Journal

29th

Today I did some work on improving certain points of Macho’s animation. I refined his reaction when the ball hits him on the head as I felt that he did not respond strongly enough e.g. the facial expressions were not on time, I didn’t feel that his jolt forward was on time, in the right direction or far enough. I also made similar improvements through the rest of the animation.

Patches

Today I made some more lip sync improvement on Patches (as that is the part of my animation that Lewis recommended that I improve).
The part that I made the most changes to was when Patches says, “Aye captain Breadbeard”

30th
Today I improved various parts of the timing. For example the weight movement in the animation, the face gestures and I made some big timing and positioning improvements on the quick movements during the weight lifting sequence.
I also today created some texture for the model as I thought it would look a lot better with texture on my showreel.

3rd
Today I did make quite a lot of changes to my animation. I still felt that for example when the weight is being lifted it is too 'one pace' the whole way through. I then added some pace starting slower and building up speed with a stop at chest height. I improved facial expression and timings and I am now working on his arm positions to give better flow when lifting the weights.

4th
I have been trying to improve the hands and arms when the weight is being lifted all day today; I have been working on his right side mainly. It has taken longer then I thought as the hand has to be in the same place otherwise the animation does not look at all smooth. So I am spending a lot of time getting the hand into the perfect position.

5th
Today I continued to improve the hand and arm positions, I have also been making some changes to the position, timing, and stopped it from moving when it should be still.

7th
Finished the hand and arm positioning on the weights today but when I watched it afterwards I was not at all happy! When the weight was being lifted up it looked like it was all set to 'stepped' but it was 'spline'! Other problems were also included in that section e.g. after Macho started lifting the weights, they dropped down again.

8th
I sorted the problems that I found yesterday when I watched the animation, but I am still noticing that it looks a bit too jolty.

9th
Today I tried to start to sort the problem out

12th
Last Few Days…

I have spent the last few days designing and creating my showreel, which I have now progressed well with. I am also still working on my DVD Pro one. I went on Audio Network and ended up buying five songs that I liked for the background music in my showreel and I asked friends, family and teachers for their opinion on which would be the best. My favourite of the five ended up being most popular by a long way. I am very pleased with all of the showreel work so far.

This weekend and Friday night I have been working on Adobe AfterEffects and making the movie that I designed to be used on my showreel’s menu page. I wanted the effect of a blank page being shown at the start but my name appearing if it is being written. To do this I wrote my name on Photoshop (similar to a font) and masked each letter separately on AfterEffects. I have also made some 3D writing on Maya. When they are rendered I am going to put them both together on Final Cut. I want to demonstrate that I can do 3D and 2D animation especially as both are being used.

A LOT OF PROBLEMS!
Today I spent quite a lot of time trying to sort out a problem that occurred while I was at the end of creating a 2D and 3D name animating video.
The issue was that the 2D animation movie file worked but when I put the 2D and 3D name animation together on Final Cut and rendered the screen, it was blank. I also tried to make the showreel’s movie on After Effects but the same happened in this programme.

Recent Problems with my Gnome Animation…
I have been having a few challenges with my gnome animation. Over the last few days I have found it looks better when I play it in Maya than either when I watch the playblast, and after rendering and putting it together in After Effects.
I haven’t understood why this is happening but I do think that my animation looses quality when it leaves Maya.
I have also been finding it quite difficult to keep the gnomes hands in the same place on the weight as he has FK handles so whenever the shoulder is moved the hand is moved with it etc. I also found it tough because I had to make sure that they stayed in exactly the same position when the weight was lifted up. Because of this difficulty I wondered about making the weight linked with The hands technique, but this could not be used as when I tried, the hand and wrist broke whenever the weight and hand were moved.

I have found the character somewhat limited by the model design and I have had to do my best within the boundaries of what was available.