The TOAD

we had a week out of our normal college schedule to do a week long project with some ND students, and the theme of this was a b-movie. (all of the final animations were hilariously good and it was a fast moving project that I enjoyed)

Here was the result of my group:

Be afraid.... Be very afraid...

updates on Joy the Magpie

Joy the Magpie

a lot has happened since my last post on this little guy, he is now rigged and with help, he now has a working grip and a more advanced leg rig! (thanks shaun!)

I've been spending a lot of time weight painting him and he's nearly weighted. and the best news of all --> he can fold his wings! this was a problem I've been trying to figure out during the whole modeling of him, but i finally have a wing fold I'm happy with.

Here is a few pic

tures with the pupils added, and some of the weighting, showing some poses:

Rabbit animation complete!

Here is the final Rabbit animation, from the live brief my and my group (shaun, Gareth and James) worked on:

There are still a couple of issues that can be reviewed. But now that the project is over I am very happy with the way the characters and animation came out, its really my first big 3D animation and it turned out nicely.

4mations project

This is the 4mations project my group has been working on. I have been unfolding the main logo with added polygons. also in this pic is the paper plane i modeled to be part of our origami theme.

Non Linear Animation reference

NLA Motion System from jerryc4d on Vimeo.

this is posted here for reference with my magpie animation, I would like to make some animation loops as part of my project and this would make the animation process so much easier because these loops can (as seen in the video) be overlapped, easing one clip into another, or easing out and into a single clip. very helpful!

Ident research 2

This is the intro to Russel howards Good news, a show i really love, with an interesting short intro which i assume is created with stop motion. This would work really well with the logo I have been given because its similar to origami, and i would like to have an element of that in my ident.

Ident research 1

i have chosen to look at this particular ident from sierra because i really like the idea of using something soft or liquid stuff, and cutting into it to create something stiff. the channel 4 logo i have been given to use in my group is a very stiff looking and would work well with this.

Updates and channel 4

The rabbit animation is finished!

During the CAAD session i completed a quick channel 4 ident, using video footage on a 3D object, but keeping the projection as front, making a masking effect. (here's 2 versions using different backgrounds an effects)

update on the Live brief

hey, long time no type.

after a couple of weeks into the live brief everything is really coming together these last days, and its nice to see, I've just finished the animating part of it, so now all thats needed are the little tweaks and additions, rendering, and then the after effects for the text and sparkles etc.

its been a great project :) but I'm starting to miss my magpies...

Sorry for the lack of updates

I've been working with a group of 3 on a live brief for the company Kurodragon. the work is going well but with only 20 days to complete, its a bit of a push to do that, and update my current work. therefore, Im putting my magpies on hold for around 20 days, the model is finished, just waiting to be rigged.

for this live brief i am modeling a rabbit and an elephant after making some model sheets. work is going well, and we are receiving positive and constructive feedback from kurodragon's Stuart.

update soon!

Joy Model update!

Hey, here is the updated version of my joy model, 4 days through now, and im pretty much there, the pictures with the black background have the symmetry enabled so please try and forget about the terrible seam line running along the character, (especially on the top of his head)

I can weld it together tomorrow (as long as im feeling ok after my hostpital apointment) and then once its welded, a few more touches and its done, this will give me a while week for the rigging so i can take my time in making sure all the steps are done correctly (because theres nothing like getting through the entire rig, just to realise youve forgotten something and need to rig it all over again...)

My first year Animation showreel (segmented)

Here I will upload all of my showreel animations (ive had to separate them all out because blogger cannot cannot handle the file size unfortunately)

Here they are in order from newest to oldest:

Mosquito E4 Stinger Animation

This animation is composited with live action footage, 3D character and parts of the environment to cast shadows, 2D flash overlay of the purple paint, pupils, legs and antennae of the character. a good use of compositing, and first use of morph tags.

