Final Animation

It's finally over... Here's Igor in all his glory!

http://www.nanimator.co.uk/Vids/wherePrecWeb3.mpg

cheering up

Okay things aren't that bad now, I've managed to redo the final scene. I'm just sorting out the lighting and touching up the animation, but I don't think there's anything more I can do.


animation coming soon....

DoomAndGloom!

Very pissed off right now, I'm redoing the final scene, and it's proving to be a real fucker.

Firstly I've just done my lip sync and it's all out of sync. The animation is looking really poor and I'm in a mood to break things right now! My energy is just dead, I just can't be bothered at the moment! but I've got nothing better to do, so like a fucking yoyo I just keep going back to the computer fucking more things up and the blood just boils even more.

I'm actually just redoing this last scene because the first attempt at it didn't give me the result I wanted, the punchline didn't work, so now I'm trying to redo the final scene and I'm just too knackered! and Thus very annoyed!

The end is nigh...Must ...Kee.....p.........go......ing!!!!!!

Animation Progress/Rant

This week I have mostly been animating or should I say tweaking graphs.

This is really an update regarding the animating process.

Actually come to think of it there is a lot I could be talking about here, I'm going to make a cup of tea (wink wink!!!!!!!!!!!) then come back...

Anyway I'm back now.

where shall I start? Well the first thing is that I quit my job in October to focus on learning animation, I think I've used my time as productively as is possible, I feel my character animation has got better but I still feel as though I'm not quite there yet, will I ever be? well only practice will get me closer. (I've also become very good at not leaving my bedroom! It's like a minefield of empty bottles of water, hall full-cold cups of tea, and a lot of empty packets of chocolate digestives!)

One of the things that I've learned is that animating is not quick, it's an arduous task, the method by which I have been working with is something I learned from an animator called Keith Lango (http://www.keithlango.com/). This guy has some fantastic tips on the process of cg animation. No matter how much I'd learnt about the principles of animation (secondary motion, key poses, followthrough...blah blah blah) I still hadn't put it into practice; this project has been
great to practice with but as I come to the final week I still feel as though I'm not seeing the kind of final product that I might feel good about watching.

I've animated about 8 scenes with Igor, and one of the things I've discovered is that Igor is not
very flexible as a rig but saying that he was never supposed to be jumping around or performing any complicated actions. But even for the simplest of actions I've had to be very careful of where I shoot the scene from so as not to show an awkward glitch in the mesh. One of the things this has led to is shooting him from above the waist alot because it's the legs that are a bit of a problem, in all honesty I think they look horrible somtimes! But in certain scenes I haven't had a choice. The good thing is because of his shape, he always looks sad so that has led to a lot less animating in some circumstances because that's what he is supposed to look like.

The general process of animating I used was pose to pose, this is where the character jumps from errr-pose-to pose! I start with key storytelling poses and watch that back to check the timing is good.

Here's an example from Keith Lango
http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/moses01_popThru.avi

What I then go and do is change all the keys so that the character moves in with linear motion through each key. Here's where the trouble starts...

It's at this point I have to disapear into a world of the Graph editor. This is a representaion of my animation from the point of view of all the animated objects in my scene (still with me?). I feel as though I'm getting very good at reading these graphs (like learning a new language!) One of my faults is being lazy and I tend to not think clearly enough about how I want an action to take place. Or.... It may also be possible that I think too much about the actions trying to tweak every key from the movement of the hips to the motion of the finger tips. Nevertheless a lazy animators motto..."if in doubt ease it Out!"

So far I have rendered about 6 scenes, I have a week left to get the final product in. I have one more scene left to finish animating; graph tweaking awaits that scene. It's kind of like ironing except I take much more time on graphs than I ever do at the ironing stand. I check every key (well almost). I then go in and work out if the action will be snappy or slow.

Once all this is done what I try to do is rearrange the keys so that I bring more life by creating secondary motion and overlap. Sometimes I think I have been overanimating; when I said this process is like ironing what I meant was that once all the key poses are set up you then have to go in a iron out all the glitches, which is why I spend hours infront of the graph editor in Maya working out really stupid things like if the hand should rotate 5 degrees or 6!

Anyway the reason I am going into so much detail is just to give people an idea of what is actually going on when I'm animating. It never really ever feels finished and I think I'm learning now that this is somthing that just takes a lot of patience; when you click on render there's no going back!

