Personal Projects

Along with the numerous compulsory projects we've been given over the past few months, I've been working on some more personal things in my free time too :)

Since new year, I've been trying to get into the habit of doing 30 minutes of creating a day, this could be working in Maya on an animation, drawing something, writing something, it can be for university or just something I want to work on and so far, I've kept to it. For the most part, University work takes up this time and usually much more than 30 minutes a day, but when I've found I've not had any work to do for university, I've worked on my own projects or projects for other people, which I guess I'll show and talk a little about below :)

One of the first things I worked on, in January was a walk cycle of the Bull Creature Rig, I worked on this for around 5 days, 30 minutes a day. I really enjoy working with quadrupeds and it was a nice, simple rig to work with :) The walk cycle is below. It's still pretty rough and could do with working on a little more, but I'm quite pleased with it.



As many of you know, I participate quite regularly in the Guild Wars 2 community, it's one of my favourite games, so I often find myself doodling fanart of some of my favourite characters in it. Below are a few digital paintings I've done recently......only now realizing that every non-university digital painting I've done in 2014 (that I'm able to show) has been Guild Wars 2 related and that does make me come of as either a fangirl or a little obsessed...but oh well :P Here they are

 

The above was drawn for a friend of mine, who sent me some materials in-game to help with a weapon I'm working on crafting, I drew this to thank him :D

 

Just a quick doodle of my character Gwylen, I'd gotten a letter from an NPC talking about how they'd named some of their children after me, in my honor (after I'd helped these NPC's out with some stuff) and thought it'd be fun to draw some of these babies with the GW2 name tags showing my characters name, above their heads.

 

The two paintings above are of Marjory and Kasmeer a couple in the Guild Wars 2 living story, who I'm quite fond of :) I plan to post a little about the Guild Wars 2 living story on my personal blog at some point, as I have a LOT to say about it. I do plan on starting up personal blogging soon, as I have a lot to talk about, I've recently completed several games, including Depression Quest, To the Moon and a few others, so I'd really like to discuss more about them on here :) Of course, this blog goes towards my grades at the end of the year, so blogging for coursework is going to be my main priority here and I've been very busy lately, so have been putting starting it off, more than I probably should be. Bare with me, I will sort out the website and blog soon though, I promise! (I only have 7 weeks left of uni right now anyway, so in the worst case scenario, it's going to be no longer than 8 weeks ^^)

When I get around to it, my plan for my website is to have (Main/Blog/About Me/Resume/Contact me/ for the main page and then for the blog to be split into two, tags wise (Game Development/Course Blog/Personal Blog) and all feed into one place, similarly to how it is now, with my blogspot account, but I'm hoping to phase out usage of that, when I can figure out how to get it displaying more clearly on my website (with tags and things till in tact) as I've noticed many embeds from my main blog didn't make it in the transfer, so I'm going to have to go back and fix all those, before I really get rid of the blogspot one.

Probably not helping me on the "looking like a GW2 fangirl" front, I've also done a lot of edits recently, using footage from the Guild Wars 2 living story. Editing is something I really enjoy a lot, so I've taken to picking a random "Creative commons licenced" song off the Newgrounds audio portal, that I like and then spending the night editing it to Guild Wars 2 footage and sometimes audio, when I'm finding it hard to sleep. There's something quite therapeutic about timing footage to beats :3

Below are all of my recent edits.

 









 Along with these random edits and things, I've been working on a couple of undisclosed projects that, unfortunately, I can't talk too much about.
One of them is a card-game project for the company When Worlds Collide the company responsible for the RPG system with the same name :) 

There's 5 of us working on the project right now, as artists for their upcoming card game, set to be released on Kickstarter sometime soon, I've been working both as an editor for promotional material and as a digital painter for some of the card art. We're very close to having completed all of the work we were commissioned for soon, so it won't be too long before the game is released and I can show some of the art created for it.

One other project I was working on was Project TDHAS, a project I've been a part of for a while now (I think I've talked a little about this before). It was originally a game made by Tristan for a university assignment, that he chose to continue working on. It's made in Unity 3D and went from originally being a top down game, to being a 3rd person game. I was on the team as an art director, producing seamless textures, UI graphics and backdrops for the game and was going to go on to work on animations, once the project got further in. Tristan was the main designer, modelling and coding it and there was also a composer on our team.

 Both Tristan and I are juggling a lot of work right now (and he's started on a new project and the assignment has been handed in) so I'm not sure what the fate of this project will be, but it was fun experience working for him on it.

