Monday Update

Everything I planned to do over the few weeks we have off, I can safely say, I've done NOTHING.
Well, I planned to play Zelda and I definitely did that!
But when it comes to art and college work I haven't done anything.

I will get something done over the next week before we return, fortunately I have already done a lot of my story board, I just need to make assets for the animatic because I have no way of animating it at home.

Also for Christmas I got 3 LOVELY sketchbooks, one of which I plan to carry around with me all of next year. Which I'm looking forward to.

On another note;
I will be leaving this year the same way I entered it. By myself watching TV (I planned on watching Jools Holland like last year, but apparently they are doing another House Party thing on TV so may watch that instead.) in front of the fire with my dog :)

Last day of the year.
Quite sad to see 2012 end.

For the Holidays

Handed in our final project of 2012 today.
It was the most relaxed I have ever been on a hand in, seeing as I finished everything a week ago, today was literally just a case of handing in, no quick finishing off (in my case I mean, we all kinda left Liam to work on the animation).

So over the holidays, apart from the set tasks of generally working on our main animation, I want to do SO much art.

I have a list of paintings I want to start/ finish, and generally drawing a lot more.
I'll also will be practicing modeling stop motion dolls..... and just normally try to get better at sculpting.

I also want to start playing Zelda again, but that's not art related..... but I'm really looking forward to it :)

Sculpting

Kinda celebrating finishing my part of the project, decided to sculpt something.

    

 The actual sculpt is terrible and I can't make clothes to save my life. But I really like his hair.
His arms can move but that's it. Making this, while frustrating at times as I don't really have the skills, was fun and really makes me want to get into doing stop motion models. While this one obviously can't be used, if I keep practicing and actually make it so more joints can be moved I think I can get some form of model to practice animating with. 
I also really need to learn how to make clothes.

To Do List

Just seeing what else I need to do on my own part of the project.

So today I have been typing up my research, which I've finished. I've been typing out annotations to explain my thought process when I've been doing test. Think I only really need to finish 2 of those pages, everything else seems to be done
I've started my evaluation and apart from the fact we haven't finished the project yet, so I cant call it finished, I have pretty much done it. Just the case of updating it over the next 2 weeks.

I need to draw up the storyboards neatly.
Find the member of our group who has the Style guide frame.

...

That's it?
That'd be sweet if that is it.
Just need to see what the others are doing and just be around if they need help. But I don't think I'm needed now my part is done.

Monday Update

Well I've finished my part of the project.... for now

I've rotoscoped 2 scenes of the skateboarder doing 1 trick on each. At first I did in every 3 frames to make sure I got it done, but I realised I had plenty of time so went back in did the inbetween frames. So now both are frame by frame rotoscopes of the footage.

So I'm hoping that's me
I'm okay with doing more if needed, but as I said I doubt I will have to.

On a side note, everyone in our group is in since the very first day of the project, which I am rather happy about.

Video composite I made yesterday

It's meant to just be hovering (aka not a fail bounce, a fail hover)

Creating a composite part 2

First we practiced with lightings depth of field and reflection.

Then using that, with a still photo we made a scene where it looks as though it's within a 3d environment.

Skateboard Roto

Finally rotoscoping proper footage for the ident.
I did every 3 frames, but every frame for the trick because if I missed any out it would have missed too much of the skateboard moving.

This only took an hour, and I took the rotoscoped character and put it on the same background but it's just not moving.

There isn't as much detail on the character because I drew him a lot smaller than in my tests. It was mainly to get to idea of how long it could take and the quality of the video when rotoscoping. But I don't think the character looks good enough this rough, so I may go back and do it in more detail.
Also there is another trick I need to do so will do that first.

Time Plan

Well I can't really do this accurately because when working in groups I guess there is a case of not knowing how long it'll take others to do things.

But for me

Today
We will be getting some footage of our Skateboarder friend. It may not be the nicest of days but I only need the character shots so I can rotoscope. So we will get the footage and then go through it to see what it is we will be using. And maybe even edit it so it'll be like creating a finished video, but then everyone will composite into it.

This Week
If the footage is all sorted out then for the rest of this week I will be rotoscoping.
I will start off with drawing every 3rd frame. This cuts down my amount of drawings to about 200 at least and will give us all an idea of the fluidity of the animation. If it looks good for one of the Idents then I will carry on doing it for the next 2 (however depending on today we may only have the footage for just one Ident).

