A series of rather unfortunate events

2009-12-10T10:10:00.003Z

Alright chaps!
I have for the past month, been working to paint up issue 2 of Leo Fox which I am working on with a friend as part of UNFIT productions. While the work is slow I really think the quality is high, so we will be delaying any publication of the work until we both have time to see the end in sight. What with freelance commitments and day jobs, we have pushed back the release date for the first 2 comics till Spring 2010 with the third following in the Summer. But for now, here are a few illustrated pages from the new comic, enjoy!

2009-11-09T20:17:00.001Z

Hello! It has been a while! I have been sitting on this piece and tweaking it for quite a while but thought I'd just get it out there and move on! So have a look at this acting piece and let me know what you think!

2009-07-07T22:29:00.004Z

Hello guys,
Well recently I haven't been animating at all! I've actually been doing a lot of watercolouring for a comic I and my friend have been working up for about a year now. I finally got issue one of a 3 part story arc completed and will soon be putting some pages and artwork up in its very own blog! It is currently having the lettering done and the layout cleaned up by my partner in crime Mr. Patrick Potter. For more info as and when it arrives, please check over at http://themysteriousleofox.blogspot.com !
I thank you.

2009-03-31T13:36:00.002Z

Just a few quick animations I was asked to do for a job application, did these in about a day and a half each. As always, keep them comments coming!

2009-03-03T14:00:00.005Z

What Ho!
Just thought I'd post this acting piece I've finally finished. It got started last year but then I got so busy I never got chance to work on it till now. The sound is a touch out of sync, but since my graphics card went kaput its hard to line anything up in Premiere. I hope to solve the problem and update this soon. Hope you like it.
Bye for now.

2009-02-07T10:48:00.009Z

Hello!
I am still unemployed, which in terms of getting some animation done, is a good thing! This is an animation I did yesterday using video reference from youtube, a 540 taekwondo kick. I was looking around for a good martial arts combo and this fit the bill. I think I am also gonna do some punches and wrestling moves too, so watch this space, hopefully I'll get a few done next week! Comments as always are welcome
Bye for now!

PS I have redone this animation taking into account the comments left, so see what you think of this new version!

2009-02-05T14:02:00.004Z

Hi, I'm currently out of work so I have time to animate. Heres one I did yesterday, I'm gonna try and do a few of these short pieces, let me know what you think. Thanks.

this animation has been updated taking into account the feedback I recieved, please feel free to let me know what you think!

2009-01-26T13:02:00.004Z

A post of renders done for M, an events and marketing company last year.

2008-12-10T19:23:00.011Z

A selection of renders from my current job.

2008-11-23T12:12:00.006Z

Hello
Its a horrible day outside so I thought I'd take the time to post some more work. For the past couple of months I've been working on a comic, based on a film I made with 2 friends back in 2005. The film was a 7 minute prequel to an animated series funded by The Digital City at Teesside University called "The Adventures of Leo Fox". The series was to follow the exploits of a young boy on a magical council estate. Orphaned as a babe, Leo was brought up by his Nan until one night she falls into a mysterious illness. The film follows Leo on his mad dash through the twisted estate in search of the only one who can save his Nan, his long lost Grandad.
The film can be seen here.

Anyway, time went by and the 3 of us went off to do different things. Ben went off to study film, Pat has been freelance writing and creating audio short sto ries , and I've been learning how to animate p roperly (as many of you may know!), but in the background we've always wanted to do something with Leo Fox, his tale is not yet told!

Since we now live all over the place, making a film again isn't really an option, so what we have decided to do is try and make a comic. Its slow going at the moment, but we have finally got a first adventure mapped out and are working on issue one.
When you go into making a comic I don't think you realise just how many decisions you need to address. Style, characters, working method, and what to show have been some of the many challenges. For myself as the penciller, it has been a challenge to create the work in a format which is doable with limited space and equipment. The process I came up with was to sketch out the panels roughly and scan and photoshop them into some kind of order. I then printed these out and using a dark pencil and layout paper, traced the roughs out as clean lines. These were then rescanned and photo texture added in photoshop, before being sent on to Pat, who is taking care of lettering, as well as the writing.
Being that this is the first time we've ever made a comic, its been a real learning process and more work than I thought it would be (drawing carefully takes time!) but I am getting better and better at it. One of the main things that has taken time has been to create the array of characters which are needed when you start to break down even the simplest of stories, and also working out just how much you can say in one issue, which is roughly 18 pages. We are aiming for the first story arc to take place over 3 issues, but since this is just a hobby at the minute we're not setting hard and fast timeframes for completion. We're just seeing where it takes us.
Anyway I've rambled on long enough. I'm sure I'll be adding more on this project as time goes by, but for now, here are the first ten pages of issue one without lettering. I know they won't make much sense as a story without the words, but I'd be happy to hear your critiscisms in terms of style, pace and readability. And until next time...
Adios!

