Grand Mal Week 3

Hello and welcome to the third in installment of my blog which is recording my progress of creating a 30 second film based on the moments of a grand mal (tonic-clonic) seizure.

This week I have spent a lot of my time and energy on building what was called the contraption but thanks to the help of Zara's drawings and labeling The Machine, I thought this was a much better, it also sounds more sinister. I used the drawings Zara gave me as reference which helped nicely, but I quickly realized that all the images were not completely equal, meaning if I was building my model on the side panel in Maya I would and when I then model to the front panel when I look in the perspective view it would not look the way I would want it too. so I had to compromise a little in the creation of the machine. I was building this model in part rather than the brain which I was able to build it all without attaching bits and pieces to one another (other modeling half of a selected model and then duplicating the other half, rearranging it and attaching it to the original half.) If I remember it correctly I started off with the base of the machine making it in a hexagon shape, this is were I noticed the issue with the images not correctly matching up. so I did my best and once I worked out a way of dealing with the problem I was more easily applying it to the other stages of the model. I had to make a hole in the middle of the base to insert a plinth which the brain would be attached too but none of this was really that hard and building the wooden structures that tower over the brain again very simple in design I only needed to make a cube and elongate it. The Knife is most likely the more difficult task I had to do, but even then I do not recall getting into much bother other it. I just followed the reference images and after a day and a half I was finished.

My machine was finished by Sunday 31st of July I had finished the model, which I had begun on Wednesday 27th of July, so I go through it very quickly in my mind. The main thing I am going to be talking about in this blog is what I did yesterday and today.....UV TEXTURING! ah me and UVs do not get on at all. Just in case you're not familiar with UVs, they are basically invisible verticles that you can only see the changed you make in the UV Texture Editor in Maya. UVs help shape what your texture will be when you apply it in Maya. At the moment I am trying to texture the brain but I am find it rather difficultly, at first I was unable to cut a seam in the UV mesh. but after watching a few amazing tutorials on Youtube I was good to go in that area. I'm still trying to get a good place on the brain to cut a seam and place a pin to pull the mesh back on. I think I will look do some recapping from the videos I found just because they are so help full and they channel covers a lot of different things I think I will have to watch them too.





I will post up some photos at the bottom of this blog on the textures I am planning to use for everything pretty much. I did a lot texture hunting when I got my PC so I will upload all them too.

OH YESH! I forgot to say I now have a new computer, though I am an avid Mac user I need a new comptur to use Maya one my Mac is about six years old now and can not go into high quilty rending which buggers everything up(Maya also works better on a PC more than a Mac I find). This is something I found out in my last project. But back then I was able to go into Newport Uni and use their high end computer but since I am in Liverpool in my room I think that is out of the question. So anyway I was able to fork £500 out to get a local PC builder to build me computer. This was on Tuesday when I ordered it and I got it on the Friday,would of been Thursday but I their was an issue with the Motherboard, he thought it came with an integrated graphics cards but it didn't so he ordered me a dedicated one free of charge. ANYWAY I installed Maya onto it and it runs so much better, this will help me a lot in my 3rd yr at uni I can render out scenes over night after I get back from uni working. (and not to mention all the PC games I can now play.)

As you can tell I am not find more issues in this films creation which I knew would crop up some where so next week will be a lot long and I will post the Youtube videos that helped this week under here. All of this week till my next update I will be texturing everything so that is brain which needs to be finished and the machine. If I get it all done before next Tuesday I will then go to add some joints to the wooden "arms" on the machine so I can control them to stab the brain.

Till next week BYEBYE!

Grand Mal (Film) Week Two

Another week down two more weeks left it seems. I don't know how much I have to say really this week, everything seems to be going smoothly. I haven't encountered many issues as of yet, so this could be a much shorter post that last week, rest assure though, when I start texturing the blog entire will be huge. Also I have completed the model for the brain, it took a few day I think it was around five days to finish it maybe six. Overall it wasn't changeling Maya has been rather kind to me which makes me all the more worried about something going wrong....maybe my Mac will explode.

Moving swiftly on, I should most likely talk a bit more about what did during the creation of the brain. Once I started up a new Project and changed the system setting to what I needed them to be for me, (real-time 25fps PAL, etc) I imported the reference picture to build on, using the skills I have developed over the past year I was quickly able to create a believable brain. There really isn't much else to talk about it yet. I have asked a friend of mine earlier on in the week was able to draw up some drawings of the contraption that will be stabbing and keeping the brain in place. The reason I asked her is that I am not very good at doing model sheets and I needed to have a model sheet as refenance when I build the contraption. I was okie with the rain because I used images from the internet (<3 Google.) After been shown a few earlier drawings I got the final design I was looking for, an earthly feel but with some metal materials to represent epilepsy coming from nature (wood) and the traces of metal would be how a lot people with epilepsy depend on medication to live with out epilepsy interfering too much with out going to extreme like brain surgery. Earlier thoughts I had about the contraption originally were going to be completely steel and I thought it thought it would give off a more colder and scary feel. The fact it was man made made me think that it would go against epilepsy, I will upload some images of the concept designs (THANKS AGAIN ZARA.)

