The Presenter

I decided to start this one while the first task of the module is still in progress just to get them all up and running and to give me something else to work on.

Christmas break isn't quite going to plan this year so I have more time than I expected of time to fill seen as it looks like I may not be making the journey home. Damn you snow! So to distract me I have chosen my audio clip for the presenter task. It's the from the comedy sketch by Rowan Atkinson called 'Welcome to Hell', which can be heard and viewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAGNuZTXONU

After giving it some though my idea is to construct an environment of hell and make my presenter look like the more stereotypical devil. I'm thinking a bit of red lighting, and some nice bits of mist too... though I think making the scene look pretty will have to be something I look into if there's time at the end.

First plan is to make a few sketches and shoot my own reference footage after playing the audio over quite a few times and getting a feel for it. I'm also going to begin work on the environment.

In the meantime, here's a really awesome 2D short I watched the other day. As an artist as well as an aspiring animator I thought this was really amazing.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Lip Syncing

So I made a start on one of the tasks for the new module. I also took some time to read through the relevant section on lip syncing and facial animation from a few of the animation books I currently have before I started just to get a general idea of what I was doing and how to tackle it.

The audio I selected is as follows:

"This is the end, the absolute end!'

Not very long, but long enough. The story I chose to betray for the piece was a father scolding his teenage son/daughter. 

I began by blocking in some basic lip sync to establish the right timing for the open and closes of the mouth shapes, as well as the wide and narrows.

I also put together a basic scene of a room with a chair, table and various items to give the impression that the man had been sitting up all night. Attempted some sort of lighting set up as well, but not too happy with that but I think I'll leave that until the actual animation is done and dusted.

I filmed some footage of myself sitting at my desk and performing to the dialogue to use as reference for my animation and then blocked in some head movements and some simple animation on the body and arms after positioning my character to be sitting at the table.

So far so good! Now to work more into the lip sync, tweak the timing and get some more expressions going... looks a bit weird at the moment cos his eyes are unfocused, there's no eye brow movement and his face is just blank, haha!

Animation Practice 2

This is our next module, which is made up of three assignments, building on and developing from what we did in the previous animation one module.

For this our three tasks include:

1. A Lip Sync Exercise
2. Animate and Lip Sync a comedy sketch
3. A Song and Dance performance piece

A selection of audio tracks for each have been provided though you can chose your own if approved.

We can tackle these as we please, but I think I'm going to begin with the basic Lip Sync exercise to start just to get to grips with it as I have only ever done one lip sync prior to this and that was around two years ago now O_O Time to did out Jason Osipia's 'Stop Staring' book again to refresh I think, along with a few others.

End of Module 1

I handed in all my work tasks for the Animation Practice 1 module today which included the final attempts of all my tasks.

I managed to work my lift animation to a satisfactory standard. From my previous post I checked all my arcs on the various body parts by turning on tranjectories so I could see the curves. I did the obvious parts like the pelvis, torso, head, feet and hands and then moved on to the knees and elbows, which strangely enough had the most work. When this was done the animation seemed to flow a lot smoother. However, I did have to make some further adjustments then to the position of the elephant during the walk and as a result fix the positioning of the hands. Lastly I then moved onto the Elephant and animated the segments of the trunk so it would move as a result of the lift and the walk. For fun I also added a pink bow to the head of the character rig to match the elephant ^__^ hehe! I was pretty pleased with the end result, though I do think it could have been pushed further, but I didn't want to end up overworking it and losing the appeal it currently had.

This is the final:

Task 7: Lift (Final) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

I also made a final render with a few more adjustments to me ball with a tail animation. This was another example of an animation that could have been a lot better. If I'd managed to put together a more successful rig at the start I think the ball would have had a lot more weight (as discussed in a previous post). As it is, I did the best I could with what I had. Maybe I'll re-attempt something similar in future using the improved ball rig.

Task 3: Ball with Tail (Final Attempt) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.