Skye: Animation Story Progress and Visual Style

After over written files, whole scene changes, music re-writes and last minute story tweaks the animation is done! (For now) And I feel the story is finally finished and concluded to what is coming together to be a really nice story for Skye. With 3 weeks to get the music composed and directed for the film it also has been an experience for me and Adrien to really help push this animation to what it needed to be. There are obviously some sound effects missing for this but they will be added soon after the rendering is complete.

I am now going to turn myself towards lighting and getting the animation rendered as soon as possible to then focus my attention towards the art of and finalizing this project. I have rendered out a still for the new designers which admittedly took a way too long to render, but I plan to keep this visual style throughout the film with a different light set up. I am in the process of making a colour script so I know exactly what I want my animation to look like in terms of colour and aesthesis in readiness for lighting. 

I hope you enjoy :) 

Skye: Scene 01 Animation Test

After a long week Scene 01 is up to standard with the animation, still things need refining and the hair needs to be animated but I am working towards animating each scene to this standard before refinement. I have also been in touch with many composers after going to Vimeo for help with the animation and have finally decided to work together with Adrien Volpi. His music is used within in this first minute of the animation and it seems to work almost flawlessly with it. It's exciting seeing it all come together, now onto scene 2!

Skye: Previs take 05

I have composted the images on top of the footage for now with the mum and Skye in the photo frame but in the animation it will be textured and the papers in front of the frame will be her drawings of her and the family, for now I have only used two models of Skye for the image but for the animation it will be painted. Hopefully it is complete enough to start animating and sending of to the compositors 

Skye: Previs Take 04

With Phil's suggestions I have changed my previs, I feel as though it is a lot stronger now and more cinematic like what I had hoped for. I need to get the timings done as soon as possible as a composer is waiting upon the final previs so she can compose to it and to give myself enough time to animate. It's getting there though!

Skye: Previs 02 & Scene updates

After talking with Phil and Alan I have updated the scenes to a version which I feel is ready for animation and updated the trees more to fit with the environment. I am still undecided whether to keep the tracking shot of the leaf at the beginning and rather have it land at the window seal and start the animation that way or not but for now it will stay the same and probably be decided on how much time I have left to finesse the outside scene. 

So far the music is still not available unfortunately but I am trying to get that sorted as soon as possible. The sound effects also need some work with sounds of the mother coming into play when she is looking at her picture and the drawings in her hands. Although I do have the drawings back from the school! So I need to scan those in and decorate her room with the drawings from the children, next to start animating and lighting and a few tweaks on the shots specifically in the dark room I am still undecided on this sequence of shots.

 

Skye: Walk Cycle Test

As im busy working on my previs for the meantime and my blog has not had much attention I decided to update it with the first stages of a walk cycle for Skye inspired by a video that Phil had showed me and experimenting with layering animation rather than pose to pose animation.  Still needs a rather alot of cleaning up especially in the arms but a good starting point :)

Here is the video for anyone else to reference from: https://vimeo.com/51370027

Skye: Facial Rig Update

Finally after going through the trouble that rivets had caused me I decided to change my facial rig altogether to more characterful and artistic rig and that being blendshapes but I also wanted the deformation that rivets allowed you to have. So I found a tutorial series and redone my rig, I am really happy with the overall face rig even though the trouble it had caused but the deformations are a lot nicer now and I can achieve the different expressions which I couldn't of done with the previous rig. 

After a long process of setting up the joints and the different rigs (local rigs) and sculpting the blendshapes that she needed alongside the correctives too, she is finally animatable ready! Here are just a sample of the blendshapes that I needed to create. Oh and Shapes is a really good plug in for anyone needing to do correctives and blenshaping. 

Here are some of the expressions  I managed to achieve with this rigging style: 

 And finally here is a quick video I put together showcasing the rig in its complete state.

 

Now onto finalising the environment block out so I can start the prevising and animation!

Minor: Key Poses and Inbetweens

Narrative: Scene 3 Rendered

Here is the final third scene rendered, its a shame that his jaw goes through the floor at one point but overall I think it looks good, all that needs doing is the sound effects and editing the animation together.

Narrative: Scene 01 and Edit

Here was the first scene that I have animated for our group, I thought the scene was too fast at the beginning therefore I slowed bits down in premiere. We are left to put sounds in and the change the hue for night and day in after effects the animation then the first scene is complete.

Fantastic Voyage: The Lonely Fern Final Animation

Fantastic Voyage: Animation With Voice Over & Sfx

Toolkit Animation: Showreel

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Toolkit: Character Animation

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The Principles of Digital Animation: Chain Swing

The Principles of Digital Animation: Pendulum

The Principles of Digital Animation: Bouncing Ball

CG Artist Toolkit: Sack Animation

During this morning's animation class with Meg we had to complete our sack animation, although I forgot to draw the box on another layer so I will correct this at a later date. He's kind of a fat sack who is a bit clumsy who falls off at the end but I feel the sack could have more personality looking back at the animation.

Cg Artist Toolkit: Final Zoetrope Animation

Zoetrope animation



Zoetrope animation, a quick morph of objects associated with christmas :). I am happy with the outcome, I was going to do a fourth morph but I feel it wouldn't work too well on the zoetrope so I decided to my make my morphs slower so the transitions are smoother.