Like everyone else, I started with the proposal.

A smart student would know that leaving a proposal

purpousfully vague is the way to go since that will allow maximum creative freedom as long as you
make sure it fits the criteria. You cant change from fruit to veg unless you just say food.
Conventionally we were supposed to start with choosing a theme from the following:
E=MC2
The Meeting
Tea for Two
Segregation
Division
The Box
Rose Tinted Spectacles
Cross-Over
I dont know whether to call it smart of foolish but I started my idea development before choosing a
theme.
To make my mindmap I used a website This was soon to be a mistake, just you wait.
mindmapfree.com
I came up with my FMP idea in it.
I personally like to make my projects ambitious and interesting as well as to try and improve a
method such as model making or digital effects. This is how I started my idea development
mindmap. I started with listing different projects Ive done in the past and how they improve on a
particular element. Just for an example, the last project was a cartoon animation project. While
others did cell animation or using paper sprites which were moved one by one, I used my large
chalk board at home to make a minute plus longer animation of a giant monster and giant robot
fight with sound effects and a backingtrack. The full package. The minimum was 3 seconds of
animation as well. But this time I needed a new area to improve.
At first I realised that Ive done everything there is to do so instead of doing something new I
needed to improve. I decided on green screening and 3D modelling since I did green screening
twice on my last courses FMP and a short video for this course to try out green screening. The same
goes for 3D modelling in Cinema 4D. The examples of my models are on my previous Blog.
From their I made an idea.
I started with something huge and much, much bigger than what I could handle.

Originally I made an idea of green screening myself into a short story with an incredibly large
narrative to do with time travel and the multiverse theory as well as including a bunch of different
villains and characters from video games, movies and TV shows. As ambitious as it was it was also
too much for me to handle. In the past Ive dealt with heavily narrative based videos such as my last
FMP. The story for that one was that a For Dummies parody book that brought demons and ghosts
to a house. The final outcome explained little of demons or the book being connected to the strange
goings on but still managed to be over 10 minutes long somehow. So when I reread my original
idea, I released Id easily bungle up the narrative part and how I couldnt use the characters from
other series either since that would breach copyright law and the like. Instead I came up with a new
idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4dOj3a7HE&t=52s

Nevertheless I still wrote it all down and I expected it to be helpful information later. With that idea
came a train of thought on how I made my previous projects from over the years in college and how
I improved skills with each one leading me to my decision to improve 3D modelling.
I later decided on a new idea which I stuck with and slowly changed overtime.
I talked earlier about wanting to make a large and ambitious idea. I promised myself I wouldnt do
giant robots or giant monsters since the last project with the chalk animation already covered that.
However I found a loophole. I decided to make giant Cyborgs. Theyre both a giant robot and a
giant monster but not only one of the 2. That and I could make more than 2 cyborgs to deviate from
the norm. To achieve this idea and to improve on my selected methods of design I chose to make
the cyborgs in Cinema 4D and to put it into a real world setting like Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Its not quite real green screening but if I added a green screen to the model I could still achieve the
same.
The story was that 2 rival mad scientists who compete in an arena where creations are pitted against
each other decide to settle their differences with one last large scale assault.
The next step was research.
I knew what I wanted to do however I had to make it relate to any of the 8 themes in the bulletpoint
list earlier in this evaluation. I had only one choice in order to use my desired idea. Create an excuse
that I chose one of these themes using the most tenuous connection possible.
I chose E=MC2 because Sciencey Cyborgs and The Meeting because there will be cyborgs
meeting to fight and Cross-Over because there will be a Cross-Over of science since a Cyborg is
both Biological and Mechanical.
I made 6 mindmaps of the 8 themes to show some more thought processing to show I considered
the other themes rather than just focusing on the few themes I decided on at the end. I even made
Pinterest boards for all 8 of the themes as well to gather ideas through images to help develop ideas.
https://uk.pinterest.com/pangys_agha/
Fool Proof! Now to research.
I did research on cyborgs from VideoGames and Movies. This had a Pinterest board all to itself.
Inside were examples of cyborgs from movies and videogames. Mainly videogames. Some of the
examples werent animals cyborgs and some werent cyborgs at all. They were mostly there to
inspire design variations. I had the following:

