Lead Animators Final Thoughts..

Well here we are... tommorow i will be goin into uni, handing in my work and then thats it... im not a student anymore!! The chapter of three years coming to a wonderful end with a short animation film i am very proud to of been a part of. Back at the start of the year when i first heard Jono's pitch, I knew straight away that i wanted to work on his film. Although the story line is completely different now.. i have absolutely no regrets. I can also say that being the Lead Animator on the film was an honour and was very privaleged that Jono and the rest of the group trusted me with the huge task of literally animating the entire film. With a big help from Ben and Yemi, i am very pleased with the outcome of the animation. Giles did a grand job on rigging and the charcter, without him i wouldn't have been able to animate. Jenny's performance throughout the year has been outstanding. But i must pay a special congratulations to both Jono and Rob. They have stood out in the group. They took on the role as director and producer and without them the film would not have been made. The roles they took were extremely tough and they had the dedication to make schedules, (and made sure people stuck to them) put together different edits of the film throughout the year and also liased with different tutors to get advice from them for the benifit of making our film better.

This whole year has been so tough.. it has been very challenging and i have learnt so much. I came into this film with the specialist skill of being an animator, although there is always room for improvement, i am still very pleased with my efforts and am so impressed with my developments. With different people having different specialists i was able to learn skills from them and with everyone having to do a little bit of everything anyway it was good to learn and practise different parts of the production process.

Teamwork was the most important aspect of this film. and you cannot take teamwork for granted. While making the film i have learned that planning is the key!! although at the timne the pre-production process seemed to go on forever, looking back i feel that we could have done more... obviously this was the first film we had made in a group and i have learnt that nothing should be untouched.. you need to discuss absolutely everything in detail. and make sure everyone is absolutely clear on what is goin on..

But anyway i think im rambling on a bit now.. its very late and i have probably about 3 days worth of sleep to catch up on. But all i want to say is a big thank you to everyone.. it has been an emotional journey, an experience i will never forget, and i wish everyone the very best of luck in the future.

Deadline is Almost Here!

Nearly there!! Deadline is in two days time, and the film is pretty much finished.. we are just waiting on the finishing touches to the sound and then all we have to do is drop it into premiere and match it up with the footage. I'l post some render shots of our final film so you can get a little taster of what you can expect of our film:

Temple Lighting Untill 5.30am.....WTF!

Again was another ridiculously late night. Me, Rob and Jono were up until 5.30am!!! It is getting silly now the times we are getting to bed.. but it is a sacrifise we are willing to make at this stage because there are still a lot of little odd jobs that need to be finished promptly in time for rendering. Last night (or should i say, this morning) we were lighting the main chamber.

This was going to be quite challenging for us for various reasons... firstly the temple is going to be quite dark and dull and with the scene essentially at night time the lighting needs to be an effective moonlight... or sunset? also Jono made a good point when lighting, he said that you cant just plonk a random light anywhere you need to think where the source of the light is coming from. Therefore baring that in mind we used the same technique we used in the jungle for the temple. We made holes in the temple roof and made the light pass through them. However we had to use different lights for the temple because for some strange reason maya only lets you have six spotlights per scene!!??? very strange so we used directional lights and point lights. the only time we used spotlights was to highlight details of the scene which were too dark.. i.e the alter and the characters face.

Below are different jpgs of lighting tests:

as you can see with the picture above the light on the alter is very nice... its very harsh and draws your eye straight to it which is what we want. however going back to what i said before it doesnt work because there is no justification as to where the light is coming from.. it looks very staged and is not the effect we want, we want a more natural light.

This above image is a better example of the effect we want. This image was created by using lights through the holes in the roof. it isnt as harsh as the previous examples but still is effective in lighting up the alter.

This image again shows the effect of the holes in the roof. this time however we did use a spotlight because we wanted a more harsh lighting in some of the darker areas of the temple. Becasue this area is quite dark we think the bright lights contrast really well.

FOG EFFECTS -
These next images below are examples of the fog effect we gave the scene. We used an environmental fog which is attached to an ambient light. The effect is AWESOME and really brings the scene to life. The fog effect is in the render settings. I really like what it does to the scene. it gives it great depth and especially for the sunset/night time effect respectively.

