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MR.

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

CHARACTER 20TH CENTURY


DESIGN POLITICAL
HISTORY

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

THE STRUCTURE and THE CURRICULUM


Children are visual by nature; the humor and empathy created in cartoons
naturally lend them to a child's understanding of the world. Why not take
the advantage of that natural attraction to cartoons in classrooms? The
strength of the images and the power of the messages will help teachers
in their classes. When I was researching the current history curriculum in
primary schools in Turkey in December 2011, I found out that the images
inside the schoolbooks are very low resolution and old hence they are not
attractive at all. In order to help to make the history curriculum more
attractive, I tried to use elements of commercial television in structuring
the format of Mr. Dusty like: a strong visual style, fast-moving action,
humor and music. I know that children of today don’t have long attention
spans. So each episode is designed as a 2:40 min long interstitial program
that is often shown in-between movies or other TV programs on TV chan-
nels. My main aim in creating this kind of structure is to awaken the curi-
osity of children to the important historic events while they are having fun
watching the humorous Mr. Dusty. Thus, Mr. Dusty and his history book
can be shown in different media platforms like iPad, iPhone, computers
and TV in the near future.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE FORM

FEZ VEIL
ottoman_people
TO TO hat_revolution_ataturk_and_women

HAT HAT
ottoman_soldiers hat_revolution_ataturk_and_friends

In each episode Mr. Dusty will take us to an important historic event,


which took place during 1920-1938 (the important period in Turkish
history where a lot of revolutions happened) For my thesis purposes, I
focused on one pilot episode; which is the Hat Revolution in 1925. I chose
Hat Revolution as my pilot episode because right now in Turkey, religious
people see that Hat Revolution as a treat to Muslim belief and they try to
find a way to bring turban back as an everyday outfit for women. There
have been many discussions going on about this subject and I think, it
would be a good start to show the young generation, what we have been
through in 1920’s. The next episodes will be, the Alphabet Revolution,
Women's Suffrage, changing the capital city from Istanbul to Ankara, Sur-
name Law, New Numeric System and Calendar etc.

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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

hat revolution stills_1 hat revolution stills_2

hat revolution stills_3 hat revolution stills_4


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MR.DUSTY
the making of
MR. DUSTY’S BACKGROUND STORY

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

Dusty’s background_Blacksea_2 Dusty’s background_Blacksea_3

Dusty’s background_Blacksea_4 Dusty’s background_Blacksea_5

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

painter designed the composition of the scene


and his apprentices drew the contours with
black or colored ink and then painted the min-
iature without creating an illusion of a third
dimension.
The understanding of perspective is
different from that of the European
Renaissance Painting tradition. In min-
iatures every human figure should be
small and of equal size with each other.
This is because all human beings are
equal under God, in Muslim belief. The
only power is God and all human beings
are God’s servants.
02_ottoman miniatures by Levi
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
OTTOMAN MINIATURES
The predominant colors were bright red, scar-
let, green and different shades of blue. The
domes of the mosques were painted pale blue
in order to merge them with the sky, which
they believed where God/Allah is. Gilt was
used in architectural details, in the back-
ground and the foreground of calligraphic
works. Miniatures are very important and
unique historical resources, which visualize
the evolution of the Ottoman lifestyle over a
long period of time.
03_ottoman miniatures by Levi

04-06_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

Republic, his aim was to create a soci-


ety where religious clothing was only
acceptable for the clergy. The Hat Law
of 1925 introduced the use of Western-
style hats instead of fez and turban. In
order to achieve success in his revolu-
hat revolution/Ataturk/highschool girls
tion, Ataturk first made the hat com-
pulsory to civil servants.
The guidelines for the proper
dressing of students and state
employees were passed during
his lifetime; many civil servants
adopted the hat willingly.

hat revolution/Ataturk/Afet Inan


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MR.DUSTY
the making of
HAT REVOLUTION november 28 1925

