A new forum

ok so Liam and I had been discussing the idea of getting a forum going for computer arts, as well as GPM, CGT and audio at Abertay

This would be a great place to show your work, get feedback and ask for help!

Since we asked about it at the rep meeting, we decided to set one up ourselves.

So please if your are on any of these courses you should have received an email about it.

Join up and let us become a community!

The Final Frame

And so all good things must come to an end. Mines is a happy one!

We end the animation with a classic, a kiss.

(all that is left to do is fill in the rest of the facial animation and the it will be complete.)

Animation Progress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AIXtDw-1t8

This is my animation progress so far.

(pretty low quality, for uploading time, so sorry in advance)

animations ups and eventual downs

So I was very happy with the progress I had made with animation and was all set to do the facial aniamtion which is what I had been looking forward to. Then disaster after disaster came.

First I noticed one of my elbow controls had gone, leaving my arm to be stuck in one position, not good for when I want to animate a hug at the end. Then because I had blocked out the animation with the keyframes, I found I was having great difficulties locating what was animated and what wasnt...anyway it turned into a big mess. I thought I was doing the right thing by being organised and blocking out my animation but it turned out I was giving myself more hassle and work. Now I am starting again from scratch because it all just got messy after that. I spent last night trying to sort out everything into some sort of sense.

I now have a clean slate to work on and have started animating from scratch. I am glad I know exactly what I am animating, and what shots I am using, so I am glad I was organised, and if I work hard I will be able to produce a nice piece of animation. I was very demotived yesterday because everything finally seemed to be getting back on track with coursework and life in general, but where things go up they must come down, and it was a nasty shock for me!

Anyway I have picked myself up and have started animating. I have over 2 seconds of good animation so far, so if I keep working hard at this pace, I should have a rough animation by the weekend, which I can then work on nicely. I am determinded to push myself and get this right. Luckily I have finished off most other things, so I can focus on this till it is done.

Hopefully nothing else will happen before the weekend.

\o/

O hello!

ok so now I have blocked out my animation up till this point, been working on it on and off, while finishing off the rest of my work. I filled in the gaps where i got bored the previous day. So basically now the man walks up the stairs fully, and the girl walks to the door a bit better, I got the hip rolls in and the arm movement in, but I still feel the steps are a little to big, I would like her to totter on her heels a little more, but I am going to focus on the facial movement now for the moment and i can come back to tweaking and in-betweening after I have the rest in. I dont know how long it is so far, i know there is over 300 frames worth there once it is fully animated, maybe a little more...so that would be roughly over 12 seconds by my calculation (300/24). Once the facial animation is in and the finishing hug, it will definetely be long enough for submission, probably longer than the 30 seconds, but I doubt that will matter. Since Brian knows I am working towards a longer animation that I will finish in the next few months when I am a little more free.

I will be working on the later today so hopefully will have up so of the facial shots later.

Update

I have not posted in a while, so I will do a bit of an update on what I am currently working on.

I am almost finished my film, added the last of the sound effects and music today, all that is left is some minor tweaks will colour and highlights and recording my dialogue :)

so that is all uder control as far as I am concerned.

I have also been blocking out the final scene for my animation, so far I have the man walking up the stairs and ringing the doorbell waiting, checking himself, while the girl walks into view on the other side of the door, fixes her hair a bit and opens the door. Ok so its not much and its not good yet, i need to get smaller steps in for the girl, because Its not how i want yet, but I have the main bits in with timing so thats good. I had to do more tweaking to the weights on the girl because one of her arms and one of her ankles were doing a little bit of a funny bend, which was only noticable from a different angle from the one I was using, but it annoyed me so much i had to fix it. Hopefully its all under control now.

My new task is to key out the main facial expressions, with the appripraite pauses and reactions, and think about what secondary animation will be hinted at to make it work well. The last thing I want is the facial animation to look good, but looks still because there is no other movement. So I will plan out what else will animate when. So no pictures for the moment but hopefully a blocked out animation will be coming in the new few days :)

Painting weights and creating backgrounds

So I have finally started painting the weights on the character, took a while to get to this stage but I am finally there, its a great relief to final be able to move her about without it looking very weird indeed.

So now I can finally begin work on the pre vis of this scene, which is the one i am msot interested in animating right now. A lot of this scene will involve the facial expressions of these characters, so it will be very important that I plan out the exact emotions and reactions of the characters concerning the situation and each other throughout the scene.





Apart from animation work I am creating the backgrounds for my film piece, it is going very well so far. I was having a few problems at the weekend with finding the best way to put across my point and found I was not saying what I wanted to say at all, with that in mind I started again and found the words which conveyed my idea fully. I am much more happy with it now.

