Saturday, 26 May 2012
0160 Update
I've actually come to really like the way this shot has turned out. I like the snappy movement with how he gets back to his feet, and thehit of the buttons looks pretty convincing too. It might not be one of the hero shots of the film but I think it works well and is quite easily readable.
0160 Block
This shot omes after the intern has evaded the zombie by suspending himself at the top of the lift. I wanted to have him get up really quickly back to his feety, and for it to be realy snappy because he's eager to be standing quickly again just incase antyhing happens. On realising that he's safe he punches the controls in anger of the flickering on and off and manages to fix the flickering with the imapact! Similarly to shot 0100 I wanted there to be a clear thought process throughout this shot otherwise it wouldn't make much sense. I think the block out reflects my intentions for the shot well and the shot in on course to work quite well on the back of Joe shot which comes before mine. I've already seen the bulk of what he's doing in the previous shot so I'm aware of what my limitations were, which aren't many as the zombie walks and the intern hits the floor!
Compositing 0140 in Nuke
Once again it was time to step right out of my comfort zone, but this time it was a bit more daunting than UV mapping and texturing because I've never used Nuke in my life! It doesn't even resemble any kind of software I've been familiar with in the past so I was completely fresh going into the process. The fast paced sequence, as we had already decided, was going to be filled with shots with were blue. Oddly enough this actually makes things a little less complicated, so Steph ran me through what I needed to be doing and I made a start.
I'm not going to pretend I made this easy on Steph, nearly everything she said I didn't understand but she was incredibly patient with me and it did all start to make sense eventually. The way I understood it, I had to separate elements in the scene I had to comp: the lift and the zombie. I had to split each layer up into its render layers. Within the scene there were two lights (top and bottom) which produced different set of images. So the layers I was left with for the lift were:
This first image is the the previous image merged with the ambient occlusion pass.
I then added blur to the background as we wanted the characters to be the main focus of each of the shots.
Top diffuse and shadow
Top specular
Top and bottom merge
Added in the tie!
Then slapped a bit of ambient occlusion in there
Also had to added in a hue correct before I started the blue grade just so we'd get the right colours out
And then I spent easily double the time playing around with the settings to get the zombie to be an acceptable blue but in the end it all worked out nicely! I've gotta say I'm pretty happy with myself that I actually managed to get anywhere near what Steph was doing. Not that it's near the quality she's been producing! But I'm just happy that I didn't completely mess it up on my first go, and it's nice to occasionally step out of Maya and try something new!
I'm not going to pretend I made this easy on Steph, nearly everything she said I didn't understand but she was incredibly patient with me and it did all start to make sense eventually. The way I understood it, I had to separate elements in the scene I had to comp: the lift and the zombie. I had to split each layer up into its render layers. Within the scene there were two lights (top and bottom) which produced different set of images. So the layers I was left with for the lift were:
Bottom diffuse and shadow
Bottom specular
Top diffuse and shadow
Top specular
The reason for splitting it up into all its layers instead of just merging them all in as one is that it gives the operator complete control over every single aspect of a shot which makes Nuke an incredibly powerful tool. The next thing I had to do was create a 'merge' to combine all the layers above which looked like this:
The bottom camera was also split up into a load of others layers that then needed organising and merging in much the same way:
The image above was the grade we added in which the colours can be changed. This was really the trickiest bit because I had to try and get it as close to Stephs good previous comps as I could and it took a lot of tweaking in the settings for a long time before the imagine above revealed itself.
The next layer was obviously the zombie, which began with the same procedure as the lift.
Bottom diffuse and shadow
Bottom specular
0148
Despite the fact that this one belongs int eh fast paced sequence as well, I had to spend a lot more time on this one because you see a lot more of the body and its a long shot in terms of duration. I wanted to have him lunge towards the intern buthave the intern duck it so that he could start reaching for the button pabel in the next shot that Joe was working on. I think it's a good thing that this is going to be masked in strobe and blue tints etc because it's not one of my finest shots on teh film, but as long as the raw information gets through then it will be a successful shot.
