DES307: November 2012

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Animating In 3D Studio Max

Week 7 is by the far the best fun we have ever had in 3D Studio Max. It was called Randomness Week and basically it was animating shapes within 3D Max.


This is an Image of My Blood Cells, we created

This video is of the animation I created with Blood Cells

After creating the blood cells we started to have some fun with the messing around with snow on 3D Max.

Max File Of Creating Snow

Image of Snow

This is a short video clip of my snow scene, recorded using 3D Studio Max

3D Max Modelling

Head Modelling

Leg Modelling

Octopus Legs

Rendered Version of Veepees

Further Polymer Clay Modelling


Facial Detail

Body Detail

Ear Detail

Leg Modelling

Detail as it is now...

My influence came from Ursula as she is the villain in The Little Mermaid created by Disney and personally I'm like a big kid and love Disney. I like the idea of keeping the character of Veepees as light as possible but still portray a villainous streak.

"Ursula is based on the "sea witch" character in Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Little Mermaid". In the original story, the sea witch is a neutral enabler, but for Disney's animated adaptation, the character was modified into a full-fledged antagonist and plays a larger role in the overall story. Ursula is a cecaelian sea witch who "helps" unfortunate merfolk to achieve her own goals. Her appearance is of an obese purple-skinned, white-haired female human and from the waist down has black tentacles."

Disney Wikia. [Online Article] Ursula. Available at: <http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Ursula> [Accessed November 11th 2012]

I got many more influence from the basic shape of octopus legs, I also looked generally at Korean and Chinese culture. I noticed that with both cultures they like bold, solid colours but personally as I was trying to put across a villainous attribute I started to look at Hanna Barber's villains from my favourite cartoon Scooby Doo. I started to look at the underwater villain Captain Cutler from the show to get an idea of an underwater villain and also the colours of him.

"Captain Cutler's Ghost was the "ghost" of Captain Cutler who on one dark, foggy night collided with a yacht and followed his ship down to the ocean floor. After a while he began to haunt Rocky Point Beach and take his revenge to the yachts at the marina by making them disappear."

Scooby Doo Wikia. [Online Article] Captain Cutler. Available at: <http://scoobydoo.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost_of_Captain_Cutler> [Accessed November 11th 2012]

Week Four

Polymer Clay Modelling - what fun??

I will be completely honest with you, this is not for me. It was my first time ever using clay to create a model and to be honest it is something, I need to get used to.

Below is a few snapshots of what my clay model looks like.

Beginning of the Modelling

Body Modelling


Adding Arms


Eye Sockets

Body Modelling

Ears Added

Week Three

This week in 3D was a lecture about the importance of Emotive Design. Throughout the lecture the significance of portraying emotion through a character was reinforced throughout.

Form Follows Function??

We have heard that before right? But what if we considered,

Form Follows Emotion??

I mean emotion is a function within us right? As an inanimate or animate object can bring us joy, it doesn’t have to be much, but we still feel the function of joy.

So it makes sense to say that Form Follows Emotion.

Designers have moved from the Bauhaus

creed of form follows one function to one

where form follows function.

Grinyer C. 2001

Grinyer Clive, Smart Design: Products that have changed our lives, Rotovision SA, 2001.

Although in life we all feel that Attractive things work better!!

Don Norman, is an academic in the field of cognitive science, design and usability engineering: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman),

and he believes that design falls into 3 parts.

1. Visceral - The Aesthetics of a design

2. Behaviour - The pleasure and effectiveness of use.

3. Reflective - Self Image, personal satisfaction.

How do we, as humans relate to products??

There is 3 ways we think about Emotion and the Design in which follows emotion.

The Appealingness - The social attitude and positive intention
Its Praiseworthyness- Its social standard
Its Desireability - Fun qualities, attractiveness

Desmet and Hekkert (2002) say that there is a 4th way to consider Emotion and the Design. The fourth being Surprise as it is an element no one really considers.

( Desmet PMA, & Hekkert P, 'The basis of Product Emotions', Delft University of Technology Department of Industrial Design. In: W. Green and P. Jordan (Eds.), Pleasure with Products, beyond usabilty (60-68) 2002)

Ortony et al . 1988 believes that there is 3 main aspects in life in which people focus and which affects their decisions.

Events - Activities or experiences
Agents - Feelings towards active parties in an event
Objects - Interest in its attributes.

(Ortony, A, Clore, G.L, and Collins, A. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

Of course there is a lot more information to get on Emotive Design, but this is just a basic overview of many peoples opinions and ideas. I enjoyed the lecture as it opened up more ideas to help expand your ideas.

Friday, 9 November 2012

New Colour of Veepee's

This was the colour of Veepee's I decided to do after seeing some of the other people's work in class. I felt that I should put more work into defining his features, which I feel I did by added light and shade.

Week Two

This week, we were doing a random student roulette were basically, the lecturer picks a student at random to "show off" the artwork we have done over the past week. I guess the idea of random student roulette is to ensure that we are actually doing the work we were suppose to over the time given and not just the night before. Below you will find my basic colour of the character Veepees who was created by Tom Magee.

Basic General Colour of Veepees

In the 3DMax class we got to creating an alien head with Mark Cullen. Unfortunately this week my computer once again began to shut down causing me to fall behind and try and play catch up. Sadly my catch up made my little alien head look extremely alien as shown below.

Different Shapes and View of My Alien Head

Week One

After taking Introduction to 3D last year, going into second year I knew I wanted to continue down the route of 3D as I thoroughly enjoyed the class. I never for a second thought that 3D was going to be an easy class to take and after the first class this semester my thoughts were confirmed, though even though the class is hard I feel it is worth it as so far I am really enjoying it.

On the first class we received our tasks for the following 12 weeks, of class. The brief included two assessment in which we have to completed, the first within the first 6 weeks and the second in the last 6 weeks.

Brief one - Emotive Character Interpretation.

For this brief we are asked to pick one of six children's drawing, and turn it into a more realistic character using Photoshop or Sketchbook Pro. For some help and for a better understanding of what is expected of us we were told to have a look at Dave Devries website, The Monster Engine <http://www.themonsterengine.com/>. On this site we were able to see his interpretation of children's drawings and what he has done using one of the sites to create a character.

3D Class in the afternoon

The other half of 3D is of course 3DMax, last year I found it difficult but the more you practice the better you become at it. Unfortunately over the summer I will admit I slacked off a bit so forgot most things related to 3DMax. Therefore the first class with 3DMax was a bit intense.

Our first task was to design a human leg on 3DMax, this was a difficult task to complete due to the fact that the computers in the room at times decides to shut down every once in a while. After battling through all the shut downs and playing catch up, I completed my human leg.