Here are some images.





I had been thinking what to do about audio this week. I had thought about a little but not too much. I was thinking of having a dark atmosphere, confusing sounds and I want to use audio footage of someone having a seizure. So armed with those goals I went onto Yoube and watched a lot of seizure video, their was one I knew of before I watched it as my girlfriend showed it to me when she told me she had epilepsy.




That video was my one my list to use first as the woman in the video (Christine Lowe) has given people premission to use the video. I still looked around to see if I could find anything, nothing amazing was coming up but then I found a girl who has recently been having regular seizures but sadly hasn't been diagnosed yet as the doctors are unsure if it epilepsy though it clearly is (Doctors*sigh.*) I watched a lot her video which was intresting to see how she is coping with her new way of life, she was an avid horse rider but since she has had a Grand Mal seizure while riding she can not do that any more, I couldn't began to think how she must feel. but she has shown much strengh, you can tell from her videos, she isn't letting it get to her. Then I found a video of her having a seizure, she filmed herself sleeping to see if anything happens druing the night the audio was just what I need I thought. so I emailed her explaining to her who I was and what I was doing, I asked her if I could use part of video in my film and she agreed (which I am so grateful for her)

Well I know most of next week will be now modeling the contraption and I still have to decide what I call my film. I hope next week will be as good as the one I have just had. Well until next week. BYE!

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More Pictures from this week =)

The Wrath of Second Year

So I knew that I had failed one module around Christmas time back in 2010 but when I got my letter saying I needed to do my retrieval for it I was also slapped in the face with an essay and a proposal that I apparently failed, (News to me, Thanks for letting me know Newport.) I have till the 11th of august to hand in my work and was given the letter to say I had to do my retrieval on the 12th of July, so I have little under a month to get all my work done for then.

So as part of my module I need to do a blog to show development and perhaps other stuff too, this bog will be in four parts one every week as I will be slammed to the wall doing work and it will be easier to set a side one afternoon to write what I have I done, etc, rather than posting up snippets every day or two.

For the project, this blog is about my progression on creating a thirty second film about one of the following

>Environment
>Identity
>Memory

I have chosen Identity and that my film is about the few moment before a grand mal seizure (also know as tonic-clonic.) I want to show people what it is like in the mind of someone who is about to have a grand mal seizure, the reason for me doing something this is because I find it is a area which isn't often covered and people are almost blind to what a grand mal seizure is and how effecting it can be. Grand mal's are a type of seizure were there are two phases the one called tonic phase which cause the body to become ridged due to muscular contraction. Oxygen is pushed out of your body from chest contractions often causing a low moan or grunt, you may bite your tongue rather hard and loosen your teeth due to contraction in the jaw. This then paves the way for the clonic phase were the body will start to convulsive which is the muscles repeatedly relax and contract.

Once I wrote my script, which original was about a brain with a thunder storm over it using dark ambient music to help set a scary and bleak feeling. Lighting would then strike down onto the brain causing electric currents to surge over the brain, the ambient music stops a low muffled groan can be heard which get louder into a gasping scream the sound of something smashing (glass or pottery) and one or two more regular screams can be heard which the screen would fade to black at this time. However after a few talks with people I decide the overall message was good and the feel was right on the nail, visual it needed some work into. I made a few adjustments to the original script and created a similar but new version which I have stuck with after one edit to it. The newer story is about a brain that is attached to a towering structure and at the top of the structure is a knife which swings down and stabs into the brain this happens repeatedly and after a few stabs the creepy ambient music stops, a muffled groan which turns into a gasping scream, and the sound of shaking can be heard but at this time the screen as faded to black.

I got the idea for the newer script after interviewing a young woman who is diagnose with epilepsy and suffers from three different types of epilepsy, Grand-Mal, Absent (often mistake for daydreams but can cause brain damage if it goes on for a few minutes) and myoclonus which is random convulsions (twitches) of various body parts

I had done some drawings of brains after looking at images of brains (which you can seen under this section,) such as real brains, cartoon brains, CGI brains, and several scans of non epileptic brains compared to epileptic brains.

I drew up some designs of brains and a rough sketch of the machine that will hold the brain in place. I asked a friend to help do some concept drawings and a model sheet of the brain and the machine for me to upload into Maya and use it as reference to help build the models. I have only just started creating the brain and I am not very far in its creation, (I will upload some screenshots of what I have done so far.) next week i am hoping to finish the brain modeling and start the modeling for the machine, once they are both done I will then texture them and then add a simple joint system but that will be nearer the end of this project rather than next week.