Animation planning Post 5 - My 4th animation segment

In this animation it is realy all about the comedy that comes across from the couple. Both the timing and the character's expressions/ emotions will be what makes this fial pay off work to perfection. I must get acoss the funny intitial moment of Roy rolling past, but alsowith great timing add the stomping run of the mum chasing after her husband.

Animation planning Post 4 - My 3rd animation segment

In this section of animation it is imperative that I get across the couples struggle to release Roy. I need to get the hilarity, and sympathy across to the audience so that they can connect with the characters.

Animation planning Post 3 - My 2nd animation segment

This is my second anmation sction, In this one my key objective is to get across Roy's feelings/emotions as this is one of the key scetions of the film. I have t get the right emotions, across to the audience or the won't conect to Roy, and they then won't understand what's happening to him.

Animation planning Post 2 - My 1st animation segment

This is a table I have created for my first section of animation. I've created this to give mea strong idea of what I need to do in this section. Keeing to this will help me to keep as close to the animatics times as possibl and will help me to define the actions adn emotions of each character at al times.

Test animation of Jimmy's rig- Final video

Summery of my YMCA animation

Overall I am prety pleased with the animation prduced in this short clip. It wasonly designed to be a test peice of animation, but I am realy quite proud of a few parts within in. I am happy I did thi test as it has allowed me to fully prepare myself foranimating the character within our film.

I will definately create a short video like this for each of our characters as it realy seem tohelp both develop my skills and deveop my understanding of each characters rg. I think this actualy is an essential part of the process otherwise I may have come into problems further down the line that could not have been resolved in time.

YMCA animation post 4- Day 2-3 progress (the faciel animation/lip sync)

Update 1

My first piece of faciel animation started with me seeing if I could lip sync just the letters being mimed by the character. I haven't done any proper lip sync before so this was a good time to test it out, and see what I could do. I think it has turned out OK, you can tell he is singing along to the song so it cannot be that bad.

Update 2

After having completed the lip sync it was time to add the rest the facial animation to him for this part. This was really just a case of widening the eyes, and lifting his eyebrows when he had to pronounce the Y, and the A.

Update 3
The addition of eyebrow movement's, an eye lid animations to the rest of the dance:

Update 4
From watching through the animation it was quite apparent that I needed to add a few blink in here and there, and play around with the eyes to stop them being so wide all of the time.

After a few more general adjustments, It's now all completed.

YMCA animation post 3- Day 2 progress part 1 (finnishing the body mechanics)

Update 1
I have completed the rest of the characters spin, so that he comes back around to his full 360 degree turn. This part was one of the trickiesst I found, it was realy hard to get the feet into the correct postitions and corrct animation paths, as allot of the time atleas ton ef his feet would slide, or his leg would over stretch etc, tese problemsoccured for quit a while, but I evantualy got it to look ok.

Update 2

All I have done is just have him standing there slapping his tummy to te beat, to end the dance and calmit down as the music faces out. I realy do like the overlap that I added to the fingers, and wrists as he slaps his tummy, I think it makes it look more realistick, an it adds more power to the slap of the beat.

Update 3

Here is just the final video of how the whole body animation looks without any emotion/ faciel actions, just before finnishing this I have done a few touch ups here ad tere to smoothen thngs out, adding and altering overlapping on hands, ad the body etc:

YMCA animation post 2- Day 1 progress

Update 1

In this update I have as you can see added a builders hat, I thought it was a nice little touch to bring to the animation. In regards to the animation itself I have done the following:

1)First of all added a lot more overlap/ drag to the movements of the body and head so that it flows better.

2) Set the YMCA letter spelling to both times it is sung.

3) In between I have added a little simple dance, just for a transition.



Update 2

Now that I had the YMCA part done it was time to focus on other sections. As I had 30 odd seconds to do I had to think up ways to transition into different dance moves. This first one is just a fun move I though up, it's a fun cheeky little move that suits the character. The pointing and wiggle of the character (what I thought up) built up nicely to the thrust of the hips.

  

  

Update 3

This is by far my favourite little bit of animation so far. I have now added a little jogging move that they do in the music video. I think it's a really fun and cute little move for the character.

Update 4

This is just a little piece of animation to add to the start of the dance. It is really just a warm up in a way, to build up the dance in sync with the adding in music. I wanted to keep it very basic so that as the song goes through the dancing will match the music and become more dynamic.

Update 5

Now it's where things are getting tricky. In the music video they clap along to the beat while doing certain moves. Due to the character have extremely short arms in proportion to his body he cannot clap his hands, so I have done an alternative of him slapping his little podgy belly instead. I had quite a lot of problems animating this bit, it was hard to match up to the beat and get the body parts to move at the right time. I believe that I got it pretty much there though.

