I discovered this work by Preston Blair, Basic Phonemes shows in detail the realistic mouth movements. This will help me a great deal when animating my characters talking.

Animating speech can be one of the most difficult tasks in animation; the process of matching the mouth-movements of your animation to the phonemes of your audio track is most commonly known as lip-syncing. For a quick fix, it's no problem to just animate the mouth opening and closing, and it's a simple shortcut, especially when animating for the web. But if you want to add actual expression and realistic mouth-movements, it helps to study how the shape of the mouth changes with each sound. There are dozens upon dozens of variations, but my sketches are renderings from the basic ten shapes of the Preston Blair phoneme series. (They're also an example of what happens when Adri dashes off ten-minute sketches from memory rather than detailed artwork.)

These ten basic phoneme shapes can match almost any sound of speech, in varying degrees of expression--and with the in-between frames moving from one to the other, are remarkably accurate.

You may want to keep this for reference.
A and I: For the A and I vowel sounds, the lips are generally pulled a bit wider, teeth open, tongue visible and flat against the floor of the mouth.

E: The E phoneme is similar to the A and I, but the lips are stretched a bit wider, the corners uplifted more, and the mouth and teeth closed a bit more.

U: For the U sound, the lips are pursed outwards, drawn into a pucker but still somewhat open; the teeth open, and the tongue somewhat lifted.

O: Again the mouth is drawn to a pucker, but the lips don't purse outwards, and the mouth is rounder, the tongue flat against the floor of the mouth.

C, D, G, K, N, R, S, Th, Y, and Z: Long list, wasn't it? This configuration pretty much covers all the major hard consonants: lips mostly closed, stretched wide, teeth closed or nearly closed.

F and V: Mouth at about standard width, but teeth pressed down into the lower lip. At times there can be variations closer to the D/Th configuration.

L: The mouth is open and stretched apart much like the A/I configuration, but

M, B, and P: These sounds are made with the lips pressed together; it's the duration that matters. "M" is a long hold, "mmm"; "B" is a shorter hold then part, almost a "buh" sound; P is a quick hold, puff of air.

W and Q: These two sounds purse the mouth the most, almost closing it over the teeth, with just the bottoms of the upper teeth visible, sometimes not even that. Think of a "rosebud mouth".

Rest Position: Think of this as the "slack" position, when the mouth is at rest--only with the thread of drool distinctly absent.

When you're drawing or modeling your animation, by listening to each word and the syllable combinations inherent you can usually break them down into a variation of these ten phoneme sets. Note that my drawings aren't perfectly symmetrical; that wasn't just shoddy sketching. No two people express themselves in an identical fashion, and each has individual facial quirks that make their speech and expressions asymmetrical.

I wanted to see how other people animate mouth movement and talking this animation uses a simple method. This would be the quickest and easiest way for me to make my characters talk as the movements aren't particularly realistic.

Music video animation

This isn't the original music-video to 'Yellow' by coldplay, i couldn't find the release date and to be honest i have no idea whether or not this movie is legit but i do know that it works well with the song and would be easily made in flash. i like the clean cut style of animation and plan to create a similar style when developing my short animation.

Flash animation

Doesn't it seem like the simplist ideas are often the most effective. When i deceided to create my animation in flash i thought i best start researching what other have made using the program. This was the first animation i came across on youtube, i had actually seen this originally about a year and half ago and was still impressed with this idea when stumbled upon this the other day.

2020 Holographic advertisement

Here is my final piece for the 2020 brief, it shows a 3D holographic projection of a car emerging out of a television screen. I took a picture of the TV screen however the picture of the mustang was taken from infinitee-designs.com and was created by Ralph Manis in 2004 and the image in the background was taken from deviant art entitled, 'On the road of life,' by Mashuto. I manipulated the images to portray the idea that the mustang was created using a 3D holographic projector. Had this brief been worth more credits i would have created all the imagery myself, however i didn't want to cut myself short and end up rushing to get the brief finished besides i feel this imagery portrays the concept perfectly... Thank god for image manipulation!!

2020 The step by step production

First i took the image of the Mustang and cut around it using the lasso
tool, i then deleted the background and smoothed the edges.

Overlaying the Mustang over the image of the road i scaled it to
proportion, after doing this i burned the road to add shade and blend
the road around the car.

Taking the photograph of the TV, i cut out the screen and smoothed off
the edges.

By layering the road image behind this photograph and placing the
Mustang image above it, my idea was beginning to take shape.

2020 The step by step production part 2

By creating a lighter layer around the part of the car that
would be made up by the holographic projection it made the
holograph look more realistic.