2008-11-21T16:49:00.005Z

Hi There!
Here are some more images from the arctic environment. For the fog I used a large direct light with volume effect and a noise projection map. For the sea I used a blend material of foam and ocean lume, using an ambient occlusion map with a low sample rate, high spread and a blur as the mask so that objects in the sea would have foam around them, I think it really adds to the cold feel of the environment. Please feel free to comment.

Edit: The finished flythrough. The idea with this is that the camera would hold on each vehicle before flying to the next one, hence it slows down and accelerates between each them.

2008-11-19T16:54:00.011Z

Here are some more stills from the Royal Navy Project I'm working on. Below are:

the Viking with boats in the background

An LCVP landing craft

A "Rigid Raider" Speedboat

HMS Bulwark being refuelled by RFA Largs Bay

I'm now working on a snowy environment and camouflage colours for the Viking. When I get chance I'll post some more cameos of these models, renders of models which I did not create, and go into more detail about the render settings I've used, and some of the techniques I've used to get the effects for the different environments. But for now, Adios!

2008-10-17T11:44:00.003Z

Hey hey hey!
Been a while eh? Well I am busy and will be posting some animation just as soon as I get chance. I have a piece which is nearly there, but this week I have been getting into textures.
I'm currently doing a job which has afforded me the chance to make some realistic environments and build some militery vehicles, so I will post them as I render them. Above is a BVS 10 troop support vehicle modelled from scratch (apart from the gun which was modified) in about 2 days. The model was done in max and uses a series of nested blend materials, sub object materials, grunge maps and ambient occlusion to dirty up the surface. The environment is lit with a photometric daylight system. The project calls for lots of vehicles but due to time constraints we have had to buy some readymade, but I have had chance to make a ship too, and maybe a few more things before the job is done, but I'm happy I've had the cahnce to work on this. It makes a change from the usual shiny looking surfaces I have been doing for the past few months. The scene is rendered with Mental Ray with Final Gather but no global illumination although I have used a logarithmic exposure control to attenuate the brightness. As always let me know what you think and I'll post more renders and the final animation as soon as its completed.

2008-07-20T19:00:00.003Z

Hi! I'm trying to find time to finish this animation at the moment, but in the meantime I thought I'd put it up for comment. I'm having a problem with video playback on my computer at the moment so getting the timing is quite difficult. But I'm happy with the keys and just need to finess the overshoots and add the lip synching.

As always, let me know what you think!

2008-07-11T10:31:00.002Z

Hi Guys, Still no animations, but it has been a lean week at work, so inspired by looking at others' blog I decided to have a go sketching straight into photoshop. I've been reading a lot of Mighty Thor lately so I wanted to do this flying character. It was good to be able to move it round and distort it directly before going into the details. I did this with just a mouse, as my stylus is at home, so the lines are a little wobbly but I'm happy for a first attempt. Definitely going to do more of this in the future. Let me know what you think!
Laters

2008-06-13T09:54:00.003Z

Hi everyone,
Lately I have been a bit busy to animate, although I have 3 pieces that are WIP at the moment and I may post them for comment soon. I have started using soundbites from www.11seconclub.com for inspiration although since I work full time, finishing a piece to actually enter seems a long way off at the minute, but anyway, it creates a good starting point, and it is also useful to see others' interpretations of the same piece. For now however, here are some models I had to make recently for work. Usually the modelling I get to do is very simple and dull, so it was fun to get to do some individual pieces for this project. Let me know what you think.
Be back soon!

2008-04-15T22:28:00.002Z

Hey back again! This is a little animation I did initially as a long shot, but then I played around with the camera for the second render. I'm thinking the longshot works a lot better as the timing feels right which I guess shows how getting the camera right before animating is really important. I feel the second render needs more time,even though its the same move, so that the viewer can understand whats happening, as the emphasis is placed on so many individual elements and not on the action as a whole. This is a classic case of understanding by doing for me and really helps, because sometimes you need to question what you are told as a given rule.

Your Thoughts?

laters!

2008-04-15T22:12:00.007Z

Hello y'all. Earning a living is keeping me kinda busy at the moment, but I have been doing this and that so I'm uploading some life studies, a sketch I did in town a while ago and a storyboard for a quick animation I want to do. I have actually made the character and modelled some of the set, but the rigging isn't so good so there are a few issues to iron out before I get started, though I may have a look around for a ready made rig that might suit. Anyway your comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome.

storyboard for a sorcerers apprentice style short

train sketches

hand studies

Chinatown - Chinese New Year.

laters!