(Primary Research on animal Cyborgs) Winston the cyborg gorilla from the game
OverWatch. Much like the game, Team Foretress 2 (or TF2), its design style is realistic
but cartoony to appeal to a larger audience. My personal style is more cartoony as well.
Although this is true, Winston has a somewhat detailed and deviates from a simpler design
that Id like but has helped widen my idea on how much something should be changed.
Winstons design is almost 100% robotic and doesnt appeal to me since I want a 50/50
balance making my designs obvious that it is an animal and not the equivalent of a robot
with a brain inserted into it.
 (Primary Research on animal Cyborgs) Mecha King Ghidorah the cyborg, 3 headed,
lightning breath, armless dragon from the Godzilla franchise. Despite being a cyborg version
of a dragon which of course is not an animal that exists, its still a creature thats not a
human so I say its valid. Saying that it helps me design a fictitious character as this is a
cyborg of a fictitious creature as well. Not only that but the ratio of organic and machine is
exactly what Im looking for. It has an example of both complete robotic replacements (the
centre head and neck) and an example of partly robotic attatchements (the tails and knees).

(Primary Research on animal Cyborgs) The cyborg dinosaurs in the game ARK: Survival
Evolved. In ARK there are different ways you can upgrade a dinosaur to do different things
and thus helps inspire more variety in both design for different body parts like headgear and
uses. There are ways to build homes onto some of the dinosaurs as well as station dinosaurs
that act as turrets onto that dinosaur building. A bit of a large scale example but it does open
the possibilities of how different utilities can be built into a design.
 (Primary and Secondary research on animal and human cyborgs) Examples of different
cyborgs from the Crash Bandicoot series including animal cyborg enemies, Dr.N.Gin the
Robot addict engineer with a missile in his head and Nina Cortex the cyborg goth girl. From
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back to Crash Twinsanity, thereve been plenty of
cyborgs both animal and human. Whats better is their design style is very cartoony and was
originally designed to reflect the Warner Brothers cartoons like the Looney Tunes. This
perfectly reflects my personal design technique since I have never been good at making
realistic drawing.

(Secondary Research on Human cyborgs) Servo Skulls from the Warhammer: 40K series
(Skulls of the dead repurpoused as drones). I suppose it is contradictory that I consider servo
skulls as cyborgs since the very definition of a cyborg is a combination of organic organisms
and technology and skulls dont really have flesh anymore. Skulls are just calcium or
something like that. The point is that of course the cybernetic advancements do contribute
towards my designs but whats more interesting is I got in contact with Workshop (the
company that own and make Warhammer: 40K) to ask if they have a definitive design for
a servo skull since the fan based community love making their own. They got back to me
and said that there is no definitive design of a servo skull which obviously means that the
designs are limitless since theres no official design. Despite how Im not roboticizing
humans or skulls for that matter, the servo skull still has an infinite list of designs to take
inspiration from.

(Secondary Research on animalistic robots) Giant, animalistic Robots from the (currently)
new game, Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS4. This gameis about the earth but years in the
future where normal human society has broken down to a primeval and caveman state but
robots have evolved to a point where they have become animals themselves. Its a beautiful
game with robot designs that have clearly taken reference to dinosaurs and primeval animals
 but scaled them up to the size of an elephant and beyond. Despite that it isnt an animal
cyborg, it still gives me a variety of animal shapes through technology to take reference to
myself.

