Work at the moment

Erm it's been rather a hectic time for me recently animation wise. I have been extremely overwhelmed with my projects.

I managed to hand in a file of the pig flying animation film to be looked at recently and should hopefully get to completing the necessary changes and that will then be a completion of the job. I shall finally be able to pot some freelance work up.

In terms of the film though I do wish I had a bigger deadline as the pigs animation isn't at the level of animation quality I would have hoped for. I look forward to seing it up on the clients website though, and getting some recognition for my work.

As of this week though I was set 4 speaking/acting animations or the computer game. Three are fairly small and simply done, however I was set a 20 odd second animation piece with three characters interacting, so it was a nice chance to explore this area more, I have enjoyed doing it. It has taken me I beleive 3days to do which I'm pretty proud of because I have worked my butt off on this one. It looks pretty nice now it just needs a bit of cleaning up which I plan to finish tonight and then I hand it in and move onto the mini ones, in which I have to produce one a day to meet the deadline on Friday. 

Also I unforunately ad to turn down yet gain another job this week. I seem to keep beingapproached now which is realy nice, but some are areas I don't know a lot about so like this one I amtigh for time with other things so without knowing all the techniqe it would be hrd to even concier.

Random post to say what's going on with me at the moment.

I have been completely crammed with work over the last couple of months. Since braking from University I have had a really stress full and busy summer with animation.

On the first 3 or 4 weeks I worked solid on more game animation, this particular task I had to do was the most challenging I have had I feel. It took me a while to get that one complete.

As the weeks went by I decided to try and make some Internet presence for myself so I signed up on linked in, animated buzz and also posted a couple of videos on Vimeo. From this really amazingly I have made allot of really friendly, encouraging and inspiring people.

Also as time goes I like to check out companies and also see what kind of freelance work is out there. I haven't yet applied for any myself as I don't have much work to show them at the moment.

About 3 weeks ago I got a random urge and wanted to see whether any local companies would be interested in any animation done for them. I emailed around 13 I think and from that I received 8 responses 2 were that they wouldn't need that sort of thing and a couple interested to know more but strangely never went further. I managed to get 3 offers though. One was unfortunately technical animation done using coding which wasn't my area so I had to refuse. The other two however were really good offers.

1) The first is a promo film by Fresh Fish design, for this I have been assigned piece on a local area of thanit.

2) The second is to produce a selection of 2d flash animated logos, in which components move and come together to form the logo.

The promo film I was only assigned 3 weeks so it is very tough going, I am in the last week now and the deadline is approaching quickly, I hope to get it done in time, and then I will finaly be able to have some freelance work I can display rather than hiding it like the game as I don't know if I can yet.

The logo's weren't a very pressing Holman design so I am casually doing them when I can fit them into my schedule. I hope to get a selection for them of around 10 by the end of the summer so early September. I look forward to showing them too as so far they are looking nice.

Finaly I have also been approached by two people for other projects. I had to unfortunately refuse the first as it would have required me having to commute or rent a hotel which wouldn't have been feasible for me. The second I haven't heard anything back from so I don't know if that's going anywhere.

I look forward to posting some videos when I have finished each project.

Degree show, how it went and we won best 2nd year film!

Just got back from watching the animation degree show at the odeon.


Our film seemed to go down very well. It looked realy great on the massive screen.
 Lots of people giggled when it came to the imp section. I'm not sure wether it's because they understood the story or was just because of the cuteness of the imp, but I think I pulled off the cute imp apeal well and the movie seamed to connect together well.


After watching all the movies I was happy with what our group did and to make it even better we won an award for the best second year film.

Character turn around of me as a character

I have just done a simple trun around of my character in simple clothes to just get an idea of how he looks all round/perspective wise. From now I hope to take this forward and try to produce some nice action shots. And also develop the character design wise into other clothes for the sport ideas.

Initial head/faciel expression designs of me as a character.

Yes I have developed the faces above some ok some not so good but they were just to test the drawing process of how I can quickly produce quick drawings of my face using shapes. so in this instance It's easy as I just use a circle and basily half a hexagon for the jaw/chin. This process seems to make it very easy to reproduce the characer.

Current work I'm going to start on at the moment

I have a huge list of ideas i'm going to do this summer but as I'm working on the game animation at the moment my time is quite tight as it is getting more rushed to get it all done.


The work on the game is slightly stressfull sometimes so I randomly decided I would try design myself as a cartoon and I think I may take the concept further and try to get some nice animtion out of the character I see s myself. I will try to include a range of short animtions such as sports I do and interests I have. This I think will be a nice change away from the game stuff and will allow me to develop my 2d skills more too.


