Almost death by piano! Final!

Yes! Here it is, the final submission for the first module.
But lets talk about the last few days of work before showing it.

On Friday everything went smooth and I got a lot of work done, I focused on most of the facial expressions and the hands, in addition to finishing up the run to walk cycle.

Saturday started out great, and I got to work on the stuff right after my character picks up the ball. However, when I rendered a preview and showed it to a friend of mine, we noticed that the steps where waaay to long and the animation was choppy.
I decided to delete all the animation I had done that day, and start over by fixing the storytelling poses in stepped keys. Everything was going great, but after 2 hours I noticed something strange with my rig.
Somehow the foot had been twisted and there was a gap between the foot controller and foot. I had no keys at all that made this happen, I carefully went trough the entire animation 1 frame at the time.
So when I couldn't find the reason behind it, I manually twisted it back and lowered the entire controller to make the animation normal again.

Phew, crisis averted I thought! Not at all, somehow the foot I had problems with would not go out of stepped animation. At that point I almost had a meltdown. I had been sitting at Uni for 10 hours animating and fixing, and I could not get rid of the last problem. I saved one more time and went home to get some sleep.

On Sunday I woke up fresh and ready to tackle the problems and finish the project. Even though I did not fix the problem, I got through it in the end. I sat for over 20 hours, only taking one break to get some food.

Wow, what an eventful weekend this was.
So here it is in all its glory!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 5

Today I continued to work on my breakdowns. It is going slow, but I am happy with the result.
Only a couple of days left before hand in, so I need to work faster! But faster often means less quality.

Here is the work so far:

Enjoy!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 4

Today I have been working on the run and walk of my character.
It is fun to do, but it takes a lot of time. i have never done a run before, and certainly not a run into a walk before either!
I am learning a lot, and I am trying to keep the animation clean and neat without to much stuff messing up.
Under you can see how far I have gotten, and you can probably see where I have not done anything yet.

See you later.

Almost death by "piano" WIP 3

Today I have been working on the bouncing ball, added the piano and fixed his fingers to match each pose.

Here you can see a picture of the piano and a small clip with the bouncing ball.

See you later.

Almost death by "piano" WIP 2

Today I finished the storytelling poses for my blocking phase. I already love how it looks, and cant wait to get this animation done!
Do not mind the weird ball animation at this point, it is basicly only 3 keys to just give me an idea where I wanted it to go.
Tomorrow I will hopefully get the ball and maybe the piano/box done.

See you later!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 1

Over the weekend I have been blocking out my storytelling poses, and created a small environment.
When animating, I always love the blocking part. This is where the animation is at its basics, and by creating good poses you can tell a story.
When moving on from the blocking stage, I always get nervous for some reason. I think it has something to do with the fact that it gets way more complicated at that point.
Nevertheless, a good blocking stage helps a lot when moving on.

Enjoy!
I will be back tomorrow, where I will hopefully have blocked out my main story.

See you later!

Ball with tail final!

Here is my final ball with tail animation, I wish I could do it over again. I am not happy with how it turned out.
I cannot believe how much trouble this animation is giving me.

Enjoy!

Almost death by "piano" Reference

Today the whole class was in the green screen room with Mark Bushbaker and Penny.
We each shot our reference footage and helped out where it was needed, and came with new ideas.

It was a blast, and we got a lot of good laughs doing it.

I am pretty happy with my ref shots, and you may notice that I changed the ending too the "lucky" one.
It seems like a much more fun idea, and I get this classic slapstick feeling about it.

Here you can see the footage, I have also added Frame counter to each of the clips.

Now I am ready to start getting my storytelling poses down on paper and in 3dsmax!

See you later.

The Walk final!

Here is the final version of my walk animation.
I had some doubts about having the breathing pause in the animation, since I felt it kinda broke the fluidity of the walk.
But most of my classmates like it, so I am sticking with it.
This task was a blast to do, I have never done a good walk animation before. And I am quite happy with this one.

Enjoy!

Death by "Piano" storyboard.

As our final ICA in this module, we are tasked with creating a small animation.
This animation has to have a person who is acting together with two of the following things: Bouncing ball, ball with tail, or pendulum.

Often here in Middlesbrough I see kids running in the streets playing football, and thus I got an idea the other day walking home. What if a person runs after a football that went wide, and after he picks it up he gets slammed by a piano or box that was being hauled into a tall building. The box is suspended in air by some straps that acts just like a pendulum when it swings.

I made a quick storyboard showing my idea, and I am going to show them to Penny tomorrow.

Above you can see the storyboard. I also made an alternative ending, where the character is lucky instead.

That is is for now.
See you later.

The walk WIP 5

Hello again.
It has been some time since my last post, this is because my darling girlfriend came from to Norway to visit me last week.
Felt really good to get some time off, and I am now feeling fresh and motivated to complete this module.

After last weeks feedback session I made some changes to the walk animation, and I am in process of giving my character a thinking pause.
I am really happy with the feedback I got, and I cant wait to start the final ICA for this module.

Here it is, enjoy!

See you later.

The walk WIP 4

Today I finally got my breakdowns done, I have also added a "up" and "down" position to his walk.
This is the one I am going to show tomorrow for our feedback session.

See you later.

The walk WIP 3

Hello yet again.
Today I have been working on my breakdowns. I am not done yet with them, but I figured I could post a updated preview.
As you can see, the animation flows more fluid at this point. The breakdowns allows me to define the person that is walking too.

I will post another update tomorrow.

See you later.

The walk WIP 2

Hello again.
I am now finished with my key storytelling poses for this animation.
Next I will be doing the breakdowns.

See you later.

The walk WIP 1

So here is the first few steps in my walk animation.
This is just pose to pose with automated curves on, I have a few more steps before I start doing the breakdowns and all the other stuff.
So far I kinda like where it is going.

See you tomorrow.

Reference for the walk.

So yesterday, Kristian from my class helped me shoot my reference footage for my next assignemnt.
My plan for this walk was found when I spotted one of the teachers at Teeside walking with alot of books under her arm, and a big and heavy suitcase in the other.
She had this fantastic arc of motion trough her entire body, and it made her look kinda like a old woman.

here you can see me trying to get the same result when creating the reference:

A big thank you to Kristian for helping out.
Now onwards to doing some animation!

See you later.

The Ball and its Tail WIP 2

Hello dear reader.
After having a successful feedback session today, I sat down with the "Ball and Tail" Animation again, and fixed up a bit of the stuff I got feedback on today.

These are some of the things that are fixed:
- Gave the whole sequence about 50 more frames to work on.
- Fixed the squash and stretch so that it is not squashed or stretched when the ball reaches the peak of its jump.
- Created breakdown for the squash and stretch on each jump.
- Tilted the Ball towards its movement trajectory (not sure if this is correctly written)
- Gave the landings 1 more frame, before it starts on the way up again.

Here are the result, I still have a lot more I want to do to this before we are done with this module.

Hope you like it so far.

See you later!