Animatronics & Walking with Dinosaurs Live

For as long as I can remember I have adored dinosaurs, at one time I wanted to be a Palaeontologist to be able to study dinosaurs up close and I knew (and still know) hundreds of dinosaur names.
A few years ago I went to go and see Walking with Dinosaurs live in Liverpool and I was amazed at how beautifully the dinosaurs moved and acted, this got me interested in animatronics and more technical special effects.

Below is a video of just some of the work put into making the dinosaurs I saw in the show look as life like in their movements as they might have some hundred million years ago.

The work put into making these creatures look real was outstanding, not only the animatronics but also the colours and fabrics used for each dinosaur which got me wanting to make my own semi animatronic Utahraptor model over the summer, made from PVC piping, foam latex and an array of wires and controls. So far I have made a few initial sketches of how I believe the initial skeleton would look like as well as simple studies of the dinosaur I would like to make.

Looking at the two bottom images you can see that the skeleton has changed slightly for more simpler means of making the model.

Watching these animatronics made me wonder just how many films use them and for what purposes. I thought a good place to start would be the Hellboy films, more specifically, Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army. Del Torro has often used amazingly detailed suits for actors to wear rather than resorting to CG but this film offers quite a few new characters which also rely on the use of animatronics in order to work to the best of their abilities.

Johann Kraus: Kraus is one of the new characters in Hellboy 2 and acts as the leader and in a sense the baby sitter of Hellboys team. He is an ectoplasmic soul encased into a robot suit which enables him to travel more safely and appear more "normal." The animatronics that are used on Johann allow the metal flaps on his head to move when he talks, as well as allowing steam to pass through the bulbs in his neck in short bursts.

Wink: Mr. Wink acts as one of the main baddies of Hellboy 2 as well as a friend and accomplice of Prince Nuada. The animatronics used in Wink's design allowed his mouth to move when he roars/speaks as well as making him able to move the fingers on his mechanical hand and wrench his actual hand back when it is fired at opponents.

The Chamberlain: One of the more unusual creatures in Hellboy 2, the Chamberlain is a member of the Elf council and acts upon the actions of the King. Out of the other 2 characters show above, Chamberlain is probably the one with the most animatronics used to make his movements more  natural. The animatronics used on this character included helping his mouth move and eyes blink but probably more noticeable is that these same animatronics are used to make the Chamberlains slender fingers move and curl naturally.


The more I find out about how these effects are used the more interested I become and it has also opened me up to new art forms that although I had heard of I had never tried, such as clay character modelling, painting realistic skin tones and other special effects as well as the art behind controlling the animatronics themselves.

Ps3 Michael Promotional Trailer

Recently I came across a promotional PS3 trailer named "Michael,"
the trailer features well established characters that have appeared throughout games for the play station 3, including Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid), Kratos (God of War), Battle field Soliders, Locusts (Gears of War), Drake (Uncharted) and other characters.

The characters appear to be sitting in a down and out pub reminicing about how "he" got each character through the hardest of times and helped them to overcome challenges. It then becomes aparent that the characters are actually talking about their player, Michael and toast him for his efforts in playing the games that the feature in.

Not only did I find this promo ad comical but I also thought it was extremely clever and that they had directly engaged the player into their conversation, acknowledging his or her efforts in the games they play which I feel helps bring audiences closer to the games industry and spurs them on to buying more games for the Play Station, also anyone who doesnt have a PS3 could be swayed into purchasing one if they feel the characters are rewarding their game time.

This trailer is something I havnt seen the likes of before in the games industries advertising and I think that following this more direct yet unique route that adresses the player is the way to go in order to attract a more vast audience.

Below is the "Michael" trailer.

Sound Programming Reminders

function OnMouseDown()
{
audio.Play();
}

This function allows me to make sounds whenever I click on the object this script has been partnered with.

function OnCollisionEnter()
{
audio.Play();
}

This script plays a sound if a cube with a rigid body is picked up and thrown, this gives whatever shape a sound effect when it hits the ground.

Kickball!

I found this animation while surfing through Tumblr and I thought it was simply stunning. The story of the animation is quite simple and follows the morals of "dont judge a book by its cover" in the case of the Shark character. I love the sketchy design of the characters and it shows how lines dont always need to be picture perfect in order to make something look beautiful.

The Pinhegg - Using The Camera As Art.

I love photography and always have, recently I found out how to make a pinhole camera using an egg. The results that you get from this makeshift camera are astonishing.

The creator behind this pin hole camera egg said that he wanted to "make a special camera, with the purpose of shooting just one photograph. The purpose was to sacrifice the camera in the process of photo creation" and thats exactly what he did. 

By cutting a hole into the egg and smothering it with all sorts of photographic liquids and emulsions to make it light sensitive the egg was ready to shoot its first subject. Below I've shown photos of how the pinhole egg has come along in development:

 This will definately be something that I'm going to try out soon when I get a hold of the things I need, I may even try the same techniques on other objects to make pin hole cameras outu of them too.