Following Weeks
Well doing all 3 Idents may take longer than a week. But if I get it done in good time I may go back into it and add more inbetween frames to make it look better.
Also next week, hoping everyone is in, we can give other people in the group the footage we have so they can go off and do there parts (e.g rotoscoping other effects and composting the 3D elements).

Final Week
By this time we plan to have all the rotoscoping done as well as the 3D composites. So this Final week will hopefully will just be editing and dubbing in the Sound design (if we haven't already been able to do so the week before).


Following this plan means that we have plenty of time to get all 3 of these Idents done, and even though we really need to get together as a full group to discuss things it shouldn't be too hard to keep to this plan.

Channel 4 Ident Test

More practice.

Photo is mine

Logo is not.

After animating it, i saved it from 2 different camera angles to then put into After Effects to mix together like the ones you see on T.V.

Test 2

Okay I was going to do this tomorrow but I got bored so did it today. Also was only gonna do a small section of it, but got carried away.

It definitely looks good done properly.
I think it's about 65 frames and it's taken me maybe about 5 hours (if not more, I keep forgetting to time myself).

Only things wrong with it now is you can see him slightly underneath. But as I start doing the real thing I'll actually make sure it's done well.

Now I need to go to bed, because my hand has cramp......and it's 6am.

Brother Skating Test.

Well I have drawn from a youtube video linked by Steve. But I wanted to havean actual video to properly put what I draw over the top.

Which failed but here it is

So as you can see there are a lot of frames missing so you can still see my brother behind it (and I generally just failed at drawing over him properly.) but it still shows you the idea of what it can look like.

Tomorrow I will do a much shorter clip, but with every frame in it.

This is the animation just by itself.

I think it's still quite smooth, and I like the drawing style (just need to see what the others think.)

Next up is to think of weird and wonderful things I can add to it. (again I'm not that creative, so may get the others just to suggest things).

Testing So Far

When rotoscoping over the top of a video. If we are wanting to keep the original video underneath the rotoscope I will have to literally draw every frame in order to completely mask the person I'm rotoscoping.

I have a problem with this seeing as it's taken me at least an hour to draw 22 frames and it'd take 3 times that to fit the video. I can do it of course and I'm guessing the guys want me to. It's just gonna take a lot of time.

However!
If we were to record the background without the character then I can composite my rotoscoped version of the character onto the top of it, hopefully without mistake.
This is an example of where a still, or locked, camera is needed in order to make sure my character fits into the background.

I will post my work so far once I've finished animating.



In other news I do actaully like the look of my rotoscoping, and this is before adding any random elements (ie cartoon body parts.)

Idents

Idents that can influence me when working with group on our own.

This is a MTV one where you can see it uses live film as the main environment. but with this 3D model in the center and interacting with it.
This is the kind of thing we are looking to doing for our Ident.

This is SYFY channel and shows liquid filling up and invisible object which shows the logo. This is again another idea of something we can do to show the Logo we do. Whether it'd be liquid or anything else with this same kind of idea.

This ones for Gold. I chose this because the illustrations and colours. This is another thing we are incorporating into ours.

This E4 one again shows a 3d object within a more realistic environment, this time it's the reveal of the logo which is something we mainly are using the 3d aspect for.

Compositing Tests

Initial testing

street image doesn't belong to me

Then testing adding a foreground

This image is mine (taken like 5 years ago in France).

Trying to get better at drawing.

In yet another attempt to get better at drawing I decided to try and sketch people quickly.
In not a proper realistic style, just trying to sketch however I'm using quickly but making it at least look like them.
That way I thought it'd mean I could quickly sketch someone easily then go into more detail quicker. Instead of drawing someone and having to constantly correct the mistakes along the way.

Here are a few of my Sketch dumps already.
Even if you don't know who they are, I think my drawings are getting better.
(you might want to open them up in a new tab to see them properly. there are quite a lot of drawings)

The last Sketch Dump is what I was doing yesterday. Hence Why I forgot to update.

I really wanted to draw and I don't let those moments pass.

Monday Update!....On a Tuesday

Okay so I had a very unpreductive day yesturday. I will get into why a bit later. But first, Here's a break down of what I still need to do.