I'd never done any kind of texture work before, so it was a new experience for me. The game works on PC and is able to connect to an android system, for puzzles such as lock picking or safe breaking. Here's Tristan's blog post on integrating those, showing the android lock picking game and one of the environments (albeit not very textured) areas in the game.

Finally, I'll talk about this more soon, but in my free time I've been working on a personal project of mine called Taking Wing. It was an idea I jotted down whilst at Bradford games festival, being inspired by the talk Jaromir Plachy gave on his inspirations behind Botanicula. Falmouth University is starting a games development degree next year (one I wish I wasn't too late to be a part of) and as a result, 3rd year animation students can now submit games as well as films, for final year. We'll be pitching these ideas soon and I'm hoping Taking Wing gets greenlit, so I can put it towards my degree in 3rd year and collaborate with other students on the campus, such as composers.

I'm currently working to build the game in Stencyl, although this is subject to change, depending on whether I find the program too limiting or not (I only have experience in  RPGmaker XP and Game Maker but chose Stencyl because it seems to be more versatile from an animation perspective, something I'd need if I was to submit it as my final animation project)

Here's a screenshot of the production bible I'm working on and a concept for the first level and the current title screen (working, but subject to change...the writing is animated with a flicker)

Fingers crossed pitching it goes well, I guess! :)
 I'll talk more about games and other projects soon (particularly past games projects, as I'm about 98% sure game development and 3D character animation are the areas I'm most passionate about and would most like to go in, now)

But for now, Char out! 

2013 a year in review :3

So, here it is, my last post of 2013 :D

It's been an interesting year, I've learned a lot, had a chance to further my animation skills at least a little. Passed my 1st year and already made it through half of second year, created some animations I am proud of and some, not so much. I also decided where I want to specialize, which is a massive leap for me :D

I came onto this course being completely in love with all animation styles and techniques and didn't really know whether I wanted to go into post production, pre production, production or other things.

It was only at the end of 1st year that I decided that the thing I'd most like to specialize with, is 3D Character animation. I really enjoy working in Maya and trying to bring characters to life, using this method sounds perfect for me :) Subtle eye and body language are things I always seem to pick up on in films, so it'd be nice to learn and get good at bringing characters to life myself.

We recently got set an 11 Second animation project, to the November audio clip from the 11 second club, you can see this below.



I spent a few whole days working on this animation, paying attention to as many little details as I could, even though the rigs I was using (Nico and Fox 1.0 from Creative Crash) didn't have as complex facial controls as a human rig would've. I enjoyed playing with the ears and tails especially, working on follow through and overlap motions.

I received some incredible critique from my 'mentor' that I posted about a while back, so I'll be improving this animation and working to his feedback very soon. He's given me a lot of tips and advice on how to improve the way the characters interact, along . Infact, I'll post it below, as it's really helpful advice may help others too, plus it'll make it clear what I'll be changing at some point.

"First off nice job so far! You've really improved since I saw your first animation! Also, an 11 second 2 character dialogue shot is NO small task! Don't sell yourself short with "only 11 second short one." Thats a lot of animation!!! Even professionals at Disney and Dreamworks average 4-5 seconds per week. It's pretty ambitious!

First things first, that camera angle! Flat on the side is the most boring camera angle you could choose! Switch it up, put a 45 degree angle on the center of the shot. Play with camera changes, over the shoulder type things to really keep the shot interesting!

It will also free you up from being stuck to forward/backward awkward movement. In terms of the acting, some of the choices work, some don't so much. At first for example she's coming on strong in her voice, but she backs off when she's saying it. It doesn't sound like shes intimidated by him or anything, so maybe try reversing that move and having her come forwards towards him when she says it.

Same thing when she curls up and sits down. She's taking a lower position than him on screen and psycologically, which makes her look weaker. Again, she's coming on pretty strong. Get her up and strong! She probably can't get above him height wise, but you could perhaps lower the male wolf a bit in order to make that happen!

That being said I like his body language when he says "I don't cry." It makes him seem proud the way he puts his head up, which he sounds like! But then you drop it down instantly! If he's really proud, he's not going to go into sad mode again! He might look away or look at his foot or kick the dirt or something, but lowering his head again makes his proud statement not so strong.

Those are just some general ideas to think about as far as the acting goes. The body says 1000% more than the voice does!
In terms of mechanics, I would take a lot of time focusing on those! Study how a dog should sit and really work on making it seem like she's sitting when she sits down in the middle! Make sure the feet aren't sliding around. You've got a fairly large pop around 2 seconds in when she sits down too.