2008-03-26T13:20:00.002Z

Hello!!

I have been working recently for a company called M who produce trade exhibition stands for clients. A lot of the work has been re hashing old models but last week I started my first project from scratch and I thought I'd post this graphic which is of a spooky operating theatre for a new computer game, which I am quite happy with. The space is quite small so the camera FOV is wide to make up for it. The work was done in 3ds Max using mental ray and architectural materials, and the blood textures came from http://www.cgtextures.com/ which has been an amazing find for me, you can download 15 mb of jpgs a day from there, which is pretty fantastic. The scene was rendered with final gather for those impressive shadows and reflections and took6 hours to finish! Anyway let me know what you think.

laters

2008-02-01T14:21:00.000Z

Here are some of my latest sketches. The first is a tattoo design for a friend based on a drawing she saw in a magazine, the second is of a friend who came round and got sketched whether he liked it or not, and the third is the train I take home from town. I sketched it then cleaned up using a blue pitt brush pen which is nice because you can vary the width of the stroke. Here I used it to define the depth in the image. I think the technique worked well and I can't wait to use it again, possibly with a more complicated subject (though having said that, the train environment has some great shapes and lines in it). Thats all for now,
Toodle Pip!

2008-01-07T17:46:00.001Z

Finally got a scanner sorted out. Freecycle.org. Fantastic! So here are some 10 second sketches I did, some cleanups I did from the sketches, and some life drawing I did of our Ruth watching the telly. I really wanna get out and draw, but its so cold at the minute! I will though. I have a few places in mind to draw. anyway, enjoy.

2008-01-07T17:33:00.000Z

This is a new storyboard I have worked up with two new characters which I am busy rigging in 3D Studio Max. Its basically just a bit of slapstick. I'll post the character rigs when they're done.

laters.

2008-01-03T11:53:00.000Z

This is the finished acting piece. The clip is Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets. Loads of good qoutes in this movie. Let me know what you think.

2007-12-04T13:08:00.000Z

Hi There,
I'm still working on my latest piece of animation because I have had a commercial project to do. The job was working alongside Tim Frost at BullnGate on a project called Hotel Hasbro. I worked on the opening and end shots, creating the 3d environment for Tims 2d artwork to sit in. There was an awful lot to do in the space of 6 days and getting the render time down was difficult. In doing so I managed to network my 2 laptops into a render farm, and managed to get the look I wanted by substituting processor heavy area shadows for a raytraced light coupled with the environmental light tracer. Simpler shadows solutions were impossible because of the 2d artwork being mapped onto planes instead of being actual geometry, meaning advanced lighting techniques were required to deal with the shadows. I'm happy with the result. There were a few animation challenges for me too, in the ribbon, which was animated by hand, and the tonka toy, which tim delivered to me in pieces, as well as all the environment popping up into place as the box unfolds. Working with Tim was a great experience, he had a strong directorial vision and was very approachable in terms of solving problems that arose and being able to describe to me exactly what he wanted. You can see an edited version of the opening shot here.

2007-11-12T14:50:00.000Z

Thanks for your thoughts people, I have taken them on board in this next stage. It really helps to see what people think as you go through the different stages.In this vid I have added the inbetween keys. Next I will lip synch the face, before going on the tweak and offset the body for smoother action.

2007-11-07T11:15:00.000Z

ACTING ANIMATION using the ED rig.

Hi There!

I thought I would document the entire process of making this animation, so here in the background you can see the keyframes I drew and timed to the soundclip, and in the foreground the ED rig moving from pose to pose. Next I'm adding the inbetween poses.

2007-10-30T15:06:00.000Z

A compilation of the scenes I have animated for the modfilms sanctuary project featuring the avatar character "CD"

2007-10-08T10:50:00.000Z

Hi There!

I just thought I'd post a piece of work I did. Its my first freelance job, and was done at Picasso Pictures. I did two days modelling, texturing and lighting on a pitch for a samsung commercial with directorial team FAQ. It was a bit of a challenge modelling all the components and getting the lighting right in the short space of time I had but I enjoyed working there and hopefully this could lead to more work in the future.

2007-09-27T13:53:00.000Z

I wanted to try this exercise. Its my first attempt at a character lifting weight in 3D. Let me know what you think! The model is the Alfred rig and was animated in Maya 6.5.

2007-09-27T10:09:00.000Z

This is my first walk cycle in Max. The Character was created by a friend of mine, and rigged by me.

2007-09-13T10:17:00.000Z

Hi There,
At the minute I'm busy looking for work and making new animations which I should be posting here real soon. In the meantime, I'm putting up my showreels for download. Each is a .mov in small and large format, so you can take your pick! If you are an employer and like what you see, then please get in touch. All comments about the work are most welcome.
Thanks.

