These posts will probably keep getting shorter and shorter the busier I am! The main reason being that the current project / commissions i'm working on aren't really things I can showcase just yet. Im i'm still trying to keep on top of my own personal projects like regular sketches... SHAUN T for example.
I'm also really wanting to update my concept art game, but that's looking less likely this side of the year but i'm still hoping to cram it in to my days.
My current list of priorities are:
1. Animation Project (With Natasha)
2. Commissions x 3 (before Christmas)
3. Comic Commission (for Phil)
4. Ribbiting Comic
5. Creative life (including Drumming, Concept Art and other projects)
I need to be stricter with myself and make sure i'm sticking to my own personal schedule - 4 and 5 are falling to the wayside for too easily and that's even before starting #3. but i've got a handle on it me thinks...its all about more and often! So dedicating an hr or 2 each day of solid work to 4&5 should help a lot.
Definitely been a bit on the slow side in terms of personal projects, mainly due to Dudley (Natasha) and I landing some freelance work =D its a 2D project which i'll keep hush for now, but been pretty flat out all week with illustrating and kicking off the 2D animation next week.
Now that i have my time back, i've started a couple of online courses to help me progress with my animation. I'm doing a Programming in Python Course and Game App course all courtesy of Future Learn.
They're about 4-7 weeks long and it's a lot of into to take in. But knowing all the stuff I learnt this last year and some previous knowledge of basic coding is really gonna help - I don't entirely feel like a deer caught in the headlights just yet!
ALSO almost at the end of inktober and I think i've learn heaps, and my style has definitely relaxed a lot more. I'm gonna do a more concept art based challenge next month to get my environments up to scratch.
Well this has taken me longer than hoped mainly due to just having time to do it... but i'm calling this finished!
Pretty happy with this and I know that in a few months i'll be able to do a much better one but as it stands i'm happy with it ha. Still need to work on adding much more personality and secondary movements in other areas like the head etc but that will be with my next cycle
I've pretty much spent the week (or bits of it) working on a walk cycle haaaa. I've sketched, resketched, and resketched again atleast 6 times, each time figuring out something new. I'm also starting to give it a bit more weight and character...
This is the most recent rough one with Garnet (Steven Universe) as my model. This will need tweaks a a few inbetweens so I can get it to a semi polished state
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Also finally kicked off my Inktoberrr haaaa, using it as a an excuse to try out new things and push my character work a bit more
So before moving onto the next stage of my 2D animation learning, i've decided to redo some of the previous tasks after paying better attention and really considering timing and the principles. I don't want to just gloss over steps and I really want to improve quickly.
I've realised (and so has Natasha) that i've got a good understanding / grip of the principles, but depending on my artistic mood (mainly laziness) I can let these slip in favour of finishing quickly. oops.
Well eithr way i'm keep reworking on some of these. The flour sack kicking the ball was the first to go!!
Old
New
Finally 'fleshed out' the jump. I think this one will be redone once I get near to the end of my task list
More daily practice. I think this one was a bit rushed, I could definitely have worked more on the weighting especially. But its good I can recognise that
Task 11: Flour Sack Kicking a Ball
Task 12: Change in Character Emotion
The hilarity of it all.
Task 13: Character Jumping Over a Gap
I need to flesh this one out...
Task 13: Standing Up From a Chair
Was a bit lazy with this one, but I guess my main aim was to get the key poses in - i've been working in 1s so i'm trying to break that habit kinda...
I also decided to sculpt the creepiest thing i've ever seen in my life... and abuse the polypaint tool
I present, Day 7 of my Speed Sculpt. The creators of Stephen Universe must be quaking in their boots
Day 8: in my attempt to reacquaint myself with ZSpheres, ZBrush turned on me today. So this was less of a speed sculpt and more of a lesson in confusion and patience. Im planning to make this one a longer project.
THIS was definitely a lot tricker than I thought it would be... sneak animators island...
Learnings are...that I DEFINITELY need to be more patient AND pay more attention to my timing. But I also need to make sure i'm blocking out the key poses - which I haven't really been doing. A bit of exaggeration wouldn't go a miss either!
Task 8: Flour Sack Waving
Task 9: Flour Sack Jumping
Speed Sculpt day 5 & 6! Trying to be a bit more creative...
Did this in 20 mins using Dynamesh... my main aim was to see what I could achieve in this time and see where I lag / faff around, as as per usual its with trying to add in as much detail as possible too soon, and I didn't even achieve this haha. I need to get better at blocking rough shapes then building on these
Speed Sculpt Day 3:
Done in about 35 mins - quick attempt at my face taking learnings from yesterday, like using the move and mask tools better, and the move brush.
Speed sculpt day 4: A slow and unfinished version of the Dr himself, Mr Peter Capaldi. I must commit to finishing these. But again, learning new things as I go along. This was about 25 mins. A sloppy 25 mins I must admit.