It's now friday, but on Monday I had animated 6 scenes and I knew I had to get rendering but I still had to go in and fix the lighting in all the scenes. I spent about a day setting that up, then on Tuesday I went about thinking about rendering. What happened was that I looked at my first scene and still wasn't satisfied so I began to tweak, then I started rendering and what has happened since then is that I've pretty much done the same with all the other scenes; tried to clean up the animation, fixed the lighting and rendered... Now I have one last scene to do and I must go and face it!

I've learnt a lot about process of and I have lots more to learn....

Igor's Cameo

Igor makes a guest appearence alongside Brazil The squirrel



Click Here to enjoy:
http://www.nanimator.co.uk/Vids/SquirWeb.mpg

OOPDATE!

An update....

Its been a while but since I last posted anything on here but I Promise I have been busy.

There has been no animation on here because I'm still working on it. I have so far edited the dialogue I recored with Omar and now I am going through the process of animating each scene, there are about 7 scene, all very short, but since this is my first attempt at making a movie this long (about 2 minutes), I'm working very carefully checking that each scene flows into the next.

I basically won't be putting any updates of the animation on here until it is finished which won't be too long, only another week or so. (...He claims...)

I have about two scenes left to do.

Also one last thing, I have modelled a very crude dinosaur, but since you will only see the eye, there was no need to model it to great detail, the eye just had to be right.

Anyway animation should be done today, then rendering will start next week, during which time I will be putting together my research essay on the subject of animtion and visual storytelling through acting.

merry xmas from Igor

Igor's been busy partying hard this christmas!

Just look at the state of him...

click here or here

Igor's First Animation

I've done a short Igor animation, No story or context just flexing my character acting skills

Check it out here

small file
http://www.nanimator.co.uk/Vids/IgorTensec/igortensec.mpg

bigger file
http://www.nanimator.co.uk/Vids/IgorTensec/igortensec.avi

Mac (L)users!
http://www.nanimator.co.uk/Vids/IgorTensec/igortensec.mov

Animating Igor this week

Happy news, I've finaly started animating Igor, he's looking good, not perfect but good!

He'll be on here as soon as I'm happy with it. Not exactly true, the dead line is in about 2 days, so it'll be up no matter what it looks like!

I've been animating him for a competition called the 10 second club.
It's actually proven to be quite a worthwhile little excercise in character animating. The premise behind the competion is to animate your character to a given line from a film. Each month a new line is released and you just have to act you character(s) to the dialogue. Here's a good example, http://i-animate.org/10secondclub.org/files/2005/3/5664.mpg.


Here's the link to this month's line http://i-animate.org/10secondclub.org/files/soundfiles/2005-11.wav

This is something I've been wanting to do for ages (animating to dialogue), but technically I've only just been able to reach a stage that I'm both patient and capable of achieving the requried result of giving convincing life to a 3d character.

The only dissapointing thing about animating to dialogue is, I can't listen to music while I work, it's impossible and so, a really bad idea!

Offcourse I will be using Igor for my own project, but the tensecond work was a good test of the rig, it gives me a good idea of where I can go with him and where his limits are.


Anyway, back to work!

Rigging Hell

Igor seems to have become my life at the moment, so much so that he's even beginning to look like me!

I've spent about a week or so now just setting up the rig. After setting up the skeleton system, I'm now farting around a bit with various methods of controling him. I think I'm probably taking too long over this process and, I'm a bit too precious about it. It took me about two days of solid work to make sure that every area of the body deformed correctly! When I rotated his legs his buttocks kept on dissapearing, and even now, I should go and fix a few glitches with the way his belly area deforms but it's a bit a niggly, and I should find better ways to deal with these problems; some people have suggested that I avoid showing him from certain angles where the mesh might be a little glitchy! I think I'm probably just too much of a perfectionist.

Anyway I think I've ranted enough, along with the all the hell that has arisen from the process of setting up the rig, I have started working on the various blend shapes. These are basically all the expressions that Igor is likely to pull. I model all the expressions and mouth shapes and voila, he's Alive! It's nice to finally see him moving and coming to life!

And one last thing the dialogue has been recorded and that was quite fun, Omar really got into the part. I've just got to edit it and start animating.

