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: