Ryan Lang

Ryan Lang Portfolio

Amazing artist to follow and take notes from.

On his Tumblr account he shows the process of some of his work

Classroom observations: 1st semester

I loved Beata's colours in these sketches, thought it made the trees look like candy↓

Michael's work (below ↓) always seemed to be very beautiful. He has a simple style that manages to catch the essence of the scene. I believe the details he does put in are very effective.

Above right↑ from Darcy's colour week. I was always very fond of the watercolour+ ink combination and her sketch is like a child's dream. Love it!

Below↓ Alistair's colour work makes me think of vintage futuristic postcards. I like the technical execution

Below↓ I didn't write down who made it but mainly because I stared at it so hard, it got my full attention and forgot to listen. I was very impressed with it

Leanna the awesome's work ↓

Maggie + Michael + Clare's animatic ↓

I thought it was very skillfully made and really felt its intention

Nuala + Bradley + Erin's animatic ↓

It's fun and skillful, love love love it! 

Michael's blog

Leanna the awesome's blog

Beata's blog

Nuala's blog

Portfolio

→My Online Portfolio Here←

Pecha Kucha

After learning about the pecha kucha concept, I have to say that I am very fond of the idea and it is now my favourite way of presenting things. It is not only an efficient way of having a presentation but it is concise and fun - the perfect combination.

In preparation for it I chatted a lot with Molly and we agreed that we are supposed to make it fun as well as informative which I was very glad about. I believe that working hard should be accompanied by a few laughs to keep up motivation and stimulate creative thought.

We each had to prepare 4 slides and research 

My slides ↓

(All the pictures I used were found on google, including the ones I photoshopped Don Bluth's face in: the Don party and Don riding the horse which was originally a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger)

I feel like my part of the presentation didn't go very well which is surprising because public speaking doesn't generally make me nervous. It could have been the stress of not having all members present or the fact that we went first, but I will have to do my best in the future to be more relaxed in unexpected situations.

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

Scale world: my second story

2nd STORY:

(Backstory)

Bigs are running out of space on their world due to constant technological development and they're preparing to invade the Smalls' world.

Midi not present (just like above), their world is obscured by clouds and space dust.

No Big or Small that ever ventured down the scale made it back to tell the story.

Midis are just a myth.

Bigs can physically assimilate parts of their environment and they communicate through high pitched noises.

Bigs are thelepatic

Main character:

- the runt of the Bigs' world:

-a bit of an outsider because his shoulder crystals are smaller than average

-moss growing on the side of his face (unkept allure)

-has a bit of a flower power spirit

-shorter than others because he's been spending too much of his childhood in the mines, fascinated with the beauty of the ore

-in his spare time he polishes different stone parts of his body

-dreams of becoming a sculptor

-plasma crystal-based life form

(Story below)

Story follows the goofy Big marching to Small world

We see propaganda posters about Smalls

Our main Big doesn't really believe that Smalls are that bad and once on their world, saves a lonely scared Small

Scale World: my first suggested story

As the group didn't want to change much about the world we were given, my two stories had to keep the scale part a bit too literal for my liking so I decided to work around that and focus on the story.

1st STORY:
(Backstory)
With the purpose of keeping true to the scale idea, the Midi world does not appear in the middle of the scale but is rather situated at the base of it, long forgotten by the Bigs and Smalls.
Both Bigs and Smalls perpetuate their species by asexual reproduction(once per life cycle maybe).
Bigs and Smalls come from the Midis of the bigger world underneath (explaining the gravity pulling down the two worlds) and are the result of a disease.
The Midis built the scale to keep Bigs and Smalls from contaminating the others and separated them in order to avoid the possibility of conflict between them.
Midis now exist in Bigs and Smalls culture only as a myth.
Smalls have discovered a cure for the disease (by accident) and are slowly reverting the process of getting smaller and smaller.
The Bigs are too proud to accept anything from the "despicable" Smalls as they believe logic and knowledge will reveal the cure to them
Smalls are afraid that the fast expanding cities of the Bigs and their constant increase in size will tip the scales and destroy both their worlds so they insist on giving them the cure

(Story)
The story follows a Small diplomat as it travels to the world of Bigs in order to give them the cure
We see  a few Bigs trying to sculpt their legs smaller, in contrast with other Bigs that are obviously proud of their imposing statures.
One of these Bigs listens to the Small and travels back to Mini world with them in order to get cured.

Character design pointers

Pixar

"Think about the meaning of the word 'character'. You're supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they're like to meet and how they might move."-Neil McFarland

Ricky Nierva

Above: Ricky Nierva

Disney

Below: Sergio Pablos 

The most important point he makes is exactly what I've been telling my team mates every week (!): without clear knowledge of the personality/motivation/ etc of a character the design is not believable.

Below: Aaron Blaise

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!