Polarity

Finally started work on a side project with a friend, she's had an original superhero character idea for a while and I happened to mention a few showreel piece ideas that I'd had involving superheroes but I'm not so great with designs so I'd not pursued them any further...

Anyways I'm working on making her designs into a 3d character in maya and building a better rig than last time out, researched and found better  modelling and rigging solutions than used in the grad film so loads to learn but working with someone on a cool looking character makes it fun and easier to go through the process from scratch.

Aside from that I've also started to learn some python programming as every job spec I've looked at seems to want some know how so hopefully that'll start to sink in and become useful as the polarity project comes along - especially when it comes to making the GUI.

Short tests 2

So after the previous short test thing I found that I really liked getting back into the facial stuff compared to the more game-y body mechanics stuff i've been working on pretty much exclusively for the last year or so, I've decided to have another go at a longer piece, its getting there slowly and ive got a few ideas of how this is going to end up as a full body performance. I think im gonna start blocking these bits in then re animate the eye line/head movement to fit

Short tests 1

While i'm waiting for shots to come through at work i'm doing my own thing and either taking part in the mini challenges on the 11second club or playing around with various ideas of my own, today i decided to tackle some lip sync and start doing some more performance focused things.

This is still a WIP but i've really enjoyed spending a  couple of hours working things out and playing with a different facial setup to things ive used in the past. Want to get some of the mouth shapes better defined and figure out how to get some movement into the upper body without over doing it.Been a nice change from the sort of things ive been doing with mocap and my grad film.

Will post polished version shortly

Face wise it feels a lot closer, keep scratching my head when im thinking about the line, not so sure it works with the character, single frames look nice but over the whole anim it doesnt feel quite right - at the same time its better than him stood there arms side by side. will ask around and think about what to do next... 

Discovery

Discovery from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.


My grad film, completed in 7 months. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way

[insert witty title]

So its been a while since I last updated this properly, loads has happened in that time. I'm writing this sat in a hotel bar drinking an ice cold pint celebrating getting a 2.1 for my degree and starting my new job as an animator at Rare.

To say I've been lucky is an understatement, admittedly I've worked hard this year but it's all coming together at last. The month or so before hand in was unbelievably stressful and I still cant watch the film without cringing at glaring mistakes and animations that are a little too rough around the edges.

The grad show came and went and I'll post photo's from that once I've been reunited with my camera, which is in one of many boxes 116 miles away in Cardiff. The show itself was a success, was a good chance to see people from my original year before I disappeared to do the animation internship at Lionhead Studios as well as getting to see my film on the big screen, the biggest surprise came the next day when I got a mention on the ffresh review of the screening and show.

Whilst all of this was going on I'd been applying for various jobs and snuck off for an interview at Rare in Birmingham, within the space of 7 days I'd been offered the job, moved to Cardiff, and then frantically raced upto Birmingham to start work as an animator/motion editor.

I'm still not entirely sure as to the purpose of this blog post gradutation, in some respect it will always be my production journal for the grad film and a place to ramble about the various projects I'm working on. So far there's been talk of working on a game with Chris Caesar, vague discussions of a windows phone game with Megan and Jacko once Tea and Techno have finished competing at Dare to be Digital, as well as wanting to get my reel vastly improved to send out after my time here at Rare. It seems the work really never ends but there's so many cool things going on I really cant complain. While I try figure out the best way to keep working on my reel (separated from pc whilst on the short contract at rare) and juggling the other projects I'm shortly going to be posting various things over at #AltDevBlogADay but it may be a few weeks before that gets off the ground as internet access and time have been in fairly short supply...

Degree Complete... Level Up!

So I've handed in the grad film and have completed my degree, it's been a long testing year but it's also been awesome. There's a few bits and pieces I want to tweak and the edit needs a tiny bit of work now the final audio is sorted but other than that i'm real happy with how it's all turned out. I'm dying to post it but in even better news I've made the shortlist of the top 12 Ba/Ma films and festival submissions appear to be liking exclusivity for a while... However if you want to see the final thing e-mail me/comment and i'll sort something out :)

Moving onto re cutting my showreel and generally job hunting in an attempt to distract me from thinking about getting the final assessment feedback...

Blockout to Final Render

This clip shows some of the processes involved from animation to final film, the first section shows the blocked out animation of the proxy models, the second shows the animation converted to spline curves and a first pass on clean up, the model has also had a smooth preview applied to ensure that there are no strange intersections and base textures have also been applied. The third and final section consists of the final render from the film, the scene has been lit and as a result the SubSurfaceScatter texture on the skin appears along with a light inside the helmet, the background has also been added in post. 

Light at the end of a ridiculously long tunnel

So I've nearly finished the film for monday's hand in, the last few scenes are rendering and the edit is pretty much there. The only decision left to make is whether the bed jumping animation stays

 
I can see the argument for cutting and leaving.... at the moment i want to drop it but that knocks the music out and im still waiting for the final draft of that to arrive so i guess i'll probably make that call late on sunday... that or remove it for the grad show (click link for trailers/previews and profiles etc)

Eitherways while this has been rendering I've been working on Megan's film and doing various things, the biggest job was working on one of the puddle worlds and making a CG city so she could animate a tricky camera shot which iI then inked....

All that's left to do now is a huge write up and publicity pack, hand in on monday then work back into the film a little more for the grad show, I want to get string behaving like string but still don't fully understand how to make this work on time for monday which is a shame but I wanted time to make sure the edit was right and refine a few other animations that I felt were more important. Will have a trailer/link to finished film soon.

Rendering

I'm almost finished with maya, nearly every scene has been rendered with one or two animations left to complete and refine. I've spent the weekend shifting settings and generally solving technical issues which took a little longer than expected but for the most part it's all falling into place.
The biggest relief is sorting out the tomato face in the cave, it turns out I'd changed the settings of the SSS shader without realising and made the layers of skin super thin, so once they were corrected the render started behaving and looking less red. Here is a picture;

Once the animations are out of maya im putting everything through after effects to add in the skies and do any colour correction as required. There have been a couple of cases where I've had strange artifacting on the walls or props, in these situations I've gone back to the source file and rendered the character and environment out on separate layers and composited the two in after effects, these are then exported as uncompressed .mov files for the final edit which is happening in Premiere Pro.

Renders

Been lighting, rendering and stressing pretty much all week but finally have a configuration im pretty happy with, also the renderfarm is alive again so once the last few bits and pieces are textured i'm gonna work up the animation a little and the finally hit render.