Finally done with the animation. It actually got finished today, and a bit of the beginning of the animation got changed in the last minute. This is why it isn’t of the same quality as the rest, so I’m not happy with it at all! I’m fairly happy about how the rest turned out though.
Also I just used perspective view very quickly, to render, so the angles don’t really work that well.
It’s been quite a while since I animated, and it’s horrifying to look at that block turn into a rough.
This is the stage where I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel. The main animation is there, but still lacks something.
I started to do the lipsync with phonemes, but it took too much time, so I started doing jaw movement instead. This sped up the process significantly, and made it less like a chore. I tweaked the mouth afterward, to form the phonemes.
The dynamic facial expressions aren’t there at the moment, but I have put in a sad look on him, to help me “feel” the character more.
This is the stage in between block and rough, simply because I made the block half-finished before I made it into the rough animation.
The timing is getting fixed and the poses tweaked a bit. I tried to experiment a bit with the lipsync, but decided I should delay it until I started closing in to the clean animation. I am not too sure about the animation and poses in the beginning here, but there should be time to fix it.
I started on the animation by blocking out the key poses, and tend to use quite some time at this stage. This is important, because I want the exaggerated poses to follow through to the final product.
My inspirations have been Invader Zim, with it’s economical animation and hysterical characters, and the stereotypical Dr. Frankenstein-scientist type we all know and love.
Here’s an .avi-file of the block-in-progress (Max wouldn’t render to .mov for some reason):
I have been working hard to finish the previz and presentation, which I presented this friday.
The previz was based on the animatic, but with clearer camera moves.
The presentation was terrible. Sure, they liked the previz, but they didn’t have much faith in me pulling it off.
So I will have to try and convince them to let me continue. I’m thinking of removing one of the shots (shot 2), meaning one less matte painting. The lava, that they mentioned, might just be based on stock footage with a lot of fumes covering the view.
There’s some convincing to do Friday this week. I’ll have to prove that I can make a matte painting and some camera tracking.
I’ve started modeling the characters in 3D Studio Max, and I still struggle with the head.
The model is being made with facial animation in mind, which means I have to get nice edge loops. This have proven far more difficult than I anticipated, but it seems like I’m back on track now.
I’m fairly happy with the outcome, but the animation could and should have been better in many places. Starting late with animation does things like that. But it’s the best film I’ve worked on so far…
We’ve just finished with the “making of” as well, giving people a small peek into our production process.
Even though it’s meant for the teacher and sensor, I really want to include this on the final dvd.
Now I just have to evaluate myself and look through my blog to see if I can improve on some of the posts.
Lots and lots of thanks and praise to the team for doing a great job on this film!
Doppler used my school computer for rendering, so I had to use Paint
Ok, so we just finished our short film and I’m ready to finally relax after all this stress.
I had to go to Michael’s home in Asker yesterday, to finish the editing and sound. The reason was because I didn’t see the “final cut” until very late, and saw that it didn’t turn out like I hoped it would. Changes had been done that didn’t work and such.
I’m a 25 year old norwegian male student, currently residing in Middlesbrough, UK
My goal is to get a bachelor degree in Digital Character Animation at Teesside University, and get into the industry as an animator or concept artist(when I’m good enough).
This blog is here partially to push myself to become a better artist.