Middle sequence shots
These two shots belong in the fast paced sequence and are therefore are only blocked. It's such a relief of pressure not having to polish these shots, and I can afford to be a lot more loose with the poses to experiement with them as I'm not going to have to put up with the difficulties that arrise a bit later on in the process.
This is the first one in the sequence which works well to set the tone as the zombie now appears more agress and has a motive: brains and stuff. I got to mess around with his jaw again as well which was a lot of fun.
This one I'm a fan of. I tried to have him fill most of the screen towards the end of the shot to make him seem really threatening and to indicate a change of pace in the film.
This is the first one in the sequence which works well to set the tone as the zombie now appears more agress and has a motive: brains and stuff. I got to mess around with his jaw again as well which was a lot of fun.
This one I'm a fan of. I tried to have him fill most of the screen towards the end of the shot to make him seem really threatening and to indicate a change of pace in the film.
Quality Control
We hit a big problem at college in the last few days when our film completely failed the broadcast quality control test. This is something that every film has to go through so that it can be played at the degree show or online, etc. And we failed pretty badly on teh flashes. Technically speaking you're only allowed 5 flashes or under otherwise is becomes an epilepsy risk. The big problem for us is that soe of our flashes during the fast paced sequence reach 12 flashes in a second near the end which would obviously fail the QC test! I had previously tried emailing Mike Dixon at ravensbourne who is in charge of the broadcast sweets and testing film before the degree show but he never got back to me. Eventualy we became so preoccupied with other, far more pressing, issues that the film presented so we compltely forgot about the flashing being an issue. But really we were just committing more and more to an issue that could mean our film does not get shown at the degree show, and we've worked too long and too hard for that to happen!
We all went away and tried to think of a solution for the problem. A couple of staff members suggested scrapping the sequence and forming something else, but it had got the stage where the sequence had become a really integral part of the film, and I personally really didn't want to scrap the sequence at all because I really liked the idea of it and thought that anything else we added would seem last minute and tacked on.
But then...Greg had an idea! The luminosity is what the film failed on, and luminosity is the measurement of black to white and how quickly it goes from one to the other. White is made up of three colours: green, blue and red. Therefore in theory if we were to remove to of the colours we would reduce our chances of failing the QC test to a third of what they were, because the colours would be a third of its original intensity! Greg = beast. We therefore decided as a group tht it would be a cool idea to grade the sequence blue so that it not only passed the QC test but had a really isolated style to the sequence. Steph did a quick compositing change and graded everything blue, and Joe made a quick flash test with varying speeds which went on the completely ace the QC test anmd solved all of our problems! Sweet!
We all went away and tried to think of a solution for the problem. A couple of staff members suggested scrapping the sequence and forming something else, but it had got the stage where the sequence had become a really integral part of the film, and I personally really didn't want to scrap the sequence at all because I really liked the idea of it and thought that anything else we added would seem last minute and tacked on.
But then...Greg had an idea! The luminosity is what the film failed on, and luminosity is the measurement of black to white and how quickly it goes from one to the other. White is made up of three colours: green, blue and red. Therefore in theory if we were to remove to of the colours we would reduce our chances of failing the QC test to a third of what they were, because the colours would be a third of its original intensity! Greg = beast. We therefore decided as a group tht it would be a cool idea to grade the sequence blue so that it not only passed the QC test but had a really isolated style to the sequence. Steph did a quick compositing change and graded everything blue, and Joe made a quick flash test with varying speeds which went on the completely ace the QC test anmd solved all of our problems! Sweet!
Sofa Texture
Unfortunately once in a while I'm forced to step out of my comfort zone and do something other than animating. Below is an image of the chair Dave modelled that I was going to be texturing. I've done bits of texturing before and I understand the basic concepts behind the process, but there's stuff I have no idea about that makes the process much easier and Ollie ran me through the order I should be doing things to help me out before I started.
