Just a quick post about my progress with the flour sack. This is HARD WORK. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, in fact I think i'm enjoying it, but it's almost 8 o'clock and i've been in the studio all week and i'm about half way done. It's going well though, I feel like the sack has some character, even though he's only walked a few steps at the minute. The technical side of it is a bit messy; i'm sure i'm doing quite a few things wrong (or at least going about doing them the hard way, my graph editor is hilariously messy) but these are mistakes i'll just have to make until I learn how to do them the right way. I'm happy with the amount that i'm learning at the minute, and i'm just about managing to pull the animation off the way I want to. I'm feeling very motivated, not just in this task but in general and it's lasted for a week or so already and still going, rather than the occasional flicker. I'm trying to do and learn as much as I can, I know I need to be like this to get a good job and all that crap. Hopefully it'll last. Anyway, Here's the sack so far:
UPDATE 01/05/08: Spent today getting as much done as possible after the storyboard session (which I actually enjoyed :o) and i've come a little way. Today was the most frustrating day for me so far, but only because of a short period of time where I completely messed up my character's ears in the section I was working on. They completely spazzed out and I couldn't figure out why, which led me to restart from a previous save, losing a short part of my work. I don't really mind, it's probably better off for losing it. Now my character is ready to jump, but i'm undecided which route to choose. Either the sack will puff up his chest and bravely jump off, or close his non-present eyes tight and throw himself off the edge. The first option is quite a change in the personality of the character, which is why i'm hesitant to choose it, but to be frank it's probably easier and I only have one day left. The second is more in-keeping with the sack's cowardly character but i've had some problems with the ears and they'd have to be used quite a lot showing the 'scrunched up' reluctancy of him. Since I only have one more day to complete him i'll probably choose the first option and deal with the inconsistencies. He is only a sack after all. They can't be that intelligent.
UPDATE 2/05/08: Done :D It's not bad either, I decided to go with the superman off the edge and it looks okay. The anticipation is a little dodgy (I couldn't get a really big squish before the jump without it looking funny) but I put that down to the rig being poor/me being poor at controlling the rig properly. Same with the ears, I would've liked to have animated them a little more or a little better, but I just found the ears in particular so difficult. Two out of the three rings around the ears seemed to have very little control over the ear itself, and the other seemed a little irrational. Due to this I kept the ear movements down to a minimum but what I have is okay. Surprisingly I haven't really felt forced to complete this animation. There have been times (but only very few) where I felt frustrated with it, but apart from that it's been reasonably pleasant, and i've just got on with it at my own pace. I still have time which I could use to tinker around with it, but I think i'll call it a day and wait for my next project :) Here's the finished animation:
Wednesday 30 April 2008
Bouncing Balls!
So we finally got around to delving further into Maya and it turned out to be quite difficult indeed. We were given the task to create 3 animated balls; a football, a bowling ball and a pingpong ball.
The first ball I created -after quite a few hours fiddling in maya- pleased me at first, but after having a few other peoples opinions and coming back to it after a little while away from the computer, it seemed overly bouncy and unrealistic. You can see this version below.
I then proceeded to create the exact opposite, an underly bouncy football.
It was difficult finding a mid-ground, especially since I was completely new to the graph editor and the entire animating side of Maya. On top of the technical difficulties there was the question of how much stretch and squash to put in -how much realism I wanted- something I hadn't realised before. Usually you just draw the ball a few times and that's it; the way you can tweak things right until the end in maya was a new experience. The day after I created these two animations, we had a talk with Peter Bailey. Aside from being a really nice guy, his visit was handy because watching him animating in maya taught me a few things, specifically how you control handles in the graph editor. This was a great help in refining the bounce of my balls. I spent the rest of the day playing around and created a ball I was quite pleased with (which i won't upload because I think two progress shots is enough for anyone).
I spent the entire next day in the studio, first off I tweaked my football into something i'm very happy with, then in a significantly smaller amount of time managed to create my Pingpong and Bowling ball animations. I found it much easier when i'd found my bearings in the graph editor. All 3 animations are below, hopefully you'll be able to tell which is which without me explaining, or i'm a complete failure.
Overall i've enjoyed this assignment. It was definitely intimidating and a little disheartening at first, but as time went on and I learnt the tools a little better, things became much easier and I've made some animations which I'm really pleased with. The only scary thing is how complicated animating a simple bloody ball was lolz, it won't deter me though, I look forward to the next maya task :D
The first ball I created -after quite a few hours fiddling in maya- pleased me at first, but after having a few other peoples opinions and coming back to it after a little while away from the computer, it seemed overly bouncy and unrealistic. You can see this version below.
