About time

So I know I have the conker project to work but to make sure I'm not constantly working on this. I want to animated a dual dialogue piece since I haven't really done that for a loooooong time.
so I spent this day preparing for animating with the audio I have chosen.



So here is the audio from saw 2 I believe, a nice little piece
then I created a short animatic with the key poses

then after tat I recorded myself, mainly focusing on the facial expressions.

so here is the scene ready for me. feeling pretty confident and giving myself 2 weeks to complete it.
Then its back with the conker project

stay tuned for more

Cheers!

Conkers! part 2

Hi again!

Here is part 2 of my mini project that involves conkers!

so lets show what happens next in this journey of a project.

so after completing the rig and skinning for my character I needed some story to help show this character off the most. Something simple, fun and cute to go along with it's look and desired personality.

So here is an animatic that I did very shortly to show what I mean.

I realise that after making this animatic that I would need a flower to animate, so I made one from scratch.

simple ebough flower to animate with, not after any awards for this plant of the year award!

Then adding the joints so the petals can fall and I can control them properly with out any tedious fiddling.

so after all the naming and grouping together of different mesh objects it was time to bind.

After binding the joints to the mesh I went to weight painting so that I can separate the petals from the head of the flower.

Success! I finished weight painting and the petal is free!

Then putting the models in their poses ready to animate.

Part 3 will be up soon of the coming animation along with the flash facial expressions to have a 2D/3D feel to it.

Thanks again for reading, See you next time !!!

Conkers! part 1

Right terribly sorry about it being not as active as usual here. just moved back home with my mother to take care of her while I work and search for a career BUSY TIMES!

So far so good I have been to animate for a short but cant go into too much detail so we shall see how that turns out.

So this will be the start of my own independent work. making characters and animating them however I

 So years back I had a design for a vinyl figure called 'Conkers' and whilst being in uni and all other crazy stuff. I left behind the idea but since learning new skills and how to 3D model I jumps to the opportunity to finally make it.

one of my main influences was a couple of game grumps animated videos that fans have made. one animation called EsquireBob and another PixlPit

both made smaller more cute lookalikes of the main hosts to the game grumps channel.

the first video has more rigged and organic shapes features including movable eyes and rigged mouth for dialogue.

The second one is more square and less defined as a body that they are more like cubed cut out people, but what I loved most about this was the option to use flash animation to make the facial expressions and mimic the dialogue.

So I decided to mix a bit of both and come up with my earlier redesign of my little guy.

 my first initial model had the leaves a little thin with thumbs but i thought lets make it easier and more natural to have normal leaf like arms. did a bit of more research into leaves and conker leaves as a matter of fact.


 as you can see in the image below they look more organic and will be nice to rig later on too.

after the arms I looked into changing the spikes on the shell to be more bigger and short making them almost like little sharp stumps. friendly looking for a younger audience. 

Set up the rig nice and simple I don't want anything to complex just some nice stretching and bouncing for my little guy.

looking good and I have flattened the front of the face so I can apply my flash animation for the expressions.

Then finally the skinning which I will show you the next part to this wonderful little creature.

For now doing work experience this week so i should finish it up pretty quickly!

TILL THEN 

BYE!

Oh this studio is too great for me.... such beauty!

My showreel

So here is everything I have been working up to and I must say it has been a hell of a time to remember.

Frame Store visit

Yesterday we had a couple of representatives from frame store come in to the uni and talk with us individually to see how we were doing, what are skills are thus far and what we wanna do or be for when we graduate. We had 10 minutes each which we cherished whilst talking to the members.

The two members were very friendly and modest people that a great sense of humor and an open mind. I enjoyed discussing my near or far plans with them to see what they thought, they told me that having a main skill is essential and rewarding. They supported my ideas for the future and gave their respects for the risks I'm willing to take to chase my dream.

After are individual sessions we went to the larger presentation room where they both showed the companies work, personal work and the needed requirements to join frame store. I really enjoyed the show reels including the personal ones presented by  Michael Elder. They were well presented where the videos didn't but entertained me to the highest peak. I really enjoyed Michael Elders the most because not only were their older pieces of work but he also included life drawings and photos of his clay models which has inspired me to add some of my own for my future show-reel.

The tips they gave when creating a show reel were ones that were not new to me but I enjoyed hearing their point of view on what makes one to remember. Also other tips were on how to improve and also what books to look at to improves ones own skills.

Lastly another word of wisdom that wasn't new to me was the quickest way to get into a studio/ company is to become a runner, serving tea and coffee but also gaining skills when being taught and getting to know the company's main workers. This to me sounds like a nice idea since I'm pretty good at making a brew but also a social butterfly so meeting new people is my 'cup of tea'.