I realllly like the mechanics you have going with the dog on the right. He's not moving too much (a common issue is wayyyyy too much movement, or what might be called "over animating") He's kinda backing away at the end which feels nice enough mechanics wise (Acting wise I might place that more towards the beginning because he's put his pride on the line after his statement) You wen't really simple with him, WHICH IS GREAT! It's such a smart decision and it really helps him feel nice!

The girl is what I would say is overanimated. She's walking back and forth for no real reason, she sits down and stands up for no real reason. You can do something like this easily with two poses. Maybe start with her sitting and then come up on him when she says "you know what'd be really nice?" (Not saying change your whole shot, just things to think about in the future!)
But again, super nice progress as far as where you came from! It's honestly not horrible, but it's got a long way to go at the same time! You're doing great! Keep it up!"

I'm definitely going to work on removing some animation from her, as well as posing. I really love the idea of her starting out from sitting, as I struggled to get her sitting animation to look authentic. I'm not sure whether I'll get all of this done for the deadline, as I still have an essay and 3 production reports, among other things due this month as well. But I'll be sure to try my best with it, and even if I don't complete it for the deadline, I'll rework it for my show reel anyway, so expect that on my blog soon! :)


Another thing I wanted to talk about was Kieth Lango's tutorials. Kieth Lango's blog was suggested to us in first year, because of his amazing article on Pose to Pose animation. What I didn't know, was that he used to do a series of VTS animation clinic tutorial videos every week, that could be subscribed to like a magazine. One of my friends at University recently noticed that he was selling 60 hours worth of these VTS tutorials in a bundle for £18. This was only for a couple of days, so I was really lucky to get in on it, but from what I've seen of them so far, they're incredibly, helpful and detailed tutorials, ranging from timing and poses to character animation itself. I can't wait until after deadlines, so I can really get stuck into them! For anyone interested, he's still selling these 60 hours of tutorials for £60 on his website here, I'd definitely recommend them! It's an incredible price for so much knowledge.

Just before I end this post, I thought I'd put up some Digital Paintings I've done recently, the first 3, practicing Lighting and the Final 3 practicing colour :) The first 3 were some pre-vis concepts for my Production Bible, which have since been scrapped, for a different style. The second 3, being random warm-up doodles whilst I was home for Christmas c:

and finally, the end of year showreel!



I'm slowly trying to phase out most of my 2D animation, replacing it with newer 3D work. Mostly because the majority of my 2D work is very old or sloppy to the point that I am unhappy with it. But also because I want to have a more specialized and detailed 3D show reel that I can continue adding to :3
I still really enjoy 2D animation and will probably continue working on 2D animations at one point or another (I've already applied to be a tweener/clean up animator on a couple of the 3rd year 2D films as well as a character animator on the 3D project Lone Wolf, so I'm looking forward to 2014!)

I hope you've all had a wonderful year,
See you all in 2014!

General bulk update, Character Animation, Production bibles and Disneys Frozen

Heya everyone :)
It's been a while since I've done a proper update explaining what I've been doing lately, so here it is c:

Production Bibles - 

Currently I'm working on a project for our Pre-Production module which involved I picking four concepts out of a hat. A character, Location, Genre and Art influence. My cards were: A doctor, an opera house, Family Feature film and Edward Gorey.

I'll talk about this project a lot more when it comes to a conclusion and I've handed it in, so I can post the final pieces, however, it involves us producing an animatic, short animated film, a production bible and a research bible for our 'film'.

The synopsis I created for this film is below.

"Dr Mathews is a well known performance psychiatrist, working freelance at Canada’s biggest new opera house. With questionable methods which involve entering the patients mind by use of a machine and fighting off the monsters he finds there with hand to hand combat, it’s a shock when he is called in for an emergency case. Eugine, an up and coming singer, set to perform in front of Royalty in 4 days, has broken down due to an anxiety attack during his latest performance. If anything can help Eugine, it’s Dr Mathews. But Eugine has more monsters than he has ever seen before, fighting them off is difficult and for once, he cannot do it alone. Can Dr Mathews convince Eugine to join him in facing his fears? Or is Eugine’s date with Royalty destined for disaster?"

I'll post the full plot, when I come to put the actual production bible on this blog, as it's much to long for a blog post :)

For the production bible, I must create concept art for the characters, locations among other things in the film. A PDF including everything a production company would need in order to get a feel for my film, if I were to pitch it to them.
It's something I'm really enjoying putting together and I'm finding Edward Goreys style quite fun to work with, especially when giving my film a dark, edgy, Tim Burton style feel to it.

I thought I'd show the work I've done on the Animatic so far. Obviously the voices will all be re-hashed before the hand-in of this and it's just a very rough draft of the animatic, but hopefully it at least gives a little bit of a feel of the kind of film I am pitching.



