Extended Practice:Evaluation

This project was a roller coaster. I set really high standards for myself, not really knowing what i was getting myself into. It started out alright, I set myself up with a schedule and a project plan, hoping to keep myself adhering to  a schedule. Slowly I began to fall behind, and more and more mistakes started popping up. I wanted to try out a new experimental technology, as well as keep my focus on character design, but balancing these two objectives was difficult to say the least.
I have everything set up for a 360 degree render for my animation, but i'm not going to submit with it, due to various drawbacks including render time and quality of the animation itself. There's some caching errors involving some of the hair sets, which i will fix as soon as possible in order to get ready for the exhibition. I feel as though if i wanted to get this project done on time and under budget, I probably should have worked with a partner that would help with putting everything together. I did work and commission out other people, but it would have been nice to have someone working alongside me for the entire duration of this project. I managed, however. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and knuckled down and finished my project by the deadline, which i'm very proud of.
The logistics of shortening a 4 year work cycle down to 4 months is nothing to be ashamed of. I will continue to aspire to new heights, and I will polish this project up in order to get it ready for display. I ended up applying for an extension on this and another project, and i feel like that truly gave me a chance to get this done for deadline. Due to various circumstances beyond my control, I had to stay an extra week in Chicago for a family matter. I would have traveled back to Leeds if this had not occurred, and that put me behind a full week in production. That, along with having to balance my jet lag with work set me back a good amount. Still, I wouldn't get where I am today without some help from friends and colleagues.
I got the chance to work with some really interesting people, as well as friends i had been wanting to collaborate with for a while now. I got the chance to work with my friend Jalen, a practicing actor based in Chicago. He wrote the script and did all the voice acting and motion capture reference. He was the perfect choice to act as the Viking character, and i wouldn't have preferred anyone else over him for this role. He always got done the things I needed him to, on time and under budget.
I also got to work with a really great 3D artist, Thomas Parker. Hes the guy that put together the environment for my animation, and he made it in the exact specifications I asked him to, which was amazing. He even provided me with differential and normal maps for the  mountain ranges he gave me which added a nice depth to the animation itself.
I got to work with a second year animation student as well, Dan Goodman. He provided me with 3D assets for my scene. If he didn't help, I wouldn't have the fire I needed for my animation. He's very adept at Maya, so he also helped me along with some other things as well. I wouldn't have fixed my face rig if it wasn't for him.
Another great artist I got the chance to collaborate with is Jela Mckinney. She went to my Arts high school, and It was really great seeing how her art style has evolved over the years. I commissioned her to provide me with 2D sprite assets for my fire animation. Her art truly adds to the overall project, providing imagery to the story the viking tells in the animation. I don't think it would have the same feeling if they weren't in the animation.
So I might have not had the chance for a full collaboration with another artist for the entire duration of the project, but a lot of different minds and efforts went into the making of this animation.
This, along with the great help that my instructors gave me provided me with the ability to see this project out until the end. I'd like to thank everyone who helped me along with this, as i probably wouldn't have gotten it done without their help.
I do plan on polishing this animation. I will be re-recording the dialogue as well as the facial motion capture, this time simultaneously so that I wont get any lip sync errors I'm going to re-cache the hair so it doesn't fly around and act buggy over the entire animation, and i'm also going to finally export this as a 360 video, all in preparation for the Exhibition Week.
Overall, this project gave me a lot to think about in terms of how i want to go forward with 3D animation. I want to focus on character design, but rigging is extremely tedious and mind numbing. So I think I might prefer to just do character modelling for the foreseeable future. I may go back into it, I think for right now, a break from 3D might be needed, as I'm completely exhausted and I haven't touched my sketchbook in weeks. Still, I don't regret doing this project at all.and given better circumstances, I could see myself doing something like this again. Still, for right now I want to focus more on 2D animation rather than 3D, and I've got a commission lined up that will let me do just that. These past three years have given me so much knowledge, and I'm endlessly grateful for the opportunity to study here. Going on from here, I have amassed all the experience and ability to become a proper animator, and I'm excited to see what I can provide to the world.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.14

Today I managed to get almost everything done for turn in. I finished half of the final after effects project, and I also managed to render out all 3834 frames of my animation. Ill be adding some buffers for the title and end sequences, but overall this should be done on time. I ran into a couple bumps over the week. I forgot to cache my hair files, so all the renders i made over tuesday night werent working properly. So i had to start over wednesday on 20 computers all around the school. They were rendering out all day, right up until closing time for the school. I have all the audio files set and ready to go, all i need is to put them together and render out my final video. I'm going ahead and making a 1920x1080 animation for submission, however i will be making a full 360 video for exhibition week.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.13

I managed to get a lot done this week, I fixed the eye controls, as well as putting together the fluid systems for both the fire and the ocean. One of the teachers suggested that I cache the objects, which ive done now. Hopefully over the weekend i can finish the new hair system and render everything out over the weekend. I got the extension, so my final deadline is now May 18th. I dont think i would have passed if i didnt get one, so im really glad the school decided to alleviate some pressure.  

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.12

I managed to get the face Re-targeted onto my model by today. I'm still behind, and i need to remake my hair systems since the older ones got deleted. Its probably for the best anyway, since im going to need to make it not clip with the body model. The face retargeter had some trouble reading the expressions on his face, and I cant get the eyes working for some reason. Im going to go over my control systems and see if anything is amiss, but i might have to leave the eyes unanimated. I managed to finish the environment today, everythings set up in place. I wasnt able to make a forest out of modeled trees, so i ended up making sprites instead. They look just as good from the camera perspective, so it'll save render time at least.I also commissioned out one of my artist friends from back home to make me some sprite images for my animation. She accepted, and im waiting on getting those assets so i can add them to the final product.
I decided to go ahead and ask for an extension, since i probably wont be getting this done on time for may 11th. I figure my grounds are acceptable, considering the circumstances, which i wont go into on here. I figure if i get an extra week for both my modules i should be able to get everything done on time. They should be in session today anyway, so ill get my answer soon enough.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.11

This past week has been rough. My sleeping schedule has been all over the place, so im working at home a lot of the time. But since my laptop is the only thing that can use faceware tech plugins, thats alright for the time being. But things cant continue like this, or else i'm going to have to ask for an extension. I managed to finish the analyzer process. Next i need to figure out how to retarget my animation onto my rig. However, im afraid that it might not retarget properly, so im apprehensive about dong it.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.10

I had originally planned to go back to Leeds by now, however, There have been family matters i need to attend to, so I'm staying an extra week. Last Saturday I finished recording for the facial motion capture. It doesn't line up with the dialogue completely. Something tells me I should have recorded video while in the studio, in order for them to match up, but this will have to suffice. Next monday I'll be flying back to Leeds, and im going to have to go directly back to work. I cant afford to wait a few days for my jetlag to get better, since im already behind as is.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.9

I finished in the recording studio, and I also got a quote for the motion capture of the body. Its going to be somewhere around 3000 dollars, but in order to get this project done on time, i need this. Since im not in school, and i cant use the in house body capture tech, this is my only option. The sound recording went really well, and i'm looking forward to updating my animatic with the actual dialogue for my animation. I messed around with marvellous designer, a program used to make clothing for 3D models. However, it seems really complicated and i think im just going to hardmodel the clothing onto my character. Maybe if i learn how to use clothing patterns, i can come back to this at a later date.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.8

This week i managed to start modelling the body. Most of the week was me recovering form the jetlag however, so I couldnt get as much work done as I should have. I've been looking around online for local recording studios, as well as a body mocap studio. Next week hopefully i'll be able to set up an appointment with a recording studio.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.7

Today I managed to make most of the blendshapes on my rig. Ill be taking the next week off to go to Lille, since im attending a workshop at Ankama studios for Projection Mapping. I would like to get more work done, but I asked to go on this trip a while ago and theres only 3 other people going, so I feel like i should. After I get back I'll be going straight back to chicago, where I'll be getting my recording done for both the audio, and both the face and body mocap. I have a former classmate, Jalen Rios whos a practicing actor and writer. My other writer fell through, so h'es going to write and act the script. I have trust in his abilities, since ive seen him both write and act.

I also got back the environment from Thomas, along with normal and differential maps.  They look really good and im looking foreward to using them in my project.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.6

Ive started rigging the face. Its been a while since ive last done this so its a little hard to grasp, but i think i'm managing.

I've also made the geometry for the eyes, the tongue, the teeth, and the brows. I had to redo them because Mat told me that i did them wrong. Again. Trial and error is the basis of maya though, so its not as if i didnt expect this. I copied all the controllers off the test rig for the faceware tech application. So hopefully it wont have a hard time learning how the rig works. 

I also finished a full hair test. hopefully this will look somewhat like what the final animation is going to be.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.5

I had to restart my head model. Apparently i made it with the wrong geometry so i had to restart from scratch. At least i can streamline the things i did right, so it wont  take as long as it did the first time.

I've started experimenting with different hair methods. I want him to have braids on his beard and the back of his head. I tried xgen, but modelling braids with that hair system is extremely difficult. so i decided on either nhair or hardmodeled hair over his head. as of right now im leaning more toward nhair. 

Dan got back to me with the asset design. I like the fireplace, but i might look online for a tree, since he didnt manage to get the species i wanted for the environment i plan on this being in. Still, the fire will be very useful. 

