Hey peeps, well as you know my FYP is now handed in and on its way to being marked but i still have my Viva to do so im still working on my animation so that i can show improvement during my presentation.

To help me out with my animation and hopefully improve my skills i had one of the best video calls ever from an master of animation called DJ Nicke, ye is currently working on the new Dreamworks movie MegaMind due to be released 3rd December 2010.

here a quick trailer for it -

And if you are interested at all he has a Webinar coming up soon that i would suggest you sign up for - HERE

So anyway, ye thanks to his call i managed to push past a massive mental block i had come to in my animation. i am now able to see what i was struggling with and fix them problems.

I can only imaging what i would learn from just watching him work and getting one on one lessons with him like the one over Skype.

Anyway as said this is just a quick update to let you all know im still working on this animation and will be until it is fully completed.

unlike the one from last year (The Button) i feel i can really finish this animation and with a little time and effort it could be a very strong showreel piece.

well, till next time peeps keep safe.

These are just the videos found in the last post (HERE) but i wanted to put a copy of them in the video section as well so it was a little more organized ^^

The first one is what i handed in to the Uni, the second one is one that i did this morning and is how i wanted it to look but with all the software issues i could managed to get and the third one is a colored version of the second just cos i wanted a color version as well ^^

enjoy

Submitted Version


Peferred Version (Black & White)


Preferred Version (Colored)

This would have been posted yesterday but i needed sleep so very bad so sorry its late.

Well yesterday was the handin for my FYP (hard copy) and i got there at 11:50am and deadline was 12:00pm, but by the time the queue had gone down i go mine in for 12:05pm. lucky they said it doesn't matter so its all good.

anyway im just lucky i got it on the disc, as i was exporting my final video in Premier Pro i had nothing but problems, first every thing that happened was as i pressed export movie it decided to have a fatal error and closed then every time i opened the program it would come up with the message and close again, this happened every time i tried to do it, thankfully i had saved the project before pressing export so at least i had the file to use......so i went over to my Mac partition and went to open it in there but as im running CS4 on PC and CS3 on Mac it wouldn't open so i started to get worried and at this point i hadn't slept for around 35hrs so i was already at the end of my tether and was about to snap :(

so i thought i will just start to composite it all again but then Mac did't understand AVI files so i tried to convert but my copy of Prism for Mac had expired so i then went back over to the Windows partition to convert the files but as i was converting i wondered if After Effects would be able to open Premier files and luckily it did....so i exported all my work only to find that the compression i used made everything pixelated and un-viewable.

with only having 2hrs left till handin i exported it again as an AVI but without any compression, when i was finished the file ended up being 2.90GB and would only play in VLC player but it was working in something and viewable which was important.

anyway i got it handed in then went over to the Union to have a well deserved pint and some shots and by the time i got back home i had been awake for over 40hrs and i was in need of sleep so i ended up laying on my sofa and crashing ^^

so here are some videos for you guys to watch....let me know what you think..

the first one is what i handed in to the Uni, the second one is one that i did this morning and is how i wanted it to look but with all the software issues i could managed to get and the third one is a colored version of the second just cos i wanted a color version as well ^^

enjoy

Submitted Version


Peferred Version (Black & White)


Preferred Version (Colored)


But DON'T think thats it is all over as i will be working on this project till its done, i want this animation for my showreel and to prove to myself that i can do it so i will still be updating as i go on with the project so please keep checking back.

so until next time, keep safe ^^

Hey just thought i would upload this as some of you are interested to see if i will manage to pull this off in 24 hrs....well 22 now but whos counting ^^

anyway this is what i have so far, going to work on the breakdowns next.

just so you know i've not but the diving boards movements in yet so thats why the feet go through the board ^^

also timing hasn't been added yet :D

and because i can :D....here is another render of my scene, this is from the blocking you just watched ^_^

So as i said my last post i have now handed in my digital report for my Final Year Project.

Although i have submitted it i still have work to do on the animation and that is what i will now be doing till Wednesday's handin.

As i was doing my report i created a couple more images and test renders that i thought you all might be interested in.

but first...............French Monkey ^^

So ye i did a couple of renders of the scene and played around what what it would look like in Black and White and in Color. For the B/W images i used a red filter in XSI but im starting to lean toward the green filter, sadly have already said i used the red filter in my report so i should probs stick with it.

Also after playing with the scene a little i was finding that it looks really nice in color so there might be a change to a color animation but that will be after the handin is over.....or if not a color animation i will still create some color stills for the crack of it ^_^

anyway here are the images.










so ye please let me know what you think of these are it would be great to get the feedback.

anyway back to the animation and once thats done i will upload it to my videos section.

laterz all.

well today was the digital deadline on the report for The Dive.

i managed to submit it 22 minuets before the deadline had passed so i was very happy about that.

my handin for the animation and the printed report is this Wednessday so im working on getting everything sorted for that and with a little luck i will come out of this without to many problems.

anyway im really needing sleep right now so im going to go crash, so speak to you all soon and if you had your handin today hope you manged to get it in on time, i know how hard it is.

Well as the keen followers of my blog will know my digital hand-in for my report is on Monday and im still working my ass off on it as im worried i wont have it done in time.

Today i went in to see Chris and work out what i needed to include in my animation and my report. we worked out that there isn't enough in the way of animation so i need to work on that a hell of a lot more so that i can present my skills better.

Another thing is that he felt that i needed to work on my report a hell of a lot more as im not selling all the work i did enough, so im going to go back and make sure i talk about things like things i have learnt from tutorials and other sources, also i need to talk about my scene more as at the moment i only have 1 page and half of it is images at the moment so a lot more work is needed on that section.

There was a hell of a lot more we talked about as well but since as i said i only have till monday i need to get on with it so i will end it here.

my next post will most likely be on late Sunday or early Monday.

so till then keep safe peeps ^_^

Today was my 8th meeting with Chris (my mentor).

it went really well, we discussed what i need to include in my dissertation and how to go about ensuring the best mark possible.

we also looked at my rig to work out what was wrong with it but although it only happened 10% of the time during the meeting (and 100% of the time when im at home) we couldn't work out why it was doing it but it does cripple my animation progress if it keeps up, we tried saving a file on his computer to try on my computer which i will be doing later.

Anyway on a bad note, after getting back from the meeting....all the reference images i had saved throughout the year are missing...i have looked on every USB and External drive i have and there is no sign of them.

the only copy of them i have is the 2 images placed on this blog - HERE & HERE

i can still use these images but there are very low res on here so its not going to be the best when its printed out.

i could also use the images to find the original images on google image but as it took me over a year its going to be hard to get them all back.

anyway thats all i have for now, so im going to get back to the dissertation write up as i have a lot to do.

this is just an update so that i know what i did for when it comes to doing my dissertation.

Last night and today i worked my hardest at getting this rig working as it should but although i managed to get the bones setup correctly the envelope isn't as easy to fix.

If i can do anything for this hand-in as far as the animation goes it will have to be a quite extensive storyboard/animatic.

so i will refine the animatic and add some more frames to try and get a smoother animation all together, this will be hard but if i can push for at the least a week extension i will have better luck.

Anyway as i said its just a quick update do that i know whats going on when it comes to my hand-in.

so till next time.

Ok i have just over a week left and this had to happen NOW ! ! !

i was animating another section of the scene and for some reason no matter what i do i find that my rig screws up so very very much.

i think i can fix it but it will take me longer then the time i have left, if i do fix it i wont have time to animate it for the final hand in but i will have it working for when i head out to complete the animation after the hand-in is over.

I want this animation done for my showreel, so either way it will be completed but i really can't see it happening for the hand-in in a weeks time.

I still have my full dissertation to write and although i can take a lot of it from this blog i still have a lot of work to do for it.

anyway this is the problem i am having, i have taken some screen grabs so you can get a better idea.

To fix this problem i would have to remove the XSI Spine as i feel that this is coursing the problem and create a 3 bone spline in its place, although i believe this part is quite simple the enveloping on the other hand will not as i struggled to get the it right in the first instance.

I will have to go over it with Chris on Monday and see if i can be marked on the full production of the animation (rigging, envoloping, texturing, modelling, etc).

If i can get him to agree to this i will be able to hopefully have a shot at getting at the very least a 2-2.

anyway i hope you can follow what i was saying here and i also you are still interested in the progression i am making, both negative and positive. if i have learned one very important thing about doing this project it is that problems will always happen.....you just can never tell where and when they will happen.

anyway thats it for this post, so till next time.

keep well and keep animating.

So today me and my house mate went outside to record some new reference footage for my animation.

It was great to do this as he was doing things that i would never have thought of doing.

For instance when he was acting as he was walking along the diving board he didn't lift his feet of the board to much as he was nervous and i didn't think of this as when i was animating the character i have him walking as if there was nothing wrong with him.

So this is what i got from it, its not the videos but a thumbnail sheet (i love that Media Player Classic does this)

Image Link



Image Link


So ye thank you to Almantas Šukelis for helping me out today, its really going to help me out.

As i feel that im still not understanding animation very well i thought i would do some small test animations to increase my animation skills and hopefully help me understand the process of animation better.

I have been watching a load of tutorials from Keith Lango and taking on board everything he has said so far to do this animation.

I know there is still more that needs doing but over the next couple of days i hope to have that fixed as well.

My problem as i see it is that i understand about line of action, anticipation, phrasing, timing, spacing...etc, but when it comes to sitting at the computer and doing these things i just can't seem to get the grasp on it.

So this is why i am doing these animations, in hope that i will be able to work out how to put everything i know into the animation and get it working.

I will say one thing for this animation, although its not the best and i know that, it did help me to slot a couple of the things i was struggling with into place in my head and put them onto the computer.

anyway this is what i have.....

Émile Turn Around Angle 1


Émile Turn Around Angle 2


Key Poses - I feel i managed to create some strong poses with the character.










oh and i know the face needs a lot of work on it......its not rigged at all yet so it make its hard to do the right face animation.