week 9 almost over!

4 weeeks left to go...doom and gloom!

no not really!

Been animating this week. I have about 25 shots to get done, and so far I have done about 8. Having done a plan chart (dope sheet) in the early stages of storyboarding it's coming in quite handy now. I'm working mostly on the judge's scenes this week, which are mostly done!

Started Blink's animation today, Blink's shots are are slightly more complex but only because they are longer. I've changed my animating style for the last week. instead of working with stepped keys where I start by putting in the key frames first and to make sure my timing is correct, I've been going with a bit more of a pose to pose method. This has been okay, because my plan chart already charts where the key frames should go. most of the animating takes place in the process of of giving character to the inbetweens or the passing positions!

Also I've chaged Blink's colours a little as well I wasn't happy with how he was looking before, he seemed a bit flat. I think he is looking a little better now.

In addition I have a musician writing some music for the animation He's currently working with the playblasts, because nothing is rendered yet. But it's quite handy because it gives somthing to work towards the more I get done the more he has to work with the quicker this animation will come together...
...anyway now I go!

blink new colours

It'll have to do!

Anyway I'm reasonably pleased with my work so far.

Blink is now fully setup and the judge too. There are are a few niggly things that will still bother me but the main thing is that I'm very satisfied with the setups for both characters. And I have started animating eventhough my schedule did require me to have finished all the shots by now. but I was a bit over ambitious with that scedule and not to mention that I (and JD and Richard) almost started to do some animation work that would have been paid. However after a few days of deliberating and a few meetings we pulled out because the work was just too demanding considering we only have another 5 weeks left It was a good opportunity that just came at the wrong time.

Anyway I'm giving myself two weeks to get the animating done. That should then mean I have at least 3 weeks to render edit and produce sound.

I do still have to write my essay but that's partially writing itself because I find that in order to stop working at night, it's quite productive to do my resaerch at bed time...it puts me to sleep!

Only kidding. No really, I find that taking a few notes on the research at night is a good escape from the computer.

As a quick insight I'm looking at the contrast of realsim vs Abstration in animation.

Exploring how and why animators may stray away from realism and produce more iconic imagery, so examples of this may include Tom and Jerry, where exageration is more important to the animator. In contrast we have films like Watership Down. where the idea of reproducing a realism is more important to the story. Anyway I hope to elaborate a bit more once I have done a bit more reading up...

And that's a wrap! (for now)

Judge Set

Lighting this scene has been a huge pain in the butt!

Maya Sucks! I'ev spent all day doing this and now looking at it on another monitor I've just realised that the background is a bit too dark.

Oh well...

blink animation test

ClickME

Update

Well as promised I am now ready for a more indepth update.

Since the beginning of the semester, or more precisely since the hand in of the proposal, I have developsed a narrative for blink which has a bit more life. This has involved a lot of work

I've had two characters to rig.

Blink proved to be a real problem because I couldn't work out how I was gong to animate his mouth. The reason being that I wanted the mouth to be a simple shape that deforemd across the surface and not a mouth that uses morph targets as we see on most 3d characters. I then discovered Maya 7 with which I discovered that you can paint straight onto any objects surface.
It then became apparent that if I painted a mouth I could use the paint brush attributes to tweak the shape of the mouth. So using an example setup of a character that comes with Maya 7, I managed to create a pretty felxible mouth control for blink. If I can get my website working I should be able to put a link to some animation tests I 've done with Blink, untill then you'll have to make do with the static images that are here.

In additon to Blink I have also been juggling my time modelliing a more standard 3d character which has been a complete arse to setup!

However only today have a finished rigging him, it's taken almost 3 weeks, from modelling to rigging but I finally have a set up that is pretty flexible and should allow for all the animation I need. Although I do still need to go and setup some facial expressions for him, but that'll be a days work and have that sceduled for later this week

In addition to all the technical stuff, I also took some time out to constracut a plan chart which is simmilar to a dope sheet. When I do eventually sit down to start animating, the plan chart will be prestty useuful in that it charts the length of all my shots (in frames), including the length of any cuts between shots. Having done the plan chart already, I alreaddy have a clear breakdown of all the key elements of each shot such as the basic aim of each shot or what key poses I need to express with each shot.

Anyhow that's enuff rambling, I now need to go and build some sets!

Woohoo!