Mandelbulb - Something New To Try Out?

http://www.subblue.com/projects/mandelbulb

Whilst browsing on DeviantArt the other day I came across something I had never seen before, known as Mandelbulb art. The work itself wasnt perticulaly complex but the way in which it was created intrugued me so I decided to do some research into it and I was shocked to find out how complex it all came across.

"The Mandelbulb is a three-dimensional analogue of the Mandelbrot set, constructed by Daniel White and Paul Nylander using spherical coordinates.^[1]
A canonical 3-dimensional Mandelbrot set does not exist, since there is no 3-dimensional analogue of the 2-dimensional space of complex numbers. It is possible to construct Mandelbrot sets in 4 dimensions using quaternions. However, this set does not exhibit detail in all dimensions like the 2D Mandelbrot set." (wiki)

After reading this I had a slight grasp of what they were getting at, but I was still confused how such beautiful looking shapes could be made through this Mandelbulb program and did more further looking into it, it was then I found out that Mandelbulb contains complex mathematics and equations for it to work. As shown below:

I've never been good at maths, nevermind equations of this kind, so reading and trying to learn things like this completely threw me off track. In the end it was something that I just could not grasp. I downloaded the Mandelbulb 3D pack to even try and attempt making a shape but it required programmes that were more recent (such as photoshop CS4 onward) whereas I only have PS CS2.

I tried not to be put off by my lack of tech and math smarts so decided to watch videos on what exactly it does as at this time I hadnt yet seen anything other than still images of Mandelbulb products. Some of the videos I found really amazed me.

Discovering this program has really made me curious as to if Mandelbulb is used within the digital film and games industry and if so why its used and what effects the people who use it want to create by using it. I'll be trying to do more research into who exactly uses this program as I would certainly love to give it a go if ever I get the chance.

Wrath of the Titans...Its fine...

Its fine. Thats all it is. Not bad. Not amazing. Not even good. Just fine.

I went to see this film with a pal of mine against my better judgement. It was fine.
Im not sure if it was down to the fact that I didnt want to go and see it anyway that made me completely neutral about it or if it was the fact that they should never have made a sequal to Clash of the Titans but this film just really didnt do itself any justice.

The beginning of the film showed minor promise as it didnt by any means linger around or beat about the bush getting to all the action, in fact the audience are pretty much thrown into it from the get go. But is this actually a good thing? At times I felt like we had been dropped into the deep end of the film with no real in depth explination as to why the titans were escaping.

Later in the film the characters get attacked by a group of Cyclops in a forest. When I say a group of Cyclops, it was only in the scene after showing about 5 of them walking with the characters that I realised that there was more than 1. Prior to this I assumed that this perticular cyclops was either very fast or could teleport to other characters locations to have some sort of time warp battle. Turns out I was wrong.

The ending of the film was quite possibly the most anti-climactic thing I have ever bared witness to. Zeus's father Cronos escapes the depths of Hade's and busts into the relm of the living in the form of an enormous moulten lava man. Roughly around 5 minutes later he's dead and the world has been saved by the main character. Not because of some epic fight, because our main man decided to throw a spear that the Gods had made down the throat of Cronos essentially choaking the 700ft man beast and perminantly ending him.

Honestly, I wouldnt suggest thinking about going to see this film let alone actually going there. Its messy, uncoordinated, filled with errors and plotholes and just all around is a dissapointment.

If I could give it a mark out of 10 it would be 5. If I were to descibe it as a colour it would be Grey.
I have absolutely no strong feelings either way about this film. Its just fine.

Telford MCM Expo

Over the weekend I went to the Telford MCM expo and had a great time. I love going to conventions like these as i always end up making new friends and making connections.

I also made friends with the creator of an up and coming comic as well as his lead illustrator who offered me an interview for some of my artwork as he was looking for new artists to join him for the next volume of the comic which I dare say was pretty exciting, I was actually pretty shocked how friendly people were there. Half the time when you actually get the chance to meet people who inspire you they tend to not live up to your expectations, hence the saying of "never meet your hero", however the people on the stalls of Telford really were excited to meet us all and gave up advice about the industry.

Other things I did while i was there was sample a new Resident Evil game for the Nintendo 3DS which seemed pretty good, although I feel it was a shame that it had to be for the 3DS as that consoles visuals destroyed my eyes and gave me a migrane within a few minutes of using it.

For the expo I went as the Team Fortress 2 RED Sniper. Another reason why I love going to these conventions is because It gives me the chance to make props and other such things that I normally wouldnt attempt to make. As you can see in the pictures below we also met other people cosplaying TF2 aswell. All in all an excellent day, I highly recommend going to conventions like these, cosplay or no cosplay as it really can boost your chances of making connections in the comic and games industry as well as making new friends along the way.