Ideas to develop using me as a character:


Swimming- Swimming has always been qute a big thing to me. I still swim now and am also a qualified swim teacher, so I intend to produce some realy nice animations of the swim strokes and perhaps diving.


Handball- I have only been a part of handball for 2 years now playing at university but in that time I am a qualified coach, qualified table official and also I have plaed both years for the great britian Universities team. With this I hope to get some realy nice animations such as shots, dribbling, goal keepers. This will test my abilities but I htink for me it'l be an enjoyable process.


Anyway shall keep posting as I go.

Random post

Just a quick post to say I'm going to now use this blog to post all my other work I do as it'l be pointless to leave it and start a new one.


Anyway I have lots of new work I intend to be getting on with in my own time aswell as work on a a children's computer game so I will be kept very buisy. I will try and keep posting all my new stuff :)

How completeing tasks for degree show went.

To be honist i'm disapointed with how the two weeks went up to the hand in. People in the group just seee like they gave up and although I gave people jobs not all of them got done. On the contrary even though Liam didnt do anything the first week he did realy well in the last week an me and him managed to pull most things together and atlest get a few things changed. Hollie also managed to produce a mobile for the room to help to try show the connection between the two sections of the move.

Jobs I still wished we could have sorted were the dribbling of the Imp and getting the train moving through the birdseye view shot.

Jobs we are aware of for the degree show

There are a few jobs that we are planning on doing for the degree show. Some are from jobs we missed and others are fom new ideas to improve.

1. Unfortunately we couldn't attatch the Imps texture due to rigging and unwrapping UV's in the wrong order. From this we were planning on changing the shader colour for the and in but we ran out of time ad realy had to star rendering with the red one we had. We are going to change his colour though for the degree show.
2. We also need to re render the imp scenes because they came out with a white border around everything. There is also a strange strong block shadow in the scene which unfortunatley stopped us from being able to pan out to see the whole cave. We will sort these rendering issues though for the show.
3. Each time the train goes past we want to make the guy in the crossing shot be in the pose the previous reaction shot ends with rather than him stood in the same position.
4. Adding lights to the train shots and to the street lamps.
5. In the umbrella shots paint in gusts of wind to emphasise the wether more.

Assement of my self in the project

Directoral

From when I became diector I think I perhaps added more enthusiasm and organisation to the team. I created task calenders which seemed to keep everyone on track. I hope everyone was happy with how I directed and felt with me in charge, the genreal response seems to be thatpeople liked it.

The only draw back of me being director may have been on some of the art direction I wasn't always the best person to choose colours etc.

My roles

My honist opinion on myself would be:

I realy struggled early on with the animations of the head turns but I managed to resolve my issues in the end. Through doing the mixed 2d and 3d project it di me good as it helped me to realise that I prefer 3d animation by far, as my drawing ability holds me back sometimes in the 2d parts.

OveralI my animation turned out well in the end and I am happy with what I produced. I wish I'd finnished some bits earlier though so the process would have been a bit more fluid, as we had to rush alot at the end.

Soming up of the project and group

The project/idea

I think from the start we had a realy interesting idea that linked realy well to the Lincoln theme as the themes are realy recognisable as Lincoln.

Ithink that the mix of 2d and 3d was from the start what we wanted to do. Many people thought we should stick to one or the other but we realy liked the mixed media and stuck with it, adn I think it payed off in the end.

The final film ended up alot longer than we originaly anticipated but I think without this length it wouldn't have turned out as good.

The team/members

I think that I was lucky to get the team I was with because between us we all had strong abilities in our own areas so our skills came together nicely.

Genreal team assesment:

As a team I think at times we may have slacked off a bit especialy at the beginning but when it counted we realy stepped up and produced some realy nice work. We had quite a few time drawbacks troughout but I think we did well concidering these.

Sam

Unfortunately Sam was a big negative issue in the project, and held us back quite often as we had to re do things. We gave him lots of chances but had to give up on him because we couldn't waist any more time and we wanted to just get things done. I do feel slightly bad beibut to be honist it was his own fault.

All of my imp animation shots put together and rendered out properly.

2nd shot parenting the man to the imp

After struggling trying to keep the man in the imps hand I wanted to find an easier way to do it. Me and Liam came up with parenting the man to the imps head joint so that it would remain in place. This solved the man problem, but then to stop the whole film from having the guy floating around following the joint throughout we just rendered out the frames we needed.

