DM7909 3D Visualisation
Aims of the project investigation
The 3D module has been more of an exploration into 3D skills and what 3D can offer my own development. I am a multidisciplinary creative and I wanted to incorporate the use of technology to enhance these techniques in my practice
The commercial proposal for the 3D module has come from a 12 week artists led project I have been involved in. A collaboration with artist Katt Grover, Chapel Arts Studio and Test Valley Borough Council, the mentee opportunity has helped me developed new skills alongside the coursework in 3D.
The UNDEREARTH Project was a digital and technology project delivered into two primary schools for Year 4 pupils. The mix of traditional art and the use of: Coding, Animation, 3D scanning of models, Illustration and narrative storytelling. This has provided me with rich examples to execute some interesting work, culminated in an exhibition.
“To learn something new, you need to try new things and not be afraid to be wrong.”
- Roy T. Bennett
Author of The Light in the Heart
Design research
Bill Fleming a leading authority on Photo realistic 3D graphics, creature/character creation says “the problem with technology is it can greatly simplify some tasks while greatly complicating others…. In 2D, the animator simply draws the body perfectly and doesn’t have to worry about the technology getting the way or falling short. Being a digital animator means also being a technical engineer and in many cases a programmer.” (Pg 8-9 Chat Animation and popular culture, (originated in Withrow, S, ibid 2003 p54)).
This sentiment is probably applicable to those growing through the technological advancements. New generations of animators coming into the workforce are used to programming, editing code to get the outcomes they want. Job descriptions no longer require an art school background they desire the programming capabilities too.
The maths of the tools described in David Eberly’s book, ‘3D Game Engine Design’ have not thrilled me as much as the creative process has. The ability to play with the software trying to make my ideas come into existence has been a challenge, I appreciate Bill Flemings sentiment that he just wants to create not code.
Eberly explains the mathematical code that creates the transformations within 3D software. Having an ability to visualise your object/character in 3D through your ideas and drawings is halfway to the result, my limited experience in Blender allowed me to create objects e.g. a robot by combining shapes pulling and indenting axes to represent the form. See other blender examples in Appendix 1.
Fig. 1 : Robot by Tina Scahill in Blender
Research is a key component of building characterisation; Wells describes in his book ‘Fundamentals of Animation’, the key elements for this process:
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Technical planning - can the software facilitate what is required?
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Is the resource available and appropriate?
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Research is necessary as it informs the project both in relation to form and content.
My 3D project is based on work of the emotional assertiveness characters I have created for a client.
The characters portray actual emotions and are used to show how we can interact and use our emotions to have a win/win philosophy of communication. Appendix 2
From this background and the research and work with the client I feel I know how the character will approach problems in a story or scenario.
“When you have gone through this process it becomes obvious in your work that you have another level to add to the film process, they become real. And after all film’s animations are about suspending disbelief and taking the audience into another world” (Wells, P 2006,)
Artists want to reinterpret the visualstimulation they see or have witnessed (see blog post https://www.scahilldesign.co.uk/post/stop-motion ) they make this stimuli into something new, it reveals a new story. Real life as given in the examples of my blog by the animator Minoru Meada (‘The Day The Sun Was Lost’ 2002 film), want to emulate the reality of a street scene, when the boundaries of art get pushed further than reality this allows for the connection between animation and the Metaverse.
Fantasy and fiction have influenced the look and feel of animation genres, the new realities we can create with mixed, virtual and augmented realities expands the animation world into a new sphere. The end of a chapter perhaps, where the metaverse springboards new ways storytelling, where we can be an integral part of the action, first person point of view.
Since becoming a member of Decentraland a metaverse owned by the users. The characters avatars have a one size fits all approach with selection of ‘Lego’ style hair and outfits, but the economic reach for brands is beginning to realise a new income stream.
The narrative with a character and the relationship we imbue in it to the digital world has not really been fully explored. The characterisation of 3D worlds has huge potential for questioning our relationships to avatars and how our projection of self is actualised in the meta spaces we are populating. How does this affects our choices and actions in a virtual space? An example here of how businesses are utilising the avatar already, positioning their products in the virtual world to encourage product desire (fig 2).
Fig. 2 : Airtopia Nike kids play space, links Roblox with avatar consumers
Fig. 3 : Pipeline for 3D project
So much to discover in each area of 3D design each giving me a different idea on creation and perception of a storytelling process. I found my interest in animation and wanted to digitised characters to act as guides or to inform and help – a virtual character to help narrate a story or a bigger theme for my clients and projects.
