FMP- Alpha (Final Rendered Animations)

Here are the final rendered versions of my scenes from the project Alpha and also a few final thoughts. 

Its really nice to see the whole thing come together and I am really happy we managed to get it finished in time (though it was very close) We ran into a lot of issues throughout but learning to fix them taught us all a lot. 

Its always nice to see the rendered versions of your animation as it adds so much more to the atmosphere of the scene. 

Over all I am pleased with the work here. I enjoyed the pace of this scene, and although not much happens, its really about the subtleties. This scene was about showing her curiosity and thoughtful nature. 

I think at some point when I have the time, I would like to go back and fix the little glitches in the forearm. This was a rig problem that I was unable to fix in the time we had but I feel it distracts from the shot and makes it feel less polished. 

I really enjoyed this creature piece! It was fun and playful even though he was scared and I enjoyed walking the line between him moving like a creature but having a human personality. 

The rig was very challenging to work with because of the unusual shape of his body but I am happy with how it turned out. 

This was my only creature animation for my final major project so I am happy with how it turned out. I would like to get into character animation, so I saw this piece as a character piece rather then just a creature animation. I would like to try more animation like this in the future as I had a lot of fun with it. 

Over all, I am happy with the work I did for this project although there are a couple of tweaks I may make. It was quite hectic being the animation director also, but everything turned out okay in the end. I found it a good challenge to have more responsibility and more control over the final product. 

And if you are interested, here is the final short film in full....

I am really pleased with how everything turned out. There are of course, always things I would change or do differently second time around but I am really proud with our teams achievement.   

FMP- Alpha (Creature Scene)

Just a reminder, here is the animatic for the creature scene...

First Block:

Here we have the first block for the creature scene. This took me quite a long time to get right but I felt that the poses were very important here. I wanted a nice silhouette throughout this piece for the creature and I really wanted to hit those key poses. 

I really struggled with this blocking as the rig was quite challenging to work with. We initially had a lot of issues with some of the controllers and the rig did not like being referenced into Maya 2015 however we got it to work in the end, it just pushed us all back a little time wise. 

First Spline: 

Again, first spline is pretty ugly and I think I need to do a lot of work to get some weight into this piece. I have had a lot of trouble with the legs and shoulders when using this rig. The anatomy of the creature means the neck is very large and unfortunately doesn't deform to the nicest shapes. I tried my best to make the poses appealing (with as little clipping and glitching as possible) while still making the movement believable. Hopfully, the more I work into it, the better it will get. 

Spline:

After the first spline, I moved the landing position of the creature so he covers more ground with his jumps. Getting the last run to look right took me a lot of time playing around. The problem was he is a big creature so if he doesn't cover much ground with each stride, it looks odd. On the other hand, his legs are very tiny, so there is only so far they can stretch before it just looks like im making him fly across the screen. I am quite happy with how it looks now and I am excited to get some nice overlap animation done and really smooth out the curves. 

Overlap:

Here I really tried to work on making his movements fluid but weighted. I had fun adding some character and emotion with his ears. Its a little difficult again as I cant animate the eyes until the body animation is done and I also cant see what the totem glow looks like (the glow of the totem is what scares him away) So its a lot of guess work but I am over all happy with the way it is progressing. 

Facial Anim: 

Finally I got to work on the facial animation and really add some character and expression to the creature. We had a little trouble again with the eye textures as some didnt want to work, so the range of eye animation was quite limited however I still think it works and I am pleased with how they look. 

I will be uploading the finished rendered version in another post once they are done.

FMP- Alpha (Character Scene)

Now to begin animation!! 

Just a reminder, here is the animatic for the character scene...

First Block:

Blocking was fairly simple for this piece, no complex poses and im pretty happy with the timing. 

Note: we are having animated textures for the eyes so they I will have to animate them last. They are pretty intense on the pc and bog down the file and make it pretty impossible to animate so im going to have to get everything for the body done first and then animate the eyes. Its a little different to what im used to but hopefully it will work out. 

