Level

The level I will be aiming for 

Wishful thinking

Apologies for the lack of posting, the last week or 2 were frantic ones due to dead line, however now thats all over and I've had a few days to chill down (and also catch a cold in the process :( .. sobb) Its time to get back onto the work train. 


Theres literally so much to work on over this short xmas break. The main task is to pick up nuke, properly. Up until now I've been kind of guessing my way through it in a panic all the time. And now having finally.. acquiring the software after around a months worth of attempts I can actually get round to using a full licence rather than the limited student version. (which is real convenient as i need nuke extremely bad the other week!) 


So overall I've set my self a few projects and I'm going to be hopefully starting a fresh as well as bumping up the quality of other pieces of work, the tasks will be: 


Motion Graphics

A module that I was working on a few weeks ago, got some pretty good footage but had to trim alot of it to fit the brief's specified time limit. I'l hopefully be looking to clean it up, add a few more graphics and really secure those slippery tracks down, sorry for the poor quality I'll post a cleaner one when I begin tackling it. 


Website(s)


Due to suddenly realizing the state of my bank account I am really trying to produce as much as possible my self to keep costs down, I don't know how well this will work but I'm going to give it a go. Recently my mums really got into photography and its all beginning to take off which is great, but the fact shes uses facebook as essentially as her base for selling her photo's is not. Therefore I recon I can produce a website for her to start her off as well as teaching her how to maintain and update it to start her off. I'm also pretty sure that I have a self promotion module next semester so it will be beneficial for me to come up with my own as well as some basic logo designs to get myself a little ahead for when the module comes up.




Compositing 


Okk so compositing is a real biggie for me, I had a real bad time with this as I've never really used nuke long enough to ever get a real understanding of how it works. I'm more than likley going to be doing tracking tests, downloading hq res footage or using the the same footage as we were given for the vfx pt2 module just to get the basics down as its pretty much vital to my survival during semester B


more to come..

Tough times

poor poor blog :/ I think its fair to say there has been some neglect over the past week or two, however not without reason. 


Just to brief you.. whoever, its quite literally been crunch time and the deadlines have been coming thick and fast. I quite like a challenge and I enjoy being busy yet my liking for this feeling has changed quite suddenly, more so because of file corruption/render times and stress. damm these things!


Nevertheless I can only look forward and plan and put more effort in to aviod such mental pain and with only one more day of class I hope i can get on with some self projects to get some practice in that I so badly need.  

Branching out

Due to the mass of modules i currently have at the moment and the mass of work being produced from them, i thought rather than have it all centered in a jumble of posts on one blog i would break it up a little so its all a bit clearer to find and read :)

Explaing the addition of the phototography blog as well as the insiration hub i have added for when moral is low and everyone needs theyre creative flare re-lighting!

Photography
http://cpatersonphotography.blogspot.com/

Inspiration
http://insparationbase.blogspot.com/

Central

Recently discovering google reader a world of social networking, updates, news feeds and so much more have come to light. One.. its great simply because of all of the info that's constantly updated but that's not really the reason I'm using it :/ Its more down to what a lecturer said to me about reading, 'you'll never understand nor experience unless you research, understand and make use of the industry you reside in' a pretty good piece of advice no?

Film - London

Film - London

yes please afte graduation :)

Snow White and the Huntsman - Teaser Trailer

I think i would be lying if i said i wasn't looking forward to this :/

No Internet

Internets still being a pain, its been on and off and hour at a time for the past week, dont think you really realize how much you use it until you dont have access to it :/

However, being unplugged kind of allowed me to get on with my motion graphics edit, i kind of just threw it together to see how i want to lay the shots out and so far I have come up with this >>

I know its not an award winning edit but it was just put together to experiment with colour grades and the overall sequence layout. Will be posting the actual motion graphics when I've finished creating them some time this week, but that's all for now :)

Essay :/

So the internet cut out a day or two ago for some absurd reason, just because your one of the richest people on the planet does not mean you can flick the internet on and off light a light bulb Branson (virgin for thoes struggling to understand my rant) :/ 


Therefore thought it would be a good idea to make a start on the essay due to being unplugged. Though I've been attending the lectures i think after six or so weeks of going it has only just dawned on me how big the topic of conversation is. However, i really seem to be enjoying it :) in all fairness i cant really understand this myself as i am the last person in the wrld that could write an essay. yet it seems to be all going well, i think my biggest problem will be cutting down on how much i end up writing! The question im working on is..


