Major Animation Project: Summary

Soooooooo... the hardships are finally over. Another leaf in my book of accomplishments has been turned over... in fact its probably one of the very few pages in my book of accomplishment :) But I can say confidently that the successful completion of this project has definitely set the ball rolling for my long road to success and beyond. What did I learn in the last three years you may ask? Well where do I begin. For starters I am what I like to think, more than competent in at least three programs now(Maya, Photoshop, AfterEffects), and have a decent understanding in various other programs such as Premier Pro, Final Cut etc.

Sticking to the subject matter though, I am quite happy with how my major project has turned out overall. Of course, there is areas hear and there I would have loved to have made better like more dynamic animation, a few little extra visual effects here and there, and most definitely above all I would have liked to have had just a bit more time to polish the audio.

All these minor faults aside, I am more than happy with the finished porduct, I feel I expressed my vision quite vividly, and can honestly say in some areas, far exceeded my expectations of how it would look in the end.

It's been a fun ride and it gives me great pleasure to view all that I have achieved....

...I just hope the viewers feel the same way..

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Seven

This week I spent time finishing my dvd cover and dvd label, and director's bio for Sheersha and Matthew's class. At this stage they are merely mockups of what my final cover and label will look like, as i have only a limited amount of rendered pics to work with. Im quite happy with what i came up with but when it comes to finalising my cover, im think i will go for a much more minimalistic look,with a lot more negative space and less colour bursting out at every square inch.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Six

This week im still sorting out the cameras (movement, focal length etc) for all my shots, and reassigning some new shaders to the guitar. Originally all the metallic components of the guitar and the microphone and stand, were going to just be a generic silver coloured reflective materal, but i've now upgraded to a much more realistic looking chrome shader (20% gold 80% chrome silver). Seeing as there will be quite a few fairly close shots of the wood on the body of the guitar, ive also updated the wood to a much higher resolution. Parallel to my own project i've also been helping Yen with texturing again. I mapped and textured three different versions of a weathered metal duck, just to give the ducks a little variation and character, insuring also that none of them look generic in any way.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Five

This week i completed a milestone overview, discussing my success' and falures, in terms of the things i had planned to have done by week five. Overall I was not very successful in completing my goals, but i feel i made up for it in audio and AfterEffects work. At this stage i can safely say i am around 30 to 40 percent complete. I am currently blocking out my cameras and running a few test environment renders with hdri, tweaking the colour grade in maya before commiting to any solid rendering.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Four

Week four and I am not very confident about reaching my milestone next week. The audio component of my milestone SHOULD be complete by next week if all goes to plan but the whole conversion/graphics card issue is still yet to be resolved. Instead i have been going hard at the visual effects and animated 2d sequences of my major. I am currently working on a 2d limited style animation in After Effects to represent a four second dream sequence in my project. It's looking nice but still requires more polish. My goal now is to at least complete all my 2d sequences by next weeks milestone to make up for the 3d work I should be catering to.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Three

This week I completed two compositing layers for my project. One is a psycadelic style animated graphic, four seconds in duration and will be composited over the last shot in my film. The other is a fiery background sequence which will be composited over a shot where "El Conejo King" is angered. I can honestly say that i am loving After Effects at the moment, and i am quite suprised with what it can do, so much so that i have decided to incorperate it much more in my animation than i had originally planned, which i feel will put the icing on the cake, so to speak, on my film visually.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week Two

This week completed Li's master character's facial texturing, all that is left now is his hands and it's done. I've been building upon my audio week by week in approach to my milestone also. The instrumental is virtually complete apart from a few minor alterations and polishing touches, just at the vocal lyrics and melody writing stage now. As for my own 3d work, i am still unable to do much due to conversion issues and my graphics card no longer functioning, but im hoping to have things all sorted in the next few weeks. Until then i've decided to start working on a few little animated graphics for compositing.

Major Animation Project Stage Six: Week One

At this stage in my production process, i am currently ready to animate. All scenes, characters, props, texturing and rigging is completed. Unfortunately though, due to a virus my computer had to be reformatted so i am yet to reinstall maya at home again. Also my aim at this point in time is to sort out a suitable format to convert my maya 2011 files to a compatible format for 2008 so i can continue my production on campus. Due to these minor speed humps i have decided to shift my creativity collaboratively, lending a hand to Yen with his character texturing. I have completed the clothing textures for his "Johnno" character this week, leaving only some minor alterations on the skin. By the end of next week I should be able to complete the texturing of his other character "Rex", and in return Yen will be helping me out on my project with some key poses and general blocking out of shots.

Animation Major Blog- Week thirteen

Ah week thirteen. Things seem to be running just a tad smoother this week which has given me a little much needed peace of mind. Jack helped me complete my rig with distributed rotation, controls etc. now all that is left to do is skin it and repair the weighting in certain areas. One problem though, even after my newfound weighting knowledge, WEIGHTING IS STILL A BITCH!!! I'm confident i'll get there though, it'll just take some time. On a lighter note i've virtually finished texturing Li's master, all i need to do now is texture the hands and neck and its done. Yen completed the model sheet for my "Queen Divinity" character, which apart from a few minor proportion issues, I am extremely happy with. Time to start modeling her now and everything will be on track more or less so far.

