Pipeline 1 - Tutorial Submission Post

Pipeline 1 Tutorials
Lip Syncing

Pipeline 1 - Character Turnaround

The character is now finished and rendered out, lots of things were learnt.

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 7

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 6

One more texturing tutorial to do and the character is pretty much finished.

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 5

Jeans are now done, it was pretty difficult to do as the UV map wasn't straight, but they aren't looking too bad. Shoes are up next!

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 3 & 4

Hair and shirt done, next up is the jeans.

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 2

Pipeline 1 - Character Texturing Part 1

Today I started doing the texturing tutorials for the character, the shaders are blocked out and now I am ready to get texturing.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 5

With the help of Alan this tutorial is now finished, next up is texturing and then he is almost finished.

Pipeline 1 - Facial Rigging Part 5 Issue @Alan

I had an issue when doing the phoneme blend shapes tutorial, the shapes that I connected In caused the whole head to come forward slightly when they are turned on. I'm not sure If I did something wrong when connecting them, I made sure to reset the blendshape tool and set it to front of chain.

Pipeline 1 - Facial Rigging Part 4

Today I did rigged the brow for the character, almost finished rigging this guy.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 3

Today I did the blink for the character, I had some issues when skinning it but I tried to make it work the best I could.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 2

I finished the second part of the tutorial, so now the character has some teeth, a tongue and some more controls.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 1

Today i did the first facial rigging tutorial which involved creating the eye controls and the face cam.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 4

I finished off the character rig and I am ready to start facial rigging, I had an issue where once I changed the colour of the C.O.G control, the clavicle control also changed and wouldn't change back to the red and blue.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 3

The upper body is rigged and I am ready to move onto the last body rigging tutorial, then it is time to do the facial rigging.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 2

Next up is the arms, then the body rig will be complete after adding some restrictions and grouping.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 1

I managed to some how break one of the character legs during skinning, so the leg would straighten whenever I applied an IK to it, after a bit of exploring I found a fix for it. I had to set the preferred angle of the joint and that remedied the issue. So after a bit of fighting the lower half of the character is rigged.

Narrative - Rendered Stills

Over the last few days we've all been working extremely hard to bring all of our work together, here are some rendered stills of the scenes so far:

We all worked on the archway scene, adjusting the poses and getting it all set up. The factory environment was mostly modelled by Julien, I added a few elements to help clutter it and applied the materials and lighting to the scene.

Shaun of the Dead Film Review

Fig. 1. Shaun of the Dead poster.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) is a comedy, horror film directed by Edgar Wright, who has directed other great comedy’s such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hot Fuss and The Worlds End. The film is almost a parody of the zombie genre and it gains its laughs from the use of violence, some jokes that it sets up early on and the simple minded characters.

The story is about the very average guy Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his failure of a life, it starts off with Shaun having a terrible day in which everything goes wrong, he attempts to turn his life around and win back his now ex-girlfriend, but unfortunately for him the day he attempts to change is the day a zombie apocalypse breaks out. Shaun however sees this as a chance to prove to everyone he can be useful, he just has to survive and of course win his ex-girlfriend back.

It could be argued that Shaun of the Dead is essentially a slapstick comedy as a lot of the laughs come from inflicting pain on the zombies or each other, the gag in which Shaun attempts to jump over a fence and it falls over is repeated in other films that Wright directed and has become an expected joke that gets funnier every time. In Shaun of the Dead it comes at a moment in which Shaun is attempting to appear strong and in control, which makes the gag that much funnier.

Fig. 2. Vinyl scene.

The film is also a great parody of the zombie genre and in fact our culture in general, it starts off by showing everyone looking and walking like zombies although the apocalypse hasn’t started yet. It shows people walking around staring at their phones and dragging their feet, ironically this means that when the apocalypse actually happens it’s hard to tell that zombies are actually among them, which is funny to observe. This means that when Shaun and Ed first see a zombie in their garden they assume that she’s just drunk, by accident Shaun causes her to fall and impale herself on a parasol base, when she gets back up they then realise she is a zombie. A funny scene follows in which they attempt to kill two zombies by throwing vinyl records at them, as Ed pulls them out and throws them Shaun complains that some of this collection is rare. So as two zombies slowly approach them with the intention to eat them, they search through the collection looking for vinyl’s that aren’t that valuable.

Another great scene is when they attempt to get into the Winchester pub for safety, they are surrounded by zombies and they are pretending to be zombies to not cause any suspicion. Ed’s phone rings and he casually tells the group he needs two seconds and answers the phone, discussing with someone that was looking to buy some weed. Obviously this alerts all the zombies that they are in fact human and that they should be devouring them, the stupidity draws out a chuckle as most of the things Ed does are idiotic.

 To conclude Shaun of the Dead is a film that draws most of its human from violence like slapstick comedy, it is ultimately a parody of zombie films and attempts to make the genre into a funny experience instead of the usual scary, hiding behind a blanket kind of experience. The gags that continue throughout other films almost feel rewarding every time you see them as you are in on the joke and it aids in finding them that much funnier. The laughs also come from how mundane they make zombie fighting appear, as they always have something more important to be discussing like getting back together or which vinyl can be thrown.

Illustration List:

Figure 1. Shaun of the Dead poster. (2004) From: Shaun of the Dead, Directed by: Edgar Wright [Film still]  At: http://images.moviepostershop.com/shaun-of-the-dead-movie-poster-2004-1020228593.jpg (Accessed on 05/12/2015)

Figure 2. Vinyl scene. (2004) From: Shaun of the Dead, Directed by: Edgar Wright [Film still] At: https://maxqueen.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lancer-de-disques-contre-les-zombies.jpeg (Accessed on 05/12/2015)