Read the whole presentation here: https://www.scahilldesign.co.uk/post/3D-visualisation-the-story-so-far
Animation projects:
My area of interest is animation, 2D and 3D. I have used three examples of work I have been creating throughout the term. These form the basis of my investigation into commercial projects and have had outcomes for the clients I have worked with.
Project 1 - EAI characters
Project details:
Emotional Assertiveness International, a global business training and teaching organisations from schools to governments to businesses and crisis centres. The training involves you understanding what being Emotionally Assertive is, it relies upon us being able to communicate our emotions effectively. Using our anger as an emotion that gets things done, using our fear to make us acknowledge an experience, knowing why we are sad and seeking ways back to happiness. Globally recognised characters add impact to the training and teaching work they create a richer narrative of understanding to the subject. I would like to thank John Parr Msc for allowing me to use his project files that we have created.
Motivation:
The motivation of the characters is solely dependent on the emotion they portray; Anger has a wide variety of emotional out’s – anger can be mild to explosive and so the interactions that can be had are many.
Examples
Fig. 4 : plasticine model 3D scanned and recorded to illustrate AR
Anger as a plasticine model below – even though experiment was a failure, due to the consistency of the plasticine not holding its form. It still gave me an insight to the application of modelling and AR.
Fig.5 : Knock knock stop motion animation example in Adobe Stop motion, story with Anger character
Fig. 6 : Flowers and bees - stop motion example - Adobe Stop motion, story with Anger character
Fig. 7 : Explosive anger stop motion animation - Adobe Stop motion, story with Anger character
Reflection
Process and experimentation. The EAI characters have given me a chance to try and utilise 3D software and 3D thinking in my work with a client. The success or failure of each process tried has built my knowledge this investigation is a self-driven project outside of my clients remit, it has allowed me to explore characterisation in different mediums. The EAI characters already appear on a product being sold in Denmark, a sleep pillow where grandparents or parents can tuck notes or photos or comforters into the pouches of the pillow and small children can express how they feel by pointing at a character.
Project 2 - 3D mole
Project mole! This project really stretched my investigation into 3D. In the UNDEREARTH project I worked as a mentee artist, the creatures the year 4 children made were brought to life in technology driven ways, through animation, through coding, through sculpture and through drawing. The mole for me proved to be a difficult challenge, I used 3D photogrammetry to scan the hand sculpted mole into a 3D form.
Project details
The mole was part of the UNDEREARTH project a technology driven experience delivered into two primary schools to develop and create artistic work digitally and traditionally from the inspirational subject matter of Harmony Woods, Andover.
The project was delivered over 12 weeks, and we enabled young people to engage with a narrative process, storytelling, characterisation and asking them to imagine different worlds other than their own. I wanted to add to this with my own 3D AR mole... Process: Sculpting my Mole creature using air dry clay, referencing images of a mole so find the shape and textures that I could apply.
Use of the Qlone scanning app: Once the clay was dry, scanning began, I used the scan matt to try and accurately get the 3D model, the model was laid onto its back which proved to be problematic as the two sides once scanned would not stitch together in the software.
I bought credits for the app, where I could free scan. This scanning of the model was quicker, but still the angel wasn’t right, and after several tests I found that the lighting of the object makes a huge difference to the outcome. Something I was able to bring to the modelling for the children in the UNDEREARTH project, we sat close to natural light in order to get good scans.
Producing scan after scan developed different errors, at the neck of the mole lay and indent where the telemetry would not place any data, the clean-up option within the Qlone app was not sophisticated enough to close it, so I attempted to take it into blender to rectify the edge loops and smooth the mesh.
In order to add colour to the mole I decided to do this in procreate, an app that I had started to use with a graphic pen, my mindset on the production had me working in a new way, the flow of the project came to several halts because of my newness to the software. I did however mange to make the mole a disco colour!
Fig. 11 : disco mole
I took the mole creation into substance stager and here played with texturing the model in different effects – I particularly liked the gold version as it reminded me of the balloon sculptures of Jeff Koons (Fig 11). See Appendix 3 for my examples. I decided that play was the way forward to try and get the effects I wanted, I exported and opened the mole in different formats:
Fig. 12 : Jeff Koons exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford 2019
Fig. 13 : Gold mole
Reflection
The 3D mole should have been a simple item to deliver, the Qlone app whilst I was developing my mole had an additional matt to download for better background selecting for the 3D scan. Also, I tried to prop the model upright in order that the area of non-scan was set to a minimum and could be filled in.
