PMF: Producer

(You should be able to HD this...)

So I had to reduce the time for PMF... Because we're only meant to do 20seconds of animation for each project, and the lecturers liked this segment, which was fine for me.
The whole point of this exercise was to prove that I could animate a character who reacts to things being said for 20 seconds... In a subtle way... this was the point. This was artistic intent as, if you've seen the other vids, the Director is incredibly cartoony and hyper-active!
This was a lot of fun to do, as I am not a serious, or subtle person (I am the Director).. well apart from when I have to be...
Anyway! Lavs will be up next week for laughs!
Morpheus @ Josh Burton

See you later,
Claire

What have I been up to?

RIGGING!!!
Which is insanely fun as I am applying some MEL script I have been learning, (incredibly basic, mostly variable naming then recalling and stuff.) But really cool, have more or less done a Rig in two weeks... which would've taken me four last year! It's also more robust!!

Anyway, deadline is approaching, so I thought I would briefly update.

So while I was completing other pieces, I was communicating with Pierre Laffoux, an amazing ex-grad of Glamorgan, who made just about the most bulky, broad and well built character I had seen that year! Obviously I wanted to rig it! Please check out his website.

We both communicated to each other ways to improve the mesh for better deformation, which was a learning curve for both of us, as I am not known for modelling and Pierre seemed to enjoy what I did know.

Just a few notes I sent to him after one model evaluation session!

I have now got a fantastic model to rig, and I hope my Rigging skills are up to the standards of his modelling!!

See you later,

Claire

Background textures and scene setup - Office

So you guys do not know about my projects for university as of yet, however I want to show you some of my render tests I have been making for my personal project... As well as texutres... Turns out I'm going down a generalist route, I only need to add modelling to the CV!

Following images copyright details:

Morpheus rig, suit,

Following came with no textures: Darts and Dart board, Clock, Chair, Desk, iMac, Desk Caddy.

Room Texture

City texture

Textures made in photoshop for this project include the 2D textures on the walls (inspired by 101 dalmatians backgrounds), and the background cityscape. The city was deliberately coloured to contrast the blue cool colours inside the office. Blue being the character's colour scheme, as he is a very calm, collected character.

Glass test render

Final room render

I also installed large areas of glass into the walls of the room to allow better lighting of the character.

CG assets, like the dart board, originally came in untextured, texturing selected faces of the object quickly rectified this problem. Tacks and paper were made and textured by myself as well.

Final Desk render, came out better than I thought, the 2D city image being reflected nicely in the table surface added to the texture of the background I think!

Now to progress to animation!!!

See you soon,

Claire

Production Pipeline : Pre-Production

A third year university collaboration project, working with Modeller Beks Rootes (link for her work to come), we were tasked to make a short sting for a TV studio. This involved making the characters, background, story, basically the whole sha-bang of production from scratch.

As the animator/TD (technical director) of this project, for preproduction I created character concepts, ideas for poses, but most importantly the story itself. 

We originally looked towards an E4 sting, as most projects worked to the E4 criteria, but as the look evolved we aimed for a company where we could explore cute more. We kept in mind the modeller's sculpting criteria for her brief, so the simplistic designs were scrapped.

 If I am honest here, maybe one of these poses originated from a deer? Most came from pouncing cats and dogs, hence why in some pictures I am struggling with proportions... although back flexibility (or lack of) was kept in mind while making anatomy adaptations.

However thumbnails above did come from deers...

This sequence was turned into an animatic.

As a TD I was in charge of creating a rig for this project as well. This was a basic rig diagram I created for reference in production.

Soon to come - The sting itself!
The process of production as well....

Update on that Gallop animation from yesterday... Getting there... I think.