GROUP BLOG: WEEK 3

Curtis south – Modelling and creating a ford island radio tower and hanger.

Developing and designing the storyboard and draft script

Curtis south –

A script has been written detailing the facts of the USS Arizona actions and events but also allowing the narration to be interesting and not dull in what the narrator is saying, at times the narrator will emphases what’s going on in a scene or help direct the viewer into an emotion.

From week 2 to week 3 I started and formed up a radio tower model from referenced images, using the referenced images I have created the radio tower to look like its real life counterpart.

Constructed from individual pre-sets, this model is very basic in design but as according to the storyboard , ford island and the buildings will be in the background so they don’t have to be as detailed, but I have made it detailed in case of changed camera shots from the storyboard.

I have constructed a ford island hanger, designed better than the tower as by having the hanger being created by one or two pre-sets; it has less file size for the videos.

Radio tower – how I found it – I found working on the radio tower easy and straight forward because the majority of the building is made out of multiple pieces.

The design is simple with numerous areas of detail like the stairway on the side of the tower and the radio tower control room.

Room for improvement the radio tower can be made more detailed because referencing the storyboard in a number of scenes I have designed, the ford island will be shown in some shots by the planes flying over or the number of camera angles being placed on the ford island itself.

Hanger – how I found it  - I found the hanger much better to work on than the tower because of its simple structure.

I made the hanger from one pre-set, by exuding and shaping it to look like a hanger; it looks exactly like its real life counterpart.

The hanger has room for improvement including a roof and back detail to the hanger, but out of the two I have created my favourite is the hanger because of how its constructed and the model is a lesser file size to the tower, meaning I can have multiple hangers in a scene and not over use the file size.

I have developed the storyboard – keeping to the events of the USS Arizona's where about tells it's story on the pearl harbour day – the storyboard  mainly consists of the USS Arizona itself and the planes, as the planes in a swam take down the mighty ship.

The storyboard incorporates interesting and different perceptive camera angles between the USS Arizona and the Japanese planes, from the planes dropping bombs to the USS Arizona firing its turrets.

The storyboard incorporates many camera angles such as angled shots to high shots, looking down shots, close up’s, far way shots, low water line shots and under water shots.

The storyboard whist talking to our special FX creator David Allison, the different camera angles from the ship and planes allows David to experiment more with the explosions and clouds in the shots.

The storyboard shots allow the video narration to come in and out in a following pattern.

Instead of the narration being consist and standard throughout the video, certain scenes within the video allow the sounds and visuals to take over instead of a narrator being needed, so you get a complete scene of dramatic angles and camera movements from the planes and backed up with sound effects and atmosphere noises.

Alex Nicholls –

During week 3 Alex wrote down some initial concept ideas on the development of the USS Arizona theme, more of a written storyboard than pictures.

But overall the group decided to go with Curtis's storyboard based on the ideas and showing the story of the event of the USS Arizona.

Alex also created in 3ds max, a model of the nakajima bsna bomber from the six fleet Japanese aircraft carriers.

Alex found the model challenging on the design aspect of plane particularly on the wings design shape, but time consuming the design of the plane’s wings came out perfect in proportion  and design, giving the plane its aerodynamic looks and to help create the other wing on the other side of the plane Alex used the symmetry modifier to complete the model.

David Allison –

David has looked into Fume FX of explosions and clouds in numinous software and 3ds max plug INS

David has looked into Fume FX of explosions being successful in creating a good explosion effect David over the next week wants to upscale the size of the explosion rate and spread for the USS Arizona’s scenes.

David has also been looking into creating cloud effects for the sky shots, experimenting with clouds FX, the software called VIEW for creating the FX clouds  has a long render which can be a time consuming issue to the overall  export outcome of the scenes the clouds feature in.

Austin spillman –

Developing and constructing the USS Arizona Austin worked more on the ships Main turrets, which when designing them he found easy and straight forward from the few shapes to construct the turrets, overall the design of the turrets is very nicely detailed and placing shine textures to the model it looks really realistic.

The hull took a lot of planning from Austin because from the lack of good plans available of the USS Arizona, Austin had to construct his own plans of the ship and work and develop from them which has led to time consuming and stressful task of creating the hull itself because of its complex shape and design Austin worked with a lot of vertex points to pull certain areas of the hull out or in to create the structure of the hull.

One improvement that was discovered by Austin experience is that 3ds max could be developed on the constructing aspects in the software because of the time consuming creation of the hull, 3ds max could be developed to improve on the time of the creation of difficult shapes or create new tools to help craft the difficult shape better and simpler.