The Logres Post

"the hats begin to fly and now thoughts of summertime are rampant. everyone who does not suck begins to clap each other on the back and smile."

2008-04-10T19:40:00.002-04:00

alright, so to avoid the temptation of using this blog in the future and writing about my feelings and turning this into some sort of shitty livejournal i am hereby ending it. it served well its purpose as a venue for progress and feedback on my thesis but its time is over. the thesis is almost complete, a few small changes to be made before final output and then it will be posted,

but not here.

no, the grand internet premiere will be on my own website. www.shayneryan.com

there is nothing there now, but soon. i promise.

thanks for playing.

out.

-SR.

"some talk about art, others simply concentrate on not vomiting from the intense vertigo."

2008-03-16T03:21:00.003-04:00

seq 03.

eat it.

fight time.

"he then closes with yet another joke about death perplexing some, and scaring most of the children"

2008-03-12T05:12:00.001-04:00

so woot. woot infucking deed. sequence 01 = done.

providing there are no super awful errors thus far unrealized.

pretty pleased.
so much more to do though.
back to maya.

"but hp gets ronnie’s back by issuing a comment or two so deft i can’t even start to reproduce them here. "

2008-03-05T05:26:00.002-05:00

so again totally not thesis related, these are the exercises i've done so far for my character animation class. 4 hws: walk cycle, lift, pitch, and interaction. i'm liking them, though they all still need work. id say they are about at 85 percent done...ish...

yeah, they should make good spots for my animation reel come june

word

back to thesis now.

"yes, yes is still the answer. yes to life and yes to magic".

2008-03-01T04:12:00.003-05:00

not gonna lie. kind of excited when i test comped these shots. go america.

rendered sequences soon.

out.

“well bless my nippers,” cries harry. “bless them all day long.”

2008-02-25T06:52:00.003-05:00

so, the lab flashback. woot. gonna do a motion render of this soon and see how it works. im liking it though. was going for a really violent color change from the blue and a saw like style.

more to come soon. or else..

"harry makes that mental note, i assure you. the mental notes are stacking"

2008-02-19T07:13:00.003-05:00

so...

here is my updated work in progress. still have so much animation left to do its making me sick. cause then i have to render. and you know how awesome that is.

i also have some new test renders and the model for my throne room which i'll post later/tomorrow.

i'm really getting worried about finishing on time now. i need more computers.

"they are running the money show, clever turnips, these needleteeth."

2008-02-04T05:55:00.000-05:00

so, some more animation. nothing totally new just some "refined" action and camera work preparing these shots for completion. baring any major disapprovals from gallagher and no other "that totally sucks. fix it!" feedback from whoever keeps tabs on my progress here anway, these should be set to render as soon as i fix all my screwed up textures and lighting stuff.

slowly but surely. next stop, reanimating all the crap i lost over break. and then light exploding. and then fights. and then talking. and then...

how many days are left?

son of a bitch.

out.

"he’s a wizard with uncanny powers, but this guy is so evil, as soon as he came out of the womb, he put a scar on his own forehead."

2008-02-02T20:44:00.000-05:00

well,

some frames.

about 95% done on setting these shots up. still have to tweak some things to speed up my render times.

hopefully ill have this and several other shots all set up to begin rendering out sequences this week.

word.

"the boys have to admit, this creature posing as a humanoid has some chops, definitely some chops, indeed. "

2008-01-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

so, slowly but surely, progress. i guess.

this is a test image of the o.r. for the flashbacks in the opening. you can which shots this is used for as they are so subtely designated with 'shot missing' in the animation post below. still have to add the people and animate them...but its a step.

also still have to animate some nice heart monitor-ish stuff for those 2 blank screens.

now, i really really need to animate. a shit load. so look for that soon i hope.

buckets.

-shayne

“holy balls. i’m not doing that,” he thinks. “willikers.”

2008-01-14T19:18:00.000-05:00

so the deal is, my hardrive decided on christmas eve to completely fry. yep. merry fucking christmas. goodnews is i had a backup of my thesis. bad news, it was a week old. so i lost a chunk of finals week work. so yeah, that was awesome. but onward and upward. or whatever.

this is the opening sequence at about 85-90 percent animation. im trying to get this together before moving on so i can start rendering (and soundtracking) this while working on other parts. so any feedback as to what works and doesnt in this part would be sweet.

i have since changed my story to be more realistic for my time frame. sadly, merlyn is no longer appearing. arthur will never actually meet mordred, but will still be the guy behind all those cool monitors which i have yet to build.