(Primary and Secondary Research on animal cyborgs and animalistic robots) Stock Cyborg and
animalistic robot images on Pinterest. This was just cannonfodder that I didnt take personal
interest in but it does give me a whole gallery fo work made by the Pinterest community
thats not directed linked to a particular franchise and thus has no overall design style to
follow allowing expressive and free designs to influence my work with.
Both the Primary and Secondary Research are important to me. I dont care if I had human cyborgs
in my research when Im using animals for my project. The whole point that I was using both kinds
of Research was to influence how I viewed the different ways an organic organism can be modified
from the ratio of the mechanical parts to the original and how uniquely I can use it whether to my
advantage or to my creative ingenuity. However I do have my own softspot for the cartoony
designed cyborgs in my research like the Cyborg designs from the Crash Bandicoot franchise.
Maybe a little bias nostalgia mixed in as well.
However I didnt do anything more than just design research. An example of research that could
have drastically improved and expanded on my viewpoint would have real life examples of
cybernetic enhancements and the real life moral conflicts of tempering with the natural body like it.
I chose not to do either for 2 simple reasons which can possibly come across as an excuse.
The first being my own style of drawing and animating is cartoony and exaggerated. I dont want to
pretend that Im trying to emerse people into believing that giant animals with metal arms and legs
are roaming around. Much like how Who Framed Roger Rabbit didnt truly commit to a cartoon
standing by a real man since there will always be a conflict in both worlds existing that breaks that
emersion. The same goes for my narrative since its wacky and silly enough that no-one could
possibly believe there could be a stereotypical rivalry quite so comical and dramatic as 2 mad
scientists facing off like that.

The other reason is in a normal situation a bit of research into why people are morally at war about
machines substituting body parts but in my projects narrative, there are 2 stereotypical mad
scientists you would expect to be in a cheesy cartoon or comic building robots, monsters and
cyborgs to fight in an arena. The problem that comes between my story being compared to the real
thing is the same reason the last paragraph ended at and how the characters in the narrative already
introduce themselves as selfishly competitive and wouldnt care about the moral or legal
consequences. To me that makes sense.
With my idea development and research done after reviewing my own work to come to my
decision, I needed to put things into action.
And with that I needed to decide on animals to turn into cyborgs. Or Roboticizing rather. This is a
popularised and common terminology in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise which means turning
organic organisms into robots.
http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/Roboticization
Although this word has existed since the 50s.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/roboticized

My plan is simple. Ill first start with designing all the main characters (the cyborgs) in Photoshop
using real photos of the animals to make a rough draft since it would be quicker than grabbing some
paper and looking up and down from my laptop screen over and over again. Otherwise I would be
wasting paper and giving myself an awful neckache. Then I would make refined versions using my
prefered method of design, hand-drawn, since whether Im using a mouse, a track pad or a tablet.
My digital drawings always look terrible. Ill also need to take photos and videos for the
background and also edit them into foreground layers in Photoshop to stick the 3D models ontop of,
so theres a little photography going on as well. Then everything will be thrown straight into Adobe
Premiere Pro and AfterEffects to greenscreen the 3D models and make the video.

Moving onto doing stuff!

After Googling extinct animals in the last 100 years, the first result was a top 10 list:
https://www.google.co.uk/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi-
7vvupuXTAhUDBcAKHRW_C9QQFgg8MAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aol.com%2Farticle
%2Fnews%2F2016%2F04%2F22%2F10-animals-that-have-gone-extinct-in-the-last-century
%2F21347328%2F&usg=AFQjCNHP7d_RNt-PxV2D2mBvsTB1LJvElA&sig2=_rtvrcf-
rOLXrW8SWSJodQ
Despite the title, I counted and it has 9 animals on the list. I still decided to use all of them though.
I knew that making 9 cyborgs was a big challenge so I went for the next best thing. 6 Cyborgs.

Baiji Dolphin

Thylacine

Golden Toad

Caribbean Monk Seal

Formonian Clouded Leopard

Caspian Tiger

Pinta Tortoise

Pyrenean Ibex

Tollache Wallabe

I designed all the cyborgs to have defining features from a Dolphin with a gun on its head to a Deer
being redesigned into a helicopter. I.. started running out of ideas by the time I got to the Deer
which was at the bottom of the list I was processing. The first design was the Thylacine dog and the
Baiji Dolphin which are both the most detailed designs.
During the making of the 3D models I left out some details from the original design such as the
band around the leg pivots on the Thylacine design. In some cases this was because I forgot to put
them in. The main reason for some of them is because it would be difficult and time consuming to
make them.
For some of the models I got premade models for the organic bodies:
https://free3d.com/
https://free3d.com/3d-model/leopard-37241.html
https://free3d.com/3d-model/low-poly-tiger-95936.html

