I cant believe i didnt do anythang this weekend.
The man who bleeped my sim system up

LESSONS IN STORY DESIGN FROM PIXAR's Creative TEaM
I was an 7 year old when Toy Story hit theaters—almost too old to play with toys ( I played with all kinds- from Dolls with shifting eyes, to tins of peak milk lined together) . Even so, the movie resonated with me in a deep way. I had always imagined my toys having their own personalities (even now i still imagine each xter that I modeled as alive and mischievous at the darkest corner of my mind), so it made total sense to me that they would have private lives and adventures of their own. The world Pixar created was just a half step sideways of the one I lived in. It felt real—and secretly, I wished it was.

This is the power of storytelling at work—this ability to create a cast of characters and a fictional world so compelling that viewers yearn to be part of it. Pixar is a modern-day storytelling master. It’s no mystery that all 17 of their movies have received both critical acclaim and box office success. Every film involves the same core elements, blended together in new and exciting ways, to draw their audience.

I recently had the chance to explore the behind-the-scenes process that goes into Pixar filmmaking at the Cooper Hewitt online Museum’s Pixar: The Design of Story exhibit. Here are a few of the key story design takeaways I learned from my visual trip.

Pixar’s Story Design Philosophy

According to John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer at Pixar, every great story contains three foundational elements:

- Start with a compelling narrative.
- Develop memorable and appealing characters.
- Create a believable world.

To cultivate these elements, you need a continuous cycle of research, collaboration, and iteration that feeds into every part of the story design. These actions take on different forms and formats depending on the type of element and the medium you’re using to tell your story.

Let’s dive into some of the specific story design elements and tools Pixar uses that anyone can leverage for personal creative work.

Start with a Compelling Narrative

Pixar’s stories aren’t particularly complicated in terms of narrative structure. You can sum up each film in just a few words:

Toy Story: Misplaced toys try to make it home.

Finding Nemo: A fish goes searching for his missing son.

WALL-E: A robot follows a probe to a visiting spaceship.

Since the primary audience for Pixar films is children, the narratives must be simple and relevant for young viewers. And yet, these stories also captivate and move us as adults. They tap into deep-rooted emotions that are woven into the fabric of our human nature: love, longing, loneliness, jealousy, fear. And they treat these emotions with a great amount of subtlety and nuance, even if the stories that contain them are straightforward.

The way stories first make their way out of a writer’s brain and into a shareable format is in a script. Some scripts contain dialog; some contain a list of actions; still others contain a visual snapshot of how the story is supposed to feel. All of these formats are extremely useful when working on visually-driven storytelling formats such as videos, comics, and interactive content.

Scripting

Scripts don’t need to follow a fancy format or be developed using a special kind of software. For example, John Lasseter wrote the script for Pixar’s first film, Luxo Jr., on a regular old legal pad.

I love this script because it clearly conveys a story, complete with characters, a narrative arc, and an emotional journey, in just 29 lines of direction. There’s no dialog. There’s no world-building. There’s no scene setting. There’s just an everyday interaction between a father and son (yep, Luxo Sr. is a dad!). But when you watch the final film, it comes through just as vibrant and rich and engaging as a feature-length movie.

This is what the best narratives do: They transport you to another time and place, if only for a few minutes, and immerse you in a story that becomes real as long as you’re inside of it.

Colorscripting

A colorscript goes hand-in-hand with a written script. Its purpose is to map out the color, lighting, emotion, and moods in a film, setting the visual tone in the same way the action portions of a screenplay set the tone for the on screen blocking and dialog

While colorscripting isn’t necessary for every type of visual storytelling, it can be immensely helpful for any story that involves bespoke image creation.

This colorscript from the movie Up gives a clear sense of mood that a simple keyframe doesn’t.

The muted palette evokes a somber feeling in the scene. Carl’s suit, the cool purples and greens of the house, even the lack of color in the balloon he’s holding, show a lack of vibrancy that mirrors Carl’s emotional state. Now that my system is with the doctor, I have taken time to dust my old color mixing tutorials, especially the one from Andre Price. These things might appear like some overt overkill to the uninitiated but they do matter. Light is color...color is light. I dont really like that photographic starkness that Cycles give my renderings, I will start researching deeply into color styles/palette for each project. Of all renderings with Cycles done by Nigerian CGers only Tos87's method seem to tell stories with color gradation.

Conversely, this colorscript for Okuni, a kabuki dancer in Tokyo from Cars 2, provides a rich and vibrant overview of her character. I absolutely love the translation of human clothing to vehicular paint and parts, particularly the fan. (How does a car even hold a fan? Doesn’t matter—it’s adorable!)