Adding a black border around the majority of the photograph of
the TV placed the main focal point of the image in the center,
towards what is actually being advertised.

I placed the main text at the top of the image, the name of the
product; 3DCQ (3-Dimensional cinema quality) holographic projector.

Finally at the bottom of the image i put a bit more information
about the product so potential customers would know what it is.

2020 Creating Imagery

I needed a screen to put my finished artwork on so as i develop the art i decided to ask one of my friends if i could take some pictures of his 42" HD plasma TV. Here's one of the best of the bunch, a likely candidate.

Animation; an introduction in maya

Today we had our first session in maya. Unfortunately my knowledge of maya is rather limited therefore i have decided that it's not the right program to use for this brief as my idea for this animation would be best created using either stop motion or by creating it in photoshop and image ready. However i do plan to spend my spare time learning some simple aspects of maya as i understand that it is a vital program to be learned in terms of 3D animation.

2020 Using other peoples artwork

After realizing that i had only a couple of weeks left to finish the 2020 brief i decided i had to get creating some imagery. Unfortunately i was running out of time fast so i figured the quickest and most affective way of communicating my concept is through image manipulation. I searched through thousands of images until i found to i could manipulate. The picture of the mustang was taken from infinitee-designs.com and was created by Ralph Manis in 2004 and the image in the background was taken from deviant art entitled, 'On the road of life,' by Mashuto. I plan to take these images and manipulate them to create my advertisement for a 3D holographic projector.

Digital culture and emerging technology 2020

After reconsidering my original idea i decided that it is too late in the day to begin researching a different technology to advertise. I have already got a large body of research therefore it would be pointless looking at other forms of emerging technology. This is the reason i have stuck with my original idea, i have decided to put the main focus of the project on the home entertainment side of holographic imagery and how i think they might interact with 3DTV's in the year 2020.

Digital culture and emerging technology 2020

In light of recent research into my original idea of creating a poster to advertise the release of 3DTV and holographic film, i have decided to reconsider the emerging technology i plan to promote. It appears that this technology is less than a decade away in terms of coming into production, in fact i believe that with the release of the Philips WOWvx 3D Display (2008), will be the beginning of the mass development of this technology. So in reality it would pointless designing a poster advertising a technology which has been around for over a decade. The only difficulties i think 3D displays will have in the early years are a lack of designers able to create moving imagery for films, games and eventually TV, however i believe this is a problem that will be overcome by the year 2020.

Extra carricula activity

You may remember that a couple of months ago i was spending some of my spare time creating a CD cover for a local band, well here's the finished product. Let me know what you think.

Minilogue/hitchhikers choice - short version (Longer on DVD

This style of animation really impressed me when i first saw it. Looking at it now its obvious to me that this is stop motion, most probably drawn on a white board this would make it quicker and smoother to edit.
It is clear to see that someone has spent a lot of time on this. I plan to do something similar by using cut out card with an over hanging camera, i'm sure it won't be anywhere near this long.

Illustrator

The class had an introduction into the basics of illustrator this morning, i missed about a third of the session as i had to give a talk to the second year of ND Graphics about why digital media is a good decision for higher education. Fortunately much of the session was covering skills i had previously acquired so i didn't miss out on much. After break there were some server problems and the files we were using became unworkable, never the less here is a vector image of a duck i produced.
























The beauty of vector images is that they will never become pixelated unlike bitmap images and this image is only 16kb (very small in comparison.)

Cheoptics360 show Holographic Ads

This is the sort of thing i had in mind when i thought of computer generated three dimensional motion imagery, although when i thought of this i had no idea it had already been created... just imagine where holographic imagery will be in twelve years time... is it really worth thinking about?

Holographic Magic

This is the sort of 3D screen that would be more likely to be used by proffessionals, as appose to home entertainment ie mechanics, doctors, architects as it would give them an idea of whats goin on inside, i think the only problem with technology such as this is a lack of designers able to create the graphics to support it. Nice one brova!!

Animation

Unfortunately I missed yesterdays session due to illness.... Not to worry; i did a course in graphic design last year and one of the modules was in stop motion animation. To show i have an understanding of how it works, here's one i made earlier;

Philips WOWvx 3D Display - The future is here!!

When i set out to advertise 3D TV for the 2020 brief, i would have never of thought the first generation of home entertainment screens would be in the shops within the year 2008, i must admit i did have something a bit more sci-fi in mind. Anyway here's the specification i took from www.dimensionalstudios.com;

3D Intelligent Dual-Mode Display
Philips 3D Solutions offers a 42" autostereoscopic 3D display family, for professional applications, that provide today's best 3D viewing experiences by using WOWvx technologies. The slanted multi-view lenticular lens technology affords full brightness and full contrast and allows multiple users to view 3D content at the same time, within a large comfort zone. Moreover a true colour representation is ensured by the lenticular lens technology.