The links are here:

Showreel 2007 large (39Mb)
Showreel 2007 small (7Mb)

Showreel 2006 large (42 Mb)
Showreel 2006 small (8 Mb)

The Stubborn Stallion small (8 Mb)

2007-06-25T08:59:00.000Z

Hello!
Well its all over! I managed to finish my animation for the show last Friday and got some of my highest marks of the entire course for my final assessment which was fantastic. I got some really positive feedback for the work and was only 3 percent behind Kim who managed to get the distinction this year, so well done Kim I think it was well deserved. So anyway, here is the finished animation with soundtrack by Dan Hazlehurst, the Midi Metal King! Also posted is my showreel which has been significantly abridged after getting some good advice from my mentor, Jonathan Privett at Rushes. Thanks Jonathan for all your good advice over the course.

The Stubborn Stallion

Showreel 2007

2007-06-11T16:30:00.000Z

Hey There,

I just made these pictures to show the inner workings of my characters. It wasn't my idea, I saw Mariano doing them and thought "Why Not?" But I think he has copying Dave so...thanks Dave, Thave!

2007-06-11T12:03:00.000Z

Hello Y'all
I have just finished a weekend of intense work on the project and have finally got to the rendering stage of may animation. I can't say I'm totally happy with it, I had some file corruption issues and in the end I had to animate the reins by hand, but I managed to work around this and now I'm rendering.
I have decided to render the animation twice, first with the background and then with just the characters. This is so that I can iron out parts of the animation where it is noticeable that the characters feet are moving through the ground plane. Obviously in some areas this will not be possible, such as when the characters need to intereact with the environment, but in most scenes this will make work to make the animation look less shoddy.
The hardest part of the animation was certainly the reins. I had to animate all 6 controllers to follow the movement of the two characters at the same time. Once this was done I had to animate the lengths of the joints on the ropes so that they look as if they are staying attached to the handle the knight holds. It wasn't possible to use dynamics or scripting because of the reins being attached between two characters. Even parenting was out of the question as each point on the rein had to be able to move freely. It took hours, but it allows the reins to seem as if they can stretch which gets round otherwise awkward staging problems.
I'm generally happy now with the look of the animation and think that it makes sense. In some areas I think that the timing is a little fast. But I think that this is due to not giving enough time at the video stage for some of the more expressive movements. Timing on something as long as this with no soundtrack to work to is something I need to work on. I think if I'd had music at an earlier stage the beat would made timings for things easier, although the video work with Kitty really helped.
I am however really pleased that I went for it and completely animated the full storyboard. I'm really pleased with this achievment in such a short time, and the fact I tried out new working methods (though a little unsuccessfully!). I'll post the finished thing as and when.

2007-06-05T17:50:00.001Z

Howdy!
After a weekend of working on the animation, I'm much happier than I was last Friday. I decided to make it easier to treat my keys, by using character subsets. I created character subsets for the knights arms and spine. This made it easier to look at the controls for these in the dopesheet. I was able to use the dopesheet to remove unwanted keys that had been put there whilst blocking out, and highlight points at which the animation was going out of control. I could then find this in the graph editor and tweak the movements appropriately. Once I was happy I was able to offset the keys of the spine controls and arm controls to create overlapping animation. Its not quite there yet, but its worked up enough to continue with the next stages. I spent yesterday and today creating the facial expressions for both Knight and Horse for the first parts of the animation, I found I could make my knight look like an angry Steven Segal by increasing the negative value of his surprised blendshape! It make him a lot more angry and nasty looking than I had previously allowed which is all good. Today I also made a start on the soundtrack. I've trawled the archive here at CSM and found quite a few suitable sounds, and Dan Hazlehurst AKA Midimanvandann (www.myspace.com/midimanvandann) finally got back to me and said yes to using his tunes! He'd been away for a week. So cheers Dan. Right now I'm tackling the laborious task of keying the rein controls. I still haven't thought of a nifty way of doing this quicker, so am keying the knight holding the rein frame by frame. Over the weekend I did a few experiments using the soft and rigid body dynamics tools with constraints. This may be an option for making the reins dangle realistically but the fact is the underlying keys stil need to be there for soft body deformation goals. You can set a soft body (ie rope) to be affected by gravity, and use goals (ie the underlying ik spline) as a second force. Using spring constraints in the soft body can also make the mesh stretch. I don't know yet if any of this will be useful but I'll continue to experiment. Anything to not have to key all of it frame by frame! As well as this, dynamics don't work well with skin objects, they use the original undeformed mesh to calculate the bounding box, so even if it is possible to make the reins move realistically, intersection issues might let me down. Time will tell.
Adios Amigos!

