Reading, writing, refining

No update for a couple weeks, handed in previs, went really well, lots of good feedback to carry on with. Dedicated a couple of weeks to the dissertation and research, argument developing and changing will each new book I pick up but going well.
Looked at the film for the first time since the deadline and fresh eyes meant another list of tweaks and changes to impliment but looking forward to getting back on with things, complete dissertation first draft first tho

Feasability Tests

an7.1 feasibility tests from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Animatic 2

After talking with Matt G and Caroline on friday ive gone back to the story and tried to create a reason for him going to the moon and some motivation/challenge whilst there


Test Animatic 2 from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

backstory

To give the boy a purpose/reason for going to moon i needed to come up with somekinda backstory which im hoping will show thro pictures of him and dad (? - who will be an astronaut when these are painted over) recieving his space medal and that medal will be the boy's prized possession which is missing and he is convinved its on the moon and travels to explore and retrieve by jumping in his cardboard box rocket and warping. 
Looked at various nasa medals and i dont think it needs to be named just a clearly engraved space theamed medallion hangin near pictures and clippings he's collect and pinned to wall of various missions etc, signed photos of other astronauts etc.... Im debating killing off the older character and showing that thro a headline on a news clipping which will add weight to the importance of finding the medal

Stuff occurred today

Lots has happened today. But i maybe have a film. Spoken to Caroline and Matt who gave me a variety of options to try get a story working and have it all make sense rather than the current animatic which is very dry and dull.
Matt suggested him losing something or going to the moon to find something to give him some purpose and have a satisfying ending rather than it just stopping as it does in its current form, so the plan is to introduce a backstory with his dad or someone being an astronaut and giving him his medal/Space Operations Badge (they really exist). Precious object goes missing, he sees a glint on the moon whilst gazing out of the window and thinks its the badge and jumps into his cardboard box rocket and warps... following old boards.... swapping crap alien for hunting for badge, finds, happy, returns home..... working on the rest.

Also i tested the character rig out today and that is what i want to change ^^ all the skinning is default so once ive gone and looked at it all and tweaked i think it'll work nicely except the hands which have been on the list to redo for a couple days but the priority is story

Feasability Testing 3: Facial Performance

Been thinking about the facial setup and animation a lot for this project, I wanted to go a step further from the 2nd yr group project and try something different. I spent a lot of time looking at Jason Osipa in the 2nd year maya option and rigged and animated accordingly which is something i'd like to go back to with the mouth and make sure i create all of the correct extreme shapes to link up into neater sliders later on rather than lists of blendshapes.

The approch to animating it and thinking in layers also helped lots and can be seen in the test below (2nd yr maya unit) trying not to do everything at once, thinking about the widest/up and down points, then accents in the head, eye darts etc and slowly build up the performance rather than try and do everything at once.


Facial Anim Tests from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.


The biggest difference this time round is the eyes, I wanted to test myself and do something other than semi realistic looking eyes and have more fun with the shapes - e.g Eve's eyes in wall-e and the button eyes in Coraline, simple shapes relying a lot on the brow to convey the emotion etc...

In terms of testing the faces range of movement im going to create a simple set of mouth/eye/brow shapes to work back into later on, looking at a broad range of "lip sync shapes" including Aardman, Preston Blair, Eve, and in a mirror to try and sculpt the best possible ones, I've found it easier to work straight into maya rather than draw everything out then translate to 3d, will post tests shortly

Feasability Testing 2: Cloth

Cloth Tests from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Testing possibilities of being able to animate clothing especially in the jump sequence, something to concider and develop further and look into nCloth and collision objects - making a more accurate inner body for the shirt to rest on and remving the edgind around the sleeves rather than its current extruded form

Feasability Testing

Im slightly concerned that a lot of my testing has been more technically based, the stories developed a lot and changed about 6 times since ive been nack but always been on a common theme with the world the boy enters through his visor and keeping the narrative very simple meant i had much more time to learn the tech and play around, also the presswure to produce 30 seconds of animation tests has meant modelling and rigging the boy earlier than anticipated, today ive unwrapped what i think is needing to be uv-ed textured at a later date to prevent any problems during rigging (incase i cant unwrap and have to re rig) lots learned, the head needs some work still to get a nice map but im contemplating keping the deisgn simple and just adding minor details like seams and logos to the t-shirt and shoes etc. Checked the model through meticulously this afternoon and everythings in place to attempt rigging and finally test out some animation :D

Animatic

is in progress, been getting feedback from various tutors/people on storyboards and what reads/doesnt so im working back into those whilst working out the animatic and whether any dialogue is req'd the general opinion is that it reads well with out...