Enough!

Theory Topic

Since I can not escape the theoretical aspect of this project, I'm going to be looking at acting and storytelling and how it has evolved from stage to screen.

Nuff Said!

Good News

So what have I been up to this week,

Well I had to put a lot more detail into Igor's face, the pics here are a bit outdated now, I'll try and get the new pics up soon, but I've got a lot to get done. The model is more or less complete, I just need to fix up the colours a bit, my tutor didn't like them so much (she also said Igor shared some resemblence to me; I can't see it! Okay, maybe just a bit)

Anyway what's the plan? Well I hope to get the dialogue recorded this week For those of you that know him, Omar will be the voice.

I've also got to go and model all the expressions for Igor. I've got to rig him as well, to So that I can see what he looks like moving.

But I've got to do all this stuff megaquick, so I can get down to start animating him.

Also some good news!

I should have more time to work on this project, I've turned this into a larger project and dumped the Frankencow project. Doing two small projects was getting a bit too stressful and this was certailny the more fun, out of the 2. I feel a lot more relaxed cause my brain is not being streatched in different directions; basically I can focus on one thing this semester and that is mildely pleasing.

Anyhoot enough of the waffaling

Till next time...

Igor Has Colour

Igor Model

Igor is taking shape

Theory?

well I've jsut found oput today after a few words with my lecturer, that I'm also going to have to do some in-depth theory based research into an area related to this project. Since this is really my first attempt at animating to dialogue, the practiceal process is going to quite a hard task in itself. But I guess, the theory side of things would be useful as well, I've just got to explore a few ideas, I'm thinking something concerned with body language and how we communicate behaviour through it. I think I'm just going to go looking for somthing relevent to dialogue based animation, that would probably be more sensible.

Might be worth exploring the history of dialogue in animation, eg: where the concepts for phenomes come from who was responsible.

I think the theory side of this project is probably going to have a snowballing effect where ideas relevent to the subject of lip sync and acting, are just going to grow and grow.

On the Fun side of the fence, the practical side, Igor is starting to take shape as a 3d character. He has no head yet, or arms. As soon as he's looking close to ready, I'll get him up here.

Anyhoo

Igor revealed

A few character studies of Igor, I'm aiming to go with the one one the bottom right.

Here's Igor looking a bit a angry and on the right, I quite like the sad expression!

Here's Igor looking quite smug!

ps. soory about the quality of the pics.

script and character ready--Sort of.

Okay so since my last post I now have a very clear idea of where I'm going. Apologies but I haven't got my charcter on the web yet, but he is more or less complete. He's not modelled yet, but I've got a very clear idea about what he looks like: he's a big glum hunchback, no neck, gaumless creature. Rather than go on about him too much, i'll try and work on getting him on my website asap! It's a painfully menial task and I've not got the time to get it on just yet.

But enough winging, in addition to the having a visual idea of what Igor looks loke, I also have a script completed; i'm just going to get a second opinion on it, but the basic gist is that Igor has lost his pet 'Precious'. He mopes around looking under small objects, scratching his head, "I wonder where he could be?"

Eventually after lots of head scratching he hears a loud roar outside, he goes to the window, undraws the curtain and shazzam, a giant dianosaur eye is staring in...Precious has been found!

Simple I know, but I must make it clear that this project is my first attempt to animate to dialogue, I'm keeping it very simple. The scrip is a bit more detailed, the above example, as I said, is just the gist of the story. I'll try and get the script up asap, but I have a lot of other things that are more important at the monement. (Man, I got to stop wingeing so much!)

I have just discovered how to use this blogging site slightly more easily. Igor won't be too long, lets see if I can get the script up.

Back soon

While I'm here i'll just say one last thing, I've got a friend to agree to play Igor and hopefully I can arrange a date with him in the next few weeks to get some audio recording done. It should be fun!

Anyway, script and Igor coming soon to a blog near you!

Welcome to my first Blog

I'm using this blog as a diary for a project I am doing for my animation degree.
I'm hoping to keep an account of all the work I do towards a creating a 3d character communicating dialogue.

I haven't chosen anything yet, but I do have some ideas for what the character will look like, I'll try and get him posted on here as soon aas I'm satisfied with the design.

Although saying that, It might be better to get the audio done first, then design the character around that.

I'll see how things go...