Marvel Sketches

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone had a good one. Once filled with turkey and trimmings there isn't much you can do in the way of physical activity; the perfect time to test out my new tablet! I was lucky enough to receive a Wacom Intuos M this holiday season, and it's just plain gorgeous.

Anyways, I figured I should try to draw something that isn't Batman this time. This started as some dynamic hand practice after reading some of Burne Hogarth's books but evolved into yet more superheroes.

I think that Tony looks more akin to Josh Brolin in his role as Llewelyn Moss here! Interesting.

Environment Concept Practice

Before undertaking the Sony Masterclass project, I thought it might be a good idea to rough out some environment concepts so that I didn't make any rookie errors in the actual piece. I'd never tried to sketch environments before this so I headed over to Feng Zhu's site artbyfeng.com for some help. I remembered Feng from a Gnomon Tutorial that someone had given me once. He's a concept God and is gracious enough to upload nearly 50 in depth tutorials on his site which proved invaluable.

The first concept was supposed to be some sort of futuristic temple in a desert environment. I had fun sketching it out but the values didn't really translate once it was coloured.

For the second I used a technique outlined in one of Feng Zhu's tutorials, in which he uses stock images to help quickly texture a surface. Admittedly I got a little carried away with the images and veered more toward a matte painting style but it was definitely a good exercise.

Bat Sketches

I had some free time tonight, and decided to do some sketching in Photoshop. I found myself drawing bat ears onto each figure. Perhaps it was some kind of subconscious display of excitement for The Dark Knight Rises trailer? Either way, it was great to just draw what I wanted, and it ended up being a lot of fun. Sometimes it's good to just put everything else on hold and just do what you want to.

Masterclass Project - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe [Re-Post 12-12-2011]

So with principal photography at around 90% complete after Fridays London trip it was time to start working on my Masterclass project. The aim of this project is to prove that you can complete a real-world task, in a real-world period of time. These projects are set by actual industry practitioners who think up a project centered around a specific discipline. We had several choices but in the end I chose the brief set by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) for which I would have to design and create a 20m x 20m 'cookie cutter' of a games environment using one of the landmarks in Bournemouth.

The first stage of the brief is the pre-production stage. This involved going to the locations and taking reference photos and sketches. After visiting each of the locations around town, I settled on the Bournemouth Oceanarium. I chose the Oceanarium because of it's unique architecture both on the interior and the exterior. The building has to accommodate the needs of many different exotic animals, and so skylights, nets, railing and porthole style windows are all present.

 Inside the building is even more fascinating; there are artificial rock formations in place of walls and the lighting is all engineered to convey the tone of the deep blue sea. The most interesting feature of the Oceanarium, for me, is the main tank which is dubbed; 'The Great Barrier Reef'. This tank allows you to observe from under the water using a clear glass tunnel which runs underneath, or from above on the observation deck. The ceiling above this tank features a long skylight. I love the multi-tiered nature of the room, combined with the artificial decking and rock formations. I think that this room will be the focus of my environment.

Animation Workshop Day 5 - [Re-Post 7-12-2011]

Today was the final day of the animation workshop and I have to say it was my favorite; not because it was the end, but because both Campbell and Susannah ended up sitting down with us and sharing their experiences from industry.

The day started with more of the sitting animation. By this time I had re-started my sequence six or seven times. Some people had theirs finished and had sent them to Campbell, who put them all into a single scene and rendered it out. This was interesting as it let us see all the different styles of animation that we had produced.

Afterwards Campbell came and sat with a few of us and recounted the story of his surprise interview with Pixar at Siggraph. By the time he'd finished the story a small crowd of people had wheeled over their chairs to listen. Susannah joined in too and more people gathered.

I feel that although I struggled with the actual animation, the experience and the 'golden nuggets' of information that both Campbell and Susannah shared with us were the most valuable things that I took from the workshop.

By the end of the week I hadn't been converted to want to become an animator professionally, but I definitely had a better idea of what the job entailed. I mentioned this in a previous entry but it only recently occurred to me how closely rigging is related to animation.

I really enjoyed the workshop and look forward to the rest of the workshops in this module.

Animation Workshop Day 4 - [Re-Post 7-12-2011]

Today was the fourth day of the animation workshop. With the same objective set from the day before, we carried on animating our old people/children climbing onto chairs.

When I loaded up Maya, I watched through the frames that I'd animated yesterday and instantly hated what I'd done so far. Nothing flowed and the action all happened too quickly. Susannah helped me out with some of the poses  for when the kid once he was up on the chair. I wanted him to seem so hyper active that even after he'd got onto the chair, he would still be looking around as if to see what he could climb on next. I decided to have him kneel ontop of the chair while looking over the back, which turned out to be more difficult than I had planned. The problem arose when I tried to transition from the kneeling positing to the sitting position. Annoyingly enough this is the same situation I found myself in during the first year animation project. Memories.

I ended up restarting several times over throughout the course of the day. The help I received was welcomed and helpful but I still suck at animation! 