Preproduction test animatic 1 from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Head mk2

but the body was cool...

... and sticking in some joints and testing the mesh worked switching between fk/ik and not changing the weights so when i go back and tweak those it'll look nicer

to say the head went bad is an understatement

i didnt like the mouth so decided to redo and broke the smoothness under the chin and neck.... 3 hours later and much help from Charlie we decided it would be best to redo and try and extract working elements like the ear and mouth.... long. day.

to keep the final panel or not....?

sunday

todays efforts added, slow progress but progress nonetheless

neatening up thumbnails

Story

Ive been totally side tracked with getting to grips with maya and learning how to model/texture etc that ive not posted much about story, unfortunately a lot of it is still in my head and has formed thro conversations with various people and therefore isnt that well documented but after a brief chat with Caroline earlier today and combining comments from the pre vis things are getting into shape enough to turn all the various sheets of thumbnails into a fuly fledged storyboard and hopefully a loose animatic for monday.
my largest concern has been dialogue and wanting to do it silently but with a lot going on i think it might help to add in a few lines and its become essential to get the 3rd person (mum's) perspective and attempt to drag the boy back down to earth, gonna get some placeholder recordings next week in time for the presentation on the 6th.

have a few issues with the character ive modelled and getting it to deform as required which has put a hold to any animation testing which is massively concerning. Mixed week. Lots still to do

making character pt5

hmmm... spent ages trying to cut a mouth in and get it alright for blendshapes... hmm

making character pt4

dropped some simple textures on to get a rough idea of how things were shaping up and to get away from looking at the same grey mesh, coming together nicely i think. gotta add in some edge loops to get better definition in the crotch, ankles, shoulders and make a start on the mouth and add some eyebrows then paint up the helmet to look hand made.
Also starting to redevelop the story after being pointed in the direction of calvin and hobbes

making character pt3 continued

hair and hands need redoing

making character pt3 - hair test

Trying to work out how to do the hair, rather than go for something simulated/planes(?)/paint fx im gonna model it like lego hair, wasnt sure whether to try and extrude from the base head model or make it as a separate piece and combine the two later or parent it to the head bone when rigged, either ways this test has given a good indication that a separate model could work nicely

making character pt2

restarted this afternoon, need to redo the hands and start on the head but i think it looks ok as a first attempt

making character

made a model from plasticine to check proportions etc then started modelling in maya, decided to swap the shorts for jeans/trousers to avoid any issues with them and the knee when bent as im not really wanting to fiddle around with cloth simulations (or know how they work) for the time being, having reconcidered his ROM, the shirt sleeves may narrow slightly for simliar reasons but nothing skin tight, want to keep a slight gap

new plan: ending

the middle section will occur when ive figured out what that exactly is... im dropping the 2d animations crawling down the walls as trying to juggle 2d, cg and compositing etc to the level i'd like to achieve is asking a lot and adding further complications with how the transitions would work between the two spaces....
the current thinking and a suggestion by leonie is to introduce another character - his mum or someone so we see that he's really just in an empty ish room and all of this is in his head, so in order to make that work as well as i can without jumping out of his imagination and to the real world for no apparent reason im proposing (?) deciding (?) or just thinking about having him disturbed mid adventure, his mum checking on him but hes so sucked into what he's doing that he doesnt hear her and when he turns round he sees an alien and takes a second to adjust and come back to the err 'real' world at which point he removes his helmet and the view switches accordingly...

new plan: intro

New and uber rough intro thumbnails thing that needs padding out but an explanation....
It'll start in the bedroom which will be stripped out and almost bare in comparision to the original plan and possibly drab colours (contrasted with a brighter pallate for the imagination sequence), anyway, it'll start with the lad stargazing out of his window thro a cardboard tube then making/sticking up the stars hanging from the ceiling in the old design (possibly in a montage-y type way) and adding the finishing touches to the cardboard box helmet, then looking around at the room and pulling his helmet on and flicking to the world he is imagining...  

update

Been a slow week this week, previs presentation on monday didnt go as well as i'd hoped and a misunderstanding or few ground the whole project to a holt for a few days until i decided what to do next, had a useful tutorial and established what the film was about and left with a story however thinking about this later that evening it was an unmanageable amount of work for a team of people in the time available let alone just me (and probably down to my stubborness in not wanting overly simplified visuals)

However all isnt lost and im working on a combination of tuesdays epic outline and then older kid/alien combo to explain in more detail later on...

hate the colours. kinda like the last two

Deciding whether to have an astronaut costume at all time or not... The original plan was for  a home made looking one that switches to the old design when the visor comes down, but im thinking about trying to keep it simpler and just have a helmet/t-shirt - simple things that can be added rather than to try and create an outfit that would be tricky to get deforming correctly and needing a lot of detailed textures that i dont know how to create, so the current thinking is combine some of these to a simpler look like the last - top with mission control badges and a box hat then when visor comes down have a more astronaut-y look and then in theory there'll be more contrast later between real world and his imagination... i hope.

After combining various hands feet body shapes and faces this is the one i like and will try make

Re designing

Changing the age of the character for a kid means re designing/changing the character, the costume im planning on keeping the same in the ections where the visor is down but after thinking about how he'll move there needs to be some other changes to avoid weird looking animation, just extending the feet and giving him a neck should help...

Hands and feet

Rough Props

Basic colours

Basic Bedroom from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.


Chucked a load of standard flat textures in to try get an idea of what needs uv-ing and what can be left as.... a lot of unwrapping to be done....

Shoddy cam

Shoddy Cam pre vis test 1 from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Shoddy cam of room thus far... fairly happy with it, needs more to look lived in (all planned for) but before any more modelling or texturing the priority is sorting the story etc...

The Start of Pre Vis pt 2

2 days and a fuckload of modelling later the bedroom mk1!

The Start of Pre Vis

Pre vis presenatation next week, making some of the props and working out how to texture/render and show the 'look' of the film... so i made toy tools to fix his spaceship

Today i learnt about booleans... and made a toy car

Early alien drawings

 Initial ideas for the room, will probably be messier/have the kids drawings stuck all over the walls, i like the idea of having the moons and stars dangling from the ceiling - maybe glow in the dark but im also thinking of swapping it for some kinda solar system mobile-y type thing and having a border run round the top of the room,
possibly a combination of the
drawings below - a rocket floating
(?) or orbiting round...

While I've been working on the story and various other things ive been trying to get ahead in other areas and thinking about the design of the room/what props would be needed and started to work on these as well as learning various ways to model things in maya.

The initial idea for the story is a boy who wants to be an astronaut and builds himself a spaceship out of cardboard boxes etc and when he puts on his helmet andn pulls the visor down the view changes to show his imaginary world and where he thinks he is....

In this "visor view" all of his drawings and creations come to life - the cartoon aliens he's pinned on his wall crawl down and animate as 2d crayon squiggles or morph into cg characters (tbd), part way he spins round and sees an alien he doesnt recognise, frantically flicking between the real world and his imaginary one (by lifting the visor up and down) he sees a real alien has arrived in his room....

After talking through various astronaut ideas with my tutor this week was a chance to pitch the idea i think im going with, rather than have him breakdown and get stuck in space or enter a bizzare cooking competition the idea is now based around a kid pretending to be an astronaut and fighting imaginary aliens, until one day a real one appears in his room....
The concept went down pretty well so i'll redesign my character to fit a younger age and try get a more homemade looking costume etc, and have a heavily space themed bedroom and get the whole thing out of space rather setting anything on a spaceship and risk re doing something thats been made many times before

2010 Showreel

Stacie Hawdon Showreel 2010 from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Responcible for all animated content, images of Milo and Kate used with permission from Lionhead studios, copyright Microsoft Games Studios.

Showreel breakdown:

1. Shot compromised of various clips reused and combined from other motion capture files to create a new,fitting motion

2. Short film from the 2nd year of university, first maya project

3. Part of a series of sad locomotion animations, fixes included correcting head and neck positions to avoid broken bones and intersections as well as editing the posture and  dropping the shoulders.

4. Shot compromised of various clips reused and combined from other motion capture files to create a new, fitting motion.

5. Part of a series of sad locomotion animations, fixes included correcting head and neck positions to avoid broken bones and intersections as well as editing the posture and dropping the shoulders.

6.  Short film from the 2nd year of university, first maya project

7. Hand keyed prop animation, exaggerated slow motion reaction to being struck

8. Hand keyed walkcycle

9. Shot compromised of various clips reused and combined from other motion capture files to create a new, fitting motion.

10. University project to create a tv ident for 4 music

11. Shot compromised of various clips reused and combined from other motion capture files to create a new, fitting motion.

12. Handkeyed bird animation, completed at Lionhead Studios