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Design For Animation

Week 3: Film Analysis —— The Matrix（1999）

The Matrix. Photograph: Roadshow/Rex/Shutterstock

8 Story arc


Stasis: Neo’s life in the Matrix
Trigger: Morpheus gives Neo the choice of red or blue pills
Quest: Training after learning the truth about the world
Surprise: Cypher’s Betrayal and Tank’s Rescue
Critical choice: choose to save Morpheus or not
Climax: Rush into the police station to fight with cops and agents
Reversal: Neo resurrected and become “The one” to take down the agents
Resolution: Resolving the crisis with reality in the Matrix

Characters

Hero Neo (Thomas Anderson)
Mentor: Morpheus
Threshold Guardian: Ai world, squiddy, agent
Herald: Neo discovers Deja Vu, agents are coming, real-world Squiddy is coming
Shapeshifter: Oracle
Shadow: Agent, squiddy and Cypher
Trickster: Mouse
Allies (sidekicks): Trinity, Tank-operator, Dozer, Mouse

Timeline

Stage 1: Virtual World: Trinity engages the agents and escapes. Neo (Thomas Anderson) wakes up listening to a song to find someone talking to him on a computer. He went to the disco and met Trinity, reminding him that he was being watched. Neo received a call from Morpheus the next day to run away, but Neo was caught by the agents. Neo suddenly wakes up and is taken by Trinity to Morpheus, who gives Neo a choice between continuing to learn the truth or ending here. Neo chooses to continue.

Stage 2: The Real World: Neo in the real world wakes up in a petri dish and sees the real world (Morpheus teaches neo about human history and trains Neo.

The third stage: Return to the virtual world: Morpheus brings Neo into the Matrix to meet Oracle, Cypher betrays everyone to help the agent kill his companions, Tank kills Cypher and saves Neo and Trinity. Morpheus was captured by the agents, Neo and Trinity went to rescue Morpheus, during which Neo grew to become “The One” and defeated the agents, and the real world also solved squiddy with electronic pulses. Neo later becomes Superman in the Matrix world. The story ends for now.

Categories
Nuke

Week 3: Behind the Scenes: Nuke basic exercises

Get to know the Nuke interface, node information and connections.

Categories
Maya

Week 3: Behind the Scenes: Bottle & Hot air balloon

In-class exercises with a bottle, cups, and liquids in cups.

Made a hot air balloon in Maya in class, then practiced and completed the Bend part and the part using preset UVs at home.


When multiple Bends are used on the same object, they need to be on a horizontal plane, otherwise they may affect each other.

Categories
Design For Animation

Week 2: A potential topic title or question

22 years of VFX technology development has brought changes and progress to The Matrix series of films.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

The Matrix was the film that won Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1999, it was one of the films that used VFX technology to the extreme at the time. Its series of films also make extensive use of VFX technology and special effects photography technology. The research is going to describe, from The Matrix in 1999 to The Matrix Resurrections in 2021, how the Matrix series has progressed in the use and production of visual effects after 22 years of development, and what new technologies and VFX have been used in Design thinking. And what breakthroughs, both visually and narratively, this film has made compared to previous series.

Keywords:
Visual Effects
Bullet Time
Practical Elements
Virtual Cameras
Computer-generated

Bibliography:
Byrne, B., & Braha, Y. (2012). Creative motion graphic titling : Titling with motion graphics for film, video, and the web. CRC Press LLC.

Mendiburu, B., & Mendiburu, B. (2009). 3d movie making : Stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen. Taylor & Francis Group.

Okun, J. A., & Zwerman, S. (Eds.). (2020). The ves handbook of visual effects : Industry standard vfx practices and procedures. Taylor & Francis Group.


Whissel, K. (2014). Spectacular digital effects : Cgi and contemporary cinema. Duke University Press.
Mendiburu, B., & Mendiburu, B. (2009). 3d movie making : Stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen. Taylor & Francis Group.

Categories
Nuke

Week 2: Short Video Work: City

Here are three videos I shot near the Elephant Castle, starting with a traffic light, then in the form of a train, and ending with a time-lapse of the same scene as the second video. It symbolizes the alternation of the part of the city I am most familiar with.

Categories
Maya

Week 2: Behind the Scenes: Lego man

I practiced lego man’s model in Monday’s class, and then tried UV cutting and texture.

lego man render

The production of the LEGO man is to practice our poor understanding of 3D graphics, when we see a graphic to imagine, how does it change from the base graphic? The arms were the most difficult because they were sculpted using the sculpting tool, which made the whole arm round and smooth.

uv

Finally I used the U V tool to add a Lego face to the head.

Categories
Nuke

Week 1: Picture Work: Time

Faced with the theme of “time”, I chose to photograph ice cubes. In total, I recorded the melting ice over several hours from 130 photos at three different depths of field. Then pick the 7 photos that best fit Moodboard 1. Three of the photos 3, 4, and 5 are different parts of the same depth of field. The three of them are combined into a complete photo, but at different times.

In addition to the ice cubes, the sun’s light is also part of the representation of time changes, the angle of the ice cube’s shadow, and the brightness of the light.

Categories
Maya

Week 1: Behind the Scenes: Tesla Truck

In the first lesson, we had a quick lesson on the basic way of working with mamma and the creation of basic shapes. For example, a body is created by dividing and deforming a rectangle several times, where extrusion and adding side lines are both very used tools. The wheels are created by first dividing the cylinder by calculation, then extruding the axle inwards and finally turning one wheel into four wheels by duplication.

car render

We then learned to add materials to the shape by adding a sky, a hood to add shadows and ambient light to the car after selecting the metal material in the preset and by constantly adjusting the position of the camera and the angle of the model to make the car look more in tune with the background.

I did a quick run through everything Nick did in week 1 on my computer. During the process, my background image could not be found because I used Chinese in the file name. After the error message fixed the error successfully rendered the Tesla truck again (very rough).