All in all, I really enjoyed the people and their talks and I learned that even people that haven't quite reached their dreams can have so much wisdom but also be really modest at the same time and that's a rarity in my opinion


So thank you frame store for visiting our university and I hope to see you in the near future.

Dance Project: Rounding up all the Blocks and splines

Been a very busy Easter break but lets see what I have been able to do for the Dance Project

I have had some personal matters attend to so it has been very difficult to keep up with my coursework.

So lets start scene from scene with all their either final blocks or being in the middle of some splining. 

Scene 19 more or less complete anymore polish will be done when the rest are near the polish level but that wont be till a week or two.

Dont threat by the thumbnail, there is a video here of scene 20 the hip and bash scene where Donna hips away Regina. a very toony scene full of stretching and quick lunges. In block form but in a couple of days will be into spline and getting messy.

 Again thumbnail wont show. scene 21 is thr largest and most difficult scene out of all of them. The twirl and dance are the most challenging tasks I have done thus far. but hopefully will be the most rewarding.

Here is scene 22, the aftermath of reginas impact with Donna's hips. simple 'get up and go' near to polish but still have a few kinks to work out.

Deadline for this is around 4 weeks time so fingers crossed that I achieve this with some pride !!!

Inspiration Post 2: Ice Age by Blue Sky Studio

Ice age (2002)

by 

Blue Sky studio

Here are two clips showing some of the 'Behind the scenes' of the production.

As a child my mind was all over 2D animated films because they were different and eye catching, something you can only see on the screen. I know 'Toystory' was the main production that began the 3D animation. But something Ice age was unique.

It was a creature populated film that was humorous to all ages, had a good story and the characters were all very lovable where you knew everyone had... mostly good intentions. 

Part1

Part2

After watching the film I would wait till the very end to watch the extras as they sometimes added to VHS's back in the 90's. I never knew how they made toy story or bugs life since it was a new typed of media, but when blue sky show the whole process to create the characters and animated them I was overwhelmed with awe. 

The character designs were my favorite part of this to see the before ideas for each character towards their final outcome then the clay models and finally the movement for each character and what the artists and animators went through. 

After that first watch I re-watched it over and over from the start of the film to the end of the extras that I soon began drawing even more and taking in inspiration thanks to the extras. 

I wanted to do some myself with all of the activities they went through because I saw how much fun the people who created the film had doing this.

I guess you can say that yes 2D animated films started my love for animation but 3 the process to create this 3D animated film or more speaking Ice Age helped begin my path to being a CG Generalist.

So thank you Blue Sky Studios for creating this film and more like it and inspiring me to become who I am today. 

Dance Scene 20: Blocking

From the dance project scene 20

This is final scene that I need to finish blocking out properly and then it's back to my personal work for pepmin. Unfortunately I have been unable to be as quick with my work due to personal matters but life is getting back on track so hopefully I will catch up and do well. 

so weak....

This is the first block for the scene where Donna the larger woman hip bashes the woman in possession of the main man. This is a scene that needs to be full of stretch and pulls to get the motion and energy given off by the characters. I do think this will be an enjoyable one because its quick with simple moves and there is fun conflict.

improved block

Since I'm away from my student house the internet in my original home is terrible and so it takes  good while to upload a video to YouTube to put on here, so hopefully I can fix that and make more posts sooner to show my progression. 

Inspiration: Prince of egypt

For years in my life I have always been drawn to moving imagery and would never leave a film por cartoon till the very end. I was attached to a lot of characters in my time because they were unlike us, as people we are the norm visually whilst animated character are new unique and inspiring to the eye. 

Drawing characters through my time nothing has inspired me more than the characters/landscape and stories by the companies I wish to work for. 

Dreamworks was and still inspiring to the eye. the various style in their work since the 90's to even their new releases are just fantastic.

My first creation by them that got me hooked their works as a child was the prince of Egypt. As a religious based film it was surprising that I would find it interesting, The route this film took although taken from the bible was one for adults and children.

I remember this film almost frightened st some points because the lengths they went to show the realness of the events such as how the soldiers come to rid of the first born in the slave huts. Besides the lion king with falling of mufasa this brought emotions and chills to me especially the departing of the mother moses from him to be sent away by gods hands.

The animation was unique for its time. instead of being looney tooney like I was use to as a child it showed a more realistic aproach bringing the story more then humor however there always has to be humour in an old tale such as this.

The music and animation put together some of the best pieces I have seen to this day,

deliver us

Looking through heavens eyes

PLaying with the big boys

All I ever wanted reprise- The plagues

Putting these links up is enough to explain then using words for each image

If whoever is reading this has not watched this film then please do so as soon as possible for this is a treasure among animated productions that doesn't get enough credit.

and If you are a person from Dreamworks reading this then you should be proud of this production as to the start to many of your amazing animated productions I hope you make many more.

