Pantomimes, Monologues and Voice Replacements, oh my!

About time for another update. The pantomime assignment went well; I definitely learned a ton from it and I was amazed as to how much time I spent fixing mistakes in blocking when transitioning to splining. It helped me greatly with my workflow and I'm adapting it all to the next assignment to something that I feel is a better fit for me (eg. building in offsets in key poses rather than doing it after the fact, personal preference but it seems to vibe.) Here's the final version, tho a revision is still in the works.

Things are really beginning to click. After obsessing the past 3 weeks over the last assignment and the new one, I'm beginning to have a series of "Ah ha!" moments which is boosting my sense of self confidence but I'm still remaining very humble about it all. I've definitely reached a new echelon in my personal development for which I am grateful, but there's so much more to learn. It also just occured to me why at AM we spend so much time on so few assignments; spending 5 weeks on an 11 second clip seems absurd at a glance, but in retrospect it's brilliant. It forces me to push my work and see what's wrong with it at the finest levels of animation and subtleties, instead of producing a massive repetoire of so-so shots, as I'm particularly used to.

In terms of the new assignment, it's our first dialogue piece, a monologue rather, so one character, a new rig and the challenge of real acting. After sifting through many many carefully picked clips, I chose one and shot more video reference than I ever have previously to test out different ideas. I decided to go with a serious, emotional clip as most people tend to go with something humourous, but I figured I could get more out of it with a solidly conveyed piece. With that said, it has it's risks and rewards as I'm learning; far less forgiving over a funny shot, but I believe in myself I can make it shine. Here's my first pass blocking attempt at it, halfway through the second pass, but I won't post it yet.

Further development on my charitable project, have many rendered shots and the base of it is complete, a lot of fine tuning still yet to do. The script has undergone some serious changes to increase the length and overall power of it, so a lot of things are being reworked and reshot. Also an amazing learning experience and one I'm not soon to forget. As an additional test and personal curiousity, I did a little experiment with multi-channel sound editing. Largely because I haven't tried before and I wanted to see if I could. By and large it seemed to work and proved to be more challenging than I had previously thought; no copyright infringment intended this is simply a test but I successfully removed Robert Downey Jr's voice and replaced it with my own. Victory!

Here's the near polished version of my first acting (pantomime) assignment, it's been quite an evolution. I rendered this out to test the lighting and occlusion, all in all worked pretty well. It's down to the last 10% of polish to put that often imperceptible oomf into it; if you ask me, also the trickiest part.

In lieu of Ironman and my seemingly undying interest in visual effects as well, I messed around with making a HUD much like the one featured with Tony Stark. Much of it was done through the aid of a tutorial, but the experience was all together new and I learned some invaluable tricks and techniques. Here's basically what I got. I want to reshoot the footage and splice myself into Ironman, but after rewatching that sequence, I'd have to be really crafty with the audio... if I can get the music on it's own track then I'd say it's possible and totally worthwhile.


Coraline comes out this weekend, very exciting, and new Monsters vs. Aliens posters are released. If you have no intention on watching that film then shame on you! It should prove to be thoroughly enjoyable for all ages. Dreamworks has finally learned from past mistakes, all the power to them. March 27th, mark it down.

Many other things in the works, but I don't feel obliged to talk about them right now; they're not in any real state of public displayability, so I'll hold off until my next post.

Actimating

Long overdue for a post, but Term 3 has started and it's just great so far. I've switched over to a new computer as my old one was on it's last legs and this has helped endlessly. In terms of Animation Mentor, we've delved into learning about acting and pantomime. This assignment is incredibly challenging and I'm already a bit surprised the amount of time I've put towards it (technical complications with constraints not-withstanding). It's criteria involves an emotional change, leaving the playing field very open. I decided to try and go unique and, during it's evolution, it actually progressed into something that made more sense.
From the original video reference and thumbnails, all I can say is that so much has changed, and by next week, so much more will also.

I've also started reconstructing a new logo for myself and rebuilding the Julio model I was creating in Maya, well rerigging and reskinning mostly. A timely prospect, but my progress has been good and I decided to spend a little more time now to save time later. This is largely to save me from some insane compositing that I would have had to resort to in a couple weeks time. I did this screenshot as a test to see how it might unfold, the environment still needs a lot of work but it answers a lot of questions for me.

Wow, it's cold out. And other irrelevant blog titles

It's the last day of term 2, and I'm excited and sad at the same time. I've finished the last assignment and updated my progress reel, which is this:

In retrospect I think the music is a tad obnoxious, but I have changes to make to it anyways like finessing the intro and properly rendering out all my assignments; but I can do that over the break. I also feel that ol' Betsy here is dying on me, it's official, my DVD drive crapped out, and she's approaching the end of her upgradability. She shall be missed when the time comes, tho I may keep her as a render mule. I feel as if my mind has been all over the place lately and slowly lamenting into insanity... of sorts. So many side projects for one, it's hard to stay focused, especially now when I really should. For example, I started messing around with SDKs for the first time, predominantly Half Life 2 Source and my personally beloved Orbiter. The former I've made more progress with writing and creating my own addon, but so much work left to do. In my nostalgic geekiness, I'm trying to create some nuclear-esque rockets from the Buck Rogers universe; being one of the coolest retro concepts ever! This photo shows my first attempt/test of different parameters and model importing.
That pathetic shadow on the landing pad of the Brighton Beach moonbase is telltale of success, believe it or not, because at first I was skeptical if I could even get that much to work. Ideally, come soon, I should be able to have a fully functionary nuclear rocketship that would behave ideally like that of Buck Rogers' Maelstrom Rider; complete with cockpit and animated controls. As far as the Source engine goes, I'm still learning the (sometimes) frustrating inner workings of the tools it comes with, but will hopefully be able to update my progress with that. The Julio project is partially slowed down due to some technical and personal issues, but should be back up at full force come the new year; Evidentally I still have many lessons to learn in rigging.

The latest of assignment nears completion and I'm feeling somewhat comfortable with it's progress. I have learned from many of the mistakes from the last assignment and thoroughly analyzed the process on this one from a new perspective. Here's a more updated version with an incomplete first pass splining; the latter half needs much work and looks extremely floaty, whilst the first half simply needs more polish. With this term almost over, I really look forward to next term.

My other project is progressing the animation blocking phase, this is a recent shader test and roughly blocked run cycle, just to see how things deform and what still needs tweaking, animation aside. As well, here is a vfx shot that I wanted to try to see if it was possible; it wasa great learning experience and generally a lot of fun, if not challenging.

Well the final assignment has been handed in, and work has started on the new one. I still need to polish the last one up a bit more, based on my newest mentor notes, but it's getting there. The whole area with the balance on the first candy cane, I've never been super happy with, and slowly I'm beginning to figure out how to change it. It's not so much a matter of me not being able to decide what I want it to look like, but more a matter of having what I want translate properly with my keys and f-curves into the computer.

Much work has been accomplished on the next assignment as well: Video reference, thumbnails and first pass blocking have been more or less completed, tho many changes yet to come I'm sure. I Desperately need to fix the set, the lighting's been tricky, and I just decided to scrap the secondary character, as he's too misleading with the eye and distracts the audience from the focus of the animation. I may spend more time working with the actual struggle with the sticky door, as that is the crux of the assignment, however it was great fun to throw in some acting choices as well.

My Julio character for a side project progresses very nicely also. fully rigged and skinned now, I've done a lot with set design for this piece and am kind of finalizing the look of the character. Here's a little test of face shapes and facial hair; still using base textures at this point.

Why Can I never think of a Title?

Once again an overdue blog update. School keeps trucking forth and I with it. In the final stages of polishing this latest assignment after countless revisions. This is not the final version but close to it. I had a lot of fun attempting some dynamic simulation in Maya as well, not my forte. Still a fair bit of finessing to do, but it is ever closer to completion.


I've also been heavily involved in a project I took on in good ol' Softimage, so I had to refresh myself in all that joy as well. I have a character under construction and nearly animatable for this project, who has been rigged and UVs layed out for texturing. Here's a screenshot as a teaser. Weighting and base textures should be done by the weekend and proxy animatics done sometime next week. I'll try and keep updates on that as well.