Artist Research - Low Polygon Artists - Timothy J. Reynolds - JR Schmidt

Low Polygon Artists

Timothy J. Reynolds

Timothy J. Reynolds is an American Freelance 3D Illustrator best known for his work using Cinema 4D to create artwork for a vast range of clients including Facebook, Greenpeace and Popular Mechanics.

His work based around Low Poly landscapes interests me significantly more than his other work as the manipulation of Polygons to simulate water and terrain has a very nice balance between detail and clarity. His work uses high quality materials and textures to give the illusion that the artwork exists in a real world and that the polygons are affected by real lighting such as sunlight.

On Timothy J. Reynolds' Behance page, there are several images of how the image above looked pre render and from this image it appears that he used a variety of tools and objects in Cinema 4D such as the Displacer tool for the water and a Polygon Reduction Object to create the base rock formation in his imagery. From this point onwards I believe he manipulated the rocks and water to achieve a very basic idea of what he wanted.

JR Schmidt

JR Schmidt is another 3D motion artist who created a series of works called Geometric Landscapes and Polygonal Posters which use a similar technique to Timothy J. Reynolds'  Low Poly work with a few differences.
The artwork features a lot more thin polygonal faces, maybe indicating that the mountains/hills had been created by extruding or dragging certain areas of terrain upwards or maybe just being used to give a sense of intensity and dimension to his work. Generally Schmidt's work is less minimalist than Reynolds' and features a lot more 3D objects such as characters and props.
Maybe due to the amount of things happening in these scenes or perhaps due to a style decisions, the materials and colours used in Schmidts artwork are much more cartoon-like and colourful than Reynolds' work helping to give a completely different aesthetic all together.

The similarities in technique between the artists is very similar and the main distinguishing features are the choices in composition and the colour/material scheme. However, the way in which dramatic coloured lighting is used remains the same and obviously adds a significant amount of depth into the artwork. The use of lighting when creating these static landscapes in Low Poly is drastically obvious and if I was to create a similar piece of work, I would experiment heavily with lighting and textures.

Artist Research - Psyop

Psyop

Psyop Animation is an American company founded in 2001 working in a variety of media from Advertising through to Gaming. With such a broad range of animations, I have chosen to look at the 3 episode "miniseries" for the game Dishonored that they created and published with Bethesda Softworks.

Dishonored Miniseries

The Dishonoured Miniseries consists of 2 videos which are around 2 minutes in length and were created to advertise the game and also give a glimpse into the world that the game is set in. 

The general aesthetic of these animations is a dark, rough type of hand drawn animation which I assume was created using some sort of digital program frame by frame.With the majority of the animation in greyscale, the only use of colour is for objects which are key to the animation such as the lights in the city or the whales blood which helps track how the objects are related directly to each other and that they are key to the story by attracting attention in the greyscale scenes. 

The animation was obviously constructed with the narrative being created first as it is much easier to time the scenes to the audio, than to time the audio with the scenes. Once this process was completed, I assume that additional non diagetic sounds were added such as music and ambience noises as during the production process, these noises could complicate things. 

With the animation following a very dark style, the inconsistencies in the hand drawn style used only help to add to the mood. With the frequent use of dramatic lighting, fire, blood and smoke, the slight fluctuations help give a more unpredictable look and stops these natural images appearing regimented and non chaotic like the narrative suggests. 

The use of varying rough brush strokes helps give the animation a much grittier edge than if the animation was entirely clean cut and smoothly animated. Despite the more time consuming nature of 2D animation, this style helps each frame look like a painting and with the animation being narrative based, helps give the impression that it is a more tradition type of story. 

Like most short films, the animation peaks in the middle with more scenes of general violence and much quicker, action packed scenes. With animation opens with the main character before he discovers the invention and ends with him killing himself with his own product giving the whole animation a sense of irony because what he had strived from so much ended up being his downfall. 

With the animation being based off a video game, most of the backstory has already been created so the concept work for Psyop to do was not as impressive as some of their other work however their ability to collaborate and work with pre existing concepts is admirable. 

Artist Research ‐ Axis Animation

Axis Animation

Tale of Three Brothers

Axis Animation is a Glasgow based animation studio which are behind several 3D Animations and Models used in Adverts, VFX and Video Game production. The company is probably most known for its role producing this animation for the highly successful Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows film winning the company Best Film/TV Graphics at the British Animation Awards.