Develop Memorable, Appealing Characters

Buzz and Woody. Mike and Sulley. Nemo and Dory. These characters are beloved by children and adults everywhere. After spending two hours with them, you feel like you’ve known them your entire life—and you want to keep spending time with them (hence the successful sequels).

What makes these characters so compelling? They’re memorable—not just because they’re talking toys or monsters or fish, but because they have familiar personalities that appeal to us. We all know people with aspects of Woody or Buzz. We probably have a forgetful Dory in our lives. I know I’ve run into a feisty character like Mike a few times before.

These characters are extremely tangible, multi-dimensional, and relatable. They have obvious strengths and flaws and fears, just like us. Of course we fall in love with them—even the villainous Sids and Syndromes and Chick Hicks—because we identify them with real people in our lives.

On the writing side, characters often start as a word clouds, where you get to know a half-formed personality by digging deeper into what makes them tick. On the visual side, characters often begin as concept art, a rough sketch that, after many rounds of revisions, eventually becomes the onscreen persona your illustrators and animators will bring to life.

Concept Art

This is one area i will focus too, even if it means just drawing stick figures to delineate every character's pose before modeling.

Some concept art serves to show a character in various physical and emotional states, like this series of drawings for Remy of Ratatouille.

Create a Believable World

Whether you’re creating a story in a real-world setting, one in an alternate reality almost the same as ours, or an entirely unknown universe, your world has to be believable for your audience to become fully immersed. If your world is inconsistent, illogical, or ill-defined, viewers will immediately begin to remember they’re engaging with a fiction—and then the magic is lost. As storytellers, it’s our job to sustain the magic for our readers or viewers as long as possible, and world-building is one of the key ingredients in this spell.

For the most part, Pixar movies are set in worlds we can relate to, at least on some level: the suburbs, the desert, a forest, the ocean. But even the ones we’ve never visited—like Monstropolis or a huge spaceship flying around the solar system—are believable because they tie in elements from everyday life. Mike and Sulley still have to go to work like the rest of us; advertisers are still blasting messages to consumers in space; love and friendship and doing the right thing remain important, regardless of where or when the story takes place. Even if we’ve never been to these worlds, we can imagine ourselves in them without much effort.

At Pixar, world-building starts in the mind of a writer, and is eventually brought to life in collaboration with teams of illustrators, animators, and 3D modelers. Often, early visualizations are created in the form of static concepts that show how a scene or setting should look. Artists also use multi-panel storyboards to reveal how the world, characters, and narrative work together visually in specific scenes.

Storyboard, Storyboarding, Storyboardest.

I don't do this s.hit at all
Maybe its because i can't really draw on the fly or perhaps, point blank laziness.

Anyways, I learnt that they are nece.

These storyboards from Inside Out (nice film, but somehow boring if u are a still kid) illustrate a real-world setting—a normal house where a kid doodles on the wall and is forced to eat food she clearly despises—juxtaposed with scenes of Headquarters, where Riley spends most of the movie with her personified emotions. Both worlds feel equally real, even though Headquarters’ setting is quite fantastical.

Key Story Design Takeaways

Story design requires both wordsmiths and visual artists to bring a narrative to life. Using a highly collaborative and iterative development process, along with some useful concepting and prototyping formats to get your ideas into a shareable format, you can design incredibly powerful stories.

The best stories make a lasting impact on viewers, becoming part of their imagination and broader worldview. Pixar has mastered this kind of storytelling. We can learn a lot not just from the techniques they use, but from the way they invest in developing compelling narratives, characters, and worlds.

ha, Yawnnnnn, O bula n ka ora m n'uno.
Yes o, I got f9 in igbo and am very proud of it. I wonder what i will do this week kwan. MAybe I should revisit my the Millipede. No, I am not just inspired these days. Maybe its my sick system. Maybe I am just CG Fatiqued. Mba n, I can't be, can't be.

My Doodles with Gimp.

I wish i can frame some of these. would love to hang them. gimp is quite good for an open source

interesting...especially the paintings.
nice one kazuna

Finally, My system is back and alive. phew.

I am thinking of revisiting this model even though i vowed not to do women again bit after seeing Jereal's xter....I am thinking women again.

Wow...! Your sculpts are really amazing... Nice portfolio, there's a lot for me to learn from here... Following...

I don't know what is happening... GIMP has taken possession of me....I ve gotten sucked in it. Chai. MY Blender pull me back.

