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.