The animation produced for the film is a highly stylised 3 minutes 22 second long animation following the narrative of a tale about Three Brothers in the Harry Potter universe. Axis animation generally create highly stylised animations for a variety of reasons such as the animated 3D short Codehunters and 2D animatic styled animations for the film Sucker Punch.
It is hard to place an exact style for the company as it consists of several smaller studios and independent artists helping their studio have a wider range of potential jobs.

This animation in particular uses a very dark style incorporating a lot of dramatic lighting which helps give the characters a more sinister look as the narrative is around the topic of death. Around the 20 second mark when a bridge is growing out of plants, the low frame rate of the animation gives a feel similar to stop motion or pixilation, a technique which I have always found to look quite sinister when used correctly.

The animation is nearly in silhouette due to the dramatic use of the black and almost sepia colouring helping to give an aged look to the story. The further enchance the aged look, the lighting in the animation fluctuates throughout giving the impression that the animation is lit by candlelight or a flickering lightbulb making the animation seem more dark and sinister.

Because the animation has decided to follow this style, the characters for the animation have been designed as very skinny, skeletal figures who are draped in cloth, helping bridge the gap between silhouetted figures and 3D characters while at the same time showing off the lighting and particle effects.

The story begins with all main characters in one place but splits off into 3 strands eventually ending with the death of the 3rd brother. This storyline is similar to the majority of traditional fairytales which were used to try and teach children some sort of lesson but in this case the story is set in a magical world. Rather than building momentum and having more action towards the end of the animation, the animation seems to meander through and eventually fade out. This differs from the majority of short story animations I have seen in this style. I believe this is because the story is designed to be more of a recap for unfamiliar viewers and the fade in and fade out helps to stop the viewers immersion being broken whilst still adding valuable information to the film.

Artist Research ‐ David O' Reilly

David O' Reilly

The External World

David O' Reilly is an irish animator well known for his critically acclaimed videos and short films on both the internet and in film festivals. He has also worked on films as an animator and animation director.

The External World is a 17 minute video consisting of several short animations, often feature the same characters or variants of the same sketch.

All of David O'Reilly's animations feature the same intense style using pop culture, computer glitches and bright colours to create a very over the top animation often in a shocking or humorous way.

With this animation featuring a variety of short animations and sketches it makes O' Reilly's style a lot easier to identify as many themes reoccur throughout. For instance, taboo topics such as drug use, genitalia and sex are frequently used throughout his animations. 

In general, David O' Reilly uses 3D animation but in some instances such as with Octocat, he uses 2D animation. The style of 3D he uses is based around the use of basic, low poly count objects helping simplify the models and creating a style closer to 2D animation than conventional 3D visuals. 

This style works very well with the low brow, over the top themes and stories which O' Reilly approaches and usually works in his favour. I think that this is due to the fact that the innocent, cartoon-like appearance of the characters contrasts the shocking nature of the story and other content in an almost humorous way.

For his animation Octocat, O' Reilly again works off this to his advantage, creating the first half of the animation in the software MS Paint which is normally avoided due its limitations. Another reason why he might prefer to use 3D software is that a lot of his animations feature various "glitch" techniques which would be incredibly difficult to create in 2D and help add the modern, surreal edge to his animations.

In this instance with "The External World", the pace and timing of the animation is erratic and has little in regards to a consistent storyline instead revisiting characters such as the people in the nursing home, the sitcom and many more. However these scenes usually serve as short sketches rather an a continuing story and this does not affect the overall theme of the animation.

It seems that with this piece of David O' Reilly's work, the majority of the concepts were created individually rather than as a story and serve different purposes lacking narrative. The art style, though generally consistent varies in itself but he has used this to his advantage helping to add a chaotic, surreal piece of work demonstrating the versatility of himself as an artist. 

Artist Research ‐ Tokyo Plastic

Tokyo Plastic

Tokyo Plastic are animators probably most known for their cartoon like style of 3D animation which is used in several adverts, idents and award winning short films. 

The Tail Gunner

 The Tail Gunner is a 40 second long animations which follows the dreams of a sleeping cat and how it is dreaming of being the pilot of a fighter plane. The animation goes from the cat purring as it sleeps quietly, to a noisy firefight and then back to the cat sleeping.

The 3D model of the cat is deliberately designed to be cute, with oversized eyes and large fur. This is so the contrast between the sleeping cat and the cat in the fighter plane appears even more extreme and helps add to the comical aspect of the animation.