...yeah.

its gonna be a busy 2 months.

-shayne

"the scene is so beautiful. the landscape is literally peppered with painters working out masterpiece after masterpiece."

2007-12-17T05:10:00.000-05:00

though unrelated to thesis, figured i would post this. cause i like the attention. my final project for lighting and rendering. pretty pleased. top one was all mental ray (and not the will frazier "im an ass hole and i love to press just one button and have my thesis look money because i don't know what i'm doing. also I like boys" easy render button. its under the mental ray tab, trust me. look around. you'll find it.) , bottom one was software (plus the obligatory occlusion pass. man, is occlusions sweet.)

so thats the end of the semester. so much work left to do by march, but not this week. this week is vacation. and is going to be completely maya free.

really.

no maya.

i swear.

later.

“follow them, harry,” says harry to himself. “follow them or die.”

2007-12-16T06:47:00.000-05:00

so here is the magic from a program named after another wizardly harry.

so, yeah, totally not finished. i had to get it ready for my houdini final. the smoke, fire, and water are all out of houdini. for a first time user, i can live with it. in reality all 3 will be rerendered by the time the shot is "ready" in spring. Smoke could use more plumes/particles. water could use some smaller waves with less noise in the distance. fire could use not to look like ass. but whatever.

Also the foreground will be animated with some sweet breathing and coughing animation. woot.

all in all, i think fair progress.

especially since the shot will just get filtered like f*ck in some sort of "FLASHBACK!" way and will be on the screen for most likely half this time.

word.

one more project to go...

"this is between you, me, and the little patty mcgrossout, ok, hp?"

2007-12-10T06:21:00.000-05:00

so, completely un-thesis related but still having a need to be shown and responded to, i had to design a personal business card and a label for a dvd reel. granted, could you not tell this from the picture below, i would have completely failed in these presented endeavors.

let me know what you think.

"sweet mustache! wilikers! harry watches kids breaking their nose cartilage on the window panes of broom stores. this is heaven."

2007-12-10T02:16:00.000-05:00

well. here it is. my first test rendered scene. still a work in progress. looks a little washed out and just...not right yet. we'll see. but i mean, its something.

go america.

"wands, magic sands, one turkish massage owl… where can i ever obtain such obscurities?"

2007-12-08T22:57:00.001-05:00

muuurdaaah!

yeah. anyway. once in hd. and in motion. pretty pleased with the progression. i only wish i had more ram; mental ray errors are shitty.

providing no serious problems, should have a rendered shot (just one) in two days.

later.

“well, ‘just harry’, i imagine that lions are just lions, and gods are just gods.

2007-12-03T06:32:00.000-05:00

also, forgot to mention that i have decided to drop the toon lines. i like them...but i dont. i'll probably switch back and forth 100 times, but for now, consider them 86ed. also, here is an update on the caina...hopefully all goes well and i can have it rendered in motion with some animated characters...if i can ever get them to look good.

yes, i could have just amended the post i made 20 minutes ago, but this was a different topic. also, im looking for any reason i can find to look at wizard people dear reader quotes.

a victory for upfish!

out.

i must make my move in this masking of a snowstorm and i will take one letter into my room and whisper it to my horses and see what they think.

2007-12-03T05:52:00.000-05:00

oh dear reader, behold, the magic of houdini.

alright, so anybody with an eye for 3d can see that the fire and smoke aren't reflecting and the flame is pretty dull and blah blah but for my first render out of houdini, i think its pretty sweet. i photoshop-ed a quick sketch of a sky and foreground to show what the shot is more or less supposed to be (those each to come later from matte painting/maya), but the ocean, ship, fire, and smoke are all straight out houdini. plus they all animate. so, all in all, i think alright.

this is a test of dyamics to make light bulbs explode. its only the "glass" part now, will have all the nice sparks and such and you know... a background, but i think it more or less works. something is a bit off, but nothing a change in the gravitational acceleration constant wont fix. mmmhh. yes. take that, physics.

cant wait to escape this.

out.

it is a cake, handmade no less, with love, by a warrior of the wind.

