Any animation bits that I actually want to show, I imagine will make their way onto the blog and maybe my showreel quite soon. However, I’m in the process of doing some other bits for my showreel first.

I’d like to think I would revisit some of my shots and finish them up, but I can’t see that happening. Time for some fresh stuff.

We had a lot of fun over the duration of the course. From freshers, right up to the final deadline. Our whole year group was an awesome bunch. I’ll miss a lot of those guys and I wish them all the best. Good luck, boys and girls.

Animation Showreel Underway

I’ve been doing some personal animation since we finished, with the plan to put it all into my showreel. Although I want to explore outside of animating, producing some shots would allow me to put together an animation showreel that I am happy with.

The showreel I created for hand-in was put together in about 30 minutes and was filled with a lot of crap. Doing some stuff for myself will allow me to try and put some of my own personality into it.

What Next

A job surely?! Well guess what, I have a job (just not in the games industry yet). Whilst I work, I will be trying to push my portfolio, find out what I like doing, etc. I’ll learn to rig as well. That, I’m sure of. Even if I hate it, I feel like I need it.

I have also begun messing around with the Source Engine and UDK. I’d like to add at least one game engine to my ‘core skillz’ and I think it’ll probably be UDK. Just because it seems to be so well supported. Of course there are others out there, so I will have some fun trying those out too.

Anyway, Meet the Medic. Only the Pyro left.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Texturing

Our first pass of texturing  for the room is almost complete, without any detailed painting or shaders applied. The final texturing will most likely be done by Simon, with myself possibly jumping in again where necessary. I will from now on be back to animating and other animation director duties.

Olly Skillman-Wilson has been putting together some lighting shots for the room, which have been looking very nice. He’s a great addition to the team.

Shot below without lighting.

The jungle scenes are being modelled as we speak, so texturing for those will begin as soon as UVs become available, over the next few weeks.

Block Through (from December)

This is the block through from way back before Christmas, which followed the animatic I put together and is now pretty out of date. Oddne, Emma and myself split the scenes between us. Simon has been producing storyboards even at this stage, going through something like the 8th version.

[There is sound, but it was put together during the animatic and is now completely out of sync].

Click here to view the embedded video.

The final scene was not storyboarded due to how complex it got, so I have worked along side Simon with him directing me as I animate it. That will be one of the first scenes animated, to allow Pete plenty of time to do his visual effects.

Below is my latest version of the fly-by at the end of the first scene, using Matt Luxton‘s high_res blimp model. It’ll be passed over to our visual effects master to test out some more smoke and heat haze effects.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rig Testing

Rigs have been coming through this week, so I’ve had a chance to play with early versions of both the Hunter and Bap rigs, which Scott and Matt B have been working on. Although Bap is both a mythical creature and a complicated rig, it animates very nicely already. Matt Butler has done a great job putting it together over the last few months. Below is a quick walk cycle test I did using the ‘alpha’ version of the rig.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Once some weight painting aspects are ironed out, I’ll put up a test of the Hunter. Very shortly we will be making a start on the first pass of animation (or final block-through, depending how you look at it).

Let’s keep up the pace.

Since I last reported on this project back in October, we have moved out of pre-production, into full production. Just before Christmas I finished a rough block through with Emma and Oddne, which has been given to the Foley and music students to work with. I will post the block-through and details of that shortly.

UV Texturing

Texturing has begun and I’ve been exporting all the UVs ready for painting. Matt is still in the process of modeling for the cabin, so I’m working with his UVs as he models the objects. At the minute I am just applying very basic textures, ready to paint into once Simon produces a moodboard for us to work with.

File Management

Myself, Simon and Tom spent a lot of Tuesday morning discussing how we would manage the Maya project folder(s) and file naming conventions. Simon was concerned about the size limitations of our shared Dropbox (about 3GB, thanks to referrals), since the project is eventually going to become very bloated. We weighed up pros and cons of multiple project folders, then decided to split the project into two separate Maya projects – Interior and Exterior. If necessary, we can remove a project whilst working on the other.

With the /sourceimages library building up nicely, texture artists can grab the UVs, paint them, then drop them back in. With the project synchronised across Dropbox, we are always up to date and practically working in real time. It has worked fantastically so far, since we all reference our files from one to an0ther, allowing us to essentially work on the same file, together.

Good start so far, we are getting back into the swing of things.

Proposed Idea

Originally, a team of 5 were going to carry across their video game project from last term and create a trailer for it, adding me as their animator and sixth member. Over the summer they decided to drop that idea and come up with an idea for an animated short, to be about four minutes long. Again, with me animating, but also getting involved with design.

The main team consists of (with their current focus): Tom Dowler (producer), Simon Acty (director / storyboarding), Matthew Luxton (3D modeling), Emma Taylor (environments), Matthew Butler (3D modeling) and myself (animation). There are a couple of others who are expected to join us through out the project, Jacob Jones has been doing some character work with us already.