Textures on the Models

TEXTURES 2

TRAP CORRIDOOR
SWINGING HAMMER


SPIKESCLOSING DOOR

TEXTURES 1

The past couple of days have been very productive. With a huge weight lifted off my shoulders with all the animation done! i have now managed to completely texture the entrance corridoor and the trap corridoor in TWO DAYS!! very impressed arnt ya, i can tell!!

ENTRANCE CORRIDOOR

Editing Till 4.30am !

I went to bed at 4.30 this morning!!!! and had to get up at 7.30 for work!!! This bloody project is certainly taking its toll i tell thee!! The evening started at about 5 when i arrived at Jono and Robs house, i was greeted with the guys in the middle of the edit and they had just completed the jungle scene. They played it to me and asked for my two cents worth. My first reaction to it was that i didnt like it at all!!! Only reason being is that the speed of it was SO SLOW! Obviously i had done all the animation for it so i had seen it a million times with all the bloody playblasts i had been doing, but the animation in this edit was ridiculously slow. I had found out to my dissapointment that Jono and Rob had changed the speed of my animation in the actual Maya file. They had stretched out the key frames to make him run slower.... they're intentions were obviously for the good. However i felt that they had totally messed up my animation because now he looked like he was running in slow motion. All was not lost though because i just made them speed up the run in premier. The both kept on taking the mick out of me because all night i was saying 'faster, faster, faster!!'. i just wanted the run to be faster and back to the speed of how i originally animated it. But Jono said that it was a little too fast and with the quick cuts the character runs past the camera in less than a second!. So the final edit of the jungle, the character was not as fast as i had animated it but no way near as slow as Jono and Rob made it. I also put in a lot of input to the cuts.. the version that Jono and Rob played me was fine but i think with me coming in as a new fresh pair of eyes was very benificial and i was able to pick at it with a fine tooth comb..

After i managed to get the speed of the run faster, Rob, Jono and Myself sat up to get the rest of the final edit complete.. (well when i say final i mean a final playblast edit of the whole film). It has to be done by tomorrow because then we have to give it to our sound people.... THATS RIGHT WE HAVE SOUND PEOPLE!!! we have been very fortunate as we have two sound people working with us on the project. Firstly Jenny's sister is supplying all the sound effects for the film. and then one of Jono's friends is our score artist composing an original soundtrack especially for our film!! ooohhhh fancy!! Obviously these guys need the edited version for timing purposes.... and they need a week to do it so we have to get it to them by tomorrow. The reason the edit took so long is because we were finallising the cameras for the whole film... i had used a few different cameras while i was animating which Jono and Rob really liked so we had to drop in all the cameras and animations into the master file to then playblast from. This was very tedious as the file took FOREVER to open up in Maya. A lot of time was spent waiting for files to open which was very annoying.

Below is some playblasts of the CAMERAS I SET UP myself in the film:

This playblast shows the character lifting himself up... i produced the camera that zooms over the edge of the cliff and also the other camera where it cuts to show him getting up after pulling himself up - however the only difference made to the edit we made in the early hours of this morning is we had the camera a little further away.... The best part of this playblast is the TRANSITION between the temple and the house. This edit is very important as it is the first time as an audience we realise the character is sleepwalking. I MADE THIS TRANSITION into a fade because i felt it was the most effective. However what makes it most effective is the positioning of the two characters. As you can see i have placed them in very similar positions so that the temple character almost falls into the sleepwalking character. I think it works very well and i was ver pleased that Jono and Rob were very happy with it aswell.

This playblast show the camera i set up for the jump... originally Jono had set up a very nice camera shot, and although we all really liked it, it unfortunately broke the 360 degree rule. So i set up this slight pan movement for the jump to give the audience of how far the character is actually jumping..

But anyway... i am shattered so im off to bed now!!! Need lots of sleep to catch up on...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........

Animation.... DONE AND DUSTED! Woohoo!