I'm having a lot of fun with the character of Dr Mathews and how him and Eugine interact with each other. I think when I come to actually animating this scene, it'll be a very fun challenge for me :D

Character Animation -

I'm still trying to get a decent amount of character animation in on the sidelines to the other projects we're being set. We've recently been given the task of animating to the 11 second club, November audio clip, to focus on character animation, so hopefully I'll have that to show in January. We're in the planning stages of that now and I'm looking forward to being able to concentrate on just the animation, a lot :)

Below is another animation I've done recently that I wanted to show. It's still a little bit unfinished, I need to work on the overlap of the tail and ears and work out some skips when it loops around, among other things, but I'm still pretty pleased with it overall. I sent this to Yasmin, director of the 3rd year project, Lone Wolf and she accepted me onto her production team as a character animator, so I'll have that to work on in Feburary, which is exciting!



Disneys Frozen-

I don't usually talk about Animated movies I've been to see (although, maybe I should do that more? or is that too off topic? Maybe just once in a while as part of bulk updates :D As I do like to keep up with the animated feature film scene)

On Tuesday, I went to see Frozen with the remainder of my flatmates that haven't gone home for Christmas yet, Connor and Katie.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much from it, the adverts I had seen of it just seemed to show Olaf a lot (wheras he was more for comedy relief and this gave me the impression that the film was aimed more at kids and was going to be quite childish...my first impressions were a little harsh, I'll admit)

A short film, in the style of classic Mickey Mouse Disney, was shown before the film, worked on by Eric Goldberg, named "Get a Horse" which combined traditional animation with 3D animation, having the characters seemingly burst through a screen to become 3D. It was fun to watch and really nicely done too! Really nice to see another traditionally animated Disney short :3

In regards to Frozen my opinion had changed after the first couple of minutes of the film, it had such a beautiful and energetic opening and was so beautifully done. The film was so much more than I expected it to be and surprised me in so many ways. The character animation is stunning and the visual effects are masterfully done. If you have the time, search some of their behind the scenes videos on youtube in regards to snow simulation, it's really cool, some of the techniques they've created for this movie.

They managed to put so much emotion and feeling into the characters, I genuinely felt for them and ended up teary eyed at least twice throughout the film. 

I'll just leave this sequence from it, here :3 Beautifully demonstrating this.



I'll admit, this film has become a big inspiration to me these past few days, I've had a lot more drive to work on my character animation among other things, since seeing the film. I'd really recommend it for any of you animation types pondering whether to go or not :D Even if you're not into the Disney princess scene, it's worth it for the animation alone!

Usually when I've got a day of drawing ahead (for my production bible) I'll do an unrelated warm-up sketch to start off the day and get the creative juices flowing. This was from a couple of days ago c:
I'm still kind of sloppy when it comes to human anatomy, but I've been more pleased with this sketch than many of my previous, so maybe I'm improving a little bit :)

That's all for now c:

Until next time
~Char

Back to work :3

So, I've been back at University for a few weeks now
Apologies for the lack of updates since coming back, there's been a lot going on lately, but hopefully I'll be back to blogging regularly now :3

I guess I'll begin by talking about the holidays as I kept myself quite busy during that.

I spent some time practicing 3D techniques, as mentioned in my previous blog post, but unfortunately didn't get quite as far with that as I wanted to. I didn't really feel very accomplished whilst at home in the holidays and without any feedback (I couldn't upload things, so couldn't ask for advice from friends or from lecturers) so it mostly consisted of me playing around with the software for a few hours a day, learning different rigs, but not really having amazing work to show for it.
I do feel it helped a lot, but I went in wanting to improve my showreel tons and I don't feel like that has happened (I only ended up being truly happy with a couple of things I animated)

I finished about half of the things on my list and then chose to do something I felt was more productive from a CV perspective and enrolled on a EU recognized adult learning course named ECDL, which I completed in a couple of months and received a qualification for :D So not a completely wasted summer, luckily ^_^

Here's one of the animation tests I did during the summer, that I was most happy with
I spent quite a lot of time focusing on the characters facial expression and subtle eye movements and I think it's probably the best animation I've done in CG to date, so I'll definitely be including it in my next show reel once it's all fleshed out :3

Other than that, my holiday consisted of doing art commissions (my style has changed a lot o-o) Editing game footage to music, to work on timing and spending time with my family/relaxing :)