Meanwhile, Touching down in Lagos....en attendant de voir ce que le battage médiatique est tout au sujet de cet endroit.

Lagos....is It what I expected? I dont know.

Meanwhile, I hav been suffering from a serious lag in my willingness to sculpt anything new.

So Today, I spent the whole afternoon Rigging fish...which was quite fun unlike rigging a snake.

I did a quick render too, as usual lightening x not my strongest suite despite all that i ve learnt from Pixarz exposee.

Imagine if i have access to an heavy system....think of all the water bubbles and the Blood I can simukate witg Houdini Fx. My next 200k is definitely for an HP Z desktop.

Before the end of this year, i will design a site where i would upload all my 200GB worth of Tutorials free. Their subject range x varied and it would be my way of givin back to CG geeks......since i cant teach

wow, that will b nice of u.... just make your tutorials with Maya

while I was busy whining on why i couldnt lay hands on a better Nvidia Quadro powered laptop...a muse revealed to me...Real flow , she said, now that Blender has Alembic, y dont u export this fish to Realflow and do ur sims there.
Cg geeks, realflow seems to tolerate low caliber laptops o. quite unlike Houdini.
In just two hours, i simulated 5.7 million particles of water, that x an equivalent of a small lake in physical terms. Chai.

This Realflow and Blender marriage, am in love.

meanwhile, i am still figuring how to simulate foams and i am really risking injurin this system again. Who cares if it spoils again....I repair. CG must work for me.

Shading and materials time...i dont know how to do foam, splashes and bubbles yet. But I am happy with this my discovered pipeline

This might be my last 3D work for this year. It has been a wonderful and at times onerous learning experience.

I got a new line of work as a graphic artist....So I will be giving the boot to Programming and entering my one time arch enemy PHOTOSHOP.

So i ve downloaded as much CS6, all the packs and brushes i can lay hands on. I am going photo shopping sabattical for a month.

when I return, I will continue with my models, or maybe, if in btwn boredom, I might make one or two models before this year runs out.

Thank JEhovah, that I am finally quitting codes for good.

Meanwhile let me describe my experience and the limitations I faced with this particular piece.

The Making of the Fish Conjurer

What was learnt?

Never under estimate the power of a female counsel beside you . I was battling with how to solve my liquid problems in blender/Houdini without overburdening my system again. I developed and threw into the bin several approaches until i got super frustrated. This was Until a friend came over. She's has considerable experience with liquid simulations being that she has worked/still work for advertising companies (that Peak milk churning in a bowl, she had a hand in it)
she said use Realfow and phuck Houdini.
I said Realfow and Blender...how can they rhyme.
She said...figure it out?

I racked my brain for a while and was about losing it again when she quietly ask if blender has alembic. It was a eureka moment!
That was how i used the combo of Realfow and Blender for the first time. Like i mentioned earlier, simulating with Realfow, especially with the command line, x reasonably lenient with low grade laptops. Of course there are limitations but compared to using blender's Native fluid system or Houdini's flip solutions....Realflow x less wicked.

U guys should download it. Give it a try and whenever you are lost in a project, consult a sensible woman

The Making of the Fish Conjurer

The Limitations

Realflow is fine and dandy. Quick simulation time (if u use the command line).

But....

There is a final process know as Meshing. This process invloves you, now, solidifying your simulated liquid particles into smooth polygons. The higher you increase the meshing attributes, the more ur hard disk space gets eaten up.
Note, i mentioned hard disk space, not RAM or Graphics card....at this stage, this two are just bare accessories, So when i realized this ( i ve less than 300GB HDD space), i had to reduce hand with the meshing. To think that I overcame simulation wahala to enter meshing wahala

So if you posses up to 1TB free HDD, with Realfow - ur blood/water sims can be as viscose and smooth as u want it. But as regards to computational time, Realflow got u covered.

Hollywood can afford to bandy Houdini around so easily becos they got two assets at their disposal : CG artists that are natural Mathematicans and tons of Hard disk space.

A second limitation is ME.
Building material shaders in Cycles is becoming a termite up my rectum. I cant still get sometin to appear wet/moist and a proper translucent (not transparent) feel to the water. Someone suggested that I use materials for Glass, but doing so increased my rendering/Baking time.

so u would notice that the fish are plastique instead of moist and the water apart from the meshing that i reduced hand in is not physically accurate when it comes to materials. I ve been looking for the crack of/ and where I can get the cyscles material vault by Reynandez.

