A lot of animation...

It has been a while since I last posted. I've been working flat out on my master class animations, and as much as I am enjoying doing it, it's a lot of work. I need to get it done asap as well because I have innovations and the major to be working on. Also soon we'll be given the yet unknown AAT2 animation project. Hectic times and late nights ahead I feel.

Anyhow, I posted my blocking passes for the master class animations a while ago, unfortunately those videos are no longer on line, however I do have one of the animations nearly finished. Here was the first pass of splined animation I did - The Sneaky Man.

I was pretty happy with this and would have been happy to hand it in. However it was of course still worth getting feedback. So I asked some people and sent it off to Kevan at Dreamworks for some notes and critique. He was very helpful and gave me some good notes (as well as a telling off for not including frame numbers, haha). His main points were that the beats in the animation felt a bit separate from each other. I tend to agree with this, looking back I think it was my response to my animations being too 'floaty' in the past. So I made a concious decision to add pauses to the animation. Secondly he suggested that I look into making the piece more energetic, particularly after he does his tip toe run, as the animation slowed down after that and I risked losing the audience's interest. Finally he suggested I remove some of the fence so people can see more of the animation. Which I did.

So, after that feedback, this is my re-worked version (with frame numbers):



Hope you enjoy!

Stu

Dreamworks?! YES... Dreamworks!

Since I last blogged a lot has happened. Uni has actually properly started, and its hectic. Lots of animation for me to do this term, it's a bit daunting really.

Other than that we had the week of animation lectures from Kevan Shorey and his wife Robyn who work at Dreamworks in San Francisco. The whole week was a great series of lectures and talks about Kevan's process and approach to animation, it was an invaluable insight into how another animator works and I certainly came away from it having learnt a lot and will be applying a lot of what he taught us to my own process. On top of that Robyn talked a lot to us working in the US and the studio's pipeline and departments as whole, after hearing everything I was sure that Dreamworks is where I want to work one day. Overall it was an amazing week and it was shame we couldn't kidnap Kevan and keep him as a full time lecturer, haha.

As for my projects, everything is plodding along nicely, I'm currently finishing up doing the layout for our major project. Once that's done I'll be focusing my attention on the Masterclass project and it's impending 3rd of February deadline. I had a good meeting with Mike Wyatt who set us our Masterclass brief. He says I seem to have a good sense of animation, I just need to push my poses more, which I agree with, it's come up a few times so I need to work on that. My innovations has been slow to get going, but after a meeting with my tutor this morning I've got a clearer idea of what my plan is and I'm really looking forward to that one.

Kevan mentioned when he was talking to us that animating a horse was hard, he was right, you can see my attempt here in my latest showreel edit. Hope you like it, let me know what you think.




Stu

Busy, busy, busy...

Hello again. I've got a lot to show you in this post. Here we have the environments for our major project. But this time we can see all of it as we fly through the Tudor streets. The (not so) stealthy cube in the posher street (1st video) is where the Doctor's surgery will be, however that is still to be modelled by Nesta.

   


   


Moving on. Next up we have the final and re-worked rig tests/walk cycles for both of our main characters. The sick man I've only done recently. But the Doctor I went back and started again after taking on feedback from one of our screenings. People generally said he looked a bit stiff and had no character. So I gave him his cane and tried to give him some more swagger. I decided he needed to look more posh and dignified, so I slowed his walk down from 16 frames a step 20. Which I think helps, it makes him look more deliberate and less in a hurry. I also added more shoulder movement because it helps loosen characters up and make them look less robotic. I don't think its quite there yet, however the Doctor only has to walk once in our animation, so for now I think I should concentrate more on the acting side of things.


   

   

I am very much looking forward to having some Dreamworks animators, Kevan and Robyn Shorey, coming to talk to us next week. It will be nice to learn from animators from one of the best studios in the world.

For now though the Christmas holidays have come to an end and I'm back to uni tomorrow. It seems like it's been non stop work for the whole of the 'holidays', however I'm sure it will be worth it in the end.

Stu

rigging up a storm...

After a long, hard fought battle with rigging I've emerged victorious. I've finally completed the second of our two character rigs. It was a long and at many times frustrating process but we got there.