'In 2001, Jesper Juul posed the question “Do games tell stories?” Examine this question in relation to games as narrative structures and how this might differ to other media forms.'
 

Literally reaping info, though this module is a games related topic the discussions far exceed the boundaries of just games, rules and theories can be applied to many area's of media its self. Defiantly worth a look as its only a short text and its pretty light reading, which is a pretty solid statement coming from me as i think its the first time ive ever really enjoyed reading!

http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/

Compositing

VFX pt2 started last week and it consists of comping. YAY! and kind of neigh.. simply because i haven't quite got my head around nuke yet but all in good time :) after buying a subscription to digital tutors i think I'll have a broader knowledge of nuke in no time. 


But the gist of this assignment is to pretty much show off as much skill in comping as possible, making this project good practice for the live projects we get in our second semester. We've been given the back plates to work from and have pretty much free reign of creation. I think I've set my eye on a few ideas but i think I'm looking more towards a kind of crash site/zombie esc abandoned area. So far I've created a basic scene layout and and a downloaded asset to use as some kind of burnt out/crashed car maybe.

 with that in mind ive been checking out a few good reel in this area on sites like vimeo and youtube to try and get an understanding of what we're being asked to create. these are pretty good examples i think and with practice hope to create something similar :)


http://vimeo.com/10852187


http://vimeo.com/4915546


http://vimeo.com/groups/350/videos/15052997


http://vimeo.com/8337356


and this is possibly the best of what ive seen for a while, quite literally where the term 'invisible effects' originate from i think!

decreasing motivation levels

I think its fair to say that rigging is slowly draining all of the fun and enjoyment i get from the course :( well, its not that bad, its just taking me a while to get my head around it. In fact its not even that, it was all going pretty smoothly up until this point but oh well! i posted pretty much all the details on..


http://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18582&st=30&gopid=247895&#entry247895 


For those that want to know :) i might make it a late one tonight and try and get my head around it, updates as soon as i have them!

Organic_Modeling_002

Again this was one of the pieces of work that had to be handed in this week and its been coming along nicely since my last post. I'm currently working on the facial texture maps which is looking extremely strange, seeing an image of pretty much what my skin would look like had it been peeled off of my face :/

However the maps not quite finished so I'l save that post for another day! the assignment for the module was to submit a grey scale model of what we have created so far. Now as always I've been having problems with my arch enemy displacement maps, i know its ridiculous and i shouldn't be having these problems but the majority of what i manage to go wrong, and all of what does go right looks awful. (more experimenting to be done there i think) so i posted the base mesh with clothing, which in all fairness is what was required but i want to try and get as far ahead as possible. but to date, this is what I've come up with. Soon as i get a bit more done I'll have an update!

invest!

Pretty much just a post on how good and worth while it is to sign up to one of the many tutoring sites! 


I've.. used a tutorials from a range of sites and cant explain how indepth and helpful they are. I recently was subscribed to lynda for when i was trying to learn about creating web pages and a little of aftereffects and it was extremely resourceful. As good as they are the sites pretty much lean to certain practices, although they have tutorials for the majority of tasks they are pretty brief in some areas. My personal favorite at the moment is digital tutors, they cover almost all aspects of the modern day digital artist and the majority of some subjects to great extent. This is my current choice as it covers everything i need to know for the time being, As mentioned, all of the sites differ and appeal to different professions. for example im pretty sure eat 3d and gnomon are fairly game base compared to something like tuts+ that is a more graphical based tutorial web site. Long story short, SUBSCRIBE!!!! 

Busy busy busy

so the last few days have been pretty busy ones as i had the first load of deadlines crop up, leading to a few all nighters :/ 

However now that dreadful weeks over ive just had the past 2days relaxing before i crack on with the next few assignments. That aside i think that the past week was the hardest ive worked since ive been back at uni and its not really good enough in my own personal opinion, from now on i look to put as much time and just as many long hours into my work. 

