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.