Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DUSTY
the making of
by Serin Inan
MR.DUSTY
the making of
index
The Concept 2
The Aim 3
The structure and the curriculum 4
The form 5
Narrative Flow 6
Mr.Dusty’s Background Story 7-8
The Stage 9-10
Ottoman Miniatures 11 -12
Hat Revolution 13-14
Character design 15
3DModel 17
the book rig 19
the pipeline 21
user testing 22-23
horon 24
color coding 25
render farm 26
list of consultants 27
MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE CONCEPT
the mind map
STORYTELLING
METAPHORS
EDUCATIONAL
HISTORY
FUN
FOR
KIDS METHOD
RECONNECT ANIMATION
CHILDREN 7-9 YEARS OLD
HISTORY 3D POP-UP
BOOK
SYNOPSIS
Mr. Dusty is a digital pop-up book series, which represents important
historical events to Turkish children between 7 and 9 years old. Children
are expected to memorize historic events without understanding their
relevance therefore; they often lose their interest in history. Mr. Dusty’s
goal is to engage children and introduce historic moments by visualizing
them through 3D animation and humorous character design.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
book_openning_scene
THE AIM
When I was 7 years old, I used to like watching TV a lot. I believe, I have
learned a lot from Sesame Street and many other educational TV series for
children at those times. Right now when I turn on TV, I can’t find any edu-
cational animation for children. When I made a survey for my animation,
in Ahmet Vefik Pasa Public School in Turkey in December 2011, I found out
that, the most liked TV series for children in Turkey right now is Sponge
Bob Square Pants. This could be because the lack of animation series on TV
and/or the success of Sponge Bob. Today’s children are more exposed to
visuals compared to my generation. I believe with right context, content
and distribution, Mr. Dusty will be a good tool where he won’t be a new
history teacher for children but he will be a teaching aid for the history
teacher.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
ottoman_scene_2D_sketch
FEZ VEIL
ottoman_people
TO TO hat_revolution_ataturk_and_women
HAT HAT
ottoman_soldiers hat_revolution_ataturk_and_friends
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
Mr_Dusty_running newspaper_scene
NARRATIVE FLOW
In each episode Mr. Dusty will find his subject inside an old newspaper. He
will take some time to figure out how to represent that subject visually
and then he will run through the pages of his history book in order to find
the right mise-en-scene for the subject. He will make some mistakes
while he is trying to act fast; but in the end he will find the right object for
his visual representation of that historic event.
Mr.Dusty tries to find the right hat for the revolution
Dusty’s background_Blacksea_01
Mr. Dusty was born to a fisherman's family in the Black Sea region of
Turkey. He grew up playing on green hills and swimming with his friends.
When he was 18 years old, he became a fisherman like his father and his
grandfather and his great-grandfather. Unfortunately, he was not a suc-
cessful fisherman and he didn’t enjoy catching fish in the sea. One day, he
realized that he was not happy about his life; he didn’t even like to eat fish
at all. Black Sea people like to eat fish a lot at every course; hence, every-
one is a fisherman. They even invented a fish dessert. After many
depressed days and nights, pretending to be a fish person, Mr. Dusty
figured out that he wants to get out of this place and travel until he finds
what he wants to do in his life. There must be a life other than catching
fish and eating them, he thought.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
MR. DUSTY’S BACKGROUND STORY
But then, how will he even get out of this place, where everybody knows
every detail about each other. He has to do something extraordinary. He
has to catch that big eel that everybody is talking about these days. The
governor organized a competition with a reward, for the first brave fisher-
man who could catch that big eel. So Mr. Dusty waited and waited to catch
the big fish. Suddenly, when he was half asleep he felt a strong vibration
on the boat. He thought finally the eel has arrived to save his life. He
pulled and he pulled but the thing came from the sea was not fish at all, it
was a huge book who was hungry to catch a man...
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE STAGE
When Mr. Dusty thought he caught the ‘big eel’ while he was fishing, the
old history book came out of the sea and ate him up. After that point Mr.
Dusty got stuck inside that book. The first reason I used a book as my
stage is that, we learn history from books. The second reason is, each
page of the book contains an important historic event in itself and when
Mr. Dusty wants to explain a particular historic event, he runs through the
pages and finds the right page for that event. Instead of using a text-
based book, I preferred to use a pop-up book for my stage. When I was a
child I used to like pop-up books a lot. I think they have a magical look
and feel compared to a regular text-based book. Pop-up book enables to
visualize written stories.
Mr.Dusty_running_through_pages
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE STAGE
ottoman pop-up_01
The tactility of the pop-up book creates a 3D space where one feels
him/herself inside that particular page. Thus each page surprises the
user by showing how many different pictures can be folded and
unfolded on a page. When I researched about pop-up books, I find out
that most pop-up books are about fairytales and super heroes. I
couldn’t find a pop-up, which is related to actual historic events. Since I
am going to make a digital pop-up book for my project, I researched
about them too. I found out that digital pop-up books are already out
there but they are generally used for TV commercials. I couldn’t find any
digital pop-up book where it was used as an educative tool for children.
I believe with the exploration of the e-books and devices like iPad;
digital pop-up books will become a sub-category of e-books where
the user can actually flip the page with his/her finger and experience
the paper pop-up book feel digitally.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
OTTOMAN MINIATURES
Ottoman Miniature is an art form in the Otto-
man Empire. They represent different time
periods and spaces. Ottoman Miniature themes
include religious festival gatherings, palace
entertainments, ambassadorial receptions,
council meetings, life outside the palace, etc.
Ottoman Miniatures were not signed. This is
partly because of the worldview of the tradition
that rejected individualism. Hence, they were
not created entirely by one person; the head 01_ottoman miniatures by Levi
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
HAT REVOLUTION november 28 1925
Ataturk’s (the great liberal reformer
and founder of modern Turkey) reform
of clothing emphasized the need to
wear modern Western suits with neck-
ties as well as Fedoras and Derby-style
hats instead of antiquated religious-
based clothing such as the veil and
turban. When Ataturk started the Hat
Revolution after he founded the Turkish hat revolution/Ataturk/Afet Inan
sultan
Ataturk introduced hat in 1925, by wearing his Panama hat during a public
appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anato-
lia, in order to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations.
Even though Ataturk personally promoted a modern dress code for
women, he never made specific reference to women’s clothing in the law,
as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles with
their own free will. My grandmother was Ataturk’s foster daughter. She
had a chance to witness all the revolutions during 1923 – 1935 and pro-
vided a real role model for modern Turkish women by her modern outfit
and her active role in politics in her everyday life. At those times women
were not educated hence they were not active in the political scene, they
even didn’t have a right to vote. My grandmother, who became a very
important Turkish historian and sociologist, was the leader of the move for
women's suffrage in 1935 in Turkey, and she was the first women member
of the new parliament
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
CHARACTER DESIGN
MR.DUSTY as narrator
In May 2010 I took a Character Studio class and created two hand-drawn 2D
Turkish characters that represent Turkish gypsy musicians. I took one of
the Turkish gypsy musician characters, and redesigned it for my thesis
project. That character was a very appropriate character because he pos-
sesses a lot of visual middle-class Turkish characteristics. I named him Mr.
Dusty because he lives inside an old dusty history book. He became the
main character and also the narrator. He leads the story by moving
through the pages of the pop-up book. Creating the lead character first
helped me visualize the look and feel of the narration and also assisted me
in placing the point of view in my narration. Having his character bible
and 3D clay model from last May, I was familiar with his shapes and char-
acteristics. For my thesis purposes, I recreated him as a 3D model in Maya.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
TURN AROUND
2D turn around_MR.Dusty
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
2D expressions_MR.Dusty
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
3D MODEL
I changed his outfit and added more exaggerated items in order to make
him look funnier and more charming for children. Even though I was
familiar with his construction, I had many problems to resolve with his
structure when I was modeling him in Maya. I realized that creating a 3D
model from a hand-drawn still character sketch is not an easy task to
achieve. Maya wants smooth, precise geometrical shapes to model and
also to animate; whereas in drawing you can go as crazy as you want if you
are not going to animate it. I think there is a huge difference between
characters designed for animation and characters designed for illustration.
Not every cute character is suitable for animation.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
3D RENDER
3D model
3D model close up
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE BOOK RIG
fold_unfold sketches
How to create the illusion of folding and unfolding objects was a big ques-
tion mark for me when I started the project. First, I used basic geometrical
shapes in order to understand the mathematics behind the pop-up idea. I
realized that even with simple geometrical shapes, it is not a simple con-
struct. I managed to fold and unfold one geometrical shape while flipping
the pages in Maya, but when I tried to use the same technique for the
other shapes in the scene, I had technical problems. Even though I spent a
lot of time to redo the scene again and again by trying different methods,
there was an unusual and illogical thing happening inside the scene,
where the shapes moved not according to their pivots. They started flying
around and not obeying, when the code said that they should. I took a step
back and started to draw the structure for analyzing the pipeline. I figured
out two different logical approaches on paper. 19
MR.DUSTY
the making of
Designing the Ottoman Scene and Turkish Republic Scene
ottoman_scene_visuals hat_scene_visuals
Dusty_ottoman_01 Dusty_ottoman_02
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Dusty_ottoman_03 Dusty_revolution_01
MR.DUSTY
the making of
HORON The Traditional Dance of the Black Sea
Horon is a traditional dance,
which is famous in the Black Sea
Region. The movements slightly
vary from city to city, but the
music stays the same. The lyrics
are generally about fish -- cook-
ing the fish, eating the fish, catch- Mr.Dusty’s Horon Dance 01
script_texture_manager
render_farm_prep_01
Even though the entire project is around two minutes, I ended up creating
35 different scenes for the project. The purple files above represent my
actual scenes and the red ones represent the references I used in each
scene. When dealing with a lot of references, textures and source images,
one needs to be super careful in order not to miss a texture or a small map
outside the project folder. I was going to render my project on a PC-based
farm. However, my project is built on a Mac and all my texture files and
references have an absolute file path. Obviously this was problematic
when I was transferring the file to the PC. Even though I tried to archive the
project with all my references, the file paths were still absolute. I needed
to find a way to convert those paths into a relative path, where the top
most folder is simply my project folder. After searching a lot I found a
script called File Texture Manager, which solved my problem and saved me
a lot of time.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
SPECIAL THANKS
ANEZKA SEBEK
BARBARA MORRIS
TOLGA YILDIZ
NINO MENDOLIA
JASON WOLLEY
ZACH SHUKA
MR.DUSTY
the making of
references
And,Metin.Osmanlı Tasvir Sanatları: 1 Minyatür,İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, Istanbul,2002.
Finkel, Caroline.The History of Ottoman Empire: Osman’s Dream, Basic Book New York, 2005.
Foroqhi, S. Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire, I. B. Tauris, 2005.
Kundert-Gibbs, John and Lee, Peter. Mastering Maya 3. Sybex. San Francisco, 1999.
Szasz, Suzanne. The Body Language of Children. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, 1978.
Thomas, Frank and Ollie Johnston. The Illusion of Life, New York: Disney, 1984.
Williams, Richard. The Animator’s Survival Kit. New York: Faber and Faber, 2001.
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