2007-06-01T17:45:00.001Z

Here is my latest blockomatic. The timing, anticipation and overshoot is done. I just need to calm it down in places and then I can offset some of the movement keys and add the blendshapes. I still have no idea of how or where to find sound effects, and Getting a soundtrack is looking unlikely. Also I think I'm going to cut the second half of the animation. It has not been easy getting this far even though I'm working about 11 hours a day! Perhaps I'll get round to it next week if I get the other stuff done over the weekend. Heres hoping :(

2007-05-29T14:59:00.000Z

Hi There,
here is the tutorial I followed to create the clouds in my scene:
http://3dtreat.com/pages/tutorials/CloudTutorialPage/index.html
I just rendered the 3d cloud to create flat textures.

I also modifed the settings to create the dust cloud. Details of how to animate the particles and add forces to them can be found here:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/video.php?v=1

2007-05-29T09:36:00.000Z

Hi There! I finally got round to scanning the drawings I've done this year at the Backhills Life Drawing Class. Below are my best pieces. Though at times the constraints were infuriating (at one point we were told to follow the model around the room whilst drawing him - not really conducive to anything in my view, except creating a mess!) I think I did get some good sketches down. As you can see, most of the poses were very short which really helped in honing my pencil lines after a few years of relatively little life study. Let me know what you think.

2007-05-24T18:38:00.000Z

So today I produced my rough cut, its been a hard week so far as I've been basically blocking out and then tackling some of the more physical areas of the animation. That has included the knight jumping from his horse, the walk and run back beofre the kick and the kick. Its not great yet but the timing is there and with a few tweaks it should look good. Now I can begin on adding a bit more life in the beginning of the animation with some strong keyposes. This is the part of the film which is going to make the character believable so its got to be good. It also gives me a chance to play with the facial expressions, its amzing what you can do with just a few controls. I'll post something new to see soon.

2007-05-21T10:48:00.001Z

I'm now happy with the timing of my keyframes in my blockomatic and am moving on to the next phase. I am attempting to follow the technique outlined by Victor Navone in his splinophilia tutorials. This technique is to move through the animation using first stepped keys, followed by turning areas of action to linear and then smooth keys, first starting with the backbones one at a time then the legs and arms last, this method is favoured by animation directors as it makes keeping a coherent style easier, and therefore since this is my final student project I wanted to at least attempt it. If you want to know more about the method, check out Navone's blog (its in my links section).

2007-05-21T10:47:00.001Z

These are the 13 questions asked by Central Saint Martins as part of our Final Project Presentation.

1. From which painting did you get the inspiration for your project and how did it influence your animation.

The painting from which I drew my inspiration was The Battle of San Romano by Uccello. I chose the painting because the painting had a lot of characters in it and it seemed to me that knights would be easier to animate than other characters because of their jointed armour, which would be more forgiving than robes to animate. Also, I wanted to have another piece of work incorporating a 4 legged run cycle. A battle is also the scene for lots of action and so I thought I could make my animation quite a lively piece. The idea of the painting was to romanticise the idea of chivalric daring and so the knight in my piece personifies this.

2.Describe the development of your central character and answer the following "Seven Questions" for the character.

a. Who am I?

The characters in my work are a knight and his horse. The knight is an upper class twit of sorts. He is used to getting his own way and people following his every command. He is also a bit of a sadist, he actually enjoys violence and is a rather gruff character, so in a way he is the antithesis of the romantic image of what a knight should be, though he doesn't recognise this. He thinks he is a great knight, and is rather vain.
The horse is quite a simple character, stubborn in nature and apart from things which are really obvious, he is unable to work out anything too complicated. However he is not just a dumb animal, he is more like a stupid human being in nature. I have given him the ability to portray emotion as a human character would in his character rigging, so really this piece is a battle of wits between a stubborn horse and an intolerant knight.

b. Where am I?

They are at the Battle of San Romano, somewhere between Sienna and Florence. The knight is a captain in one of the armies but not in overall charge.

c. When am I?

Circa 1435

d What do I want?

The Knight wants to engage in battle and lead his troops to victory. He glories in his self image and takes it as a personal insult if he is made to look a fool.

The Horse doesn't want to fight. It wants to eat grass and be left alone.

e Why do I want it?

The knight is a romantic, in love with the idea of chivalry and honour and wants to be seen by his peers to be heroic, possibly so that he can get promotion and wealth.

The horse wants to eat because thats pretty much what horse want mostly. He's a passive creature usually when not being kicked or threatened. He just wants an easy life. Though he will react if provoked.

f. How am I going to get what I want?

