Animation Complete

Huzzah! It is done at last and......it's quite good actually, considering I did 90% of the work on this. I expected it to come together in a far worse state, to be honest. But there you go, take it for what it is, I think it's a work of searing genius. Enjoy:

Project Review

It has been a long eight months or so, but this project has come together to create something truly inspiring. Few problems presented themselves over the weeks, and they were resolved with minimal sacrifice to the finished product. One such issue early on was the fact that this animation could not exceed one minute. This meant cutting out roughly one half of the story I intended to create. Gone was the sub plot with the greedy walrus and the robot looking over an icy hill to admire the aurora Borealis, recovering his memory in the process. Such exposition was mercilessly trimmed for the one minute limit. The irony being that even with the trim, the final animation clocks in at just over two minutes. This was the only real problem from the pre-production segment of the project, as naturally the majority of woes came from the production stage.

At the beginning of the production phase, I was hit with glandular fever. This played havoc with the animation. Despite this setback, I did not stop working on it. I managed to model my set and fully rig and texture the robot within a week. While this still put me behind, I wasn't under the impression I was in any serious peril of not finishing in time. With assistance from Chris, Li and Jack over various conflicts that came up, I quickly caught up with everyone else. What was first a plan to cut down on the visual aspect of the project to meet the deadline, became a promising looking animation in its own right. My choices to hide a lot of the action and have minimal sound was helpful in allowing me to concentrate on more important issues. Lighting, for example plagued my mind as a difficult hump to overcome as I was completely inexperienced in that aspect of Maya. Regardless, the lighting was completed much sooner than expected - within minutes, in fact. At this point production was about finished and post-production began.

Perhaps the less stressful point of the animation. The relaxed nature of the post-production phase, due to my knowledge in all of the required software, allowed me time to assist Steve in his post as well. In addition to voice acting for both Steve and Marcus, I was able to mix the sound, edit and burn the dvds for both of their projects. All that time, still working on my own project and making excellent strides along the way. My comp work, for example, was completed within a few hours, with assistance from Darren. At this point, the project was just about complete and I felt less compelled to worry if anything were to go wrong.

And now, after a long year, the major animation is now complete. Suffice to say, it wasn't nearly the hell I expected it to be. I learned so much in this time that any would-be problems that may have occurred would have posed little problem to me. It was a great project to work on, as was Steve's and Marcus'. My only hope now is that the masses will enjoy it as much as I have producing it.

Semester 2 - Week 14

Well, not so much the nightmare I thought it would be this late in the piece. What was looking like a few weeks of stress has come together well. The lighting issues, comp work and sound editing were all completed within days and now all that remains to be done is render one last shot, edit everything in Premiere and burn to dvd.

Semester 2 - Week 13

*Yes, I'm aware my entry numbering system is messed up. I've counted them, they're all there so I'm not sure what's going on. >_< *

Week 13 is over, thankfully better than expected. What was going to be a moderately stressful week, likely ending in a mad blur during the weekend in an attempt to finish my lighting, has ended with two of the three most complex shots of the animation rendered and finished. From here on out it's possible to have the rest of the animation rendered and finished within a week or two. I've also improved on the penguin's walk, with assistance from Jack, who also advised using my background as a light source to give off a coloured light effect with minimal effort. At this point, I'm well on the way to finishing this animation.

Hoorah for renders:

Semester 2 - Week 9

This week I'm delighted to have finished that blasted walk cycle. It was a lot easier breaking it down as I did, in order to take variance in terrain into account. I've shifted the first shot of my animation into top priority since it's the only shot to have any compositing work to be done, and I'll likely need Darren's help on that. Aside from that, all I need now is a quick trip to the Mac lab to grab some extra sound that needs replacing, then it's rendering time. Hopefully I'll have this all edited and completed within the next few weeks.

Semester 2 - Week 8

A short entry, as little has changed from last week in terms of what needs to be done. I still need to lock off lighting, hopefully the coming Tuesday I can make a decent start on that. Hopefully I can get that done by the end of next week. Aside from that, I need only a few textures here and there, replace one sound that's bothering me and hopefully I can move into post-production proper.

