Harry's Thesis

Script

2012-02-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

Sous Chef

“Welcome to Fukusuke. What can I get you?”

"Hei, irasshai! Nani ni itashimasuka?"

"へい、いらっしゃい!　何にいたしますか?"

Sous Chef

“ Sir He'll have Unagi-Maki and Ika Nigiri”

"Unagi-maki to ika nigiri hairimashita."

"うなぎ巻きといかにぎりはいりました。"

Sous Chef

“Thank you”

"Doo mo."

"どうも"

Itamae

“Don't do that!” (angry)

"iikagennishiro!"

"いいかげんにしろ!"

Sous Chef

“Please remove your chopsticks from your rice”

"okyaku-san, sumimasen ga, hashi o tatenaide moraemasen ka?"

"お客さん、すみませんが、箸をたてないでもらえませんか？"

Sous Chef

“He wants to buy a drink for you”

"sakki no okyaku-san, owabini ippai ogoritaisoodesu yo."

"さっきのお客さん、お詫びにいっぱいおごりたいそうですよ。"

Itamae

“Welcome to Japan”

"Nihon e yookoso."

"日本へようこそ。"

Tweening and Set Render

2012-01-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

Here's an updated animatic, with a first pass at tweening everything. I'm planning on making one more detailed pass to clean refine everything, and add facials once I get the final audio. Also a test render of the set.

Another render

2011-05-15T08:19:00.001-07:00

Here's another rendered image- this time of one of the sushi plates. I think I've nailed down that background texture, and just hint at the restaurant space through the toon outlines and occlusion. We'll see once I put all the elements together.

more blocking

2011-05-02T05:41:00.000-07:00

Blocking

2011-04-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's some blocking for the first 20 seconds or so

FX test

2011-04-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

So there's two teeny shots that needs effects in this. One is when the tourist dunks sushi in soy sauce. I was playing around with it today, and am pretty happy with the rough results. Sure it looks a little thicker than it should, and the liquid reacts too early, but those are just easy tweek fixes.

new animatic

2011-03-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here's an updated animatic with my actual characters in place. There's a few places in the middle that I think go a little too fast, but seeing as it's already over two minutes, I'm not terribly eager to add any more time. I'm going to head into animation, and maybe adjust the timing a little bit there.

re-rigging

2011-03-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

whelp, the title says it all. I'm re-rigging at least the tourist rig. Serves me right for using an auto-rig- it just can't do everything I want. It will probably just easier to rig it from scratch that try to modify the rig that's there. Fortunately I haven't actually started animating yet, so I won't lose anything. Hopefully the other two rigs will be okay, but I might end up re-doing the chef, too. We'll see.

I'm back

2011-03-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

I recently finished work on a few projects at Fisher Price, so it's back to work on thesis. Here's a little rendering test.
And here's the node network for anyone who's interested.

Itamae

2010-05-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a work in progress on my chef model

Updates

2010-05-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've kept choogling on my thesis. The paper is essentially done. My chair okayed it and my editor is signing off on it shortly, so that's one major portion of thesis done. All that's left is that pesky little film.

I've finished laying out UVs on the tourist and modeled the sous-chef and laid out his UVs. I'm currently modeling the chef, now.

Here's some pictures.

Fortunately (unfortunately for my thesis) I'm starting work at Fisher-Price next week, so that's gonna slow down production on this a little bit, but oh well.

texture test

2010-03-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

So here's a test I did with just some spheres. I'm trying to get a painterly texture. I'm happy with how the outlines look, and which I use are going to depend on the mood of the character. I like how the fills look, but I don't think the method I used will work on an actual character. So I'm going to have to play around with some different ideas. Essentially, this is how I want it to look.

New tourist Model

2010-02-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

Totally different head. I like this one much better

tourist

2010-02-13T16:41:00.000-08:00

Here's my tourist model (not totally finalized, but enough to start rigging). Hopefully this means I can start replacing my layouts actually blocking him in.

animatic

2010-01-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

here's my 3d animatic

more designs

2010-01-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

Here's some more designs done by Mark McDonald. Some old guy pictures, but mostly his young sous chef.

new chef character design

2010-01-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've put anything up here, but I'm actually registered for thesis this quarter, so I'll mostly be working on it. Here's a new character turnaround done by Jose Landron-Baralt. It's about 90% where I want it.

Georgia!!

2009-09-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of Georgia, seconds before she knocks over all my stuff.

Fish maquette

2009-09-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the maquette for my fishy. I already have him modeled in 3D, but working on this had given me a lot of changes I want to make on it. Perhaps I should have held off rigging it, but I can still probably use the same rig- or make it better.

Chef

2009-09-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Here's some character designs I've been working on for the sushi chef. Some pretty poor concept drawings, but the maquette is actually coming out pretty well.

Another clip

2009-09-03T18:23:00.001-07:00

Here's another extraordinary clip from the Japanese move Tampopo. It's all about food. This scene really highlights the age difference that I want to incorporate into my story. The young assistant is willing to step outside his own culture and take the time to educate himself- while the older men are firmly rooted in their ways. If you can get a chance to see the entire movie (it's tough to come by) I suggest you do it.

Concept Art

2009-08-29T06:59:00.001-07:00

I decided I'd put up a few pieces of concept art I've been working on. They're not really what I'm hoping the final looks like (I've got someone better than me lined up to actually do some concept pieces for me to help direct the visual look of the piece). The first one is awful. The next two are a little better, and the third one is probably closest to what I want the final product to look like.

Coke Commercial

2009-08-21T15:35:00.001-07:00

This is a commercial from a number of years ago my teacher brought up the other day. I completely forgot about this one, but I think it does a pretty good job of demonstrating my topic.

Big Night

2009-08-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

This clip from the movie Big Night, is one of the best examples of themes I'm exploring in my thesis. If you have the opportunity, you should watch this entire movie, because it is a gem. The actual scene starts around the 3 minute mark.

Basic premise

2009-08-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd post an entry just summarizing the basic premise of my thesis. Here at SCAD we're required to have a written component and a visual component. So essentially we have to write a paper about some concept, then demonstrate that in our film.

My paper is about how gastronomy can be used as conflict in the animated narrative (yeah, it's a bit of a mouth full). Basically I'm researching how food can exemplify cultural conflict, and can be combined with other cultural (and language) difference to create, heighten, or represent conflict in animation.

This has been done a lot in film, but not so much in animation. As this progresses I'll post more stuff about the research- films, narrative device, realities of gastronomy, etc. This has actually been a really interesting topic to research.

As for the film portion of it, I'm taking that concept and building a story around it. An American tourist finds himself in a Japanese sushi bar. There is immediate animosity coming from the elderly chef- who speaks no english, is distrustful of foreigners, and is deeply rooted in tradition. The tourist persists in committing social faux pas (unwittingly) and increasingly agitates the chef. The story is about how the tourist tries to atone for his cultural ignorance, and how both characters try to overcome various cultural, language, and age barriers.