Nelly Luckett : BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

The original King Kong movie is a massively influential film, not just for building a massive film franchise that spans 8 movies currently released, 4 spin-off movies and another couple of movies on the horizon, but also because it shows the beginning of very large-scale production using stop motion integrated into the large amount of action. King Kong once again encompasses the common theme of an evil monster and a damsel in distress. The blonde lead female, played by Fay Wray is a beautiful woman struggling in the wall street crash, who agrees to go on an undescribed journey with a man she has never met. She is incredibly annoying throughout the rest of the film, being a pathetic stereotype of a woman. “It’s a 96-minute screaming session for her, too much for any actress and audience. With the blonde still screaming while in Kong’s palm atop the Empire state, after having screamed all the way from the first reel, another unbelievable fact is that Kong shouldn’t drop her and look...

This week's Maya tutorial online was to complete the common shaders on this cute little robot!  This was what a basic lambert shader looked like on him. Doesn't he look sad! This is the ceramic version. This is a brown Lambert.  The next one was plastic. This is created using a Blinn and then changing the eccentricity, specular roll off and reflectivity. We then created a silver texture for him. This is also a Blinn, but with a higher reflectivity. The actual colour of the texture is black, its the reflectivity that gives it its silver colour. This is the gold version for him; again a Blinn but this time the base colour was very dark brown with a yellow highlight. And the same method again for chrome, just this time with a blueish colour scheme. This is the glass version. This one is a little more complicated as you have to put the colour to black, turn up the opacity to max, allow refraction and then put in the right refraction index for glass....

I have to say I'm both a little disappointed in myself and feeling better than I did in the last project. Weird huh? Basically, for this first stage I have focused a lot on research, and fully developing my concept before properly diving into drawing it. This has given me a much clearer path than I found myself on in the Invisible Cities project, but has meant that I have ultimately produced fewer thumbnails than I would have liked. I felt like this additional research was necessary to ensure that I wasn't chasing my own tail for a number of days which is how Invisible cities felt at times. So, at this point, although I have less thumbnails right now (more will be uploaded tomorrow), I feel like I am in a much stronger position that I was after the OGR before. OGR1 by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd More thumbnails tomorrow! Watch this space!!!

While I have been drawing, I have come to realise that there are two "categories" for Brancusi's sculptures. They are either rounded, grand merged shapes, or a number of shapes piled on top of each other. This began to get me thinking about how these shapes could have been formed when found in an environment; whether they were caused by the habitat they were in or whether it was a stylistic choice. Whilst doing research into how weather conditions can effect buildings, I came across two astonishing examples that have really caught my imagination, and are taking me on quite an interesting journey. The one with the most information is: The sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion, Egypt One of the statues discovered Statue of a Queen Recovered Recovering the Pharo's statue A huge, engraved tablet discovered in the city's ruins. What it is believed that the city looked like before it was lost. It is really unknown what actually made the city ...

Brancusi's Influences by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd

To what extent is "The Curse of the Sad Mummy" influenced by Film Noir and Expressionism? by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd

Today we got our creative partners for the What If? Metropolis project. So I did some very early initial research. Constantin Brancusi Information by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd