Major || Progress Report 12 - The Re-Submission Post

(unoptimised)

Reflective Statement

From this project I can acertain the skills that I need to work on most urgently. Compositing for one is an important skill, I know about compositing in photography using photoshop but not so much in the process of creating films. I'm also not amazing at sound design; the least I know is that silence can be considered sound design and that music can help to set a mood, after that point, my foley is especially lacking. I think my presentation has improved in regards to my art book, and posting once a week suits my work ethic pretty well, as it gives me time to think about what I am posting. I still need to work on my time management though.

Major || Progress Report 11 - The Submission Post

Reflective Statement

From this project I can acertain the skills that I need to work on most urgently. Compositing for one is an important skill, i know about compositing in photography using photoshop, but not so much in the process of creating films. I'm also not amazing at sound design; the least I know is that silence can be considered sound design and that music can help to set a mood, after that point, my foley is especially lacking. I think my presentation has improved in regards to my art book, and posting once a week suits my work ethic pretty well, as it gives me time to think about what I am posting. I still need to work on my time management though.

Also I am personally not satisfied with this post as i have gotten so far already with the story and animations (90 per cent done, just missing key scenes), I will definitely finish and upload later this week. Signing off.

Major || Progress Report 10 - The Pre - submission Post

Outside and animations are complete now. Just waiting on conductor to finish with the renders.

Sorry for a brief post, I'm focusing on editing what I already have mainly. The purpose was to keep everything up to date anyway.

Major || Progress Report 9 - Random Easter Content

The Outside scenes have started production, after adding a matt painting in the background and a lot of testing. It may need a few more looks as the ground looks too flat and the matt looks foggy, but this will be rectified soon enough.

Found out that my progress reports were wrongly numbered and fixed them. Wooden textures and others were re vamped and added to my growing material library which I am developing to replace old data. An old hard drive of mine got corrupted, so I lost a lot of archived data including my old projects on this course.

Here's a quick snip made as a sample of my animation progress. Over the final three weeks I am planning to finish all my shots in maya and move onto editing fully rendered scenes. 

Major || Progress Report 8 - What's to come

exposure

Once again I've been working a lot on animation this week. As I was doing this I was thinking a lot about the universe around the main character and how they ended up in their situation. The idea was that this was a character dealing with computer addiction as a result of social seclusion and neglect on the side of the parents/guardians. But it was odd to me that the main character was completely unable to leave to the point that the door had become some symbol of escape, plus the idea of psychoactive episodes leading up to leaving and convenient thunderstorms, though attributable to overactive imagination, could be indicative of something bigger unfolding in the world besides the plot.

Environmental storytelling can lend a lot to animation and how much a story can be read into. Doing it well can also improve its re-watchability. Whilst I already have a few elements of environmental storytelling around like the plane and the photo for example, the nature of what is really 'outside' remains mysterious. We already have some indication the of the nature of the outdoors through the presence of rain and the sky outside through the window as well as through the content of the photo. Despite this, the mentality is almost like the main character is completely unable to leave the room to the point that the room seems more like a prison. Perhaps this concept can be built upon in the ending?

Major || Progress Report 7 - Just making progress

The render above is taken from a portion of my animation. This week I have been very focused on getting my various parts of animation blocked out and ready for later in depth articulation. So far I've begun the bedroom and Blank Space scenes. While I've been doing this, various cameras were laid out in a scene with one animation in it so I could chop and change if necessary. The main objective is to get the animations as smooth and transitionary as possible, keeping the idea of visual storytelling in my head.
During my renders I noticed an issue with UV seams appearing white while looking at a longer distance, which also appeared in the render. Looking online, i researched that it might have something to do with the colours showing at the edge of my map. I went into Photoshop and added a black background to solve this.

Regarding the computer display, I put on a random test image from the internet and stuck it onto both the diffuse and transmission ports. If I could do this with a video, it would be even better.

Major || Progress Report 6 - remodelling, lighting

I finished re modelling the hair. I changed the eyes too, but might change them back if it looks better. I felt the blue gave the character a more innocent appearance.

I tried a few test animations over the past few weeks, and as I was moving on to animating the actual scenes, I noticed that the character was too short to effectively get up on the chair. In the render you may notice I used the original character model but the scales between the new and old are the same. It may be that I have to exclude the scenes where Squareeyes gets on the chair, and just not show the lower half of the body to make the scenes less comical. Besides this I have also been working on lighting my environments, learning about light linking, rim lighting and kicker lighting has been really helpful in doing this.

In the next few weeks I plan to begin animating proper and do this for the next 3-4 weeks, and in the remaining weeks I will edit the scenes to a satisfactory standard using the old sounds from my animatic. I aim to have the final animation be about 4 minutes long.