The knight, being quite an intolerant sort of chap decides to get his horse to move by threatening violence, he figures a good jab up the rear with a lance should get his horse to do what he wants. When this fails he decides to pull the horse into battle.

The horse intends to get what it wants by stubbornly resisting the knights attempts to make him move. A well placed kick seems to do the trick!

g. What gets in the way of what I want?

The knight and the horse are at loggerheads, each is preventing the other from getting what they desire.

3. What animation techniques did you use?

I have used several new techniques in this animation. I have mainly tried to follow the tutorial by Victor Navone on handling splines. Firstly I created my main keyframes from a video guide track. This was done in stepped keys. After I was happy with this I moved to linear keys and again looked at the timing and keyframes. I worked pose to pose for this stage, looking at whether the keyframes were strong enough and how long they were held for. Once I was happy with this, I changed my keys to clamped and starting with the pelvis of each character worked on the acceleration of joint over time, adding overshoot using free tangent weights and extra keys in order to bring the joint to rest. After this I began adding accents and anticipation before and after the key poses. I decided to work firstly on the physical aspects of the animation, for instance the walks runs and jumps, as these are really systematic, in order to get them out of the way and concentrate on the acting side of the piece. Using these methods has made it much easier to stick to the timing I set out at the beginning, however in terms of efficiency, at this time I think the method is just as time consuming. With experience this would hopefully be reduced. Although for most of the animation this system worked, In some parts the movement was too complicated. This is probably bad staging, but in these instances I had to add more keys, such as fixing a hand in a spot as the body moved or if there were a complicated series of keyframes close together. In these instances I found it easier to feel my way through the movement by eye than to tweak curves.

For this project I also used character sets for the first time. This is a really useful tool for blocking out animation as you can move all the keys for one character at the same time, making tightening up timing much easier. Certainly up until the pose to pose stage I almost constantly did things in this mode, and it was only at the stage of offsetting keys that working with character sets became obsolete. Another important trick I used in this animation was cloning the state of the characters by middle clicking and dragging on the time line and pressing "S" to set a key. In terms of setting pose timing this was a real time saver, especially teamed with character sets as keys for all controls could be set at the same time. I also used character subsets to look at just part of the characters' controls. This was useful when offsetting keys as you can look at just a few controls in the dopesheet, clean up erroneous keys created by cloning, and drag the keys to offset them.

In terms of the models I did use expression for quite a few areas. Shoulder and elbow guards are animated using expressions. I also used clusters parented to controls on the reins. The clusters were actually singular points on the IK Spline controllers for the rein joints, and pairing them made it easier to key both sides of the reins in tandem.

As well as this I have made full use of referencing objects into scenes for this project. Using this method, the actual model files are kept seperate from the scene files, allowing changes to be made to the model and then being able to reload them back into the scene. This means work on textures and controls can continue on the character seperate to its animation. Having had technical difficulties with the horse's reins, it was definitely a bonus that changes to how the reins were controlled could be made on the fly without having to lose any animation. I was able to light my characters in their reference files so that they were not affected by scene lighting. This meant I had more control over where shadowing would occur.

The final new technique was the use of particles to create the dust cloud I found this quite straghtforward having followed a tutorial on how to create clouds and other tutorials found on the web.

4. Did you use any techniques or processes that were new to you?

Blocking out and changing from stepped, to linear, to clamped keys is new to me, but it is an industry standard and makes it easier for an animation director to keep a coherent style throughout a piece of work so I wanted to attempt it at least once while still a student so that I got more of a feel for controlling splines without adding extraneous keys, which can become complicated and time consuming. Also the use of character sets and key state cloning was new to me, but easy to pick up and utilise.

I also researched use of dynamics for the dust cloud, but also for rigid and soft body dynamics animation, as I thought this might be able to be used to drive the reins animation, however I found the compexity of showing dynamic effects meant that many dynamics could not be viewed at the same time and therefore could not be used in a controlled manner and I went back to hand made animation.

5. What technical difficulties did you have in realising your project?

I think using the spline controlling method has been the hardest part. I have really had to ditch the theory and get stuck in. I spent a lot of time cleaning curves and tweaking accelerations, only to find I had lost the liveliness of the movement, so I went back to square one and used my eye when adding the anticipation and overshoot key to the key poses. There is some use of spline tweaks however in the horses kick which is largely achieved simply through my original keys and curve tweaking.

Coming up with a method for animating the reins was rather difficult, and still not perfect. Also expressions in the scene file carried in from a referenced file were in some cases lost. This was due to carelessness over what was selected and keyed.

In the last part of my animation the file became corrupted and I ended up with several empty meshes where the polygonal data was lost.

