Franklin_v03 New Rig

Found this cool new rig today called Franklin. I've been having a a bit of a play with it and have also been looking at the new rendering software in Maya 2017 called Arnold, still not sure how to work it properly yet, I'll do some more research. Looking forward to using this rig in the future.

Here is a quick pose I've done with him

You can find the rig at: https://artella.leadpages.co/artella-character-giveaway/

Personal Character design

Something a bit different, here is a quick character design idea I came up with for a character called Hogabu. I thought I would share this as I was really happy with my progress I've made with Photoshop CC since I started using it only last year.

11 second club final version

After looking at the previous version I upload I couldn't take the fact that the lip sync was slightly out of sync, so I've gone through the video and managed to work out that I rendered the same frame but in different cameras, this meant the camera spent too much time on Mery before moving onto Mr Buttons, this meant that anything that Mr Buttons said would be out of sync.

This was an easy problem to fix as I only had to go through my frame files and work out how many frames I went over, all I had to do then was to put the video into Premiere Pro CC and take out the excess amount of frames.

I'm glad I gave myself some time to go back and sort this problem out, enjoy the final version

Once again many thanks to the people who made the rigs and environment I used.

The Rigs I used for this animation can be found at:

http://www.meryproject.com/download

http://www.bloomsbury.com/cw/cartoon-character-animation-with-maya/student-resources/mr-buttons/

Also a big thanks to the people who made the Animator Starter Pack V2, you can find the scene file at https://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scene-files/c/animator-starter-pack-v2-full-pack

Rendered in Renderman

Art Nouveau style Alphonse Mucha

Our first task for Pre-production was to look at an art era and find an artist from that time and copy their art style. For me I was given Art Nouveau. Through doing some research I found an intriguing artist called  Alphonse Mucha.

I loved his art nouveau style posters which he had created over his life time, especially his one called 'Flirt'.
I took this painting and tried to recreate it within Photoshop which was a good success, though recreating it I've looked more into the warmth of this poster and the recreation of the perfect utopia within his poster. His use of warm yellows with the light greens of nature bring together a relaxing clarity of peace.

Here is the original and my recreation of the poster.      

11 Second Club final

Here is the final version for my 11 Second Club, if I had more time I wish that I could look again at the Lip Sync on Mery as it is still too fast between the op[en and close phases. I also believe that the Cat's lip sync is a bit out on the final render due to the way I put the sequences together. Apart from that I'm pretty happy with it, I have learnt a lot from doing this and I hope to do more in the future.

Many thanks to the people who made the rigs I used.

The Rigs I used for this animation can be found at:

http://www.meryproject.com/download

http://www.bloomsbury.com/cw/cartoon-character-animation-with-maya/student-resources/mr-buttons/

Also a big thanks to the people who made the Animator Starter Pack V2, you can find the scene file at https://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scene-files/c/animator-starter-pack-v2-full-pack

Rendered in Renderman

The Rush Job

First task of the year that we were given was a collaboration exercise between the animation students and at TV students, our task was to create a Christmas Advert for a made up company. The catch was that we had 4 days to put together a presentation and an anamatic for a 1 min advert. Our team worked very well, we met up every day to go over details of the script our writer had written and also to look over the storyboard in progress. A few changes were made over the days but we all worked well to fix and agree on things quickly. Due to only having 4 days, we were literally working till the last minute to get the anamatic ready for showing.

Our story was of a Fisherman at sea who is trying to find his way home, after surviving a horrible storm he reaches for his only picture of his daughter but sadly it gets blown out of his hand, but he suddenly sees a strange light in the distance, after following it he finds himself at a lighthouse in which he enters and try's to find out who turned on the light. When reaching the top he finds his daughter who has made a huge light out of many lamps (product from the company). She had done this to guide him home for Christmas.

Here is our anamatic after the 4 days, if I had more time I would of loved to add more shading and also looked more into the cinematography side of our shots to enhance the experience.      

11 second club update 0.4

Today I've been trying to go over the lip sync of Mery and finding it a bit difficult, the problem which I've found is that I've tried to add in all the close and open shapes when really when talking fast the lips would have quick movements between each letter but would not close due to the speed of the talk, I've tried to adapt this in some places but there is still alot of work to do.
I've also added a bit more motion to the eyes and head in some parts of the animation to try and bring a distressed feeling more forward.

I've also started on the second piece of lip sync, this is still in early stages but so far I believe its going well, I love the little hand moment I've managed to put in, I want to add handcuffs to Mr Buttons to suggest that he is trying just to be nice to be set free by the other character.

I'm planning to have this finished and ready to render by next week.  

11 second club update

Quick update, lip sync added !!!!

11 Second Club September progress

Here is an update of my progress so far, I've managed to move out of blocking stage and I'm starting now to add the last through touches for the body movement. There is still some work that needs to be done on the arm and figure moments as this area still seems a bit robotic. Also the figures also seem a bit out of place, I need to work a lot more on the thumb placement as there are a few random twitches which are still happening with it and it doesn't seem to flow with the rest of the hand. Once I've tweaked this I'm going to start on the first pass of the lip sync.  

11 second club September

I have now started blocking out an animation for the 11 second club, this months dialog is from Spy (2015).

I've started on the first part of the speech but it is still early days, should make some progress during next week.