Maya: Pixar short film

Story

This short is about a ball of yarn named purl who has her first day on the job at an office. As Purl notices and enjoys the workplace environment, she expects to fit in with everyone and become friends right away. But Purl then notices it’s not as easy as she thinks and thinks she must change to fit in. Eventually, after losing hope of fitting in by being ignored and avoided, Purl comes up with the idea of changing personality and appearance, the end result turned out as expected as she now is a staple in the offices. Just as Purl feels accepted and goes on a break with her colleagues, a new member who is also a ball of yarn named Lacey joins the office and goes through the same feelings Purl did. Purl notices and decides if she wants to introduce herself to Lacey or hang out with her colleagues. She decides to introduce Lacey to herself and her colleagues too so she feels accepted. Later it is shown that because of this, the workplace has become a more widely acceptable place for all kinds of people. From an all suited men’s workplace to a diverse group of friendly workers.

Job Roles

The kind of job roles included to make this short are as follows:

• Concept artists: To give an overall design theme by coming up with the aesthetic of everything.
• Animators: To give the characters and objects life by giving them motion.
• Story Writers: Self-explanatory, to tell the story, which people can understand.
• 3D modellers: To turn the characters into 3D models to fit the environment.
• Lighting artist: To light the scene, also determining the mood of the scene with light.
• Texture artists: Create’s textures and colours on various 3D objects such as skin or clothing material.

Programmes and Art Style

A variety of programmes are used to create these shorts, some of them being Renderman (For rendering), Maya (For modelling) and Presto (For animating). Funnily enough, Presto is very similar to Source Filmmaker, in terms of functions and design, though presto is more powerful and is bug-free. Unlike other animation apps, presto uses sliders to move certain bones as opposed to selecting them and moving them manually.  The art style for this short is entirely 3D based. It has done the job of exaggerating on the style of realism so it looks more upbeat. I like how the short does a good job of mixing a cartoon looking character with a more realistic environment. The style of Purl is also a nice design choice as, because of her look, she is a more likeable character. Her extreme facial expressions compared to the workers emphasise this as it makes us have sympathy for here. This art style also helps attract and fit a younger audience.

Lighting and Rendering

In terms of lighting, the lighting is very appealing and realistic and consistent throughout the whole short. Though they could have used lighting in a way to convey emotion in some areas. This lighting fits in with the realistic style the short is trying to represent. Rendering these frames can take a very long time, from 5 to 7 hours, which is why Pixar render each frame on different machines to speed up the process.

Animation

The animation is quite different depending on the character and is very noticeable too. You have the suited workers whose movements are very realistic, to a point where it looks Motion Captured. Then you compare this with Purl who is very different from the others as her animation is exaggerated and at times blocky, which emphasises her character and look.

Conclusion

To conclude, this has to be one of my favourite Pixar shorts. I really do like the moral it’s trying to convey which would be to accept everyone, no matter how they are and to not be prejudice. The art clash between realistic and cartoony is another touch up I really like too and how it works so well together both aesthetically and as a story emphasis.

Film Noir Evaluation

Our objective for this topic was to make a Film Noir based on a story we had to follow. We were split up into groups of 4 and were assigned different roles among the 4 people in the 4 group. The Film was about a man who recently committed a murder as he was ordered to do so. 4 Different scenes were given to us and we were assigned to do one of the 4 scenes. We got scene 1, where a person enters an office, pours a glass of wine, only to get a phone call where the same person proceeds to ask “is it done?”

The filming

The filming process went well. I had to take on the role of being the cameraman and so I was in charge of getting the camera shots right. A difficult task was actually getting some of the camera shots due to the position they were in, for example, the close up of the phone had to be filmed behind the table. Despite this, I feel like the shot was pretty decent as they helped convey the scenario and scenery.

For the camera shots, I feel like they could have been improved upon seeing as some of the shots has a lack of good field of view. Alongside this, I could have done a better job at aligning the camera correctly and possibly keeping it still in some shots. One side note I’d make is that I felt like most of the shots that we got were too long, which would be good to make the beginning slow as it is at the start, but was a little too slow in my opinion.

Editing

As for the editing, I figured it could have been done better. First of all, mainly due to the fact that most of the shots that we had were very long and instead of cutting most of them up I left the majority. Though it was rushed due to time and so changes will be applied later to make it better.

On top of that, the sound design was okay as well, Though the choice of music at the beginning compared to the end is a little off as I don’t think they go well together. One could argue and say that its to represent the change in scenery but personally, something else could have been better to fit.

What I liked

My favourite parts would have to be the sound for the man waking up in the room. We wanted to emphasise the feeling of isolation in that scene and so sounds similar to ones you’d hear in horror felt like a good choice. The beating heartbeat is to represent the fact that he woke up, nervous and not knowing where he is, then it increases as he tries to open the door, showing his true fear as he realises he’s trapped. The ambient sound that builds up is also to emphasise this further.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the film noir could have been done better, but it wasn’t the worst in the world. Most of the shots run on for too long and it probably would have been better to cut them down more and even rearrange them to better narrate the storyline. As a result, it probably wouldn’t bore people as much. Though I do like some of the shots, especially the ones that take place outside, and some of the sounds and music used too which helps define the scenario and scene, Though not all of it.

Film Types

Main genres

• Action
• Adventure
• horror
• Ci-Fi
• Crime
• War
• Romance
• Mystery
• Western

Sub-genre

• Children
• Buddy
• Erotica
• Mockumentary
• Thriller
• Epic
• Road
• Spy
• Biopic

Non-genre

• Animation
• 3D
• Stop motion

Sound lesson: Soundtracks

In today’s lesson, we began making a soundtrack for an intro and a scene from a film. The film was roughly 4 minutes long. We were allowed to use anything that can help us as long as it was music. I hadn’t fully finished but I used loops for most of my music. I planned to use my own melodies but I didn’t know how I could. However, this will change in future.