https://free3d.com/3d-model/low-poly-deer-87801.html
Only half of my models did. The rest were custom made. However the model I used for the
Pyrenean Ibex (Deer) somehow bugged out the model making them entire model hued blue from
the blue background I gave it to ChromaKey with (green screen terminology). Due to this it does
not appear in the finished animation. Its a bit soon to be saying this but because of the outcome of
the Thylacines animation, I also cut it entirely from the animation as well but since I already edited
in images of the Thylacine model to imply it exists at all, I made a custom sprite to overlap it to
show that it is not currently operational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_C_CsQ9Ivs
I used the following techniques when making the models:

Booles (Putting holes in shapes)

Symmetry (Self-Explanatory)

Subdivision Surface (make sharp corners smooth)

Pen, circle + Sweep (I used the Pen tool to draw a tail shape and put that and the circle into a
sweep file to make a tail shape)
A short lived problem I had with the Caspian Tiger cyborg was with the tail being animated. The
problem was that the blade on the end of the tail couldnt be attatched to the end of the tail so I
could move it in sync meaning that I had to seperatly animate it. Then I released that for some
reason the blade was slower than the tail and always slid off where it was meant to be when
moving. And then I realised after going frame by frame fixing the last problem that the movement
was too binary and not fluid. After all that I decided not to fix it and then I removed the animation
entirely from the tail for the final animation. The original animation is on YouTube.
In my FMP mindmap I also said I wanted to do a Who Framed Roger Rabbit thing by green
screening real things to be alongside the animated stuff. The closest I got to it was how I took
photos of a town close to me and then Photoshopped it into Background and Foreground as well as
put my animated Cyborgs onto it. It... didnt come out too well. I wasnt aiming to make the video
look realistic (as previously explained) but my lack of proper detail became my undoing since it
may have stood out a bit, too much. I would have improved this with proper lighting of course and
video footage of the town rather than still photos that makes the still water in the mere stand out.

Although I
originally used the green screening idea for my original idea to put myself into new environments
such as a white, spacious landscape that was meant to be the central hub connecting all possible
universes and timelines.
To some people Chromakeying sounds difficult. Not for me. Unless you count how my Adobe After
Effects program decided to not work. Lucky for me Adobe Premiere Pro had a Chromakey option
called UltraKey. So that helped...
Since these amendments made the size of my project smaller, I thought I might as well keep going.
My environment was going to be a town called Diss. I dont live there but it is close-ish and bigger
than the village I live in and the neighbouring village. I was planning to take photos of Diss to use
but I ended up limiting the area I was taking photos of to a small area around the mere of Diss.
The size of the project continued to decrease. Before I even started 3D modelling, I decided to not
use the actors I was planning to use.
The story was that 2 rival mad scientists who compete in an arena where creations are pitted against
each other decide to settle their differences with one last large scale assault. I mentioned I decided
on 6 of the 9 animals to be turned into Cyborgs. These 6 would be halved to give to each scientist.
With experience from my last course doing filming, I realised that not everybody is good at acting.
Especially when reciting lines. To compensate I designed my storyboard to accommodate no on
screen voice acting but instead explain their rivalry using a radio broadcast with voice actors
instead. This broadcast would explain the events preceding what will happen. Once again I dropped
this to avoid commanding actors to do something right. One quote I picked up well from my last
course was Do not rely on anyone. Just because if you need someone for something then theres a
good chance they cant make it. Its better to handle things yourself.
The new story is a basic assault on a city gone wrong but with a sprinkle of narrative. The narrative
being the logo on the desktop background implying an organisation of Evil doers. Theres only one
featured evil scientist whose only perspective is from the computer hes working on starting up.

