The Final film...

Hand in

Yesterday we finally manged to had in our film. After all of our hard work, the project is finally complete.

So how did the project go?

As a whole I am very proud of the quality of our film, and think it is impressive visually for just a short student film. I think each person in the group pulled their weight equally, and I am proud of us all for that.

Response towards the team:

Throughout the project, I think at stages people became annoyed and sometimes slacked from time to time, including me.

Self critt-
I think from the beginning I worked well at the planning and story stage, and helped to create some nice story material. Once the story stage ended, and I was waiting for characters, I did feel like a bit of a spare part, as I wasn't doing a job I found as exiting. I think that perhaps at times I should have pushed myself a bit harder then and get more high quality models produced. Once it came to the animation stage I felt a lot more confident, as I was finally doing the job I wanted. After a shaky start with my style, I think my animation turned out OK. Some were perhaps a bit rushed, and there are other issues in there such as timing, but overall I am happy.

Josh-
 I think Josh did particularly well for the sheer variety and quantity of jobs he had, there was a delay for rigs, but he was attempting first off to rig them him selves, so I am happy he gave it an attempt, as we are a team, and it's unfair to say you can't try and rig yourself for time reasons. The rest of us had other things we could work on so that was OK in the end.
Once we had the rigs though, there were a few tiny issues but I worked through them, and don't think it affected my animation too heavily. I have in fact animated with far worse rigs that that with my freelance projects so compared to those it was a piece of cake.
Josh definitely made up for any lost time with his great modelling and lighting skills, and was always around for support on tasks. He definitely put in the max and I think you can see it run all the way through the film. It was nice to work with him, as he had skills I definitely couldn't of had working individually. Also on a final note, I am very thank full for the time he put in with the rendering stage at the end, as both me and him were in every day till late trying to get the renders done, so I am thankful he put the effort in to get the film together.

Amy-
I think the work Amy put in really counted. The amount of times we changed stories, Amy still managed to keep giving us new and exiting concept work for them. Coming into the production stage the textures she created I think really have given the sets a realistic and high quality feel. I think without Amy's flexibility between her concept art, and texture/ Mapping, I think it would have been impossible for our team to produce a look anywhere near as good as we have done.

Phil-
Phil at the beginning was very exited about working in our group and creating a film. Throughout the early stages I felt that passion, and we were regularly bouncing ideas off each other, and I think particularly me and him worked well on the story side, and got some good results. I think the further on through the year, he was perhaps less involved and communicated less about his work, and ours, so sometimes it was hard to know what was going on his end and what he was up to. When it got near the end however seeing the animations come together, he definitely pulled it out the bag, and got some really nice animated scenes into the movie.

Overall summery-

I think over the year there were a few issues, however I think our team was a strong unit, who worked very well together, and I think the dedication pulled off, and I am happy with what we produced. I think we could have clearly changed some things in the story, as along the way we perhaps lost grips of some areas, with needing to cut stuff out, however what we handed in I think was a strong and visually nice piece of work, so I am very proud of my team for all of there hard work, and would definitely work with them again, as every one of them worked equally as hard, and as a unit we worked very strong, and our skill sets blended nicely.

Today's disaster of a render day......

After a day of waisted rendering, it took us until nearly 12 AM to realise that perhaps it wasn't the rendering that was the issue, but that it was very possible that my fork that has caused many issues before may be why it is messing up so much.

After getting home I have completely re animated a new fork deleting any resemblance of the old one. I ten sent the file onto Josh and he could finally open the file on his laptop so it is a very good sign for rendering tomorrow. I look forwards to hopefully getting it all rendered and looking good.

I do however feel very accountable for this waisted day, as I should have looked into the fork issue a long time ago, and being the idiot I am, I left it and it caused a problem within the rendering stage. The reason it wasn't spotted earlier though was because the file itself would open on the studio computers and my laptop but not on anyone else's laptops, so it was hard to realise that the fork was the thing that was causing the issues. I hope now though it can get done and dusted, and we can still be on track for Monday. I do however apologise to Josh for getting him so stressed today with our third day of rendering, and with it not wanted to render a single frame, it got him very stressed. We however do work well as a team whilst rendering so bright and early tomorrow me and Josh should get the rendering going and finished.

End of day 2 of the rendering

Today due to various reasons, we had to re- render a couple of the scenes so they are still rendering over night as we speak. One of the scenes is complete, so that's another fully rendered scene towards the film.

So still to render is the finishing off of the two scenes today (the fork scene, and re- render of Phil's scene). I managed to finish the animation of the short Zilla light switch today so that needs rendering.

I hope we can get it all done. I believe we should be fine to finish for Monday, and have it looking nice.

Zilla Switch animation post 3

1) I have really just added in the switch to the scene, and gone through the frames making sure the animation of the finger can match up nicely to switching the switch. I had to move fingers around but I think it matches up OK.

2) After thinking it was complete, Amy just suggested putting a bit of motion into the arm, so I have gone back through the animation and added in some arm motion, and altered a few bits of hand animation. This however is the last video so hoepfully it will be ok for a very quick animation, and will hopefully duplicate well wehn it comes to repeating it in the compositing stage.

Zilla switch animation post 2

1) I have now moved onto the faciels of Zilla to try and get a good overal pose. I started by getting the basic face pose and have added a basic blink.

2. From there I have just added slight lip and mouth movements, to get the face moving a bit more.

3. I have now moved onto adding body motion, and have duplicated the blink to cycle through twice.

4. I have been further editing the body animation, and have also altered the camera for more of an over the shoulder shot.

 

5. I just minimised the animation slightly as her mechanics were a bit to distracting, and take away from the actual switching motion of the finger.

Light switch

For the light switch I always wanted one of the metal ball shaped switches, as I knew that would be the best to flick.

I started of with the generic square shaped base for it, however after researching decided to go for the more traditional, and appropriate, cylinder shape.

To model it, I just used a cylinder, and extruded in and out the faces when appropriate, and tried to keep it looking as close to the reference as possible. I think it has turned out OK for a five minute fast model.

Zilla animation post 1

First of all I am starting off with the hand/ finger. As I said before I am going to go for a flicking motion to cut down animation frames.

1) This is my intitial start on the animation, getting some basic finger/ hand motion into it.

2) Starting to play with the timing and adding bits of drag, to the downward flick.

3. Editing the fingers flick up to have more of a hit, and more power in the movement, to show a hint of resistance, adn weight to the switching.

4. After finnishing the finger off, I just looked at the thum and got some nice overlap on it for when it comes back .

My Zilla light switch idea

Toying with thoughts on how to best animate Zillas light switching to find shortcuts, but still resemble good animation.

My ideas are the following:

1. I'm going to create one of the old fashioned switches ( the metal ball shaped switches). I think this will be easier to flick on and off, instead of pressing it in, as that will take far more frames to animate, and in turn longer to render.
2. To save time I am going to just make one cycle of animation, and then in after effects we can just repeat it. (this will halve the rendering time it would be otherwise).
3. As there is no voices, and Zilla can't say "Zilla the light switch isn't working". I have thought of the idea to add a small wall lamp and have her looking at it when switching on and off the switch, as if to say she's trying to get that lamp working.

Back to rendering

I just got in this morning to find that the over night rendering hasn't exactly gone to plan.

After setting eight computers in the studio to render, it resulted with three of the computers completely crashing and were found turned off, resulting in them rending a range of two-eight frames before dying. One computer had just stopped rendering after fourty frames. All of these I had to set off again and hope we can play catch up and get them all done.

Another animation........

Phil text me a few moments ago, asking me to animate his scene of Zilla switching on and off the light switch. If I am honest I really wasn't amused by this, as I'm extremely busy at the moment with rendering and I also have a freelance project in for Monday which is realy far behind schedual, so I honestly don't have the time to spare for this. For the film however I guess I have to make time, and then do my best to make up in my freelance work.

I am also a bt dissapointed that Phil didn't already find time to animate this, as in theory it should have been completed ages ago. I suppose however it gives me a chance to get some extra animation in to the film, it's just unfortunate that I didn't no more in advance as I could make a better go at animate it nicely. WIth this short amount of time i'm going to have to find shortcuts.

Rendering

Today me and Josh have been getting stuck into the rendering. Thankfully some of the machines are coping with some of our less demanding scenes that don't contain Zilla and her fur. We have started off 3 scenes today, and are hoping that two of the scenes will finnish over night, and the biggest of the three will finnish tomorrow in the day.

Scenes rendered:

1. Opening street- 2 shots
2. Phils tie caught scene
3. My Reaching scene
4. My in between scene
5. Phil's ending scene

Scenes rendering:

1. Re- rendering Phil's opening scene: 283 frames- hopefully finnish over night (spread on 4 computers in studio)
2. My safe scene- 200 frames (rendering on 2 computers)
3. My Fork scene- (Josh is currently finishing the lighting but is going to render through the night and tomorrow. (rendering on 2 computers)
4. My zilla scene- (rendering on Josh's powerful desktop computer)

Scenes still to do:

1. Phi'ls Light switch scene (also has Zilla so may cause a problem)
2. Phil's sink dynamics scene

Inbetween shot post 2

I left the animation yesterday as I wanted to look back it it today to make sure I was OK with it. I also left the tie for today for the same reason, as tracking the tie takes a long time so I wanted to make sure the animation looked good enough to progress with.

1. Starting to track the tie (badly) 

2.  Improving the tie

3. Starting to add a settle going both ways on the tie.

4. Finishing the tie animation, making sure the settle worked well, and looked good.

5. This is the final animation with the rest of the kitchen showing.

Hopefully after this work the two scenes should blend together better. Itt's short and sweet but should do the job. I would like to of started a new animation from fresh but due to a short deadline I had to think of a shortcut.

Inbetween shot post 1

I decided that I would recycle part of my turn from my previous animation as we are low on time.

I have used the basis of the turn and from there progressed it to link and fit in well in the new place in the story.

1.This one is just a basic video showing how the animation has started out linking the turn with the original position that my scene ended with. 

2. I then played around with the door to get it to look as though the door is getting slammed shut my zilla. I also started to get the camera into position and follow the animation better. 

3. Once again I have altered the camera to be closer and it follows the animation better. 

So what's next for me to do?

Now that I have finished all of the animation for my scenes, it's a case of what else can I give to the project.

Looking at the animation we have so far, me and Phil noticed, that through our sections of animations, there was one particular scene that we need blending together more as my scene doesn't particularly flow into his. The scene I am talking about is just after zilla has left, my scene ends and it cuts to Phil's scene where Zilla is looking at the door. So really my new task is to find a short but effective way to transition between the two to make the animation fit together better.

My ideas are really to find a way for him to turn to that position.

• My ideas include having him turn and look for Zilla and look at the door perhaps as it slams to a shut.
• Or he could do a turn and relief as she's gone, or a turn showing him relieved.

Safe and pulled section put into kitchen

I have now put this animation which I finnished ages ago, into the new kitchen. The way I had the camera though was blocked by the big decorative pot so I have had to move that, and the small jars in a way that allows the animation to be visible, but also show the pots are still there, in the area they are suppost to be. It also I think gives a nice frame to the shot, drawing your eye to the action.

My 3rd scene put into the new kitchen

After lots of time playing with the tie, and adjusting cameras, and Roy's lims, I hav got the scene to how I am happy, and into the proper kitchen, so now it just needs sending across to Josh for rendering.

Still can't find the memory stick

I have pulled my whole flat apart looking for the memory stick, and have asked everyone from animation, and no one seems to have seen it anywhere, so the likely hood is it's either been stolen or dropped somewhere.

Sean has sent an email out for me, but I'm pretty sure it won't turn up now. The last time I saw it was Monday when I was packing away in the studio, and from there I have no idea what has happened with it.

I am realy frustrated I have somehow misplaced my memory stick, and it's realy not good. Although there is nothing on there that prevents me from finnishing the project, there are videos and files that I wasa transefering to to my harddrive through. My computer is so terrible I have to transfer files onto my memory stick as a temporary precaution to allow space on my laptop to work. I then later further transfer those files onto my harddrive.

So it appears I have infact along with the memory stick lost all of the videos/ playblasts of changes I have made to my fork scene, so I am realy annoyed about that.

I realy hope I can find it, because I am unsure what else is on the stick.

After the external examiner

After today's visit, I was a bit more relaxed to hear that the viewing of work wasn't as strict as I thought, and his visit was more to See how the course was going. He however did go through out idea, and seemed to like it, however like I suspected I could tell he wasn't fully sure of the idea in his head as there wasn't much of the story visually shown to him to go by.

My second scene colour playblasted

Once again due to my ridiculously bad laptop I cannot even open the kitchen file with the coloured textures shown in Maya so I had to pass it across to Josh to re-assign the textures and create a playblast from that.

I think as a whole I am happy with this scene, the real trouble was trying to get the right amount of force in each movement. It really was a huge challenge to get the correct shifting weight whilst remembering that he's always being held back by his tie.I just look forward to seeing it rendered out along with the rest of the film now, hopefully it will look great.

External examiner rush to try get things together

I have wanted to really get things together for the visit tomorrow, and really hoped we could improve what we have to show him. Looking at what we have, we have indeed made improvements however we haven't added more onto the film or put much more together to show, so it looks more like we will be relying on the hand in film.

I hope it turns out OK and he likes what he sees, I'm just a bit nervous as we don't even have a full story of any quality to show at this point.

My coloured scene handin for 9th of May

Hand in day

Today it was the hand in for the films, and although today's hand in was nothing like the final film, we can finally see things shifting in the right direction.

The positive

1. I have got one scene ready to render and am well on the way for the second, so it's looking good for my scenes rendered in time. 
2. The texturing, lighting and rendering is coming along well so far, so it's looking like the quality of the film will be good.
3. The rest of the group are all pushing hard to get the project finished, so I am positive about us doing well.

Issues

There's no particular major issues, just a few things that would have been better, but have been affected.

It is particularly annoying that the computers in the studio cannot render the film as it would ease the pressure of rendering, as everything is having to go through Josh's computer, so it may take a long time to get this complete. I am still optimistic though as we are all still pushing hard and everyone is pulling there weight towards the end. 

Due to time and technology restraints, we've also had to cut down on particles, and effects in the film which is a shame, but I feel we still, have worked around this and made up for the problems.

I just hope it will all come together in the remaining weeks and look and resemble the quality we all wanted from the beginning of the year.

Animation put into kitchen

Pull from the tie

Reach1 post 3

Reach 3 post 3

Tie animation

Reach 2 post 3

Fork section post 7

Fork section post 6

Sorting Zilla out

Scene with Zilla

Changes to Zillas entering

Zillas close up

Zilla changing

Reach 3 post 2

Safe and Pulled 4

Fork scetion post 5

Safe and Pulled 3

Safe and pulled 2

Safe and Pulled 1

Safe and pulled

Fork scetion post 4

Fork scetion post 3

Reach1 post 2

Fork section post 2

Jar of glow worms

After my idea to get Roy to hit and tip over a jar of glow worms, I have been trying to work out how to go about this. Josh has build the Jar and sent it over to me.

First of all I made a poly model of one individual worm. once happy with the shape, I duplicated it many times, and ranged the scales of various worms.

Once bult it was a case of filling up the jar. This was where I ran into a brick wall with my idea. Due to them being poly models the more I did maya couldn't handle it and crashed every time. The image below was as far as I could get with filling up the jar.

In future I am going to get Phil to animate the worms using particles, as it woul dbe less demanding. I will however controll a select few of the worms so I can get beautiful results in the animation and getting them to land and bounce how I want.

Fork section post 1

Fork section post 1

Reach 2 post 2

Reach 2 post 2

Reach1 post 1

Attempted mox of reaches 1 and 3

I wanted to see if reach 1 and 3 would link together in one animation as it initilay looked possible. Unfortunately it turned out terrible, so I'm going to revert to the originial order of reaches 1, 2, 3

Reach 3 post 1

 

Attempt of second grab

I have been trying to get animated a second grab which will be his attempt to get free. I wanted to add an animation where he looked like he was struggling to get free and fighting the pull of the tie.

I found it quite tricky to show the forces of him pulling to the tie pulling the other way. It was hard to show this in an effective way. I still however don't think it's a very good animation so I am going to scrap this grab and try and get a nicer animation that shows Roy's real efforts to get free.

More work on Zilla's entrance

More Zilla edit

Once again I have been giving the animation of Zilla a go, trying to get her to enter through the door. She is is causing me all sorts of problems at the moment, with her short legs and also trying to get her moving right for her weight.

