WEEK 1
We started the term with Advanced Body Mechanics, George gave us an introduction to the subject and showed us a few examples. Over the next five weeks, we will have to produce a short animation of a body mechanics action sequence that can be included in a showreell.
MY IDEA
My animation idea is about weight lifting as I have seen this to be a very frequent animation in showreels. I decided that my character would be lifting a large, heavy apple and then by trying to stand up he gets crushed by the weight of the apple.
STORYBOARD:
VIDEO REFENCE ( thank u Caroline xx )
As for the work on Project 2, I decided to continue with the production of the animation I made for the previous term, as I did not have much time to start a new project from scratch and wanted to concentrate more on George’s lessons.
I first worked out which was my plan of action and then started to work on a couple of moodboards to understand how I wanted the look of the characters and the nature.
WEEK 2
During the second week we started working on the blocking of the animation after it was approved by George.
In order to really understand how to give the impression that the object was enormously thought out, I watched a lot of weightlifting videos, to see where the weight was being loaded and what movements the body was doing.
BLOCKING
SOME FEEDBACK
The initial feedback I received related to the addition of a few key frames essential for animation and also George helped me to understand how best to pose the body.
PROJECT 2
First, I started to fix some of the animations to make the scenes more sinuous and pleasing to a view. I also tried to find better rigs and adjusted the assets in the scene.
After that my partner and I started working on the textures and lighting so that we could start rendering the scenes in time for the delivery of the project. And on the side I started to think about possible titles for the animation.
Among the possible titles, the one I liked the most was THE HOOKUP, as it created a nice word game that in my opinion went very well with the animation concept.
WEEK 3
During this week we started working on the blocking plus. For this procedure, the feedback that my tutor gave me for the rotation of the torso and especially the weight lifting moment was very useful.
The main difficulty I encountered working in this animation was to understand how the body behaved while lifting the weight, and once I understood that, the rotation would be more natural.
BLOCKING PLUS:
PROJECT 2
During this week I worked on the inamation of the title, I really like it when 2d and 3d are mixed together in animations so I thought of using the same style.
During this week I worked on correcting the animation of the first three scenes and texturing and rendering some still images to see if the scene worked or not.
For the first part of the animation I wanted to have cold colours dominating the scene, to make the atmosphere cold and sad. I would then change the colours and make them warmer at the moment of the kiss to give more importance to that moment.
WEEK 4
During this week we received feedback and then started to work in spline. When i saw how maya translated my blocking plus animation into spline it was very painful, as i hated how my animation took shape. Thanks to geroge’s feedback i understood what to correct and how to make the timing better.
At this stage I still had difficulty in understanding how to animate the part where the person was lowering and lifting the weight. I understood that I should move the waist under the apple and not separate the chest from the apple at any time.
SPLINE ANIMATION :
PROJECT 2:
My working process for project 2 has been very similar for weeks, i.e. working on polishing the animation, then transferring the FBX file to Blender, working on textures and light, and rendering the scene, which I left over night as the rendering took a long time.
WEEK 5
This week we worked on the polishing of the animation, where I tried to polish the animation as sinuous and smooth as possible. I adjusted some steps where the timing was not correct, such as when the character moved to get closer to the apple.
Finally, George showed me how to correct the movement of the hips in order to create nice curves to make the animation more pleasing to watch.
SPLINE BEFORE THE FEEDBACK:
FEEDBACK:
FINAL OUTCOME:
PROJECT 2 :
During this week I focused on polishing the animation with the fish, I tried to imitate as much as possible the fast and sinuous movements of the fish’s tail. To do this I watched a lot of video references on YouTube to get as realistic as possible.
After that I worked on the texturing of the fish, I tried to make its texture more shiny in order to give the impression of something wet and slippery.
As for the colours I decided to use a warm and somewhat surreal colour palette in order to suggest to the audience that it was a dream.
FISH ANIMATION:
POLISHED ANIMATION:
RENDER:
WEEK 6
Then this week we began by planning and recording some reference videos for our lip sync animation. First I downloaded an audio, got the script written, recorded some reference videos and finally came up with some sketches.
George here helped me understand what sounds I should imitate to animate my lipsynch.
This helped a lot and definitely made it a lot easier to understand how to pose the mouth.
REFENCE VIDEO:
SKETCHES:
PROJECT 2:
I dedicated the whole week to rendering the first half of the animation because otherwise I would not have had enough time to edit and add the music and sound effects before the handing over.
these are some of the shots me and my partner rendered:
WEEK 7
During this week I picked my character and I modelled the background for my animation.
I also started animating by blocking the main keys. Once that was done I sent it to George and waited for his feedback before proceeding to the next step.
As a rig I chose Malcolm from Animschool, as I had seen a lot of showreels with this character I thought it would be a good rig to work with, as he was equipped with a picker.
ENVIRIOMENT AND CHARACTER:
BLOCKING:
PROJECT 2 :
This week I have been working on finding the sounds I was going to use for the animation, in order to get copyright free sounds I used an app called UPbeat.
Looking for the right sounds was quite a long process, for the fisherman’s voice I had to cut and edit a lot of sounds in post editing so that I could get the right old man’s voice.
WEEK 8
Once I received feedback from my blocking, I started working on my Blocking plus.
The feedback I received about my blocking plus was mainly about the positioning of the arms in such a way as to create nice curves and movements. In addition, George told me to correct the eyes and the corners of the mouth.
FEEDBACKS:
BLOCKING PLUS:
PROJECT 2:
During this week, I set myself the goal of finishing the rendering of the last remaining part of the animation, so that I would have the last 10 days before the deadline to work on the final design and the postediting.
I decided to leave myself the last week to get the rest of the material ready to be sent, such as the presentation for my final project and my showreel.
SOME OF THE RENDERED SHOTS:
WEEK 9
During this week I have been working on the polishing of my lipsynch, following the feedback I was given.
I created some overlap sequences for the hands and neck in order to make the animation more interesting, and finally george showed me how to rotate the head in such a way as to create some nice curves.
FEEDBACK:
FINAL OUTCOME:
PROJECT 2
During this week I focused on the production of my artefact, I used After Effect for compositilng the renders and finally Premier Pro for editing the scenes, sounds and music.
FINAL OUTCOME:
WEEK 10
CONCLUSION
I have really enjoyed working on this unit, I would like to exaggerate and say that it has been one of my favourites so far. The animations we have worked on have become very good material to be the basis for a future showreel, which I think is essential to have as it is the only thing that will allow me to get work.
George was indispensable and a great help. He followed us step by step and showed us where we were going wrong and how to correct it. He showed us a very good approach to animation and other tips that will be belonging to my work process from now on.
Working on the artefact was also very interesting, and seeing the effect the animation took once the render was done was certainly very exciting.
I wish we had a lot more time to polish some scenes and find better sounds, but overall I am satisfied.