Maya funsies

It all started with a silly mountain I did for fun. I added a texture picture that didn't work too well and the long line of failed attempts to make it better led to the discovery of the adding snow option which of course was immediately applied because snow is the best thing in the world!

The scenery looked too empty so I then decided to add a cartoony UFO to brighten up the atmosphere, which led to the addition of a torii gate and (my favourite one:) a Santa Panda!

Following a youtube tutorial on npatricles I learnt how to make it snow - in my opinion, the best thing I've ever learnt! 

❤ Snow is the best

Maya seems very complicated but the challenge of it is exciting and at this point I can't stop myself from working and experimenting in it all the time!

Above : Big Oops! Had to close it and work from the previous save

I used cloud texture for the Santa hats. Still not sure it was the best idea but seemed like a fun thing to do.

Below: I had to make the characters in a different file, as my laptop has difficulties with the bigger Maya files. Characters are made from one object- the cube and only the eyes and hats are independent objects. That's why I hat to group them in order to paste them in the scenery above.

Above: don't know if it was the right thing to do but I copy pasted the eyes and hat from the panda to use on the penguin as well
Below: Using the nPatricle option I made it snow

I intend to add more structures or maybe a building.

Also need to learn how to add lights.

Maya: first contact

1st task - Bouncing 1 ball

2nd task - Bouncing 3 balls 

(squishy ball, tennis ball, bowling ball)

use locators

add stretch

add squash

(below) My squishy ball bounces off the 2 walls which I feel it was a challenge at this point as its trajectory is diagonal instead of straight and my knowledge of Maya is almost non existent. 

Squish was unexpectedly time consuming because I did not place the locator at the edge of the ball and had to change Y each time the ball squashed or stretched.

Note to self: Place locators before anything else

Bowling ball has small bounce, like the one in the video I used as reference

3rd task - Build a piece of furniture

Note to self: figure out how to save the cloth in one position without having to place it again every time I open the scene.

Nuala and Bradley showed me how to use textures - they're both very nice and helpful

Textures I used were found on google

 I made the bed covers using ncloth command

Wanted to try ocean texture on something and I'm loving it. Should find a fun way of using it in the future

Colour palette inspiration for future reference

I really just like the textures/patterns in the images below:

Xiao Pan - Benjamin Zhang Bin (colour work for future inspiration)

His blog is amazing!

Scale world: my work

I was assigned the task of drawing the Big for our project so I changed the backgrounds to find the colours that work best with it:
(Note to self: remember to rasterize stuff)

Final scene (Mini will be placed under the "soft light" layer)

Each image took a lot more time than I expected due to trying out different brushes and textures.

Designs are inspired by Nuala's work (below)

Scale world: our animatic: my notes

Notes:

If the audience is made of people that use written language from LEFT to RIGHT, then the starting scene should pan in the opposite direction to accommodate the natural movement of their eyes.

The colour of the sky keeps changing back to a lighter hue - inconsistency 

I believe that in our animatic (below) the Mini was not placed right.

Working on different layers usually prevents mistakes like that.

Correct way:

 Mini/Small should be placed under the hand layer so that the finger covers it slightly and looks like it's standing in the middle of the palm 

Below: Scale is different

 Mini below has to be smaller OR Mini above has to be bigger

In regards to story:

The Mini/Small is surprised by the Big's stature because it's not what they expected, but there is no follow up. I believe that having no visible disappointment or a reaction to that discovery is unrealistic.

The showing of the Midi is confusing as it looks nothing like either the Big or the Mini/Small and has no similar colour palette (audience will have no clue what that is or where it comes from) - may be better to remove it completely.

Where does the flower come from?

The ending is different from group storyboard. Happy with the unexpected change though, as the previous ending, within the context of our story, seemed a bit morally on the edge.

Animatic inspired by Nuala's work below:

Mother Nature - Shadow world: colour work catch up (3)

These were made in December, but placed with the November posts for continuity reasons.
I had a lot of fun trying out different styles and brushes

New project : Scale world

After the first meeting with the group I still have unanswered questions that I believe are important whenever developing a story. Motivation and reason determine the way any sort of character behaves, walks, talks, carries themselves, interacts with others etc which helps the story grow in a logical way and I feel that we don't have that yet. Not having all that explained creates the same issues we had in the previous group which I believe generated a lot of confusion and thwarted our group work.
This time though, I will try my best to work it out

Unanswered Questions that need to be addressed:
- how do bigs/smalls reproduce - how do they come into existence? (if it is through kissing, we have to be careful with that)
- if midis are the children of bigs+smalls, why do their bigs+smalls parents hate them and abandon them?
- why would the mistreated midi kids want to help keep the balance and peace in the worlds of their bad, hateful parents? Would it not make more sense to let them self-destroy?
- what pushes minis to go to the bigs' world and what do the midis think of all these minis/bigs going through their land?
- what is their relationship?
- do the bigs ever try to go to the smalls' world?
- how do bigs/minis react when an opposite manages to enter their world?
- would the bigs/smalls try to kill the intruders?
- if so, how could minis possibly kill one of the bigs?
- how do the porcelain smalls come into existence? Born? Made? Wishful thinking?
- where does the gravity come from? Two planets floating in space connected by a bridge do not act as a scale, so what pulls them down?
I believe that understanding and explaining the world to ourselves generates good stories. They sort of write themselves when you know the environment you're dealing with

Story:
We all decided to develop individual storyboards for tomorrow when we will also make a choice. So far the group is leaning towards the classical Romeo & Juliet plot developed by Charlotte: a mini and a big that already knew each other are trying to be together, so we follow the mini travel through the midis' land to get to the bigs' land. Once there they hide in a room and when another big tries to come in, and check the noise, the mini hides on the ceiling's light source from where he starts sliding off only to be saved by his/her big at the last second after the other big leaves. I believe it would be a good, fun choice.


Pictures of what the previous group did with this world ↓