Yesterday was the deadline for the animation to be fully completed. i am so happy that my job is finally over... unfortunately ben still has little finishing touches to do.. he said he'l have them done by tommorrow. But other than that the character is fully animated!! I cant wait to see what it all looks like fully textured. There still needs to be secondary animation completed like rocks falling and stuff but thats in the hands of the other group members, as like i said everyone needs to have a small piece of animation done for hand in.

So the animation that i was doing this week was the entrance to the temple. As i gave the other two corridoors to other people to complete i am glad i chose to animate this one. the reason being is because this starts of quite slow tempo. Up until now the film has been quite fast with the guy running through the jungle and also with the animation iv done in the temple which is also quite fast. This scene gave me a chance to work with anticipation. The character walks through the corridoor and then steps on a slap that sets off the traps.. there is a big rumble and the character is unsure what is about to happen.

The entrance to the corridoor was a nice piece of animation to do. I had to produce a walk which i hadnt done in this project yet (well apart from the sleepwalking guy, but thats no standard walk). And i wanted to animate a walk that was quite determined and forcefull. Obviously the character was on a mission and i wanted to show that in the walk which i think i achieved.

Firstly i'l show you the key frames which i always key in first before animating, it also gives me a sense of what the speed will be like:

LIGHTING JUNGLE

Jono, Jenny and Rob have already spent a great deal of time on lighting the jungle however i was fortunate enough to be included in the finishing touches. I met up with Jono and Robs at their house last night and was up untill 3.00am finilising the lighting.

Below are two images of the stages that Jono, Jen and Rob had already developped on the jungle lighting:

These next images are the development lighting tests that Jono, Rob, JEN and Myself came up with. How we did this was we created a plane above the jungle scenery and cut holes out of the top. By feathering the edges of the holes with plant models we flooded the holes with light via spot light. The bottom picture is the final rendered shot of how it will look... as you can see we continued the spotlight effect on different parts of the scene to give the effect that the sun is pouring in through the canopy by adding more holes and made the light brighter ...... I Hope You Like... IT IS NICE!

Times Nearly Up!!!

Today i had a talk with some members in my group and as lead animator i delegated with Ben as he offered his assistance. Since completing some animations for me he has really sunk his teeth into it and started to really enjoy the animation process. As it stands now i only have a week left to complete three scenes of animation. I feel that the best option is to share the work load. I could complete them all in the time but to do so it would be a very rushed job and it would not be my best work. So i have decided to focus on just one so that i can give it 100%. There are three corridoor scenes left to complete so im sharing the work by giving two of the corridoors to other people to complete. Ben was more than happy to oblige therefore he will animate the trap corridoor. The rock chamber has been given to Yemi. Yemi is a veryclose friend of mine who is actually working in another group. He has been a fine scholar and a gentlemen in choosing to help me with the animation. So i am very grateful to him. THANKS GUYS... well i need to get cracking on the entrance corridoor.... Peace out.

Whole Temple Scenery

With just over a week left there is so much animating to do.. From this image below we can see the whole model for the temple scenes. I'v now fully completed the Main Chamber animation GOOD TIMES so now iv got all the corridoors to animate!!! BAD TIMES

Entrance Corridoor

Rock Chamber

Trap Corridoor

Alter Stairs

This is the last part of the chamber animation i need to complete.. THANK GOD!! because i'v just got over a week left and i still need to complete three corridoor scenes!! I have no idea how im going to get it done but we'll see.... Il let you know how i get on! anyway, back to the temple animation these are some playblasts of it.....

Timing and Key Frames:

Animation:

Alter Jump

This is the last part of animation that i needed to do for this scene.. It consisted of the charceter jumping from a falling pillar and then walking up the stairs to the alter. There is a small part of animation after this where the character presses the buttons on the alter. As lead animator i liased with my other group member Ben and decided to give this piece of animation to him to see how he gets on. He said he will show it to me in a few days, i will watch his progress and if the aninmation is of a good standard i will give him some more animating to do if he wishes. I am very confident in him and feel he can deliver a good piece of animation.

