Cepiiimation: Week 7

Showing posts with label Week 7. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Chapter 7 - Hello Bishop :)

I decided to chose my Audio 1 for my dialogue shot. This audio was also the one that was chosen by my mentor. I love all 3 audios to be honest. I do think they are all fun but i had to choose only 1 audio. AM seriously teaches me to be more confident when it comes to choosing something. We had to choose theme and ideas for our shots and i learn that i have to believe in myself and my idea.. more importantly, to have faith in it. I mean if we don't believe in our own idea.. we are trying to imbued a puppet with life here.. we are telling a story.. if we don't believe in it.. then who will? D:!

So, back to my shot.. :) .. i literally smiling as i'm writing this sentence.. Hello Bishop :) ..

It's Bishop! Finally! :D i was super excited and i am actually still super excited :) Bishop's cool.. and i can write about his coolness forever, but unfortunately that is not the point of writing this entry (>w<) he is still cool though.. awesome rig :) I got to dress him up, gave him ears, clothes, shaped the nose, make him shorter.. it's really cool, it was like customizing the Sims character.. and I gotta make him alive, not the code or the computer! That is really cool right :D and don't get me wrong, The Sims is an awesome game :)

Moving forward, it's blocking stage. This time around, the blocking stage was quite difficult for me. Mainly it was because i'm very used to Stewie. He does not have facial expression. Bishop has this full facial control. It was weird to see the body moves but the face stay still. On my last post, i mentioned that i missed facial expression on my planning. This was when it started to really hits me. I did not have strong facial expression to start with.

This is what i did: I went through my video reference and find the pose according to the jaw opening and closing. At first i though this would help out the blocking process. This did not work. :( ... I feel like i was unintentionally trying to hit each of the words. I was not happy with the poses that i had, the blocking looked very unappealing and stiff. My mentor really helped me out to fix this problem. I can't thank him enough to be honest.

I don't think i keep all of the playblast from this week.. hopefully i can find the playblasts, and below is the XSheet and an extra planning stuff.. (I really wish that i had a printer so i could print this XSheet out. I'm not comfortable writing an XSheet digitally, im more of a fan of pencil and paper when it comes to planning/drawing something >.<! )

I need to train myself to use the XSheet.. i think i have not maximise the use of the XSheet

Breaking down the dialogue using the planning packet

I really wish that i found the planning packet earlier :/ next time, i will definitely use it for my next planning. I found that it is very useful and the video tutorial really helped me out too :) I regret i did not use it for my planning earlier. I did not upload this to my workspace, this was just a little extra stuff that i did :

and now the playblast :

yeah.. i really did not keep all the playblasts from that week... this is the only one that i found :p

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i found the missing playblasts! One has my video reference on it and the other one was just a pure mishap +o+ it looks really bad, but i will put it here for my record :p .. anyways, here they are :

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Chapter 7 - Catalyst

On week 7, I also did a new planning for my last class 3 shot (Whaaa...!?) it feels surreal.. i cant even say the magic word about this.. (hint: time _ _ _ _) ^^' .. My initial idea was to do something related with Japanese theme. I have always loved this country since forever.. I decided to do a shot about ninja and i'd add some parkour move or some ninja tricks. During my research, I discovered some stuff that changed my mind completely. I always want to make something unusual and i guess this part of me told my heart to find something else. I moved on to the next idea which was samurai. I carried on to do some research and at some point, i felt that the idea has somehow stopped inspiring me. I'm not saying that samurai is dull though, my favourite anime is about samurai :)
I went back to my sketchbook and started brainstorming again. Couple of weird ideas were born, there were spy, samurai, samurai spy (which i like a lot, i should try to develop this one :D ) and all of sudden there was a painter, grafitti.. there were a lot of ideas and they confused me a lot!
I certainly had to narrow down these ideas. Before I continue, this is one of my inspirations:

How awesome is that! i drew on my wall when i was a little, my parents thought i was crazy and i think they were upset cause i ruined my room's wallpaper :p (and it was just a drawing of a tiny hobbit door! D:) .. anyways, that guy inspires me a lot, i love his art work! i wish i could hire him to draw on my room's wall ^^'' .. back to the main topic.. So i was thinking to make a shot about someone do wall painting or do finishing touch on a painting or showcasing a hidden art work. However, each shot has its own problem. My first shot this term turned out soo difficult because of constraint problems. This time around I need to consider the tech problem before I locked in the idea.
So, my tip would be; consider what kind of problem or difficulties that possibly comes out when you bring your shot to computer. I believe this would be different for everyone, cause every single person has different software expertise. So really, be honest with yourself and think if these issues will possibly consume most or your time or not. However, we also should see the situation and the condition, ie; are we working in studio, personal project, school assignment.. but if we really, really, really want to do it, and we confident about it, then just do it! There is nothing to lose to try out something new, but we should also seek people's advices and suggestions at the same time! :)