Mid-Semester Break

Suffice to say, I spent the majority on the two week break on animation. The robot's animations are completed, but numerous shots of the penguin require work still. I've taken onboard Jack's advice on having the penguin's hips constantly moving as he anchors himself to the ground. For the most part, he's looking better and I'll likely playblast a few examples and upload them over the week. This coming week, I intend to get some advice on lighting, as that is one of my week ten milestones and I have yet to get any decent lighting going. Hopefully I'll have that satisfactory by the end of next week so I can spend this time doing something productive. I still need a few more decent textures and a fish as well, best I not forget those; and sound might require some polishing up a bit. Everything seems to be going well, never thought I'd say that.

Semester 2 - Week 7

Ha! I assumed it couldn't be done, but there you have it. I'm still a little undecided on some of my sound effects and others need to be swapped out with more appropriate ones altogether. My biggest concern right now is the penguin's rig. For the most part, he animates quite well according to my tests. There are still a few issues with his legs, particularly his upper thighs. Might need to do a better job on my weight painting in that area. The robot on the other hand is working well. That was to bo expected, as he has minimal moving parts as it is. So I shall play around with the penguin and get him working better, otherwise everything seems to be alright....though every time I say that something inevitably pops up and my workload is almost doubled, so I'll just assume I am not going to have an easy time of it. Ever.

Semester 2 - Week 6

Good lord, an animatic:


Yes, well......it goes for way too freaking long. For a one minute animation, it comes in to around two and a half minutes. Lot of chipping away to do yet. But at least most of my sound and shot are how I want them to be. For the most part, I intend to work up from here, tweaking all that is necessary and so on. What fun. At any rate, I'm just happy to see something moving at this point. Where I go from here is uncertain as there are many avenues to traverse. Chris and I have been playing around with different metal textures and bump mapping them so they look all weathered and old. For a robot that's been sitting motionless in the ice for centuries, he still looks a little over a year old, spending that year in the rain. Still, I like how he looks with the temporary textures now, so things can only get better from here, logically speaking that is. I'll hang in there.

Semester 2 - Week 5

Major strides, as I'm almost finished with my running comp. Would've been done sooner if it weren't for Maya 2008 deciding to crash while saving and spitting this out when opening the file again:


Why?

So now I cannot save files on my pc anymore. Curses. Utilising 2010 is an option, though I'm unsure how the compatibility works between the two versions. Marvellous situation. Though I'm not terribly concerned, as according to the week ten milestone, I'm actually on target. Miracles never cease.

I've textured the robot, a simple enough task considering I only need to uv map one object. The rest were objects with the texture applied to it. Crude, but it works for the robot anyway. Camera and set are locked off, just need to finish off lighting and I'm good to go, hopefully.

Oh, and for laughs I did a test render to see how it looks. Still no lighting and some place-holder textures here and there, but you get the idea:



EDIT
My issues with saving have been resolved, at least for the time being. Fingers crossed this does not plague me again.

Semester 2 - Week 4

I've had the pleasure of needing to restart my set, but this is likely a positive. The original set had a modelled mountain and curved plain for the sky which I'd already realised I did not need. So it'll likely be few flat plains, including one for the hill. Nothing to complain about there. Chris is currently polishing up the robot model and I have no doubt it'll look better than my first attempt; even my original design for it. Looking at my rough sound scape, I realise that my ten second wind loop may be a bit obvious after a short while, so I'll likely add a few atmospheric sounds such as ice cracking or a distant seal. I may have to record a number of sounds myself and since I'm recording the voice over for Steve's animation, I can possibly do both it one sitting. Not panicking just yet.

Semester 2 - Week 3

Upon my return from holiday I've been told I have to do in terms of animating, while at the same time a number of shortcuts have presented themselves. As I worked on my set in Maya, I realised I did not require a panoramic view of the sky or 3-D modeled background mountains as I only have a small number of still shots for the entirety of the animation and no camera movements. So now I have the option of either putting the sky and hills on a plain and multi pass rendering when that time comes or adding the entire background in After Effects. Hopefully I'll have my shots set up within the next week.

Semester End Evaluation

Given the amount of conflicts regarding my concept, I feel I've got a clear idea as to how my production will come about. The story has been revised twice, and much of the original concept is gone, however I still feel that I've retained the important elements I tried to get across - A robot suffering from amnesia trying to find his place amongst other life forms. The underlying theme of acceptance remains intact after whittling away a character and a pivotal scene of the robot sitting in front of the Northern Lights which was, what I felt at the time, the centrepiece of the animation. Thankfully, I feel I can live without it.