First Spline:

This is always the part I hate, so many glitches and nasty floaty bits. I have a lot of smoothing to do and I have to fix that hand but im quite happy with this as a basis to work on. I think i'll be spending a lot of time cleaning up the graph editor with this one.  

Facial Animation:

[Sorry about the curves on show here] This is a different angle to see the facial animation as the render camera it quite far away. Here are the dreaded animated eye textures....they were quite a handful to work with. These took a lot of time to get working and I'm still not entirely sure how they work, however I really like the look of them so I think they were worth the effort. 

Final Shot:

And here we have pretty much the final shot before rendering (you can see all the render cameras here) I had a lot of fun with her bouncy hair and her facial expressions with this shot. We did have a lot of trouble with the rig though and some things (like her bracelet) had to be cut out as they were just not working. A few more tweaks and I think we will be there

I will make a separate post for the final rendered shots of them both, but for now, its out of my hands and off to the techy people to do their magic to make it look pretty.

Final Major Pre-Production: Alpha (Collab) Part 2 [Creature Scene]

This is the second part of my pre-production for Alpha. Just to remind you, here are my scenes again... 

I did some research into the animals most like the creature from Alpha. This was a little difficult as he is a fictional creature but we decided he would have the anatomy of something like an alpaca or a Shetland pony. 

After anatomy and pose research I thumbnailed some variations for the scene and cut them into animatics...

In the end we decided to go for the second one. I liked the curiosity shown with him scratching around the base. I also think that animating him rearing up will be a lot of fun and give me a lot to play with. 

I then drew out the final story board for the creature scene....

And made a final animatic...

I think that this scene is going to be a lot of fun to animate. I think i may have some trouble with the posing as the design of the creature is quite unusual and the large neck and tiny legs may be an issue. Im hoping to get a nice bouncy animation for him running away as I want him to look harmless and cute.

I'm super excited to work on this project and get my teeth stuck into it. It will be nice to have a play with some new custom rigs too!!

As I am a co-director I also made up schedules for the project to keep us on track. Im sure some things wont go to plan but fingers crossed we will get it all done in time.

This will also be my first time being an animation director so Im looking forward to that challenge. Hopefully I will be able to give a lot of useful feedback and keep the animation style consistent throughout the piece. 

Final Major Pre-Production: Alpha (Collab) Part 1 [Character Scene]

'Alpha' is a project that I will be co-directing and also working on as head of animation. 'Alpha' planned to be a short film acting as a cinematic game trailer. 

As head of animation, I was responsible for getting an animation team together and sorting out who was going to be responsible for what animation wise.  

The first thing to do was to cut a rough animatic/ previs together so we had the whole short planned out and I could start dividing shots between animators. This took a very long time, as there were many points we wanted to communicate to the audience but we also didnt want to ruin the pace of the shot or make it too long. We aimed for a minute and a half and we managed to get it almost exactly which I am very happy with. 

This is what the final version looks like: 

Luckily, everyone managed to get the shots they wanted or were happy with. Each person on the animation team needed this project for different reasons so I tired to tailor their shots accordingly to what would be most useful for them. If they are happy with what they have to do, hopefully they will enjoy their work much more and produce better work as a result. 

These are the shots that I will be animating. I chose one character and one creature one. I wanted the character one because these scene should have a lot of subtle acting in it and I want to get better at that. Especially because a lot of my other projects are very over the top. 

I chose the creature scene because I would really like to improve my creature acting skills as I have not had the chance to animate many animals. I am also yet to animate an non realistic animal. 

I am happy that these scenes are interesting yet each just contain the one character as I also want to make sure I have enough time to work with the others as head of animation. 

First I worked on the character scene. I did some research into the type of character I think she would be. It helped that I was provided initial character designs by the Director who will also be working as head of the art side.

I explored a few different ideas while still keeping the base movement the same. I wanted to explore different emotions she may be going through during this scene which would impact the subtle ways in which she would perform the action of bending down to look at the claw mark.

In the end i decided with the third as this claw mark is something they have never encountered before and  I think, being the more sensible one of the pair, she would realize the danger and be worried. 

