Here is it, the final animation. throughout the whole project, i was in charge of using the clips sent by my team, and updating the animatic for the weekly presentations. once it was all finished, and after all the chopping up of clips for the animatic, i noticed the sound wasn't quite right and didn't flow as well as it could. so i got the group to find some appropriate sound clips in which i could take into Premier to align with the final animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLXUOYbECJA

Overall i think the animation looked good. The style worked with the software we were using, it got some laughs, and we were all sufficient in flash to make the animation work smoothly and look like 1 movie, not 1 movie with the different animation styles. I was very happy with the communication and moral with my group, and felt that there wasn’t a weak link in terms of skill or effort. The project was a fun way to kick start year 2, and i look forward to having the strict weekly deadlines with other projects throughout the year. After talking with the group, i think one thing we would definitely change, is the amount of crit sessions we attended as a group and try to get more lecturer feedback to prevent miss communication. When it comes to laughter, one persons gag may not make another person laugh, but i feel more constructive feedback on a broader level would of helped with our development, and given more confidence through the team. 

Week 4 and were constantly updating the clips from the animatic with our finished animations.
Heres my 3rd week contribution. all that i have left to animate before next week, is the bear transition, the bear going into the mouth, and re align all the sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBzFjZmuFas

When we presented our animatic, we got pretty good feedback from the class, and from Andy. One thing that came up a lot was everyone felt there were too many camera changes, and it became confusing to tell which kid was which. Although we knew this would become clearer later on, with things like colour and sound, we still wanted to make sure we weren’t animating and doing certain shits that were unnecessary. Although that was the case, once the unnecessary shots were removed, and colour was added, we were given the go ahead to just begin animating.

Here is an animation test that i did, ready for next weeks review. it's the scene where the toy gets shoved in the mouth. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21hZmNS11K0

we eventually made all the amendments to our story board, and went with Carls drawings. The reasons for this are because we know we are going to use flash, and Carls drawings are better suited and will be faster to animate when we get to that stage in the development. 

here is the animatic that we have done for our week 1 deadline. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tr0LmG0YBI

Here's my storyboard idea. hopefully the group like it, and theres something in here we can incorporate into the final idea.

We have an idea! After meeting up just before our first weekend on the project, we generated the idea based on the term ‘you are what you eat’. We instantly loved the idea and started running through all kinds of ways in which that could be humorous. The best way to display that, we thought would be to have the normal tendencies of a baby, or toddler, to just put its toys in its mouth, resulting in the child morphing into it. Also incorporating the competitive, and selfishness of a child, in wanting to have whatever toy the other children have, which would mean that each child would be constantly one upping whatever the other toddler had eaten. time to spend the weekend storyboarding.
 

First project of the year!!!          

 "Funny in 15"

Our task was in random groups of 3, to produce a 15 second animation with the sole purpose of evoking laughter. The task guidelines other than that it had to be funny, and no longer or shorter than 15 seconds, were very broad. We could use any type of animation, be that stop motion, CG or 2D. Firstly after finding out my group (Carl, Paris, and I) we got together straight away and started coming up with ideas, things we personally found amusing, and things we thought were universally funny.

After some broad ideas were developed, we started to filter out the not so good ideas, and restricting ourselves to what ideas would fit within 15 seconds. A strong idea that we ran with for a while, were to do an animated version of ‘1 liner’ jokes, told by comedians such as Jimmy Carr and Milton Jones. Although we found this idea quite interesting, we decided that it wouldn’t turn out to be the most effective use of 15 seconds, and wanted to come up with a more original idea and not just animate an existing joke.

Here's some links to the kind of thing we were thinking 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJhQDiAIqA 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=473KIeo_Xv0

revisited an old shield i made a year or so ago, decided to add a normal and spec map to give it more pop, and realism. Would much prefer the high poly version, but the restrictions i gave myself was to learn how to model off the high poly to create effects in a low poly model. Really miss modelling props and environments and hope i get the chance to do a lot more at university this year.

I had some free time, and thought that i would make sure i didnt get too scrappy on my 3D skills. fired up maya and decided that i would have a go at recreating my animation backgrounds in 3D. so far so good. (hopefully will finish this at some point)

Over the summer, i decided to move in to my 2nd year accommodation straight after moving out of halls, and spend the summer down here in Falmouth, working. I didn't have much time for personal projects, but managed to start and finish (a few) some different ideas.

First off i did a few birthday card designs for some friends that were into tv series, like breaking bad, game of thrones, and sons of anarchy, even a little portrait. managed to finish 2 of them!