Basically my idea was wall painting. The problem of this idea was most of the time the audience would see Stewie's back -_- .. there were lack of motion. One advice that came from one of my tutors back in uni is, 'if you dont have something on your art work, dont get confused, just add what you need.. If there is no motion, bring motion in that piece, if there is no dimension, make a dimension for that piece'. That was the simplest advice i have ever received but it was literally drilled into my brain and it just stay there. That's exactly what i did, i added motions to my planning and all of sudden this idea of a kid drawing over a painting in museum popped out.

The idea of vandalizing an art piece was locked in and i started planning the shot. This time around I planned out what i wanted to do before i shot video reference. Here are some sketches and my video references:

Video Reference & animatic :

and now .. off to blocking! wiii!

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Friday, March 9, 2012

Chapter 7 - Allegro

On week 7, i pretty much spent the entire week refining and polishing my ballet shot. By the end of week 6, i splined my shot (as i mentioned on my last entry). One thing that I notice was, I actually did not do a lot of tweaking compare to what i've done on my previous assignments. I was very surprised by this because I usually did major tweaks on my shot.. and I, like everybody else, is of course very terrified of Spline. So this is kind of new for me! and I find this shot is very special, i really learn a lot from this one. Here are the playblasts:

The part that i have not achieved in this shot is that graceful feeling and the overlap on the body parts. I did not see this when I refined and polished my shot, but now as i look at it, the movement feels very sharp. I have to continue polishing, or maybe i should say revise the shot to make it better and better! :) It is always good to go back and see your past assignments :)

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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Chapter 7.2 - Survived from The Storm .. o_o

Oh boy, the past 2 weeks was... superr stressful but Fun at the same time! My bum is kicked by this heavy rainstorm shot Literally. I regret nothing from choosing this one.. I learn a ton from this shot :D I'm not sure where i should start... all i could think is those spines are really killing me and im so grateful to finally have a chance to use stewie, and this week we're using stewie...(wait for it...) with Arms! :D I feel I learn a ton about overlap and drag, weight and force, ultimately the whole body mechanics in this shot.. Now it is not about moving one character from one to another point, not only creating a story, but this is really a combination of all of those. Below are the process of my shot and the polish i did yesterday, i still think it could be improved..

First pass refining

still have feet detaching from legs and pops .. sometimes hiding the head is very helpful, it gives a clear view of what's going on on the shoulder and upper spine area

still refining..

final pass refining...

polishing.. and still refining ...

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Chapter 7.1 - The Third Pick List

I think i will do simple dance move.. :)

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update: I think i will not do the simple dance move.. my mentor mentioned that he would avoid this one.. which i think this is make a lot of sense cause this will not show the Force as much as the other pick lists topics.. so my new choices would be: balance while standing on a ball, push/pull heavy object, tug of war, walk up the stairs and trip, and walk up stairs of different heights. Narrowing down the list, now! :)

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update: Down to 2 choices .. Push/Pull a heavy object and Walk and trip going up a staircase

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update: Push/Pull a heavy object it is! :)

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Chapter 7 - Tail-or part 2

So .. i really pit myself into trouble .. I really struggle with my animation.. my friend told me that there are too many things going on on the screen and they suggest me to cut out some part of the animation. I totally agree with them! So I decided to simplify the animation and bring down some unnecessary decoration. I'm still refining my animation now, well it seems like it start to come together..*finger-cross.. +_+ I'm working on the timing of the tail.. Below are the progress clips:

Planning:

Modified:

Cut the end part

(i actually like the part when tailor jump on that green ball :( .. but hey, it's not about me, it's about the animation!)

Refining:

Keep Refining~

Final:

Conclusion: Tailor is very challenging ^^ I had to go frame by frame to monitor all the poses. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it. This week i decided to go and challenge myself.. i also don't know if this a wise move or not.. hopefully everything goes well..

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Chapter 7 - Tail-or

It's week 7!! This week we're going to animate either one of the character! Taylor / One Leg! I'm super excited this week :) I'm off to plan my shoot, keep an eye of this space folks :)

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a preview of my first plan .. i kind of feel it's too complicated.. .. do you think this is too complicated ..? i want to challenge myself a little bit.. but i'm scared i'll be overwhelmed by this ..

Complete planning:

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Cepiiimation