I then went on to develop that idea and this was the result. I think timing is going to be very important in this scene. I want her to pause for a moment before she bends down and also pause throughout to show she in deep thought. 

I am really looking forward to animating this scene as I think its a chance to spend a nice amount of time on a relatively simple scene and also a chance to improve my subtle animation skills.  

Final Major Pre-Production: Dance Off (Collab) Part 2

This week I continued on with the pre prodcution with the 'Dance Off' project. I have quite a large amount of animation to do on this project, so it has taken a while to plan out all the shots. Luckily, all off my shots are one after the other so that has made things easier for me as I dont have to worry about the flow of the whole shot as much. 

Continuing on, Shot 16 is the male characters reaction shot to shot 15 (this is the shot where Ragina snaps her fingers and turns a spotlight on above our characters head) This is a very quick shot but a lot needs to come across in that time. I want to communicate his shock at this surprising event (as most people cannot turn lights on and off with the click of a finger) he also needs to look confused about whats happening and look worried about what could be following. 

I played with both a lot of body movement and just the facial expressions with this shot. However, I felt more body movement gave it life, and given how over the top he reacted in an earlier shot (shots 12-14) it would have been a change in character for him to suddenly not be as over dramatic. I chose the third as I felt it also communicated to the audience this is the second time she has barged in on him acting odd and he is now slightly concerned about her and her persistence.  

The next shot is Regina seductively walking towards the male. Me and the director had great fun filming video reference for this and looking at films such as Chicago for inspiration. We played around a fair amount with how she was going to walk towards him.

In the end we settled for the third. The first was very dance like and the second was quite silly and funny but I felt the last was still funny but more predatory too. She is coming to 'get him' in this shot and as well as seduction, I want to be able to convey the desire in her movements. 

The last shot I have for this project is a very long but hilarious one. Regina finally makes it to Alphonse and starts seducing him by dancing around and on him. We filmed reference for this shot pretty early on and my thumbnails are based from our reference for this shot. The reference filming came out so well none of the team really wanted to mess much with the shot, so I only tried two similar versions. 

Alphonse's movements will be very minimal in this scene, I want him to seem very stiff and awkward, not quite sure what to do with himself in this situation. On the other hand, Regina will be throwing herself all over the place. I think there is the opportunity to get some nice hip action in this scene and I also think the facial animation will be a lot of fun. 

I am really looking forward to working on this project. I think its going to be really fun and if anything, I will just be laughing watching my video reference back. Im hoping this project will really help me with body movement and mimed acting. Its a good opportunity to improve my facial expressions as they cant talk and also improve on some basic body mech as there is a lot of walking and shifting weight in the shots I have. This scene is very large but I am excited to take it on and make it funny and silly and it should be nice laugh on my reel. 

Final Major Pre-Production: Dance Off (Collab) Part 1

Dance off is planned to be a short film set at a high school prom. The main character attempts to make his way across the dance floor while being ambushed by various girls trying to win him over by dance.

After a lot of decision making I was luckily given the shots I had initially had my eye on from the first pitch. At one point during the short, the main character (Alphonse) runs into a popular 'mean girl' type character (Regina). My shots include their encounter. 

After I had my shots given to me, I took the animatic given to me by the director and broke it up into my shots. 

I was also given character profiles for both the characters I would be working on. With them, I went on and did my own research and looked at characters similar to the ones described for inspiration.

 First was shots 12-14 to plan. This is the two characters first encounter. Regina comes into shot and stops Alphonse in his tracks, she gestures for him to dance, he refuses and makes his way past her. She is not used to this rejection and storms after him .

In the end I chose the second as I feel it is dynamic and there are a lot of fun poses to play with.

The next, shot 15, is where Regina once again stops in front of Alphonse and snaps her fingers which causes the main lights to go out and a spotlight to appear over Alphonse.

I preferred the second as I felt it was more clean and sharp.

I have ended up with quite a lot of animation to do for this project, which Im looking forward to, but its going to be a lot of work. Im going to continue to work on my pre production for this project next week and hopefully have it all finished.