high quality still

Just thought i would upload a high quality still of my character which i messed around with in photoshop. I added some fairly naff steam to a still i rendered out of my character using HDRI lights, this was after i had rigged my character so i could get him into a pose/base stance.

HP Sauce aniamtion

I thought i would quickly post the HP sauce animation mentioned a few posts ago. This version of it wasn't cut down how we wanted it, and didn't have any sound or after effects, but i think its ok and i learned some techniques while making it.

Still posed up character

Christmas break update

I thought i would update my blog since it's nearing the end of the second week off for Christmas. During this break i was supposed to catch up on the work for the first two briefs of the second year which i was behind on because of the work related brief. This hasn't gone exactly to plan, because i caught a virus and a chest infection the day after finishing college, and was unable to do anything at all until Christmas day. Regardless i started working on things as soon as i was able and will hopefully get everything done in time.

So far i have finished the rigging of my steam powered robot character which i has been waiting for a while now, and it seems quite successful so far. I worked out pretty much all of the problems i had with various parts of the rigging. For a start the character foot kept flipping upside down when the controller when in a certain direction, this is because of a constraint on the foot bone, but i fixed it and my method seems to have no problems of its own. After this i filled all the gaps between my characters fingers with rivets which i think look very good. I finally found a texture to use for my robots steam gauge and i made an indicator which is controlled by a slider. I reluctantly decided to use the split torso version of my character to give him better movement in his spine, which i wasn't too happy about because i think it looks worse like that, but after rigging it up and getting it in a pose i think that it looks fine. there were several more things i fixed or added, but those are the main things. Aside from that all i need to do to it now it align some of his pistons so they move in the right directions and squash and stretch as they should, and i need to add several gas/oil tubes using soft IK splines but that takes very little time. Now that my character is rigged though I'm going to create a second model sheet to go with the first one showing poses and expressions/features.

Thats enough of an update for now, i will upload a still of my character posed up too.

first two briefs of the year

For the first two briefs of the year which i have yet to complete, i thought i should work out what needs to be done, because the deadline may be earlier than expected. If what i have heard is correct and the deadline is wednesday, i don't have a hope of completing the work on time.

I still need to render out stills of my character and make my model sheet. I need to rig my character, and create some test animations. My storyboards need to be completed and script finalized. I also need to create a treatment for my idea and set that up.

These are things i know need to be completed, and I'm unsure if there is anything i have missed or don't know about, i will have to find this out in my tutorial today.

new brief

After completing the HP sauce animation, the next we we were due to start work on our new brief, in which we have to work in groups to create 3 idents from logos we were given, made by graphics students.

So far this brief isn't going well because the weather has made it hard to get to college, and i haven't been feeling well. Now I'm fine and the snow is melting, so i can actually get here and start doing some work.

I completed my storyboard ideas and the concept development sheet which i typed up in word.

Because of being behind for various reasons, and the rabbit animation, I'm behind on pretty much everything. I need to complete the first two briefs of the year which coincided with the rabbit animation for the work related module. I was informed today that the deadline for this work may be wednesday, which is bad because i have an enormous amount to do, such as rigging my character, and doing the test walk cycles and animations, not to mention the model sheet for my character (which shouldn't be a problem because i have the character made and backstory done, so it should be a simple case of rendering them out and putting them together.

So with everything i need to catch up on, today i need to create a time plan and find out the deadlines and other information about what needs to be done. I have already had a word with a member of my group and caught up a bit, so once i have a tutorial today we have decided to create a time plan for our work, and decide on the final concepts we will use from our storyboards.

Work with first year interactive media students

During last month we had a week in which we worked together with interactive media students to create a b-movie using various compositing techniques. The project didn't work out very well for out group as the interactive media students didn't help us as all, and me and Gareth ended up making the whole thing ourselves. Our idea was that a bottle of HP sauce grows to a huge size in an unusual accident, and then it starts rampaging the area, angry, because of people eating sandwiches with HP sauce on them.

In the end, we got the work finished, and it turned out ok, but because of limited time, and limited manpower the work wasn't complete. We didn't have sound in the final animation, and we didn't have many of the after effects that we wanted either. On top of that we couldn't cut all the scenes down to the right lengths so some scenes dragged on a lot, and some of the masking failed too.

rabbit animation still

This is a screenshot from the final render of the rabbit animation, i will upload a video of the final thing later, after i get a version with a reduced file size.

huge updates and recaps

I haven't updated my blog in a long time, this is because of various things keeping me behind on my work. I'm behind on pretty much everything and need to catch up badly, so to start with i will cover the things which have happened since my last update.

To start with, my group finished the rabbit animation for kurodragon. While finishing the animation we had various problems with rendering and the cape, which meant countless re-renders and various renders to patch problems. We eventually got the animation finished, but received a list of problems with the animation from stuart. Most of the problems detailed were either incredibly slight, or as with most of them, impossible to fix or achieve the desired results using cinema 4D, especially at such a late stage of development.