Update 6

I have now added the next part to the end of the step clap dance. I have managed to get him to turn to face away like in the music video and ave also matched up the slapping of the tummy to match the beat. So all in all it has come out well this section.

Today's video so far:

YMCA animation post 1- The basic YMCA spelt letters.

YMCA reference video for dance moves

This is the original YMCA music video from 1978. I am going to try and animate my character dancing some of these moves, plus the more recent dance craze of people spelling the letters with there arms. 

Idea for test YMCA animation with Jimmy rig.

I received the character rig off of Josh today and after a week of him asking for me to test his rig I finally tested this version he had made. I initially had a general fiddle around with the controlls to tell him if there were any issues, but then I felt like I would give it a proper test by having some fun with it. That is when I got the random idea in my head to make hi dance to the YMCA.

I originally just felt in he mood to do the chorus where people sign the letters with there arms. This however didn't really involve the whole body , so from there I have decided I will try and animate 30 seconds of dancing,trying to get a rage of moves to test out all of the parts of the characters rig.

I hope that I can produce a nice little test animation. It will be fun to do some animation at last as it is my chosen area, so I am rather happy about this, and extremely exited to get stuck in to it.

Animation planning Post 1 - The Divide

First of all me and Phil have decided between us a fair distribution of the animation. We decided the best way to do it was to split the film into short animation segments and then divide those segments between us.

 On deciding who was animating what segments, we took into account a few different factors:
1) Having an equal total amount of  animation in seconds.
2) Equal amount of scenes with different difficulty levels. (We wanted to make sure that we each had a few easy and a few challenging scenes otherwise it would be unfair).
3) Equal amount of action to acting scenes. ( Making sure we both had a few scenes of each
4) One of our key points to decide also was "What we want to show from the film"/ what skills d we individually want to display from his project".

From this we came up with the following split, which we felt gave us a pretty even divide:

Phil- 5-14 9 seconds chopping etc- just before mum enters
Aaron-14-25 11 secs Mum entering- mum leaving
Phil's bit 2- 25- 37 12 secs reaching for tap- when Roy hits his head on the sink
Aaron- 38-49 secs =  11 secs reaching and knocking over saucepan- just before mum switches light switch.
Phil - 49- 1:06 17 secs Mum switching light switch- end of granny part.
Aaron- 1:06-1:24  18 secs Mum wrestling to get Roy out of the insincorator- the black screen.
Black screen - 1:25- 1:29 4 secs
Phil- 1:30-1:44- 14 secs
Aaron- 1:45- 1:55- 10 secs
Phil= 52 secs, from black screen- when the ambulance leaves to the left to the screen.
Aaron= 50 secs, From when the ambulance leaves to the left to the screen

Perhaps add a little scene after credits where it shows the nans house with them laying there, perhaps nan tries to lift herself slowly with strain, but flops down again.

End of term summery

This term has been very up and down for me in terms of the group project. It seemed a lot like we were just constantly changing our idea.

Overall I am prety disapointed with how much I personally have acheived so far in this project. I think though this was due to the amount of time me and Phil spent re- writing the story etc, so we realy didn't get much time to sebttle into the proper flow we wanted to in terms of production.

I personally would have liked to have modelled more than I have done up to this point. I seem to be into a good strong production flow at the moment in terms of modelling so I seem to be turning out completed modells prety quickly which is a plus.

As a team my analysis so far would be prety much how our blogs seem. There was a riduculous amount of time spent on story this term which realy knocked back our plans for production stage. I think every one of us was prety slack at the beginning, however I have seen a real boost in productivity in recently, and have seen some realy great work coming out of our team. I think everyone so far is playing there roles well and we are gelling and starting to catch up with our production shedual.

In conclusion I think concidering the constant idea changes we have done well to produce the amount of work we have at this stage, and am sure we can produce some beautiful looking work by the end of the year.

Our teams hand in animatic.

Modelled a pipe out of the top (needs some cleaning up still though.

Modelled the hand rail/bar of the oven plus a little more detail.

Aga edits

Since the last post I have modelled the air vent and anoter peice of detail on the front.

Aga phase 1

I wanted to move away from small assets such as fruit, veg nd utensels and concentrate on a bigger asset. As we haven't got much of a set yet  I decided I would start to model a cooker.

From our kitchen's designs I thought an old aga would be a suitable style to include.

Below you can see the very first stages I have done. (main shape and two oven doors).

Carving fork

Banana

During the week somebody gave the idea of adding a fruit bowl into the kitchen scene, so to start off I have made a banana.

Chopping board

It's basic at the moment with no colour. It has rubber circles on the bottom corners, as seen on many wooden chopping boards for softening the blow when putting it on down.

3 peppers- basic colour again.

Chilli Pepper

Leek-

Basic colouring etc at the moment just to indicate the colouring for textures etc.