The one thing I do know is that I have to slap a checkered lambert on it to begin with!
I went into the texture editor and this image below shows the state of things to begin with:
I then selected all the faces of the main sofa cushion and isolated it so I could see what was going on. I then used a tool called planar mapping on the selected faces. This is a type of camera projection where it will lay out the UV's from the axis that I select. This gives me a good basis from which I can go on to unfold the UV's. Lovely.
The image below shows the planar mapped faces before I unfolded them.
I continued to do this for all the sides of the model and then unfolded them creating nice flat UV's!
I then used 'merge and move UVs' tool to connect the UV's in the editor so that I could continue the process into texturing!
And the image below shows the finished product. I had to do a bit of experimenting by selecting certain sides to see which bit matched up to another in the editor but it was a straight forward process.
I then transferred the attributes from the main cushion over to the other cushions as they were more or less the same size.
And the image below shows the chair ready for texturing!
I had a quick look on cgtextures before I found a couple of possibilities for the chair. I really liked the first one but I tried it out and it didn't really work that well so I took the second one and changed the colour of it to red in photoshop and it worked a little better.
I applied the texture to the main cushion first to test out how it would look and it seemed to be working fine. The chair is going in the last shot which is a really dark scene anyway so it coesn't need to be incredible quality, but it does have to look good.
I applied the texture to everything else, though I did spend some time hiding the seems in photoshop.
I went back and changed the bump value by turning it down and played around with that for a while but the render below shows the final settings and I actually think it looks pretty good!
The one thing I do know is that I have to slap a checkered lambert on it to begin with!
I went into the texture editor and this image below shows the state of things to begin with:
I then selected all the faces of the main sofa cushion and isolated it so I could see what was going on. I then used a tool called planar mapping on the selected faces. This is a type of camera projection where it will lay out the UV's from the axis that I select. This gives me a good basis from which I can go on to unfold the UV's. Lovely.
The image below shows the planar mapped faces before I unfolded them.
I continued to do this for all the sides of the model and then unfolded them creating nice flat UV's!
I then used 'merge and move UVs' tool to connect the UV's in the editor so that I could continue the process into texturing!
And the image below shows the finished product. I had to do a bit of experimenting by selecting certain sides to see which bit matched up to another in the editor but it was a straight forward process.
I then transferred the attributes from the main cushion over to the other cushions as they were more or less the same size.
And the image below shows the chair ready for texturing!
I had a quick look on cgtextures before I found a couple of possibilities for the chair. I really liked the first one but I tried it out and it didn't really work that well so I took the second one and changed the colour of it to red in photoshop and it worked a little better.
I applied the texture to the main cushion first to test out how it would look and it seemed to be working fine. The chair is going in the last shot which is a really dark scene anyway so it coesn't need to be incredible quality, but it does have to look good.
I applied the texture to everything else, though I did spend some time hiding the seems in photoshop.
I played around with the bump settings and did a quick render but the bump values were set too high and it looked really odd! Below:
Friday, 25 May 2012
0100 Complete!
I think I put a lot of pressure on myself with this shot because I think it's a really strong shot and it's one of my favourite in the film so I really wanted to get it right. I'm happy with it for the most part but you can always improve, and for me the zombies lunge into the lift could use more work because the movement is quick and ends abruptly too, so ideally I woul've liked some more time to focus on teh zombie. But because the main focus is the intern I spent a lot of time looking at the tming of his movement and trying to create a thought process that audiences could track and identify with. That was really the number one aim for me really. So often in really good animation films the audience can track a characters thought process and understand why thay are performing the actions that they are, and that is something I definetly wanted to bring to this shot, especially because it's a pretty lengthy shot as well being almost 10 seconds long. I do think I was fairly successful but I'm obviously no expert so I'm sure there was a much more effective way of doing it. But if people can track and understand what's going on then that's good enough for me. Plus I showed it to Ollie and STeph and they laughted so that's the biggest compliment I can get on it really!