The display is based on a high definition panel and thus enables great picture quality in 2D and 3D mode. Integrated advanced display signal-processing offers content creators and end-users full control over the quality and depth-effect characteristics of the picture. Furthermore, a flexible 3D data format, in the form of 2D-plus-depth, allows easy creation or adaptation of applications and content for the display.

The 42-3D6W01 WOW type includes a news lens design based to enable even more exciting out-of-screen experiences.

3D System Solution
The displays can be applied in a broad range of applications, since it can be operated in both 2D and 3D mode. The system solution is designed for maximum reuse of content/concepts from the 2D world. The key enabler for this is the flexible 2D-plus-depth format, that allows decoupling of content creation and content visualisation. This allows applications where different 3D display screen sizes and designs can be applied in the same system. The 3D display selects the best way to visualise the 3D content.

3D Content Visualisation
The 2D-plus-depth format is compatible with existing compression tools, where the additional bandwidth of the depth is small. The 3DS Media Player is provided with a 3D display to show the 3D content. The actual 3D content can be created via a plug-in available for popular 3D animation software packages, that allows existing and new content to be exported in this format.

There are many Digital Signage or Narrow casting software solutions in which the 3DS Media Player can be integrated easily. However, for smaller system the 3DS Media Sequencer available offers a way to create XML based play lists that can be supported with an HTML based user interface design for infotainment applications.

In addition to real-time and offline content creation tools, are are also many applications that operate on a 3D dataset. Most of these applications, such as games, design, etc, use the OpenGL or DirectX API. The OpenGL WOWvx Visualiser and OpenGL WOWvx Control support real-time extraction and useage of the depth information and thus real-time visualisation on the 3D Display.

Price: £7,325.00 (GBP)
Order yours through me if you like..
i promise i won't leave the country.

Communication Design for Print and Digital Media

We received our second brief for this module today. Basically we need to design a double page spread for a magazine and a HTML/CSS based Mini Website looking at a hobby or personal interest. This will be created using a variety of digital media and print based processes.

Course Elective

In my course elective i set my first choice as the music technology and recording techniques. I still have no news on whether or not my request was successful, regardless i am looking forward to starting the course as it will improve my knowledge of producing, recording and mastering.

SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival

Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Gorillaz Hologram MTV Awards - Created by Musion Eyeliner

Whilst trwalling youtube for interesting videos i stumbled across this holographic display made for Gorillaz at the MTV music awards in Lisbon. I was most impressed as this was the sort of thing that i first imagined when i decided to do my 2020 brief on three TV, cinematics and holographic display.

Digital culture and technologies - 2020; 3D TV 'could be as little as three years away'

My original idea for this brief is to create a poster advertising the release of the first 3Dimensional moving image or Holographic Display. I wanted to see if this was a feasible idea to develop, my initial research makes this project look promising;

3D TV 'could be three years away'
Wearing 3D glasses may be a thing of the past
3D television could be in homes within three years, according to a European research consortium.

Levent Onural, co-ordinator of the multinational 3DTV network, said the technology was already in place for 3D TV and cinema to become commonplace.

The consortium, funded by the European Commission, consists of about 200 researchers in seven countries, and is halfway through its four-year duration.

However, Prof Onural said holographic television was at least 10 years away.


We think that there will be huge interest from the movie-goers
Levent Onural, 3DTV consortium

He said: "We do think holographic 3D TV is feasible, but the technology is not in place yet.

"If you ask my opinion, it will take another 10 years to get there, but some say it will take 14 to 20 years."

However, he said that it would offer the "ultimate viewing experience".

"For example, take a football game. Viewers would be able to look at a TV that will be like a coffee table and see small-scale real football players made up from light running around on that table."

Lower-end technologies

The research consortium is looking into all aspects of 3D technology, such as capturing 3D motion scenes, computerised representation, transmission and display.

Professor Onural, who is based at Bilkent University, Turkey, said: "Lower-end technologies, such as stereoscopic 3D (a method of displaying an image that gives the impression of depth) will be commonplace in homes and cinemas in about three years."

He said the technology had been present for many years, but recent advances would mean the motion sickness that has made 3D films an unpleasant viewing experience in the past could be reduced.

The research consortium has also developed and tested 3D stereoscopic displays where the viewer can look at 3D images without special glasses.