Animation Major Blog- Week twelve

This week I have managed to make some breakthroughs in my rigging skills and understanding of rigging in general. Li has been kind enough to talk me through the weighting and component editor process which in turn, has vastly improved my rig. Jack has also been helping out by setting me tasks and leaving me to figure them out for myself (kind of), which personally, is how I learn things majority of the time. Earlier this week I completed my mood boards, a few concept renders, and added a few finishing touches on my character models before I set them in stone with a completed rig.

Animation Major Blog- Week eleven

My eleventh week of preproduction. Well for starters the majority of this week consisted of several failed rigging attempts. It's a frustrating thing rigging, once you manage to get one part of your rig deforming nicely, another part decides to screw up. I've decided to save myself the stress for a little while and move onto other things that need to be done in my preproduction/production like character design and modeling. Aside from my production i've also started texturing Li's master charater for him to not only give him a hand, but also to improve my texturing skills. It's looking pretty awesome (if I say so myself) and i'm considering even putting it in my own showreel.

Animation Major Blog- Week ten

As for this week I completed my animatic in Maya. I chose Maya for two reasons, first reason being that Adrain said it was fine to do so, and in fact is a better solution for a 3d project because of the freedom of camera work it allows. Secondly I felt that doing it in Maya actually gave me a better vision of how i want things to be in the final piece. Also this week i polished off the storyboards which Marcus so kindly did for me. They were good but there was just a few minor things that needed to be changed a little, and same goes for the script which Drake wrote for me, a few things needed to be altered and stripped back due to length issues, apart from that, i am very pleased with how both the storyboards and script turned out. I am still yet to receive my reworked script back from Drake, but it should definitely be ready for submission by next week.

Animation Major Blog- Week nine

This week I finished a quick mix of my song..it's titled "Euphoria" and is coming along nicely. The whole song will actually be about 4 mins in duration but only 1-2 mins is necessary for my project. I have also done some mood boards this week and some polished renders to really form a nice color grade for the final look of the piece. Here's the links to a few of my renders..

http://firesign333.deviantart.com/art/Euphoria-pre-visual-one-162298611

http://firesign333.deviantart.com/art/Euphoria-Chris-toon-one-162323577

http://firesign333.deviantart.com/art/Euphoria-microphone-render-one-162304774

Animation Major Blog- Week eight

This week i have been experimenting with toon shading in maya which is what i'll be using for the characters in my project. Also i got my recording deck back from repairs this week so i have been putting in some really solid hours of music recording for my project. I know it my seem i bit soon perhaps to be worrying about the sound already but my project is a music video so it's extremely important and ii feel if done well, it should boost the visuals greatly.

Animation Major Blog- Week seven

I really didn't get much done in terms of pre-production this week, but i did some test renders instead, purely just to get the feel of the lighting and camera angles i'de like to incorporate.

Animation Major Blog- Week six

This week i have completed my thumbnails loosely based on my first pass script (kudos to Drake). I have started a few storyboard frames but i think i will hand the rest over to Marcus to help me with as i am not the greatest storyboarder. I have been running some maya camera tests also to almost serve as a rough animated "video block" for reference.

Animation Major Blog- Week Five

This week i completed my treatment and drew up a few thumbnails to get a visualisation of some possible shots i'de like to use. My vision is growing a lot stonger now in terms of story and art direction. Drake should be finished my script sometime in the coming week so after that i will move onto storyboards.

Animation Major Blog- Week Four

This week consisted of more concept and design for my project. I've done most of the modeling now except the two main characters. Ryan has been helping me out with the art design for them and i've stated modeling one of them (the character bearing my likeness). I've also started a treatment which i'll then hand on to Drake to help me with the script writing process.

Animation Major Blog- Week Three

Another rather unconstructive week this week, just trying to get my head in the right space before i rush into any concrete decisions on my project. Creative flow is running low this week so I'm just going to relax and not force anything. In the meantime i've decided to do some texturing of a few of the props.

Animation Major Blog- Week Two

This week has been a little uneventful as far as preproduction goes. I scribbled some rough concepts and ramblings on paper but merely to no avail.. I managed to get a fair bit of modeling done on my throne, it is now nearly complete, in fact most of my modeling is almost done so this week wasn't an entire waste of time. I've gone for a medieval/european style aesthetic to the thone and I am very pleased with how it has turned out so far.

Animation Major Blog- Week One

This week I have drawn up some concept ideas and thumbnails to help brainstorm the visual style I'm attempting to achieve. I am going for a much less straight forward look as opposed to my minor project (e.g. dutch angles, asymmetric framing, obscure lighting etc.) I am still in the strip down faze of my story, as it's way to big of an idea to fit into one minute, so the amount of characters has been reduced and much more refinement is yet to come.