Task 1 - Schedule

This is my final burn down chart. On day 1 my ideal and actual task are the same but then on day 2 my actual amount of tasks were less than the amount of tasks that I had ideally had for it. On day 3 my actual amount of tasks were one less than my ideal and by day 4 i was able to finish all of my tasks. 

Task 2 – Dada and Sophie Taeuber-Arp Research

Dada

Dada or dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde based in the early 20th century. Having and early center in Zürich, in Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire (circa 1916), New York Dada began circa 1915 and after 1920 Dada grew in popularity in Paris. Dadaism was developed in response to World War I, The Dada movement consisted of artists that rejected the logic, reason and aestheticism behind the modern capitalist society, they instead expressed nonsense, irrationality and anti-bourgeois protest in their works of art. The art movement wasn't just focused on one kind of media it spanned over from visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. 

"There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the Austrian artist Richard Huelsenbeck plunged a knife at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism."  

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber-Arp was born on the 19th of January 1889. She was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor,textile-designer, furniture and interior designer, architect and dancer. She is considered to be one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century. 

"Born in Davos, Switzerland, Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber was the fifth child of Prussian pharmacist Emil Taeuber and Swiss Sophie Taeuber-Krüsi, from Gais in Appenzell Inner Rhodes, Switzerland. Her parents operated a pharmacy in Davos until her father died of tuberculosis when she was two years old, after which the family moved to Trogen, where her mother opened a pension. She studied textile design at the trade school (Gewerbeschule, today School of Applied Arts) in St. Gallen (1906–1910). She then moved on to the workshop of Wilhelm von Debschitz at his school in Munich, where she studied in 1911 and again in 1913; in between, she studied for a year at the School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Hamburg. She joined the Schweizerischer Werkbund in 1915. In the same year, she attended the Laban School of Dance in Zurich, and in the summer she joined the artist colony of Monte Verita in Ascona; in 1917, she danced with Suzanne Perrottet, Mary Wigman and others at the Sun Festival organised by Laban in Ascona."

In the year 1915, she met the Dada artist Jean "Hans" Arp at an exhibition at the tanner gallery which then became her spouse seven years later when they married in 1922, she then changed her name to what she is known to this day which is Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Jean "Hans" Arp moved to Zurich in 1915 as a way to avoid being drafted by the German army during World war I. They collaborated in many joint projects until she died in 1943. 

"Taeuber-Arp taught weaving and other textile arts at the Zurich Kunstgewerbeschule (now Zurich University of the Arts) from 1916 to 1929. Her textile and graphic works from around 1916 through the 1920s are among the earliest Constructivist works, along with those of Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich. These sophisticated geometric abstractions reflect a subtle understanding of the interplay between colour and form." 

I think that I will be using Spophie Taeuber-Arp's work as an inspiration for my animation because they are colorful and interesting especially her puppets I think that they are perfect to use for my animation because they simple but interesting. 

Task 3 – 3D Gameplay Animation Research

Animation.
In the games animation industry there are a few techniques that people use, But the two main techniques that people use is 2D and 3D. 2D gaming was basically the beginning of games because at the time they only had softwares that could only create 2D animations. There are debates as to when 3D animation started coming around like DOOM which people were saying how it was only 2.5D and then there's 3D Monster Maze which definitely wasn't 3D. While looking at a discussion thread about what the first "true" 3-dimensional game was people seemed to focus on the fact that if games didn't allow you to look up or down then it isn't considered as 3D because in 2D you are only able to play or move the way the character has been drawn. For me 3D games became more and more defined when the first tomb raider came out which I also made the action-adventure genre much more interesting as it allowed you to climb, run and jump in many angles.

In terms of films there are many more techniques that you can use but this also depends on the genre of the film, the earliest techniques used in terms of the fantasy genre is a mix of both normal filming and stop motion and also a case of sequencing or putting together different cuts to create the final piece. At the time there weren't softwares available to create 3D objects like monsters and other creatures so they instead used different techniques like using real life creatures but at a close up angle or the stop motion techniques where they would film movable objects close up and take shots of every movement and then take that sequence, enlarge it and put it in the original set up. Although stop motion is an old technique it is still used for many films like for an example the recent film Kubo and The Two Strings which came out in 2016.

In both games and filmography whatever the techniques is used for the animation it takes time, skills and dedication to work till the product is finished. 

3D Animation.

