marskieranosborn

[marskieranosborn]

Asimo probably the cutest robot since R2D2

Asimo is the most advanced robot that has been produced so far. It may not be able to process questions as well as Sophia or do backflips like Boston Dynamics robots but Asimo can do far more tasks than these robots combined. Asimo has the ability to recognise moving objects, postures, gestures, its surrounding environment, sounds, faces, open water bottles and poor drinks, weight tables, play football...kind of. Basically this robot is just incredibly advanced with how much it can do. 

Asimo has a cute design looking very similar to an astronaut and having minimalistic details making it look a lot like a toy. Its short compared to humans and has a very round aesthetic to its limbs. This toy like design perfectly dodges uncanny valley and makes this robot so much more likeable. 

Honda developed Asimo but they started making humanoid robots with the goal of making them be able to walk and now they have gone above and beyond and have made a robot capable of interacting with humans and the world around them.

[marskieranosborn]

Boston Dynamics

Created in 1992 Boston Dynamics is one of the largest robotics companies in the world and have made some of the most advanced robots in the world. 

These robots I find are far better designed than other robots because they aren't designed to look human at all they are meant to be robots and are designed that way and this I feel helps make these robots more likeable since it completely dodges the uncanny valley effect. Due to this design choice I much prefer Boston Dynamics robots to something like Sophia.

These robots are fascinating to watch they're programmed to do mainly one or two tasks but they can do them extremely well for the most part at least. The tasks they will complete could be opening doors even, picking up objects, transporting supplies and even tricks like summersaults. These tasks don't go without some hilarious tests though. Boston Dynamics is famous for reasons other than high tech robotics and that is robot abuse. Boston Dynamics show off their advanced robots by disrupting their jobs in anyway they can think to show that the robot will adjust or will complete the task even if there is a disruption when completing this task. These test lead to funny compilations of Boston Dynamics employees kicking, tripping, pushing, bullying and pulling on their robots to disrupt their jobs and this has probably helped boost the number of people that have heard of Boston Dynamics since humorous content tends to stick into peoples minds and get shared more.

[marskieranosborn]

Sophia The Robot

Sophia is one of the most technologically advanced robots in the world. Developed by Hanson Robotics her design is more on the creepy side. She is human like from the but from behind has a clear dome instead of skin and its really off putting for me personally. This design choice was to try and make sure she wasn’t confused for a human but I don't really like the choice.

Sophia is programmed with highly advanced artificial intelligence and she is able to process what people say do some calculating in the wired cranium and reply to the person talking to her. This A.I also allows Sophia to learn over time allowing her to become increasingly better at replies and human interaction. 

[marskieranosborn]

Brian Reedy and Kaiju’s

Brian Reedy is known for his woodblock and linocut prints of super heroes, Kaiju, and other pop culture. His work sometimes include apocalyptic dystopian futures, mythic creatures and the goddesses of Hinduism.

Kaiju’s are gigantic creatures from Japan that are believed to come from experiments and radiation side effects. The most famous are the kanji especially Godzilla and King Kong. The Kaiju have become very popular with Japanese films often have them terrorising cities.

[marskieranosborn]

Finished my 8 pages for my zine.

Using link printing I managed to get enough pages to complete a simple zine.

My zine is fairly simple since I found that I ran out of time to make more complex pages. I reckon if I had more time I could of completed a more intricate zine.

The lino printing was the most fun to do for the zine and it might be something I should consider to include in my final major project.

[marskieranosborn]

Robot Worksheet

Here is my design sheet for my Robot. I really struggled to do this project. Cinema 4D was extremely hard to wrap my head around, the way it worked and the menus along with all the very convoluted ways you have to do things really was frustrating to work with. 

I required a lot of assistance to get this far with the design and in the end because of my struggle with the software and the time given to complete the project I could not complete it in time. With more time to get help the design could of been completed and coloured. 

3D modeling will not be something I'll pursue in any final major projects I am set  as it was too frustrating and I still do not understand how the software can be fully utilised and how to navigate it’s menus.

[marskieranosborn]

Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese Artist. He works in fine arts industry and so does painting and sculpture and other art forms like it, as well as commercial media like fashion and animation and he is also known for blurring the line between high and low art. He made the term Superflat to describe the aesthetic of Japanese art and the post war Japanese culture.

Takashi Murakami made the Superflat theory. The theory is that there is a legacy of flat. These are 2 dimensional imagery from Japanese art history with Japans Manga and Anime. This differentiates itself from the western style by using an emphasis on surface and flat planes of colour. The Superflat theory also served as a commentary on post war Japanese society. Murakami argues that differences in social class and popular tastes have flattened which has created a culture that has less emphases of high and low class. 

Here is some of Murakami’s artwork.

[marskieranosborn]

Continuing 3D Model - Making  a hat

To continue adding to my robot a hat was needed. By adding a cube and flattening it the basic shape for my robots hat was there. Adding a cylinder allowed for a suitable top for the hat as well. 

To make the hat look more natural using cloth physics was needed. By going through a time line of the cloth physics animation. After finding the right frame the hat was complete with a more natural and over all cool look.

I am still not a fan of 3D modelling. Required help to achieve these results again and still have no clue how to use these softwares properly. The menus and tools just confuse me as I am more used to photoshop than cinema 4D.

[marskieranosborn]

This is my final animation.