Unfortunately the animation didn't get finished in time, and in the standard that we would all be

comfortable with. But we were all happy to know it will get completed at a later date as we

thoroughly enjoyed working together in a team, and in industry style. We all thought it

would be best to have it as it is for hand in, instead of letting quality drop just to get it

finished in time.

When considering changes within the animation, I don’t feel like anything hasn’t worked, or

been well researched or represented, the only issue I feel we had over all was missing a few

weeks at the start of the project due to changing our idea. I am still happy with the way in

which the team worked, and the work I produced personally. Given the opportunity again, I

would definitely still use Maya or other CG software as it suits my style and is what I want to

constantly improve in for the future.

textured hut for the Sea tales project. excited to see the finished render of the animation. watch this space!

Final showreel of the year. Mainly some motion studies focussing on character animation, also a few life drawings from sessions since September. Overall happy with the outcome of the studies, i feel i got more confident towards the end of the project, and the walks gave me the opportunity to put a lot more over exaggerated actions. Poor 'Eleven' having to do a flirty walk though!

Music by 'Balmorhea'.

Finito

Just getting cracking on the textures. It has been a while since i have done photo realistic stuff. I will be using photographs as well as adding some grimey detail here and there to make it look more appealing. excited!

Started using mudbox for the first time today. After finding my environment reference imagery, there didnt turn out to be too much detail to add in mudbox, that i didnt feel i could add in photoshop textures, which was great as im not too confident with mudbox yet, but also would of liked to experiment a little more with its tools. Onto un-wrapping. 

Finished my walks today, with a couple of days spare to maybe retouch once i get some people to view it. Animation still doesnt seem to be my 'thing', but i've found watching more animation and not overworking helps with the final product. Enjoy.

Here's my finished backgrounds for the 2D project. Happy with the results, and still really enjoying using photoshop.

First update for a while.
Got one of my animation backgrounds finished today. Did a few digital paints earlier this week to get back into photoshop, so this roman style corridor may get finished for personal projects at some point.

Moving onto the actual project work. Really happy with the final pirate environment though, and enjoyed being able to use digital painting for this project. Still thinking the foreground is lacking in some kind of detail, but maybe it'll look fine once used as a background. Onto the Interior then!

Hut model, ready for 'Team Milk' Sea Rescue animation.

Background adaption project. 

Decided to use a stage from Street Fighter II. 

Excited to finish this project. 

Some early sketch ideas for the group project. 

Drawing water realistically isn't easy :(

We were given a little 1 week drawing task, after our first 'Animation Background' session, to find some examples of backgrounds used in animation. I decided to have a go at recreating some of the examples i had found. 

Heres the original, from Beatrix Potter.

And my effort. using water colours wasn't too easy, but i enjoyed the process and liked the effects you can get with colour blending.

I then picked something slightly more cartoony, which was from the Roadrunner Animation. 

I didn't want to go for a straight copy on this one, so i decided to take inspiration from the 'Incredibles' concept work, which is shown in 'The Art of PIXAR' book. This book, and the 'Dreamworks Artists.. After Dark' book, are really great and recommend them to anyone interested in the concept and personal work of 2 major studios. 

Original Roadrunner. 

After gathering inspiration i recreated the Roadrunner background into this.

Here are some water tests i've done. Ended up with a couple of different results, with one pantomime style using layered shapes, and one more realistic style using fluids. both in 3D. 

Decided to do my boulder lift in 3D, as after using a few other methods in the first semester, i found 3D the most comfortable and enjoyable. There are still a few in-betweens that i need to add, and a few tweeks in the graph editor, but so far i'm happy with the progress.

Started some prep work for the heavy ball lift exercise today, and managed to talk a pal into doing a few lifts for me for video reference. 

Also dug out a Xmas present which is 'The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs' by Eadward Muybridge. I really recommend this to anyone looking for all kinds of locomotion reference. Ranges from males to females, lifting, running, dancing, and animals eating, and doing everything else animals do. 

Second semester, First project. The first mini task was to animate the sea using methods we had previously learnt, or experiment with new techniques. Before experimenting, i decided i'd take advantage of my surroundings and visit some of the local beaches, Maenporth, Gylly, and another that i cant remember the name of, but It had an amazing pub called The Ferryboat Inn. 

Time to get animating.

pirate progress. 

Found some old 3D work that I used for college and projects. I hope someone wants to do something Bonne Tron inspired so i get to texture those mechanical legs.

The movie 'Gladiator' can inspire anyone, so here's ,y Roman concept dump, and a few 3D versions. Used 3D max for the models, as texturing isnt something we've been taught yet when using Maya.