Major || Progress Report 5 - Ironing out the Models and Setting the Scenes

Whilst my rigging is done, there were a few issues after testing which were put down on a list, and few more that appeared during the continuing testing process. There was popping on the eyebrow blend shapes that was fixed by going to the inputs for the face and swapping the blendshape input to be on the bottom ~(not sure how this worked but it did). For some reason the blink controls went nuts when keyframed, found out that there were two blend shapes in the shape editor, so one was deleted. The restrictions that I set up earlier were too restrictive, so they were adjusted, and the weights were blended a bit better. An interface is also really important for quicker selection of a desired joint without fiddling around with the model too much. When working on the hair physics I found out the IK had somehow become attached to the foot, so I redid all the simulation, then fixed the hair so it would move with the model. I'm glad I gave myself a bit of time to troubleshoot everything now so issues like these wouldn't arise to annoy me later at a crucial moment.

I compiled the entire process for this character for easy referencing. This will probably appear in my art of as well.

The hair really did need animation because its right in the middle of the face, you can see in the videos how I tested this element and its interaction with the geometry. I was planning on having soft body simulation for the hood and hairs at the back but this was too complicated so i just used more nhairs instead. Then I set up another CTRL to turn those simulations on and off to streamline animation.

Major || Progress Report 4 - Square-Eyes Rigged Model

Though it took longer than expected I finished the rigging process for my main character on Thursday, and cleaned up the scene. I want to begin testing it by applying random animations, mostly by putting it into a pose and attempting natural shifts, beginning to set up rulesets about dos and don'ts and writing them down, but first I have to address the functionalities of the rig and get the hair moving naturally. 

The character in the environment took ages to render (~13+ mins). It's most likely to do with optimisation of the scenes, so it won't take that long. I'm setting up an editable scene and an optimised one for animating with.

At least in the meanwhile I can exercise my skills in photography. 

Major || Progress Report 3 - Blank Space Test Renders and Stylisation stuff

I moved onto the facial rigging finally despite my earlier post a few weeks ago about reaching this point by the end of February, I'm going to try and do as much as I can for this week so i don't have to worry about this stuff in the near future. Here you can see the results of the mouth rigging tutorials. Considering the character in my animation doesn't talk, the mouth articulation doesn't need to be overtly complex, however i am taking advantage of the resources granted to me in order to learn more about how to do things. 

Re analysis of my environments in a 3D context. I had another look at my initial sketches and also some online examples to better understand the look I'm going for. Overall the sketches were very influenced by the idea of black and white in combination with bright colours. I chose this style initially because I wanted a lynchian feel to the animation, a kind of weird black and white short except with splashes of colour throughout. Implementing this will solidify the cartoonish artstyle a bit better.

this sketch is seeking the differences between the two spaces. The blank space is a lot larger and decrepid than the normal bedroom, and has a flooded floor that reflects the neverending ceiling. the cracked walls reveals a dark sea all around the space. the red door stands in the background.

Major || Progress Report 2 - Test Animations and Environment Texturing

While attempting test animations on the body rig I noticed that some of the driven keys weren't working for some reason, so they were fixed. Helps to notice this now so it doesn't make problems in the future. Now all that need to be completed is the face rig stuff.

Finished some more texturing for the environments, was a bit torn on whether to include patterned bedsheets or not, decided against it because the white looked ok if a little clinical. Tried to put a normal map on the carpet but the texture went very dark in the viewport? In the future perhaps look at making the main door taller, adding the window, and think about focal points.

I want the Bedroom to look like it belongs to a young person, so I'm avoiding using the 
same colours and utilising neutrals like white to fill in gaps in design. The use of brighter palette will help to create a family friendly, airy space to contrast the Blank Space, which will be characterised by its sense of enclosure and isolation echoed in a negative palette of darker colours and patterns. 

The inclusion of rain throughout the entire animation provides an extra layer of drama known as pathetic fallacy. There are mood changes to do with rain that varies between different people, I want this characters mood be affected by the weathers presence in the same way. I wanted to extend the interaction with water a little further by having the floor of the blank space be submerged in a thin layer of stagnant water. This will play with the idea of reflections both as a concept and in visual practise, as well as adding an extra layer of interaction. On the Outside scene as well, when I get around to it, could have a sparkle of morning dew and the remnants of clouds in the sky.

Looking at my concept art, the original Bedroom seems to become bigger and the waterlogged walls become taller through the use of vertical drip stains. Adding this to my current perception of the room, the ceiling should be out of sight completely, making the reflection of the room in the water like a bottomless pit. The small entryway with the red door is extended into a long winding path with the door standing out with red paint. The darkest corners of the room glint with something unearthly.

surprise. it's birdperson.

