MagnoJack Model

I have finally finished the MagnoJack model now. It took longer than I anticipated to make it, there was a lot of detail that I hadn't included wich I found out after receiving more pictures of the model.

My client has approved it and it is ready to be textured and rigged in the next couple of days.

Some of the smaller parts are not included in the model, as they are not elementary to understand its use. I also asked my client whether to include the wires in the back or not, but I was told to not include them. The reason for that is that the plan in the future is to hide all the wires.

Some of the geometry around the battery and the hydraulic is not as complex as the original model. But once again, this does not take away from the coming animation.

Previs/feedback

I have showed the previs to a couple of my teachers and my client, and a lot of the feedback that I get is that it is too much information in a short amount of time. It is also hard to see a definite style in it, and it all just seems a little over the top, and not simple (which I am aiming for)

I have realised that I give a lot of info in this previs, but not enough about MagnoJack itself. I fell in love with fun facts and fancy deformer animations and lost my head during the process.

After thinking it through I have come to the conclusion that I have to rethink my strategy.

Instead of showing all of this fancy stuff, and talking about the damages from not having a MagnoJack, I should rather show off the product, even more, give it a fair introduction to the audience and demonstrate its use.

I am not deleting any of the old stuff, I am saving it for later as this has an opportunity to be a scalable commercial. I am making the short version now, and later on, if my client wishes, I can extend it and include the environmental information.

I do not consider this as a loss, But rather as a great learning experience!

previs

I have added a coupple more elements to the previs now. Additional to this I have contacted GoSoundtrack to see if maybe they would like to help me with background music and voice over.

The truck

Before Christmas, I was working on a truck that was going to enter the scene and pick up a container. After I started on the animatic I discovered that I had a plan for a lot more to happen separately than what I had time for. I went way over the maximum of 60 seconds that I am aiming for. So I have now experienced why people in the industry use the phrase “kill your children” I had put a lot of energy into this truck and I had also planned to rig it so that the hook lift was functional.
I found that it is not enough time for this to happen and that I have spent a lot of energy on something that shouldn’t have taken up so much of my time.
Because I have chosen to go for a simple style, the commercial doesn’t suffer a loss from it, and now the container is simply just exiting the frame by sliding out on its own. I found that as long as this isn’t something that takes away from the message that I try to convey it is a more efficient solution.
I will use the truck in another scene where I demonstrate the amount of E-waste that is being generated worldwide. Because of this, I am removing the hook lift and just adding a container on the back of it. 

Previs

I have been working on the animatic lately, and from working with it, I learned that there was a lot of things in my storyboard that could be better, faster and more interesting.
The animatic is a mix of playblast and After Effect animations that is been put together and timed.
So far I am happy with the length of it. I was afraid that it would be longer than 60 seconds, which it was when I first started working on the previs. But after changing some things, speeding some things up and combining shots, I found that I was still able to deliver the same message  in a shorter amount of time.

Here is the result:

(The backgrounds is something that I am still working on, so the background that has been used here is not meant to be used)

 There is still some work to be done, and some missing elements.

earth + map

I have been playing around with an idea lately. I just had to test it out and I am actually really happy with the result that I gained when I tested it.
I recently watched an After Effects tutorial on YouTube that showed you how to make a flat map fold itself. I really liked the simple look of it and I started playing with ideas on how to implement it in my own work, being that I really wanted to test it out.
In my commercial there is a scene where we see the earth and then zoom in on it, focusing on the great wall of china. After a few seconds, the camera zooms out again. But what if, when we zoom out the earth fold out and turn into a flat map. This map could be folded and end up in the shape of a refrigerator and would make a smooth transition to the next scene that actually is a refrigerator.
I tried it, and I liked it. I showed it to my father and he really liked the idea too.

To make this happen, I had to make a round object turn into a flat object. First I tried folding a plane around a sphere, hoping that I could create something from that. It didn’t work and it looked bad. Then I tried to fold out a sphere and played with blend shapes, but that didn’t work either. Lastly, I found a solution that was easy and worked perfectly.
I simply made a plane, created a nonlinear bend two times going in two different directions. Then I bended them both 180 degrees and voila I had a sphere!
This is the result of my first test.

CFC

Lately, I have been trying to figure out how I am going to show the CFC circulating in the refrigerator and how I am going to animate this. Because CFC is an invisible gas and doesn’t evoke any odor I figured I would just make simple spheres that move inside of the pipes. I talked it over with my father, and he approved of the idea. The point of this shot is simply to demonstrate that the refrigerator contains the gas and that it will leak if the appliance gets damaged.

I ended up drawing a curve and extruded a cylinder along it. This cylinder is now the pipe and the curve inside of it I made into a motion path for the spheres.

Then I made enough spheres to fill the whole piping system before I looped the animation. 

To make the spheres “escape” from the pipes, I drew 3 more curves that went outside of the refrigerator and created new motion paths out of them. I wasn’t sure about how to make the spheres change from one motion path to another, especially when I had made the animation infinitely. To solve this, I duplicated the spheres when they were at the root of the new curve and connected the new ones to the new motion paths. I turned off the visibility on the original at the same time that I turned in the visibility on the duplicates and it now looks like the spheres are exiting the pipes leaving the refrigerator emptied from CFC.

I don’t know if this was the most efficient solution, but I achieved what I wanted from it.