Holy Belated Blog Post Batman!

So I was supposed to update this yesterday but I didn't really have much to show. Here's a bit more stuff on my current project. I've not got pre-prod stuff scanned in but at least I have the rough turnaround images I can show you.

The gist of the project is that we get given a sound clip (around 10-11 seconds, like the 11 second club), and then we have to animate a short performance piece to it. We get 4 weeks to do it, including pre-production, so hopefully I can put something nice together.

As we're using the LowMax rig (by Peter Starostin I believe), we've also been tasked with a sort of character design excercise. Basically we can make whatever character we want, with the obvious limitation of making it fit with the rig without destroying it. I'll pop up my blocks with the sound clip next week when I've got it done, but for now I'll just show you my turnarounds and rig etc. Also, don't expect the sound clip to have much to do with my rig and set, seeing as I've just put (read: crowbarred) it into a new setting.

Here's the rough turnaround for my guy.
And now here he is in a pose. An awful pose that isn't even in my animation mind you, but a pose nonetheless. Additionally - catapult!

So there's the physical work, sorry I've denied you the amusement of looking at my diabolically bad thumbs and LAVs, but I'll put them up next week in animatic form alongside my block, so you can see how they line up.

On the drawing side of things, I took an "executive decision" to stop trying for 100 drawings a fortnight. It was too static a schedule to work with, as the amount of work for practicals fluctuates from week to week a little, and I don't want my drawings to either end up being rushed and shoddy or affecting my practical work.

Here's a few human figures I did this week. If you're wondering where I got the reference images from, there's a great little site called Artsy Poses that's recently started up. They've got a good number of photos on there, so if you're interested I'd highly recommend it.

Into Minor Project

Didn't update last week, as I was busy and I never really found the time. I'll leave posting the advanced techniques stuff here, as I don't really have any render's I'm pleased with. Rendering as PNG did some odd stuff to the transparency I think unfortunately.

So instead I'll post up the results of last week's brief, which was to create two sets of storyboards, one for an advert that has already been made (sort of an exercise in devolving the ad back to storyboard form), and a page from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Script.

The ad I chose was an advert for Kelloggs Frosties, which meant lots of drawing Tony the Tiger, but gave me the advantage of having nice clean shots to work back from.

In the interest of space, I'll just put an example board in the post here, and then a link to the Picasa album at the bottom. Here's one from the Frosties ad.

The Turtles script was from an episode called The Mobster From Dimension X, which is about a guy called the Globfather, who comes and does terrible, terrible things. As you can expect Turtles become involved and the aforementioned terrible things are resolved through the use of Ninjitsu, the eating of pizza, and in this case, remote controlled cars and industrial strength vacuums.

The page I was allocated was essentially during a scene in which Donatello and The Evil Warlord Dregg™ are fighting to wrest control over a satellite with a big 'ol laser on it. I'm fuzzy on the purpose of the laser at this point but rest assured The Evil Warlord Dregg™ probably wants it for doing evil warlord-y stuff, and you can all feel happy when he gets his comeuppance. (If you want to see said comeuppance you're gonna have to find the blog of whoever did page 44, because in mine he just gets slightly annoyed by a remote controlled car).

So anyway, here's a board from the turtles script.


This week, pre-prod for the main section of minor project, which involves doing a short animation of a sound clip we've been allocated. Should be fun!

StoryBoarding - Minor Project

Week 1 - Advanced Techniques - Modelling a hand

So this week we started modelling for advanced tech. We started out with a 24-hour bug modelling task, which turned out to be a pretty good way of getting into modelling. I did a black widow, but swiftly found out how much of  a pain 8 legs are to attach fluidly. Still, I learned a lot on this short task, and hopefully it shows on the hand.

Here's the spider.

After that we began modelling the hand, I don't have much in progress stuff to show to be honest, and I'll probably post my pre-production up next week when I've finished my 100 hands drawings too; I'm currently just about on schedule on 40 or so. Here's my first (well technically second after my little practice run) attempt at the hand.

This first one was arguably better sculpted (for now, I still have a day left to model a bit more before we start rigging), but I wasn't happy with the edge flow, it had given me some tri's, and there were a lot of poly's in places where they weren't adding much to the overall mesh. After a big overhaul and some serious chopping up, here's my second attempt.

And vertex painted so you can see the loops:

It's still not as defined as the other, but it has roughly the same detail on the loop count, and the fingers and thumb are actually higher poly (ten-sided), thanks to an extra loop running right the way round the edge of the hand. This one is all quads, no tri's or n-gons; I took a time lapse of sorting out the edge flow and my somewhat trial and error attempts at moving the poles around to correct the flow, which I'll probably post sometime next week. This hand needs a little more sculpting to get it right (the palm creases are using the crease setting on the edges for example, which looks a little inorganic to me).

As for my narrative and critical studies, they're both in the conceptualising stage at the minute, although we have to write a script for narrative forms, so I may post up the development of that if I get chance.

Like I mentioned previously, my drawings are currently halfway through the 100, so I'll post those as next weeks update, which will be a big one as it's the hand in for advanced tech part 1, as well the end of my 100 hands.

    See ya next week.