Josh's 3d scene plan

Josh has recently been posting his camera angles of his maya outside scene looking for peoples opinion on the cameras angle for the 1st shot of the film.

After he posted this one, I gave him a little sketch over the top of his to guide him on how I would dpersonally want the shot. I told him to try and keep the windo of the house on the line of thirds so it is a key focus point for the viewer, also I wanter it pulled back to see more of the street on the right hand side to give a bigger and more dramatic effect, of enforcing that there is a huge city surrounding that little unique house.

Josh also made a basic car so I gave him position idesas of where I think they should be placed in the scene along with the sign post with the name of the film.

I also got quite exited and thought up the use of a yellow cab to enforce that it is american and a yellow cab in the car style we have chosen would look realy cool.

Toning down the chef's hat

Fixing Turn

I just had a play with how Roy turns as I was completely happy with the motion/drag he had. I think this one is smoother and is more appealing adn natural.

More hat animation

Hat and Tash working

My latest work with the hat and moustache animation. I really like the hat at the moment and how much drag and bounce I can add to it, it's very fun to animate.

Animated the hat and Tash

Recently Josh finished the rigs of the hat so I have been having great fun playing with it. It has given me that extra boost again, in enthusiasm towards the animation.

Tasks for the group for the last weeks

Once again I have created a task calender, hopefully people will attempt to follow it this time.

Smoothing Roy's Animation

For the past few weeks I have been concentrating on cleaning up and smoothing out Roy's aniamtion trying to get it to the finished standard of animation. I'm just realy now waiting to get into the tie and hat animation properly.

Adding Breakdowns

Recently I have been tidying up the key poses and adding in the breakdowns. I think it's starting to look nicer, and hopefully using this method the animation will turn out looking realy nice.

Reaction animation

After working on the initial shock part of the animation, I wasn't particularly sure how to make Roy recover into his next position. Today I starting working on the following where he collapses and then comes back up into the position.

I wasn't realy that happy with how it looked, I tried to locate Peter to see if he could help, and then saw Denese and asked her advice. After discussing it with her she thought the best way would to have him hold his position longer giving him time to almost recover after the shock, and then return to what he was doing.

Ambulence Stretcher modelling

Stretcher process  

   1. Used a cube, stretched it into a mattress shape and bevelled it.

2. Created a bar to support the mattress form a helix.

3. Next I have created another bar that surrounds the mattress. I then created handle bars for both sides and the end.

4.  Next I created another bar with a cross bar on it. I then created a smaller one further below for the bottom of the stretcher.

5. Next I began sculpting the wheels. I started with a cylinder, I then pulled out faces to make the tyre stick out more. I then extruded out a bolt/nut, to connect the wheel to the frame.

I then contsructed a peice of metal that surronds the wheel,which also habrake attached. From hi I constructed cycinders toact as the conecti componants to allow the wheeto attatch tthe stretcher itself and add the twisting/movement that stretcher wheels have. 

6. Following that it was just acase of putting the wheels into position.

7. To conet the top and bottom part of the stretcer Idecided to go for the crosed br style stretcher which I fee resemled a better looking stretcher. Oncethe asic bars whee in position I sculpted partof the cylinde to resemle a peice tat conects the bars together. 

8. It was then just a simple case of adding crossing bars to support the frame.

9. Here is the stretcher. (not with final colours, and I may ke alterations latr on)

Neil's advice

Today Neil had a look through my stepped version of my animation. He looked futher into the reaction part of the animation, where the mum slams throu the door and shocks Roy.

I originaly had Roy do a large reactin where he bursts out backwards. Neil thought that a more subttle approach would work nicer. The following is a few frames nil drew to demonstrate how the reaction should go. We thought this type of reaction would suit his type of character better.

Animation progression post 4

Fromative assessment

I wasn't very confident going into this formative as I would liked to have got more animation together and complete, to get more reactions and to get further along my stage of animation.

Through showing my latest animation it became clear that both Neil, and Peter thought that my technique of animation was very different and was harder to see what the fnal product would look like. They thought the animation was far too robotic and even.