This part of my 3D project investigation – The trial and error of the software and the testing of the ways to create a successful scan was all part of the development process. Creating the tests enabled me to engage in a photogrammetry project in a different way next time because of my experimentation.
I concluded that trialling a turntable was useful to assist in the scanning. The item to be scanned really needs to be upright so the scan can work in all areas. Also the lighting was key, I made several attempts of scanning indoors and outside, in bright light and not direct light. The brighter the light the better the scan.
I have some examples where the mole is a totally different colour because the scanner has not picked up on the change of lighting see below and Appendix 3, for more examples.
Project 3 - Animation
Simple paper animation of created hand drawn and cut out objects.
Project details
The children on the UNDEREARTH project were free to draw colour and stick items to a huge roll of paper, space was not an issue, freeing their minds to create on the paper. These ideas were saved, and I cut out every creation that the 24 children had made. Some of them where backgrounds others were characters. To view the movie: https://www.scahilldesign.co.uk/post/animation-from-the-underearth-project
The variety of styles and colours made me wonder how I could bring the pieces together, I decided that a stop motion animation to connect the characters would work as a final piece and bring the two schools project together.
The stop motion took around an hour to create, the story grew organically from playing with the items and then placing them together. Here is the finished piece that appeared in the UNDEREARTH show -6-21st May 2022.
Fig. 15 : UNDEREARTH animation with childrens’ work
Motivation
Whilst working with the children to create their own narratives, we needed them to think ahead about motivation of their characters, fortunately School One had been taught in their English lessons the story of MacBeth, they understood from their current curriculum what was expected from them.
The children engaged with making their bugs and microbes into human like creatures and some stuck to the UNDEREARTH theme and some decided to do something completely different.
The process allows for children to take control. Pressing the photo button to move to the next frame was very easy, and they enjoyed moving the character along in different ways and reflecting and adjusting their process. The children worked intuitively with the equipment and the group work was excellent, some children already had friendship groupings, but some children found new partners and shared their characters story with each other. Two children in School Two created a whole scene with objects coming in and out of the scenes, the character travelling through paper constructions.
Appendix 4
Example
The children worked in the similar ways to the early animators. The Lumiere brothers cinematograph in 1895, led to toys being created that played with optical illusions, flip books were one of the early pre-cinema ancestors of cinema, and stop motion takes its nod from that. They were based on earlier forms of optical play for example the works of Eadweard Muybridge (the zoogyroscope) and Etienne-Jules Marey (Chronophotography) in the 1870’s and the 1880’s to study motion in photography by using a succession of snapshots to show the movements of humans and animals are in the spirit very close to what will be the flip book. A brilliant example is the work of - Lotte Reiniger in 1926. (Fig 16)
Fig. 16 : Lotte Reiniger
https://youtu.be/G_9L7r8NIBc
Trailer - The Adventures of Prince Achmed [1926]
When we are working with a character the need to communicate emotion from our physical being to the character. If the character is a watering can, we want to imbue it with human characteristics, so we feel affinity with it, finding a visual language helps us do that and animators and creators of 3D art find the nuance in the expressions.
Illustrator Neil McFarland advises:
“Think about the meaning of the word ‘character’. You’re supposed to breathe life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they’re like to meet and how they might move.” He goes on to say, “Even if you’re not someone who works in 3D, you can learn a lot by converting your character into three dimensions.” (Cite Creativebloq)
The driving force behind a character’s personality is what it wants/needs to achieve. We create an environment - somewhere believable. The addition of Sometimes the telling of a character’s back story can be more interesting than the character’s present adventures.
Reflection
As a professional delivery we achieve very clear results, the children engaged and produced work that was thought provoking and gave them new skills to think in a new way. The commercial basis of the project has given me a new perspective on the act of learning through character play. I am interested in the use of avatars in the 3D space and found it interesting that the children spent a long time creating the characters placing details onto them and enabling special features that gave them special powers.
