Combined

A finished shot, which Nat edited.  The guinea pig works fantastically in his CG environment.

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Last Little Niggly Bits

Not that I'm cutting it a bit tight or anything...









Above are the Gantt charts that I used to record what I planned to do and have done over the course of the year. I do, however, prefer to take work at my own pace and change order if need be. What with other commitments like dissertation and a job outside of the course, I've juggled schedules a bit, but managed to finish areas for the most part where I wanted to finish them.

The segments in green were when I planned to start and finish tasks, and the segments in red show the time it actually took.

Above are my CV and business card. I wanted something hand drawn for my card, with the raw essence that I specialise more in.

... is it over...?

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Proper Music!

My younger brother, a very talented guitarist, agreed to write a subtle, bluesy soundtrack for my film.  He sent me a wma of the basic melody, then came to Lincoln to record the actual soundtrack to the film.  Above is the final version of the music.

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Work What Nat Did

Natasha Adiletta did 20 hours on my film, doing the following roles:

Scripting:  Nat offered her services as a script writer, and considering her flare for writing, I took up the offer.  I was not disappointed, she wrote out the treatment and scripts fantastically.  The images of the scripts feature earlier in the blog.

Assistant Editor:

Nat offered her services as an assistant editor, which I was more than happy for her to do.  I trusted Nat with a number of shots that did not involve a lot of masking or drum interaction.  She was able to work independently, but was conscious of my opinions and instructions.  

Nat's help in editing meant that I was able to spend more time on more difficult shots, so her assistance was much appreciated.  She had a brilliant sense of timing, both natural and comedic, and a good sense of spacing and scale.

Above is one of the more complex scenes Nat had to cope with.

Work What I Did

The following describes the hours I spent on various films:

Claire Burn - Pest Control



Sound Design - During recording sessions, Jo and I assisted Claire by helping to create sound effects such as pigeons pecking at grain and pigeons walking on gravel. This was done by poking piles of fish tank pebbles with chopsticks, and rolling the balls of our hands in a tray of fish tank pebbles. The desired effect was achieved successfully, and works really well with the final film. (5 hours.)

Pre Production Assisting - Before Claire started filming, she asked me to design a walk and a swoop for the pigeons and seagull. I designed the walk by looking at the movements of pigeons and thumbnailing findings and feelings. Due to the quick movements of pigeons naturally, to mimic their moves precisely would not translate well in animation, nor work with her models. Therefore I designed the walk in a way which would compliment the models, but add interest to the characters.

The Seagull, we decided, would not need thumbnails of the swoop, as the model was in a position too difficult to animate. (1 hour)



Poster Design/Title Screen I was asked to produce a title shot for Claire's film, which showed the title and the robot from the protagonist's point of view (which from the point of view of a pigeon, is a low angle shot.) However, after this commission, it become clear that Kat, who was meant to have produced Claire's poster, was not going to complete it for the deadline that Claire had specified. So the title image was then designed to double up as poster to Claire's film as well. This was successfully produced with Claire able to make regular comments so that appropriate preferences and changes could be made. To produce the poster, I used Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. (3 hours)

Credits The credits I produced for Claire's film were done using Photoshop and After Effects. This was done with Claire's supervision so timing and effects could be produced to her specifications. The credits were initially thought of as a quick job that wouldn't take long, but I was proven wrong, as is the usual with such tasks! Thankfully it didn't take more than an hour, and the results were pleasing. (1 hour)

TOTAL FOR CLAIRE: 10 hours




Natasha Adiletta and Kat Downes - Sarafina's Bubble

Animation: Early on, I was offered the chance to animate a particular shot from Sarafina's Bubble. The shot involved a run cycle from a low angle, which would have been time consuming and difficult to animate.

During the week allocated to animate on the piece, I had most contact with Nat, as the director and producer of the film, and as the character Sarafina's animator. She was always willing to give opinions and was confident about what she wanted. Likewise, Kat was open for discussing movement and changes.

I spent the first couple of hours getting acquainted with Sarafina, drawing thumbnails of runs for her while getting used to drawing her. The construction sheets and turnarounds were very clear, making Sarafina and easy and pleasant character to get to grips with.

After drawing out thumbnails, I began to animate Sarafina's run cycle, so that it could be repeated indefinitely and copy and pasted using Shake, as requested by Nat. I worked from the legs, body and head, to the arms. The arms I did several experiments with to find the perfect movement for the character.

With the arms, we settled with Sarafina's arms being stretched out behind her. This suited her character best, and so these arms were used for the final clip.