I do agree with that in many respects, my only argument was that although that is my style I have used previously that degree of animation was not finalised in any way. I tend to animte everything straight off using splines. I put the key poses and breakdowns in that way and then go through adding in any drag etc following that. I do think my style usualy works, woever the type of animation I have been subject to through my freelance jobs, have required quick and animation that is less demanding, so that was the best way for me to do those at the time. I have always however wanted to try the "proper" method of animation, just the situation hasn't occured for me to properly get into learning the graph editor properly and getting used to working on the stepped key animation.

From this feedback I am definately going to work on using the stepped method, and use the graph editor to follow this way of animation. It may take me a little while to adapt but in the long run this is how people in the industry operate so it's best to learn and adapt now before finnishing uni.

All in all though they both liked my key poses and the general idea of my animation, it's just a case of working to the new guidelines and using the new method to get it looking nicer.

Animation progression post 3

Animation progression post 2

Animation progression post 1

Begginning my fisrt scene of animation

I have now finally come to the stage where I can animate. It is a shame it has taken so long to get to the part of the project i want to do, but now I can finally make an impact in the group.

Video 1

First of all I started to get Roy's basic shuffling motion on the saucepan to test the rig and to find an easy way to begin.

Video 2

Next I began the movement of how Roy would sniff his food in the saucepan

Video 3

Finally today I got in the motion of Roy sniffing the food.

Reference for my first animation scene

coocoo clock fo rthe wall

I have been begining to create a coocoo clock for  the wall of the house, I have only got to this stage because it's now not going to be in the scene, so I'll move onto something else now.

More Kitchen Models

As I am taking it to myself to build a basic Kitchen I have decided to model some more items to fill it up.

Large cooking pot for the hob

Decorative pots for the shelves

Knife block for the Kitchen side

Various wooden spoons to hand from the shelves

Teapot

I just created this simple teapot for the scene, I just wanted to make it a bit more unusual so played around with the shape and moved the spout low down.

Decorative jar

Kitchen update 2

Plate stack for one of the shelves

Kitchen modelling post2

Tap model

For some reason this was simple but my favourite model. So simple but I like it.

Basic sink model

Update on Shelving

Here is the final model of the shelving supports. I think they look realy nice and should add to the scene nicely.

Below is just a quick image of a quickly made shelf which I have shaped to be different and fit in with the rest of the scene, more than a boring rectangle shaped shelf. Below is just and image of these put together.

Creating the shelf supports

First of all I started to make them by polygon modelling, but it became apparent that CV curvs sould sped up the production time.

Below I have showed examples of how I created parts of the shelf supports

kitchen modelling

I have begun building a very basic kitchen so in the future I can begin to animate and place kitchen items/models into it.

Updated fridge

After recreating the oven, I decided to go back to the fridge and shape it a bit more to help it feel more stylised. Al I have done is curved the shape and made it seem a bit more dented and distorted.

Chefs hat progression

I have recently been playing around with creating the hat for Roy. I found it very tricky to actualy create a nice shape for the hat. I have made various attampts at the hat and the following are two varieties of hat, one very basic, the other trying to get the traditional shape of hat.

We will definately be going for the shaped hat, and I'm happy i finaly made one I'm happy with as it was a nightmare making this hat.

Monster oven

Recently Neil saw my oven, and thought it was too realistic, and not realy stylised in any way. He suggested trying to design it to resemble a monster itself. So after days of modelling this is what I have come up with:

1. I have kept the hob tops/protecters on the top
2. Sharank and shaped the oven body, shaping it to not be perfect.
3. Added features to the front.
4. Added a long tail like extracter pipe on the back of the oven.
5. To complete the monster look I have used Roy's feet and added them and feet for the cooker.

Arga finnished

After loads of time modelling this oven, I think it is looking pretty complete, and ready to be put into the scene. I like how it has turned out and am happy wth it.

Fridge

Kitchen Cupboard door

Kitchen Cupboard

Plasticine Model of Roy

I just decided maybe a nice way to get used to the anatomy of the character was to just physically build him from plasticine, with my own hands. Although Josh is the character modeller, I thought it would just allow me to personally view him in my own way and look/ imagine what I can do with him in regards to animation. It is extremely rough, and not exactly Aardman but it does the job.