Anyway, the self discipline aside il pick up from where i left off, begining with my hard surface scene. all finished for the assignment it was all handed in on time and with easy however i look to develop it more as its not quite at the level i want it to be at. i never really managed to get the volumetrics working so i didnt include them in the final render but i look to work on it for the mudbox competition that was  part of the assignment. but heres what i have so far and will update when ive progressed further

Cracking ending

Success, so today was my first real kind of arranged film shoot, and to be honest I'm pretty pleased with how it all went. This was essentially the part 2 of the motion graphics shoot plan. I had been in contact with a few friends from home that I used to go out and  ride bmx with and arranged to meet up and get some footage for the mini documentary. I originally planned on meeting up  at the skate park baysixty6, HOWEVER due to the park for some reason being skateboard lovers the bmxers only get a few hours a week to ride the park, which didn't really fit the times that people were available. SO I had to look else where to get some shots and looked to they're local spot where they ride often that happened to be Hastings skate park and the source bmx bowl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPApcPBdkPA



After riding about an hour of the outdoor park and one bike having a snapped chain we headed to the indoor park that is part of the source bmx shop where we could some new parts too! What an amazing park, it was built within a church hall with 2 bowls and a huge vert ramp at on end with the walls covered in ply for huge wall rides. (link of clips to be uploaded soon) Overall we got some pretty good shots considering I had a couple street riders in a park environment but at the end of the day we had some spare time to nip to my local outdoor park in Ashford where they came into they're own, it was where I got some shots of a completely different mood due to the light having disappeared and that's to be posted soon too, but until then that's all I have for today :)

An all new unproductive high

Fail. possibly the only way i can put it, I totally passed off class today to have some made course work stint, that was far from progressive. This post is simply down to how much I hate maya and photoshop due to the syntax errors and just pure crashing due to large files. HATE.

Reading?

Here comes a book plug. Now to be honest I'm not one for reading. At all. Especially when it comes being advised to take out a book on a subject that I found most boring when having lectures on it. 


HOWEVER, this my fellow blogger's, is a gooden :) I was totally dreading it, but I though I've got a test on it next week and I've literally taken nothing in from the lectures, so it became pretty clear that the time to read was ni. But all silliness aside, it was probably the quickest 1hour 35mins ever whilst reading it! (well, for me anyway) I never really knew how key it is, and to be fair I think I picked up more then than I have done in the past few weeks in class. I think I this may only be relevant to the people who actually have to sit through those god awful classes and to everyone else its going to sound like an unclarified rant about a book as if they're some new kind of discovery to man, Sorry :/ Good book though :)

How slow?

Just thought I  have a cheeky blog while I'm waiting for updates and the pc tune up to complete. 
General progress report then.. its all gone to hell :)


The first of the deadlines arrive next week and it appears I'm not particularly close to completing any of them! which some how doesn't seem surprising :/ So with the 5 or so assignments looming next week I decided to take the week off of class to try and go on a mad work spree. Day one :/ wasn't so good. I created a little piece to explain that but I'll upload it later maybe. Day 2? Slow as mentioned I'm clearing up and doing a few scans on my machine as its all going pretty slow, much like the scan its self at the moment (4h 56m 09sec so far) meaning I cant really use the pc for anything other than Facebook. resulting in what looks like a fairly unproductive day again. I really do hope to god that i some how manage to do a 56hour stint of non stop work so I can relax and be pressure free, it could defiantly happen whether i like it or not  by the looks of things :(

Hard Surface Modeling #002

Thought I would post up where I am with this one, finally got the uv's sorted out after I decided to construct the whole scene before I created the uv's :|

I know it all looks like a big jumble of madness at the moment but as soon as I re-arrange the scene and slap a few textures on I'm sure it will all be looking lush from there on-wards more. until then!

pack mule

I wish I could have taken a photo of what I looked like the other day, after being called a pack mule by the girl friend I thought there would be no other post title as fitting as that. So dressed up with pack pack upon laptop bag upon camera bag with a tripod dangling from on of the back pack straps, I set off for stage one of my motion graphics filming mission. I cant remember if I mentioned before but i had originally planned to head out to a a bmx event last weekend but had to blow it out due to a call earlier that week about a job interview, which was fair enough until I got to the interview only to find out that the interviewer was off sick and I had to come back another day. Basically resulting in immense rage. However, I scoured the web for another event to try and get some shots at and found this

http://uk.westfield.com/london/offers-events/events/extreme-sports/

Due to it being in a shopping center it was all pretty short and sweet. There were 6 shows that day all around 15 minutes long with a mix of professions, inline skating, bmxing, and skateboarding, though I was only out to get shots of the bmxer's caught a bit of inline skating because it was absolute madness what they were pulling off. Though I did't really get a mass of footage I wasn't entirely fussed as this was my back up event, Next weekend (5/6th) I plan to meet some friends at the skate park bay66

http://vimeo.com/30905713

This is where I plan to get the bulk of the footage, but once I have sifted through the memory cards from this weekends shoot i'll post some video's up

Organic_Modeling_001

New brief..