There will be posts of many more inspirations from this and many more animation companies

PEPMIN THE ELEPHANT: Lets get RIGGING

Right so previously I was in the starting point of texturing. However I thought it would be better and safer time wise to start now and worry about making him pretty later on. so here is the joint layout of him so far.

Just need to get the naming down and sort all the fidgety parts of the rig and freezing parts so that nothing is effected later on when so many hours have been done to it.

Next step is to get the tail and trunk hard rigged but in a way to get a nice 'curl' and 'sway' to both body parts.

it's been a while since I rigged but the memories are flooding back and I think this character is going to do well being animated for his shot on the big screen.

SPECIAL TALK: Business of Masterclass

During our business studies we were introduced to 3 people, each with amazing and well lived backgrounds towards the business world.

our main topic was about your IP about the usual of whats your rights towards something that you own and how to make sure you keep your creative idea without another taking it from you using your weapon of ownership.

There was plenty of discussion with the certain key points about how to start and run a business and how to run a business smoothly whilst sharing ownership of an IP with another. Going deeper into collaborations there was also the case of backup plans incase another partner takes full credit so using  good ideas to keep your own is the basics of always signing your work and perhaps putting it in a safe place or get a lawyer to keep it for a fee.

These points interested me a lot in the guest talk. At some point in my future, I would like to do some collaborations in my spare time with others whilst being in the industry so that I can improve on my own skills and have creative freedom.

After that talk we moved on to Helen Howles from HO HO entertainment who helps with the marketing and merchandise to big up the very popular brands and helps within production. She helped on a series of children s programs and programs for S4C. I was very interested in knowing the ins and outs Helen had to go through for other brands even from outside Europe such as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and 4Kids. She even helped towards the video game industry such as 'Little Big Planet'

Listening to this overall talk I was pretty excited about starting a business or even an animation series for a number of reasons and now more positive reasons are added to the list of reasons to start. I do like the idea of working in a company but I also love the thought of starting something that no-one else has done yet and hopefully in the future things happen.

THE CAT CHASE ANIMATION PROGRESS 2: polishing the works

The semi-final update to 'The Cat Chase' project. Theres been a lot of fixing errors with the mesh of the cat since the poly is short numbered. But all in all it's pulled through and the characters are doing just fine.

Heres the Semi-Finals to the animation, just need the final feed back from my director and fingers crossed it's all ok.

Cat Animation: Run cycle

This is the cat animation, I have added facial movements to the cat so it has a similar animation style  such as the toon squash and stretch but since the cats face is much closer I too more attention to the movement in the cats face. Thanks to our helpful rigger and big supporter he was able to rig  the front paws and enlarge them so a nicer perspective can be noticed in the camera angle.

Policeman Animation: Run Cycle

Heres the policeman's animation. His character was a challenge to begin with but now I think he is one of my favorites so far. I love the squash and stretch and the hat really works well with character bouncing up and down. My only concern mainly was him holding the baton, it seems to be rigid and wiggle in the air.

Cat climbing the building scene

This scene has been through the works with changing the timing positioning and other option to make the cat seem more frantic. I have even given myself the task of adding the smaller things to make the animation more pleasant to look at for when I capture this at a closer distance in my own time.

THE CAT CHASE ANIMATION PROGRESS: chase and climb

For this week I have mainly been focusing on the cat chase project animations. So far so good the run cycles just need a little polish and The building scene is in first official blocking and thumbs up from the director to proceed the completion of this. I believe that this project will be complete by next week and then I can continue the other two projects Pepmin the elephant and The dance animations.

So heres the almost complete version of the run cycles.

The aim for these animations were to be as tooney as possible, full of stretching, squishing and bouncing. I think a little more side-to-side squishing on the hips will really make this character seem fleshier. But that will be taken care with the final steps of completion

The cat so far in my eyes needs to features to move with it but apart from that I'm really happy with the results. It has been since 1st year of my uni life that I dealt with quad ped creature animations, so im glad that I indeed improved in my skills. 

The building scene had a few improvements for it to be a green light to continue to spline or further poses. The time was the main issue. The director has an idea of it being very fast paced and so I had to keep compressing keys until it was perfect. 

block1

block1 timing

 still too slow 

remove camera and check

I playblasted this without the camera animation as the cam was too quick rising. so i kept getting the cat to go faster but still it needed more as feedback from my director.

Final animatic blocking 1

so this is the correct timing. Just needs to have the tail animated as well as the features 

This animation will be the most complex-ed for this overall project. But I like a challenge and so far I have enjoyed every step of it. 

Special Talk with Michael Cawood

In university today was a special talk with Michael Cawood about his personal career and journey from where he is today.

We first before skyping the special guest from Los Angeles we had a look at his website with all his creations from advertisement to gaming and films.

