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.