'Create a 3D model of half of your body including arms and hands the head must include ears, neck and hair. Adding legs and feet is optional but emphasis for this exercise is from the waist up. You should consider aiming for as realistic a depiction as possible using reference photography and anatomical knowledge. Headwear or hats are allowed but I expect to see good fabric detail, for example I expect the same amount of time and effort worked into the 3D headwear in replacement for the amount of time that you would have spent on the hair.'

So now you know, here's the images of me that were shot in raw with the Canon 5D, (amazing camera) to create texture maps from. I'l post some progress as & when.

Hard Surface Modeling #001

Hard surface modeling brief, been looking forward to this :) 

We have to create and render one 3D environment based on a Film or TV series of our choosing. 

Pretty wide range of choice out there so for some reason i only though as far as zombies and looked to silent hill :/ 

So I've gathered a bit of reference, well, there's a few fairly large folders on the pc filled with reference from grungy power station basements to the scene subject a class room, here's a few shots..

and this is where I am with the modeling, its all pretty basic so far but its just for layout purposes, updates soon! 

Its looks so good!

So i got back to uni today and unpacked the newly fitted pc and damm does it look good. i did a few test on temps to see how much of a difference its all made, and to be fair, its more than half the temps.
I used to get around 40/50c at idle and around 85+ at full load (sometimes as high as 98c)

Let the screen shots do the talking..

















(idle)







                                                                                       
                                                                                            (load)

Calm down son

Yeah so im going on a real mad one with the posting today but being able to enjoy the rugby world cup highlights and blog at the same time is bliss, really trying to make an effort to post more like i did earlier on in the year, the summer job really was what destroyed the bloging flow but im looking to get back on track.
This ones a brief introduction to a motion graphics module im studying as one of my electives. Its all about producing a mini documantary on a subject of our choice, the first submission of the module was to produce a proposal so this is what i came up with...

http://assignments1.herts.ac.uk:8080/assignmentsV2-war/getAssignmentSubmissionFile?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/70128747/Paterson-Connor-Motion-Graphics-Research-Development-Portfolio

Upgrade

Ok so im going to start posting a general weekly update on where i am with projects and other info related
This weekend the work progress has come to a hault sadly, however its not all bad news, after a few months of saving i have finaly got to the stage where i can afford the upgrade of case and cpu cooler that ive needed so badly due to mad temps of 90c +
So here's the case
http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/crafted_series/phantom

And the cooler, freezing temps here i come!

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/04/02/be-quiet-dark-rock-pro-review/1

Bad news

<p>For weeks ive been looking a job to try and survive without living off of my savings from summet work, yet finaly ive had success! Or have i? I got a call on friday asking if i was available for an interview on monday, coinsidently the same day i had arranged to get some footage for a project im working on :/ though ide much rather choose to go and get some shots for my short film i guess i have to prioritise (sad face)

Blog overhaul

Everytime i take a break from blogging the time period seems to grow and grow like some mad thing that grows alot :| due to this mad jumble of words above trying to explain in some way how bad i am at keeping the blog up to date there are Apoligies to be made as always :/ yet there is a time of change upon the blog :) (joy!) due to a new mobile phone that has the capability of blogging from it will hopefully see me sort my blogging life out. Going to be tweeting alot more too so check it out.. Twitr__twatter

Step #3

During the spare hour I get an evening to be creative after work I sat down with my friends the pencil, pad, ruler and perspective. (sounds terribly sad to be referring to those things as my friends :/ ) and started to think about how I wanted it to look. I created a few thumbnails and came to this. It is only basic shapes at the moment but it will get developed when I have the time. Looking at it I thought it all looks a bit boring. I want the theme of the image to be tall and overwhelming which was not the effect I was achieving at this point. I watched some videos on composition and came to the decision of lowering the horizon line to give the overlooked feel. 