0100 Planning
Shot 0100 is one of the first shots that we came up with. It's meant to be a long, drawn out shot in which the zombie has just entered the lift. But instead of it being a chaotic affair it's just incredibly awkward, as the intern does his best to ignore the zombie and just hope that he eventually goes away! I really liked the idea and I think it's gonna be a really cool shot. It is however quite long and is the first one with both characters in the same shot so it is quite an important shot as the on screen relationship between the two has to work properly and both their poses have to work in harmony with eachother. Below is the blocked version of my first attempt:
This has all the movements I'm after planned out, with a stronger look at timing than anything else really. I added in the step away late into the process which meant replacing some other keys and reworking the characters in the space but I think it worked and adds a bit more character to the intern in a shot where he is mostly stationary as he is too frightened to look directly at the zombie.
The initial pose works quite well in attracting attention to the face, and the lines lead there fairly well.
I tried to work a nice arc into the interns movements when he snaps upwards ito his stiff/board-like position. The firstpose was very open but because of the angle it seems a little more closed off than it actually is, so I wanted to really open his body up so that when he snaps into his final pose (which has his hands by his side) it sems like more of a contrast, which is what I have done above.
The intern is in his final position above, while the zombie is driving forward lunging into the lift. The curves in the zombies left arm and back help to keep him slightly hunched over but his right arm is opposing to these curves which makes it act as the driving force of the lunge and I think it makes for a fairly strong pose.
The is a good representation of the majority of the scenes content. The intern is completely up right, but because the intern is so hunched over is makes a much more interesting screen relationship between the two that actually compliments the interns' face which is what I would like it to do so it's working pretty well so far.
This has all the movements I'm after planned out, with a stronger look at timing than anything else really. I added in the step away late into the process which meant replacing some other keys and reworking the characters in the space but I think it worked and adds a bit more character to the intern in a shot where he is mostly stationary as he is too frightened to look directly at the zombie.
0090
0090 is the intern reaction shot to the zombie. Originally in the animatic the intern was just frozen with a shocked face but I thought this shot would need a bit more depth and that it if didn't have some kind of movement in there then it wouldn't link very well with the plans I have for the shot after this which is a long one that going to require a lot of thought. I think the strongest idea that I had was that he would stumbvle backwards out of shock, and it seemed the most straight forward option. Below is the block of the shot:
As the shot is a medium of mostly the upper torso I wanted to show that he scares himself off balance and then ctaches himself again, whilst converying complete chock and terror in the process. I think that it's defintely going the right way but I've got to be quite careful with the flailing arms in terms of the timing because it could look really unnatural if I get the timing wrong. Below are some screen shots of the main poses from the animation, because it happens very quickly and relies very heavily on the poses looking very natural so that the audience won't pay explicit attention to his body language but they will feel it instead.
I continued to work into 0090 because I was had a lot of ideas for the timing and the positioning of the breakdowns that I wanted to explore quickly before I forgot them! I wanted to make the arms a really smooth arc, which meant that I was really going to have to make the movements shine in the polishing stage of the process, which I hope has made a big difference to the shot and the finished version is below. I was very conscious of not drawing too much attention to the poses directly as I mentioned before, which I have hopefully pulled off. I showed it to everyone and they seemed to like it so I guess it's worked!
As the shot is a medium of mostly the upper torso I wanted to show that he scares himself off balance and then ctaches himself again, whilst converying complete chock and terror in the process. I think that it's defintely going the right way but I've got to be quite careful with the flailing arms in terms of the timing because it could look really unnatural if I get the timing wrong. Below are some screen shots of the main poses from the animation, because it happens very quickly and relies very heavily on the poses looking very natural so that the audience won't pay explicit attention to his body language but they will feel it instead.