Here's a few other things I worked on during the holidays

Art -

The above work is mostly commissioned pieces I worked on during the summer, along with a comic I made. My 6 year old bamboo tablet ended up on it's last legs, so I decided to buy the Cintiq 13HD I'd been saving up for last holiday (but didn't save up enough to get, before I came to uni) and bought it just before term started :3

It's an amazing little thing and I think it's making me pay a lot more attention to little details in my work as well as work faster and more efficiently, which can only be a good thing :D All I can say, is 3 months packing biscuits 9 hours a day, last holiday was totally worth it, even if it was hell at the time ;u; Hopefully it'll last me as long, if not much longer than my Bamboo did c: Little thing is still fighting onwards, even with the odd connection issue from time to time :'3

The three orange Charr drawings are post new tablet and as you can see, my work has become much more loose since getting it :3 


Editing -

I really wanted to practice my editing more, I find it really relaxing to just sit down and edit footage to music, so I edited a couple of GW2 video's, most that I recorded myself and one that I used the watercolour style cutscenes of Guild Wars 2 for. The cutscenes in this game are beautifully done and so was the ending theme of Guild Wars 2 'Fear not this night'. So I chose to combine the two, editing a lot of the cutscenes to the music, which I found lots of fun :3

Below are a few of these videos







I have a couple of animatics to post up and a few life drawings, so you'll be seeing more from me soon c: but for now, that's all from me :D

Until next time ~ 

Holiday Work Master Post

Hey everyone c: It's been a while since I last posted, so I figured I'd come change that :D

For a start, I passed first year with a 2:1, which is awesome :D Really happy, because I was having my doubts about some of the stuff passing (3D Modeling) so it was a huge relief to know I don't have to retake anything in the holidays ^_^

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I've been working on some basic animation tasks during the summer holidays c: Unfortunately I have an internet bandwidth here which is preventing me from uploading large files to the internet whilst at home (basically anything but pictures) >.< However, I'll make a checklist of all the things I'm working on, here and then post them all up at once when I'm back at uni with that shiny fast broadband, the ones I'm happy with will probably end up in a showreel of sorts :D

So I thought I'd make this the master post for all of my holiday work c: As not to clog up the blog with everything c: I'll probably elaborate on each video in another master post, when I'm back on campus ^_^ 

Here's the list I'm working from in 3D (Compiled a mixture of tasks from the 11 second club and Animator Island)  -

1. Ball bouncing in place (No Decay) 
2. Ball bouncing across the screen
3. Simple character head turn
4. Character head turn with Anticipation
5. Character thinking
6. Flour Sack waving (loop)
7. Flour Sack jumping
8. Flour Sack falling
9. Change in character emotion
10. Overlap/Follow through (tails/hair.ect)
11. Character Laughing
12. Standing up from sitting
13. Biped Run Cycle
14. Biped Walk Cycle
15. Quadruped Walk Cycle
16. Quadruped Run Cycle
17. Dragons/Birds (Wings) 
18. Scared character peering around corner
19. Startled Quadruped
20. Character jumping over gap


and to end this post, a drawing for you :D I worked on a few days ago for a friend c:

Task #2 - Bouncing Ball Across Screen

My second holiday task was to animate a ball bouncing from one end of the screen to another, I'm not as pleased with the outcome of this task compared to my previous one, but hopefully with a bit more work and practice, I'll be able to get this one on par with the other one :3 I've also recieved some really good feedback on the other one, which I'll talk about in a future blog post (when I have applied these changes to my work)

Below is my first attempt at this, It was suggested that I try animating almost entirely with the graph editor, which I did for this one. The graph editor has turned out to be a really, really useful tool, but something I think I need to work a lot more on, so I completely get the hang of it.  :3



 From observation, a few things I can see, need work on this are that the stretch and squash seems a little bit too visible for me. When I re-work this animation, I will make the stretch of the fall a lot more subtle, as I feel that especially when the ball changes direction, the stretch becomes distracting.
Another change I will probably be making is I feel the bounces are too close together, so spreading them out a little would be of benefit c: I'll be working on both these things along with whatever I get from the guy who agreed to help mentor me over the summer.

