Quick bit of progress made on the ball this week. Just working on the step blocking method we were taught in our a while a go. This second attempt of the ball animation is definitely more organised, step blocking is certainly the right method for me. (Though I've taken it to spline to make the playblast a bit nicer.)
Another note is I've changed the ball. My first attempt was a generic sphere with the pivot at the bottom, this is a far more sophisticated ball rig, with nice squash stretch and bend controls.
The rig is free to use from a website made by the authors of "How to Cheat in Maya". ( http://www.routledge.com/cw/luhta-9780240525907/ ) The rig is from the 2012 version of the book that I got as an early christmas present. (another reason why I wanted to restart the animation from scratch.)
The Backwater Gospel is a short film produced by a group from the Animation Workshop (http://www.animwork.dk/en/).
This has to be one of the most memorable things I've seen. I love the artistic style, the dark story, the music fits well with the feel and sounds professionally produced.
The overall film is very stylized, making use of highly painted textures, and toon shaders to give a 2D in 3D feel which they've achieved very well. It's a style I feel can easily go wrong, but when it's done right it can look amazing. Personally I think this is one of the best examples of this style of rendering around. The only other example I can think of that would beat it is maybe the Borderlands 2 game, and considering this was an amateur production with no budget, that's a pretty good standard to come second to.
The posing and animation were also very stylized. to match the 2D, painted aesthetic they stretched limbs outward giving a similar look to as if it were puppet animated in something like After Effects or Flash. Perhaps some parts were. The lip sync was a tad off, though that could be from uploading to youtube. As far as I'm aware they had to animate textures to get the characters to talk, that or it was some post production magic. Which is a pretty inventive way of going about the task, though it certainly solves an issue of trying to make the 3D look 2D, as when a 3D model talks, the mouth shapes have far more depth than what can reasonably be achieved in drawn animation.
The story in itself is relatively simple on the face of it. Though I'm sure it's meaning is a lot deeper! The director of the film is working on making a feature length script for Backwater Gospel which is awesome.
He also posted up a lot of "making of" assets which are very interesting.
The Ball animation progress has halted again... I just can't seem to enjoy it. The task is to keep the animation inside 10 seconds, which I think I've realised is a near impossible task, and so carrying on with a failing idea seems a bit pointless.
So I've had a look at it again and decided to come at it from a new angle. Literally from a new angle, well, not me... the ball...
Basically I was wasting a good 3-4 seconds simply introducing the ball into the scene before he even interacts with the shape sorter, giving me no real thinking time what so ever. So instead I'm having the ball enter from behind the camera... Also making him a bit more squishy than originally planned.
Finished my first walk cycle. Decided to put him walking through a park... then decided to make it night time and spooky... It's fair to say it doesn't really look like he cares... perhaps he needs a bit more personality.
So I decided to make him look a bit more scared, after all it's pretty dark out there. (Still having problems with the playblasts... I guess it doesn't really matter though, at least the final render looks okay.)
Learning the layered method of doing walk cycles. It's... different, just feels a bit weird going one limb at a time rather than pose to pose. Though it has it's benefits, by focusing on just the foot then the hips etc. you can make sure you're getting good arcs of motion and it's easier to spot where the mistakes happen.
Here's the progress of my very first walk cycle!
Don't really know why it's gone black and white and skewed, I guess it was the codec used to record the playblast... Though it wasn't like that before I uploaded it.
One of the best flash animations I've seen has to be that of Bitey of Brackenwood.
Created by Adam Phillips (Aka chluaid on youtube) Originally done using Adobe flash though he later moves to ToonBoom animate pro for his animation ventures, he's also made some handy tutorials which ToonBoom themselves have praised.
Bitey of Brackenwood is a series that follows a very fast, very contentious dashkin called Bitey. His character is incredibly entertaining, his humor is very simple yet funny, and it's not hard to see how he can get into all the trouble he does. Although you can't help but think of this guy as a jerk, you do begin to empathise with him through the series.
As the series goes on you can see the quality improve, (as with most flash series I suppose) The animation becomes less jerky at points where he's included a few more inbetweens, yet keeps the snappy motion that goes so well with Bitey.
More Sketches to post up. I've got a bit of a back log due to most of the work being put up a while after it's done. What can I say, I'm not quite a blogger at heart. Also I'm trying to keep to a consistent Wednesday and Friday update routine, eventually there will be an update every Wednesday and Friday! ... Well, that's the plan at least...
So yeah here are some more sketches from coffee shops! It's always a bit hit and miss when drawing in the mornings, sometimes you can but usually you just can't! I'm not much of a morning person and sometimes keeping my eyes open long enough to draw can be the trickiest bit!
So I seem to have neglected my work on the ball exercise, thought I'd add a little update. More to follow soon, I hope to have this finished and done with in the near future!
Here's a play blast of the latest progress, not a lot has been done on the face of it, still need to add the rotation and squash and stretch. But the rough timing is there, the rest should come together easily enough.
So me and a couple of friends have started to regularly meet on Saturdays whilst doing a Bible study called Uncover! We're going to coffee shops and chatting, and while we're there we're taking the opportunity to sketch those in and around the shop, and anyone who may be walking past slowly enough to put onto paper!
Along with the coffee shop drawings, I managed to take advantage of an unusually sunny Middlesbrough afternoon and draw some people in the park.
I'm not sure what the most challenging part is, trying to put down on paper a well proportioned realistic pose, or to do so without them realizing you're drawing them!
Not much progress this week. However I've begun animating my ball. It was an interesting challenge to make the roll believable, trying to stop it from looking like it's slipping and sliding. Though I think i'll continue working on the rough movement and animating the roll, squash and stretch in afterwards.
As part of the module, we've been assigned to undertake regular sketching exercises to improve our knowledge of natural posing.
We've been told to go out into the real world and sketch people in day to day lives, but it's raining today and I'm tired! So instead I've done some life drawing studies in the comfort of my own home.
There are a few websites that offer many great life drawing photographs as a practice tool, but my absolute favorite has to be that of Pixelovely, this website offers a huge range of photographs (including animals!). But the best feature has to be the options of Standard and Class mode. By doing a study in standard mode you can set a specific time interval in which the photos will change, great for training yourself to speed up and put down expressive poses quickly. Class mode is an extremely powerful setting where you pick how long you want your drawing class to take, and it will set images with progressive intervals, starting off with a few quick sketches to warm up with, and build towards longer, more detailed studies. Though if at any point you want to stop and take a break, or simply spend longer on a photo, both these settings have pause, forwards and backwards buttons to let you control your session yourself.
This blog is to keep a record of all the work I do towards my 3D Character Animation module this year.
I will be uploading work specifically for the assignment, as well as reviews on animations/films/websites I like, and sketches and designs that I've done to support my assignment projects.
So I'll start off by uploading the storyboard for my first assignment project. The ball animation.
We've been tasked to produce a 10 second animation featuring a ball. We are to give this ball energy and personality. My Idea is of a toy shape sorter that toddlers use, and a ball decides that even though he's supposed to go through one hole, he can go through any hole he wants to. What a non conformist ball he is!