I continued to work into 0090 because I was had a lot of ideas for the timing and the positioning of the breakdowns that I wanted to explore quickly before I forgot them! I wanted to make the arms a really smooth arc, which meant that I was really going to have to make the movements shine in the polishing stage of the process, which I hope has made a big difference to the shot and the finished version is below. I was very conscious of not drawing too much attention to the poses directly as I mentioned before, which I have hopefully pulled off. I showed it to everyone and they seemed to like it so I guess it's worked!
0080 Final
The final version has been...finalised? Everythings smoothed out and done now so this can be sent for rendering! Im fairly satisfied with the result, I think I put in a lot of thought early on so I constantly had a view of how it was going to look in the final stages so it's more or less how I pictured/planned it to be. I think it sets him up as a zombie character, as it obeys by the sterotypical zombie body language and is more of a classic style of zombie. I still think the jaw is the best bit purely because of how floppy it is!
0080 Further
So the shot is slowly getting there. I think it's coming along positively, the extra keys I've added explain the pattern of the arm overlap which makes the whole thing make more sense. I hope that it shows a bit more of the distribution of his wieght which I have tried to emphasise by the overlapping movement in his jaw. Myself, Ollie and joe spoke a while ago when Ollie was doing teh blendshapes about how slack we wanted the zombies jaw to be able to go, and we all decided that the sloppier his movements could be the better. We wanted it to the point where it was almost not part of his body, but more like something that he was just dragging about thoughtlessly, which I hope will come across well.
I tried to add a bit more movement into the hips because it was looking fairly stationary at one point. That head bounce took a bit of experimeting to get hold of but I think that looking fairly comfortable now. The movements of the 'lunge, (both going up and down) are quite snappy which I think is working for now but if I put everything into linear and it isn't looking how I planned then I can always give the keys a shift around and add some more ease in there to soften the movements out.
The camera angle is kind of skewed which is really helping the flow lines of the pose that the zombie settles in towards the end. The arm and the curve in the spine are leading quite cleanly to the head but the left arm (screen right) is breaking the convention set by the other lines so that it gives the pose a bit more variation which I think is a beneficial element.
I tried to add a bit more movement into the hips because it was looking fairly stationary at one point. That head bounce took a bit of experimeting to get hold of but I think that looking fairly comfortable now. The movements of the 'lunge, (both going up and down) are quite snappy which I think is working for now but if I put everything into linear and it isn't looking how I planned then I can always give the keys a shift around and add some more ease in there to soften the movements out.
The camera angle is kind of skewed which is really helping the flow lines of the pose that the zombie settles in towards the end. The arm and the curve in the spine are leading quite cleanly to the head but the left arm (screen right) is breaking the convention set by the other lines so that it gives the pose a bit more variation which I think is a beneficial element.
0051 Final/0080
Shot 0051 is done (above). Lovely! This wasn't an incredibly technical shot and in all honesty it didn't take forever, but it was important to do it properly so I made sure I didn't do a half committed job and I think this shot is going to serve its purpose quite well.
I have also begun work on shot 0080 which is the zombie reveal. PRESSURE. It's quite an important short and there's gonna be a lot riding on it as it is the reveal of the iconic character of the film so I need to get it right really. I thought about going a number of different directions with this shot but a lot of the ideas I had were needlessly flamboyant and over acted really, but I didn't want to have it so simple that it wasn't interesting. So the block out above is the bare basics of what will be a half torso lunge whip upwards to show that he has akcnowledged the presence of the lift somewhere in his thoughtless mind. There's going to be a lot of overlap in the head and arms which I have loosely laid out with the main keys so the next step is to add breakdowns etc to get some more fluidity.
0051 Stepped
This shot is the first one of the intern in the lift environment. He's supposed to be tired beyond the point of genuine consciousness and barely notices anything around him. He does however recognise that the lights are dipping in the light which is important because the flashing lights play a much more integral role later on in the film. By drawing his attention to the lights we are also drawing the audiences attention to them, as the audience a very much plunged into the interns experience of the events within the film.
