What have i been up to?

Well, i've managed to complete all of the animation for Joseph! YAY!

Over 3 mins of animation which has worked out very well considering my time constraints.

Ritchie and i will still work on our film adding wonderful music etc. But up until now this is what i have learned and achieved by working on this dream of a film with my buddy Ritchie:

Artist:

Concept drawing of the characters
Model Sheets
Character Sheets
Coloured Character Sheets
Filmic Language (Thank you Mike Hirsh!)
2D Animatic

Technical:

Rigging - Adjusting joints and bones on Ritchies rig making the movement of the character more manageable and realistic, also adding more controls/handles so customising the rig to my preferences.
I learnt how to create set driven keys allowing me to create easy to use finger controls, i also adapted my set driven keys by using the different blend shapes for Josephs face and creating whole expressions by moving all of his features: eyebrows, eye shape and size, mouth brow and cheeks then creating a set driven key allowing for easy expression animation.
I learned a great deal about clusters. I created a model of the boy that was able to move well using cluster as apposed to painting the weights which we didnt actually use as weight painting seemed a far more successful way of manipulating Josephs mesh.
So, i weight painted Joseph from head to toe learning a huge amount an the way.
I also learnt how to do a jiggle effect that i ended up hating. We almost had jiggle on Josephs big hair.... it was horrible!
I have also been doing a lot of compositing, using after effects and premiere to create and edit my animatic (1&2) and the blockout. I learned how to add effects to the frames and also animate mildly on there (condensation on window in Train Scene).
I have also learned how to use the graph editor and many other technical functions on Maya that allow me to animate well and also quickly.

Animator MY MAJOR!... WOO!

I have animated around 3 minutes for the film, all of Joseph. I have improved very much since the beginning and have taught myself many things including a good animating work flow, technical things like the graph editors curves and tangents etc and for me, most importantly, i have improved greatly at giving the illusion of weight, fluid movement and adding character to a piece of animation!
I have done a lot of character animation for Joseph and also all of the short animated parts in the Blockout. I have also animated props like doors, binoculars, suitcases etc in the film.

This almost finished beauty of a film was a great team effort by Ritchie (Director and working machine) and myself (... assistant :-) ) and i never want it to end. Hope you enjoy the finished film at the degree show and i hope you like what you see in my 3 folders - Animator being my Major. I suggest Watching the development i went through from storyboard through to animatic 1 then 2, and then the blockout - this way you will familiarise yourself with the story and you'll be able to see and understand what is happening in my playblasted animations for the final film.

night for now

Harddrive not so hard!

My external harddrive took a minor fall and decided to not work anymore.

It makes a relaxing scraping noise now...

i lost a day and a nights worth of work... oh well. Going to re do what i lost on thursday.

I managed to get 4 shots done today, about 18 seconds worth, so not feeling too bad about losing my work.

My animation work flow has changed several times since the beginning of this production. I have now found a way (no doubt it'll change again soon) to animate that suits my style.

I have forgot about the stepped keys and all that business, now i do a very basic smooth blocked out pass and then with each pass after that i improve one area in chunks until it's all done.

This suits me, i can keep good timing but also have a smooth flow and create spontanious magic (rarely). My animation seemed slightly mechanical early on blocking out using stepped keys, but now it feels more fluid and organic thanks to my new way of working... yawn, how uninteresting, sorry.

Done about 2 mins worth now, it's coming along. I'll have all the parts for Joseph finished by monday, then i have until wed to add other bits the it's render city for us!

another early start tomorrow, night

Counting the seconds

so far i've managed to animate about a minutes worth!

WOO!... i need to speed up though, i've been working day and night (literally all night!) to do these scenes and need to do much more!

AHH!

As i said i wont be posting much animation because id ont want to ruin the final film!

More animation tests

I'm posting this test because in the actual film you wont see it much.

The first part will be blurred as the robots in the foreground will be the main attention, then when he stops doing his silly robot walk you'll see joseph except with the robots also doing things in the foreground so the focus will not be on him.

Joseph finishes his silly robot walk thinking the robots that were laughing at him (not in scene yet) are still laughing but really they've noticed some thing out of the window. Joseph doesnt notice at first but then see's what they see... The pylon!



See the blockout (part two) for what happens.

Here is another example of Joseph pretending to be something else, here he does a zombie walk

Working on an EARLY showreel

Another test animation shot

This is Joseph walking to the train window on the seat to look out. He notices something and wants a closer look.

The next shot is him jumping off chair, then walking up to the main window and looking closer.



Remember, these are rough tests!

ENJOY

Clip of Joseph

This is joseph asking what the robots are doing, kind of saying "what are you doing? we dont have time for this, we have to go!"

hmmm, well maybe.



Here si Joseph looking where he can put his robots down. I was happy with knitwits floppy arms.... like woody!

What have i been doing?

Well, i've been animating my eyes out!

I've managed to do a healthy 50 seconds now.

I'll post a few VERY short and rough and NOT the best clips on here so you can see some progress but otherwise, so i dont ruin the final film, i'll keep you waiting.

As for my three folders for the film grading thingy, i'll be organising that soon also.

I have plenty of pre production stuff, drawing, storyboards etc
Some technical bits, weight painting and blockout
Animation, which will be my main folder
then after i will compostite the film in after effects adding fun filters and blurs and camera shakes.

Lots to do and not much time to be on this blog.

Will post some animation clips soon.

Bad skipping boy

Here is my first UNFINISHED attempt at a skip.



YES, i am aware of all of its faults but i'm leaving it up here as development work.

Unfinished Test walk (New settings for boy)

I changed the parenting settings on the boy. i unparented the feet from the main controller (arrows on floor moving whole boy around). This allows me to move him anywhere in my scene without his feet moving from their positions. Before, all of Joseph would move leaving me to re place is feet in the same position everytime!

Here is an unfinished simple walk (hands in a carrying position so they're not straight out by his sides) to test my above aforementioned changes:



I think I may be ready to animate for the final film now.

Blockout (in three parts)

Here is the blockout for 'Joseph's Trip To The Seaside'

It is split into three parts

Eyebrows

I created some set driven keys for the eyebrows so i can also control them independently from the face.

Above shows two extremes for the eyebrows

Facial expressions

I made whole facial expressions using set driven keys.

I used the blend shapes of the face, i moved the eyebrows and i also changed the eyes to create whole emotions with just one slide of the bar

Here are a few snapshots of some of the whole facial expressions

Happy:

Sad:

Scared:

Confused:

Content.... ha!

Driven mad by set driven keys

hahahaha, i'm so funny... and intelligent.

i decided to make whole poses using set driven keys to make my life animating as easy as possible... i made many different poses, tried to animate using them and failed.

It turns out, you cannot key controller handle things if they have set driven keys attached to them!! AHHHH, so worked for hours for nothing, still, it's all learning!

ready, set... driven keys!

hahaha, anyway.

yes, i have been creating set driven keys for joseph. I began with the hands. i made a controller (drawn by hand), then made the set driven keys for each finger and thumb and one to spread them all.




Here is the hand in a cool pointing pose!