2007-11-28T14:31:00.000-05:00

alright, time for some look development stuff. below is a render at about 45 percent of how bad ass i want him to look. its definitely a work in progress, but i'm liking the progression toward a really dark and gritty style. plus, it hides stuff i cant do. fuck you, sub surface scattering.

also, there is a line test in motion for the doubters and nay sayers. I think it looks pretty cool. combined with everything else should work nicely.

go america.

"he is indeed a mean little puke who is borderline retarded and must shout moistly every stupid sentence he manages to piece together."

2007-11-20T08:28:00.000-05:00

An update.

Go America.

harry produces many a wine-out-of-nowhere spell, and is drunk every day before noon

2007-10-25T03:50:00.000-04:00

dear blog,

its me, shayne.
its been a while i know.
i used to keep diligent tabs of my thesis progress on you,
but lately, i haven't even come to you to complain about how slow it goes.
i'm sorry blog.
you deserve better.
i'll change, i swear.
i'll come here at least twice a week and let you know whats going on.
cause you are my favorite blog.
my only blog.

<3 shayne

...anyway

been really busy on ...everything. reworked my mordred model and re-rigged the muscles. also fixed a lovely hip spinning problem i only discovered as i animated him walking backwards. all better now. im almost done with his facial rig too.

i have first passed animated about 30 seconds almost, bringing some of the shots a little past that first pass even. I will hope to have that posted here in the next day or 2.

i spent a day teaching myself sub surface scattering and then decided that realism just isn't gonna do it for me. my models aren't totally anatomical or realistic and its just not as interesting unless its textured and lit perfectly. and it wont be.

so i started playing around with some weird ramp shaders and post processing the frames alot. not going to toon shade by any means, but i can use them to get some really expressive colors and shadows. considering my concept sketch above had my main character bright blue, it might be more to my liking when its done.

again, hopefully, something to show in the near future. just gonna make some more blendshapes tonight.

out.

the sweet wizard in remission is psychically linked with the beautiful snake; having dreamt himself of eating leopards, boars, and dik diks.

2007-10-09T01:25:00.000-04:00

some frames i had to render for my thesis class as a lighting exercise. but i threw the guard
character in there so i figured i would then throw them up here. i like the light glow and i think i am going to use that as some reference for when i finally render my own scenes.

word.

i'm broke, hagar. what do i do? hagar happily extends a finger at the goblin bank of wobble columns...

2007-10-08T05:20:00.000-04:00

so i decided to go ahead and start modeling an environment. still in its bare bones but i'm liking it. nurbs are my new best friend. there are a few too many curves and frills and what not currently, slowing it down at render time, but after some tessellation tweaks and another few days of modeling, i should have an eerie industrial cathedral going.

or i could just have a mess of lofted nonsense.

but im hoping for the first.

the family porkums is hit palpably with shame. yes harry, do laugh on. laugh right in their unthinkable faces.

2007-10-04T05:43:00.000-04:00

so, what do you know, i finally got my guard character modeled and rigged. im sure i'll have to revisit it a few times before its really done, but its ready to start animating, and thats all that matters.

harry must repress his urges of igniting in a demonstrative fireball, ending the lives of these three little pigs; but our wolf remains cool.

2007-10-03T02:06:00.000-04:00

alright, here i am to finally make good on my word.
above is my previz. below are my excuses...

the music is a temp track by brand new. most likely will be re-scored. some continuity errors exist (ie. his position and blood in the light bulb rack focus shot) but that is because i re-cut this from an earlier version and did not re-render every shot. i think it still gets the action across.

my story is an adaptation using classic characters from the arthurian legend, but set in a future world where old merges with new. the knights are part robotic, the hero is bionic, and the castle itself is an old cathedral consumed by industrial debris. sketches and concept art and 3d to follow.

so the first scene is the boy arthur (white) talking to merlyn (green). the dialogue is taken directly from t.h.white's the once and future king. it shows all this promise and good intention of the boy before he becomes polluted by all the faults absolute power tends to bring. awww, right?

flashforward

we meet mordred (blue), in the legend the bastard son of king arthur. here he is our hero, the unwilling product of his environment, trapped in the basement of the castle. his blood relation to the king in this story is absent, and not even that important. he's just supposed to be a captured and betrayed everyman.

so mordred wakes up, not sure where he is. the experiments performed on him cause him to lapse into headaches and flashbacks. he finally clears his thoughts and realizes that the doors to the prison cell are open.
he looks around to find two dead guards (orange) and blood on his own hands. he takes off down the hall.