I decided to go for a straight forward approach to this shot/. For the most part he is kind of arched over with him shoulders right down and his eyes half open, just so that I can really sell the feelings of the character in a short space of time. He is going to be looking upwards so I'm gonna work a couple of clean arcs into the head and neck at these points.
0030
This shot is one from the sequence that Joe created to get the intern from the office to lift without shoving in a walk cycle and calling it a day. It's really straight forward animation but it's worth noting I suppose! The link was a really solid idea and actually works really well in sequence with the other detail shots so there's no complications with this section at all.
0020 Polished and Opening Sequence Test
Shot 0020:
So it's completely finished. I know there's an update for further blocking and linear missing but I got a bit carried away with this shot and didn't really stop. I'm pretty happy with how this has gone. I spent a lot of time loking at the time of the head bang to make sure it was snappy enough to provoke an emotion in audiences, whether it be laughter or empathy, it was the most important aspect of the scene and I think the attention I paid that aspect has worked in my favour. However, I'm not too much of a fan of the rate at which he eases into the head bang, and I think it could be toned down a bit. I obviously recognise that he is falling asleep and I don't want to drag the shot out unecessarily but it's something to consider.
In animating this shot I also spent a long time looking at the line of action/flow lines in the poses and looking at how they would affect the animation. In the picture below his slumped neck and shoulder create and soft curve up towards his head which is the focus. The props either side of him are also pointing inwards, with the lamp angled right down towards his eyeline. From this pose he eases into his next one in which he continues to slowly fall asleep.
Now for the whip action I completely reversed the line of action to put more exaggeration into the movement. I think the reversal was key to the success of this shot and has worked well and I hope that, when coupled with the sound that John Tebb will be doing, the impact noise will make this a successful first gag of the film!
The last thing I did was to switch the line back to have him slumped over and flattened out on his desk. It seems like an obvious thing to do but I think it's worth a mention.
SO now that I've animated the first three shots of the film, I wanted to cut them together locally so that I could test out the relationships of the first three shots to see if they worked well together. I genuinely think it's actually working fairly well and am pleased with things so far. There's always a risk that they will be completely off but I think they link into one another strongly and convey the story pretty clearly.
So it's completely finished. I know there's an update for further blocking and linear missing but I got a bit carried away with this shot and didn't really stop. I'm pretty happy with how this has gone. I spent a lot of time loking at the time of the head bang to make sure it was snappy enough to provoke an emotion in audiences, whether it be laughter or empathy, it was the most important aspect of the scene and I think the attention I paid that aspect has worked in my favour. However, I'm not too much of a fan of the rate at which he eases into the head bang, and I think it could be toned down a bit. I obviously recognise that he is falling asleep and I don't want to drag the shot out unecessarily but it's something to consider.
In animating this shot I also spent a long time looking at the line of action/flow lines in the poses and looking at how they would affect the animation. In the picture below his slumped neck and shoulder create and soft curve up towards his head which is the focus. The props either side of him are also pointing inwards, with the lamp angled right down towards his eyeline. From this pose he eases into his next one in which he continues to slowly fall asleep.
Now for the whip action I completely reversed the line of action to put more exaggeration into the movement. I think the reversal was key to the success of this shot and has worked well and I hope that, when coupled with the sound that John Tebb will be doing, the impact noise will make this a successful first gag of the film!
The last thing I did was to switch the line back to have him slumped over and flattened out on his desk. It seems like an obvious thing to do but I think it's worth a mention.
SO now that I've animated the first three shots of the film, I wanted to cut them together locally so that I could test out the relationships of the first three shots to see if they worked well together. I genuinely think it's actually working fairly well and am pleased with things so far. There's always a risk that they will be completely off but I think they link into one another strongly and convey the story pretty clearly.
Render test and 0020
Ollie and Greg have been busy testing out renders and whatnot. There I was happily working away when this bad boy (below) pops up on Dropbox! They've only gone and rendered shot 0014! Delightful.