The head took a number of corrections to get a movement both subtle but noticeable. This was also the case with the drag on the hair and skirt. Eventually, the right effect was achieved, and the frames were shot in for Nat to invert and cycle.

However, due to timing and edits, the run sequence had to be removed from the final Sarafina's Bubble. When this was discussed with Nat, I understood why this was done; the cuts before and following the run cycle ran considerably smoother without it. While the scene is not in the final film, I have been credited with special thanks, and the run appears in Nat's blog.

TOTAL FOR NAT AND KAT: 19 hours



Joanna Staniforth - Door

Preproduction Assistant: During storyboarding, I spent about an hour with Jo discussing changes that could be made to her storyboards. There was little to change, mostly angles of shots, though Jo found the time useful. (1 hour)



Sound Design: Jo's film did not require sound effects, due to its setting. Atmospheric music was, however, a must. The style of music Jo desired was based on meditation, new age CDs, which for the musical geniuses that Claire and I were, was simple to recreate! We used Cubase SX and a variety of synth sound effects to design a piece suited to Jo's film. (3 hours)



Rigging Assistant: While animating Jo's stop motion shot, Claire ran into a number of difficulties with the model; the magnets on his feet constantly attached to the table when they weren't meant to, and because of his small feet, could not balance as well. This was purely due to design, as the original character in 2D had small feet, which wasn't a problem animating traditionally.

So I volunteered to hold the wires behind the model's neck, so that he would stay balanced. I also made sure that when the model was on one foot during mid step he didn't over balance. (5 hours)



BEFORE COLOUR



AFTER COLOUR

Colour: After Jo's frames had been through Shake, I took the batches of frames to colour. This was done in Photoshop, using the paint bucket tool. To achieve the desired colours, Jo gave me a list of the RGB values of the colours, so I was able to make new swatches to select.

The character was coloured in purple, with the door orange and yellow. During the colouring process, the character's eyes had to be coloured green, due to the additional Shake process the frames would undergo. This final process involved alpha channels being made, meaning that any white would be keyed out to alpha, making it invisible. By colouring the eyes green, they could be colour replaced so that the eyes would remain white. (9 hours)

TOTAL FOR JO: 17 hours


Richard Butler and Laurie Priest - Close




EARLY ANIMATION OF THE GAP SCENE, GAGING SPEED



DEVELOPMENT, ROTATION STARTING TO BE ADDED



RED CHARACTER FINISHED



BLUE CHARACTER TRANSFORMATIONS



BLUE CHARACTER WITH ROTATIONS AND UP AND DOWN TRANSFORMATIONS



THE SHOT REDONE AND FINAL



SECOND SHOT - BLUE CHARACTER TRANSFORMATION



EARLY TEST, CLOSE UP. STILL STRUGGLING TO USE RIG



ANOTHER CLOSE UP, AFTER MAYA CLICKED. ANIMATING GETS EASIER AND IMPROVES



SHOT COMPLETE AT CORRECT CAMERA DISTANCE

Animation: After I finished animating my Maya drum kit, I offered my services to Rich and Laurie. As I was still very new to Maya, and had had no experience using a fully rigged character, basic shots were to be my speciality!

Rich and Laurie gave me a long shot of the two characters running towards each other (featured before the camera zooms in to reveal that the two characters are far apart.) The scene itself was already prepared with camera moves and background cells keyed and laid out. The characters were also set up to animate.

The two models I used for the characters were static models, with no moveable limbs. The illusion of the movement would, therefore, need to be created using rotation and change in weight shift.

There were a couple of problems I needed to overcome, which Rich and Laurie also faced. The first being the size of the scene, as there were around 30 cells used to create the back and foregrounds. This meant instant playback wasn't an option, as it ran too slow. To watch back any animation that had been done, the scene needed to be playblasted, which was a time consuming process. The second problem was that the characters didn't have contact with the cells they were moving on, so they were animated running in thin air, which wasn't noticable unless the camera was close up.

The other obvious problem was that I had only learnt how to use Maya a few weeks ago!

None the less, the scene was fine to animate. As the models were static, there was little to worry about with regards to individual limbs, so the entire animating process for the characters was done using full body rotate and translate tools. I was able to easily make adjustments using the Graph Editor.

To start, I animated the red character, first adjusting the translations so that a good speed could be gaged, and once that was approved by Laurie and Rich, I added hip rotations. The same process was done for the blue character, though I also added up and down translations to give the illusion of him hopping. The complete animation took 13 hours.

A few days after I completed the scene, I was asked to return to it so that the red character could be reanimated, due to a change of background. I repeated the above process, and after animating the character, I was asked to add additional canopy to the scene. The reanimation and assistance on the scene setting took 5 hours.