Obviously animation has not begun yet, so I’ve been concentrating on design work so far, helping ‘Matt&Matt’ with their models. I’m also support for Simon with his directing throughout this project.

The sketches above were from the first couple of days back. Emma has been in charge of environments for the last few weeks, producing some pretty kick-ass bits and pieces. I moved away from the plants almost straight after those sketches, to concentrate more on designing props. Below are some of the bits I’ve done so far, along with Matt&Matt’s 3D models.

Rocket

One of the first designs I prepared was the homing rocket. We wanted something with a bit of personality, so I had a look a nose art. As it went on, the rocket became more and more shark like. We decided to go with it and Matt Butler took it away for modelling, using a top, side and front view layout.

Matt Butler’s 3D Models – 20/10/10

Harpoon Gun

For the harpoon gun, I had a little look at various whaling guns and added a few bits. Matt Luxton took my layouts to work from for his 3D model. I hadn’t drawn some parts accurately, so he used his own judgement for those bits.

Matt Luxton’s 3D Models – 20/10/10

Other props

Some other props which are being worked on. Matt Butler’s gramophone model below; I didn’t create any additional turn-arounds for that, he just worked straight from the sketches.

Matt Butler’s 3D Models – 20/10/10

The modelling began almost as soon as we started the project, so we have made pretty good progress so far. We have a storyboard and animatic almost complete, coloured environments, character designs and Tom is working on what to show and and say during the pitch, which is in a few weeks time.

Life Drawing

Some sketches from life drawing, since our return. A new model is with us this year, which is great. Particularly because he has a moustache.

Why did you change your blog?

I changed my blog layout after the site was hacked last week. Still not sure how they got in, but hopefully it won’t happen again for a while. Will stick with this layout for the minute, nice and simple.

This crew project was a strange brief, and I think everyone from our second year had very unique experiences with it. Some people were stacked up with work, having no time spare for their own projects. I definitely wish I’d got more involved with what I was given, particularly since I couldn’t of asked for a better project.

Below are a few stills and a clip of test animation I did for Jacob’s Lightning Mike character. I actually like this rig a lot, I found it really easy to work with. I think I will ask Jacob if I’m allowed use it in the future (just for animation practice).

I noticed Jacob’s been setting up his web portfolio, which is looking awesome at the minute (even though it’s not finished yet, at the time of writing). Make sure you check out his illustrations.

I had really hoped to render out with textures, but my computer almost exploded. I might replace the play blast video with a rendered version when I get a chance, because he is missing his essential  moustache. Play blast version is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can check out Jacob Golding’s sites below:

Jacob Golding – 3D Character Artist and Illustrator
Jacob’s Blog

Best of luck dude! I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog .

I’ll get this in early, because it pretty much sets the tone for how this project really went. It was very last minute, the whole thing including post-production was completely in an afternoon. Only the pirate ship itself was created before then, possibly even a whole month before (sitting in the garage). Although completing the project only a few days before deadline was not intentional, the cheap feel of the boat and the animation itself was something we had hoped to use. I think in that case, the spontaneity may even of worked in our favor…

At the earliest stage we had planned to include a lot more (in fact something completely different). The original idea was to take the ship almost straight down to the beach, and then have a battle with either an armed fortress or another ship, then have the original ship sink into the sand. By the time our ideal (last chance) animating day came around, no more props could be quickly prepared, nor a tested animatic. We just went with it and decided to have a little fun.

Some interesting things that we encountered along the way: Rain, battery life and dog shit. As you can imagine, cardboard doesn’t handle rain that well. We started to lose pieces of it quite early on. By the time we had taken the final photo on the beach, it could barely be held together. We also discovered that batteries drained very quickly, so we had to buy more. That is what sparked the idea for the actor-swap at the Spar shop. I think I used 10 AA batteries in total.

Also, Gareth managed to get dog shit all over the front of the boat. Didn’t mention that highlight in the Production Report though. You can watch the final animation below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final Thoughts

Overall I think we were quite relieved with the result, after panicking a lot before going out, thinking that we wouldn’t get enough footage for our audio clip. I think the frame rate works for the way we shot it, and the ship itself gave an amusing feel and was appropriate for our animation. It was quick, cheap and a lot of fun. Though it seems like me and Gareth are the only two who find it funny… if you did, at all, then leave a comment.

Break Down

We had to approach the project with weekly goals, uploading our progress each week. Let me break it down for you:

Week 1

By the end of the first week, we had to make sure we had our video reference footage recorded and our dope sheets prepared. I found it quite difficult to imagine poses for the clip, so I wrote the clip out, then broke it down into key words/phrases and brainstormed a few possibilities for each. Then it was just a case of seeing which flowed into each the best. See the clip below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The dope sheets always give me neck strain? It took me about 20 tedious minutes to work through the 11 second audio, and I think impatience at this stage is what threw out my lip syncing in the final week. Remember boys and girls, this should be done properly, it saves you a lot of time later on. I was just in a rush.

