Due to working to get everything finished to a satisfactory level before this weekend I've been animating and not posting any works in progress. Luckily I did manage to get this piece done in time to submit it into the competition yesterday. Also as my family are visiting this weekend I also had to get the Mime finished up as best I could as well.
Anyway, from my previous post where I established my idea, these are my development videos.
Initial Block
Camera Tests
I set up two other cameras to look at possible angles to capture the two characters to see which would be best to capture both their attitudes to each other.
I did make a previous block before this one, where the sitting guy reacted slightly differently when he spoke, using a hand gesture when he says 'How's that again?'. I showed this to the class though, and from feedback it was suggested that a more toned down reaction with the character being more dis-interested would suit the piece better.
So i went home filmed some more reference and altered my block.
Developed Block with Camera Cuts
In this block I decided to experiment with the new camera angles and possible cuts in the piece more than anything. I also worked more on the lip sync and facials and developed some of the poses and actions.
Work in Progress 1
Developed the camera a bit in this to reduce the number of angles while still keeping the same amount of cuts. Worked some more on the lip sync and facials and added in some hand animation, focusing my attentions mainly on the sitting guy.
Work in Progress 2
Tightened up the animation some more, added in some breakdowns poses to make the animation smoother.
Work in Progress 3
Developed the facials more. Set up a better lighting system and fixed up some bits of the scene. Added in the rest of the inbetweens and tidied up the hand animation for both characters.
Work in Progress 4
Started working on the animation splines, reduced the camera cuts down after feedback and re-did some areas of lip sync for the guy in red which I wasn't satisfied with.
Final
From feedback I tweaked the cut lengths slightly, toned down the yellow guys head movement and fixed up his eye movement and also adjusted his reaction to the point to start later as he was initially moving a bit too early. I also made some offsets here and there and tweaked his end pose slightly.
Overall Thoughts
All in all I'm pretty pleased with this piece. I particularly like the guy in yellow who I really enjoyed animating. I found his reaction an amusing one to try and capture. I enjoyed animating the two characters actually and I think the overall results captures the right attitudes I wanted for both of them. It could probably do with a few more passes to tighten it up more and get more of a polish on it but I wanted it done in time for the competition deadline and I'd also like to move on to the next module now and focus my attentions on my final piece.
I enjoyed using the Dee rig too. I had much less trouble with it than the Max rig, not one gimbal error occurred in the whole animation! Woo!
I think an area my work could really improve from, is better rendering! It's not as important as the animation but presentation is definately an important factor in pieces for a showreel. I'm going to look into this during the new module, pre-production so I'll be able to get a much better result when it comes to rendering my animated short. I could always re-render these pieces then at a later stage.
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