While having a browse over the net I did a bit of research on coastal and sea defences as I want to create a kind of watch tower/front line defence made out of waste materials, much like everything is in   3rd world slums. I found that almost everything has a purpose and can be used in some way or another to benefit a new owner. Also looking into coastal/sea defences I found images like this that though they are trying to protect the land they also look particularly offensive which is what I want to reproduce.

More...

So I continued with the dodge sketching and came up with this, im looking to create a sort of rugged camp out post or guard tower. I want to create a kind of favela type scene, having the structures made up from anything possible, taking reference from distric 9, brink and maps from call of duty.

step #2

okk so I decided on an idea to work on, I came up with this sort of gate house tower idea that came about from the photo's I took. This is just one real rough sketch at the moment but its something I''ll look to develop over the next few days

step #1

For these sketches, sketches being the key word here I've come up with a few ideas after studying the photos I took at Dungeness. Some to begin with I started taking components from a selection of photos and sort of pieces them together on paper, slowly I worked my way on to focusing on one object and trying to enhance it be it though mood or the impression it gives. These are just a few rough ideas that I'll now take elements from and go onto create more initial sketches for one particular image. 

Concept overhall

Okk so I've had a bit of a rethink of how I go about creating sketched that I want to go on and develop. I picked up this little baby and read a tutorial on the subject. Basically, other that real rough sketches there's no such thing as a quick concept if you want to create a good one? well, for the time being this applies to me as I don't ever spend much time doing it. 
So...from now on I will keep using my little pad to sketch idea's down but spend more time on the concepts I decide to develop, much unlike the one I started a few posts ago. I'll have a go at some idea's using the photo's I took the other week I think and I'll see
where I end up, if something of use is born I'll plan the project a little more. Hopefully have something to post up later. On another note, I also saw some familiar work, that of Simeon Pataronliev a former student at the I currently study at. 


















NICE.

Point and shoot

Took the camera out today, went to try and get some material for some matte painting. going to try and do this more often so set up a flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/65649660@N07/ ) to try and spur me on a bit, hopefully will work? also started up a twitter, god knows why.. well, to a point I'm hopefully going to get down to a bit of networking but we'll see what happens > @Connors_mention 

had a cleann out

had a some de-fluffing to do of the pc insides due to high core temps, looks rather shiny now though :)

Finnished!!

Finally I think I have this web page to a standard that can presented as a prototype. To be honest I cant understand why it took so long, I think its just down to the fact that I was sick to death of AS3 and needed a break, but I picked up from where I left off and totally changed the layout and how it all works, I started at about 5 ish and finished about half an hour ago so for the two odd weeks I actually spent on the thing it took me about 6 hours to totally re work it all and finish. typical but I guess its just one of those things, to a point, that's weeks break from the project done some good. So here's where I am so far, I'l now email the client to see what they think or what they would like to change if they see it fit for purpose, (fingers crossed?) its pretty much a flash based site yet I used dreamweaver for the base for a few features that I would work out to do in flash, I've not hosted the site in case its all a waste of time/money so here's the swf file...

http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1311632078

and here's what it would all look like on the web page

update

Just a quick update. i just sketched over the shapes to try and gain an understanding of it might look like? I've progressed a bit since I saved this jpeg due to saving it a few hours ago. I'll hopefully post up some more later on tonight :)

short ones

So now having kind of given the website project a bit of a break I decided to start some short projects to hopefully inject some joy back into working after action script had previously removed it. 


Recently work has been a killer, currently doing around 45/50 hours a week and cant seem to find the time to sit down and do some personal projects =/ But I've recently got hold of like an a5 ish sized pad that I take to work now to have a quick sketch in when no ones looking, hopefully to put down a few idea's.

I've had it about a week now and have sort of given my self a list of projects I want to have completed or at least attempted if I get the time. So far I've sketched up a few environments I'de like to finalise or model so I'l begin with one of the first. Recently having created the rooftop garden I took a real interest into the environments I researched, mainly the american 1890's styled architecture. Now so far I'm going from the tiny sketch in my pad so I haven't researched heavily, however I have a layout, some perspective (emphasis on the word 'some') a basic 3d model and a colour pallet (which is likely to change throughout) I spent and hour or 2 getting a base down and will go onto develop it when I have some more spare time.