And my Animators Island for Task 3:
Decided to add in the ball as well to push myself a bit and get better with timing.
Getting less rusty on the principles, and visualising testing things a lot more, especially where weight is concerned!
Annnddd here's Task 4: Simple character head turn!
Task 5: Character head turn with anticipation
Task 6: Character Blinking - which oddly enough I found more tricky. Slowing stuff down always is
alas the animation journey ceases to be over, and as mentioned all year i'm working on getting my 2D animation up to scratch with the help of one Miss Natasha Dudley and Animators Land.
I'm going completely back to basics to make sure I don't pick up any bad habits, and we're going to be doing daily / weekly sessions. So hopefully in a few weeks I can start work on the 2D project ive got in mind.
For now, I present BOUNCING BALLS... my first attempt is definitely shameful, but a fair (still shocking) warm up i'd say...
Other projects in the pipeline:
- Comic with Kaitlin, Natasha and a few other peoples
- 2D animation project
- 3D animation project - this will be a bit trickier when it comes to rendering but i'll tackle that when I get to it.
I've also pulled together a breakdown reel and my show reel for the upcoming Master Show.
I guess next steps for me are to now SLEEP for a very long time, and start working on my 2D animation skills and tests which Natasha has kindly offered to help me with.
Where the hell have I been... feel like ages since my last update. ha. Well also life is still non-existent and all sleep and waking hours appear to revolve around finishing this project... which I can happily say is 80% done with just under 2 weeks to go.
Considering i've been away the last few days the extra 4 days will definitely make all the difference. But i'm still working towards the date of the 7th. i'm aiming to have compositing finally finished by Friday, with the weekend for final edits :) then the last few days will be my credits hopefully!
I've been looking at a few tutorials to help with a couple of things like using my ID passes to emit glows (this I was unable to find in the way that I needed, but I managed to work out my own way). I was mos nervous about creating a breath for shot 6/7, which turned out to be pretty damn easy -_-
The ID passes have been sooo sooo useful for some of the unexpected masking that i've had to use - mainly with the landscape and my character blocking each other out on shots - things I hadn't really considered before (mainly time when the landscape has been in the fore ground to look like a mountain/ rock...if that even make sense).
OH and this has happened for promoting the Masters show...(a very good idea from Ritchie and Kaitlin)
In terms of the other other projects... Hell Well
I've still been colouring and doing some minor clean up for Yannis's shots, and he's been really really helpful in giving me some After Effects tips, as well as some TV Paint short cuts in terms of colour. I wish I was able to do more but this compositing malarkey has taken a bit longer than i'd initially hoped (mainly due to my slowness I think) - but hoping to colour a couple more shots next week
Once Bitten
I've been colouring a few shots for Slava, and again I wish I was able to do more :( Butttt what I like about this project is that Slava has animated it in Photoshop, which is something i'd like to try at some point, so it's been really cool to see how she has structured this.
Lets Find Them Together
I've been doing quite a bit for this the last few weeks (in terms of various tasks), I've provided the script as well as the narration hahaha. All the animation on my side is finished and because I was going away I provided the group with a document for setting up renders (based on knowledge from Sean and my own learnings). I think it will also be really really useful for me (and others hopefully) to have at a later date if I ever forget how to render lol.
So after a day of avoidance and blaming the world, i've finally come to terms with compositing, and decided that I actually do understand it and I actually can do it.. especially if Dragonball is playing in the background.
In order to hit my own personal deadline (all compositing finished by 29th) I need to be doing 3 shots a day - this might seem a bit much / long, but ima way for 2 days so I need to make sure I make up for that lost time and have time to complete my credits!
I've already had a 'minor' setback / realisation - this being that my Matte Paintings are kinda no good haaaa. Putting together my initial shots with colour corrections, effects etc i've seen that they just don't fit anymore.. and this is mainly due to me finalising my landscape textures a few weeks after completing my backgrounds, so they 2 don't gel.
I'm gonna tweak them so they fit my current style / Borderlands-esque look.
Here's the current look...:(
And after doing a quick test in Photoshop by throwing my landscape texture on as an overlay i'm already getting much better results, so i'm gonna tweak them all tonight and get back on track with compositing tomorrow.
Need to add a bit more depth/ variation so it doesn't look flat but I think they'll be ok. In terms of effects so far i've added in a slight star twinkle and some dust/gases type things! I don't want to overload it to much as I still need it to look 2D-esque
I'm also finding that i'm getting slightly better results by using my painted colour corrections and adding those into AE. I' trying to keep on track with the 2D ness of it all, and thats also given me the idea of adding any extra lines /out lines that I might need on the landscape or my character by creating them in PS, importing into AE and just animating the translates to follow my character. This will be more useful with the helmet I think! Back to Dragonball... the motivation is real.
