Progress with CGI & 3D Animation
Since the purpose of my personal research project is to compare the difference between traditional special effects and computer generated special effects in film I have set myself the fairly ambitious task of creating artefacts using these different techniques - prosthetics, puppetry and 3d animation. Since I have basic to no knowledge of any of these I am going to have to be a very fast learner and depend highly on others for help when producing these artefacts. Fortunately I have friends that help me with all of these however I would feel better if I attempted to do as much as possible through my own learning. I am a fairly qualified in terms of fine art therefore prosthetics and puppetry does not pose a great threat to me at the moment, all I need is money for resources; however the 3d animation is something that I have never been taught properly as well as being a skill that is notoriously difficult to master. I have always presumed I was limited to 3D Studio Max as a 3D animation program since this is what I was introduced on the course, the interface alone for this seems daunting enough let alone the sculpting tools. However this week I have been looking at alternatives;I have recently obtained copies of Z Brush and Maya and have found these much easier to get to grips with. I am currently working on creating a zombie head on Z-Brush and creating a basic crocodile body structure in Maya by referring to various video tutorials on Youtube. Maya is tricky but I am finding the interface much easier to navigate and am getting to grips with the modelling basics.

Maya - Basic modelling tutorial

Z-Brush - Basic modelling tutorial