As the cat dreams, the animation is in black and white with a film grain almost like an old film. This could link to the narrative as the cat could have been watching old war films, affecting it's dreams. Due to the old film style, the film conforms to a lot of the stereotypical camera shots for example; Footage of planes flying away from the camera, over the wing shots and close up shots of the pilot (the cat in this case). The jump cuts which move from the mid range shot to the extreme close ups do not fit in with the style of old films and as they stand out, they help add to the implied psychopathy of the cat.

The techniques used which I find particularly impressive in this animation are the use of texture. The fur of the cat is extremely visceral and helps immerse the viewer in the character of the protagonist. Although I am unsure about how the ground below the plane and the cloud layer were produced, the technique is very good at adding depth to the animation. The way I think the ground was produced was by creating a texture (maybe from a photo) and then using 3D modeling or sculpting software to raise up parts of the image such as mountains. This gives a more 3D look to the texture without having to spend a significant amount of time modeling a landscape just for the background of the animation.

Another technique which is admirable, is the way that the light of the machine fire reflects offs the cats eyes although this was probably achieved by changing the material of the eye on the model and by creating a modified light source to create the shape of the muzzle flash in the eye.

NCI410 Digital Skills Acquisition - Update 3rd March 2014

Update

The past week, I have successfully rigged the majority of my character in Cinema 4D but have yet to produce controllers for the left leg and torso. I have also created sliders using Xpresso tags for the foot roll of the character and the opening of the umbrella/head. Soon I hope to attach the 3D model of my character to the rig and create a walk cycle which, this early on in the week could mean that I have time to add textures to the model.

As I have been working on my 3D work, the 2D work done the last weeks still consists of 3 uncolored turnarounds in Adobe Illustrator, a character backstory and a layout plan for the final model sheet. With the color scheme of my character being relatively basic, I should not need much time to complete the model sheet. Just as a failsafe however, I will try to complete this work before Wednesday the 5th of March to free up more time for corrections on my written work.

Targets

This week in 3D I will try to

• Complete the character rig
• If time is free, work out a way to easily rig up the hands for basic movement
• Connect the rig to the character 
• Briefly research textures to apply to the character provided the work is completed on time

This week in 2D I will try to

• Finally decide on the coloration of my character for the concept page
• Make a digital storyboard to use if time allows a more complex animation
• Create concept pages showing my characters expressions and dynamic poses

This week in Written Work I will try to

• Complete my 1500 word essay for review
• Check previous written work for errors
• Complete development file

Artist Research ‐ Fons Schiedon

Fons Scheidon

Fons Schiedon is a dutch filmmaker probably best known for his animations and short films, some of which are winners of numerous awards.

In a Forest

In a Forest is a short animation which follows a rabbit through dark, foggy woods as he runs from a dark beast. As the animation progresses, more and more of the illusion is stripped back, revealing a CGI motion capture setup in which neither the rabbit or the beast are in any danger.

The way that the animations cameras move is basically the same way that cameras are used to create tension and atmosphere in horror films such as extreme close ups, first person views and high speed tracking shots during the chase. The way that trees bur and obscure the camera during the moving shots helps add a sense of depth, speed and intensity to the animation. I find that by using depth of field, the animation seems a lot more alive and coupled with flashing first person shots, helps break the fourth wall significantly.

The whole animation appears to have been created in a 3D program even through the transition to the simulated motion capture section of the animation. The characters involved are very basic and cartoon like but subtle effects such as texture use and choice lighting help the characters remain somewhere in between realistic and cartoon stylings. This I feel utilizes the 3D animation to the original concept.

The fog particle effects which disappear towards the end of the animation are very clear and coupled with the dramatic lighting, help make the scene more intense. With the lack of color in the forest section, the use of lighting and particle effects are reminiscent of black and white Film Noir films which used lighting to compensate for the lack of color.

Timing the animation appears difficult due to the varying pace of the film. Scenes such as when the beast is swiping at the rabbit and barely missing use basic film principles  such as forced perspective to make the chase more exciting and to keep with the cartoon like concept and this illustrates Fons Schiedons familiarity with tradition film making.

As with most horror films, there is a lot of the animation which uses anticipation to build up to the chase when the pace of the animation and action quickens.

By using the familiar genre of Horror, Fons Schiedon uses a cliche narrative and standard horror codes and conventions to build up to the twist at the end. This helps to keep the change to the motion capture section unexpected and helps enhance the narrative of the animation.