In addition to this, there are some feedback tutorials with my lecturers on the 13th, so I should have some information on what I was doing right, or wrong in regards to all of the work I submitted on either the 24th or the 31st of last month :D Which should be really awesome c:

We also get our grades on the 27th of this month, so just under two weeks time! So I'll be updating with any feedback I get from that and tell you if I have to re-take any of the modules in the summer (fingers crossed that I don't, but I'm not to confident in how my Damaged Detail and 2D to 3D Projects are going to hold up in the marking process)

But other than these things, I'm pretty much free to work on whatever I want now c: I'll be doing some observational drawing in my free time (another thing suggested), particularly over the coming week, when I'll be going home for a few days, to catch up with an old friend of mine (and won't have my computer or maya)

Other than this, I'll be updating when I have new work to show :D or new information on things :3
Expect another blog post in a week or so once I've had these tutorials and improved on the beginners tasks I've been working on :D

Until Next Time! c:

No rest for the wicked...Aka: Task #1 - Bouncing Ball (No Decay)

Hey Everyone :3 I'm back again o-o It's so soon but meh, I've had a nice rest over the weekend, Geocaching with my flatmates, so back to business! :D

Basically, on Saturday, I posted my showreel, seen in my last blog post, to an animation 'newbie' type forum space, asking for some critique. I got some really helpful feedback, especially on the movement of the dragons tail, it should be moving more from the base outwards and I was given this video of Haku from Spirited Away to pay attention to, the next time I animate them.

The general consensus was that I should be going back over all of the 12 basic principles to get them down first, instead of rushing into complicated things like I have been.

As I've mentioned previously on this blog, my main aspiration on this course is to eventually end up in the field of 3D character animation...Having a showreel composed of almost entirely 2D work, this is clearly something I need to work on a lot xD

On this forum, I was approached by a 3D Character animator, currently freelancing in the industry who gave me some amazing tips, advice and feedback and offered to act as a kind-of mentor to me, during the holidays. Which is a really great offer and one that I am extremely thankful for :3 He suggested a few animation exercises to do over the holidays, including the basic principles, which will hopefully help me to improve my timing, spacing and how I approach animation in general c:

Here is my first task c: A simple bouncing ball (using the squishy rig I used way back, in my 3rd ever blog post. This ball was animated on the spot, with no decay (bounced the same height each time)



I'll work on this one more, possibly, based on any feedback I get on it :D
I'll hopefully be posting these at intervals throughout the holidays until I've completed the majority of the basic principles tasks I've been given :3 I've added a 'Summer Tasks' tag to the side bar of my blog, so I don't clutter everything else on my blog, up with all of these posts xD I've also linked my showreel in the 'useful links' section, because It's going to get buried very quickly else xD

But yes :D Task 2 is a Ball Bouncing across the screen, which I'll be attempting tomorrow :D

See you very soon :3
~Char

Achievement Unlocked: Year 1 Complete!

Second blog post of the day is a new 'achievement' xD Today marked our final hand-in and therefore, the completion of the year :D
It's gone really, really quickly, but has been a very enjoyable one c: I've learned a lot, made a lot of friends and I can't wait to get stuck into next year and work on my own stuff in the summer c: (I have two small group projects planned, one 2D game project with my friend Danny and a CGI, cut-scene like, short with my friend Tristan, from Plymouth University, Watch this space c:)

Below is my showreel, showing some of my best motion studies work for this semester c: along with a little bit of life drawing :3



I'm very happy with what I have achieved this year, but think I've stayed in my comfort zone, a little more than I'd have liked to (particularly with the dragons and lack of human animation). My intention is to take Post production next year and work a lot on CGI, 3D animation, as it is something very out of my comfort zone a little bit, but still something I'm really interested in and enjoy doing c: I also intend to do a lot more life drawing, to try and improve on my human anatomy skills :3

But yes! I'll be updating this blog regularly still, over the summer, so you'll still be hearing from me ^_^

Then next year, I have the pleasure of living with 6 other animators and an English Literature student :D Should be great fun ^_^

Until next year!
~Char out!

Deadline #1 Complete

Hey everyone c: Yesterday was the hand in date for half of the work for this semester, which was kind of scary, but a huge relief at the same time ^_^

I'm going to split my work into two posts, as I have both work from the 'Adaption' project in both 2D and 3D to talk about, but also very different work from the background project and for the sake of ease, using my labels, it'd be easier to do them both separately c:

In this post, I'll be talking about the Adaption project, a project in which we had to take a page or scene from a story book/game/comic and re-create this in Photoshop, putting everything onto layers, then perform a camera move through it in both Toon Boom Harmony and Autodesk Maya.