The whole process of rigging two characters to a level at which they can move realistically was a challenge. It was the first time I'd attempted such a level of rigging, previously I'd rigged very simple cartoony characters. I didn't appreciate the amount of work involved, particularly in skinning. I was introduced to a few new things along the process, namely Pose Space Deformers (PSDs). These are essentially corrective blend shapes but are easier and quicker to produce using Michael Comet's scripts and plug-ins. Although the PSDs do the job on the rigs, I am curious as to how well muscle systems would've worked on our characters. The characters aren't very muscular, but they do have areas of loose clothing and I think that muscles would've been very useful to get a nice roll over and around the skin in the absence of nCloth. I've never used muscle systems but I'd love at some point to look into them when rigging, I think it's a very interesting area.

I am overall pretty happy with how the rigs work, if any issues crop up during animation then I'm sure I can go back and tweak the rigs suitably. So without further a due, here is the walk cycle rig test for the sick man:




This is just the rigged model. The displacement maps have yet to be added. I will post the final version up soon.

Stu

rigging the sick man...

So for the past 2 day I've been working (almost) solidly on the sick man rig for our major project. It's had it's up and downs but I'm back on track now. There's a lot more work to be done, but for now this is how it looks:

Unfortunately due to my lack of concentration on the first day I have spent the second day going back through the rig and fixing things. It's my own fault, I should have made a plan like it did for the Doctor rig, however I thought I could just breeze through this as it's pretty much the same. Alas it's never that easy, and by missing one little step I've managed to lose a day of productivity. At least I now know in the future not to be so keen and take the time to make a plan, especially for rigging, but also other things. The time it takes to make the plan will be more than made up for in the time saved from avoiding mistakes.

The rig is working pretty well now though, and is almost identical to the doctor's rig, except for a few spine alterations to allow us to hunch this guys back. I still need to do the hands and the face, and of course skin the damn thing, which is by no means the most exciting thing to do. However skinning is made a lot easier by Michael Comet's scripts and plug-ins, I don't think I'd be so keen on rigging if it wasn't for them, they save so much time.

Ah well, live and learn I guess. At least I can crack on and make some progress tomorrow (with a plan!).

Stu

all quiet on the front...

Hello again, I spent this weekend moving back home for Christmas and playing bowls, hence the lack of posting. It's been a pretty hectic weekend overall, but now everything is settled I can relax back in to my steady pile of work. I haven't forgotten about my post-it per day, I did draw them, just couldn't find the time to post them what with my computer being packed up in a box. But fear not, here are Saturday, Sunday and Monday's drawings!

So these two cheeky chappies are Trulop and Zingo, they're wanted for something, I don't know what yet. But I really like these guys. They're a little clichéd however I think we might see more of them in the future. I imagine them being like a corrupt Penn & Teller.

This cute little guy I think would be the kid who foiled Trulop and Zingo's master plan (whatever it might be).













As for everything else, not much has moved on, the next step for me is rigging the old man character for the major project, but I'm sure you'll see some of that soon enough.

Stu

major progress...

Today I'm packing to go home for Christmas tomorrow evening. But me and Lewis have found some time to finish up the exterior environments for our major project. Here they are:

This is the first scene street

Second scene street

So our project has two exterior scenes, both streets however both need to have different vibes. The first one is meant to be a posher more up market street, it has bigger houses and is where our doctor character will live. The second is set at night and is where the murder will take place. It's supposed to be a poorer street and feel more claustrophobic and intimidating.

I think these streets have come out really well, I modelled all of the houses and laid out the streets, then Lewis come along with his TD hat on and procedurally generated the cobbles and curbs for the streets. I think we've really managed to capture the feeling of each street, and even though the second street isn't lit correctly it already has the feel of being close and a little bit uncomfortable. Also what helps is that there are few straight lines leading down the street, we originally had the curbs of the street straight down the middle and it just looked too CG and perfect, so with a quick lattice deformer we managed to give the street a much more organic feel. If I had more time I think I would add more detail to some of the houses, but ultimately they're not the centrepiece of the animation and they don't have to be perfect, I'm confident that they'll do the job as they are.

Next up - rigging the old man. I'll let you know how it goes.

Stu