Major || Progress Report 1 - Square-eyes Body Rigging and Environment Modelling

As this is the first post about my Major since the end of my Minor project, I'm planning to update my project every Friday and detail what I have managed over the week chronologically using my physical diary as a reference. This should help me plan ahead so I can get things done on time, as well as giving me a secondary point of reference for physical progress and timelines on the project.

At this point in time, the work being achieved over the week is slow as I am still in the rigging process. Most of what I planned for this character is at a satisfactory standard, I've only waylaid myself with other work, like the included work on environment, for the sake of variation in my daily activity. The rig for the body is done, I am in the process of building a face rig now whilst troubleshooting as I go.

The aforementioned standard is a simple character that will interact with the changing environment of the bedroom, who will also be part of the furniture in the way that they are designed. They are a recluse with computer addiction. I also consider the title 'A Boy and his Shadow' a working title as when I look back on the work for this project, the original character was intended to be androgynous or sort of tomboyish to best represent a wider range of people.

Within the next two weeks, in other words, by the end of February I want to be finished with the face rigging and have no issues with the rest of the rig. This will enable me to move on to designing the core focus of the animation which will be the shifting environment. Spectacle is the best part of my animation and I want it to look as good as it can be. The time frame for this will be about two weeks from the beginning of next month, whereupon in the second half of March I can begin setting out the scenes in 3D space.

'A Boy and his Shadow' Minor || Submission

A story of a young boy and an unlikely friendship.

Reflective Statement

During this project, I have gotten a sense of how larger scale animation finds its foundations. I have worked on my management skills by using a timetable, though my work ethic still needs attention. Also I have found parts of the production phase that I have felt comfortable in.

'A Boy and his Shadow' Minor || Matt Paintings and Environments

I have made a few notes based on my storyboards and animatic attempts so far, though some events may change, the environments have always been the same, even props I have already made are supposed to fit into this space. Therefore I have begun matt paintings, orthographs, some modelling in proportion to my character, lighting experiments... which will be covered in this post.

Orthographs and Environment building

After blocking out everything the scale changed a bit to accomodate the fact this is a stage where characters are going to need to move about. I haven't done many models or textures yet as I intend to make my pre vis using this, and it doesn't need to be too elaborate for that purpose. When the space transitions, I'm going to use this specific model as a reference.

The memory photo

This was a vital storytelling element, and also an opportunity to use the original art style of my drawings.

The computer screen and the drawings that fill up the walls will be done soon enough, I have already begun creating some basic computer startups with the title incorporated into them. 

Matte Paintings

View from outside the bedroom window. I realised that it was supposed to be raining outside, so I decided not to use this one.

Skybox on the outside, perhaps it should have a more 'after the storm' sort of look to it, as it will look more dramatic.

One I re styled as a production art based on my storyboards.

'A Boy and his Shadow' Minor || Prop and Character Models

Square Eyes Model

Textured

Lambert

UV

Wireframe

Props

The Computer

to be updated with desk furniture during environment modelling stage (pens, paper, cups, other stationary ect...)

Plane

I am currently working on finalising the character rig, storyboards and animated pre viz ready for future presentations, as well as textures/matt paintings for the room and other environments.

Toolkit 3 || Moom 5 Minute Posing 9 and 10

Testing boundaries, an important note; most real life poses don't work very well in cinematic sense, especially with cartoon characters. it is really important to experiment and understand the limitations of the model, by attempting the most extreme poses you will discover a lot about the model, and begin to apply artistic license where necessary.

A lot of issues arise when you try to base the moom pose solely on a reference, because the moom has different proportions to an actual human, it is better to study the reference image first and then model based on your memory of it. This way also helps to focus on Maya and any issues in the viewport.

'A Boy and his Shadow' Minor || Prop Design and Modeling Update Post

To begin, I started modeling some of the props in preparation for a initial test animation. Specificially I needed to scale the objects correctly so they looked natural for the main characters to interact with.

I added a nose! It looks completely different to the design I had before, so I suppose this is a lesson in 3D design and having some foresight into the modeling process. It does look a bit like a doll, but this suits the animation.

I feel like this is the most I'm going to do for this character as I have been working on the model for some four months, which is quite a stretch of time, however, it only took so long because the model kept getting updates to look more natural.

A start on the computer model, just need accessories and wires next. It's going to be immobile so no rigging required.

I've also been working on the logo as during the intro, the title appears on the computer screen before the boy walks in the room, so I wanted a more glitchy looking aesthestic going on to best represent the computer framework.

Going forward, I need to create a couple of matte paintings ahead of time to put outside the window in the first bedroom scene, and also outside for a more expansive landscape. I won't worry as much about the environment especially as I need to start getting into skinning and rigging models at this point in time, but I am assured in knowing that I have sound design ready, as it is a crucial point of understanding for the audience.