Modelling talk

Just a quick post to say my plans for this week.

Now that I am back to modelling, I hope to get lots done quickly as it feels like I haven't done as much work on this project as I would have liked. Josh has asked me to take over modelling the rest of the buildings for the street shot, so I plan to move onto those next week, and get through lots of small models for the kitchen.

Ideas dropped and changed

I'm realy annoyed today. Once again the idea has been changed, Phil went and saw Sean at the end of last week, and I have only just found out today that ideas have been dropped or changed. It is realy infurating me now, I just want a sebttled idea now and to realy get into the process of the story.

I'm just annoyed that we keep having ideas and then work hard on them for three weeks and they just get changed again. Everytime I keep feeling like were loosing all of our ideas and to me I think some of the comedy has been lost.

I understand the cuts of the first scene etc it just annoys me how many ideas we have gone through and none of them are good enough each time, so it feels like an endless circle.

Also having it changed again it has realy annoyed me as I realy tried hard last week on my animatic and put so much time into it. Now the idea has changed again I feel like I lost a whole week of work and waisted time I could have spent on more constructive work. I knew I wasn't good at drawing but hoped I'd get some considertation for that work but it feels like similarly to other ideas they've just been tossed in the bin.

I was very sorry to see the ideas of the child in the costumes get wiped out of the story. If I am honest I don't find the new story that funny anymore, to me too much of the comedy has been erased.

Hopefully when I get more into it, I may get the passion back for the idea, but at the moment it feels like i'm not realy working on a project I enjoy.

Hopefully getting back to modeling today will help me to get back into the flow and enjoyment towards the project.

My animatic- scene 2 part 1

This is my share of the 2nd sceneof the animatic. I managed to complete mine in time for the showing with Sean and Peter but unfortuntely Phil had soe problems, and we weren't able to put it all togeher in time to show. Hopefully we an ge it together for Monday and show Sean.

My animatic- scene 1 part

This is the first task of my on the animatic. I have spent 2 days on this, struggling to draw, but I hope it's clear enough to understand. This is my half of the first scene to draw up.

Animatic plans

Today me and phil have been discussing changes, and planning the animatic. We have gone through new ideas and put together all the shots in rough and have divided up the shots for each of the three scenes for us to try and get the animatic done for Thursday to show everyone.

I am extremely rusty at drawing, however I will try my best.

Newidea again and hopefully the last.

Today we yet again saw Sean to try get a story sorted and heading in the right direction. He leaned us more towards slapstick comedy, taking us away from so many static shots, talking and the formal approach of cutting to each character in each room etc.

Later in the day we managed to compile a story with using our last stories beginning but added a slapstick section after it. Josh came up with the idea this time which was nice to get fresh ideas from him as he doesn't like to get involved in the story usualy.

Anyway with a bit of discussion and some entertaining role play we got a pretty short and punchy idea together.
We scrapped one child and left ourselves with 2 children but have now somehow gained an interviewer and  ambulence crew.
I will post up the idea in a moment in image form.

Creating a teddy bear for the little girl monster

My production over the day of the teddy bear

I modelled it from a cube, extruding out the head, arm, and leg, and then I duplicated and copied over the good side and attached them together. The teddy bear still needs work, so hopefully I will get it looking nice soon.

Wok

Spice pots

Candle stick holder

A few bits for the table - simples :D

Chefs knife

Kitchen models

Timetables for everyone

Last year my group followed the task timetables well, so I have mad onethis year to see if we can keepto it and get tings done on time.

My Scripting

Meeting with Peter

Today we had to pitch our idea to Peter. Me and Phil went through our idea with him, and he seemed impressed with what we had come up with, and liked the gags we had come up with for it.

So we now know we are on the right lines for a god story, we just need to sebttle on what exactly happens and what the characters say.

Group meating with Sean

Today we had to meet up with Sean, we were all a bit nervous about aying we werent keen on hs idea of the estate agent.

We got through that though and he accepted it but thought we still needed to add a bit more edge to our film. He then gave us the idea of have it as a documentary style with a monster.

Our group liked this idea and spent a long time this afternnon/ this eavning thinking up ideas invloving the documentary. We have come up with having it as a family of monsters. From here we have come up with some nice ideas for the story.

Today we went through our idea with Sean where he said he was a fan of the monster part of our idea but wanted to change it to an estate agent idea, where there is an estate agent who takes a monster around the house trying to sell the house to the monster and they have to jump out of view when the hear someone coming.

Our group hasn't realy taken with this idea unfortuanlely, so we are going to carry on with our current story idea. 

Since my last post my group has developed our monster story.

To the following:

Monster living under the stairs. (he is huge in comparison to the size of the cupboard.

Monster has slippers, dressing gown, face pack, blindfold.

