Category: Sketchbooks and Back Up Work

Following further delays to shooting we have start to model the assets for the film. I aim to have my final versions of my 3d models finished before Christmas. It is difficult to communicate with my classmates that this is where we are supposed to be going with the work. Especially given this weeks abysmal attendance, the fact that emails and messages to the group chat are ignored.

Nonetheless I am happy to be working on my pieces! I have had a good productive weekend and look forward to furthering my progress through the week.

This week I am concerned that the film will be derailed as the director and lead modeler aren’t in. I feel like this film is potentially going to collapse and gets weaker every week.

The sculpt that I was working on has made some nice progress it’s still got lots of hours left on it, but I feel like I’ve got some good groundwork started. I can’t wait to move onto detailing the face. Alongside this I’m keeping up to speed on my character designs for the conceptual studies class, and finally reached a happy level of organisation for my professional development class.

I hope that my laptop is repaired soon. I miss being able to bring it into class when I need it.

So day three, due to weather was cancelled. I am relieved not to have to go out and shoot in the rain, but it would have been nice to have completely finished the live action portions of the work. We are aiming to shoot later in the week, but I would prefer early next week instead. We are also limited to what the actors can do.

I am finishing out some designs to hand out for approval and production tomorrow. This is going smoothly now. I feel like some of the issues I was having with the sets and designs are starting to resolve better.

My sculpting work is really not where I want it to be, it’s not behind schedule. The quality is lower then I want and I have ran out of my free trial on the software that we are using. I wish that my college provided better suggestions to us then “use the free trials over and over”

the other work I am following on for college is going well. I am not behind schedule but I haven’t don’t anything too exciting either- but that is okay as far as I am concerned. I am staying on top of what is needed.

Today was another ultimately successful day.
Personally I was very off form today. My wisdom tooth was giving me grief and hurt immensely. It was painful and distracting and I left before the end of the day because I had to go to the dental hospital.

The set was ready to go from the day before. We made the adjustments for the day and started to map out the choreography for the fight scene. The set maps started to get changed. I was not happy about this but it was ultimately okay. The actress was constantly swinging her arm through the area where a cg object was and ultimately its better we don’t create more work then is necessary.

There was a lot of issue around no one having story boarded this scene as the choreography was difficult to shoot as one of the core props was very very important, and see through.

Following this. We had the challenge of shooting another scene without storyboards. I was starting to feel annoyed about the lack of boards as I was only assigned one scene and was the only person who tried. The boards should have been done long before. I feel like shooting was rushed into especially given the trouble we had over the script.

Again the writer and producer didn’t come in and no one was able to contact him successfully. I am finding his attitude rotten and it is spreading to others. To further add to complications coming up on this course, the man who was supposed to be the lead modeler is potentially dropping out.

As far as I could percieve we had troubles shooting the shots we wanted to get and had to improvise on the day. I don’t like this but there was a firm time limit on when we could shoot. Ultimately it feels like it went well overall.

Our next day shooting is next week. I might grab the storyboards by the reins and try to set them down.However none of the shots we are going for have effects so it feels less important.

While I am happy that we got the shooting done, I think that there are many problems and issues in the class. Most of them are denied or feathered around. the lack of directness, and communication as well as denial that people are not participating is really beginning to take a tole on my motivation.

Day one of three has gone (fairly) smoothly. The wires of the lights nearly melted due to an unseen tangle in the middle of one of the extension cords. The set took a little longer to make then I had anticipated, this was also down to the white screen being an unknown dimension until the day, and then on top of that it was not as big as I had been told. this resulted in changing the design of the room as well as the shots for scene 1 the fist scene that we were filming.

I made the mistake of not printing out the storyboards the night before nad from that I made another mistake of not getting them printed on the day. This caused some delays that were my fault-but I was also distracted by the set and thankfully on of my classmates was able to storyboard on the fly. I could have done with more help managing my workload on the day.

Shooting I felt went well overall. The actress settled in and really warmed up from take to take.

I found one of my classmates very frustrating for his comments and remarks during the day. He was rude and very difficult to be around. It also created tension on the set that could have easily been avoid had he kept his mouth shut. It was also very demotivating that the writer and producer of this production left after lunch. He did not come back and no one has had any interaction with him since. I have tried to send a normal friendly message to him, as he is my friend but it seems to be a fair bit of radio silence.