We also had to put together a quick character sheet.

Week 2

In the second week we moved straight into blocking out our animations, using key poses. Definitely the laziest effort this week, since all the lecturers were at this year’s Bradford Animation Festival. I took at good look at the video reference footage I had recorded, and used it to animate the character into his most important poses. Quicktime is great to use for reference, as it allowed you to scroll through frames individually. At this stage the there is only natural tweening between poses. See video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We were encouraged to use the G_male Rig.

Week 3

During the third week, all of the body movement was completed. All facial features are left untouched. I made sure to start with tidying up the largest movements, since I didn’t want to return to them afterwards, once all the fingers and smallest movements are keyframed. It really puts you off going back in, if there are keys on almost every frame. I also started to work on the eye movements and eyebrows, which would be continued in the final week.

Final Week

I was a bit worried about this final week, because I’ve not really done lip syncing before. Also, my dope sheet was a bit out of sync. It also didn’t help that I was using the video ref at the same time, so they conflicted a bit. I decided to just work with my dope sheet, then iron out afterwards. I found the timing seemed better after offsetting the sound clip by -2 frames. After a while I got a bit anal with getting the lip syncing right, to the point were I couldn’t look at it anymore. Get someone else to check it for you, it just won’t look right if you stare at it for too long. Final version is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final Thoughts

I have no idea what to make of my lip-syncing, even now. I was concerned that I had made the animation a bit busy in the end (I was initially worried about under-animating), I think the conclusion was that I had a little over-animated.

A good friend of Andy’s, who had previously worked for Disney, came to be the main judge during our feedback assessment. He didn’t mess around, which was great. He gave everyone critical feedback. His thoughts with mine were more so to do with my choice of actions for the character, rather than the animation itself. His final point was that he felt the character turned too far away from camera towards the end. Basically all things I didn’t even notice or expect.

Well, now I’m off to sail a pirate ship.

R

We were asked to concentrate on certain qualities for this, to give the character its own thought process. It took me ages to decide on two emotions and a cause. I didn’t want to add in props, because they would require animating too. I already knew people were going to approach theirs with seeing/overhearing something off-screen, so I wanted to have him affected by something a bit different.

That’s basically when I thought, ‘what might the character be able to see near himself, but I cannot?’. Then I thought about how ridiculous people look when trying to deflect a fly or a wasp.

I instantly knew there was potential for the animation to look misleading though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sure enough, the result can be quite misleading. It does indeed look like he is wafting a fart, at least at the beginning. I decided I wasn’t too worried about this, after laughing at my screen during a playblast.

Critical feedback – I didn’t really receive any when we presented them all on the Monday morning. Aside from the heckles and sniggering, the actual feedback on the animation was quite positive. I’d say problems it has include some of the slow-down during wafts. Although contrasting speeds are good, it looks a bit unnatural in mine towards the end.

Video Reference – it helps.

After last weeks exercise, I had decided working with video reference was a good idea. I tried to over-act a little with it, although I only performed a single take. Some of the tips which I learnt in the our Acting Workshop today could of been pretty useful here. Oh, and ignore the fancy dress costume.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Next Week

Our next exercise is the main one for this unit. It involves animating to a short sound clip for this month’s 11 Second Club competition. Although we are allowed to use last month’s sound clip if we wish, it cannot be entered into the competition. More on that next week.

Lifting Animation

The aim was to animate a character lifting an object, keeping in mind the principles we have learnt up to now. These include:

• Weight
• Timing (this is what I probably struggle with most)
• Anticipation
• Balance
• Line of Action
• Silhouette
• Believability

There were a few recommended ways to approach this, such as getting into the character yourself and having someone record it. This makes sense and I probably should have made the effort to do that, although I did make sure to test out actions as I came to animating them.

The first mistake I noticed is the change in the box’s weight. In my build-up, the box appears heavier than in the actual lifting stage. I was trying to imagine it as a box of t shirts from work (a standard sized full box is usually about 23kg), which I think the initial weight was closer to. I certainly don’t lift the boxes quite as casually as my animation demonstrates.

Something else which wasn’t particularly successful, was my silhouette. Due to the large size of the box, a lot of the character was obscured from most angles during the lift. Towards the end, the box is shifted in one direction in order for my character to quickly get his hand underneath to support it. Since you can’t see the movements he makes with the other arm, it doesn’t really work.

You can see the animation below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this exercise, I started by putting in the key frames first, then adjusting the timing, then the in-betweens. I wasn’t sure if this was a good approach, so I didn’t push it too hard. Turns out this is a recommended approach to use, so I will continue to do so.

Our exercise for next week is to animate a ‘shift of mood’. This is without facial expressions; purely posture and body language. I need to decide on two emotions to convey. I’m thinking upset to angry. Or maybe excitement to embarrassment. Possibilities are endless.