Pillar:

The Jump:

Jump, Jump, Jump and Pull Up

Havent updated me old blog in a while.. been really getting stuck into the animation because i havent got long left. I have set the deadline that all the animation has to be comletely finished by the end of the month!! So pressure's on! This past three weeks iv been continuing animating the main chamber and it looks really nice if i do say so myself.

Jump, Jump:

Jump:

And Pull Up:

Main Chamber Entrance Animation

This is the first animation completed for the main chamber. It is the running entrance. Below are two playblasts of two slight different variations. The first playblast the character comes to a hault very suddenly. The second PLayblast (which i will probably use for the final piece) is a bit more natural as the character jolts forward slightly... Kindly take a look below...

Temple Timing And Key Frames

Before animating anything i have set out timing for the movements of the main character in the main chamber. The plan is to animate the character running out of the corridoor doors and skid to a halt.. he will then pause and look around at his surroundings and then continue to run over to his right and leap off the edge... continuing a run on the platform below him... WELL THATS THE PLAN ANYHOO!!!!

KEY FRAMES:

TIMING RUN:

Mountain (or Temple) To Climb !!

I have now been given the maya file for the main chamber so i can start animating that scene this week. The reason i say i have a mountain to climb is because as you can see from this jpg of the temple there is quite alot of animating to be done.. and unfortunately there is also more environments coming my way. Jono is in the middle of modelling the rest of the temple for me. So hopefully i will have them in a couple of weeks.

This is the 3D model of the main chamber... Rob has done a bloody marvellous job modelling it. The style of it looks really nice. He should be very proud.. The next image is a birds eye view of the temple just illustrating the movemnts of where the character will run and what route he will take to get to the alter at the other end.

FINAL JUNGLE ANIMATION..

This is the playblast of the jungle animation i have been working on for the past three weeks... AV A LIL' BUTHCERS PEEPS...

The cameras i have used are just ones i quickly put together for the purposes of the playblast. when i show this playblast to the rest of my group we will discuss which ones will be used and what wil be discarded.

Sofa Scene In The Jungle..

This week was very challenging.. I worked very hard to MEET MY DEADLINE of finishing the jungle scene by the end of this week. The reason i had to finish it this week is because there is still LOADS and LOADS and LOADS of animating to be done for the temple scene. BAD TIMES. The end of this week i animated the start of the jungle scene. I have already completed the end and the middle of the scene... !WONK I SDRAWKCAB but the reason i started with the end first was to make my life easier. Because the majority of it was a run cycle i thought it would be a good start to get into the swing of the jungle scene and give me a good foundation to complete the rest BISH BASH BOSH.

The begining part of the animation which i completed this week!! GOOD TIMES. Is the scene where the guy wakes up all startled and is shocked to find himself in the jungle and jumps off the sofa.

I started of by animating the guy slowly waking up and then startled by quickly looking around at his surroundings:

The next challenging thing was to get the weighting right of the character as he lifts himself off the sofa. The hardest thing of this animation was his hands. Because the way the character had been rigged.. if you moved anypart of his torso then his hands would move aswell. But to animate the guy climbing off the sofa i had to keep his hands still on the sofa. So a lot of keying had to be done on his hands to make sure they were kept still as the rest of his body moved:

The next part of the animation is of the guy looking down at the piece of paper that had fallen of his chest as he got up off the sofa. As he sees this he then runs into the depths of the jungle and thats where the rest of the animation begins:

Jungle Animation Continued...

This past few days i have been working my bloody socks off!! I havent got long and need to get this jungle animation done this week. So the past few days i have continued to develop the jump further. After the jump, is the continuation of the run cycle so that was easy enought to carry on with. The only challenging thing was to make the landing after the jump and the run smoothly flow together. Here's the playblast of the animation showing the jump, the landing and the continuation of the run after the landing.... Confused? So am i.... and i wrote it!!