1st and 2nd shots complete

After a lot of playing around with the motions I have finaly come out with one i'm happy with, after this I have alsdded mr motions and links to add more emotion and realism to the character.

Double arm shake

Lean in to grab toy

Rock back anticipation

Lean over

Train push keeping in thumb

I realy wasn't too keen on the imp flapping his arm so went back to the original plan of keeping the thumb in his mouth. It took me a little longer to keep it there but I think the pay off is worth it.

Train push with flapping arm

It was realy chalnaging to try and get the imp to keep his hand on his foot as when he went forwards and back to keep it in place i had to rotate he shoulder and flex the elbow which made the arm flicker around allot. Instead I thought I would try and go straight into him flapping but with one arm then he would go into both arms after.

Train push with imp holding his foot

I was having a bit of trouble with keeping the imps thumb in his mouth so I decided it might be quite nice if he grabs his foot and holds it.

Returned from tour

Toay I have returned frm my tour and have found out that Erica hasn't been well with migranes so hasn't managed to get much work done ove the weekend. This may hold us back a little in terms of colouring but hopefully Martynawill be able to get it done in time.

Colouring issues

Unfortunatley due to my hold back on the 2d animation we are pressed for time for colouring. Erica has coloured andis doing the shading of the 3rd rectin hot at the moment. It was taking longer than expected so I decided to help out and do the block colouring for the 2nd reaction shot and the 4th reactionshot so that they are ready for just the shading.
Before going on my tour I have posted the flash files on the Adrive for Erica and also Martyna to add the tone to the block coloured animations.

Goin to be away for 4 days

This realy has come at the wrong time but I am going to compete in a four day tournament in Poland with the Great Britain universities hadnball team.

I realy wish it was at a different time but it is a good opertunity for me.

I will be away from tonight and return around midnight Sunday.

I have left everyone instructions for when I'm away so that when I'm back we are on track for the final push to finnish.

First shot imp animation

Imp animation getting in the train movewment and imps basic movements

From opening the Imp scene I saw that moving the train would be a bit of an issue. For a start the track is cuved, but it s also a slight hill. This caused me quite a lot o issues and forced me to individualy key frame each carriage. This took longer than I hoped but knew once this was out the way it shold get easier from there.

Begining Imp animation

Just a message to tell my plans for the imp animation:
All the way through the project we haven't exactly decided specificly what the imp will be doing apart from pushing a train back and forwards.
I have had a think about what I'd like and have come to the conclusion to try and get more of the character across to the audience. I want to add the innocence of a young infant.

My plan:

1st shot-

we are going to stick with looking up at the imp pushing the train. Instead of him blowing raspberries I want to add more of realistic way to get the dribble. I want to get a nice shot of him sucking his thumb with just some nice subtle faciel features.

2nd shot-

1. Cuts to a longer shot of the imp still sucking his thumb and pushing the train
2. Imp lets go of train and stops sucking thumb
3. Flps his arms/fidgiting
4. Reaches over and starts plodding along a person.
5. Picks up person and flapps arms again
6. Shoves person in his mouth
7. Carries on puching train.

2nd reaction shot flled in animation

2nd reaction shot

Scruffier animation

I found the previous animation slightly boring in terms of movements and wanted to make it more dramatic, so I decided I needed moremovement to the body area. Making him more scruffy gave me the idea to make his tie whip as he comes forward and jacket come open.



Scruffier look

After looking at Hollie's animation of before he let's go of the umbrella, I decided that as I forgot to change his appearance as planned in the 3rd reaction shot I must make up for it by doing an in between animation, so that he is half way between being smart, and half way between having his tie undone.

So to make him messier I have made it so that his tie has loosened and dropped down his chest.

4th reaction shot- Filled out animation

4th reaction shot key poses

4th shot- planning the eye expressions.

I was trying to test some eyes to use for this hot to hopfully get his current frustration level across to the audience. I played around with both frustration/anger and and some with some with confusion in them. Through this I got to two sets of eyes they I though would fit, however I couldn't decide which ones should be at the begining and which oes at the end of the scene. Through this I posted it on facebook to get the groups opion.

We decided that the best eyes to start with were the right ones however Hollies gave me some ideas to adjust them a bit.

  

The eyes to finnish are the ones on the left which will hopeuflly leave the guy with a more frustrated look on his face

Added a settle onto the end of the animation

Flled out animation with expressions for 3rd reaction shot

Created a stern faciel expression with the eyes to try and show the frustration.

