2D backgrounds

Here are some drawings I did for the 2D background project. 

3D Environment

Having to create a 3D environment was probably the most difficult task for me. I'm not a fan of maya in the slightest and struggled a lot throughout the whole thing. I still came up with this piece which is part of my house in Seychelles. There are many many things to improve of and if I have the patience it would be interesting to go back, re-work and improve the whole environment. The thing that I struggled most with was actually the lighting. I couldn't get the type of light I wanted in the direction I was going for and had to keep rendering it over and over again till I was ok with it. Rendering also seemed to cause issues.. it kept crashing, didn't finish rendering or some frames were missing. Maya was an interesting program to learn the basics of however I don't think it's for me

Motion Studies

This is my showreel containing all the motion studies work we did throughout the term. Each week we were given a new task, i.e a walk cycle, juggling. There are quite a few things I could improve on like the juggling needs more movement in the body, the sneak cycle has a little skip to it, it doesn't flow smoothly.
We also had to create a dance in celaction and then add secondary animation to it in flash.

Mazed Ident

We had to create an ident for the mazed project we worked on earlier but all on Adobe after effects. I used the mining scene I worked on for the final animation and when the rocks fall the Mazed logo appears from the dust. I couldn't find the right sound effect to go with the logo sadly.. I think I should definitely add one to make it feel more complete. Also, I would have liked to add a logo transition.. for example having the umbrella in the corner and there being a 2 second transition of the umbrella going across and dragging a black screen. After Effects seemed like a complicated software in the begining but after a few tutorials it was actually fairly simple. It always takes a while to get used to a software after working with one for awhile.

Life Drawings

Every second week we did life drawing to improve our knowledge of human anatomy and drawing skills. I found that it was extremely helpful and I learnt a lot in each session. I need to stop being so tentative with the postures and maybe do more gesture drawings in my spare time to understand general postures and alignment. I always found feet difficult to draw and tended to avoid it in life drawing which is another thing I think I should start practicing in my spare time. 

Mazed Project

We were given a project to animate a short folktale based in Cornwall for the Mazed project http://www.mazedtales.org/  which would be created for an iPhone app. We were given a short period of time and a lot of work so there was constant stress throughout the whole project.
When we were first given the project and assigned our groups we discussed who would take on what role and played around with character design ideas. I was one of the animators on this particular project, working on the kitchen scene, mining scenes, the knocker's eyes and the picking up and dropping of the food.
As the animation would be played on a small screen we figured it would be best to have the animation made in a very simple style with bright colors contrasting with a watercolor background.


There were many complications throughout the whole project.. people falling behind on deadlines, technical difficulties, lack of organisation. All in all considering the time and knowledge of the softwares I think we ended up creating a good final piece. We redid the piece a few times to perfect it before sending it to the production company.. there are still some things that could do with adjusting, for example the fairly noticeable difference between the two animator styles. As dan,the other animator, and I worked separately but still using our director's designs we ended up with the main character looking slightly different so it is clear the final animation was done by numerous people. We could have avoided that by making it simpler-having it in a cut-out style and having all the assets ready and then animated later.

Here is the E4 sting I animated.. I liked the idea of it and really do wish I had a little more time to work on it. I ran out of time and so the timing just doesnt seem right towards the end, a bit sped up but nonetheless I'm still quite happy with how it turned out in the end considering everything.

We were given a short 2 week project working on an ident for the E4 channel. The first week we had to do design sheets, a storyboard and an animatic using a chosen 10 second sound clip. At the end of the first week we were told to swap our projects with someone else so in the end I had to animate someone else's idea and they animated mine. In all honesty, that was a bit unnerving but in the end I came round and started working on someone else's. 

It was difficult working on this considering the time I had.. I wanted to add more details in the tentacles, make them have a more fluid flow so to speak. There was a problem when it came to exporting the animation from flash so I ended up losing 45 seconds.. I will keep trying to export it and upload it when I can. I'd also quite like to actually animate the one I designed and enter it into the competition later on this year. I had originally planned to make it a stop motion and make the creatures out of paper mache and gears and have it set on glass layers (similar to how the animation mykonos-grandchildren was created). I thought it would be too much to ask someone else to do create it as I originally planned so just told the person to animate it in flash.

First Showreel is up!

It's been a hectic couple of months but learned many things, here is a compilation of everything I've done. I will be making improvements to the animations (in particular the 3D animations) and look forward to the next semester.

Picking Objects up

This one was difficult but interesting. I enjoyed learning new techniques (i.e using constraints in maya) and experimenting with the movements of the rig. It was interesting creating polygons and seeing how I can make the rig react with the surroundings. 

To further improve this I'd make his movements more natural, perhaps moving his body slightly to indicate breathing, having him blink.. just making him look more realistic. I had to redo this one a few times cause it was getting complicated but it was simple complications in reality. I made more problems in my head than there actually were. I want to improve my sense of timing when using maya, I still find the dope sheets hard to use and same goes with the graph editor.

Maya Walk Cycle.

Animating Burt walking wasn't tooo bad but there is something I'd like to adjust given the chance to work on it again.. He has a slight 'limp' in his step. I want to make a smoother walk cycle and also try out different walks, for example a slow, lazy walk.. a feminine walk, one with a little 'hop' in his step and so on. The more I use maya the more interested I get in it and the more I want to learn but I just need to find the right pace for myself and take it at that speed. 

I'd also like to adjust the tips of Burt's toes to give his walk a bit more character. 

Ball Drops in Maya.

Using Maya I animated a ball doing a regular bounce and then one with 'character'. In all honesty Maya is a difficult software for me to understand but slowly and surely I will get there. I feel like I can improve both of them in different ways. The regular drop needs to have a smoother bounce and look more natural, same goes with the second bounce. I had more problems with the second bounce actually.. The program kept lagging a bit and then I ended up getting the timings wrong, the more I tried to fix it the more it seemed to mess up. I realised the bounce the ball makes to reach the arch is too slow and I'd like to redo this very soon and correct the timings. 

Character Positions!

With a given rig, eleven, I had to demonstrate different emotions through positions. At first I couldn't figure out how to change the positions of the individual fingers or things like how to shut the eye lids. The more I played around with the rig the more I got into it. I'd like to explore this more and try animating the eleven rig showing emotions. I think to improve the positions I could slightly exaggerate certain aspects to give more of a feel for it.. for example, the 'frightened' position, I could have had him bent further back, shrink his pupils, make his mouth drop more. 

Frightened.

Hap-hap-Happy.

'Stress sir, it's a killer'

Sleepy.