Animation

final animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PqB7sbbE-8&list=UUxUOyPScOXsjtgHMcwYeT8w&index=1&feature=plcp

Thoughts


My thoughts are rather mixed im annoyed because I know i can do better, modelling and animating but im happy with what i have got with the time i had to animate ... an animatic beforehand would have saved me trouble aswell.

storyboards revision

well during christmas i started my animation ..was happily animating away when i realised that i would go over the required 30 second limit so it was back to the storyboards for revision here are the new ones ( sorry for the quality they are a bit rubbish scanner seems to have degraded when i was away for christmas) I will explain each scene because of the scanning error

1. henry walks onto screen and notices the rod

2. henry stops at the rod 

3. he prods the rod

4. he grabs it and pulls sharply but the rod just stretches

5. henry shouts with anger

6. he goes in for a second try but this time holds it with 2 hands

7. he fights with it and uses his whole body to try get the rod

8. the rod retracts flinging henry off screen the rod bounces back in forth before slowly returning back to its place as if by magic

storyboards (old)

hectic christmas havnt been able to upload stuff till now (nearly completely forgot)

so heres my old storyboards : 

Progress report and objectives before i go home for christmas.

To be honest i have forgotten to upload my progress so heres whats happened so far...

-fixed the geometry (better than it was before but still not as good as i could do, but it came to the point that i just had to move on.

- blendshapes

my objectives for the end of the week friday the 16th is to get all the blendshapes finished got about another 2 maybe more for emotions and the A/I sound shape

skin the character

complete storyboard

model "the magic rod" and rig it so i am all ready to start animating

achievable? possibly

Close to Meltdown!

well after the hard time of uving my character making a texture, i realised what i thought was a working rig turned out to be a very broken one, which caused a stress filled panic trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it many failed attempts I sent a S.O.S email to lynn went in today and have a very close to finished rig, think i need to sort the twist of the spine and do the feet (although I dont quite understand how to do this yet) =/

Decided whilst I try to work the feet i might aswell improve the mesh (really not happy with what i have as its a mess and I know i could do more just felt rushed to do it.

anyways...

the hands  and head look similar the mesh has alot less polys in it now making them look much neater ... I probably wont get the model to the standard I know I am capable of but as long as I make it better than before I will be happy.

basic texture

textured henry , its very basic and simplistic right now so i will probably go in later and make a more detailed texture

henry uvd

Henry all ready to be textured now, in time for making blend shapes and skinning tomorrow

eyes texture

taught myself how to do more realistic eyes so i put it on to see how it looked...

i think they turned out pretty well actually with a few things i could improve ... although i do think my character would suit less realistic looking eyes it was still worth a shot

* just realised i left my usb stick at uni today, GRRREAT! me and tiredness does not go together*

fool character colour sheet

Colour Test

trying to decide what colour is best for henry so did a couple of colour tests ( a good practice with photoshop) aswell.

here it is, i shall be doing a better one with the full body but this was more to practice how to shade and highlight in photoshop properly. however i do like the leg and hand colour set and the way i colour eyes is getting better i think.

Week #8 day #7

Model update

the modeling is finished maya was being a bit annoying making it very hard to get things done at home but i have finaly managed going to clean up the topology and texture it (i shall post up colour variation sketches of Henry soon)

Also Crit week was this week, my pitch didn't go well as I had a mini breakdown of sorts, and my worries beforehand was made worse when they were confirmed as feedback in the pitch, "you were doing well at the beginning of the semester your work seems to have slowed since" which i agree with 100% and im trying to get myself back into the swing of things, finaly getting this guy done has brought me out of the deep abyss I was in at the beginning of this year. So things are looking up.

storybeats written & visual

These are my first drafts of my storybeats,

Opposite Storybeats

1. Henry walks onto screen happy and minding his own business
2. Something in the grass catches his attention
3. a glowing object stuck in the ground Henry bends over to have a closer look
4. Henry curiously but cautiously pokes the object
5. the object makes a pleasant “ding noise” this makes henry really happy
6. He grabs the object
7. and pulls with all his strength but the object just stretches and refuses to budge
8. henry slips and falls back he gets up rather sad but still adiment that he wants the object
9. he limbers up
10. “ “
11. he grabs the object again this time standing up and with both hands for more grip and leverage
12. He pulls again with all his strength
13. theres a snapping noise as the camera is flicked away
14. as the camera spins you can see someone else has been pulled out from the other end of the object
15. the camera lands on the ground as henry is staring at someone right infront of him
16. close up as they look into each others eyes as they are both identical apart from the slight different colours of their skin/eyes
17. henry says hi to his other self but his opposite responds with by
18. henry is very saddened and walks off dropping his glowing object to the ground and his opposite walks away smiling to himself both showing increasing sadness, happyness.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

model update #2

So yeah although Henry might not be modeled to perfection quite yet we still had to move onto rigging our character this week (week#5)

so yeah here he is all rigged...

I also decided just to see how my topolgy is behaving so far by crudely skinning it in a different maya file so here it is.

As you can see the fingers and legs arnt bending to well neitherr is the arm pit, but atleast i know now that these ares need more topolgy so that they dont lose there shape when I bend them...

model update

Hello,

I have been very bad at updating my blogs lately, thats not to say i havnt been doing anything just been rather forgetful anyways so far Henry is looking like this...

So yeah as you can see hes getting there, however still alot to be done have forgotten how you do eyelids and general layout of the face but i tried my best from tutorials on youtube and from what i could remember.

next up rigging...

model progress

just thought i should give you an update of how my models going...

Week #4 day #1

So heres the beginnings of my model aka Henry.. using the topology research has helped me out alot with modeling however i have run into trouble with the stomach if i cant find a way to solve it i will have to go in and ask the lecturer.

Anyways....

My pitch is tomorrow and for the first time I actually appear to have a fair amount of things to show for this year of which i think is of a good standard this early on, just hoping the 4th year agrees. Have the remainder of the week off so hopefully I will have the model finished (excusing a few geometry errors that can be fixed later on) ready for rigging next monday.

topology research #2

Well here are my topology sketches for Henry  just as a reference when modelling him which will begin soon. I had a chat with Lynn earlier this week and she approved my drawing to model so theres nothing holding me back. Looking forward to this havnt modeled a character to animate in a while now.

Back Story

hello, I decided to make a more in depth back story to help me explain henry more to myself and more importantly anyone who watches the short. So here it is...

Back story

Henry is a young human race called Sapasapians who live on a planet called Sapa. Sapasapians are a highly intelligant race that can live naturaly far longer than us because of this there brains take longer to develop, at the age of 13 henry has more in common with our 3-5 year olds than a human teenager.

Henry, is a happy playful Sapman toddler who is very friendly towards everyone and everything he meets apart from broccoli he despises that stuff.

In his spare time he enjoys collecting items that he finds lying about, mainly shiny or glowing items which he keeps in a small box he carries on his person. However he has been taught that some items should be left untouched he feels the rule doesnt imply to himself especialy if the item is shiny glowy or generally pleasant looking.

more research photos

more movies and books that have an interesting take on clones/other dimensions that i felt helped.

although most of them have a more consequences due to paradox's rather than a basic light hearted approach although I suspect thats due to mine is only 30 seconds long instead of the 2hours or 500+ pages of movie/book.

Alternative characters and more sketches

week#3 day#3

I havn't made a post in a while been busy with other modules but thought i should update what I have done for this week.

Alternative Characters

here you can see the various different drawings for who to play in Opposite i do like them all some of them I may keep for a separate project however they all helped in understanding my final drawing.

my character as he is now, i feel the more i draw him the more it will help when it comes to modelling (which will begin this week) i decided to practice drawing his hands aswell as i feel they are my main weakness when it comes to drawing. practice makes perfect.