3rd reaction shot Starting faciel expression (a moderately frustrated look)

Key poses for the 3rd reaction shot animation

cleaed up head turn

4th reaction shot video reference

vdieo reference for 3rd reaction shot

new head turn experiment with after reaction

new head turn with hat in

I used shapes to strengthern and keep the form throughout

Easter tasks

SAM

Sent Sam another message but on facebbok to tell him his work and to check if he got my email but once again NO REPLY.

I realy want to give him a chance but if he keeps ignoring me after his meating with Sean it's rediculous quite frankly, I keep giving him chances but theres nothing else I can do I don't think we can use him after all the times he's been letting us down.

Feedback on blackboard for our group

We had feedback posted on the grades today. There were some realy encouraging comments and Paul appeared to be impressed with how the group was runnung, however he had an issue with how the character looed. At this point in time it was the old animation so I think most of this is prbobly due to how i drew alot of it because he chnged shape when he looked to the left. Once the animation is looking better I think the character will be alot moreappealing.

Sam

Today Sean came to me and then the group to tell us that Sam had talked to him that moring and they had diwscussed his issues.

I was shocked that his mum had phone in etc to sy stuff. I realy have gven him chances but I can't help him feeling left out or that he's worse than us if he's never in or never talking to us. I mean Sean told us that Sam showed him some sound design and that it was average, however we hadn't even heard that he ha been doing it.

I feel kind of bad as being the director is it partly my fault/ should I have tried to help him more, and I don't want to feel like it's partly my fault that he'l proboly fail the year. On the other hand he hasn't contacted anyone, asked for advice and help like everyone else and he didnt't even attnd the first semester to learn maya.

Anyway I have sent him an email of a few new tasks he could do which were finnish the sound design and make us the credits for the film (which I even wrote out for him). I unfortuntely couldn't give him anymore maya work as ther was nothing left to do.

3rd attempt head turn using a circle and triangle

Plasticene model of guys head

 

Here are some images of the plasticene model I made of the 2d guys head. I realy struggled with drawing the frames in flash so modling this realy helped my to visualise perspective and positioning of features etc.

Unit hand in

Today we had what we thought was just an updated animatic/work showing however Sean came in saying that we were getting graded, and it was an end of a unit. I wasn't very amused as I hadn't been able to improve much in terms of new animation and had to leave in the old wrong one in for the animatics timing. I was realy worried at this point because I hadn't realy got much to show and get grade on apart from the imp model, doin the animatic and a load f wrong animation. Luckily after showing them all we got told that it was going to be a group mark andthey were going to re assess it at the end ofthe year anyway. Luckily for me at this time my group had produced allot of nice work especialy Hollie and Erica's backgrounds and Martyna's amaising little town.

As the leader once again I was very pround of the group and real happy with what we have acheived. There were no bad comments atal and the lecturers were very impressed.

Pauls help

Today Paul looked at the animation I had started to do for the new head turn, and gave me advice on better ways to do it and helped with issues I was having with the drawing side of things

• He gave me advice to make the break down far more exciting by raising the characters shoulders and make the chin dip down .
• He also suggested that my current animating of the caracter I have bee concentrating too muh on the mechanics and nt on the emotions etc of the character, so I he ran through how I could do that and suggested that on the first head turn I should make it look likethe guy is boed and not raly paying attention and te as he turn its as if he is ingaged with the train.
• He suggested that I shold also add the blink into the turn has I had'nt previously done t and was't sure if I should as he's mean to be watching the train.

As wel as the animation Issues I explained how I was realy struggling with the drawng of he guy asnd working out how things should look and where they sould be etc. So he ran throgh some of my problems and helped to find solutions.

• He then said that what I needed to do was draw the guy as much as I could and get used to drawing him, finding a process of how to do it successfully every time. The suggestion was to used shapes to keep his form e.g. a circle with a triangle on the bttom for his head.
• Paul also helped me to grasp the erspective side of things which heped grasp how things should look.

Below is Pauls paper he explained things on, so I will use this and what he said to make the animation better.

Starting he 1st head turn with Hollies drawings plus a couple more

Starting new head turn

I was really struggling to get going again because of my drawing skills. I find it hard on the head turns to get the drawing right. I knew that I can animate ok most of the time once I have the Key frames and the Breakdowns in. As I was finding it hard to get the breakdown right I decided to get Hollies help as I figured it would save me allot of time.

Even though Hollie gave e the break down I still needed a bit more help as I was still struggling with where the nose, hat and mouth were and how they would look, so I asked her for a drawing in between the start and halfway to get me started ad understand the mechanics a bit better.