The unfortunate life of Crabby the Crab My first try at using Cinema 4D, this animation was make to style with 2.5D animation. the character was animated in hierarchy.

2 Tester Pieces for Gila Tyson animation:

These two video's are test pieces for my final Gila Tyson animation which is here:

Final Gila Tyson Animation:

This is the latest animation, and my first attempt at a rigged 3D character in Cinema 4D. I am really pleased with the effect, and would only change a few things, such as the pupil texture wasn't stuck onto the actual model so it flailed about all over the place.

Magpie model so far

in about 5 hours of work, ive got pretty far already, im well on track with my weekly time plan, but lets just see how the rigging goes after this.... thats going to be the time killer.

(*by the way im working in symmetry here, so the model is a virtical cross section*)

What your seeing here is kind of a before and after picture, if you look at the shape of the 'cheek' part of the beak. it curves like that because my character has a really exaggerated smile and i wanted to show this in 3D. I chose to include the previous picture because i just wanted to show the way the beak is quite hollow inside, and i find that defining the inside of the mouth gives a good chunk of realism (well.. believability?)

wings, eyes, brows, tail and tongue, then finishing touches.... well, at least the hard mouth is finished.

Weekly Plan for 11/10/10

Weekly plan for: 11/10/10

	MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDENSDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	EXTRA-WEEKEND
AM	Add a time scale to my animatic in after effects	check over and finalize back stories	try out ring tutorial, put tutorial on blog	capture video footage	update blog	update skillset essay
PM	write script referring to the time and scenes in my animatic	draw rings and add pantones to model sheets	CAAD SESSIONS	test compositing with flash characters over the top of the footage	do any extra work on model sheets and print	take pictures of magpies and park scene

Model sheets of Sorrow and Joy - work in progress

The backgrounds were created after the assets, and i used an urban city theme because it suits the cartoon style of the characters along with the actual setting they are based in. the names of the characters are made to look like they are held up by the scaffolding, and if you look really hard, you can see that i have tried to replicate a few newcastle symbols in the background too.

changes to be made:

• pantones added
• character backstories to be added
• small descriptors for the dynamic pictures

looking at character animation 5

Mr wobbles nightmare

I like the live action background and a flash 2D overlay, the effect is quite fun and simple to recreate.

looking at character animation 4

Mr. Iiuu and The Nasty Bird

I am particularly looking at the way the bird character is made and animated here, being the only 3D character, but displaying a 2D look.

looking at character animation 3

Oggo - Saiman Chow

Oggo is an animation also using the toon effect on the 3D characters which is closer to how I would like my characters to look in the final animation. The animation also runs with a music track like mine will.

looking at character animation 2

Monsters: 092 Castle

Monsters: 092 Castle from Volstok on Vimeo.

The use of a live action background here, is what im really looking at, along with the characters interaction with the real people, I would love to have a clean interaction with people using my characters, especially the marolyn monroe scene.

looking at character animation 1

David Oriley's - Octocat adventures

Octocat Adventures (HD) from David OReilly on Vimeo.

This animation is a crazy paint style, but it is the 3D end part that i am most interested in, and the sketch and toon effect that has been applied to the 3D characters. Id love to recreate a similar cartoony lineart effect on my own 3D characters.

Sorrow Dynamics Page

Here is one of the earliest looks at my model sheets. This one is the dynamics of Sorrow. I took the images mostly from my animatic, because the flash character lineart quality was good enough to scale up in illustrator. Also, the use of many characters gives a really good idea of character dynamics.

However, there are changes I would like to make. During a class discussion, people commented on how the page already looked "too busy" and therefore, I have came to an agreement with my peers in that, "8 to a page" would be much easier to look at, with the name in the middle, 4 on top and 4 along the bottom.

Animatic

This is an animatic I made over summer, it was a better plan than producing a script first, because the exchange of ideas needed to be timed with the music, how to do this best? go straight in and animate with the music.