I regret degrading my original idea to such a small size. But not much could have been done to
improve what I already made.
Premiere Pro editing was a bother. Once I finished I rendered it in 1080 but it came out with a
terrible resolution. After rescaling my clips instead of relying on Scale-to-fit I rendered it again. It
still looked awful. I had one of my peers, Chris, to look at it. Apparently my screen was set to 360
instead of 1080. Its quite a large difference to render something thats not 1080p to a screen size of
1080p.
Ive recently had to jump back into Premiere Pro to fix a problem I had with the password input clip
which I recorded on Bandicam and then cropped out later. Just some clip moving and its fixed. I
didnt mention how I used a screenrecorder (Bandicam. I dont recommend it because of its
unremovable watermark) for some of the clips because I couldnt think of a good spot in my
numerous paragraphs of project processes to fit it into but here where mentioning it. Not much to
say either. I used Bandicam to record Google Maps zooming in for the GPS clip and the Password
typing clip. I just realised how unreasonably long this paragraph was for such a short thing to say.

Overall I dont like the final outcome. It looks sloppy and it doesnt at all look as good as I wanted
it to. Ways I could have improved it was by having better textures for the models as well as
spending more time on the animation. in-fact the lack of time I had to work on the animation lead to
the inevitably short run-time of the video.
Earlier I briefly talked about the photos I took to put my 3D models into and how it didnt come out
well. The final outcome video is solid proof why it didnt work. Some other factors were its
improper lighting and how my simple design on paper came out almost monstrously in 3D and in a
real environment. To keep it simple, the photos that were still stood out as odd since time seemed
like it was standing still, the 3D models werent visually edited properly to merge into the
background making it look vibrant and stand out in a bad way. Despite all this the Caribbean Monk
Seal and the Caspian Tiger were the only animations I didnt like that I still added to the video. The
Beiji Dolphin and the Golden Toad were quite well animated is you ask me. As prementioned the
Thylacine had a demo animation which I also used for the final video but it came out weird. This
was because the animation was a walking animation and I was using it for a running animation. So I
tore it right out.
Im surprised at how well my research went since I dont usually look at tons of different sources
and talk about them properly like I did now. Furthermore the design stage went smoothly as well
because I had plenty of designs and changes done over time.

Of course the final outcome bothers me but it bothers me more of how much change it underwent
from a short partly-live-partly-animated video to a short sketch almost entirely infront of a
computer screen and only partly animated through 3D models. I said that because technically
everything on that desktop was animated while only the GPS and password clip is a
screenrecording. The original presentation would have been longer and more dramatic explaining a
rivalry and a string of events leading up to a large scale battle in a city between cyborgs. I still
planned to have it end the same way though. With the Caribbean Monk Seal Cyborg exploding and
destroying everything. I did design it to be my scapegoat.

But theres a brighter side. Well, okay, theres mostly darkness. Its like using a singular floodlight
on the moon for me. My organisation skills werent the best for me, especially during the last month
since the pace I had picked up on at the beginning slowly declined until I was doing little snippets
of work every so often in a day. However I strangely have the ability to fasten up further towards
the end of a project and eventually finish even if it seems hopeless. Like a weird sudden rush of
adrenaline and determination at the last minute. Thats pretty much how I managed to write an
evaluation over 4000 words long. Of course the times when I didnt work made the animation look
worse and worse overtime. But pretty much on the realistic background with my 3D animated
cartoon creatures.
I never took Art GCSEs for one reason. I knew that theyd make me study and do realistic
drawings like portraits of other students or drawings of flowers. I never was good at it. I grew up
with Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon so my instinctive drawing style was always cartoony. Now
that I think about it, this whole animation would look Alot better if it were drawn and animated on
my chalk board at home like I did with my previous project since my hand drawn style could thrive.
However it wasnt all for naught. I gained experience from 3D modelling which was my main aim
to begin with. I say it was a win for the right reasons. I improved and made a video!

To bring things full circle to the Proposal. I made it vague enough that even my huge drastic
changes could be allowed. Cyborgs fighting and evil scientists was pretty much want I wanted as
well as improving on greenscreening and 3D modelling. I think I met my criteria no matter how
much change I undergone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA3m8r3TluY