CAGD 445 Animated Short Week 7-14

CAGD 445 Animated Short 

Bad Anchor

Week 7-8

For week 7, there wasn't as much time to meet as a group.  Luckily, our main priority at this point was animating the scenes given out to us.  Throughout these two weeks, it was about the process of blocking, referencing, and overall formatting of good animated shots.A few things that needed to be kept in mind were the scene assets which needed to remain in the same spots throughout all shots to maintain consistency.  Another things was making sure the shot/camera angle was catered to by the animation.  Getting the smoothest animation doesn't matter if it doesn't convey properly from the camera's point of view.  My personal assigned shots are very short, consisting of simple gestures, head and joint turns, very minimal movement.

Week 9

In week 9, dailies started up, so animation was in full swing.  Critique was great for progressing into the next step of the project.  Some of the tips for my scenes in particular were more connected motions, and overall polishing up of how the scenes read with audiences.  As far as the whole group video went, the first round of stitching all scenes together along with audio seemed to work fairly decent.  For a first draft, it did accomplish some of the most important goals, but there was also plenty of room for improvement.  Some animation was just being blocked out, while other parts could have altered or different motions.  Overall, the flow seemed to match that of the animatic, and could benefit from some polishing.  Shots could be longer, or cut together differently to maximize effect on the audience in the final product, as suggested.

Week 10-11

This week was a follow-up to the previous week and the initial animation critiques.  A lot of the suggestions for the project overall were very helpful, and either have been or will be taken into account and changed or implemented into the shots.  This week's work was mainly about smoothing out edges within the animation.  Movements were made more concrete and fluid, while objects were referenced in closer to their final rendering.

Week 12-14

The second critique took place and the group put together the latest animation shots.  The new rendition of the project looked alright, but a lot of the comments were very helpful in getting new ideas and angles flowing.  There will definitely be some things to reshape and polish up even more before the final animation is due.  With only a few weeks left, it is very important to get everything down right.  My assigned shots needed a bit of work in terms of portraying movement in spline, and a few tweaks to the overall scene needed to be re-animated.  One shot with the Main character bear's initial reaction was changed from concerned and frightened to staring happy and creepily.  Other than that, a bit of smoothing out and the animation is coming along better than expected.  The rest of my work was allocated to helping out and working with the other group members, stringing together the final animatic with all the animation.  While everyone is still at work, now is the time to prepare.

CAGD 445 Animated Short Week 1-6

CAGD 445 Animated Short 

Bad Anchor

Week 1-2

The beginning weeks of the project largely consisted of getting the team together, formatting the story, and finding/creating assets as well as the scene base.  Our team consists of four members and we call ourselves Bad Anchor Productions.  We decided that the best time to meet outside of the three hours of class was on Monday afternoons.  If there is ever extra work to be done or things to be sorted out among the group, that would be the time.  We also decided that since most of the group was not as experienced with modeling and rigging, using the David O'Reily character rigs from the "The External World" pack would work just fine for our project.  The main rigs include the cute bear, the father, and the Ralph.

Week 3

After the first two weeks, we had a story draft written out, and storyboards were on the way.  By the third we, we moved onto creating a script and animatic.  In the meantime, we started setting up the scene in Maya, along with the many assets necessary.  Our set of extra meetings largely helped for settling on story beats.  They also helped with team-building, considering our group is newly formed and learning to work together.

Link to animatic v1: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By4nqJGS1gZzWlNqTTg2VkEzVWM

Week 4

In week four, our group moved further along in refining the story and setting up the animation.  Assets were further developed, and we got a better idea of how the project overall would come together.  For my part of the job so far, I tweaked the animatic to better express the storyboard shots, and rearranged scenes according to feedback.  As a group, we discussed how voice-overs and sound effects could be factored in.  In addition, we decided up shots for each member to animate, which should hopefully work out ok.

Link to animatic v2: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By4nqJGS1gZzdnQyX3BHaXdPT2M

Week 5

For week five, the group was focused on getting shots distributed and ready for animation.  Cameras need to be set up, and character rigs need to be ready for work.  Plans were also set for recording audio for the scene's dialogue.

Week 6

At this point, all shots were handed out for animators, and most of the focus was set on working in Maya.  There was a lot of back and forth about what the best course of action would be for setting cameras and getting the right shots for each scene.  Once established, it was a matter of testing and re-testing.  Given the amount of time overall, this part should hopefully go over smoothly.  Most of the models necessary for the scene were placed properly so the animation has a good start.

CAGD 345 Story Project Two

CAGD 345

Story Project Two

The second big project of the class had the same process as the first, but is now a partner/group project.  This time around, everything is based around the work of multiple hands and minds.  Otherwise, the brainstorming, scripting and story-boarding were put through the same gauntlet.  The collaboration on this project was both better and not as great as individual work, which is how it is meant to be.

Our group's projects title is Fore's Wild Ride, and tells the story of a golf ball's journey flying through a golf course.

Animatic

The animatic creation process was essentially split into two parts.  The first part was inserting the scene shots and finding the right time limits.  Once that was figured out and settled on overall, we could move on to adding in shots showing motion or minor detail tweaks.  After that we needed to add in sounds gathered by searching the web and actual recording.  Once that was all set, putting it all together was easy.