In terms of character design, I remained faithful to the original concept. The robot, B.C., is more or less how I envisioned him to be. The penguin is merely the simple animal character, he could've been anything be it a tiger or bear, I just decided on the penguin after choosing the secluded Antarctic location. The location itself was ideal, as I wanted it to be a place void of people. After reworking a few other story elements, particularly the ending, it was time to start modelling my characters in 3-D. A task I was not looking forward to. I'm far more comfortable with drawing or modelling a character out of clay, which up until that point was all we had been doing. Once the clay model was scanned in 3-D, things started to fall apart. My lack of perspective and general modelling skills within Maya left me more or less screwed with the penguin. While Jack modelled my penguin, I added joints to rig him up. After some minor tweaking, he animates reasonably well. During the end of the semester, I also made some headway modelling my robot. Only time will tell if the rig will work out, though given his Maya friendly design, he should prove simple enough.

Considering I spent most of the semester overcome with a reoccurring flu, I feel the preproduction for my animation came along well enough. I have a clear vision of how the finished animation will look. There have been numerous instances where I've considered defecting back to 2-D, the most notable being when I completed some concept art, which inspired me to try the 2-D approach. However tempting that may be, I do want to attempt Maya as best as I can. My preproduction has revealed numerous options in how to complete this animation. Looking back on the semester, the various skills I've learned with Maya have given me some small measure of confidence, whereas before I had no idea how I could ever create this animation in 3-D within a 28 week period. Hopefully as the year progresses, I'll acquire enough skill to finish this production to a reasonable quality.

Animation Major - Week 13

A fairly stressful week, given that the entire production bible is due the following Tuesday. While I've mostly completed it, it still requires a front cover, then everything needs compiling in a bound folder. Why am I stressed? After completing a recent concept design, I felt compelled to return to 2-D given that the original concept was thought of with 2-D animation in mind. I'm now unsure at this point if my story will translate well into 3-D, and contrariwise the 2-D concept art is, I feel, a lot like what I had originally envisioned. Nevertheless, I will strive to stay on track with 3-D, as I feel I would learn a lot more being unfamiliar with Maya than I would using the various 2-D methods of animating that I'm more or less comfortable with. Hopefully I will remain focused on 3-D throughout the six week break and not be tempted to revert back to Flash or scanning hand drawn images into photoshop.

Animation Major - Week 12

An interesting week. While the desire to defect back to 2-D for my major animation grows ever stronger, the odd shortcut or interesting factoid pops up that reaffirms my decision to use Maya. Currently I'm attempting to block the background for my animation. With just a plain ice field, two mountains and a sunset plastered on a spherical wrap around the ice to create some depth, it doesn't seem at all complicated to get the layout of the characters and environment nailed down before the end of the semester. Adrian helped with a minor issue regarding my penguin model's problem with a caving in tummy. Now he can bed forward without creating a hole in his gut. I have high hopes for modelling the robot, as he is designed to be as Maya friendly as possible, with numerous hidden joints and no neck. Perhaps I might just pull this off, stranger things have happened to me.

Animation Major - Week 11

This week marked the completion of my animatic, which I found out was a little late. My main concern is actually completing the video block on time, as it will put me back on track where preproduction is concerned. With assistance from Jack, I also managed to fully rig my penguin in Maya. I've attempted to animate some movement, which is proving more or less successful. I hope to complete a full walk cycle and also work on texturing it. Hopefully this animation will come together by year's end despite my lack of confidence with Maya.

Animation Major - Week 10

Having succumbed to some random disease, I again failed to get much done in terms of production. I did manage start some pencil tests to see how the animatic may look. Since I still have the thumbnails of empty backgrounds I can likely implement them into the animatic to save time. With the model sheets finished and the animatic barely started, I'm hoping I'm still more or less on track. I feel I have neglected this blog somewhat. Upon casual observation of previous posts, the blog is very text intensive and lacking a lot of the pictures I proposed to upload. Hopefully this coming weekend will allow me some time to add about a dozen or so pictures missing from this blog. I also await confirmation from Chris when he requires the animatic to be done, as I offered to do them for him. Hopefully my schedule this week won't be too full, as I'd like to get the animatics done relatively quickly, say within the space of a few days.

