Biography of Al-Jazari

Abū al-'Iz Ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz Al-Jazarī (1136-1220) (flourished c. 1206) (Arabic: أَبُو اَلْعِزِ بْنُ إسْماعِيلِ بْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري‎) was an Iraqi polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, mathematician and astronomer from Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia, who lived during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages). He is best known for writing the Kitáb fí ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to construct them including water-operated automatons, many of moving peacocks. Most are decorative fanciful objects, though some also serve a function. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been influenced by the classic automatons of Al-Jazari.

Sources: World of Invention, Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Minor Project: New idea

As I said in my previous post that I may be scrapping the idea and going for a new one closer to modeling than narrative.

I had a few ideas before I came up with the new one with phil's help.

Still image of earth being placed on a high detail orery.

Still image of scientific instrument with people gathered round it similar to the image I wanted to use as reference to lighting and colours for the old idea.

Movie poster (without text) of a small girl holding a teddy by the arm in front of a dark decrepid forest/apocolyptic city street.

Stills of an Exibition of old scientific instruments even ones that never got built.

Digital model of the "Enola Gay" a 1945 bomber which was involved in deploying the nuke at Hiroshima. (Zack Moat's idea during conversation of what I could do).



My new idea is to transcribe the automata of early 13th century Arabic engineer Al-Jazari as illustrated in The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices and hopefully figure out and show how they were meant to function.

I have found a pretty decent site regarding Al-Jazari and his automata and shall prove usefull in recreating them.

Wiki: Al-Jazari

Minor project so far

Admittedly i have not been using the blog due to laziness towards it and hence the progress i shall put into this post.

First off there is no concept art due to talks with Phil where we discussed that it would be better for me to cut straight to the storyboarding and animatic. The animatic has the entire storyboard in it so there is no reason to waste space and time uploading both.

Next i looked at possible colours i could use for this project. I had envisioned it as a poorly lit workshop with muted colours assisted with the orange glow of the candles. Here are the colours i looked at and a picture Phil sent me that fits the scene much more.



Next came the pre-viz of the scene i have started to do, i have not yet started to animate these.

The Artisan's hand:
Low poly model:


High poly model (WIP for use as normal map for low poly):


The Orery:


The basic scene setup:




That's it for the moment as i may end scrapping this whole idea since this is close to narative and is not my cup of tea for one more close to my ideal path of modeling high detail models.

Minor Project: The Idea

The Task:

The task for the Minor Project was to create a self-directed project about anything we wanted to do within 15 weeks. The fact we had no base to stand on and we had to figure out what we wanted to ourselves scared me, i've never really had to come up with my own idea fresh out of the box before.

The Goal:

With this minor project I am hoping to do something that differs from the model of Wyld’s Globe I did during an earlier transcription project. By this I mean to actually create an animation that this time is a totally original idea of mine and hope to improve on my animating and modelling ability during the course of creating this idea for the task.

The idea:

Camera fades in from black to show a small artisan’s workshop (an artisan is a high grade professional crafter) and multiple shelves full of completed solar system models (Orrery).

The camera continues to pan across until we can see the artisan at work at his worktable. The camera cuts to the current orrery he is working on of our solar system, he ponders as to if it is finished while tapping his finger on the table. After a small amount of time he decides to pull apart the orrery and fits in another rotation ring with a small rod extended out far enough to be the new third orbit (this is where Earth would be). He sets it aside and selects a wooden ball from a tray of various sizes and proceeds to carve detail into it; during this the camera cuts to the shavings floating to the table, the camera cuts back to the finished ball as the artisan blows the remaining dust from it. The artisan reaches for a brush and the camera cuts to the paint as he gently dabs the brush, this dabbing happens a couple of times with the different colours. Cut back to the ball and it has become coloured looking very close to early earth before the tectonic plates shifted (Pangea).


He places the ball upon the rod and starts up the orrery and lets it spin for a bit. He slams the table and the camera cuts to the side of the worktop as he lifts a waste basket to the table and shoves the rejected orrey into it. He in anger places the waste basket to the side and gets out his chair and storms off, the camera cuts to the orrery in the trash and zooms in closer to the label on the base, the label states “ Orrery of Sytem “Sol” crafted by God (or some other name of god)”. The camera fades to black.

I'm Back For Year 3

Year 3 of the course just started and we have the Dissertation, Minor Project and Major Project to get through this year. To be honest I dread the dissertation I have never had much luck at writing, on the flip side the Minor project already has an idea pieced together for it that has been brewing in my head over and over again over the summer. This idea shall be told in the next post.

Full E-Sting Completed

Well here it is.

Match move tutorial done

In the end i had to borrow a motion tracked file off of Tom so that i can do this, it was fairly simple to setup the rest of it, i spent most of the time on tweaking my alteration to it.