I made this animatic in Flash. The timing seems to be a bit off however, in the exporting of video instead of flash .swf but blogger refuses to allow flash files unfortunately.

After the summer, initial ideas

For the next project i would like to have another go at 3D character modeling. Therefore, for a work based module (which will be aimed at being entered into an animation festival) my newest characters will be British Magpies posing me with more challenges. that of having a more plump character, and the other, the modeling of the wings and inclusion of feathers.

Here are some initial designs and practice with the face of Joy through an expressions sheet:

An animation test for lip syncing

Shadow hates colours - my attempt at a flash movie...

Here was my first real flash movie, and it took at least 6 weeks to figure out how to export a movie file with all the settings right, instead of a .SWF file, because youtube doesnt support SWF files.

The reason I created this was for fun, but also a great try at lip syncing (youll notice that the mouth is animated the best by far)

Dynamic chain

sounds like an fighting move....

After following the Dynamic chain tutorial on GreyScale Gorilla here --> http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2010/01/how-to-make-a-dynamic-chain-with-cinema-4d/

and after about an hour, I've got a working chain. Because this chain works the same way as a rope would, I have decided to use it instead of a skipping rope to match more with Gila's character... I have come to really like the new MoGraph dynamics...

things to finish in the next few days

my work management is going the best it has all year, but I'm still behind a little on written work. Research is done but the essay is coming along slowly.

things to get done in the next 2 days:

- Essay finished off

- write about programs

- annotate all the 'making of' screenshots

Weight painting checkup

Weighted Model

the whited area of the hips was the most difficult to paint, because of the points around the shorts causing a lot of problems. However, It seems resolved now, and the skipping handles are now ready for some rope.

a collection of expressions

The morph tags I have made so far... are sad mouth, sad eyes, angry eyes and smile mouth. and with these I can get these range of expressions, I would like to make a few more expressions, and work on the smile mouth a bit more because it is too subtle.

Angry eyes + lower lid lift + sad mouth _ open mouth = some kind of disgusted expression.

same, but without the lower lid lifted = angry

smile mouth + sad eyes + open mouth = some kind of compassionate or pity face.

smile mouth + angry eyes + open mouth = evil laughing face

open mouth + smile mouth = very happy

smile mouth = happy

angry eyes + sad mouth = angry (i really like how the brow goes with the angry eyes)

the sad eyes from the front just look bored, i cannot create a sad face from the front effectively.

sad eyes + sad mouth = simple sad face/ bored look.

Making the eyes blink was by far the hardest morph to achieve, because I had to do each lid separate, and each eye separate, getting the top lid to meet the bottom one was a challenge.

~ more to come. :)

Storyboards

First storyboard. This is the storyboard I would like to follow with....

First page:

Second page

Third page

Fourth Page

Fifth Page

The next 2 frames are an alternate beginning, however, I have chosen not to use this method because the morph tags used to make the hands clench looks rubbish. But by using the above method, I can switch shots from him not holding the skipping ropes, to him holding them, without having to animate the hands, and I will not have to make a dummy of the ropes from being inanimate, to being picked up. this means I will save a LOT of time and that is crucial in the last weeks.

Finished Model sheets

yep, I've finished the bio and model sheets a while ago, but I needed to update them here. There still might be a few more changes, but nothing major to the actual design, or layout.

first page includes the elevations, and I think i might put a few more effects on here. The second page i find, I am a lot happier with, probably because it's a lot more interesting to look at, with more things in it.

As future changes, I think I will add the shadow effect I used with the brush around the expressions, on the main elevations on the first sheet, just to differentiate them from the background a little more.

I am really pleased with the outcome of these sheets, and I have enjoyed making them.

Lizard man! - now new with complete rigging!

Rigged with controllers and 2 spines'!

yeah so he's all rigged up now, I did have trouble with the tips of the feet twisting when he was lifted from the ground, even though the foot roll seemed to be working great. I desperately tried to figure out the problem, and I think it might have been the simple fact that the heel nulls and foot controller were not flat on the XZ plane... anyway I remade them and they seem to be working fine. now for the weight painting. (because the auto-weighting seems to like to play with his hair a lot.

