Animate!

So here is an update of where I'm at blocking/animation wise.



And I have started doing some texture tests for my character (these are maybe like halfway done I guess). Texturing is probably the part I'm least confident in tbh which is why its taking me so long to do. I've decided I'm going to get it all done by say mid next week at the latest though so I can start rendering as soon as we get the R drive back.

After having a chat with Brendan on Tuesday I decided to rearrange my story slightly. Brendan felt that the end of my story didn't really have a conclusion and that I should add more tension in the middle. So now I have it that the picture frame is in danger of being destroyed and my character saving the frame is actually what restarts the engine. I actually like the flow of the story better like this. I still need to adjust some camera angles obviously but I'm happier with the actual narrative now.

So now that my character modelling is finished I moved onto rigging and blendshapes. I created the bones and control shapes for my character before I gave it to Krish so he could skin her for me. Krish fixed any control shapes i got wrong (mostly the arms) and added a few bones i had forgotten (I only put two bones in the fingers instead of three) and then skinned it for me.

[EDIT: ADD VIDEO OF RIG]

I then moved onto creating blendshapes for my character. I'm pretty happy with my selection of blendshapes right now but I may end up adding more as I progress on with the project.

Some slight revisions. I'm still working on it

So this is the first suuuuper rough cut of my previs. Just watching through this I can see a whole bunch of shots that need to change. I'm going to do maybe one more pass of it on monday to fix the things that I think should change and add some audio before I start getting help and/or feedback from the rest of the class. (Unless any of you are reading this and have any suggestions now =) ). The environment model I'm using in the background is not finished yet jsyk but it gives a rough idea of the setup.

Progress

I drew some slightly more comprehensible storyboards. I can see a few things that still need to be changed. I'm going to design a quick layout for my set which should help me to get better camera angles as then I will know where everything is. I'm actually better at doing camera angles in previs so I will probably change some more stuff when I get to that stage as well.

So today I drew/got together my super rough thumbnails and put them into premiere to make sure that my story was flowing right.

This was the first version which was exactly as I had drawn it after the story workshop. After looking at it I went back and edited the first half to change the pacing and cut some unnecessary scenes.

This is the current version, the timing is a bit all over the place and at this stage im sure some of those drawings are completely incomprehensible but its helping me to plan my story. Now I'm going to draw up some proper storyboards, and add in a few boards that I think are missing, before editing it again and getting some feedback to make sure my story is reading as I want it to.

I also had a quick go at doing my character's face in mudbox. I have found that if I start sculpting without really having a plan my character's tend to come out semi realistic which isn't really the style I wanted to go for. I'm going to go back and properly draw out my character's head then remodel it on Friday.

So as we only have 10 weeks left (terrifying) for our project I have revised my schedule. I had fallen behind where I wanted to be quite a bit due to Going Live but now that I can fully focus on this project hopefully I can get myself back on track.

This is where I'm at right now and this is a link to the Google spreadsheet
 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cyXKHxq3qjLk2EFtCzWA3pmTzWPjvjKa4_QmtPAHRjY/edit?usp=sharing

It seems like I have a lot of things to do this week but most of them are already started and/or nearly done.

So today I also finished my rough thumbnails (I'm going to put them into premiere tomorrow and see if I need to add any shots/re-arrange anything before I draw them up into storyboards) and I also took another look at my character design. My plan was to sculpt the character in zbrush unfortunately the uni only has 2 zbrush licences and one of them is in a computer that isn't working so I ended up using mudbox instead. The character is still pretty rough right now especially the face but with a few more days work I should manage to get it to where I want it.

So our first day of semester 3 (I think? Or our last day of semester 2? There isn't really a break so I'm not sure) we had another story workshop with Mark Gindle. We got to show him our Going Live film and then talk to him individually about our projects. He was so helpful, I had been really confused this entire semester about what the point of my story was, which is probably why I had like 10/15 different versions of my storyboards, but he talked through what I had so far with me and helped my look more at the character's emotional journey in the film.






 I'm so happy I actually know what I'm doing now and I can quickly do some new storyboards and get started on an animatic/previs.

So here are some (very) rough thumbnails for my personal project. I'm still having a bit of trouble with the beginning of my story. We have a story workshop on the 18th so I'm aiming to have an animatic and hopefully a mostly finished character model finished by then so I have something to work with. I'm currently working on refining my thumbnails into storyboards which will hopefully help me to work out a better way to start my story.

Now that we are in the final stretch of Going Live its probably time to talk about my final project again.

Here is my character for my final animation. (The suit won't be grey in the final film that was just to help me work out the sections.)

I'm still thumbnailing the exact story (and we have another storytelling class that will hopefully help me completely lock it down) so in the meantime I have been getting on with my character.