I will post the animation as soon. Thanks for all your comments/suggestions/likes and to those who peep in and don't comment

well done Kazuna, realflow is the real thing. A friend introduced it to Me yesterday.

Throwbacks of 2015....

1. My first attempt at Tracking Geometry into a video.
2. Clay model of Blender modelled devil, light testing in Modo.

3. Actual rendering in Modo

4. An attempt at cracking objects using my devil model. Rendering done n Arnold renderer . That was before The Cycles craze.

Its still throwback week(s)...
Make una no mind me, i'ven't modelled anythang in 2 weeks...busy with my arch enemy, Photoshop

so I am showing old works that had never been on this porfolio before b'cos i don't like them so much. I dont know why it happens so, I f i dont like a work it never gets on here....which isnt right, a portfolio should contain both the good and not-so-good works.



That house with the boat is one of my, if not my earliest work...way back in the '50s

There's a new film in town....

CG Geeks and gurus, watch this film Moana.

Its Disney at it again. The latest entry, Moana, which is inspired by Polynesian mythology and culture. This seafaring adventure appears to take great pains to get it right, from the textile designs to the dance movements, the coconut-based crafts to the lovingly rendered turquoise seas.

It has all the qualities of a Disney princess movie, which means it has certain royal obligations to fulfil: a role-model heroine, a magical quest, a wholesome message, a merchandisable animal sidekick (in this case, a supremely dumb chicken) and musical numbers.

But i wanna ask, can a Nigeria company do an animation flick concerning another country's culture without getting a backlash? Can , say Kazuna Cobalt studios, Do an animation involving Japanese Samurai without getting verbal missles?

i've scheduled not to modelle any xter this November but coming december, as an end of year present to my self - I would look more into my dark side and refining my knowledge of Hair.

so Two xters are scheduled for a December....A Female Assassin and a demon from the seventh order of Hades.

My Targets would include:

- Hard surface modelling (there would be cybernectic arms, nails, chains, whips, xter paraphenalia that involves hard surfaces).

- closer attention to realism in terms of accurate depiction of anatomy (esp with the female assassin) and a keener study of Cycle material shaders.

- New inputs on hair simulation.
- A first attempt at scaled up Cloud/Dust simulation (for the Hell xter)

so i ve begun getting references for the Demon xter already

kazuna:
There's a new film in town....

CG Geeks and gurus, watch this film Moana.

Its Disney at it again. The latest entry, Moana, which is inspired by Polynesian mythology and culture. This seafaring adventure appears to take great pains to get it right, from the textile designs to the dance movements, the coconut-based crafts to the lovingly rendered turquoise seas.

It has all the qualities of a Disney princess movie, which means it has certain royal obligations to fulfil: a role-model heroine, a magical quest, a wholesome message, a merchandisable animal sidekick (in this case, a supremely dumb chicken) and musical numbers.

But i wanna ask, can a Nigeria company do an animation flick concerning another country's culture without getting a backlash? Can , say Kazuna Cobalt studios, Do an animation involving Japanese Samurai without getting verbal missles?

Abegi leave me joor!

MErry xmas everyone

In case you’re feeling too downcast this Christmas, don’t forget that overall the people of this planet are living longer, they are living in better health, they’re better educated than ever before.

Christmas - a time to “proudly celebrate the birth of Christ and the message of forgiveness, love and hope that he brings, We also think of Christians in other parts of the world who face persecution this Christmas and re-affirm our prayers for the freedom of people of all religions to practise their beliefs in peace and safety

As the year tails to an end, i will be using the opporunity to diss/critique my 3D jobs this year....the failures, the pleasant surprises, areas i could ve done better and goals that i set and did not meet.

I will start with comparing these two: Genevieve and Angela.

Genny x my first ever portrait sculpt.
Aim: To get facial details as accurately as i can and to work on Human hair.

well, i was oleasantly surprised that i can get someone's face almost 89% detailed...neva thought i could without opening a tutorial. I remeber downing five bottles of coke on the day that i finally rendered her out without hair..I was in jupiter.

Then the horror of hair came...

You know, when u start out on a new sphere in 3D, u expect urself to achieve perfection on that first attempt...i fell into that folly.
I thought that if i can sculpt almost with ease, that means, hair sim should come naturally...This Genny hair showed me pepper....Three straight nights, sleeping only once its 4 am. And yet...i Failed


Fast Forward to Angela....

Aim was to get a Kim Kardashian portrait, along the line I lost interest...

The goodest thang about this Angela job x my understanding of human hair simulation. Here, after several research/frustrations....i got things right