Fantasy Sport

Recently, I have been developing my environment in After Effects for my Hover Tennis Olympic Sport, I have gone for a futuristic tennis court with neon lines, which hovers. I have simply then created a clubhouse and spectator stands matching the colours of each player. I have also included a tree and planets for an extra scenery effect. 


I have still yet to include a scoreboard, referee, and alien spectators to further develop the futuristic aspect to the advert. I will then animate it and render it out, I hope to have this all done by the end of the weekend. 

Project 2: Fantasy Sport Test 1

This image below is a quick test of me putting the different 2D images I have produced to produce a 3D world. I decided to go for a futuristic neon glow for my idea 'Hovering Tennis' played within a bubble in space. This image is to give you a sense of what my idea is, however I have a long way to go before this will be complete... I have to add crowds, tennis rackets, balls, hover boards, referee, planets and the bubble before I can even animate so I best get cracking... feedback please? 

Project 2: Fantasy Sport Characters

After a lot of development and sketches which I will upload shortly I have finally design both my characters that will be the face of my olympic sport. The sport however I am still trying to identify exactly what sport I want to do but the characters will fit nicely into the sport. At the moment I am thinking of something along the line of hover tennis or hover lacrosse, or hover basketball but I am not sure of which one I want to pursue. I hope you like my characters, any feedback would be amazing!

The Chess Player: 500 Word Evaluation

The first project I was set this term was to produce a short animation that was at least thirty seconds where a conflicted self-defeating chess playing machine takes place.


At first this project seemed extremely daunting as I felt that I lacked the skills that were required to produce such an animation but over the last six weeks, I have learnt about hierarchy, environmental design e.g. lighting and texturing, as well as the importance of camera angles and sound. It took me a while to get to grips with the rigging of the robotic arm so that it worked exactly like a human arm but after a number of attempts I vastly improved and managed to produce a simple arm with three different types of joints. I included eyes on both my characters as I felt it gave them more of a carton feel and directed the audience’s attention to certain parts within the animation and it gave it a humorous feel. I found the actual modeling of the arm quite simple to put together, using the different tools within 3DS Max allowed me to recreate the arm in 3D to the one I designed on paper.


The next stage of producing my animation was to model the chess pieces. All I knew before was to model them using the ‘Lathe’ tool but after a lecture on modeling I had a better understanding of a new and more advanced technique to produce higher quality pieces, which in the end improved my overall outcome dramatically. I also included eyes on my horses to continue the sense of humor and their own personality.


Another vital part to my animation was the environment. For my animation I wanted to keep it quite simple so that all the attention was focused on the board and the characters, therefore I used an Omni light to act like a spotlight over the game. The texturing I used was to have a classic look for the board and pieces, so therefore I used a marble and polished concrete bitmap to obtain this effect which I believe worked well. As for the arms, I gave one a rusty bitmap with red eyes to represent old and evil and the other a shiny metal bitmap with blue eyes to represent new and good. Both of which I would say are clearly evident for the audiences perspective. I used a number of camera angles, including panning, close-ups and still improved the quality of the animation further and keeps the audiences interested. For the sound I didn’t use much as I felt it was not necessary throughout the animation, however I did include a few which I think enhanced the storyline.


Overall, my skills have improved greatly over the last six weeks and I am exceptionally pleased with the final outcome. I feel the storyline is obvious to the audiences as well as having a comedy twist. I have learnt many things from hierarchy and rigging to modeling and lighting. All of these are vital for the vocation I wish to follow in animated films and advertising as these projects allowed me to gain a better understanding of character and environment design all of which will be relevant for my future career.

The Chess Player - Final Version

Here is my final version of my animation for the project. 'The Chess Player', Enjoy!

The Chess Player: First Render

This is my first render for 'The Chess Player'. I need to add sound and make a few edits in Adobe Premiere Pro until this project is complete, I am not far off though. I hope you get the concept, any feedback would be fantastic!

Animated Robot Arm Test

I have added eyes to my robot arm to give it more character. Here is a quick animation I did to get an idea of what the eyes look like and to get a feel on how to animate the arm. There are a few issues I believe, one of which is I need to produce a smoother animation and the other is the light reflecting from the eyes. Take a look and see what you think, any feedback would be fantastic.