Oliver Thacker, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

The Infernal Machine- Like the Greek Myth of Sisyphus (the guy who is forced to push a boulder up a mountain only for it to fall down just as he reaches the top), this idea would focus on the alchemist having to try and make gold, but the machine he is forced to use just spits out what he put in (perhaps the machine reshapes whats he puts in before spitting it out) or the machine takes apart any mixture he puts in and returns it to its base compounds. It would be a never ending cycle of trying to make gold only to be brought back to square one in a sense. Eventually the machine would break or the alchemist would go into the machine only to find it doesn't make gold but is just designed to torture or torment him. Finding out the machine is a joke, he destroys it, freeing himself in a sense, and escaping with whatever gold he actually made. Children's TV show- This would be a sort of 'Monster of the Week' style show like a show called 'Trap Door'....

Character Design follow-on : Since I am having trouble coming up with an interesting idea, I thought I'd go back to my character design project. I eventually came up with a handful of different variations on the original idea. Documentary/Interview of Alchemist as well as others in the same building (i.e his Boss that profits from the alchemist's absentmindedness/stupidity, A customer of the alchemist shop, ect) Modern day Alchemist, which I thought could be a guy that makes drugs that he believes are potions and magic elixirs. There was an episode of American Dad where the son goes to what he believes is the American version of Hogwarts, but it's actually a meth lab or something similar. It would be nice to design it based on what the alchemist thinks he's seeing and have it reveal in the end that he was actually in a drug lab. Might not be a suitable topic to do because of the issue of drugs and exploiting someone for personal gain, but I think it would be an int...

This is now the second week I've been using my tablet for life drawing. I've decided to do this because I need to get more comfortable using it for sketching and drawing in general, plus I've recently added a lot of new brushes that need testing out. Some of them mimic the drawing materials I usually use such as chalk and charcoal. There are also some more experimental brushes that look like they could be interesting to work with

Following on from my ideas around what the future of customer service might be, and a recent activity in one of Phil's lessons, I had the idea of a service robot that has some kind of AI system so that it could improve how it acts in a specific place, for instance a shop. There would be some kind of malfunction or glitch that causes it to become self aware. It starts to modify its self, using things from around the store, so that it can be more helpful to people. One modification idea I had was that it would use pieces of a children's 'speak and spell' toy or a radio in order to give its self the ability to speak. These modifications wouldn't be just stuck to the character, but at the same time they wouldn't be completely internal. Perhaps the speech modification is attached to the character to look like some kind of mouth. I also thought that it would be interesting if the character started to wear clothes, or express some willingness to try putting some on. ...

So, while walking home, I thought of another idea based on the customer service idea I mentioned in my last post. What I came up with was an idea to have 3 or 4 smallish robots that can act individually or come together to make one bigger robot, in the same way the Power Ranger's Megazord forms. I also thought they could be sort of like the creatures from Gremlins, in the sense what you shouldn't do things after midnight, in this case I thought that they shouldn't be left on after midnight or they run around wherever they are, causing havoc, or maybe it causes them to malfunction and gain a sort of sentience? My guess is that this would be a more character design based project, as it would be all about these 3 or 4 characters and not too much about the story. For the characters I thought that there should be a leader, and their part would be that of the head when they all come together. It would be interesting if this character would be the only one with the ability t...

The future of Customer service- Taking a concept of customer service and taking it further to a logical or exaggerated conclusion. This could be because supermarkets are pushing for better customer service while also cutting back on the amount of staff they employ. They could achieve this by using robot servers or employ mutated humans or animals that have been changed by the company in order to provide the best service possible. Child's way of interpreting the world- Seeing people as monsters or aliens, main features of their appearance being translated into their monster version. This could be framed as the child having an overactive imagination or they see people as monsters because of some kind of abuse. Can be stylised to look like a children's show if it's an overactive imagination or something more scary if it's abuse. Another way of interpreting this idea would be a child imagining themselves in another place using something like a cardboard box. The idea wou...

Animation: Weeks 1-2:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2018/10/toolkit-2-posing-with-moom-2.html Weeks 3–7:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/weightlifting-with-moom.html Weeks 8–12:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2018/11/charlie-chaplin-dope-sheet-breakdown.html Drawing: Life Drawing:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/life-drawing-14012019.html https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2018/11/past-3-life-drawing-sessions.html https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-lifedrawing-piece-i-made-digital.html Character Design:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/character-bible-absent-minded-alchemist.html Maya:  Pipeline 1: Head Modelling:  https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/jet-pack-jones-head-modeling-1.html https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/jet-pack-jones-head-modeling-2.html https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2019/01/jet-pack-jones-head-modeling-3.html https://oneandollie.blogspot.com/2...

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