As promised, below is my checklist, showing what I have and haven't completed for first year c: My next deadline is Friday the 31st and then first year ends on the 14th June and we get our results back on the 27th June :D So I've got some very exciting and scary times coming up o-o

Updated Checklist - 

• DGA130 Design for Animation Experimental - Handed In
• DGA130 Design for Animation 3D Modelling Project 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm
• DGA130 Design for Animation Background Project 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 12.00 hrs Online
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Individual Adaptation Project (layout test shot) 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 23.55hrs Online
• DGA 120 Motion Studies Showreel 31^st May 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
• DGA 120 Motion Studies Portfolio 31^st May 2pm in Academic Office + 17.00 hrs Online
• DGA130 Design for Animation Ident Project 31^st May by 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Group Project (Sea Tales) 31^st May Academic Office time by 2pm + Presentation on 30^th May 2013
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Blog 31/5/13 23.55 Online

I'll keep my blog going until the end c: and I've got two projects (a one 2D Game Design one with my friend Dan and a 3D cutscene/CGI film one with my friend Tristan) set for the holidays c: So the likelihood is that I'll continue updating my blog throughout the whole of the holidays with information on both those projects as well.

In other news, Urashima Taro, the project I got to be a part of, a month or so ago has been officially completed and you can watch it below c:



Anyways, onto my adaption project c:
We were set the project producing a 'test shot', opening scene of a story book, game or comic. This had to be done using the program Toon Boom and had to show depth and some sort of 'background animation'.

For this project, I chose to adapt one of my favourite story books as a child. A book by Karen Hayles named The Star that fell. The book is done in a water colour style which I really like and I tried my best to re-create this in Paint Tool Sai, before importing it into Photoshop and then Toon Boom for use as part of this project.

We had to focus this project on the environment, not the narrative of the story, so I chose my background animation to be a horned owl taking off, rather than the star falling to earth (as seen in the book) as I felt the star was more of a narrative choice than a  background one, and there were owls later on in the story, so it wouldn't be out of place to do something like that c:



I created the opening of this animation using Toon Boom Harmony's perspective tool. This me to decide where each 2D piece was on a plain, giving the illusion that some parts of the scene were further away and some were nearer to the camera.

The 'background' animation had to be something that wasn't too intrusive, so in the left hand corner, I animated a tiny owl that fly's off the screen after a couple of seconds in order not to destroy the effect of the background. I'm quite pleased with the outcome, however, I think I could've spent a little longer working on it, as it's not very smooth and looks quite rough. I intend to spend more time over the holidays analysing the movements of animals like reptiles and birds in order to learn to animate them better (and humans, because as you can see from my Ident, my human animation needs a lot of work c:)

You can see my finished rendition of the Toon Boom Ident Below c:



For our second task it was required that we import this into Maya, model each piece of it and then perform a camera move through the scene. For starters, I really feel like this project helped me to improve my understanding of Maya, particularly in terms of projection mapping and using textures and I really enjoyed working on this piece, seeing how you can achieve different results with ‘2D style’ animation in 3D software packages.

This project was one I struggled with at first, but quickly began to get the hang of, as I imported more and more layers into the scene. The brief required that we give some sort of 3D sustenance to the work, so after projection mapping my layer onto a plain, getting my desired size and depth, I was able to build this up, stretching it out and giving it much more of a 3D feel (This would later allow me to give the Illusion of 3D when I performed my camera move)

I built the scene up using a variety of plane, situated different distances apart, and I used one image plane with the entire, completed background design projected on it. This enabled me to gauge where certain things had to be placed in the scene. I chose to leave the close up trees out of this scene as they caused a lot of problems for me in terms of the camera move (and they were something I added into the Toonboom scene as an after thought (they were not present in the book I was referencing the image from). I think maybe, if I was ever to try and re-do this project, I would work on finding more ways to incorporate these into the scene as I feel if would make the camera movement a lot more interesting.

As for the composition of the scene itself, I am quite pleased with how closely I matched the 3D scene to its original toonboom counterpart. I did however, find some parts of it very tricky to work with. When re-creating this, I found that the ‘hill’ or ‘ground’, which was previously of a good size to work with, became very hard to manage in a 3D environment. Framing the scene for render and positioning the camera in such a way that it showed all the parts of the scene it should, without showing the Maya grid or background (breaking the illusion) was also really tricky for me. I feel my scene could’ve looked a lot better and the camera move could’ve been improved dramatically if the hill for this environment was higher, allowing me to focus in more from the start.

Overall I am quite pleased with the modelling for each piece of land/layer in this scene. I think particularly the house, worked very well at keeping the ‘3D illusion’ and that the camera angle wasn’t so bad, considering what I was going for. My original idea was just to have the camera literally move in on the scene in kind of a zoom motion, but after consideration, I decided this was a little bit dull, for something I was making the effort to model into 3D and so I chose to make the camera move a little more interesting. The final move was more of a zoom and then a twist, showing the detail/3D effect I had on the house.

