Thursday/Friday

Today has been a VERY productive day. The linear-version of the animation I posted here yesterday I also posted in the MA-group on facebook for some last minute feedback. I basically just got the okay to carry on with it, so since there weren't any suggestions to changes I then moved into spline this morning. I have polished the entire animation + animated details, such as fingers, facial expressions and polished/tweaked the lip sync, so I must admit I'm quite happy that I managed to do all that in one day.
(To be honest it's about 2AM so I guess I went a bit over.. Hehe)
I would of course have liked to go over it again just to polish a bit more, but I found out I at least needed to complete a hand-in ready version before I dig too deep in the details and end up with something that's only halfway there.

I do have until midnight to hand in so I might do some more polsihing tomorrow.
I have made a "schedule" for what's needed before hand in;



There is a lot of post-it's lying around when it's close to deadline!

So, tomorrow's plan is to assemble the two other tasks, set up lights + textures and render the presenter (and maybe dig into the details if I have time)

Calling it a night now, my eyes have been staring at this screen for 14 hours straight today.
- But it feels good to have got so much done!

Wednesday already?

So yes, it's getting close to hand-in and I'm in crunch-mode (Working non-stop) on the presenter.
I won't use too much time to explain where I am at, so here is a preview of the piece as it looks at the moment:



This is in linear-mode.
I'm trying to push the piece to make the comedy show even better, so there is a lot of fast moves and exaggeration like drag on head/neck and chest. It's fun to try something new, even though it's difficult to get the timing right, but hopefully I'll get a decent result when I'm done.

I'm working on the lipsync now, just so that I know it works and then I need to start figuring out blinks and fingers. I think I'll add some details in linear and then move into spline and do the rest there.
It's a new way to go about the animation-process for me, but after going through the Keith Lango tutorials I see the point of working like this. (Not sure if I'm doing it exactly the same as he suggests, but at least to some degree, especially when it comes to post-ponding details).


By the way, I found this great site that shows the animation principles:

http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/

The principles are found all over the web and in the books we use, but the nice thing with this site is that they use animated gif's from a video-game to show the principles "in action". Old subject, but with a new twist, at least I found it quite handy.

Brief update!

Just a short post to tell you what I'm up to. Got feedback on the presenter today, and as to my question about moving into linear-mode I got the okay after I sorted out some of the drifts in the beginning. Otherwise there weren't any changes or suggestions mentioned, so I sorted the "drifting" when I came home.

I'm now working on getting it to work in linear. I wish I had a bit more time, since it feels a bit rushed, but I'm jumping back to stepped when I hit a problem, so that helps. But I need to make it work in linear now, it's already 11:30PM on Tuesday so it's not a lot of time left. (btw. Blogspot's date/time is completely upside down so I know that it won't match the post-date/time) I'm working constantly so hopefully I'll be able to finish it in time!

Tried to upload two wip-clips, but youtube seems to be unable to read my preview-file. Well, it was the ones I showed in the "Show & tell" today anyway so I will rather try it again later with an updated file.

Lesson learnt

I took a break from animating at one point today and saw some more Keith Lango tutorials, and as I got about midway in the one on detail I realized how much detail I actually had included in my blocking. I had a lot of trouble with this on the song and dance, especially on the face. I realized that the selection-sets I've made for the rig on the face was both mouth and eyes, which means that if I wanted to change an expression, or rather clean up the mess that it had become after moving into spline, I had to go through every key. Because if I moved it the lipsync moved. I found a solution in de-selecting the mouth and then changing the eyes/eyebrows-/lids, but it took so much of my time to fix it.
So back to the point, as I sat and watched the tutorial I just had to see how much was actually keyed, and oh dear; It was almost a key on every other frame..

The solution for this was to delete all the keys that didn't do anything, so Instead of a 60-70++ keys for the facial-expression I ended up with five. I thought I'd leave these in so that it's easier to read what's happening.

I also removed some subtle head tilts, blinks, and so on. These will be added when I have a solid structure, or at least as solid as I manage to make it with my knowledge.

Lesson learnt indeed, thanks Keith!

To update you on the work in progress I have been adding breakdowns all day, back and forth between linear and stepped and it's all moving forwards at least. I do feel the pressure, but I won't move into linear too soon, so I have made two previews to bring along to tomorrows Show and tell, one stepped and one linear - So I can ask Penny for some advice on my next move.

Well, the old eyes are tired and so is the head so that's it for today!

Andreas Deja's blog post nr.101

Just want to recommend you to have a look at Andreas Deja 's blog.
Since it's his post nr. 101 it's dedicated to "101 dalmatians" and the sketches he has posted are sketches that the animators did as research before they started to work on the film. They drew them from both live-action footage and from observing dalmatians that where brought in to the Disney studio.