... Just press play >>>>

This animation shows what i have been developing this week. It is the ending to the jungle scene. As you can see the character ends up running through the jungle with the camera then panning up through the canopy of the jungle. This leads to an establishing shot of the temple in the distance. I really like this piece of animation the pace is at the right speed and i am pleased with the jump and the landing. As you can see i have aslo included a little jump over a flower bed. I decided to add another little leap within the last section just to break up the run cycle and make the animation more interesting. THATS RIGHT ITS ALL ABOUT THE OUTSIDE OF THE BOX!! (and errrr.... the thinking outside of it)

Floating Map

There is a Map resting on The characters chest and as he wakes up, and gets up off the sofa it will float down onto the floor. This is a playblast of what it will look like:

Jungle Animation

This Week i used the run cycle created last week and developed it further by incorporating a jump into it... in the scene the character jumps over a huge gap half way through the run.

KEY POSES

Above is the animation i did for the jump... it was a challenge for me to get the weighting right.. i wanted to make it quite exaggerated and bouncy. I think i achieved this although the landing could be a bit more springy so that will be something i will improve on.

Timing Run Cycle

Now the run cycle has been completed i had to time out the run to see how fast the character would be running through the jungle. I showed the two to Jono and he preffered the slower version.. There may not be an immediate difference visable but the faster version is a second shorter. I had noticed when playing around with the cameras that they both work really well... the only thing is the closer the camera is to the character the faster it appears to be...

QUICK VERSION:



SLOW VERSION:

This is what it looks like within the environment... if you would be so kind as to press play.... FANKOO.

Run Cycle

This week i have been animating a run cycle for the explorer character... because for the most part he is running through the jungle i feel a run cycle is the easiest, quickest and most efficient way to produce this section of the film.. there will be jumps included within the sequence but i can add those in as and when they are needed in the run cycle..

Run Cycle Influences

What inspired my run cycle was a piece of wonderful animation. It is a music video - 'LET LOVE BE YOUR ENERGY' By Robbie Williams ........ Check out the video with the link below ........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5hSXmUj5KA






















ANYHOO... for those who dont press the link (shame on you, the animation is quality) then here are some stills from the piece...

The animation in this piece is very exaggerated, the run cycle is very bouncy yet powerful, with strong arm movements. The pace is very fast and is very effective. The bottom picture on the right is an image of 'Robbie' landing after a jump. I will use this as reference when animating my character. The character in the music video also runs through different environments i will use this as reference to see how he reats with the different environments.

Sleepwalk Animation Continued

This week i have concentrated on finalising the sleepwalk... this last section we see the character walk into the kitchen.. this is the last part of the house i will be animating. The reason for this is because the othe rmembers of the group need to complete some small parts of animation for their portfolio's. The animation in the house after this section is the charcter pressing the buttons of the coooker and him falling over after the explosion. These are little jons that i have given to the rest of the group to fufill their requirements. This will also give me much needed time to spend on the other main parts of animation in the jungle and temple... AS TIME IS TICKING!!!!!!!

Sleepwalk Animation

The animating is coming along very well... i am enjoying animating a sleepwalk sequence as it is something i havent done before and is something i can have a lot of fun with... like i said in my previous post i have been given a lot of freedom with the animation... so in this sequence i have made the character bang his head on the grandfather clock in the hallway... it ads a bit of humour to the animation and giving it a bit more depth and personality.

Animation Inflences

As i am on the way to animating i have decided to look at other animations to inspire me with my own... i can look on youtube for videos of people acting out the movements i want to help with the body movements.. but i will look primarially at animations to get a sense of what style i would like to go for....

This first scene i am animating has the character sleepwalking so i have already looked at real life footage of people sleepwalking but the piece of animation i looked at was a piece from Wallace and Gromit.. the movements of the character reminded me of the scene of 'The Wrong Trousers' where Wallace is fast asleep while the ''chicken'' is controlling the trousers with Wallace strapped in them....

The reason i looked at this animation is because the character Wallace is fast asleep and yet still moving around without his knowing... the animation is very exaggerated and a similar swing in his arms and head is something i would like to capture in my animation.

To get a better sense of the animation you can look at it via this link below.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o9mOwykpbg

DISSERTATION HANDED IN... LET THE ANIMATING BEGIN !