A few of the updated textures! This is a lot more similar to the initial background design that I did - mainly in terms of lines and textures (but definitely better ha)
I wanted an eerie effect for the first half hence the red and green, and then lighter / happier for the end - but i'll probably still do some more colour correction in AE.
Ahhhh yes soooo all rendering is DONE (bar Shot 15's dance and Shot 18 which will include some of the dance -_-). I've also added in an extra reaction Shot after Shot 10 when she see's the music box.
Soooo compositing starts next week as I wanted to give myself the weekend to work on the dance, colouring for Yannis and animating for Ritchie's project which is due by next Friday.
I'm working on a couple of Shots for his project - including a walk cycle and sad reaction shot for the cat character Peanut.
Look how sad she is D=
I've also finished working on the narration, but there will probably be a couple of tweaks after the animating is done!
The last few weeks have been so project filed that I haven't had much of a chance to practice art wise, bit i'm gonna start working this back into my daily routine, so i'll be ready for when I start my credits sequence.
I'm currently a week a head of schedule, but i'm hoping to have compositing finished by the 27th (O_O) - even if the dance isn't rendered out by then that means I only have to focus on that shot then slot it all in the sequence and what not.
Sooooo i've been working on my final few shots these last few days - mainly 14 and 16 - where she dances out of the cave and when she lands back on the planet. For 14 in partcular I wanted to at least give keying the dance a go and i'm rather happy with the result...
I imported the track as a reference so I can get the timing correct annnddd I've been using photos as a reference via Bodies In Motion, not only because i've found this to be easier to block to, buttt I was silly and didn't actually capture the footage with Cristina as photos/video as my iPad wouldn't let me save anything.. definitely an oversight on my part.
It's finished now but i'm to lazy to playblast again sooo this is the dance blocked to the music.
Annndddd the jump for Shot 16 - there's a new version that's slightly tweaked to incorporate Sushma's feedback
Now... the serious bit.... a few days ago I was ready to write that I was having major issues with transferring my MoCap data onto my custom rig and controls in Maya..and was potentially considering keying the dance in the few weeks I have left... I still might for specific bits. BUT...
I have been VERY VERY lucky to stumble upon something glorious... the way to get my rig to all attach :D
Literally stupidly happy about this. I can now make all the tweaks I really needed to make, and fix the shoulders - which seem to have fixed themselves kinda now that they're on the rig :) Obviously the only downside is that there are now hundreds of keys baked onto my controls but im gonna take the week to clean this all up and fix things like the head and hands.
In terms of camera angles I want to play it smart and firstly by avoiding any major problem areas like dodgey twists that can't be fixed etc. But I also want to at least try and work with more angle and camera's than I have done in the rest of the film. So i'm looking at Final Fantasy X again for a lot of reference points for their dance / instrumental scenes... cause they're bloody awesome.
(7 mins in)
If I can do this this week that brings me a week ahead of schedule as rendering is now almost one - only this shot to put in and 14 and 16 to come out.
I need to start animating for Ritchie's project this week and get back on the coloring for Yannis.
RENDERING HAS BEGUN!! And seems to be happening quick-ish mainly because I seem to be the only person using the Renderfarm at the moment (besides Olly) :D and i've got until at least next week until other people jump on.
I've put all my scenes through now, and i'm hoping they'll all be rendered by Monday!!
Dodgy Diffuse Pass
AO Pass
I've got 3 Shots left to complete - 14 (dancing out of the cave - blocked), 15 (dance sequence), and 18 - this is done / set up but I need to add her dancing off into the 'sunset'.
Just finished working on 16 - where she lands back on the planet, and decided to add a bit more drama to it with a DBZ-esque landing ha. I emulates Shot 4/5 where she lands in her space pod, but this time is just her... if that makes sense, an I think that's a nice bit of mirroring.
Got some feedback on it from Sushma and she reminded me to add a bit more squash and stretch and make sure there's more follow through in parts of the body like the arms.
In between doughnut eating and lending my life to Motion Builder i've been working on the other projects i'm helping with! So i've been living in TV Paint painting frames for Yannis's Hell Well. It's also given me a chance to flex my TV paint skills / knowledge.
Photoshop is definitely more user friendly lol but it's pretty easy to use, and i'm getting through the shots quite quickly - about 1 every 2 hours, and i'm aiming to produce a shot per day (i've done 2 so far).
Also the new animatic for Ritchie's project! As it's mainly live action there's only a few shots to animate which is good to know :) and i'll still be helping with that.
I'll also be helping Ritchie with the script - which is something i'm new to (script writing that is), but i'll use my humour and strong wit to help Ritchie's story cruise to victory!!
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In Motion Builder related news i've finally managed to get my Motions mapped onto my character!! Missing the eyes etc - they will need to be re-contrained to the head joint once I bring my model back into Maya!
Now beginning the exciting task of putting the sequences together to form my full 30 second dance. HUZZAH INDEED.
