Final - Lip Sinc

Final - Walk With Character

Final- Rap and Clap

Final - Walk Cycle

Final - Ball and Box Animation

What's Under There - Final

Waiting For.....A Plane - Final

Video Reference

Video reference taken in the green screen room.

Late For ... A Plane - Final

Pose Blocking (first run)

This is my first run through of blocking out some of the poses and movements. There is still a ton of work to be done before the movements will be looking more human.

Jessie J Planning

I found this in one of my old sketch books. This is some of the original planning that I did for the rap and clap animation.  I know there's some more around just need to demolish my room to find it!

Lip Sinc With Some Key Poses

This is my first run though of this animation trying to put the key poses in. I'm not entirely sure what to do with the characters gestures in the middle because the character is talking so fast.

Walk With Character Lighting

I thought I'd add a spotlight to my scene and a catwalk to help set the scene for my model walk.  I really like the effect of it.

Walk With Character Texture

Noticed today that the textures for this rig were missing so I've been spending my morning fixing them so the model will be visible when I render.

Lecture

When I'm in a lecture I always find it amusing to look around the room and see what people are ding and how not one person is sat in the same way.

SU Terrace Bar

I did these drawings in a tutorial session earlier in the academic year.  

 Playing Magic the Gathering

 Trying to Open a Packet of Ketchup

Layout of People

Cafe

I did these drawings while sat in cafe's around Middlesbrough.  I found it quite challenging drawing people who were not aware I was drawing them because they kept on moving! 

Walk Cycle 2

This is my second attempt at a walk cycle (with no character) It still needs a bit of tidying as one of the feet drags slightly as the character walks.

Playblast Problems

I've just noticed the play-blasts I have been putting up seem to have a small lag between the animation file and the music :/ My animations don't look this bad in maya..... honest

Jessie J First Run of Lip Tidying

This is my first run through of tidying up the lip movement. It still needs to be a lot tighter.

Pixar's 'La Luna' Preview

Pixar uploaded this video to youtube a couple of days ago yet I seem to have watched it more times than I can count. I really love how this animation looks in particular the warm light coming off the stars and how the little boy moves through them kicking them like sand.

Jessie J Lip Block

Initial lip block for the rap and clap. I can't really tell how it look yet. I'm going to tidy it up a bit and put a bit more detail in so i can pick out the words more.

Money or Mummy?

I've Just started the lip sinc cover for rap and clap. I noticed though that I seem to have gotten confused and made the rig say "mummy" a couple of times instead of "money"! Just thought I'd put this on because it made me giggle!

walk (first ever attempt)

This is my first animation of a walk cycle. I was aiming for something with less character so I am going to re-do it.

Jessie J Reference (music videos)

I have been doing research for my rap and clap animation to Jessie J's song Price Tag.  As well as looking at the music video I have also been looking at dance routines that people have choreographed themselves.  

These are screen-shots of my favourite poses:

"Bling"

I quite like this pose.  However I am not sure how that will work in the animation.  I would prefer to use a more literal pose.

"Cha-ching"

I like how the girls pop their jackets here it is effective.

 "Dance"

I like ho Jessie J's music video fort he dance section shows lots of different types of dance.  I mights see if i can get this to work in the animation

"It's not about the.."

I really like this pose.  I like how instead of using a cheesy finger wave she just does a simple shrug.

"Money"

i really like the fingrs rubbing together in this pose.

I like how the girls tried to put the fingers rubbing together into a dance move but I don't think the poses of them leaning over are strong.

"We dont need your.."

I quite like the cheesy finger wave here 

 "Price-tag"

I really like this giant price tag but I dont see how I will fit it into what I am planning for the animation.

"World"

I like how the arms circle here to represent the world.

The Videos

What's Under There?

I like how this pose looks so far.  I still need to hove the hands and fingers around and add some smaller detail to the feet e.g curl.  I have based this pose off ...

Running Late For........ a plane

This is a character pose for the title "Running Late For"

I like how this pose looks.  I might tweak it a bit after I have finished the others. I will probably make the handle on the trolly smaller so the hands can grip more.

Poses

I have been working in my character poses today and I've discovered that the eyes do not have a texture! I will have to find a fix for this before I finish :)

Empathy

This week I have been attending animex.  Today is the last day of gaming talks and on Thursday the animation ones start.

Yesterday I went to a talk about empathy in games by Ed Hooks which has been my favourite talk of the week so far.  In it he discussed how empathy is used in games, and how it works. 

I learnt that empathy is totally different to sympathy.  Empathy involves caring for someone and identifying with they were as sympathy is more feeling sorry for someone. 

Here are a few of my notes:

o   Humans only empathise with emotion

o   Emotion has to lead to an action for humans to empathise with it

o   Empathy is an automatic valued response

o   Emotion is not “actable” the character needs to actually feel it for the audience to empathise with them

·         To combat this motion capture is used to accurately capture movements.  But for this to be most effective and for a true performance to be given the actors need to be in the same room so they can react off each other.

·         You need to actually capture a performance

o   Humans have 7 basic emotions

·         Happy

·         Sad

·         Angry

·         Disgust

·         Contempt

·         Fear

·         Surprise

o   For humans to empathise with a character they don’t have to be photo real

o   Eye contact is key

·         When someone is listening they look into the speaker’s eyes 80% of the time

·         However, when someone is talking they only make eye contact 40% of the time.  The rest of the time the eyes are darting around as the brain works out what to say.

o   Blinking is key when it comes to getting the audience to sympathise with a character.  This is because if the blinking is slightly off it can stand out as it will not look natural

·         Blinking should be used to show thinking and when thoughts change not to emphasise what a character is saying.

I h 

                

         - Skip to 1.05)

In this scene of Forrest Gump most of the performance is given through the eyes. Whenever I am finding it hard to animate blinks I always look at this scene because it is an amazing demonstration of acting being mostly done by eye contact.

Walk With Character (with poses)

I have just been roughing our some poses for at the end of the catwalk. I like how the actual poses look but I still need to sort out the transitions, have her walk back and add more character to the actual walk e.g a hair flick and some blinking.

Playblast of Walk With Character

I like how this walk looks.  However I would like to add some poses at the end of the catwalk and possibly have the character walk back again.

I found animating with this rig challenging because of the character larger thighs which kept on intersecting when following the riles for a normal walk.  To combat this I  had to exaggerate the walk and the "hip wiggle"

oh dear!

ok.... I'd kind of forgotten about this blog! Time for that to change! I will  remember to keep this up even if I have to paper my room in reminders :D

I will be back to posting ASAP!!!!