ShotView

Found a useful script/tool/thing online that lets me designate a specific camera for "shooting" and have that view in a seperate window so i can see what the shot will look like whilst working on it in a different view and not risk accidently moving the camera (which ive done a lot and its annoying) and also hiding all of the controls etc leaving me with just the mesh. Probably not the best description in the world but it saves jumping between views and means i get to work and preview stuff full screen.

Shotlist

This is the shotlist so far, the tutors seem happy with the story and im itching to start animating so i think today it begins. texturing still needs to be done but i want to spend sometime animating and try get ahead rather than being to texture and get lost in putting in unnecessary detail. That and ive still gotta learn how some of this stuff works.
Also started looking into changing the eyes for smaller versions and tweaking the body shape but due to the way i'd made the model and rig changing things now will set me back 2/3weeks in an already tight schedule, so i'd rather have a finished film with imperfections than no film at all.
Ultimately im looking forward to it being covered in ticks 

model tweaks

wanted to update the model and stuff but ive got a fair way down the pipeline so when you change stuff it gets weird...

Epic monday!

For a monday today was epic, really good feedback from the tutors about the film so far and what i can do to make it better
James also showed me how to get the fk/ik controls to show/hide according to the ikBlend setting so i ended up learning about if statements and the expression editor. All in all a good day.

if (rightArmManip.ikFkBlend > 0.5)
{
    master.ikManip = 1;
    master.fkManip = 0;
} else {
    master.ikManip = 0;
    master.fkManip = 1;
}

^^ that is the code making the pictures above work, basically saying that if ik mode is on show the ik controls and if its turned off the fk controls show.

the only flaw in it is that when ikBlend is set to 0 the handle disappears (as was the desired effect) so getting it to reappear is tricky.... so im gonna try assign this to the master controller so i can always access it (or just stick with the previous setup) either ways i learnt lots and have more i wanna try out (when i have time)

Stars and Strings

The last bit of stuff that needed rigging was the string so I could add in a slight sway as they're hung.... wasnt sure how i was going to achieve this at first and lots of joints and rotating each one seemed long winded but as I was setting up the character I found out about the "IK Spline Handle Tool" which pretty much worked like the Ik handles but meant joints in the chain would have a serpentine movement which was exactly what i wanted with the string. So i tried working out how i'd impliment that:

More research and testing occured:

Then i crudely keyed a quick sway just to confirm things were starting to work:

The bottom half is getting there and the top is close but needs adjusting as well as animating the star rotating/spinning on top of the side to side motion (which is blockout not animated).... Eitherways its getting there but still needs something

Final Controls

I realised at somepoints i'd be switching between fk and ik in the arms depending on what the kids doing but when i turned off the ik i had no controls for the fk stuff and showing/selecting each joint seemed a messy way of working. So i decided to create some manipulators to attach to the elbows and wrists to help me when im animating using the fk rig. but then there were LOADS of controllers everywhere. this was messy and looked horrendous. so i sat in the corner and geeked out and decided i would find a way to hide the new fk controls when using the ik ones and vise versa....
The master control (big yellow arrow-y type thing) now has two additional attributes they are as follows:

ikManip
and
fkManip

both of these were added as Enum attributes which let me create a show/hide option in the channel box. I then connected the appropriate controllers visibility to the new attribute so they now appear or vanish as required....

I also locked and hid the translate/scale attributes for all the new fk manipulators to avoid confusion - they are also a different shape so i can instantly tell which mode the arms are in. And all the manipulators are now coloured too - red for the left, blue for the right and yellow for anything in the middle...

 trying to work out how this would all work and connect up...

Re Rigging pt3

Was happy with the rig I made fri/saturday but it didnt have any manipulators for the fingers and having to select individual joints to keyframe seemed messy so after a shed load of experimenting I figured out what to do to make my own controls for each finger and it worked!

Re Rigging pt2

Re Rigging

After the crit on monday I realised how important the character performance was going to be, I thought keeping it limited was the way forward but it turns out its gonna be harder to do it like that which i dont mind but the setup machine rig I was planning on using doesnt fit what im after. Yes its a good rig and was useful for the tests but it needed a lot of persuading to do the things I wanted often with poor results so I figured rather than force it to work i'd go back and rig from scratch, therefore creating a custom rig for the character so it'll have what it needs and in setting it all up myself i'll have a better idea of whats going wrong later on. Probably not the smartest move seeing as ive not rigged a character before but here is the final (ish) rig, just need to add in some manipulators for the fingers to save going thro each joint individually and its there in full ik/fk glory... just hope the skinning goes as relatively painfree

stuff

ive been thinking a lot about how i want this film to look and i keep coming back to paper plane... but i dont think ive got the experience or time to pull this off so im kinda lost with where to go next. Having a lot of issues with the setup machine rig and seriously concidering rigging it myself, the problem is in it adding an insance amount of joints which is making weighing a total mission, the space suit turned out ok but the hands and arms are really messy.
general feedback from the crit is that this all rests on subtle character animation which means getting a really solid rig sorted asap and some focus.

CG Animatic

CG animatic from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

rig fail

:(

Blockout

Continued starting to blockout the film, rig needs more work and adjust the timing too

And so it begins...

Today Im starting to blockout the animation in maya and convert the current 2d animatic into a CG version, once this is done i'll go back and add the textures and the details once im sure that the space is right and theres no unecessary bg stuff etc.... The first key has been set :D

Moon Stuff

Rough Layout of moon to match storyboards, sky in photoshop

mock up of stars, first half is starry ish shapes and the second more like the drawing in ps, both are a bit much but maybe workable somehow