Narrative Lecture part 6: Dracula(1958)

The next film we have watched for the Narrative lecture is Dracula.




The film is about Doctor Van Helsing investigating the case of Count Dracula and also looking for his missing partner Arthur. Soon Helsing found his partner but has to dispose of him because he has became a vampire. Later Helsing has to protect the family of his partner's fiance from Count Dracula.
The purpose of watching this film is to see a British adaptation of the classic Dracula book. Which is interesting because the film plays on the appearance of British society, with the people in a pub being quiet and don't want any trouble, while the upper classes wants to know whats going on around their homes. It even plays on their appearances and the way the public talks as well. With people from the lower classes wearing old tattered clothes and talking in a rough tone to having the higher classes being well dressed and spoke in a posh manner.
The strengths of the film is the opening sequence with the camera moving towards the castle of Count Dracula to zooming into the his coffin with blood dripping on his name, this shows that something is strange about Dracula himself. The other is how the clothes specks about the character a bit more, with Dracula his clothes is black with a red inside this shows that Dracula has a creepy feel around, while looking at Van Helsing clothes you feel safe yet worried when around him.
The weakness is that the film has bad pacing, an example would be the beginning. The film did not left too much of a mystery on Dracula we are introduce and we instantly know that something is up with him. Few minutes later it is reveled that he is a vampire, it did not left any room for the audience to think about the strangeness of Dracula.
I did not like the film too much because the acting felt stale, it didn't have the level of acting to make the film more interesting. The music was quiet most of the time and only plays when something dramatic happens, there is no mysterious background music when something questionable happens.

Character Design part 7

During the two weeks of Character design lesions I have learnt some new techniques.
The first week we had to add some facial features to a theme that was given to us, for me the theme was garden.
To help me design my characters I first listed the objects I know that are used for gardening. The objects I have wrote are big and small lawn, garden sprinklers, mini garden fork and spade, a bucket and clippers.
The first character I drew on the first page was a big lawn mower, I thought to give it a gentle relaxing expression because I seen this type of lawn mower being used in a cartoon and the character always seemed relaxed.
The next characters I have made are the two mini garden fork and one spade. I gave the spade a cute big eyed expression and I gave one fork a type of intelligent look and the second fork a more evil look, I pull the evil look off by making the fork more pointy.
The next object was the sprinkler I wanted to give it a an angry bug like appearance because I saw one of these sprinklers and I thought make it bug like would fit, I gave it an angry face because I thought it would be funny.
The last object on the first page was a bucket. I didn't know what was I going for with this but while I was looking at my bucket it reminded me a plant pot so I did some character development on it and came up with a happy broken pot with a small single flower, to me this pushes the cuteness because it's a broken pot that has a small plant and it's happy.


On the second page I drew some clippers that had some animal like features like a parrot clipper. I made most of the clippers look visious by showing how shape they are. I also drew one small lawn mower that for some reason has an expression like it is looking for something.


On my last picture I added a new object which was a lawn chair and too me that screams lazy so I added some lazy features by giving it some sleepy eyes and wraping its chair arms around it's tummy. Justin saw this and he likes the idea and helped me by giving it actual sleepy eyes, a big tummy and a happy face. Also I made one last clipper.


On the second week I learnt on how to make poses by using some guide lines to tell the expression on the character, we worked on this by using our class mates as models for our drawings. I actually felt this helped me a lot on using guide lines to show the expression on the character's body also on the second week I learnt on making facial expressions. I don't have pictures of it because they are on my actual character design but don't worry I will post it.

Lip syncing examples

I know we have finished our lip syncing tutorials but I thought these videos can give us an idea of how lip syncing works.
The first videos are examples of different ways of lip syncing 3D models with the same dialogue. The dialogue used in these two videos are from the famous speech given by the joker in The Dark Knight

Example 1


Example 2


The next video is from a documentary about the different types of technologies used in a children show called 'Sid the Science Kid'.


There is actually another documentary called 'Science of the Movies' where the host of the show interviews the people behind the show. The episode is called 'The Magic of Henson', I don't exactly remember where the interview takes place but I think the interview is roughly around the middle of the documentary. If anyone is planning to find the episode then I must warn you the presenter of the documentary is very annoying but the things he looks at are interesting.