6. How did you solve them and what did you learn from that?

To solve the problem with the reins I attempted to create dynamic controls for them. I have experimented with both soft and rigid body dynamics with various constraints, to guide the reins and make them move more realistically than keyframing alone. However I learned that using dynamics is really processor intensive, and if you have several dynamic objects in the scene, the computer doesn't show what they are doing, so its impossible to use them as controllers. I went back to the normal method, although I did realise I could key the joint in my reins in their x translation to achieve a stretch effect, which solved the problem of the reins being too short in some of the shots, so it wasn't all a waste of time!

Also when my file became corrupted I looked into the use of the Trax Editor to export the animation from one scene into another. This worked pretty well though there were some offset control issues that I couldn't resolve. However from solving this problem I realised that you can parent meshes to referenced objects so I just imported the missing pieces of armour and the horses eyelids and parented them to the bones. Although I had lost some of the expression scripts from the original model file, I don't think the end result is too noticeable.

7. What else did you learn from doing this project?

When rendering I wanted to look for ways of lighting that could be controlled. I had separate lights for my environment, and each character but I also wanted shadows. I learned how to create render layers and render different passes for shadows, depth etc. If I have time I will render my shadows in separate files and composite them together with the other footage so I can control how well they show up.

I have also learned that I should take a simpler approach to what I decide to animate. I seem to always use shots which take take the maximum amount of effort to achieve instead of using cuts in order to minimize the amount of technical details I have to attend to. Some of the shots have really pushed my rigs to their limits instead of maximizing what they are good at. I have also learned to lock everything that is not to be animated. I lost expressions on the shoulders of the knight by changing a value by mistake early on. When using referenced files I have learned its best to make any changes in the file itself and not go tweaking things in the actual animation. It leads to problems later on. Also, locking animation that you are happy with is a good idea as adding keys by mistake can set you back hours!

I think I've also learned that a minute's worth of animation is a heck of a lot, especially if you have two characters, which essentially means two minutes of animation. I think if I'd spent more time constructing and rigging in the holidays I would have given myself more time overall.

8. From where did you get your information?

I google searched for information about the painting and found plenty of information about the artist, the era and the work in particular. I used the painting to inform the character design, and the description of de Torentino as a nasty kind of guy to inform the knights character, but also the romanticism of the subject, which was the reason for the paintings creation, as the way the knight sees himself at the beginning of the animation. This falls away as soon as he doesn't get to join the battle.

I also found decent websites about period armour which inspired my design. I simplified obviously as real armour would constrict movement, a constraint I didn't wish to have in my cartoon.

For technical information I consulted the help files and found relevant websites (see my blog)

9. What was the most successful part of your project?

I'm really happy with the facial expression for the knight character. Because it was built well, I was able to increase the values of the different blend targets and create expressions I hadn't considered before. I'm also happy with the model I created of the knight, and the expressions I used to drive the fingers, shoulder guards and elbow guards. I think it is a good 3D representation of my character design, however once created in 3D I started to envisage the character as an older man, which changed his motivations and personality in my mind. This wasn't a bad thing, in fact I think it makes the plot a little more believable.

10. What was the least successful part of your project?

The reins haven't worked as well as planned. I had to do a lot of work to make them look right, and it drove me nuts! Neither has the rigging of the horse's front legs, which could have benefitted from IK handles. I also don't think I achieved a great amount of expression with the horse's face. I think I could have made this better in order to achieve more, but it was difficult to add human expression to an animals face. The problem being that the eyes have to do much more of the work.

11. What would you do differently?

I think I would have worked out the timing better at the outset.
I would have made the plot simpler in terms of the animation required, nothing to do with reins!
I would have used IK in the Horse's front legs and looked into IK/FK blending to give more control over the knights hands.
I would have spent more time rigging the characters and experimenting with the blenshapes, especially for the horse.
I would have liked to have the music at the animatic stage to inform the pace of the cartoon.
I would have locked all parts containing expressions and finished animation.

12. Looking back over your production process, how do you rate your work in terms of the following (1-10)

a.Time Management/Planning 10
b.Problem Solving 10
c.Character Animation 10
d. Technical Skills 10
e. Industry Practice 10, although I've never worked in the animation industry, so this is a guesstimate.

13. Any other comments you would like to make about your final project?

Though the plot is not that great I am happy with the challenges I set myself in terms of animation. These include:

A jump and landing.
A run cycle.
A Horse kicking.
A fall.
A horse jump.
Pulling a heavy object.
A horse gallop.

So regardless of the story, these things will all translate to my showreel.

I also have two new models which can be reused.

I was not impressed by the participation of the royal academy of music. I think its a shame they weren't involved at any earlier stage and able to give us something to time our work to. Adding sound after the animation means the two don't synch up well. I expected more, like the use of bar sheets and so on, this would have been a real learning experience for all involved, as it is its an opportunity missed.