Professor Onural said: "With stereoscopic cinema, we think that there will be huge interest from the movie-goers, and we think it will be available in regular movie houses in three years.

"We think that some people might want to purchase 3D television sets for home viewing. "

However, he admitted that he did not "yet know how the consumers will behave and what the commercial success of that project will be".

This extract was take from the BBC News Website

Alien Song

This is a good example of weight through animation, the way the character portrays emotion through body language is spot on. The movement helps the viewer sympathise with the alien character at the end in terms of dramatic irony. If the character was more realistically rendered then this would be more believable, having said that all the movements in this are human like with a finish which suits the style of animation.

Digital Animation - Newton's Cradle

Adding to the weight theme practiced in last weeks session we were required to create a "Newton's Cradle" to demonstrate an understanding of weight movement within animation... Here's my first attempt;

Evaluation for Design Communication

In general this piece sums up my hobbies, interests and a small amount of biographical information, therefore I would say it meets the requirements of the brief. I used a good range of imagery, three of the images I used I took myself and the other three I downloaded from the Internet. I expressed concern in my rationale about using imagery from the Internet as they are of a low resolution, however in the end it was some of the images I took myself which let the whole thing down. One image (the club scene) I took using a digital SLR so this is good quality image but the decks and plughole were taken with a point and shoot camera so unfortunately they’re not to my satisfaction.

I decided to go less political than first anticipated with the word “Capitalist” scribbled across the globe in a type face which is not that legible, this shows that this part of me is quite hidden yet still exists. The biographical information I included refers to the left of the image with my star sign logo, “Capricorn” and the symbol of my Zodiac sign, which is the earth dragon. I didn’t mention this in my rationale but I find myself often reading my star sign even though I wouldn’t think of myself as superstitious I decided it would be a good idea to include it in my design.

If I had the chance to do this again I would have taken better quality images and made more use of the negative space. I liked what my classmates had to say about my work and I agree with their light criticism. I must say in reply to one of the comments, I would have used some more professional turntables but these are what I use and I believe it’s not always what you use but how you use it.

Flick Book Animation

I made this short animation in a flick book in the previous session, earlier today i scanned it into photoshop and put it together by cutting each individual page out, put them in the same document on separate layers. Then, using the animation tool under window i spaced them out along a time line before the trial and error process of timing the frames.

Non-Carricula Design

Ive been spending a lot of my spare time recently designing a CD cover for a small local band, this is just a prototype as they will only be using this initially to send to producers and record labels. The way this design works is to fold into three, the middle being the front, printed on a card CD cover (like an old vinyl album) as appose to the contemporary plastic CD case with a fold out sleeve. In a way i do kind of regret creating a design like this as it can only be fully appreciated when completely folded out. Never the less, there are many benefits to designing a CD cover this way, mainly financial and environmental.

Critical Studies

I had my first Critical Studies session this morning, unfortunately due to illness i could not attend last weeks session. I got a couple of briefs to start with, one of which (the image analysis essay) i posted last Friday after receiving the brief from one of my classmates. The other brief i was given is about creating a five minute power point presentation. I will have to analyze a piece of text given to me by my tutor, break it down into an artistic, cultural, historical,technological, social, political and other appropriate contexts. I will have to back up my oral seminar with a five hundred word summary and bibliography. In the session itself we spent much of the time analyzing images of advertisement and extracting their meanings.

animation

Earlier today we started what i expect will be one of the more difficult parts of the course. Seen as my drawing skills aren't exactly top notch, i might find animation quite hard. Never the less i look forward to learning about flash and image ready in more detail and i can't wait to begin learning 3D modeling programs such as Maya. 3D animation is always something that has really impressed me but i haven't the faintest idea where to start. In the first session i started by investigating animation techniques used by other people, Preston Blair is one of the most note-able, his work its great for beginner animators as it shows the different poses taken by a character through movement.

Critical Studies

Image analysis exercise

Compare and contrast Absolut advert and Meadow Hall website

Absolut Advertisement

I think that the layout for this advert works well as it’s displaying three different flavours so the background colours are the colours of the flavour of the product.
Also when you look at each section you notice the suggestion that there’s a flavour designed to cater for the style of life most suited to you. For example:

Absolut citron- looks like a tropical environment, reminding you of a summer’s day or a holiday. Giving the impression that this is quite a light refreshing drink.

Absolut raspberry- more of a down town street nightlife kind of theme in this one, aimed toward the young professional going out on the town, I guess.

Absolut vanilla- the background image looks like the upper class environment, classier than the other two flavours, possibly with an older age group in mind.