The only real thing I’m very unhappy about in this scene was the background, sky and stars. I think if anything was to break the ‘3D illusion’ on this scene it would be those two parts as I found it incredibly hard to make them work together in a way that didn’t make them seem flat. Putting the stars and background on a separate plain made them seem as though they weren’t part of the sky and were able to move around on their own. I felt this made the scene seem rather cluttered and busy, however, attaching them both on the same plain make them seem really static. For my final render, I chose to have them on the same plane, as I felt this was the least confusing out of the two options I had. I’m not sure if this was the best option to have taken, but I think it was alright considering the options I had available to me.

To conclude, I am reasonably happy with the final outcome of my 2D to 3D piece however, there is always room for improvement. I feel I have significantly improved my knowledge of Maya whilst working on this project and if I was to do a similar thing again in the future I believe I would be able to pull it off with slightly higher quality and standards due to what I have learned. 

The final product for this can be seen below c:



The other project we were given for our 'Design for Animation" module went by the name of "The Devil is in the damaged detail and required us to model and texture something we've seen outside of campus, with some form of detail on, in the programs Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop.

It was suggested that people on the course not so familiar with Maya should model a wall or section of wall for this brief. I’m not very confident with Maya yet, so I took up this challenge and went about photographing a wall with some detail that I could work on modelling. The area we were modelling had to be off campus and so I took my camera with me to some volunteering I was doing at a community garden and photographed their shed. I think my photo’s for texturing were pretty clear although I could’ve taken them when it was lighter, as the area of wood I was photographing was in shadow and I feel this made it look quite dull.

I began this project by working with a plane in Maya, I tweaked the image I intended to use  was a texture so that the wood planks were straight and then assigned the photograph as a lambert material.  I then worked on the 3D effect the area using brushes and pulling or pushing in parts of the detail, for example, the darker parts of the photograph (like inbetween planks) I pushed in and the lighter parts (the planks themselves) I pulled out and empathised.

The final result was a section of wall that looked like it was in 3D. I then applied a simple camera move to this, to show it off from all angles.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this piece, giving the limitations I set myself. However, I regret not choosing to model something more adventurous. If I were to give this another shot, I’d definitely work on UV unwrapping a cube and building a more 3D environment, instead of just texturing one side of a plane, I’d begin texturing all the sides of a cube, so it’d look better both in the 3D turnaround and as a whole. I do feel this has helped me somewhat, when it comes to improving my skills in Maya, even if I didn’t push myself as much as I could’ve

The final piece for this project is below :3 



But yush :D I'll see you in the next post, where I'll be talking a little about my 2D backgrounds project and some of my influences and inspiration behind it ^_^

Until Next Time
~Char

Some insight into our group project ~

So, last time I posted, I promised I'd talk today about our group project about The Sea, in my next post, so here it is I guess :3

I covered a little about what the project entails in my "The Sea Project: An Introduction" Post, so for anyone that missed that post, I'd suggest taking a look at it now, so you can get a general overview of what we're up to with this project.

Since writing this post, we have done an awful lot of planning and liasoning with our mentor for this project, Kathy. From the chosen storyboard that we created combining all our idea's, in the last post. My team mate Beverly drew up all designs digitally and passed them onto Katie, another member of our team. Katie then worked with these to construct the animatic, allowing us all to have a better understanding of the timing we were going to be working to.

The completed animatic can be seen below  -



We still may be adding some tweaks to the beginning and end, in particular a small plot twist, which I won't talk too much about, at least not before it's finished ^_^

Seeing as a lot of people were going to be taking a more literal and serious stance to this project, we decided to go for more of a foolhardy, comedic take on it.  The style we've chosen for the project is, for the interview shown at the start and end of the animatic, a Waltz with Bashir cutout style animation, and for his 'flashback', a very cartoony 'chibi' like style. The backgrounds will be handled by our team mate Georg who will be working in Maya to produce a semi-realistic ocean and building for the interview to take place in, for us.

To make things easier for us, for the interview Beverly has drawn the symbols and I will be animating these, we chose to do it this way to keep this part of the film as consistent as possible, the flashbacks however are something we will need to work hard on to keep the consistency and style similar between all of us.





We've had several meetings to try and practice the style to get it as consistent as possible.






At the end of the day, there will probably be a small amount of noticeable change between our styles, but we'll try and work to minimise this as much as possible.

We're pretty much all set to start production now, It's taken us a while to iron out changes in the animatic and to come up with a consistent style and backgrounds but now, all there is left to do is start work on it.

Our production log is below, detailing who has which part on the project and showing how much has been completed so far :3

I'll be updating more on this project in future blog posts, but here's how much we've got so far at least c:

~Char