With all that going on and putting in an application for dare, it is surprising i find any time to do anything else, but recently I have been very keen to get cracking on fully understanding and implementing all the different mapping techniques on to low poly models, so i have been doing a lot of research into that, and practicing a little, but have not creating anything yet. I want to have at least a few hours to myself to actually do it properly, then I will try creating my first piece, I am sure it will take a LOT of practice to get right, but that is why I want to do it now.

Thank you

so recently i have been working on my persuasive narrative piece. Its a bit of a secret until it is done (then i will decide whether it is worth peoples time), but thanks to somebody on friday i was able to get the inspiration and jump start i needed.

so thank you.

i wrote down the initial stuff i want to tackle, and outlined a story that will be contained within it.

I then went into PS and did a basic backdrop that will be contained within it.

and lastly did the awful, recorded my voice, just to get an idea of speed and such, and how it would sound. My voice has changed a bit since the last time i heard it - which was when i was mid teens i would presume. still sounds stupid though in my opinion.

anyway that is all i wanted to say, a little thanks to the help offered to me

more blendshapes

And here is some eyebrows to go with those lips :0

Blendshapes yey!

So today i finally get to do my blendshapes!yey!

I absolutely love doing them, because then you get to play with them!
I'm working on her lips first (both sides together then I will do split ones for differing sides) so I have a few already, I'm just testing at the moment but here is the few so far.

Then I did the fun part, I played with my little limited selection of lip gestures, hehe

BEFORE

AFTER

Just the one though, i want to do more to play with!

...

although i did do this one of course


....

I think it's great! At least i can laugh as I work :)

The final scene

My early test shots for the final scene...

cant write about it now, but will later

Scene 3

and this takes us up to the end of scene 3. The next part i need to tackle involves the girlfriend. I need to model a simple scene for the characters to be in. Im thinking doorway, so then you can have that nice kinda sectional view from either side of the door. He rings the doorbell on one side and the shot will encompass her flat and we will be able to see her walk towards the door. Just thinking out loud here.

Thinking...

so i was thinking last night, and at first i thought there would be three scenes involved in my animation, but now im thinking it should really be split into 4!

the fourth scene comes into play when the Girlfriend(still unnamed, i just cant name my characters for some weird reason!i normally name everything, even unsignificant things) is involved.

the third scene would be about how his clothes got dirty and how the flowers get ruined, right at the end of the scene.

it's no extra work for me, just a better strategy plan of how to split up the workload, the parts i am most interested in animating first will be the buying of the flowers and the ending scene. i intend to work on these first most likely, unless i have a specific reason not to!

Apart from that i have just been re-vamping my site www.fayebelline.com . it was looking tired so im trying out a couple of looks, im just unsure what i want, i think i like how i have it now, but that is likely to change!

Crit week

ok so next week is crit week, and now i need to pull all the work I have done so far together.

alot of the work I have planned for is research for essays and my persuasive narrative piece. I intend to come to a final decision on the information I want to use for my film. as it is a very personal piece i wish to do it justice, so i am being very careful in what i choose. i hope to have my decisions made by the end of tonight.

My work on prototype will be coming to an end on tuesday, where our second prototype will be presented. There will be a final presentation on the 16th...i think and then that will be over! I was very happy with what i produced, and i worked very hard in my role as art lead on this project. This was decided in a coin toss! But i think i took up the role to the best of my abiltity. there were plenty of difficulties i had to deal with, and normally i wouldnt have had the confidence to take this responsibitly. But i intended to prove i could do this role, and i think i made a good effort. I am just glad it is coming to an end, i need to focus on my animation and Persuasive narrative pieces now.

So on tuesday morning, the day of my crit group, i hope i will have much more to show, as long as i keep working hard tomorrow!

The car

i quickly modelled a beetle type car. this is for the part of the animation where the man's clothes get dirty. It is low poly and will only be in the animation for sucha short time that it hardly seemed worth doing!

but it is a part of the stroy i wish to have, as i wish to experiment with changing over textures. just to see how well i can pull it off!

anyway, i still need to add this element into my storyboards. I am still deciding on the angle i wish to see the car from or if i should use multiple, so see it come towards and away from the camera... this will be something to decide on when i come to storyboarding.

so here is the car!

storyboard continuation

and this takes the animation up to the end of scene one. Scene 2 has already been animated, and I am now on to storyboarding the final scene.

The final scene is the one I have least thought about, although i know the angles i wish to see the characters from, i wish to show much more of the facial expressions in the final scene, so alot of the shots will focus on the two characters faces... i think.