At last i can officially begin the real animating... (Well at least for one scene anyway) The house environment has been fully set out and the sleepwalking character has been finalised and finished. So this week has been begun the begining of the animation process. The dissertation has been handed in today (last day of term!) so during the holidays i can really get cracking on with the animation...

I am quite pleased as the director (Jono) has given me quite alot of freedom with the animation... being the lead animator i have a lot of say on the actual movements of the charcter. Obviously sticking to where the guy starts and finishes the middle bits can be left to my imagination. I have started with the charcter leaning against the wall in the hallway

....ANIMATION POSTS - I WILL POST SOME OF THE PLAYBLAST TESTS OF MY ANIMATIONS SO YOU CAN SEE HOW IT DEVELOPS FROM START TO FINISH BUT BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY I WILL ONLY POST A SELECTED FEW.....

Rig Testing 2

This second week was spent testing the explorer guy rig... again it had the same problems with the sleeping character rig so i had to get Giles to change the rig to make my job easier. As you can see form the clip i was testing components of the rig to make sure it worked efectively...

Rig Testing 1

As you can see this is the first post in a while, i have been working so hard on my dissertation, but the good news is that i'v nearlly finished it which means i can get cack to working to my full potential on the film...

This week i have been given one of the rigs to start animating with from Giles.. i started with some animation tests tho to see if the rig was good enough to work with... unfortunately the first version had some slight problems with the torso and so i met up with Giles on a few seperate occasions to get him to make the changes i needed to make my animating job easier....



As you can see when the torso is rotated instead of the character bending over his body just bends inwards... i have spoken to giles so he can adjust this problem and make it so that if i do rotate his torso it will make his whole upper body bend forwards.

Story Re-worked by Jono and Rob

This week i was very grateful to learn that Rob and Jono spent some time with Gareth Munden on the animatic, and from his advice they started to think about shot composition and how the camera could tell the story rather then the character alone.

So after a long session with Gareth the two guys spent time thinking about what was essentil to not only the story, but what we personally wanted to take away from the film. The desire for a good visual piece made us change the "gag reel" style piece we had originally intended to produce. The guys realised that the new storyline and new shots needed to be supported with some "revised" environments that meant that the character and camera could be animated effectively and smoothly. So they spent some time editing the map layouts, specifically the interior of the temple etc.

The filmic language will play a massive part in the overall style of the film and so developing further and finalising camera shots will help me when it comes to animating as i know when and where the character will be in shot.... While animating the film i will look at the camera shots again and if need be rework them to their fullest potential (i.e incase the character is not fully in shot)

DISSERTATION!!!!!!!!! ARRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately At the same time as doing this film project everyone in our class have also got a dissertation to complete BAD TIMES... it is taking its toll.. and to get the balance of work right is vertually impossible. I have taken a lot of time out of this project to concentrate mainly on my dissertation. I would like to share time between the two but i think that my full attention needs to be on my dissertation at the mo as it is due in on March....

HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS FOLKS I WILL KEEP YOU POSTED...... GOOD TIMES

Asset Modelling

Because animation is my specialist subject and i can't animate just yet because im waiting for the characters to be modelled and rigged. At the moment there is a lot of enviromental modelling to be done. As i am not one of the main modellers i am very pleased to have been given the responsibility to model the whole layout for the house. This week... 'i will be mostly eating strawberries' HAHAHA Sorry that was a sketch from The Fast Show!...... Anyhooooo... This week i have also modelled assets that will be in the house... it is unknown at this stage whether they will even be seen in the final film because we're not quite clear where everything is goin and where the cameras will be but we have to do as many assets as we can to bulk up the house just in case.

The next image is the assets placed in the environment of the house. As you can see they fill up most of the hallway.. so efectively even without modelling being my main specialist i am very proud to say that i modelled the entire hallway.

Back To Work After A Nice Festive Break!!

Not updated my blog in a while with it being christmas and new years and all that jazz.... but this week I have been doing some animation tests. However I have had to use a pre-rigged model that i downloaded off the internet because the characters in our film have yet to be modelled. I animated a short jump sequence just to keep in practise.. I dont quite know yet when I will be animating for my film so i am using these modells just to keep my animating skills refreshed.