ANOTHER Cup of Coffee
- Amy Scott
- May 1, 2018
- 2 min read
Another project we had this semester was called 'One More Cup of Coffee'. The brief:
In the coming semester we want you to revisit your 'Cup of Coffee' project using two distinct techniques: 1. Puppet stop-motion 2. Maya. Throughout the semester you'll be able to book time and advice with Mike to tackle each of these techniques, and you'll be expected to cover at least one (and ideally both) and to hand in the results for your Design Research Summative Submission. A skeleton puppet and one of the bays in the dark rooms will be available throughout the semester at times that can be arranged. In the same way you'll have access to Maya and Mike's expertise, and it's for you to decide (in discussion with Mike) when you'll able to fit these into your busy schedules. This project will run parallel to three other projects and is not optional, so you'll have to organise your time carefully. The premise is the same one you're already acquainted with - using one of the techniques, a person in a good mood drinks a bad cup of coffee; using the other technique a person in a bad mood drinks a good cup of coffee. To add to the challenge, however, there will be certain restrictions to the basic scenario. There will be no cup of coffee and no recognisable or identifiable setting: just the puppet, 4 bare walls and a table. Both the CG and stop-motion puppet will in effect be miming the actions and emotions; this way you will have to convince us what is happening without recourse to props or other devices. You can still employ a variety of shots and angles to help convey the facts, but ostensibly you'll be relying on movement to convey what the respective characters are going through. This is entirely about performance. We don't want you to use sound. Nor do we want you simply to duplicate what you did in the first project. This is a chance to work in ways you may not be familiar with, but more importantly it's an opportunity for you to refine and improve your animation skills.
I decided to look at using the 3d software called 'Maya'. I have not used the programme much and thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about it. Over a few weeks I worked on a 3D model of a cafe in order to get more used to the programme. I hit a few obstacles on the way, like I was using a track pad to create the model instead of a mouse. This was difficult to make it accurate and I could not add any materials to the surfaces. However, I consulted with other people in my year and discovered it would be much easier to do using a mouse as you can select right click. After this I was able to add materials to the surfaces and was even able to create glass for the windows, which I was really proud of myself for figuring out. I learnt all about different material types such as Blinn, Lambert and Phong.
Below are some images of the final design.