I also think 1 minute of animation is a lot in the time we had. 20-30 seconds would have been better. I think the work may have been more solid with less other factors to consider overall.

2007-05-17T14:28:00.000Z

Hello,
Yesterday I took the video footage I recorded with Kitty Winter and Kevin and put it into a revised timeline. It looks a little ridiculous but did the job. Form that I was able to move my stepped keyframes in Maya into the correct positions and from this create a blockomatic. I'll use this for adding sound and music (if I get time) my plan is to do these sundry activities of an evening once the animation is well underway. The task now in terms of animation, is to flesh out the keyframing with more detail for the walk cycles, the jumps etc, and thats what I'm doing today,(between Maya crashes!). I'm am really enjoying this method now as the timing stays exactly how yoy originally wanted it and you can in between as you would in 2D. Anyway, here is the Mark 1 Blockomatic. I'll put up blockomatic mark 2 once its done.

2007-05-15T12:33:00.000Z

Hey guys. Having problems uploading my life drawing, the upload keeps failing and I don't know why. I will endeavour to get this up ASAP. In the meantime, progress report: I've started blocking out my animation now and have done an acting session with Kitty Winter to get the timing spot on with video guides (no you aint getting a look, they were totally embaressing!), so once I've got my keys I'm going to arrange them against a newly timed animatic using this new footage. Should be done by tomorrow hopefully!

In the meantime, here is a quick showreel of things I sent off when I applied for the Framestore internship. Hopefully i'll get some of these pieces rendered fully before composing my showreel proper. Enjoy!

2007-05-08T23:46:00.000Z

Just thought I'd post some of my old life drawings and stuff from before the animation course, so pre 2006. Some of this stuff goes way back to my foundation year in 1994-95! Hope you like it...

2007-05-08T16:38:00.001Z

How exciting! I just finished my characters and put them in the scene, this is my first render of both of them together. There are a few issues to do with the horses reins but I'm sure I can work that out, Laters!

2007-05-04T17:28:00.000Z

Here is some of my previous work, a showreel of work done as a Senior Developer at the VR Centre, followed by work created earlier in the PostGraduate Diploma. All work can be found at www.youtube.com/pual75.

2007-04-30T16:00:00.000Z

These are my character designs. I wanted to bring something of the painting style through in the knights face somehow, and originally wanted the horse to be dumpy and round, but I opted against this later, forseeing animating woes with such a dumpy character!

2007-04-30T15:47:00.000Z

What follows is the original story in full done as thumbnails in my sketchbook. You can see why I had to drop quite a bit of the plot which is a shame but it would just take too long! The trick now will be to slightly alter the plot of the piece I have to retained make it more self contained.

2007-04-30T13:29:00.000Z

Hi There!

This blog is going to be about my final project for my Post Graduate Diploma in Character Animation. The animation is going to be a minute long and be inspired by a painting from the National Gallery. The finished piece will be shown on their website. The picture I have chosen is "Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano" which was painted by Paolo Uccello around 1438. Uccello was one of the first artists to use perspective in his work, and quite frankly, it sent him a little crazy. The perspective in this picture is actually a little poor, and it was perhaps another 30 or 40 years before artists such as Da Vinci got it right. It is thought that this work was originally created to be placed in a vaulted ceiling and originally would have arched at the top, where mountains would have been depicted. The painting is one of a series of three, the other two reside in the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The painting depicts a battle fought between the Florentines and the Siennese in 1432, but the rendering of the action depicts no blood or mud or any other of the gruesome sights expected in a medieval battlefield. Instead, all the knights are depicted in brand new shining suits of armour topped off with their crests, something which knights would not have worn in a real fight, but only in tournaments. Therefore the painting is an idealised battle scene produced to romanticise the idea of knights as paragons of courage and daring. Each knight has his own individual look which was what first drew me to the painting. But there were practical reasons for choosing knights too, mainly that they would be easy to rig, having jointed armour instead of flowing robes, and of course a helmet which covers the face if necessary, curbing the need for facial animation. Of course, it would be impossible to depict all the knights in the time that I have, and getting a story which needs only few characters in the middle of a battle is hard! However I am pretty sure that I'm almost there. I've decided to tell the story of the captain who couldn't get his horse to charge. The horse is very obstinate and the knight tries several things to make him move. So the cartoon is gag based and will hopefully be funny, although after showing my animatic at the National Gallery last Friday, I still have some rewriting to do! The problem is that I shortened my first animatic for simplicity's sake and there is now no suitable conclusion to the piece. However there were some useful suggestions, which I am thinking how I can incorporate. Here are the animatic pictures as they stand at the moment: