Sorry i've not updated this sooner.....i've been quite busy suffering from cold and trying to get my life into order now im no longer a student.

So as i said in my last post....my final year project was featured in the Hartlepoool Mail and i managed to get hold of a copy of the paper.

There is now a PDF version of the article for you to download if you are having problems reading the images or if you would like a copy for yourself. DOWNLOAD

So ye thats the post......like i said i would have updated sooner but i've just been to busy but now that im getting back to things i thought i would let those of you who haven't been checking my other blogs see the post.

If you are wondering how the animation is going.....im not really working on it at the moment as i want to start the animation again but with better movement...so im working on improving my animations before i set to work on this animation again.

please dont think it wont be completed and updated as it will be so keep on following me even if there are no updates for a while as wouldn't want to lose your valued interest.

thank you for sticking with me and i will talk to you soon.

Well today was my Viva for my Final Year Project.....it actually went quite well, well better then i thought it was going to go ^^

Basically the viva is when i present my Final Year Project in front of my Mentor (Chris) and my assignment second reader (Simon), i had to go over the process i used when animating and the overall outcome of that process.......this was then followed by questions from both Chris and Simon about the assignment and the reasons why i did certain things.

I think it went ok but i got the impression that when i was explaining what i had done to Simon he didn't fully understand, for instance when he asked me about the logic behind how colors can be identified even in black and white, no matter how i explained it he didn't seem to get the grasp of it.

using this example....

I tried to explain that even in black and white the different shades can represent different colors and it is just as important to understand how the colors will come across in a black and white scene....i got the feeling that he felt that this was total rubbish. if i could explain it again i would tell him how photographers use the same principles when creating back and white images, they uses different variation on grays to create the impression of separate colors.

either way it went ok and im sure that if i could do it again it might go a little smoother but its over now and i have no need to worry about it anymore.

Anyway......as i said before i will be completing this animation over the next several months so this blog will be updated as usual so keep checking back.

on some other cool news, my final year project has been featured in the Hartlepool Mails part of a human interest piece that they wanted to do on me....As im in Middlesbrough at the moment and the article was in tonights paper i wont be able to get some scans of the paper in till i visit my hometown and grab a copy of the paper, so keep checking back and as i will get them uploaded asap.

by for now guys and glas.....keep safe and talk to you all again soon.

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.

So, i needed some new reference footage for my animation as i am struggling with at the point when the character starts to pull himself over the top of the diving board.

As i don't have access to a diving board of the same design as mine i used a selection of objects from around the house to come up with a suitable setup for the actions.

This is what i got from it

Hover Over Image To Zoom
(Remember this requires JavaScript)

Image Link



Image Link



Image Link


I will be doing more reference recording tomorrow at the university....well i will be hoping to find places to do it that will give me the look i am after.

Here is the first part of my animatic, not completely there yet but im still working at it.

The font is just a stock one till i find a better one as well.

Well its been 2 weeks since i started work on the final designed character and its finally done.

Its been a hard time getting it working but i think i managed it quite well, the problem is that it has only left me with with 4 weeks to get the other work done, now although i feel that this is possible i dont feel that it will be showing my skills at there full.

I understand that this problem is all down to me and the way i structured myself with the project over the year but i still feel i can come out of this with a good peace of work even if i work on it after the project is over.

So as for the project that i will be submitting, i am going to be requesting to my lecturer (Chris Wyatt) in my next meeting with him if i would be able to be marked not only on the animation but also the texturing, rigging and modelling of the main character, this will hopefully get me then extra marks that i dont feel i will be able to acquire with just the animation hand in.

So as i said at the start, i've finished the rig and the rest of the character set up, here is what i have.

Click Image to Enlarge











So As you can see from the images i have done quite a bit since the last post and i hope that now my rig is done i will still have enough time to get the animation out.

So what i did since the last post is i started by fixing the issues with the mesh that i mentioned before and then begun to rig it.

For the rig i used a small amount of reference from other rigs that have been made and tried to develop my own techniques that i felt would work.

One of the main things i found helpful was the rig from Pigeon Impossible, it used a small expression code that was placed on the visibility option that would bring up a feedback disc on the wrist to state that the arm was being pulled to far and may start coursing problems.

Expression:

cond( ctr_dist( Emile.Right_IK_Arm_Root.kine.global.pos, Emile.Right_IK_Ctrl.kine.global.pos ) > 6.9, 1, 0 )

For the spine i thought of a easy way to stop the body from stretching without coursing crippling to the over all movement.

To do this i placed a 2 bone chain and parented the root to the chain to the hip object and the effector to the top vertebra.



As you can see from the last image on the right the green bone is the 2 bone chain i have mentioned. This is stopping stretching but not limiting movement as you can see from the other images.

Another useful feature i have implemented is the use of a reverse foot control. This gives the animator easier control of the foots rotation and will essentially generate smoother animation.



Before starting the final rig for this character i started by making a demo rig that used all the techniques that i thought i would need and then chose the things that i felt would be needed by Émile to preform him actions.

Some of the things i chose not to include where things such as IK/FK switch....this was done by creating a "dead bone chain" (a bone chain made of nulls) and then constraining them to the IK chain or the FK chain and using a slider to blend between the two of them......i have used the same technique as i did in the demo by making the dead bone chain and constraining them but only made an IK chain. This is so that if i feel that at any point i may need a FK chain it will be easy to make one and fit it to the rig without any enveloping or weight mapping problems.

Other things i didn't include were expression scripts that would control the visibility or objects through sliders, these were not needed due to the single IK chain but can be also easy implemented if need be.

Once all the enveloping and rigging was complete i started work on the UV Mapping. As i had never done this before i found it a new and challenging experience. After i had learned the basics it become a little easier but it wasn't till work started that i begun to understand it better.

To make it easier i started with creating clusters of the main body parts for easy access to the sections when unwrapping, this helped me out a lot and i found that i didn't need to keep going back to the model and reselecting the polygons.

I had to use several projections on some sections of the body such as the feet that required 4 projections and then stitched together to create the final projection and reducing the deformation of the texture.

After the mesh was unwrapped i ended up with this....



Then i moved on to coloring it in Photoshop and producing this....



one of the hardest parts i found when texturing was the eyes. This was because i wanted a specific style to them and couldn't work out a way of producing it.

some of the references i used where from Tim Burtons Corpse Bride and the Road Safety Advert.





After several different versions of the eye colors i ended up with this and i feel that it worked best for what i was wanting.



To save from having to model out the toes i also used an old game character technique where in you texture the toes as if they where there, this results in this....



Once it was all complete i finished with this character and i feel for my first fully textured and rigged biped character i did a great job of it.

Click Image To Enlarge


Well that's all for this post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it. I hope you got something from it also.

I hope to have a meeting soon with my mentor to discuss the marking as mentioned earlier in the post, so keep tuned for that and i will speak to you soon.

PS. please leave a comment and let me know what you think i would love the feedback.

Thank You.

Well if you read my last post i stated that i would be uploading some images of my character and that i would have the mesh, rig and texturing done.

Well that didn't go to plan as you may have already guessed as my post was on 11th and i said that the images would be up on the 12th......little late and still not what i would have hoped.

The reason for this is because i have had so many issues with the modelling that it just wasn't working.

One of my main issues was that i opened my scene file and the characters mesh ended up looking like this...

I couldn't work out why it was doing this but from what i could tell was that since i hadn't frozen the model since i started the mesh had created some sort of defect.

I managed to work this problem out by opening it up on a friends computer and freezing the modelling then deleting all the meshes that made up the character and then saving the scene again and once again testing it out on my computer to find that this worked fine.

Now i have the mesh looking exactly as i wanted it to (with a few exceptions) and i now need to work on the rig and the texturing although i feel that texturing will become a problem when it comes to the mouth.

Here is what i have so far (that works and looks right)...



Well thats it for this update, i hope to have the rig done by the next update so until then i hope you all keep well and safe.

bye for now

Well yesterday me and Chris finally managed to get together for a meeting and it all went as well as it could have gone.

We talked about what i  had done so far and if i thought that i would be able to get the work load done in the remaining 5 weeks (although we thought it was 7 weeks before i just check now :'(  ).

This means that im just going to have to work my ass off on this work and get everything done asap.

By the end of tomorrow my rig and textring for that rig should be finished, i'll be uploading images of that mesh as soon as its doen so keep a look out for it.

So back the meeting, we talked about what i felt i could do inthe short time. I feel that since there isn't much time left and that the animation focus is mainly at the end of the animation i will be polishing that bit of animation (the part where he reaches the top of the board onwards) and then i will have blocking up till that point, this way i still have a strong animation without losing any/much of the story behind it.

This is only a short version of the meeting as i have a lot of work to do and need to get back to it so i will talk to you all soon.

QUICK NOTE - I've uploaded some images i did near the start of the production that i forgot about let me know what you think by leaving a coment.....thank you - Images Here

Expression Sheet - Design Sheet - Proportion Sheet - Character Shapes                 
Original Design   -    Color Test