Overall I feel like it came out well. There are a couple of areas I could of improved like the ear that disappears every other frame from simply forgetting to draw the ear in a couple of frames. I also think that the tree could of been drawn with slightly wider proportions. 

The part that I am most satisfied with is the actual running animation of my witch Mari. It took a few tries to get it right but after experimenting with different ways to draw the legs the problem was solved and the final result was satisfactory. 

My animation and stye is inspired by an anime called Little Witch Academia and that is the standard I aimed for when making this animation. With more practice and time I reckon that I could achieve much better results with my animation. 

Animation was interesting to try and attempting it has given me more respect to animators. Doing animation is something I would like to do more of in the future either for a final major project or my in my own time. 

[marskieranosborn]

Here is all the frames that I made for my animation. Not all of then were used as the initial animation was not right so these are all the tries to problem solve the issue. In the end only 4 frames was used out of these and that created my looping run animation.

[marskieranosborn]

Shikō Munakata

Shikō Munakata was a woodblock painter during the Showa Period. Munakata was awarded the Prize of Excellence at the Second International Print Exhibition in Lugano, Switzerland in 1952.

His work is rather colourful on lost pieces and has a distinct simple style. I am not the biggest fan of his work however it is not had by any means. He clearly knows what he's doing with these prints achieving some lovely patterns in the art and some extravagant colours too.

[marskieranosborn]

Tadanori Yokoo

Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese Graphics artist. He creates posters and album covers for high end clients which included The Beatles. He is known for using vivid colours and his style shows things that most Japanese people tend to hide like fears or anger. The images used in his work show many things that people don’t know about Japan. Some people consider it as a message that no one is perfect.

[marskieranosborn]

J.Stuart Blackton

James Stuart Blackwas a British-American film producer and director of silent era animations. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation and was considered the father of American animation, and was one of the first to bring many classic plays and books into the world of animation. One of his most famous pieces of work, titled “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” is considered to be the first stop motion animation recorded on standard picture film and featured a large range of drawn characters moving using stop motion on a white board. 

[marskieranosborn]

Making a Yokai

I struggled to start the lesson off but eventually managed to make a little fox like creature for my Yokai. His name is Himiko and he has one long tooth and one of his horns are broken. This was to have asymmetry in my design which helps create character and makes the design more interesting and nice to observe.

[marskieranosborn]

Disney’s 12 principles of Animation - Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson

Disney is by far one of the largest companies in the world especially in the animation industry. When starting off Disney used Cel animation which involved creating many layers of detailed drawing and pictures which when ran together like stop motion animation would create movement. They accomplished this by using plastic sheets, paint pens and tipex to  create animation sheets often making 24 sheets for 24 frames a second meaning in every second of animation there would be 24 drawings. 

Disney made the twelve principles of animation. These principles are squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, straight ahead action and pose to pose, follow through and overlapping action, slow in and slow out, arc, secondary action, timing, exaggeration, solid drawing and appeal.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson are two animators who worked on the old animations for Disney such as Pinocchio.  They explain in an interview that Walt Disney used to have a tendency to push his animators to always be better. He always wanted he animators to try something new so that they were constantly improving and people often questioned why he always asked the animators to do stuff they don't know how to do and it was because he always wanted people to be better. 

[marskieranosborn]

Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki is a very interesting man. He is the founder of Studio Ghibli and the powerhouse behind the movies they make. 

He is often hard to interview. Miyazaki is very naturalistic and is close to hating modern society. He dislikes new animation techniques and refused to do anything but hand drawn animations for his movies. 

Miyazaki actually wishes for modern society to crash even the animation industry so we can go back to the often referred to by many was “simpler times”. He has a very odd comparison that he made in 2010 saying using an iPod is the equivalent of public masturbation. His harsh attitude and creative standards have made him quite entertaining to the public however.

Miyazaki is often called The Walt Disney of Japan. This is because of his films being aimed at younger audiences, the stories having morality and his use of hand drawn animation however the Disney comparison ends there. 

The name of his studio, Ghibli, comes from a Libyan word used to describe Mediterranean winds coming over the Sahara that Italian fighter pilots encountered in WWII. Miyazaki seems to have aa fascination with the concept of flight, and his work shows signs of wanting to be free. He doesn’t seem overly thrilled with the state of the modern world, either with the way humans treat the environment or how they covet resources. Though commercialism has certainly given the studio the means to produce some of its most ambitious projects, the increase of Totoro merchandise doesn’t really measure up to Disney's approach to running a company. In some ways this is because Miyazaki’s work can seem so odd and mature outside of Japan however his movies tones are mainly down to personal preference since he does not plan out his movies.

Miyazaki simply does not like modern animation and would prefer to keep it traditional. His lack of faith in modern society is very clear by is ideals and weird comparisons.

[marskieranosborn]

The Great Wave of Kanagawa

This is a The Great Wave of Kanagawa. It is a woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai in 1829 and 1833 in the late Edo period . Hokusai made the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji a book featuring block prints both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji It was this series, specifically The Great Wave print and Fine Wind, Clear Morning, that secured Hokusai’s fame both in Japan and overseas

The Great Wave depicts 3 fishing boats under peril from a Tsunami wave with Mount Fuji in the background. 

The print has some nice colours for me I like the blue and white of the sea it reminds me of the water techniques in a show called Demon Slayer I would not be surprised if they used The Great Wave of Kanagawa for inspiration to make it.