After finishing the scene, I was approached for a second commission. The task involved animating a character in the background (the character in the foreground had already been animated.) While it was still a long shot of the blue character, it was considerably closer than the previous scene, and involved using the main, rigged model.

Admittedly, I struggled to get to grips with the model, and had to start again from scratch several times. Laurie and Rich were incredibly patient and helpful, giving me advise and showing me the best way to animate. By setting the time line to stepped, I was able to create the key frames, and space out these frames for timing. Once that had been done, I could change the timeline back to linear, so that the movements become fluid.

While it took a long time to learn how to use the rig and animate using a rig, once I had got to grips with it, I was able to complete the animation much quicker.

I really enjoyed the Maya work I did with Laurie and Rich, and feel that I have achieved a number of new skills thanks to working on their project. The final scene took an additional 18 hours.

TOTAL FOR LAURIE AND RICH: 36

OVERALL HOURS: 82

Stuff What Moles Did

Needing the assistance, I recruited the help of Chris Moles in the first year to produce titles and to design posters for the introduction of my film. This also counts towards his own work.

Above are the two shots he produced (one of mine goes between them) and the two posters he designed, which will be animated together in After Effects using fade effects and masks

Work What Jo Did

Joanna Staniforth used 74 hours on my film, and worked on the following areas of my film:

Pre Production Assistant: As already stated, Jo Staniforth was essential in editing the original animatic, shaving over a minute of footage off, which was urgently needed if I was to complete the film.  Her opinions and suggestions were also put to use to give my guinea pig more character.  Jo's support during the pre production process was greatly appreciated and much needed.

Sound Design: Claire and Jo assisted me in producing sound effects for my film.  Specifically, Jo helped with the creation of the drum kit falling.  She discovered various items that could be used for the desired effect, such as chairs, and suggested different ways in which sounds could be collected.

Colour: Jo offered early in the process to colour my frames.  No easy task, as my character originally had 6 main colours plus four additional colours for less common parts, such as the drumsticks.  This was cut to a total of five, mostly to ease her pressure.  On top of that, my character is incredibly fiddley, especially in long shots where he is quite small.

Despite this, she did a brilliant job of the colouring, and I am extremely grateful for the work she did in that department.  Above is an example of the final out come of the frames she coloured.

Additional Shaking and Shooting: During the post production process, while I was still working on Maya for my own film and Laurie and Rich's film, Jo offered her assistance by shooting in the inked frames and Shaking them.  This, again, was a real help.

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Work What Laurie Did

Laurie... Laurie did a lot of stuff, so it's difficult to gauge how many hours exactly he did on my film.  We worked out that it was approximately 32 hours, which was spent on the following areas:

Model and Rigging:


Above are shots from the drum kit that Laurie made for my film.  His design for the kit was thorough and researched, as well as being true to what I asked for.  Not only did he make the drum kit look lush, he made it completely user friendly, so I could adjust the drum kit to my specifications without breaking the rig.  Even more amazing was the rigging for the bass pedal.  The pedal actually worked!  By rotating the axis of the foot, the beater moves as it would on the real thing.

On top of that, Laurie also set up a lighting rig.

I could not be happier with my drum kit, especially after seeing it rendered with the Vector render.  

Shake Script Design: As already mentioned, Laurie wrote a Shake script for Jo and me that allowed our paper frames to be coloured with ease.  This saved us both a lot of hard work, which we are both incredibly grateful for.

Technical Assistant: These hours were the hardest to add up, as Laurie gave a lot of assistance for various technical issues.  From changing the length of key frames, to fixing broken rigs, and even tiny, mundane things such as keyboard short cuts and how to create a playblast!  He was patient, clear and always able to solve any issues that arose.  Laurie was an angel, and the majority of the group would certainly agree.  

The Cutting Room

The time has come to put everything together.  Learning from my mistakes animating, I have taken on the most difficult shots first.  These involve the guinea pig interacting with the drum kit, such as shot 26 (dragging the drum across the floor) and shot 38 (final shot, hitting the cymbal.)  

Composing the shots will involve up to four layers.  

The base layer involves a simple, grey block.  I did not want a defined space for the drum or the character, as I wanted it to be enjoyed for the sake of itself, without the speculations of why, where and how.

Next is the drum kit layer, which sits perfectly on top of the grey back colour, thanks to the alpha channels in the targa image file.

This is similar of the guinea pig. After going through Shake a second time, alpha channels were made in the new set of targa files. The guinea pig can then be placed over everything.