I think it looks awesome! I really like the green highlifhts from the old busted computer and the office looks really good, as does the intern. Can't really praise this enough really! I know it's early days but it's already an exciting thing to see!
This is the start I've made on shot 0020. The main focus of this shot is the head slam, as that's the gag that the shot is based around. I think the poses are working pretty well at the moment but there's always room to refine what I've done so the only thing there is to do is continue and hope for the best.
I think it looks awesome! I really like the green highlifhts from the old busted computer and the office looks really good, as does the intern. Can't really praise this enough really! I know it's early days but it's already an exciting thing to see!
This is the start I've made on shot 0020. The main focus of this shot is the head slam, as that's the gag that the shot is based around. I think the poses are working pretty well at the moment but there's always room to refine what I've done so the only thing there is to do is continue and hope for the best.
0014
This post is really just tracking the progress of shot 0014, with teh videos below conveying the shot at different stages of completion:
So this is the same shot with breakdowns and inbetweens added. I think it took a much more positive shape at the stage, and mapping out timing early on really helped me figure out where things should be going at this stage. One thing that stood out after a while was that I needed to work on the arc of his head when he looks over to his left (screen right) so that was something to work on.
I kept plugging away at this shot and finally it's finished! I was fortunate that because I had put a lot of frames in at the stepped part of the process, and ones that didn't require anywhere near full body movement, that I hit very few complications when I put all the keys into linear. All it took from that point was a quick re-time and I pushed a couple of poses a bit further then smoothed it all out and it was done! It's turned out how I planned, whether I made bad choices or not is another story but this was more or less what I planned he final to look like and I think it's gonna set the next shot up well!
So this is the same shot with breakdowns and inbetweens added. I think it took a much more positive shape at the stage, and mapping out timing early on really helped me figure out where things should be going at this stage. One thing that stood out after a while was that I needed to work on the arc of his head when he looks over to his left (screen right) so that was something to work on.
I kept plugging away at this shot and finally it's finished! I was fortunate that because I had put a lot of frames in at the stepped part of the process, and ones that didn't require anywhere near full body movement, that I hit very few complications when I put all the keys into linear. All it took from that point was a quick re-time and I pushed a couple of poses a bit further then smoothed it all out and it was done! It's turned out how I planned, whether I made bad choices or not is another story but this was more or less what I planned he final to look like and I think it's gonna set the next shot up well!
Updates
I've been cracking on with the animation recently and have been pretty excited to get a shot out ready for render. Below is some of the stuff I've produced over a couple of days:
Shot 0011
So thi shot is more or less final now. My first shot was purposefully simpler than all the rest of the aniamtion so I could dive right into it in an attempt to churn out the first shot. It's far from glamorous but it does the job it needs to so I can't really complain. Ideally I'd have liked to go into a lot more depth with the fingers and the contact with buttons, and well as getting some really nice movement in the wrists for the typing, but at the end of the day he does look like he's typing which for now is all he needs to be. It might sound like a somewhat careless attitude to be bringing to the process that I've been itching to start, but with deadlines already on the mind there's not a lot of time to be investing into a shot of this calibur when there's a lot more difficult stuff to be getting on with.
Shot 0014
This shot is the real introduction to our intern character, so it's important that I make the right impression with him straight away so that audiences will understand who he is and how he is feeling about bthe situation he is currently in. The diea is that he is struggling to stay awake at his desk after being stuck there for hours and hours after his colleagues have left, because he is the intern and therefore steerotypically swamped with work. He immediately rises from a split second sleep at the beginning of the shot, before look around him and remembering where he is, as he's still thoroughly in 'work mode'. Once he realises that he is alone, he has a moment of self indulgence with a big inhalation slumps forward in his chair with a subtle smile, as if he has almost accepted that he's going to fall asleep again. Well that's the plan at least!