ottoman life style

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

black and white sketch colored sketch clay model

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

3D first render 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

Before I started building and deciding on those pipelines, I chose to finish


the actual illustrations that I would be using in those pop-up scenes. I sat
down in front of my drawing pad and drew the objects in the scenes in order
to visualize the mise-en-scene when everything popped up. I scanned each
object separately and colored them in Photoshop. It was challenging to
decide the look and feel of the scene in such a short period. It took almost
two weeks for me to finish up all the illustrations and to place them at the
right spots inside the book. On the other hand, finishing the illustrations
gave me time to rethink the shapes and the folding methods of the objects.
I realized that I was thinking complex geometrical shapes before I drew my
illustrations. I figured out that with the help of alpha channel (transparency)
in Photoshop I could project each illustration on to any polygon planes in
Maya. So I saved each of my colored illustrations as PNG files (a format that
includes the alpha channel) in Photoshop and used them as source images
for each shader in Maya, and then I used those shaders on simple polygon
planes to create a knock out of the colored illustrations. After that, the only
thing I had to figure out was to find different folding methods for those
simple polygon planes so that they would look like they were different
shapes. 20
MR.DUSTY
the making of
THE PIPELINE
After solving the pop-up technique, I moved on to my next step, which
was the book rig for the opening of the book itself. I modeled a book in
Maya and textured it by using images I created in Photoshop. Since I was
familiar with "blend shapes", I used a linear blend deformer in Maya for
my page turn animations. After that, I created a skeleton for the two sides
of the book cover by using joints. That was the tricky part of that book rig.
In Maya 2011 there is a bug with the "paint weight tool”. I experienced a lot
of problems because of that bug. No matter how properly I painted the
weights for the joints, the book opening kept messing up each time. I
redid it many times but the problem was still there. So, I gave up using the
paint weight tool and entered numbers for each vertex influence for each
joint in the ‘component editor’. This actually yielded more precise results
because of the control that entering mathematical values provided.

Dusty opening the book


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MR.DUSTY
the making of
USER TESTING

user testing_01 user testing_02

After dealing with many bureaucratic problems, I managed to arrange a


talk with the first grade teacher Ilknur Calis, who works at the public
Ahmet Vefik Pasa Primary School in my neighborhood, in Ankara. I
explained my thesis and asked her permission to show and test my work
with her students during the class hour. She liked what I have been doing
so far and told me about the lack of educational TV programs for children
on TV these days. She arranged a class hour for me, and I prepared a
multiple-choice survey with pictures. It was quite challenging to prepare a
survey for 7-year-old children. I knew that they had just learned how to
read and write, so I tried to use big fonts and easy sentences in order to get
clear and direct feedback from them. Even though I thought a multiple-
choice survey would be easier for a younger audience, compared to a
regular questionnaire, it turned out that students had never seen a mul-
tiple choice test before. Ilknur explained to them how to do it and read the
questions out loud to the class. Since it was a public school there were no
technical facilities in the classroom (like DVD player, projector etc.); hence,
we grouped students in groups of five, and I showed my latest prototype
to them on my laptop. 22
MR.DUSTY
the making of
USER TESTING
While I was playing my animation,
I also tried to explain what would
happen next and what I am trying
to achieve in this animation. Since
neither the students nor the
teachers were experienced in
seeing an unfinished work, they
were confused. But they liked the
visual experience; therefore, all
student groups wanted to see the
animation three times. There were
35 students inside the classroom.
user testing_03

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

ing the fish, etc. It is a very ener-


getic dance. The most important
thing about this traditional dance
is its social aspect. Whenever one
sees that someone is dancing
Horon one should join him or her
and share the joy of the dance. Mr.Dusty’s Horon Dance 02

Black Sea people show their hap-


piness and excitement by dancing
Horon all the time.

the traditional horon dance


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MR.DUSTY
the making of
COLOR CODING RENDERING

ottoman pop-up_01 ottoman pop-up_02

hat pop-up_01 hat pop-up_02

When visually presenting a time and atmosphere change inside the


pop-up book, I used different colored "ambient occlusion" shaders to
save time. For the Ottoman Scene I used a saturated yellowish color, and
for the Revolution Scene I used a dark red color as my ambient occlusion
shader and assigned them to each object’s ambient color in that particular
scene. This method almost created the same effect as the “global illumi-
nation” and helped me create an ambience without the use of any light in
the scene. After I constructed my hyper shades with their assigned ambi-
ent color, I lit up the big scenes and used them as references for my other
scenes. I didn’t use any "global illumination" or "final gathering" when I
was rendering my scenes in order to shorten the render time.
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MR.DUSTY
the making of
RENDER FARM

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.

Blair, Preston. Cartoon Animation. Walter Foster Publishing. California, 1994.

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.

Irepoglu,Gul. Levni: Nakış Şiir Renk, Ministry of Culture, Istanbul, 1999

Lafe, Locke.Film Animation Techniques. Betterway Books,1992.

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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