he encounters logres guards in the caina. (logres being the term used to refer to arthur's kingdom historically and caina being one of the lowest regions of hell reserved for blood traitors....oooooohhhhhh snap. here its just an elevator lobby)
they are chopped up fragments of men who have been all but taken by arthur's projects.

mordred fights them in the dark. kills 'em. cause he has like...extra...bionic power...stuff.

he takes the elevator and ascends to the throne room.

he encounters the king arthur. i should also explain at this point that merlyn is now trapped by arthur and chained to the wall next to his throne. so mordred and arthur exchange dialogue that wont ever compare to t.h.white's but to paraphrase:

"i made you"
"i didn't want it"
"you stabbed me"
"yeah, i'll do what i want now"

mordred leaves. arthur enacts mordred's circuits "lysine contingency" plan as he's dying.

merlyn, as a ghost-floaty thing, appears infront of mordred. mordred dies.

so yeah, there are alot of things going on in there that i doubt will get picked up at all in the final production...or even should be. tried to kind of make it have some meaning but if you preface a project with a "what i was trying to do here" i feel like you have failed already. so i mean, if worse comes to worst, i'll still have sci-fi-violence and guns.

go america.

harry totally loses it and frags roastbeefy good with a glass be gone spell. waoosh!!

2007-09-23T05:05:00.000-04:00

feeling pretty "fragged" at this point. been pouring entirely too much time into modeling the guard (or knight) character.

body armor. greek helmets. robot legs. robot arms. just freaking awful.

but it is looking fairly sweet at this point so i'll toil on.

i got a little animation done. first passes for the next 2 shots in the opening escape sequence. i realize anyone not already acquainted with my previs doesn't really know what i'm talking about. i guess i should make good on my first post and explain everything.

...tomorrow. its 5 am. f-that. hard.
out.

hurah,a victory for upfish!

2007-09-18T03:39:00.000-04:00

so i went for it and put down my first keyframes for my thesis.
woot. woot.

its only a blocked out first pass but i think it will work pretty well. once i fix the model and give him some face controls, should be pretty rockin. there are also cut away flash back shots to go inbetween each of theses, so if you are a stickler for continuity, hold your tongue until later.

only 70-ish more to go....

also started modeling the guard...but thats for another time.

but lo ho ho dear reader...

2007-09-15T02:55:00.000-04:00

so i caved and decided i couldn't wait to do an anim-test of those jiggly muscles.
and im pretty pleased.
the model still needs weights painted, especially around the elbows and shoulers, and has no facial rigging yet, and will eventually be rendered with a displacement map/texture that makes him look more human and less like a crappy doll.

excuse me, action figure.

plus, its a little too jiggly especially in the pecs but i think as a proof of concept it serves its purpose. it adds some nice extra impact motion.

...his face....is the worst...

2007-09-15T01:30:00.000-04:00

alright, like anything else, i am going to forget to diligently update this cause i get sidetracked. but ill do my best.

first order of business will be to upload my previz once i do some more editing (3:30 is just asking for trouble. gonna shoot to have it safely under 3 minutes, ideally 2:45-ish.) you can expect that within the next day or so. i know, the wait is painful. just hold on a little longer.

spent today at framestore animating a charmin bear test until i felt kind of awful and headed home. hopefully i can find time to go back cause the project looks pretty sweet.

so far this week i've gotten my main character ready to start key-posing; complete with some dynamically jiggly muscles in his upper body. woot. i'll try to have a test clip of him up soon. plus i developed a script to make a camera rig with hand held motion noise. bourne style.

im going to begin to work on the guard character's model tonight. hopefully can knock that off this weekend.

check back often and set me straight.

out.

a book on tape. chapter one.

2007-09-12T20:40:00.000-04:00

alright. i have a blog. i guess i'm that guy now.

in my own defense, i have only agreed to do this to document progress as i work on my senior thesis project. we are required to keep a production journal all year. with my ability to be easily sidetracked by internet fads, combined with my hatred of marble notebooks, i figured a blog would be a nice way to ensure i actually keep track of everything. plus a notebook would be a little harder to post a playblast in.

for those unfamiliar with the thesis, i will familiarize you in the near future, and then some. if you are taking a look around, make yourself useful and tell me what you think. i will at least pretend to listen. honest.

thanks.

or not.