RandomDesign

Making some Good progress on the 3D model.
The basic shapes are blocked out.
I am now adding in the details.

Time to start the worklog!

Over the last days, I was thinking about a design that I can realize for this Ram Mod challenge.
Playing with some ideas, I came across one of my favorite movies in terms of art design, "Mortal Engines"

Taking the general theme of the movie with its predator cities as an inspiration, I was searching for a city that can might be converted
into a Ram Mod for this project.

I came across this design here, and thought it would just fit perfect.


Now, I need to convert the design into a 3D model and start thinking about the best placement for the ram.  

Time to start the worklog!

Over the last days, I was thinking about a design that I can realize for this Ram Mod challenge.
Playing with some ideas, I came across one of my favorite movies in terms of art design, "Mortal Engines"

Taking the general theme of the movie with its predator cities as an inspiration, I was searching for a city that can might be converted
into a Ram Mod for this project.

I came across this design here, and thought it would just fit perfect.


Now, I need to convert the design into a 3D model and start thinking about the best placement for the ram.  

The Grab and drop cat is brilliant 

Voted for Stefan Ulrich

Voted Stefan Ulrich :)

[Germany] Stefan Ulrich - as always, he does the job admirably!

I love the hamster one too

Also made a short video and tried to capture how the gifs look in "real" life
 
 

Also made a short video and tried to capture how the gifs look in "real" life
 
 

Haha thx. Was actually also the first time we did animations this way.
Was a lot of fun, even though just scratching on the surface of the abilities of After Effects.

And my last gifs

2. Hamsters in my PC
For the CPU display, I designed a cartoon hamster wheel with a hamster running inside – just as the hamster is firing the engine ^^. I drew the image again in Adobe illustrator and imported it into After Effects for animating. The wheel was fairly simple to animate and I just used the “rotation” (R) tool, making it rotate around its own axis. I moved the key frames until the speed of the wheel was just right.
 The animation of the hamster was a bit trickier. Again, I made sure that every part I wanted to animate, like the tail, ear and the two legs, was put into an individual layer in the illustrator file.

   
For the front and back leg, I also used the rotation tool (R). However, I first moved the anchor point, around which each leg is supposed to rotate, using the “pan behind” tool (Y) (shown on top in blue in the image below). I moved the anchor point to the position, where I imagined the joint of the leg. Then, I used just a few degrees (like 15-20°) to move the leg back and forth. I copy/pasted the key frames to repeat the movement and adjusted the speed (distance between two key frames) to the rotation speed of the wheel. 
   
 
To animate the tail and the hamster’s body which should move and slightly bend while running, I used the “Puppet position pin tool” (Strg+P). For the tail, I put two fixed pins on the edges (see below, open yellow circles) and one pin that I can move around a bit to make it look as the tail is moving slightly up and down while running.  

For the body, I placed multiple pins all over the surface (15 in total) and adjusted their position, so the whole hamster will bend a bit while running. This step just took some time to play around with the pins until the changes in the body shape looked good and not too exaggerated. The key frames were synchronized to the key frames of the legs. So, the whole movement looks smooth.

 
For the memory cooler display, I was long time undecided what to do. So, I just thought, ok, a hamster should not come single. So, I wanted to place another one and while Hamster #1 (let’s call him Puk) keeps the PC running, why not hamster #2 (called Fops) being counterproductive and chewing some cable inside your PC.
I drew another cartoon hamster sitting on some cables and having one cable in his mouth in illustrator. On top of the hamster, I added a layer having the hamster’s shape and showing only the skeleton of him. I also created some zick-zack stripes which are supposed to represent some electricity – I guess you know what’s coming.
             
 
Every single part was again put into individual layers for the After Effect animation later on. The skeleton and the electricity layer were not visible at the beginning. The hamster is not moving, but just cawing on that cable in his paws. I used again the “Puppet position pin” tool to set defined pins at the mouth and cheeks which are supposed to move slightly up and down by changing the position of the individual pins.
After a while, the whole hamster will move up and the skeleton-layer, laying on top of the other layers, appears together with the electric zick-zacks. The hamster-layer below just disappears at the same time, because I wanted the hamster to shake a bit. Using the puppet position pin tool, I put multiple points (9 in total) around the hamster’s surface. Because I wanted to create a more random, shaking pattern, I just used the command line for the position of each pin. You just have to press “alt” and click on the position stop watch and the command line will open. I just typed in “wiggle(15,29) with 15 being the speed of the random movement and 29 the magnitude. I tried out different combination of speed and magnitude until I liked the outcome. After electrocuting for 3 sec, the hamster just moves back to its normal position continuing chewing on the cable (who else ever had a hamster knows that they just never learn ^^).
The “wiggle” command (alt click on “Position” stop watch) is really cool for random movements and saves you a lot of time.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And the final Hamster animations!

So lets go,
Hi everyone,
I’m Stefan, a PC modder and prop maker from Germany who currently lives in Michigan, US. Some of you may know me and my wife Kathrin as RandomDesign from building custom, extraordinary PCs.
Now, I’m happy to tackle this new challenge for the Thermaltake Ultra GIF Design Invitational and make some custom animations for the Floe RC Ultra 240 CPU & Memory AIO Liquid Cooler. I like to try out different ways on how to create animations and short videos, which hopefully will inspire you to also customize your CPU and Memory displays.
Here are the ideas we gathered so far (just working titles to keep you curious ^^). I’m planning on using mainly Adobe illustrator, After Effects and Premier to create 2D key frame animations. If I got some time at the end, I also will work on some 3D animations using Cinema 4D and I’m looking forward to sharing my progress with you:
       1. Kittimania (2D animation)
       2. Hamsters in my PC (2D animation and/or Stop-motion)
       3. Submarine/Birdseye (Video/drone footage editing)
       4. Think Tank (3D animation)

Good luck Stefan 👍 

looking good. Waiting to see all assembled.