Storyboard

Making the storyboards this time around was definitely the toughest part.  Considering this project was a group effort, there was much more coordination and cooperation needed to complete each storyboard.  The drawing styles needed to match up, or at least be consistent throughout, and there needed to be a compromise or balance of each group member's work so that no one had more to do than the other.
This section also took the most time and steps to finish since multiple iterations of shots and scenes needed to be churned out to keep up with updates.  Shots mentioned in the script would need to be split up or added to indicate motion that would come later down the line in the animatic.  On top of that, finalizing the storyboards required the time limit for each individual.  This couldn't really get established until work on the animatic started.  Once we got an idea of how long everything should last, it was a matter of backtracking and tagging.

Script

The script for this project came together quick, and was easy to tweak and adjust as we progressed.  There were a fair amount of scenes and shots that were either added, dropped, or swapped.  Overall, the biggest complication on this part was making sure it properly linked beat boards to storyboards, while also making sense on paper.

Beat Board/Logline

Forming the logline and brainstorming in general was pretty easy and simple for this project.  Putting two heads together worked out better than one, and we were able to successfully settle on an idea quickly.  That certainly helped get the ball rolling.  Translating over to a beat sheet and summary was also simple.  This story's arc and base template were somewhat similar to my previous project.  The beginning and end were clear, so there was freedom to add or take away from the middle as we pleased.

CAGD 340 Quick Motions

Quick Motions

Week 10-11

This week the assignments got changed up a bit.  Each day we practiced something different, animating video game actions.  Video game actions are meant to be fast and responsive in real-time.  For each new day, we worked on a new type of animation.  The first was based on a "superhero" jump and landing.  We were to adapt a reference into something one would find as an attack or jump or something of the like in a video games.  The second quick motion video game animation was based on a reference we found in a video demonstration.  This was based around the concept of limiting blocked poses.  This meant having a just a few poses to invoke the idea of a real action.  We experimented with A, B, and C poses from the example.  This all takes place within 24 frames, give or take a few.

CAGD 345 Story Project One

CAGD 345

Story Project One

For this big story project, we got to create a short one minute story animatic from the ground up.  There were many steps to get from start to finish.  The process went from brainstorming and conceptualization, to outlining and beat boards, to scripting, then storyboards, and finally the animatic.

My project is titled Daredevil Ball.  It tells the story of Red, a rubber ball who has a goal of going to the moon.  They are going to make many attempts which include a trampoline, a jetpack, and a seesaw, and finds that there is a big challenge ahead of them.




 This is the final one minute long animatic for the project.  This was, in my opinion, one of the easiest tasks to accomplish.  The biggest problem was syncing up the audio and video, but otherwise, operating with the storyboards in Premiere was simple.  In addition, any edits that needed to take place outside of the video were manageable.



 This is the slideshow of storyboards put together to demonstrate and present the semi-complete project.  Later down the line, more in-between shots were added to transition into the animatic.  The toughest part here was making sure the storyboards lined up,m and the designated timespans of each shot fit.  For the most part, I believe I was able to keep all of my original shots, and just had to expand and add on more to convey the story.  I didn't have to cut any out and the closest to such was simply altering shots to fit suggestions.



The script was another piece of the assignment that came pretty easy.  Expanding upon the beat boards and outlining the story as a whole.  It was fun to flesh out certain parts, even if this was only to be a minute long.  Visualizing came pretty easy, so sharpening it down to the right script size wasn't too tough.  Of course, later down the line there would be alterations to the script when the storyboards came along, but luckily the basic premise was kept consistent.




 The first stage of the story project was forming an initial idea, and making loglines, a general summary, and a beat sheet.  This was a decent next step in creating the story.  While the brainstorming phase went on, overall conceptualization of this story was fairly simple.  Knowing a  beginning and end came along fast, which put most of the emphasis on developing the middle scenes.


Throughout the project, I would say there were only a few minor bumps in the road.  Nothing was too much a challenge over the course of creating and priming the project.  The biggest problem I encountered was the aforementioned organization of shots and timespans of each.  A lot of shots shifted around and changed timing from one part to the next.  It was about determining whether a shot was too short or lingered too long.  Later on for the animatic with in-between shots, it was also a bit challenging to fit everything on top of the original shots.  Another related minor task was finding and syncing proper audio clips in the animatic.  I used a mix of background sounds and ambiance that I had on hand and found in the lab database.

Tiger Walk

Week 9

This past week, the new project was animating a Tiger walking.  This was something quite new but also familiar as the next step in animating things other than bipeds.  In this assignment, we are learning to work with more joints, and more segments in order to make a natural walk cycle.  Throughout the week, we practiced the typical process of blocking out poses and adjusting based upon reference.  The next step is splining and forming overlap to further progress with a proper walk cycle.  The main focus was taking the reference and visualizing what goes where, then learning hos it translates to animation.

Weight Lift

Week 8

In this assignment, we learned how to animate with parent objects.  We learned how to operate with basic parent functions between objects, hands and blocks/balls in this case.  The main goal was to animate a character picking up an object and showing such with a certain heaviness to it.  The effects of lifting a heavy object should be felt and visualized throughout the arms, legs, and so on.