Animation Major - Week 9

Oh lord, pre-production has taken a more frightening twist since last Tuesday. The updated curriculum sheet has likely taken a year or two years off my life. Most of the past two weeks I've been caught with an illness, and thus my pre-production has slowed down a fair bit. I have completed the storyboards and have more or less finished all the model sheets (with an exception of the expression sheets, given that my characters don't change expressions at all) so I've spent this week working on the model. I'm still somewhat concerned about my indisputable lack of 3-d modelling skills, especially considering I made my character design as simple as I could knowing that my modelling skills weren't up to par. Hopefully I can overcome this issue, because oddly enough, uv mapping, texturing, joint orientation, etc. don't frighten me anywhere near as much as modelling does; hopefully I can get that out of the way as painlessly as possible.

Animation Major - Week 8

Again, not as much done as I would've liked this week. Since I've yet to see my scanned in model, I'm unsure as to whether or not it will be usable in the animation, my guess being it probably won't be. I've spent a couple of days considering the layout again this week. I've decided to try a pastel sky and sun on tissue paper then scrunched to make it appear unnatural. This won't likely be the final look, though it is a thought after viewing a 3-D animation on Youtube. This coming week I hope to complete the model sheets for both characters.

Animation Major - Holidays

Well considering my first week was spent away from home mostly, and consequently I got little done, I can only really comment on the second week. Second week of the holidays consisted of my refining my storyboards twice. I'm still undecided on a number of shots though I'm confident everything is more or less fine as it is now. Aside from the storyboard, I also locked off the design of the robot. No sense on revising it any more than necessary. I also drew up a rough layout for the one background scene in the animation which I shall upload later in the week.

Animation Major - Week 7

First pass storyboard has already been finished, so this week I went over it to add various shots to more clearly illustrate character actions. Because my characters are void of facial emotion, I realise that more emphasis on subtlety in character movement would be necessary, thus more closer shots were inserted. Having some extra time on Tuesday, I got around to drawing up a height chart for my characters to convey the height difference. Since I wanted to convey a reverse parent-child relationship, the infant-like robot is significantly taller than the penguin.

Animation Major - Week 6

A short entry until I can update the status of the 3-D scan of my penguin character. So far this week I have been concentrating on both first draft storyboard and going over the joint and skinning tutorials from Jack's class up to this point. On Friday I went over my clay model again to fix up some irregularities and it was scanned in the same day.

Animation Major - Week 5

Having thumbnailed and second draft scripted the animation; I'm more or less ready for first pass storyboards. As of yet I'm uncertain about how many shots I will have, as I'm toying with the idea of having just the one fixed wide angle shot. This will likely change over the coming weeks as I continually visualise the story. I'm hoping to refine the robot's design, making him appear more intimidating than he did before. Hopefully I'll have the basic story elements locked down within the following weeks.

Animation Major - Week 4

This week, I've completed a script and redid most of my thumbnails following the various changes the story has taken. Since the walrus character has been removed entirely, along with most of the backbone of the original story, my concentration is focused on the remaining two characters. I've also more or less designed the robot, pictured below. I kept in mind the limitations of time and the fact he's the more mobile of the two characters, so he has a lot of ball joints and places to hide limbs, the head, etc. that will make animating him as stress-free as possible. We're currently creating a clay model of one of our characters to scan in 3-D, so I'm hoping the penguin won't be too difficult to model from there. As for animating it, I spent a while on the weekend observing penguin movement on nature documentaries. Hopefully this insight will serve to help create the character's performance.

Animation Major - Week 3

During this week, I thumbnailed a few ideas for shots. As of yet, I'm undecided about how many shots the animation will have, as I've played with the idea of having the one wide shot and to have the characters act only within the one frame. Where the narrative's concerned, I've more or less locked off the story. I've trimmed all unnecessary shots and actions, and removed the entire subplot with the walrus.

Last Friday, Darren gave us a task to draw one of our characters to create an armature for to scan in 3-D. At this point, I have finalised the design of the penguin character who will be as anatomically similar to a real king penguin as possible.

Here's my final design for the penguin:

Animation Major - Week 2

My project will depict the tale of a penguin attempting to fish, accidentally activating a nearby robot, and watching as it catches fish after fish with its antenna. After brainstorming and trimming the idea down for a one minute production, I have begun the treatment and scene breakdown which I intend to finish by the end of the week. I'm hoping that I will have the chance to create a few rough designs, as I am as of yet unsure as to the appearance of both my characters. Hopefully the story will also be finalised, so I can assess what needs to be done and if any further cuts are necessary.