Animation Update: Wall Dismount

A little test I did waaayyy back in June in lunchtimes and between projects.

Hope you enjoy.

From Start to Finish - PMF Director

Hi All,

For my dissertation this year, for which I scored a high 2:1 - YEY, I studied the 12 principles of animation. More specifically my dissertation looked into the 12 principles and how they are applied differently to the different mediums. Eventually the conclusion was CG uses motion blur to aid in quick movement that is often seen in 2D animated films, however, like 2D, it also uses 'smear' frames; where one segment will stay with the beginning, or hit the end, of a big movement. This technique causes huge extremes in certain part of the body...

So how did this work with this piece:
Obviously I ended up using ARNOLD's motion blur features, however I also used some features on the malcolm rig (which is insanely flexible), to stretch out some features to aid the blur. In this piece, fingers were elongated, arms bent and stretched, and the head sevaerly stretched until it didn't really look like a head anymore!

Obviously I will be experimenting with the technique in future animated pieces, including the full film of this.

Hope you enjoy!

Oh yeah! That's me, and that's my dialogue too...

See you soon,
Claire

Current Showreel: May 2014

Will give  a  better blog update soon!
In the mean time please check out my new showreel:

See you soon,

Claire Hodges

Pigs May Fly: Poster Time

(Caution they are CMYK)

Some posters I made for Uni to promote my work.

Sorry for not posting much lately! My major deadline is Friday and well... There's so much to do!!

See ya soon,

Claire

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

Website is ONLINE

Hi all,
In prep for FMX, and because I needed it done anyway, I have completed my website!

Any constructive criticism would be loved - what draws your eye, what repels it? Is it warm and inviting, or just plain chaotic?! Would love to know.

Website is HERE

Also my latest showreel is up and active, so take a look!

Also... that lady's voice? Yeah... That's mine!


See you soon,

Claire

Practical Process: WIP - Editing

Hi all,

Thought I would add some more progress shots of my PMF project.. This time of the other character, she's a director, but I need more props to show that... Anyone got any recommendations?

A new part of my process is to take my latest playblast (When I can't think of anything else to do to it, but it doesn't feel right), and draw over it in photoshop... This helps me produce more exaggerated shapes, follow lines of action easier... and just generally have more fun!

Ta for listening,

Claire

Deer animation

Hi all,
I don't believe I posted that deer sting I was on about... So here you go (please view in HQ!):

I was in charge of (in Pipeline order): Research, story idea, pose ideas, storyboarding, being a camera woman, deleting rolling shutter, working as a team to matchmove, Rigging, Animating, Rendering and post production - including colour correction, roto and shadow correction!

Thanks for visiting,

Claire 

Industry Indent: Double negative

Established in 1998 Double Negative, or Dneg for short, have worked on several exciting projects both for
major studios, Harry Potter, Skyfall, Man of Steel, etc. and independant film makers for films like Shaun of the Dead, Paul, Attack The Block, etc. 
They have won an academy award for Inception, as well as four VES awards (three for Inception) and two BAFTA awards, one for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and the other for Inception.



Their pieces range from Character animation (Paul) to vehicle animation (Rush) and crowd animation (John Carter), again another diverse range of work that thrills me when I see it. Double Negative was another studio that visited USW in 2013, and gave a fantastic talk on their involvement with the animation of the Tharks in John Carter. Specifically they talked about the crowd scenes featuring the Tharks, such as the gladiator ring scene with the White Apes... Who are petrifying! For all those who paint John Carter with the 'flop' brush, I urge you to watch the film again with fresh eyes, the VFX are glorious, the realistic character animation on the Tharks is fantastic, and how they solved the whole four arm idles is brilliant. The film itself is well worth the watch just for all the Thark scenes, as you can see the heart and soul poured into the characters, each bringing a believable human aspect to the film. If you believe the story has influences from other Sci-fi hits like Star wars, then read the origins for the script, as the book 'John Carter of Mars' was produced early 20th century, and is in fact the stem of the other Sci-fis! Anyway, I'm detracting!
In fact this talk was the one to get me into rigging, due to the sequences they showed of all the facial animation, and how the deform shapes, and underneath muscles, were triggered by controls. However the main appeal of this talk to me how they interpreted the motion capture data for four armed characters, describing how the arms were arranged for dominate and recessive actions. This blend between motion capture and realistic key-framed animation is what drew me towards the studio. I approached the team after the talk and I was very fortunate... and very cheeky as I asked... to arrange a visit to Dneg late last near when they were in full production of a film I cannot mention because of reasons... However I am very excited to see it in the Cinema!!
If you cannot tell from my typing, I have been very inspired by the realistic animation Dneg has produced over the years, and cannot wait to see more! See you later, Claire

PMF - Producer Dialogue

So much for those sketches the other day right? Sorry, I had a couple of deadlines to attend to, but most of its out of the way now, so I get to host more stuff for you guys now! Including this:

My current version of the Pigs may fly lipsync... I'm a bit worried because I am only meant to be doing 20 seconds for each topic.... HMMMM... Oh well!
Hope you guys enjoy,
Any feedback would be appreciated!
See you soon,
Claire

Industry Indents: MPC

MPC is another amazing VFX company based in London, Vancouver, Montréal, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Mexico City. With these many facilities it will come as no surprise that they produce such a great volume of fantastic visuals.

MPC has worked on Advertisements and film, made possible by a team of talented and enthusiastic artists. Examples of their amazing hard work can be see below:

So.. why does this inspire me? Well, how can such awe creating team work not inspire a person in this medium?

More importantly when did this company become inspiring to me? On Feb 27th this year, I attended a VFX masterclass  presented by MPC's Adam Davis, on the VFX and crowd simulation in World War-Z. Davis described to us the difficult use of motion capture data, caused by the awkward twists a half dead zombie makes while grasping for the next host; well... the guy mimicking the zombie at any rate. The studio brought in people who could twist their extremities in such ways, the motion capture data was getting confused and glitched. Davis also described the hero animation system MPC made up for both World war-Z and Lone Ranger. Their VFX breakdowns for world war-Z can be seen below:

MPC has a great diversity in the realistic animation they produce, with many different subjects, in both advertising and feature films, has made me aspire to produce such diversity in my work. They have character, creature and object animation in their commercial reel alone, and I should aim to have the same in mine! Hopefully I will have a diverse, realistic, and dynamic showreel for VFX by the end of summer...

Thanks again,

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.

Whooops! Better update you guys!

Hi All,

Been a mad time as of late with so much going on, preproduction, dissertation, production.... The list goes on. However what remains the same is I did not update the blog.

This does mean there is a back log of things to post however!

So to begin with, take a peak at my Work In Progress animation of a horse, for one of my major production projects.

See you soon,

CartoonClaire

Showreel so far

Latest updated showreel for 2013, including some things that I have done this year.

Progression

Animation point two... Need to get faster...

Figurative

Body mechanics pieces made in my first year of Computer Animation at the University of Glamorgan

Thumbnails:

Second year: Hand project

My hand that I made for my advance tech project, second year, at the University of Glamorgan.
Modeled in Maya and sculpted in Mudbox