I then proceeded to create the exact opposite, an underly bouncy football.
It was difficult finding a mid-ground, especially since I was completely new to the graph editor and the entire animating side of Maya. On top of the technical difficulties there was the question of how much stretch and squash to put in -how much realism I wanted- something I hadn't realised before. Usually you just draw the ball a few times and that's it; the way you can tweak things right until the end in maya was a new experience. The day after I created these two animations, we had a talk with Peter Bailey. Aside from being a really nice guy, his visit was handy because watching him animating in maya taught me a few things, specifically how you control handles in the graph editor. This was a great help in refining the bounce of my balls. I spent the rest of the day playing around and created a ball I was quite pleased with (which i won't upload because I think two progress shots is enough for anyone).
I spent the entire next day in the studio, first off I tweaked my football into something i'm very happy with, then in a significantly smaller amount of time managed to create my Pingpong and Bowling ball animations. I found it much easier when i'd found my bearings in the graph editor. All 3 animations are below, hopefully you'll be able to tell which is which without me explaining, or i'm a complete failure.
Overall i've enjoyed this assignment. It was definitely intimidating and a little disheartening at first, but as time went on and I learnt the tools a little better, things became much easier and I've made some animations which I'm really pleased with. The only scary thing is how complicated animating a simple bloody ball was lolz, it won't deter me though, I look forward to the next maya task :D
Storyboard and Scriptwriting
When we were given these tasks over easter, I thought nothing of it, they seemed relatively easy and we had an entire month to finish them off, which is quite generous. When it got round the the actual doing, though, they (or at least the scriptwriting) too a little more time and thought than expected.
I attempted the scriptwriting first, a story about a Leaf which had been in my head for quite a while. Well, the Character had been in my head, and it's basically just a leaf, so I thought up a little story for it as I went along. I wanted to do something different, something alternative to the normal start/middle/end story format, but this was a lot harder than I thought, and my finished result is actually quite a normal story, just in an unusual circumstance. Something I found difficult was the directions, especially since my characters were all static. I ended up writing the story first and transplanting the directions in later, which i'm not sure is the best approach. I think they may have suffered slightly because I was trying to keep the script length down to a page and a half. I wanted to make the script snappy and witty like the writing that I admire, (eg. Chuck Phalanuik stuff, minus the violence) but since I don't do much writing it wasn't easy, (and obviously came nowhere near to his standard) but I'm reasonably happy with the final outcome.
The storyboard was much easier than the Script, and was what saved me when I had writers block. Also since Andy said they don't have to be works of art, it freed me up a little, allowing me to concentrate on the action in the poses of the characters and the camera angles that I wanted. This was nice but after seeing a few other peoples storyboards i'm wondering whether or not I went too loose (which is weird for me). Nevertheless I had fun thinking about the film language, and think I got some pretty cool shots here and there. It's an interesting way of thinking for sure.
All in all it was a very interesting task to be set, but I hope we don't have to do it again any time soon, I'd rather concentrate on areas that I plan to progress in (i'm pretty sure i'm not going to be a scriptwriter in the future, lol).
I attempted the scriptwriting first, a story about a Leaf which had been in my head for quite a while. Well, the Character had been in my head, and it's basically just a leaf, so I thought up a little story for it as I went along. I wanted to do something different, something alternative to the normal start/middle/end story format, but this was a lot harder than I thought, and my finished result is actually quite a normal story, just in an unusual circumstance. Something I found difficult was the directions, especially since my characters were all static. I ended up writing the story first and transplanting the directions in later, which i'm not sure is the best approach. I think they may have suffered slightly because I was trying to keep the script length down to a page and a half. I wanted to make the script snappy and witty like the writing that I admire, (eg. Chuck Phalanuik stuff, minus the violence) but since I don't do much writing it wasn't easy, (and obviously came nowhere near to his standard) but I'm reasonably happy with the final outcome.
The storyboard was much easier than the Script, and was what saved me when I had writers block. Also since Andy said they don't have to be works of art, it freed me up a little, allowing me to concentrate on the action in the poses of the characters and the camera angles that I wanted. This was nice but after seeing a few other peoples storyboards i'm wondering whether or not I went too loose (which is weird for me). Nevertheless I had fun thinking about the film language, and think I got some pretty cool shots here and there. It's an interesting way of thinking for sure.
All in all it was a very interesting task to be set, but I hope we don't have to do it again any time soon, I'd rather concentrate on areas that I plan to progress in (i'm pretty sure i'm not going to be a scriptwriter in the future, lol).
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