Using a technique dubbed "nesting" in Final Cut Pro, I am able to arrange the frames to my personal specification in a separate sequence, and drop that sequence into the main sequence. This means that the alpha channels on the guinea pig remain, whereas Quicktime files won't hold alpha channels. As a sequence within a sequence, I can move and resize the guinea pig to the correct specifications, just like resizing a film clip.

A final layer of foreground is necessary in two shots; shot 16 (playing the drums, with the cymbal stand in front of the guinea pig) and shot 31 (richochetting between two drums, top drum needs to be on top of the guinea pig.) However, as the top drum in shot 31 moves, masking the drum in After Effects may prove a better option.

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Work What Claire Did

Claire work on the following areas of my film:

Sound Design: During workshops with Jo and myself, Claire helped to gather sound effects with Jo for my piece.  This included the falling drum mix, and the scraping cymbal. These two sounds were essential to my film, and the help in gathering the sounds were important.

Outside of the workshops, Claire gathered the drum sound effects for my film, using her boyfriend Andrew Bannister's drum kit.  She also collected a variety of drum rhythms for me to pick and animate to.  The final piece I chose was a drum rhythm she played herself!

The sound work that Claire did was vital to the final film.  Without the drum sounds she gathered, I could have been stuck with free sound clips that would have spoilt the sound of my film.  Thankfully, the real drum sounds add an extra layer of depth to the piece, and I am incredibly happy with the work she did.



Ink and Clean Up: Claire volunteered to ink my frames and rub out the pencil lines beneath.  Not a popular or exciting task, but one that needed to be done, which again, I am very grateful for.  She did a brilliant job of keeping the guinea pig's form, and the lines came out clear in Shake. 

Above is an  example of Claire's work.

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Shake that Thing!

Pictures from the Shake process.

First image: Pen inked, cleaned and shot in through the line tester. The inking and cleaning was done by Claire Burn.

Second image: Shaken script one.

Third image: Coloured by Jo Staniforth, with white areas green so that they can be colour replaced.

Fourth image: Shaken script two. The final result, with alpha channels.

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As Quickly as it Began...

... it was over.  Without even realising it, all the 2D animation was finished.  Kind of an anti climax, really.  All that's left is the After Effects and the titles and poster to drop in from Chris Moles in First Year.

There's still plenty to do with Maya, but I feel considerably more at ease now.

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Shake a Tail Feather

To make colouring easier for Jo (and likewise to make Jo's colouring easier for me) we were required to put our work through two different Shake scripts.

The scripts were written by Laurie Priest, and made very simple to use.

The first script increased the contrast, and made the lines picked up in the line tester matt black. It also made the backgrounds perfect white, so that to colour the characters, all that was needed was the paint bucket tool in Photoshop. Anything white, however, had to be coloured bright green.

After the frames had been coloured, the frames were taken back into Shake. Anything painted bright green was then colour replaced in Shake to white, and all background was turned into an alpha channel.

This makes layering the final film together much simpler, and makes the colouring process far easier as well.

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Getting there...

The final animatic, with linetests starting to be dropped in.

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Enter the Vector

Prior to the final render process, Paul Sinclair discussed with me the possibility of using a Vector render in Maya. He showed me how to change the settings in the render globals, and I was able to experiment with the vector render.

The Vector gave the drums a much flatter, 2D feel, which would compliment my film considerably better than a straight render.

For the final render, I used an area gradient with medium highlights and reflections, with a black hairline edge.

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Work What Kat Did

Kat Downes was signed off for 30 hours on Pinny Gig. The following are overviews of the work she did:

Animation Assistant: When work become too much, Kat offered to help with inbetweening my key frames. This was a huge relief, and helped a great deal, even just to feel that a weight had been lifted.

Kat inbetweened shot 13 (picking up sticks before playing drums) first. This was brilliantly done, in good time with care and consideration. She also shot the frames into iStopmotion and arranged the frames so that the pauses were in the appropriate places. The animation itself was lovely and smooth, I was very pleased with the outcome.

Kat then inbetweened shot 2 (hands picking up sticks) and 24 (guinea pig sitting back and thinking.)

Concept Artist: The following images are pieces of concept work that Kat produced for my piece:






Kat offered her services as a concept artist, which I was happy for her to contribute to. Her naturalistic style made a change from my very simplistic, caricatured way of drawing.  

I was pleased with the outcomes, they are good support to my own concept work.  It's good to get additional insights into my character as well.

Uphill Struggle

On reflection, my film is big. Really big. Too big, really. Really too big. Really.