Animation Workshop Day 3 - [Re-Post 23-11-2011]

With the walk cycle finished from yesterday, we needed a new exercise. We met back in the student center at 9am which, due to its large open space, suggested we would be be partaking in some sort of physical activity. We spent the morning acting as elderly people and children. The idea was to get motion reference for a piece of animation which would last us the rest of the week. We had to animate a character sitting down into a chair, either a hyper active child, or a fragile older gentleman/woman. This proved to be difficult as most of our joints are fully functional, which made it hard to act elderly. Acting as a child was even more challenging as our limb proportions as an adult differ greatly from those of a child. After sitting down the character is supposed to be disturbed and be forced to get back up again.

When we had finished gathering motion reference via our sketchpads and cameras, we headed to the labs to attempt to animate this sequence.

Because the character had to use their upper body to interact with the chair in some way, a new rig was needed. Campbell loaded up Maya and demoed the new rig that he'd put together which had fancy new IK controls on the arms. This would make it easy to have the hands stay in place when gripping the arms of the chair (something that would have made my life a lot simpler when animating Mr. Wood lowering himself into a wheelchair in the first year).

We referenced the rig and started to play about with these new controls until someone pointed out that when lowering the hips into a seated position, the user has no control over the position of the knees. Campbell heard this and quickly added pole vector controls to the rig right then and there. Because we had referenced in the rig like he showed us, all we had to do was update the reference and the new controls were there!

Obviously we needed a chair for our rig to sit down on, so we all set about modelling a rudimentary chair in the Maya scene. Campbell then offered to model a chair which he would then rig. We then watched as he created a chair and a set of blend shapes for the cushions and arms. It was only at this point that I realised how closely the animation and rigging disciplines are linked, and how useful it would be to have both skills for either profession. I imagine that being able to fix your own rig would be helpful from an animators point of view would be useful; just as animation skills would help a rigger create a more complete rig.

I chose to animate a child climbing onto the chair, where he would perch on his knees for a second before launching himself back off and running away. The immediate problem that I had was that with the new IK controls on the arms meant that while running towards the chair, the arms were left behind. I later found out that you can disable the IK using the 'IK Blend' control in the attribute editor. This meant that I could switch between IK and FK arms whenever I needed to.

The days experience for me was largely technical, in that I re-visited blend shapes and other types of rigging. I only really got chance to start the animation today, and will carry on tomorrow.

Animation Workshop Day 2 - [Re-Post 22-11-2011]

Continued to work on yesterdays walk cycle with help from both Campbell and Susanna. Added more steps to the cycle and animated the upper half of the character too.

I have yet to finish the animation, but I'm happy with what I have so far. I'm still enjoying the simplicity of the rig. I'd much rather use a rig with little to no automation than one with complex or fiddly controls. Although I've previously animated a couple of walk cycles, I always fall into the same trap of not animating the hips first. This always results in deletion of 90% of the keyed poses and starting over.

The second attempt went much better, and I found myself bashing out poses fairly quickly. After hearing Campbell's thoughts on 'straight ahead' stop motion animation, where each frame has to have every detail of animation for every character frame after frame, I have a greater respect for the layered work flow that animation in 3D allows the user. Roughly blocking out the animation with Maya, and then being able to go back and add finesse before rendering is a much more flexible approach to animation.

I always find animation difficult, which heightens my respect for those who make a living out of it, like Campbell and Susanna.

So far I am enjoying the workshops, although they haven't convinced me to switch my focus to character animation. I don't feel that I would have the patience to become an animator in industry.

I think that for anyone who is genuinely keen on becoming a full time animator, these workshops are invaluable – so far we haven't done anything too new to us, but the advice and experience of two industry professionals is interesting and informative.

Questions raised from the activity: How early should I go to bed tonight?

Animation Workshop Day 1 - [Re-Post 22-11-2011]

Today was the first in a series of intensive animation workshops run by Campbell McAllister, and Susanna Shaw; two accomplished animators, who have years of experience in industry. Campbell has a BAFTA award for his student project under his belt and has worked as Director of Animation at two studios and was an FX Animator at Aardman. Susanna has worked with Aardman since the early 80's and is the director of the Bristol Animation Course, as well as 'Animated Exeter'.

The day started with an introduction and some observation exercises. We tried to imitate each others walks, which proved to be more difficult than expected. The subtleties of the human walking motion are extremely difficult to replicate in animation, so good observation is critical, which is what this exercise addressed.

We were then given cameras to record some real reference footage of people walking, and were set loose around the university. We found that to avoid people 'performing' their walks in front of the camera, we would film students without their knowledge, to get a more natural result.

We captured some footage from one of the busier areas of the University campus, and then asked one of the course demonstrators, Adam, to walk through the media school for us while we filmed. Adam has such a great macho walk, and was pleased when we asked to record it. Cheers Adam!

We continued the workshop in the labs, where we were introduced to the Witchdoctor rig that Campbell had used in a previous animation. He walked us through the controls, which were easy to use as the locators and controls were offset from the actual model, making them simple to select. Campbell used several joints to make a rudimentary rib cage, which stopped the arm pits from being affected when the arm is moved. I found this tip particularly useful, as it solves a common problem that affects nearly all humanoid rigs.

We then received a short tutorial on walk cycles, after which, we tried to replicate – using our captured footage as reference.

By the end of the day I'd gotten a few steps of the walk cycle done, but I was a long way from being finished.

I'm looking forward to the rest of this week, (apart from the early starts) and I'm interested to see what other insight they can give into the animation industry.

Time to sleep.