I don’t think there is one certain target audience, instead they have gone for the approach that no matter what your taste and style, Absolut is product for you with different flavours for all occasions. The advert is very colourful and illustrated but has a retro kind of art deco feel about it, the text is very simple and plain but the words ‘find’ and ‘flavour’ are much bigger than the word ‘your’. The advert doesn’t mention anything about the drink like that its vodka. I think this is because they’re trying to advertise the brand, Absolut rather than as a vodka drink.

Meadow Hall Website

The website is fairly plain and straightforward. The image on the front instantly makes me come to the conclusion the advert is aimed predominantly at women. To me it’s not sexist because the web designer obviously knows that its women that like to shop and will visit the site knowing what they want to look for, where as men would rather go to a shop and get what they need. I don’t think that men would generally look at the website for clothes as, well not in comparison.

Comparison

In Comparison of the two, I think that they are quite similar in the sense that they are both advertisements set in the interest of girls. They both use simple text to show important information. They use bright colours but the shopping centre is a simpler and has a negative space background, unlike the Absolut advert, which is filled with more colour. Even though both adverts are mainly aimed at women I don’t think that it is sexist because the Meadow Hall website is sure that its women that will be most interested in looking at the clothes. Also the Absolut advert is advertising ‘girly drinks,’ men would probably much rather have a bottle of beer, a pint or whiskey than vodka. So basically the target audience is women eighteen and over because the advertisers know they will be the majority that will use the site or be product in question.
I think they both have an old feel to the way they advertise such as the Meadow Hall one is so plain and has a scripture like type face for the subtext, the absolut advert has a retro art deco feel brought on by the symmetrical patterns.

About Me – Rationale

For this brief I am required to make a poster or flyer that would visually communicate to the rest of the class what I’m all about. The easiest way of doing this would be to list my hobbies and interests, likes and dislikes and a small amount of biographical information.

My original approach to this project is to show the side of me which most of my classmates will be unfamiliar with. I have been strongly motivated by politics throughout much of my life; I believe that the current western governments pay little if any attention to the world in which they leave future generations. I feel that our capitalist ways at present will lead to nothing but disaster over the coming years whether it be global warming, a lack of natural resources or George Bush’s War of Terror.

Ironically, if it wasn’t for this consumerist world in which we have grown up, I would never have been able to take part in many of the things I enjoy so much. Therefore I think the best way to describe myself would be by creating imagery, which can communicate the idea of a contradictory mind, stuck between my morals and beliefs and the things I enjoy most.

Many of the pictures which show my hobbies and interests I can capture myself, however there are a lot of images I won’t be able to create on my own, I will be relying on the internet and other sources of media for these pictures. The problem with acquiring images from elsewhere is the quality of them will be much lower, for example Internet images are usually compressed for compatibility (screen resolution quality-72dpi) (print resolution quality-300dpi.) If this is not taken into consideration when it comes to printing the final piece I will end up with some pixelated images.

I Like...

Here's some photo's i took last year
for a web design project, when i am
not designing things this is what i
spend most of my spare time doing.
I mainly mix Drum 'n' Bass, liquid-
funk and Deep-liquid is what i tend
to mix also dabbling in a bit of
jump-up and dub-wise. Recently i
have got into a bit of jungle, this
i prefer however i find jungle much
more difficult... So stay tuned and
Watch this space.

Digital culture and technologies

The other day we received our second brief. The module entitled Digital Cultures and technologies, focuses on investigating currently emerging technology within Digital Media. The unit is designed to develop my awareness of the cultural and intellectual discussions surrounding the present and future of digital culture and online communities. I am required to demonstrate my understanding of contemporary digital cultures through a body of research before producing a piece of advertisement; Poster/ flyer, slideshow or moving image (animation or live video.) For the final piece i will be creating an insight in to the world of Design for Digital Media in the Year 2020. I will have to take into consideration the way that new technologies have lead to the age of the 'Prosumer' (where the consumer is also the producer) and put some thought in to how, over the coming decade this might progress. This is quite an exciting brief as it gives me a chance to see the future of Digital Design and an insight into how i will be designing 10 years from now. Here is a list of some technology being released over the next few years; Electronic Paper, Virtual Worlds, Social-Networking, On-Demand Television/Film, Holographic Displays, Surface Technologies, and Ubiquitous computing. It's now time for me to start researching these future Technologies. In my next blog on this subject, i will be communicating my choice of product to promote and the form of design most likely used to create it.

First Blog

For the first brief of the Personal and Professional Development module, I am expected to create an online blog designed to record a list of relevant bits of media which will accumulate over the coming months and intern will be helpful in gaining a greater understanding of the course i'm currently undertaking; Design for Digital Media Degree.