Asking him questions to do with the correct career steps hes taken, wages and keeping relationships balanced. It gave me more of an insight to what I should prepare for in the future, meaning perhaps I need to prepare what I should do or sacrifice in order to achieve my dream career.

It's exciting to know that my job involves travelling to find the jobs I need but that also means travelling light. That sounds a little difficult to do being a person that enjoys the little things like little trinkets and many books.

I loved this talk and it really educated me on what not to do as a beginner in the industry business and how to sell myself as a Generalist for the better. Michael Cawood himself was a friendly character that seemed to have gained a lot of wisdom in such a short time and I wish him luck for the future to come.


Here is a link to his website where you can see all his creations. Some amazing projects he has put effort into. Please check it out.

http://michaelcawood.com/

MAJOR: PERSONAL PROJECT, PEPMIN the ELEPHANT

Heres a little reminder from what my personal project involved and that was this character. 

Heres the complete Maya model for my Personal Project for 2015

Heres an image of 'Pepmin' and his UV map. Next step it to open Zbrush and add some texture details, nothing too detailed since I want a simple and tooney style for my character.

I created a play blasted version of a character turnaround. So far so good I'm liking the look of him and soon he'll be even better after Zbrush.

Cat Chase Car Production

Finally I began and finished my car Rig, textured the whole shabang. I'm glad on how it turns out. The rigging went smoothly and the model was simple. My only mistakes were the Maps themselves. The diffuse map (colour map)  too k a while to accomplish because of how tedious cutting a model can be to create these maps.

But Its complete it is a turn around of the stages of modelling

Then onto out rigging, It had been  a whole year since I properly rigged but I pulled through with a little guidance along the way from our artist Director






Heres a Rig demo of the car

It's only a prop but I'm still quite liking the toonyness and simplicity of the overl look.

CAT CHASE BLOCKING STAGE PART 1

Hey I'm back with a new update to the CAT CHASE

Heres a video of the animatic that explains the animation short.

For this I will be...

-Building, texturing and rigging a car prop.
-Animating a run cycle for the policeman
-Animation a run cycle for the cat
-Animation A climb scene, where the cat climbs a fire exit stare case.

So far in this production I have completed the car prop (will show soon in next update)

but for now have an image of the car.

There were some complications with the cat but we have pulled through and successfully blocked its run cycle.

Heres the policeman's run cycle for now. 

I will be hearing feedback form the directors of this project to know if the squash, stretch and speed is good enough thus far.

Dance project: BLOCKING IN ANIMATION

A production post on how I'm doing with an unmentioned project. Well not mentioned enough.

This is called 'The Dance' and it is directed by Josh Doyle

Heres his blog check him out hes an awesome guy to work for. :)

http://tales-of-jad.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1


Here is the animatic storyboard he created and will give you a view of the story. This is an animated short that I believe will be a good one to remember.

This is my version of the animatic and how I feel it will be like. The hardest out of all of this will the twril and after blocking it, its taken a lot of time out more then I thought it would. But I do love a challenge.

These are a couple of scenes I'm currently blocking. So far so good on timing within 2 days of work this is what I have so far. As you can tell my main character is the larger one. she is very curvy and dances mainly with her rear end and doesn't know when to stop.

An idea on what she may of looked and acted like 

These are the scenes blocked so far. Hopefully it'll be like a magic trick and somehow these will be my masterpieces.  You may recognize the rigs as Morpheus, unfortunately we had to use pre rigs because there were a lack of artists but I think It will work out ok. 

If you like the look of the these rigs created by Josh Burton then check out the site where you can download it, But note there will hopefully be a newer rig to add to your collection. 

http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp

Scene 19

scene 21

scene 22

These are the scenes so far they are slowly coming along. hopefully by next week they should be de-blocked and include an extra scene.

Collaborative Project: The cat chase, Car model

This is an overall Post on the Pre-Production for my collaborative project for 'The Cat Chase' It's a short toon directed by a friend form university (will add his blog to check his work out. It's top notch!)

So I will start with what I'm doing. So as a 'Generalist' I will be covering most ares such as modelling, texturing, rigging and animation.

3 of those factors come into a model I will be creating as a moving prop for the short toon. A car to be more precise.

So here are a couple of images to help me develop my design. It's based of a 1940's vehicle but 'With' a flat bonnet for easier animation purposes. 

After liking a design which was the bottom right, I then began concentrating on the little perks such as the grid to the vehicle, types of shades that I would prefer. Everyone likes a nice red car right?

Then I began looking into the paint work of how I would have it. There needed to be age and rust for the style we were after... something subtle yet bold. I had good help from the art and animation directors to guide to the 

Finally a cute littloe concept for the little car.... broom broom!
(next will be the cat chase.)