Walk cycle.

This video shows a walk cycle in 3D animation. 

Running cycle.
This video shows a running cycle in 3D


Reload animation.
This animation shows a parody gun reload animation but its still a reload animation nonetheless.


Jump animation.
This is a 3D jump animation



3D Games.

2D Animation.

2D Walk cycle.

2D Running cycle.


Reload animation.


2D Jump animation.


2D Games.

Task 4 – Puppet Build,

The pictures underneath are some of Sophie Taeuber-arp's puppet creations which I used as a reference for my puppet build. I tried recreating the first puppet because I thought that it would be the most simple to do and it was also much more colorful than the others. most of her puppet creations are very simple using simple shapes but some consists of more shapes than others and that is one of the reasons why I chose to do the first one because it was very simple and the most colorful. 

For my puppet I just went with a very simple build like that of the picture reference above. To start off I went with a pyramid for the skirt and then I duplicated it and change the color, For the body I just shrunk another pyramid and flipped it upside down. For the limbs and the neck I went simple cylinders. For the head I went with a sphere and added a pyramid as the nose. And as for the color scheme I just went with the reference picture. 

This is the final design of my puppet.  

Task 5 – Puppet Rig

So first I added in bones and to do this I just pressed shift+A and selected the armature option and just assigned one for each of the limbs and one for the neck as well, in the picture on the left hand side you can see that I put two bones for each of the legs, I did this so that it would act like how a leg with a knee would but I later found out that this wouldn't work unless you have two separate shapes. While in the process of adding bones and parenting them to the model itself  there could be a problem with the vertex group where if you were to move a bone the object that you "assigned" it to doesn't go with it and this is because the vertex group of that particular object wasn't assigned properly to it this can sometimes be a result of copying a bone instead of creating a new one. 

To resolve this you would have to individually assign each vertex group to a bone, I tested my puppet by trying to move one of the bones that was assigned to one of the arms and fortunately the arm moved with it. This is because I created a new bone for each of the limbs without having to copy it.

    

  

Task 6 – Storyboard

The images below are my storyboards for my walking, running, lunging, spinning and jumping cycles. These are the cycles that I used to create my final puppet animation.  

For all of my animation cycles i will be keeping my puppet in the same place to make it seem like it's an actual puppet where its just moving on the spot. 

Walking cycle:

The first cycle that I decided to animate was the walking cycle. For the walking I want for my puppet to just slowly and moderately swing its arms and legs backwards and forwards.

Running cycle: 

For my running cycle I want for my puppet to transition from walking to running meaning that it would first be slowly and moderately swinging its arms and legs backwards and forwards then it would gradually get faster and then stay on the same pace. 

Lunging cycle:

For my lunging cycle I want it to transition from the running cycle so to do this I want for the puppet to start slowing down and eventually or immediately going back to the walk cycle and then I want him to stop and right after that I want it to simultaneously lean its head forward, swing his arms back and then back to its original position while the legs alternatively swings backwards and forwards and then back into the stop position. 

Spinning cycle:

For the spinning cycle I want my puppet to transition from the lunging cycle to the spinning cycle. I want my puppet to stop and then spin on the spot but since my model is a puppet I want it to spin in a weird way and I want for my puppet to spin at least twice..

Jumping cycle:

   For the jumping cycle I want for my puppet to stop from the spinning cycle and then from there I want my puppet to raise both its arms and spread its legs like it was doing a star jump and then finish in the original position. 

Task 7 – Legal and Ethical Checklist

I have checked my work for decency, representation of race, gender religion and sexuality and decided that I believe that it has met an appropriate standard. I also confirm that I own any relevant intellectual property withing the work that I have produced.
For my puppet build I did use a puppet created by Sophie Taeuber-Arp as a reference for creating my own puppet although I used the same color scheme I did not copy every detail of her work.

The picture on the left is the puppet that was created by Sophie Taeuber-Arp which I used as a reference to create my puppet which is on the left. 

If I were to breach the legal and ethical system in terms of games if I were to include sexist or anything offensive in my game it could lead to my sales going down and it could lead to getting banned in some countries as some countries have different law standards. 

If I were to copy every detail of the puppet and then upload it in the internet and claim that I was the one that designed the whole thing then that would be breaching the copyright law and the Original artists could sue me and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it as it was my fault in the first place. This could lead to the destruction of my educational and professional reputation.