I am happy with the way the sets looked today and I feel like there’s good potential for interaction between the set and cg objects. The costumes were, visually very fitting, but the actress found them cold. I did not think about the practicality of the weight of the clothing, or that we would not have access to heating. I did recommend that the actress wear an extra layer between takes and made sure that she had plenty of tea. she took the tea but did not wear the coat.

I felt that the preparation for shooting had something to be desired, but overall I am feeling happy with the quality of work that we achieved today.

So far the major complaints that were made last month have gone undealt with. However the atmosphere in college has drastically improved- or else I have grown used to it

Overall the film is going along. I am not alone feeling underwhelmed with the script. It was the source of a lot of drama over the month gone by and there are now some fairly firm divides between people. I have tried to stay out of it all and focus on my own responsibilities. While providing designs that are flexible to a volatile script. It has been a difficult time but thankfully we shoot on Monday and will be moving along and away from this conflict.

I’m really enjoying working with ZBrush. It feels like I am not progressing fast enough, but I am keeping up with the class and am enjoying working on this project. We were assigned monsters to model. It’s a great task to be focusing on. I wish that I had asked more questions in class today, but sometimes at the end of the week it is hard to speak and think clearly in the classroom. My solution to this will be to make better notes while I am working so that I can remember my progression and more importantly what I am struggling with.

I’ve spent a sizable portion of this week concentrating and working on costumes and costuming for the actors. One of the actors sent me a lot of contradicting information which is frustrating. He’s 6ft and 83 kg, but also wears a size (S) shirt. I can’t wait until shooting is over.

This one is a lot shorter then the others are. It’s mostly a comment on how we’re over a month in and the college has still not allocated every tutor. More so, the tutors allocated haven’t started yet.
This is creating a very tense atmosphere in the classroom in the last week. People have been writing letters to the college voicing the concerns. So far I have not joined them, however it feels like we have been ignored or told, that there’s nothing that can be done.
I have to say while there are many points that I disagree with being brought up, there is a core point of agreement. The title of the course is VFX and 3D Technology, we have at the moment two software classes and one coding module. No classes in visual effects anywhere in the course this year.As someone looking at primarily modelling, this isn’t a disaster, it does however limit my ability to go down the more generalist routes.
It’s difficult to get work done in the classes with this tone and atmosphere going on. I hope that the college will take the appropriate action and resolve the missing elements of the course.

So this week we focused on refining the script, as a group. In my role I focused on developing the rooms and created scene illustrations to help convey the mood, atmosphere and personality that would be displayed through the characters. In the meeting with the class today, we finialised the majority of the other roles. Alongside art direction, I’m also 3d modelling and the lead texture artist.

For the lead texture work, I need to learn how to use substance painter effectively. This should be great fun it’s very enjoyable software and I like painting. In regards to the modelling, the lead, is very technically competent and informative. His communication skills are good and I look forward to working with him on the models.

Hopefully by the end of the week I can have the beat boards started and hand them off to the storyboarding dept. From there I will finish the floor plans for the rooms. Hopefully we can start early hard surface and set modelling.

Outside of the modelling and film class, the course is, for me mostly enjoyable but I have hit some bumps with photography. It’s very frustrating to go over many of the same things as I have done before. Especially having to outline and highlight composition. This is something that has come up 7 years in a row for me, since leaving cert art history  101. I never seem to do right and having it come up again is very frustrating.

I’ve been trying to keep up bouldering once or twice a week. Most weeks this still works well and I am able to go, but since it has been confirmed as an olympic sport, there have been more people at the places I like to go to climb. This busier atmosphere is really upsetting and annoying when I need to go to clear my head. I’ve tried going to places outside of my usual spots but they are equally busy. As a result I think I might switch to swimming until the places calm down a little.

Some concept work for my classes final year film. pic.twitter.com/TpX5NYMLLu

— Rebecca Tighe (@Rebecca_Tighe) October 10, 2018

We finally decided on the film we are making. Working title “Synergy”. It’s a romance between an Artist and a Scientist. It’s based on the theme of “science in the context of art and design”

As part of this, we had to give and find the roles that we will be undertaking. My primary role will be Art Director. I’m really looking forward to developing the visual style and look of the film. I will also likely make a separate section for the work I’m going to be doing for the film this year.

The film (group project) will be the dominant subject over the course of the year, at least I suspect it shall be. The other subjects are starting to build up some momento.  I’m enjoying the way that the professional development class is growing. It’s also lead me to resolve a loop from my years doing animation. I can get a certificate of achievement. This will help me have more cofidence in my CV and when it comes to interviews, I will be less worried.

