Here is a work in progress for my mid term. I’m hoping to add more stuff to my scene to make it more dynamic.

On a side note I also wanted to show my readers how I model a car from scratch.

Start with Nurbs shape & manipulate it how you want to design it.

Story – Trading Cities 3
“When he enters the territory of which Eutropia is the capital, the traveler sees not one city but many, of equal size and not unlike one another, scattered over a vast, rolling plateau. Eutropia is not one, but all these cities together; only one is inhabited at a time, the others are empty; and this process is carried out in rotation. Now I shall tell you how. On the day when Eutropia’s inhabitants feel the grip of weariness and no one can bear any longer his job, his relatives, his house and his life, debts, the people he must greet or who greet him, then the whole citizenry decides to move to the next city, which is there waiting for them, empty and good as new; there each will take up a new job, a different wife, will see another landscape on opening his window, and will spend his time with different pastimes, friends, gossip. So their life is renewed from move to move, among cities whose exposure or declivity or streams or winds make each site somehow different from the others. Since their society is ordered without great distinctions of wealth or authority, the passage from one function to another takes place almost without jolts; variety is guaranteed by the multiple assignments, so that in the span of a lifetime a man rarely returns to a job that has already been his.
Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chessboard. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the actors changed; they repeat the same speeches with variously combined accents; they open alternate mouths in identical yawns. Alone, among all the cities of the empire, Eutropia remains always the same. Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred, worked this ambiguous miracle.”

How I imagined this abstract city – Draft

Product pitch
“The Eutropia bulding block kit – Play the role of Mercury, the fickle God of commerce – Build the utopia of Eutropia, much like the inhabitants of the great city of Eutropia, migrate the inhabitants by breaking downing & rebuilding the city a new city when you become bored on the same plateau. Even though it seems different much remains the same. EUTROPIA! Buy & command yours today. Buy more sets & increase your power to build & start a new city many times the size of the original.”


Physical product design idea:
Play the role of the God Mercury & create a new city for its inhabitants





Digital art installation/fictitious game of the city of Eutropia – concept

In a recent article from the New York Times titled “The Elusive Big Idea” by Neal Gabler, starts off talking about the 14 biggest ideas of the year from an issue of The Atlantic. Some of the ideas he mentions are featured in this issue which were “The Players Own the Game” (No. 12), “Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was” (No. 6), “Nothing Stays Secret” (No. 2), and the very biggest idea of the year, “The Rise of the Middle Class — Just Not Ours” referring to former & upcoming super economic powers rising around the world but not the U.S. I thought it was interesting that the author felt that these ideas were more along the lines of observations rather than actual ideas that could move the world & inspire. Mr. Gabler feels that we are now living in a post idea world for the simple reason that people just don’t care as much about ideas as they used to in the past. One of the reasons he believes this is because of our current capitalistic driven society often snubs ideas that cannot be monetized instantly. In the past, great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Reinhold Niebuhr, Daniel Bell, Betty Friedan, Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould had the influence & command to enthuse the masses raising them into the stratosphere of celebrity, fascinating millions everywhere.
In this article Neal also talks about how he feels we are living in a post idea world that has been in the making for quite some time. Some of the contributing factors that helped him to draw this conclusion are that in our current post-Enlightenment age, he feels rationality, science, evidence, logical argument have taken a backseat to superstition, faith & opinion. Also contributing to this conclusion is the way universities today foster & reward its students for the narrowest specialization they embark on in their academic/professional career paths rather than for coming up with bold & daring ideas for the future. It also does not help that our media tends to sensationalize the outrageous rather than thoughtfulness to further boost their ratings, generate more readers further contributing more fire to our Post-Enlightened world.

Reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Draft Animation

Japanese Garden Animation from Dennis Malcolm on Vimeo.

About ten years ago I can remember living in southern Japan & touring through the country side. For years I could remember the amazing feel of history & culture in the surrounding countryside. Although modern industrialization had taken over most of the landscape, there are some fledgling strains of ancient structures that lay scattered throughout the area. There are many guide books in your local Barnes & Noble, but I feel the real authentic experience comes from the hidden gems that are scattered throughout southern Japan. One of my favorite little secluded treasures is an amazing ancient styled garden that was given to Japan from China when “Okinawa had close relations with China during the years of the Ryukyu Kingdom. This relationship, which included periodic visits from envoys of the Chinese emperor, is reflected in Okinawa’s enduring friendship with Fuzhou City in Fujian Province in China. Fukushu-en was built in 1992 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the formalization of this friendship. Fukushu-en a beautiful Chinese-style garden includes a pond, waterfall and buildings designed and constructed using traditional Chinese techniques.”
The place has an air of mysticism, lure & the feeling of stepping into a different era of time. The construction & architecture of the garden has a Chinese/Japanese fusion from the feudal era. The last time I grazed the grounds, misty water from the waterfall brushed the cheeks of my face & the wind gently blew against my skin & the sounds of the secluded garden transported it’s visitors to a place where life takes a break & things move just a bit slower. The beautiful sculptural motifs that decorate the garden grounds has a certain aesthetic & quaint characteristics that the whole family can enjoy.

The Kume neighborhood where the garden is stationed, formerly recognized as Kumemura (Kume Village), was for hundreds of years, the hub of Chinese culture and knowledge in the Ryūkyū kingdom, and a representation of the considerable part of Chinese cultural sway in Japanese history and traditions.