Feedback from Neil and Paul

In the studio today I had both Neil and Paul check out my animations and they werent to keen on the head turns atal. there were issues like

1. The neck in the wrong place at times.
2. Some of the spacing was even.
3. They wanted more anicipation.
4. Te 2nd turn had issues with its timing with the watch check and faciel movements.
5. They both realy werent a fan of the third head turn with the sigh saying the thing doesn't move right.

From this I realised I would be better off to start from scratch on all the head turns as I think the general vibe was that it wasn't working like it was.

Takning into concideration I decided to start again.

3rd turn experiment with adding stubble

2nd attampt 3 head turns

Updated task sheet for the group

2nd attampt of 1st head turn

First showing of our work to the class

We had to show our animatic and current progress to everyone today and it looked like everone understood what was happening and thought it was good. We weren't given any negative comments which is always a good sign.

Being the director I thought today with the work we showed there was a huge amount or recent work that had been done and everyone had put allot of effort into getting stuff finnished or looking good to show people, so yes I was realy proud of our group today.

Sams Umbrella

I received Sams umbrella model that he was assigned, when I opened it it looked ok from a distance apart from its handel but unfortunately once again we realy aren't able to use it because of its mesh. Hollie realy won't be able to animate with it very well, so once again if we need a 3d umbrella someone else will have to model it.

2nd attept video reference

1st head turn

Meating/ Sam issues

I sent a message out on the 5th to set up a meating on monday to try get everyones work together for Neil as we keep letting him down in not showing enough of an improvement.

in the meating it ended up me Erica, Liam and Hollie.  Martyna couldn't go but sent us a good model of what she'd done so far.

Sam aparently had work but actualy did sent me his train model on the Monday. Me and Liam opened it and at first it looks reltively good but when you click on it themesh is an abslute shambles as you can see below. We showed both Simon and Neil and they were shocked and confused about how it was even possible to d what Sam did with the mesh.

After being shocked by Sam's mesh me and Liam decided that we would be better off unfortunatley not letting Sam re do the train modle and let Liam do it because it is a realy vital part of our film and we can't afford to loose time with Sam doing it.

As Sam says he want's to do 3d iv'e allowed him to try somethin else but of less importance. I decided that i'd get him to model some of the foreground rocks in the cave to try and add some perspective. 

Despite the Same issue we got lots of stuff together and in the end Neil was happy wit the improvements we had made as a group.

Final animatic before animating

More animatic adjustments and additions

In this animatic we have managed to change the agle of the crossin shot to ad perspective.

Also Iv'e added a couple of new images to the animaitic as Liam came up wih the idea to have a shot of the imp dribbling t help connect with he rain of the fist half of the film. We came up wth the idea of a fairly close shot coming from beneith the imp looking up seing the dribble falling.

cleaned up feet

cleaned up nappy with added fresnel shader

first tasks I set for the group

Becoming the director of the project

Today we decided that the team wasn't realy gettin things done swiftly and people were just doing what they liked taking however long they wanted because there was no specific leader. After a discussion I decided to step forward because I knew once I was in charge I would be alot more motivated to get the project done.

Adjustments and improvemens to the animatic

Today Neil looked at our animatic and gave us tree bits of advice to improve it.

1.  He didn't like it with the three heads one straight after the other, suggesting we should make the train go past four times and the guy looks four times.
2. We should cut into the guy closer each time as it would help to show the annoyance building up.
3. We should have the crossing at more of an angle to get a better perspective

Below is an animatic with the first to adjustments:

My first animatic

Liam has been struggling with the timing of the animatic recently so he decided it would be easier for me to take over so it gets done quicker and right so he doesn't get annoyed with people telling him what's wrong all the time.

 Below is my first animatic after Liam gave me what he had already done. From his I just played with it's timing to try ad get it right.

Far longer eyes

longer eyes with lashes

longer eyes without lashes

mouth in

added eyes and mirrored geomotry

smoothed up ears and horns

Modling of the ears and horns

Improving the body shape

1st modling of the body

New tasks after Christmas

Wedescussed today new tasks for people to do.

I dcided that I wanted to model the Imp as I'dbe animating it so if it is messed up it will be my fault. I think I am a fairlygood modler and hopefully I can do a good job of it.

I decided that If I model and rig the Imp then do the Imp animation and 2d animation that would be me sorted for the ret of the project.

Advice on the imp

Pual gave me advice today on the Imp's nappy about how it should look and it's texture. He helped suggest shaping issues such as making it more bulgy, and give it a texture called fresnall to make it imitate the material type of nappy rather than a plastic shiney coated one.