It's still in the early stages yet obviously, as I've just blocked the main keys in as a guideline for working into it further. The timing also needs a bit of refining but it's more or less what I'm planning to do. I'm going to try to work some nice arcs into his head movements, especially on the big inhale/exhale. I think that, providing that bit is nice and smooth, the shot will work quite well.
I think it's going to be a strong way to instroduce the character. Coupled with the eastblishing shots prior to this one, the elements will all hopefully come together to convey to the audience that he is tired and over worked, but still a likeable and relatable character. The shot after this is really the first gag of the film inwhch he falls asleep at his chair and hits his head on the keyboard, which also a shot I am doing so I want to make sure that I set that up well enought so that there is no confusion over what is going on.
Shot 0011
So thi shot is more or less final now. My first shot was purposefully simpler than all the rest of the aniamtion so I could dive right into it in an attempt to churn out the first shot. It's far from glamorous but it does the job it needs to so I can't really complain. Ideally I'd have liked to go into a lot more depth with the fingers and the contact with buttons, and well as getting some really nice movement in the wrists for the typing, but at the end of the day he does look like he's typing which for now is all he needs to be. It might sound like a somewhat careless attitude to be bringing to the process that I've been itching to start, but with deadlines already on the mind there's not a lot of time to be investing into a shot of this calibur when there's a lot more difficult stuff to be getting on with.
Shot 0014
This shot is the real introduction to our intern character, so it's important that I make the right impression with him straight away so that audiences will understand who he is and how he is feeling about bthe situation he is currently in. The diea is that he is struggling to stay awake at his desk after being stuck there for hours and hours after his colleagues have left, because he is the intern and therefore steerotypically swamped with work. He immediately rises from a split second sleep at the beginning of the shot, before look around him and remembering where he is, as he's still thoroughly in 'work mode'. Once he realises that he is alone, he has a moment of self indulgence with a big inhalation slumps forward in his chair with a subtle smile, as if he has almost accepted that he's going to fall asleep again. Well that's the plan at least!
It's still in the early stages yet obviously, as I've just blocked the main keys in as a guideline for working into it further. The timing also needs a bit of refining but it's more or less what I'm planning to do. I'm going to try to work some nice arcs into his head movements, especially on the big inhale/exhale. I think that, providing that bit is nice and smooth, the shot will work quite well.
I think it's going to be a strong way to instroduce the character. Coupled with the eastblishing shots prior to this one, the elements will all hopefully come together to convey to the audience that he is tired and over worked, but still a likeable and relatable character. The shot after this is really the first gag of the film inwhch he falls asleep at his chair and hits his head on the keyboard, which also a shot I am doing so I want to make sure that I set that up well enought so that there is no confusion over what is going on.
Sequence Development
There is a sequence in our film that relies heavily on the lift light flickering on and off to the point of being almost a strobe light. The lift light flickers from the first moment in which the intern steps in, but it gradually gets faster to increase the tension between the two characters and once the intern goes to press the button to his floor in an effort to escape, the lights cut out and queues the flickering. There is a sequence in the file above 'Mac n' Cheese' that does a very good job of the kind of sequence we want to produce. It's really choppy and works as a collection of details at first but then spreads out to give an overview of what actually happening, as it could easily become unreadable. The sequence begins at about 0:58.
This was an idea that was pretty much formed by the whole group. We're all huge fans of Mac n Cheese so were all fully aware of the possibilities of producing a sequence like this. It comes at a point in our film where there has been so much awkwardness between the two that it had to snap at some point, and the lights in the lift flicker on and off constantly, gradually getting quicker to build the tension. The advantages of this from an animation point of view is that some of the shots we've planned dont necessarily needed polished animation as theyre being shown in chunks of individual frames, so we can spend more time refining the poses to make sure we're acurately telling the story through what is admittedly a difficult narrative device to employ. We've all got high hopes for this sequence so hopefully it will turn out the way we have envisioned.
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