As the monster relaxes theres a lot of noise coming from outside so he leaves the cupboard and gets jumped on by children dressed up as monsters for a monster themed birthday part. He is petrofied at first but he then gets accepted by the children and the have a good time.

Monster shot ideas

Shots

1.     Starts with black screen, fades into tittles hearing a kettle steaming/boiling.

2.     Fades into kettle on stove (perhaps a reflections of the monster in kettle)

3.     Cuts to black, you hear the sound of two cupboard doors get opened and slammed shut.

4.     Camera is situated inside a cupboard. As the monster opens the two cupboard doors it shows the monsters face (with shadows/slightly out of focus), you see the items in the cupboard. Depth of field.

5.     Monster reaches in and grabs what he needs e.g. sugar

6.     Mid shot you see the mug on a side with up to the monsters chest. Then you see the monster pour the water, add the cocoa, whipped cream, and marsh mellows.

7.     Cuts to him sitting in chair with his mug.

8.     Cuts to a close up of his face with the mug in front of him, he does a massive sniff of the hot chocolate, and then he eats the whole mug.

9.     Turns on lamp, then reaches to the bookshelf next to him, puts on three piece glasses and takes a book and opens it to start reading.

10.                        Then you here stomping footsteps- he sighs

11.                        Stomping a second time but loader, causes dust falling, maybe a sneeze, slight camera shake.

12.                        3^rd time is the biggest and causes the lighting to go out.

13.                        Cuts a shot under the bed so it’s dark and shadowy, you see maybe him open a hatch, and you see his glowing eyes.

14.                        Cuts to a shot from his point of view seeing the kids feet running around

15.                        Cuts to the monster standing and goes raaaarrrrrrrrrrr.

16.                        Cuts to a shot from an above point of view, seeing the children perfectly still looking up at him (you see his shadow towering over them).

17.                        Kid’s eyes look to the left.

18.                        Monster turns head and you just see a kid who jumps at him and camera falls as though he’s been hit.

19.                        It all goes to chaos, can have monsters on the floor and a little kid shouts get back here in a deep voice and pulls his ankle.

20.                        Then he starts crying, they all feel sorry for him and see them group around and hug him.

21.                        Then show a little girl reach out and give him a little tub of ice cream.

22.                        Fades out to black

We have a new idea Yay

Ok so throughout this week we have been in to discuss ideas and try to come up with something. We went through basic concepts and we have come up with using monsters.

We want to try and make a story where a monster is living in the cupboard under the satairs and lives his own life trying to be in peace.

Groups 1st meet

Today our group joined up to discuss our ideas. my idea didn't realy get much responce, and no body elses idea realy did either. So from here we have nothing atal.

My story

Recently I have got the story all sorted. and ready to meet the others o discuss our ideas, so we shall see how it goes.

Elf concept

Character ideas

Recently I have been focussing on character ideas for my concept.
I have decided upn have a young boy elf, a young girl elf, and the boy will have a sidekick which is a little fat flying draggon.

I have gathered reference concepts for the main character. The main style I have been looking at is final fantasy, as I like the clothing style.

I will work ove the next few days on comming up with a concept.

I have only just realy thought of a concept for a story. I want to create an animation that involves an adventure and love interest, which will include a nice mix of emotions and a nice amount of animation.

Recently I have been tidying up the idea and have come up with the folowing concept:

A young elf boy is always mesmerised by a young female elf, he sees her picking flowers and sniffing them. He goes on an adventure to collect the perfect flower from the top of a mountain in the distance. He travels though an enchanted/ fantasy forest to get to the flower. Along the way he comes across a number of challenges to succeed on his mission.

That is the basic idea, I think it will have a lot of nice work for everyone with nice animation, nice scenery/ backgrounds and a nice story.

The critt

Today we had to try and pitch an idea to the rest of the class.

Unfortuanately we havent yet com up with an idea that we ae all happy with, so all we could say was that we wantedto do a 3d project and that we were working as a group.

Hopefully we will sort an idea out soon though.

The beginning of the end.

Over the summer I wasn't realy sure in hat I wanted to do for my final year proect. I have been very keen to work in a group because I know I have my floors in the art areas, so would struggle when it comes to grades for my concepts.

Over the summer however it was seeming alot like I would be working on my own untill Phil asked me to join a group with him Josh Bate and Amy. I concidered it for a little while bcause I wasn't sure if wrking with Phil would be a good idea or not. I needed Amy and Josh for my week areas, however didn't know if working wit Phil as another animator would work that well. The only way I was keen to do it was if our project was going to involve a bigamount of animation so that we both get a good amount each.

After deliberating for a few weeks Iwas happy to work with them under the condition of lots of animation. I now have to think of an idea though. I will try come up with an idea and see how the group turns out and deliver it to them.