At the entrance to Fukushu-en garden are 2 lion statues which are traditionally carved from granite, marble or some kind of decorative stone. Because of the high cost of these materials and the labor required to produce them, private use of Imperial guardian lions was traditionally reserved for wealthy or elite families. The lion statutes in Chinese culture are a symbol of a family’s wealth or social status was the placement of Imperial guardian lions in front of the family home.
The guardian lions are usually in pairs, an expression of yin and yang, the female representing yin and the male yang. The male lion has one paw on an embroidered ball called a “xiù qiú”, which is sometimes carved with a geometric pattern known in the West as the “Flower of life” The female is essentially identical, but has a cub under the other paw to the male, representing the cycle of life. Symbolically, the female fu lion protects those dwelling inside, while the male guards the structure. Sometimes the female has her mouth

closed, and the male open. This symbolizes the enunciation of the sacred word “om”. But in Japanese representations, the open mouth is said to be inhaling, representing life, while the female exhales, representing death. Other styles have both lions with a single large pearl in each of their partially opened mouths. The pearl is carved so that it can roll about in the lion’s mouth but sized just large enough so that it can never be removed.

According to feng shui, correct placement of the lions is important to ensure their beneficial effect. When looking out of a building through the entrance to be guarded, looking in the same direction as the lions, the male with the ball is on the right, and the female with the cub is on the left.

Fukushu-en was almost nearly completely made from wood and stone from Fuzhou City, with the assistance of artisans residing in Fuzhou, and based on the specifications like the ones found in the traditional gardens in Fuzhou. Inside the garden has many of the essential parts needed to create the design of a traditional Chinese garden. Surrounded by walls, divided into separate sections, using a lot of asymmetrical designs, rocks such as scholar’s rocks. Fukushu-en features a large pond which branches into most sections of the garden. There are a few bridges, in a couple of different styles, which extend over the pond that encompasses koi fish and turtles which in Chinese culture are a symbol of endurance and knowledge. The focal point of the garden I believe would be its waterfall, it is immediately visible in the directly facing the east entrance. The pile of rocks that it flows from embodies a cave that can be entered, and explored; in the rocks, stairs have been fashioned from them & it leads into a Chinese-style pavilion, one of the elevated areas of topology in the garden that allows for a pleasant view of the garden, and surrounding areas.

Fukushu-en also has gates on the 4 sides, it encompasses a number of six-sided pavilions, bells, sculptures, a couple of inscriptions painted on stone & wooden material. Inside one of the buildings of the garden, lays an exhibit of Chinese paintings and of a tiny model of the type of sea vessel that would have traveled to Fuzhou at the era of the Ryūkyū Kingdom to bring esteem and to connect the 2 cities in trading. The Chinese and Japanese concept of “borrowed scenery” (Jie jingin Chinese, or shakkei in Japanese) was also incorporated, adding count to the sense of the garden’s presence & size. A feature which is indicative of Japan, can be seen in the foliage picked for the garden. Trees like the Murraya paniculata, from the family of the orange and mikan, called gekkitsu in Japanese, and Acacia confusa, called sōshiju in Japanese, both native to the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and parts of Southeast Asia, were picked for the aesthetic elements that they cbring to the scenery, specifically for their flowers, which enable Fukushu-en’s facade and ambiance to adjust with the seasons in a type of way relating to the manner in which a traditional Chinese garden would.

Hey everyone, okay it’s time to update my blog again. This weeks blog post is going to be a big one. I don’t really know where to begin with this project so I think that I will just start. This has been one of the most challenging things I’ve every built in Maya. Although I have modeled many things before but just not exclusively to this software. What I used to create this was Maya, Topogun & Autodesk MotionBuilder for animation. Animation for this is coming soon.

Here is a work in progress animation below

Sakura Character from Dennis Malcolm on Vimeo.

Add some sub-surface scattering & some additional bone rigging

I’ve been meaning to update my blog with some new work. Here are a couple of new types of animation software that I’ve been working with in collaboration with ? Curious Pictures Studios. The first software is called Vicon IQ. It is the system that is used in the movie industry to record an actors movements. The movements are then translated into animation for CGI. First I start out by labeling the key points on the actor. This software includes all the crucial elements needed for motion capture, simplifying everything from system configuration to actor setup and delivering motion capture data of the highest accuracy. Aimed at film, game, broadcast and post studios, It ensures what you capture is what you deliver. Below is what I have been working on recently in Vicon IQ

Actors Stage

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Motion Capture from Dennis Malcolm on Vimeo.

Doing this short motion sequence took me editing nearing 6,000 frames of animation one by one & many, many hours of work, but it came together in the end.

After I finish labeling the skeleton animation in Vicon IQ, I import my skeleton into MotionBuilder. Autodesk MotionBuilder is the next software that I use. MotionBuilder is a real-time 3D character animation software can make film and game animation pipelines more efficient. MotionBuilder also enables you to create more and higher quality animation. You can create, edit, and play back complex character animation in a highly responsive, interactive environment that is ideal for high-volume animation, virtual cinematography, pre-visualization, and performance animation. Here is some of the work that I’ve been doing recently. In this software, I start working on correcting the key frames for production.

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