1st Module
Reserach                       - DONE
Development                 -DONE
Back Story/ Script         -Need to type out
Model Sheets                -Need to edit a tiny bit, But then just needed to Print out on A3.

2nd Module
Research                - DOING (have quite a lot to do)
Development           - DONE

ANIMATIONS - Walk Cycle               - DONE X2
                             Facial animations       - May do some more
                             A random Scene        - DONE very roughly
                             Random extras          - DONE


I plan to finish my research and typing anything else up tonight as well as editing my model sheets slightly as suggested by the tutor.

So tomorrow, for my first module all I'll need to to is print out my Model Sheets.

For my second Module. I need to make my animations into proper (quicktime) Movie files before burning them onto a disk.

Hopefully this means I will be either done by tomorrow or Thursday (anything to avoid handing it in on Friday and risking being stuck behind many other people doing the same.)

Last but definitely not least!!!!!!!
...
..Some one needs to show me where on earth we go to hand in :S

360° walk

Well I managed to do it.
It isn't the smoothest of animations, but I may go back to it after this project and add a few extra frames.
(I say after this because I want to press on and animate more things.)

So I'll show you my work process, mainly because I needed to work out how to do it.

 Starting off with my initial sketch  of showing a 360 stand still.

  Then putting copies side by side to print out and  edit the legs moving. I put 2 copies because I didn't know how many I'd  be using.

 Then this is me drawing walking legs over the top

Tested it to make sure it looked okay.

 Then after printing it out for a second time I put the detail over the top.

For my animation I'd actually leave the sketch work in, but I wanted to make sure it looked good so drew it out properly.

This is the final thing.
As you can see it it a bit jumpy, so if it had more frames it'd look right. but this gives the right idea.

Friday Roundup

the second last week pretty much over, time to see what I've done.

Well I have a walk cycle complete so that's one thing I don't have to worry about.
But when it comes to everything else, like facial expressions and animating a scene, it's all very rough work.

So what I will do is keep what I have got, (as seen posted on here) and put them all into one movie and call it 'extras'. just to show that I have been doing work.
As I said in my last post I have got a rough copy of a first scene. Which I can either draw up properly, or bundle together what I have and just submit as is.

Something else I'm wanting to do is a 360° walk cycle. Mainly because as I'm doing it all traditionally and I needed to do 3/4 poses for my model sheets, I may's well do the same idea when doing a walk cycle.


Other than that I need to do research, which I hate doing as I never really take any influence from other things. I do when I'm stuck, but not when I have a good idea of what I'm doing. It's always been something I've not enjoyed doing, because I don't need to do it. But oh well, will be quickly writing about some artists over the weekend.


Next update will be on Monday, I will get into the habit of writing twice a week.
Mondays to give a list of things I need to do and an idea of time management
Fridays is to say when I actually managed to complete in the week.

Tests part 2

Some more testing
I pretty much started creating the first scene of the story. So I will do that bit in order.

This one Shows the detail I'll be doing it in properly, however this was just drawn side by side, so I  need some extra frames in between.

When first doing this I  tried to blur it  traditionally.

But it didn't really look very good. So  did it on Photoshop instead.

Some more random tests.

This one again is to show detail and  was actually properly traced so more  of what it should look like. 

  Going through emotions roughly.

This is a 360 view of him mid walk.

I plan to have him properly walking as it goes round  him.

I have a fun little plan for this one actually.

Last up is other characters being animation.

 "HEY!"

 -shot-

Realism Lock

I like to draw him a lot because in doing so I get use to his features and hopefully that means animating him will be easier; because then He'll actually look the same in each scene.

I decided to drwa him realisticly becuase again it'd give a better idea of how to structure his face

...

And I like to draw realism.

His hair is wrong because it make his head look too small.

So I may got back to it.

I also may not because I'm not the best at drawing hair without reference.

Quick Tests

Just some quick practices I doodled in class.

They weren't properly done (as in traced to make sure they are the same size or anything)

I just drew sketched side by side.

The kick isn't the best, I need to study how to draw more kinds of movement throughout the body.

Digital Lock

It's a drawing of Lock, so I count this as doing work.....

....should have been doing animation tests...

Lock Walking

Testing out how Lock walking will look with such long legs.

I personally rather like it.

took about an hour to do