- Rachel out.

strengths and weaknesses

I have had a look throughout the rigging hand out, and it looks quite difficult for me. however, I feel I am very confident with cinema4D model building, and the morphs are quite straightforward. I would like to focus most of my time these weeks in animating and rigging the model right, because a set back in these last few weeks would cost me too much.

this week's targets

1 - I should be finished rigging and morphing by the end of this week

2 - I would also like to try and complete my 500 word essay over the weekend, if not, make a start on it.

3 - I will finish my 3D character design research as I am behind on it at the moment.

Gila Tyson is ready to rumble

update - Lizard man's evolution.

beginning with a cube model... Here is the updated, coloured and textured model. the last few pictures are with global illumination, and with a little texture editing and all of the morphs added, i'll be done!

I do enjoy making him look at the screen, ... its funny :)

the last 3 pictures are from the finished model.

The Baltic Gallery Visit

The Baltic Gallery

Within the Baltic gallery, there was one exhibition which really stood out to me. And that was the works of artist 'Jenny Holzer' and her LED series. With this one in particular, the words flowed up the room slowly, and occastionally blurred out of focus, I found it very calming.

However, underneath this pleasing light show, the text that was shown was actually quite gruesome, as it was the information of iraq war victims, who were interrogated and killed. dates of their death etc, was shown and made everyone in the gallery room silent.

The Laing Gallery visit

The Laing Gallery

Firstly within the Laing gallery, I found the original painting "Isabella and the pot of basil" created by William Holman Hunt, and I just couldnt believe how super realistic it was, especially a painting. texturing and colouring can give a character such depth, i should really practice more on it. Another super realistic piece within the gallery, was George Clausen's "The stone Pickers"

I found another piece, a more modern work by artist 'Mike Challenger' entitled: "Green Jay" shown to the left here. I really like the use of a very liimited palette to create a sense of the picture being 3 dimentional. It also reminds me stongly, of the 3-coloured glitch-like animations produced by David O'reilly.

Another work I found interesting, was the 3D optical illusions created by artist: Bridget Riley. Here, she created a set of pictures she named: "Fragments, series of seven" and I also liked the illusion of 3D with as little colour as possible. inface with only lines to create this purpose, I believe it must be a very difficult vision to create.

E4 mosquito stinger

E4 Stinger - Mosquito

Here is my E4 stinger, and although I liked the result of it, the use of a HD background video, made the file size huge, and often did not allow smooth playback.

I also prefer watching the flash only part with the green background, because its easier to see the insect, and i like the look of the flash parts.

Coke ad

another insect themed ad. I really like the way that the insects move (especially the ladybird)

Influencial Mosquito animation

I really like the design of the mosquito here, with the bug eyes and spindly legs. I also want to create a similar rotoscoping effect but using video footage as the background, like this animation.

Things to get done this week + reflection

I was happy with my progress last week, I would have liked to have filmed the background on thursday, but I couldn't get a hold of a camera. The filming is done now though, and i have pretty much gathered all of the assets needed for animating.

Things to do this week:

• Upload and edit the HD footage.
• Animate the mosquito in C4D by rotoscoping it over the video footage.
• start animating in flash over the other layers

This is my time plan:

	Week1	Week2	Week3	Week4	Week5
Mon	Research	Storyboards and Powerpoint presentation	Asset creation	animate	Sound
Tue	Research	Presentation to class and animatic	animate	animate	Render
Wed	Research	Asset creation	animate	animate	Render
Thur	Research	Asset creation	animate	Animate and test render	Final evaluations
Fri	Research	Asset creation	animate	Evaluations and edit
Sat	Research	Asset creation	animate	Edit
Sun	Pitch and treatment		animate	Sound