Sunday, February 21, 2016

Text and Image - Banksy

Schedule - 2/15-2/19

Monday 2/15 - No school
Tuesday 2/16 - No school
Wednesday 2/17 - Colored Character Creation
Thursday 2/18 - Banksy and Illustrator
Friday 2/19 - Illustrator (Line art)

Monday, February 15, 2016

Schedule - 2/8-2/12

Monday 2/8 - Character Creation
Tuesday 2/9 - Presentation on Image and Text
Wednesday 2/10 - Video on Banksy
Thursday 2/11 - Video on Banksy
Friday 2/12 - Video and character creation

Presentation Reflection #2

Friday, February 5, 2016

Schedule - 2/1-2/5

Monday 2/1 - Finished second portfolio checkpoint presentations
Tuesday 2/2 - Presentation on Hybridity
Wednesday 2/3 - Finished Hybridity presentation
Thursday 2/4 - Character Creation dabbling
Friday 2/5 - Hybridity artist research and more character creation

Monday, February 1, 2016

Star Wars: The Force Awakens and CGI

Teaser2027
So I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens quite a while ago and all this hype about the "R2D2 replacement," BB-8, made me curious as to how the droid was created. I figured BB-8 was animated or CGI and it turns out it's neither. BB-8 was created the usual--a sketch on a page--and then animatronic designers actually made BB-8. Not a legit machine though, a puppet where only the strings and puppeteers were edited out. I was very shocked to say the least; I really want to watch it again right now to look at the droid with a new light. Anyways, then I got to wondering what else on the screen was "real" or "fake." And as it turns out, only 28 shots  (a total of 357 scenes) are CGI.
Star Wars Force Awakens Falcon
WHAT?!

This got me really intrigued. Why would they do it that way in a digital world? Turns out due to the overwhelming amount of CGI visual effects used in Star Wars prequel and fan complaining, Lucasfilm and J.J. Abrams decided on authentic, real, practical effects for this movie. As a fan and a nerd, how did I now know of this?! Besides the space scenes, flying ships, and a couple characters (entire list here), the majority of the movie is using practical effects (the actors aren't surrounded by green screens). Here I had decided on researching BB-8 because of my interest in character animation digitally, and it turns out the droid isn't animated at all. However, the same thought process still went into puppeting the droid--BB-8 still had defining characteristic actions to create personality and his movements mapped out exactly--it's just interesting to think that in a technology-driven world, this wasn't a product of digital art.