And suddenly, I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the film. There's not just the animating to take into consideration, but the Maya side of the work, then the cleaning, the inking, the colouring, the editing... it's a huge project to be tackling alone. In a way, I wish someone had turned to me and told me that it couldn't be done when I did my first animatic which totaled 3 and a half minutes. Plus there's 80 hours worth of group work to complete.

... help...

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Final Script

This is based on the most recent animatic:





Nat wrote up the final script for me, using the final animatic as a guide line.

Another New Maya Trick!

Turns out there's a fair few funky things you can do in Maya!  Not only is there the wonders of FCheck, to see rendered frames play back, there is also Playblasting, which allows you to preview animation in real time, and save the playblast file as a film.

Above is a playblast of my drum kit, prior to final renders.  Some shots, such as blank sky or peculiar angles of cymbals mark shots where there is no drum kit in the shot.

This is still subject to change, and needs to be animated.

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Animatic IX

The post summative assessment animatic, taking into account the thumbnails from the previous post. Another 10 seconds have been clipped since, thanks to Jo. A change has also been made to the part where the guinea pig is reaching for the cymbal. Instead, the guinea pig grows increasingly frustrated, keeping in line with the cheeky, troublesome, short tempered character he's evolved into.

Other changes include a title sequence and cutting the "double gag," as already mentioned in the discussion of the summative assessment overview.

The opening shots of the guinea pig are going to be done using two already animated scenes. Not much needs changing, so the frames I've animated aren't completely redundant.



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Tom Thumb(nail)

Above are the thumbnails for the titles, as discussed with Sean and Paul, and for a scene that Jo and I have altered.

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Post Summative

Pretty pleased with the result of the summative. I'd been hoping for a 1st this year, but I've resided myself to the fact that it's more likely I'll get a 2:1. And I'm quite happy with that!

I've made some cuts and additions to comply with what the tutors said. Sean suggested cutting the "double gag" with the cymbal sliding away at the end and making its true sound. He also suggested shortening holds. Agree with both of these, as my animatic was considerably longer than the original draft.

Paul's comment was to give the guinea pig a reason for playing the drums. I sat with Jo and worked out a new sequence, where the guinea pig is looking at a poster, longingly. This makes use of a couple of shots that I animated, but needed cutting, and gives potential for a strong title sequence and introduction.

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Turnaround (Bright Eyes...)

The turn around and construction sheet for the guinea pig.

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Animatic V

Jo has helped immensely in cutting down the length of the film. Believe me, it needed cutting down. A 3 and a half minute film for one person to animate is huge. Jo's outside view and honest brutality, plus her eye for continuity, resulted in a minute being cut from the film, a massive help!

This version involves the edit storyboarded previously.

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Storyboard Edit

After a discussion with Sean about the animatic, I have gone with a suggestion of his to change part of the story. After the guinea pig plays the drums and discovers that he can't reach the cymbal, he ties the sticks together to try and reach that way. The suggestion was to show that the cymbal was what the guinea pig desired more than anything. This would be shown using close ups, extreme close ups and jump cuts between the cymbal and the guinea pig:

Guinea pig misses cymbal (after playing drum rhythm.) Guinea pig lowers his arm, and stares at the cymbal. Jump cut to close up of cymbal, swaying gently. Cut back to Guinea pig, eyes wide and wanting. Cut back to cymbal. Cut back to the guinea pig, closer close up shot. Cut back to cymbal. Cut back (again) to extreme close up of the guinea pig. Cut back to the cymbal. Cut to extreme close up of Guinea pig's eye, the cymbal in his pupil. Cut to medium close up of the guinea pig, waving his arms to reach the cymbal. Cut back to medium long shot of guinea pig, still desperately reaching the cymbal, but he is clearly too short. Realising this, the guinea pig slumps down, giving up in despair. Close up of guinea pig, looking sadly at the cymbal. Point of view shot of the cymbal, still wavering gently. Cut to mid shot Guinea pig, sitting back, thinking, and having a brain wave.

I feel this shows a lot more of the guinea pig, and allows for real character.

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Cavy!

Some sketches of guinea pigs (aka. cavy) that I drew reference from. Part of the problem with guinea pigs is that they seemingly have no neck. and are slightly disproportionate. Though I feel a large hind quarter and no neck is quite enduring in a character!

The skeletons and muscle groups are mostly for my own reference, and have helped when I've looked at character design.

These were produced at various points from October to January.

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Concept-ation

Concept work from October to late December. Among these are initial thoughts for posters, design ideas and just some fun with two visually interesting drums, Joey Jordison from Slipknot and Rick Allen from Def Leopard, the latter being admirable for only having one arm.

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