The use of gaming avatars is particularly powerful, the sense of self and ideas of identity could be seen in the workbook that we gave each child to complete. Each had a back story each had a specialness about them and some I felt empathised with the child itself, the character was a watcher (apple bug – with a huge eye) another was a scary spiderman (superhero fantasy) others were cute (School one creatures) but whatever the child decided upon they took the project in the direction they wanted it to go in. As a creative on this project, it was my aim to guide the creativity, to reflect the project, but at points it was more important that the creativity was what the children wanted, and the starting point no longer mattered. Hence, we had stories of Apple Kings, Anansi the spider, and three friends who hugged and then died of covid…. a sign of the times! Visit: https://www.scahilldesign.co.uk/post/animation-from-the-underearth-project to view the childrens stop motion movies.
Conclusion
My development in the area of 3D was the main purpose of taking an MA, I wanted to understand the work involved in creation of 3D graphics and those in AR and VR. The outcomes of my projects have not been as desired but the research and the theory around the application has given me greater understanding.
Animator and artist @Dina.a.amin makes her work from junk or ‘Tinkering’. Their recycling of materials and unpicking them from the original purpose gives a powerful message to the world about what we throw away. If one component is broken but perhaps 50 have to be destroyed because of it. Their work is also politically charged as commentary on global production, and about the process of looking itself to see beyond what’s in front of them – seeing more.
The ability to see characteristics in objects is called Pareidolia – for example when we visualise animals and objects in clouds. The use of Pareidolia in AI image recognition software relies on the recognisable features that have been programmed to be associated with ‘types’ of people. I am sure the programmer cannot be unbiased in their coding approach which leaves this software open to political and racial abuse. But Pareidolia itself allows us to recognise characterisation where there perhaps isn’t anything obvious. See blog post for more details: https://www.scahilldesign.co.uk/post/reinventing-stop-motion
Reducing digital inequalities…
With the comparison of the two Primary schools they were in stark contrast. Pupils from School One were well informed, a teacher assisted them in their learning and learnt the tools as well. The children were selected because of the opportunity, either they were artistic, creative or liked computing. Another reason was that they were perhaps disadvantaged or had other difficulties (emotional). School Two had not selected their children, they had little support from a teacher and were at a disadvantage straight away. They were enthusiastic children but the relationship to their current school work was not shown and they had difficulties bringing extra initiatives to the project because of the lack of support.
The UN Sustainable Development Goal 10 has three areas in the digital design industry that lead to inequalities (See Appendix 5.):
1. Class gap UK digital tech jobs,
2. Global digital disadvantage,
3. Education gap: gender makes a difference.
The global digital disadvantage is surprising, not only to third world nationals and developing countries, but even in our western top 5 countries we have an inequality of people being able to access internet services. This was starkly shown when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and home schooling showed our UK society the disparity in technical affordability.
The podcast series by Radio 4 called ‘Rethink’, spent 5 episodes discovering the details of barriers to learning and what is education for? In one podcast Zane Powles describes the need for his staff to feed the children of their socially deprived neighbourhood where most children in his primary school had free school meals. He wanted to point out that these people required their most basic needs met not to go hungry (ref: Maslow - Hierarchy of needs) before they could even consider education. The families within the school community could not afford internet, the staff of Western Primary School, Grimsby sought businesses to donate laptops, donate dongles to assist and not to disadvantage further the children trying to learn. The UN goal 10 directly speaks to situations like this.
The class gap of industries seems to be an issue, breaking down the barriers to gaining the roles on offer. Social creative channels allow for creative’s to build a name, but only if they can afford the software to create it. There is a rise post pandemic of students switching from the industry standard software to open source / free software. The decentralisation of the web and the resources of creators will only assist in making a level playing field.
Education gap – gender makes a difference.
“In 2021, there were 46 female executive directors at FTSE 250 companies, and 29 at FTSE 100 companies, resulting in 75 female executive directors at FTSE companies. Except for 2020, when there were 76 female executive directors, this was the highest number of women in this position during the provided time period. Number of female executive directors at FTSE companies in the UK 2011-2021” Published by D. Clark, Mar 7, 2022
So less than a third of women are leaders in their field, the education gap and those top 100 companies could explain why there are not more women.
The advancement in tech the change in society as we shift all our world online post pandemic is a revelation leading us to the
‘Age of acceleration’ to quote Thomas Friedman (Foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times).
The content of this webpage is for my MA course in Digital Media Practice. All references can be found in the buttons at the top of the page. All design work is my own unless otherwise stated. July 2022.
If you have any questions please contact me scahilldesigner@gmail.com