Alongside this I’m studying the work of Toulouse Leclearc for photography, in particular his compositions. This is fun, I’ve never studied him in an academic circumstance and I’m looking forward to formalizing my knowledge of him.

My favourite class at the moment is 3d and Rendering. It’s all about getting to know how to use ZBrush. I’m so excited and really enjoy working with it. It’s challenging and I have never used it before so at times I feel a bit lost. Theres a lot to get to grips with, but as it stands it’s been an enjoyable experience. I’ve made a shark which is a little bit ugly- but for having only had 1 week exposure to ZBrush I am quite happy.

We’ve just started into the 3rd week of classes. Since we have the Monday off, I’m using it as a time to do more prep work on my film and organise notes from last weeks classes.

The group project is still a bit up in the air. We have created a list of things that the film must be, but we haven’t decided on a plot theme or story. I pitched an idea and I’m surprised at how well it was recieved but I don’t know if we would make it. This pitch was mostly for practice, there is very little personal time gone into it, but it was not particularly weak. I’m going to develop it a little further to make the characters more interesting and flesh the acts out just a little bit more.

I feel that presenting my work in last weeks professional development class went well. The work showed the diverse and flexible side of my skills as well as my general consistency. It was easier to talk about my work this year then it was last year, so I feel that the practice across the year has stayed with me. More importantly I got a good scope of what my classmates had been doing over the summer, and the general growth in everyone’s work. I feel inspired to learn a little bit more about using Houdini, and have since installed it onto my laptop.

I’m really enjoying the conceptual studies class. We looked at the expressionist art movement and how that has impacted  film.  I don’t feel confident in my artist statement. It was the first time I had written anything like that and I was not very comfortable doing it. There was no word count, and I couldn’t tell how much I needed to write. This has left me feeling a bit nervous and uncertain.

On Friday we had our first 3d modelling and rendering class. I am really looking forward to this class. We didn’t start modelling last week, instead we spoke about industry and roles that we are interested in pursuing. It was a little surprising to have to show our work so suddenly, but I had some of my strongest stuff prepared for the presentation. Next week we’re starting on the basics of retopology. This will be a important to know for entry level positions modeling in a studio.

For the film pitches in college I put together a short idea. It’s not one of high personal value to me, and it is mostly for practicing pitching ideas.

Curious Creatures (working title)

“ Hunter Gatherers… in Space  “

Captain Logan hunts down alien animals on a quest for pork in the newly colonized planet

Act 1
Captain Logan sits in their empty quarters and makes the first entry of her journal, recording the first animals that they encountered.(2 creatures) The creatures skeletons are kept for research.
The contents of the journal are narrated.

Act 2
Captain Logan has their first encounter with alien predators. After losing an eye, and crew to the animals, becomes more brutal with their hunt. Her trophy collection begins, and includes taxidermy. (3 creatures)

Act 3
Captain Logan settles to make another entry. We see her immense trophy collection. This entry is interrupted as we see Captain Logan analyzed the same way the she was analyzing the other animals.
In broken English “Humans taste like Bacon” is said much like the narration

I’ve settled back into my home away from home and the first week of college has come and gone, bringing with it a new timetable for this week. today we got the title and interpretation of the theme for our group project.

Art and Design in Context

There are four separate angles that we can choose to approach this from. All of these issued by BTEC, the overseeing body on the project. Tomorrow as a class we will discuss what we want to do with the themes and what we aim to create in the final year film. This large group project is going to be challenging based on feedback from the year ahead of us and out theme this year has a much reduced freedom.

Hopefully I can get a role 3D Modelling and leading the art direction/design of the film. I want to try to push myself into leadership roles and try to take more responsibility in a group setting then I typically would. It is not my aim to be a production manager or producer as it would be a very difficult and stressful role.

The other classes that I have had so far are going well, I feel. This year has a mixture of new and old tutors, which is nice. The conceptual development module is completely new to me. It involves keeping a journal and is a practical subject. It’s great to have a subject that will talk, at least a little about the relationship with what we are doing (VFX) and art. Equally I am looking forward to the professional development class. I feel it will be beneficial to me as I can struggle with writing cover letters, and I have little experience getting interviewed. Both of these are covered in this module and it will hopefully help me with my confidence.

