that they're familiar with in order to help them memorize the characters easier.

1st step: gathering ideas from young audiences

I have a group of children who are very artistic and imaginative to be my experimental audiences.

The children were introduced to typography animation by viewing some typographic animation found on youtube and vimeo. Before showing them the videos, I had to explain to them about the idea of typography animation since it was not clear to them why we have to animate those letters or alphabets.

After watching the videos, I wrote down Thai numerals from 1 to 10 on a blank sheet of paper and asked them what they think about those numbers; what each one looks like and how they want those numbers to interact with each other. The children, then, started to doodle on around each number and sort of told me the stories in their own way. The result was quite random and unrelated although some of the idea was quite interesting.

Research on Typography Animation

I've did some research on typography animation and found a lot of interesting video related to this topic on vimeo. These are just some of the video that I like in terms the techniques they used to make the video.

Consciousness : HD Typography motion graphics: A motion graphics portraying the unconscious mind drifting into a dream state and finally coming to awareness within it.



Refraction - The Alphabet: Type is refracted through backlit signage lettering and images on iPhone.



An experimental typographic animation video:


During the research on my first week, I was concentrating on searching for as many sources as possible that provide information on typography. I took out a couple typography books from the library to see how designer play with type.

I came across this video about Chinese calligraphy vs. computer fonts which is an animation made to remind people not to rely on the computer tools excessively, as well as to cherish and protect the cultural calligraphy. This video reminds me of how Thai numbers are sort of forgotten nowadays. So, I have this idea of making an animation that is related to my language.