Finished Animatic

I added some pictures taken of the NXT building up to rest of the animatic made the other day to illustrate the fact that in our advertisement we wan the robot to build up piece by piece.

Lego mindstorms animatic

I spent most of yesterday developing the middle part of my animatic. This merely shows the part of the commercial which will explain how the sensors work. The sensor will open in a new window blown up for clarity with another window opening to show the NXT's interaction. It is still unclear wether the robot will keep rotating or not. I had the idea of having the NXT still rotate in the bottom right hand side of the screen, however the original plan was to edit it like this so we'll just see what looks best. I still need to show the NXT building up piece by piece whilst alex is working on creating the logo sequence.

Lego mindstorms illustrations

I started out by digitally illustrating the NXT parts and how they look in robot form. I then filled the robot in block colour using photoshop. I think you will agree the illustrations are really neat and it does look pretty cool coloured in however this method of illustrating for a storyboard is far too time consuming given the length of the project. I would like to do the rest of the illustrations to finish the storyboard although at three to four hours per illustration it's probably best to get a fully realised animatic in order to present my idea in Thursdays crit.

Lego mindstorms Logo

I spent the best part of today making this, a 3D representation of the lego mindstorms logo. I plan to animate this with the cubes flying in and getting blasted away to leave the logo looking like this. Another Idea i've had is to film the robot and have the camera zoom out to expose the logo.

Lego mindstorms Logo - How it was made

I started off simply with a cube, copying this many times to create a wall of cubes. When there were enough I started to delete them one by one in accordance with the original logo this was the most time consuming part. After deleting all the right cubes I changed the colour of them and gave them transparency. Finally I added the Lego logo, this was the most difficult part as the image kept being imported mirrored which was a pain and even bigger to figure out why.

optional Pathway - Lego Mindstorms adverts

Here are the official lego mindstorms nxt adverts found on the lego web site, interesting... I need to say no more.

Optional Pathway - Lego Mindstorms advert

Optional Pathway - NXT Not the first of its kind

I had never heard of Mindstorms or robotic Lego before this project. It appears this has been a work in progress from Lego since 1985. (Although motorised Lego first came about in the late 1970's) The first of the three (the Cybermaster) ran on radio waves picked up by the massive antenna on it's back. Then came the RCX, the closest relation to the NXT, there is clear comparison in the way these two work compared with the original. Below is a picture of all the parts that build up the RCX Mindstorm robot and below this is an enlarged image of RCX computer note the similarities in comparison to the new NXT kit.

Optional Pathway - Lego Mindstorms advert -

This shows some good 3D modeling skills however the animation is rather poor, the movement of the robots is unrealistic and a inaccurate representation of what the robots can actually do.

optional Pathway - Lego advert

Rather than doing stop motion I could simply film what I do like in this advert and time lapse the footage to speed it up. I don't want to show it being built or unbuilt which ever way round will be best. I want to show this NXT bot to be more intelligent than previous Lego kits this is why I will then remove the frames with me taking the robot apart.

Moving Image - Examples of stop motion in advertisement

This example of stop motion is rather impressive, obviously I can't expect to get such a quality smooth motion finish like this but I can try. I realize this will be incredibly time consuming so I plan to start the production of this within this week.

Optional Pathway - Moving Image

I have decided to go with the lego mindstorms project as it seems this would look best in my port folio. I had the idea of doing a stop from animation with each of the models being built up step by step. I realize that the program that runs the robobot has to be shown, I havn't yet figured out how I plan to go about this. Most probably in a similar manner to the robot itself. Do stop frame in front of a green screen so the background can be edited.

Optional Pathway - Moving Image

This morning we were briefed on our next assaignment. At this early stage in the brief I am still fairly undecided as to which sub-brief to take on. There are many aspects of all which are appealing to me, for example; The DVD Menu would be good as the independent film scene is an area I would like to get involved within. Whereas the Machinima would be helpful in the long run as it will give me an insight into the ever growing 3D virtual worlds. Finally the most interesting of the three, Lego Mindstorms commercial, this would also be good because it would add another advertisment piece of work to my port folio.

Hobbies - DJ/Producing

I have been attempting to DJ now for around a year and half. At first progressed seemed slow and after a brief period of playing out in pubs and clubs of spring 2008 I took some time off over the summer. Now, after the recent success at the launch party of Standard Procedure DnB/Dubstep night in Liverpool I am now most definitely back on the scene. Being offered residency for the night was highly unexpected but has been a major boost in much needed confidence. The debut night of Standard Procedure was a first for me in many ways, it was the first time I had played at a night purely for the genres of Dubstep/Dnb, mixing on the mighty 7000 watt Dangerclaat Sound-System was a worry of mine at first although in hindsight it turned out to be less of a challenge than first expected. The main thing I gained from this night was the networking which led to a few promoters asking me if I would be interested in playing at there nights/parties. The demand for this type music is constantly growing but the scene is still fairly small so I feel I've jumped on the bandwagon at the right time. With the production of my own music on the way I expect my promo to be released early in the new year with my EP following shortly. So by mid 2009 I hope to be 'big in the game.' Above is one my first tunes it still needs mastering and the quality is a bit poor because of the streaming but this will give you an idea of how one of my debut promo tunes might sound.