Here are some peoples renders of lava that they have done, which I have tried to simulate in Maya but still working on that.

Here got some black and white mine research picture for reference that are really good and two fence pictures that can be used for the graveyard design.

This is the contract for our group that I designed. The point in the contract were made by Anna as the director.

These were designs for the parrot in Kitt's room. I started off with looking at a real parrot then on to cartoons then looking at more mechanical birds with stings that could have unique animated style.

Here are a few drawings for the mine cart scene,where the cart goings off in a differernt direction through the mine.

Here was some concepts for the graveyard testing our more different stylised grave stones and some different object that would appear in the scene.

This was testing how the lava will flow if we are going to use it still in our scene. I think it works ok, but I think that the texture on the lava can be a little bit better, as it lifespan is too quick. Also needs to be more gloopy like lava.

This sort of rainbow design will be in kitty's room, and the way it animates will be similar to the finial one in her scene.

This is an birds eye view of the graveyard. This will show the layout of the track, wheres trees and gravestones will be placed. At the end you will have the mausoleum. Its kind nice to have this to plan where things will go in the scene.

This is another piece of concept work which i done in water colours and then edits parts in photoshop.

Well since ive had the day off today ive been working at home doing some more concept art work. While having lunch and watching TV, flicking though the vast amount of channels I start watching Scooby Doo.
You may think this has no relevance to the project what so ever and so did i, till there was a mine cart scene in an old gold mine where a miner was scaring people away from the town.

So here the clip from YouTube.
Enjoy, I did ! hhehe

Got some cart designs below and how the cart can join up with the second cart from behind.

Some other little designs for Kitty's room. Ive been looking into palm trees for the island which has the treasure chest on and the red balloon.

Ive used pencils, water colours, oil pastels, pro-marker pens and Photoshop.

Just getting ideas on different cart designs and looking at mine carts.


Got to have Lego ( just the best)

The one below I quite like as there are two two tracks joining up together in what looks like a cave/passage way, with rusty cart wheels on the track.

What idiots below ! lol

Here I was looking into how the cart can detach from each other and join back up easily. So here are some pictures of how trains link up together.



From looking at these pictures I started to come up with a design that would suit our cart on the ride.

These were taken from the Summer holiday to Crete (2008) in Zeus cave.


The contrast in colours and the way the rocks have fused together have a nice appeal I think, These could be used in our cave for the part of the ride.


Stalactites in the pictures above
These can give us great inspiration for modeling the cave and the type of textures can be given to the walls.

At last ive found out that the render farm is set up and working. This is good news which can speed up the post-production work flow at the end of term!

How fast is it?

A job with 8 Render Layers (one Ambient Occlusion, 2 Ray Tracing) of 200 Frames that took 5 h 50 m to render on one dual core processor. The same setting applied took 20 minutes on the render farm ! ! ! Roughly 15 times faster depending on job.

200 Frames = 20 min
1 Frame = 6 sec

Based on the figures above that it take 200 frames 20mins to render and 1 frame take 6 seconds I worked out a rough guide for how long our animation will take to render :D

So if you are looking at a 2 min animation (3200Frames) to render on the render farm it will take 5 hours and 20mins. Which is a little less time if you was rendering 200 on 1 dual core computer. ! !

From the concept art that I was doing for this scene which I really liked, I had an idea. I wanted to bring this picture to life in After Effects. Since I had all the layers from Photoshop all I had to do was import them into a Photoshop document into After Effects and it would bring all the layer into the scene.
From this I laid it out like the concept Picture and animated certain layers.




I had done it split screen to show how they are both having different ride experience. Kitty was on top because it was like Kitty was in Heaven, having a really good ride and every thing was good and happy. Lee and Chloe were in like Hell having a bad experience so had to be at the bottom.


The video below is what I was mainly concentrating on and I was quite pleased with the final outcome. This will show what going to happen in the scene and what the waves are going to be animated like in Maya.
Hope you like it

Over the last week it has been quite mental with the work that we have had to do. Every one has been mainly concentrating on the essays and presentation that were for this week, which has meant that the work has been grinding to a halt for the moment. It every hard to switch between different types of work when you get so engrossed in one, you tented to forget about the other or time runs out.
So due to presentation and every think I haven't done much work this week as I would have liked to, but after today I will be able to concentrate more on my work and be working like a mad man!

Thing to still do:
More concept art work.
Up date more of my blog
Possible some changes to the storyboards
Other things...........

Here are some renders tests, testing out different colour lights that might suit the sign.
Although this probably wont be the real sign that we will use I still wanted to test out the colour in the lights.




This is an Ambient Occlusion pass below