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I think I’m (genuinely) starting to like working with Arnold now. Sure taking my time with this bakery though. #cakedecorating#bakery#maya#3D#3Dmodeling#mideling#mayaautodesk modeling#model#autodeskmaya#render#arnold#art#3Dart#3dartist

A post shared by Rebecca (@rebeccatighe) on Aug 17, 2018 at 12:59pm PDT

Despite the touch and go of the future of the course that happened over the summer- it’s time to get back into the swing of college. It’s finally my last year, I can’t believe I’m heading towards graduation.

The timetable looks set to wiggle, as it stand I havn’t got any major complaints other then the wonders of a 3 hour lunch break on a Friday. However this is a great chance to get work done before the weekend- and hopefully subject to change.

I’m looking forward to the new subjects this year, and the new tutors that we will have. I feel that my skills stayed sharp over the summer and the new challenges lying ahead will be great fun to face. My only major concern is how the group project will go. The class has a good dynamic, but the challenge of managing the communication and work together is one that we have not faced together. I can definitely see this as a point of potentially conflict- but also a great chance to grow.

Did this for fun for part of an art telephone! Really enjoyed returning to 2d after a summer of 3d. Painted using photoshop.

I made this for college, and shot the live action footage before digitally hand drawing the animated elements.

Streaming is proving to be enjoyable! It’s fun to interact, albeit infrequently, with people who are watching and interested in what you’re doing. I do not have much of a following at the moment, but that is okay, it’s only just started.

This week I’m going to finish the set. Things fell behind schedule last week, due to some unforeseen events, and there’s lots going on this weekend so I have to utilize the time available before that starts.

I’ve successfully started to stream over on twitch, I was hoping to stream on YouTube, but they will only verify with a phone number. That feels too personal to just hand out and stream from though. It’s fairly fun and I’m enjoying it so far, even if my laptop is not. My user name is “rebeccatighe” but this may change in the future as I develop my online presence.

The bakery is coming along smoothly- its very definately resemebling on I used to visit frequently before I started to go to school, so that has inspired the inclusion of some of the simple treats I enjoyed from them as a young child. I am struggling with getting the lighting that I want from Arnold- regularly scenes are too dark and I have realised that my primary monitor might be blowing out colours somewhat.

Outside of 3d modeling, I did some baking yesterday, resulting in some of the best simple cupcakes of my life. I’m delighted with how they taste. It’s really got me in the mood to try something a little bit more challenging. I have also tried to put half an hour a day into working on and developing short film ideas for the future.

This weeks looking like a good time to set up streaming- I’ve been researching this for a while and I’m excited to start trying it out. Hopefully it will help get my confidence presenting my work up, and increase the speed I model at. I dont know if I would stream the whole process-but it will start with the modeling. I also think that it would link well with the process videos I am trying to do once a week.

I hope to finish lighting and shading in the bedroom I started earlier this summer, and to finish the modeling for the bakery. There is also a script that I hope to finish over the nest two weeks.

Outside of my work, it would be nice to get outside and draw a bit more. Earlier in the summer was too hot, sunny and bright to enjoy being out for long portions of the day, but the weather has since calmed down. It would also be nice to do a little more baking.

Between working on more cakes for the bakery this week, I’ve been breaking it up by working on some very low poly gifs of food. The aim of these were  to create something reasonably finished and to get it online within an hour. Some of these have been more successful then others, the Jammy dodger for example

I feel it looks to blocky and shield like- and a lot less like the biscuit. The over metallic shader also reinforces the shield look.
One of the later ones, the sandwich, I am much happier with. It’s lower quality as my laptop is currently struggling to render. I think I was more in the swing of modelling at this point which also helped, and I had practiced working at such a low poly level.

This week I plan to focus on developing my digital bakery further. Having recently returned from France, I have new references and ideas to develop. This will begin with some preparatory drawings and designs, and hopefully by the end of the week have begun to develop into the first models and rough shading, lighting and texturing.

The cakes offer a lot of room to play with shapes textures and themes. The challenge lies in making it look as it is, icing, sponge buttercream, jam and sprinkles. The different types of icing and they way that they hold shapes differently.

Currently I primarily work with Maya 2016 and V-Ray, however through this project I hope to develop my familiarity with Maya 2017, MASH and Arnold. In college we touched on using MASH, but it is by far the least familiar to me. I look forward to learning what you can do with it.

A short short film for my effects and integration class, made using after effects and maya.