- So many great sketches, full of energy and life. In my opinion these sketches are pieces of art on their own, so beautiful to look at.

If you want to check it out you can follow the link below;

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/01/dalmatians.html

(Sorry if you have to copy and paste the adress, blogspot really dislikes direct-links..)

A bit of everything

As the title states, today has been a day where I have worked on "everything".
I have tried my best to work out the "drifty-ness" in the lip sync animation and also worked out a camera-pan + some additional staging. I hope it's less drifty now, I found quite a lot of "hiccups" along with long eases and uneven curves when I went through curves in the graph editor all over again. It took a few hours, but hopefully it made a difference.

I took also fair use of semiology for this one; (visual aids such as; objects, lighting, effects etc. to make the scene recognizable to the audience), so I set up a a fairly dark lighting for the scene and a sign saying "keep out" to set the mood and make it more readable to the viewer.
- I think I will render this overnight, can't afford to spend more time on that one, it's also worth less marks than the other tasks.

Afterwards I worked a bit more on the camera in the song and dance, but I'm not happy with how it looks at the moment so I'm unsure if I will be using more than one angle. I have rendered a back-up now so if I see I have time I will definitively work more on it, but at least I have rendered one version of it so I have one to hand in.

Lastly I started to work in my breakdowns on "The presenter"-animation. I really enjoy working on this one, but as the hand-in approaches I can see that it's going to be a busy week!
My goal was to finish up the two other tasks during the weekend so I can direct my full attention on the presenter, so by rendering the lip sync over night that should mean I at least made that goal.

Also watched through the Keith Lango tutorial on splines and one of the detail videos (thanks to Penny for giving us those!)
I really enjoy the way he explains the subjects, it's so much easier to understand when he's using examples from life instead of actual animations.
My favourite which I will keep in mind from now on was when he talked about the importance of structure. His example was a office building that had too narrow doors for people to get through. To fix this problem, it won't help to add detail. The building does not need a new splash of paint, or new floors, etc. If the structure is wrong, adding details will just add more noise - it won't hide the fact the structure is faulty!

I've never thought about my animations in that way.. And I know I've tried to hide a lot of wrong-doings with detail..

Saturday

Today I've worked on the things I mentioned last night; fingers, knees, facial-expressions and lip sync. I found some hiccups here an there in the animation that I apparently had overseen yesterday, such as a twisting wrists and shoulder-pops. Guess the old eyes needed a rest since I didn't notice that yesterday.

I have also done some work on the actual scene to make it fit the character and trying to work on an additional camera-angle.. I'm not sure if I'm going to use more than one, but Siobhan mentioned that I cold use another angle to show the wink better. So far I haven't found a camera angle to cut to that I like and I must admit that I'm quite novice when it comes to camera-use. I will try and make time to solve this properly (It's probably better to leave it out if I can't figure out how to make it fit.)

I'm also feeling the time-pressure, so I'm going to put on a overnight render tomorrow or Monday just to be on the safe-side. I could use the render-farm if I need to do a new render, but better safe than sorry.
I also know taht I need all the time I can get to finish the presenter in time for hand-in.

Here is a preview of the piece:



I need to do some adjustments on the hand-movement in the beginning, and there are still some floaty expressions that I need to look at. (Will fix this tomorrow I think)

I've struggled a lot with the big hand-moves on this task, just the slightest adjustment to a curve rotates and repositions the entire hand completely. It's the FK on the arms that causes this, and also the fact that when I blocked this I didn't know the "Keith Lango method" for building breakdowns, but know I know I need to watch these things when I build the poses. So, again; even though the result might not be as good as I hoped, I've learned a lot from it and I will hopefully just become better and animate in a more clever way in the future!

To end this post I'll include some sketches, two from a trip to the mall and three from the gym.
Those from the gym are hard to explain because I don't know what the girl was up to, so I'm just guessing it's some sort of yoga.. Heh.

Here you go:





Oh, one last thing: I came upon this great blog by, Bobby Podesta.

http://bobbypodesta.tumblr.com/


And I found this post so very inspiring, it's about work-routines:

http://bobbypodesta.tumblr.com/post/16170179938/you-get-up-when


Bobby Podesta has quite the report-oar, here is his list from www.Imdb.com:


Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (short) (lead animator)

2006
Mater and the Ghostlight (video short) (supervising animator)

2006
Cars (directing animator)

2004
The Incredibles (animator)

2003
Finding Nemo (animator)

2001
Monsters, Inc. (animator, character developer)

1999
Toy Story 2 (animator, story artist)

1998
A Bug's Life (animator)

- Impressive!