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.

Oh, and the animation:

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.

Here’s the clip (in .avi-format):

http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_clean_and_lipsync_01.avi

The poses are timed to fit the voice acting, but it’s not quite there yet.

I have tried to make it look less like a block animation and getting some follow-through there. But all the poses are more or less there.

Here’s the clip (in .avi-format)

http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_rough_01.avi

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.

Still in .avi-format:

http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_block_rough_02.avi

Invader Zim, a huge inspiration for my animation

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):

http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_block_01.avi

When the voice actor(James Harris) sessions were over, I started creating a very rough and quick animatic of how I wanted the final animation to be. The camera is supposed to go closer in on the scientist, as he gets more and more intense and frustrated. It was made in Photoshop and Premiere.

Here’s the animatic (.mov-file)

http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_animatic_draft01.mov

My hard drive crashed. While my computer is up and running again with a new hd and Win 7, I’ve lost all my files. Every single one.

I curse thee, foul desolate storage units of despair!!!

The good thing though, is that I have Win 7 as opposed to Vista, and I’ve started backing up my files online.

This is a major setback in every module at school, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. I just have to workincredibly hard . Yes, it sucks, but I’ve learned a very important lesson. Backup your files!

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.

Here’s the previz:

Thank you

What I have to share now is some of my research.

The volcano will be based on the one from The Lord of the Rings (Mount Doom), but with a brighter sky.

Some simple geometry will be modeled, based on a Pete Draper tutorial on how to create a volcano. I will then set up a camera, render and paint over the render in Photoshop, and project it back onto the geometry in 3D Studio Max.

The same thing will be done for the rest of the shots.