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.4

I've begun work on the head mesh for my character. Mat told me about working with a facial recognition mapping program called Faceware Tech. It would automatically rig and re-target my animation onto fully modeled Rig. I wanna try and mocap the entire thing if i can, so i can focus more on directing and character design. Annabeth told me an application i can use called Domemaster 3D, which lets me export stereoscopic images into a 360 degree video. I wanna use this instead of fully integrating it into a game engine, so that i'll be able to fall back on just submitting a 1920x1080 animation if things go sour.

I made my head using the basic head model in mudbox and setting it to the attributes I need it to be. Im going to do the same thing with the body, hopefully.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.3

Rosie was too busy to help with my project. But Dan will be giving me some 3D assets for me to work with in my animation. Thomas Parker, an erasmus student from viscom is helping to create the environment. he said he will be able to get it done hopefully in about 1-2 weeks. I started working on the geometry for the head, Ill give an update on how it goes next week.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.2

Today I've reached out to some of the second years to see if they wanted to help me create assets for my animation. So Far ive gotten a yes and a maybe, and I just need to put together a few rough files to help them along with my vision. I have Dan in Second year helping with asset models and lighting effects, and I'm also trying to get Rosie from second year to help with creating the environment. Hopefully i'll be able to do so.

Extended Practice: Project Management Pt.1

Recently I have reached out to a few contacts to see if I can outsource some of the project to help alleviate my workload. I called upon one of my friends who wants to become a writer to help me with a script, as well as a few other friends to see if they wanted to voice act for me. Ive gotten responses from all of them and they seem more or less on board.

Extended Practice:Concept Art Pt.4

Here's a few character colourizations of the main antagonist of the story. She is a forest spirit known as the Huldra, and basically is a Scandanavian Siren that lives in the forest. It is said that if you see her back she will kill you, and if she sees you first she will seduce and kidnap you. There is a male equivalent to this creature as well. I plan on her kidnap the VR user and killing them for looking at their back. 

Extended Practice:Concept Art Pt.3

 Here's a few character sketches of the main character. He will serve as a storyteller and narrator of the story. I recently reached out to a few friends to see if they wanted to audition for the role of this character. So far I've asked a friend in Sweden, one of my actor friends from chicago, and i plan on also asking a friend from Norway to see if he wants to give it a shot as well.

Extended Practice:Concept Art Pt.2

I've created rough matte paintings of the environment i want for my animation. Each one represents a direction that the VR user will look in. I meant for this to look like a Scandinavian Taiga, as the characters in the animation are norse themed. I also researched various different types of trees that are within the Scandanavian biomes. I decided to go with a forest of the Norway Spruce. The user will be standing at the precipice of a forest, where the main antagonist is said to dwell. 

Extended Practice:Concept Art Pt.1

I started out trying to make Auroras in the sky. I plan on using this experience to help with the design of the aurora in the maya animation.

Extended Practice: Animation Choice

Over the past month i've been mulling over two ideas for my animation. I've narrowed my idea down to the point where I know i want to make a VR animation, and that i'll be doing the character design. It was either going to be an animation centring around themes of death and watching over a family as they deal with the death of the father in the house. It was going to be erethreal as all the characters would be shadows. The other idea was an animation about a huldra kidnapping a viking and killing them, roughly put. I decided to go with the viking idea, as it would give me a chance for more detailed characters and help push my skills in 3D character modelling considerably.

Evaluation OUAN505

This module was an interesting one. I put off most of the work I had to do since I had so many other animations to work on and I didn't have time to focus on a 5 month long project. I also had enough time to do that since I was tasked with the Production and Post Production of the project. It gave me ample time to do what I needed to without having to become anxious over whether or not I would finish the animation. The only thing I really had to focus with early on was collaborating with my friend on getting a BGM track for the animation, and maybe getting a voice actor to do some narration for it. In the end neither of those ventures ended up producing anything, but I still plan to work with both of those people on a different project. I chalk this one up to some bad communication and planning on both ends.
In terms of production, I had an easy enough time finishing my scenes on time. Each scene brought with it a different challenge and I feel as though I succeeded in each adequately enough. In terms of intercommunication with my team however, I feel as though that left me wanting. I felt as though instead of collaborating with one of my partners, he instead tried to command me to do work and he scolded me when I was taking breaks. Not exactly the best situation to be in but I tried to deal with it maturely enough. I wish there was more of an equal feeling among my partners but that didn't seem to be happening. My other partner was good in terms of teamwork, he gave me good advice and helped me along with some critiques of what I was doing. So it wasn't all bad, but like I said it left me wanting.
I feel like I needed to do some more in terms of Post production. The stuff I dealt with ended up failing halfway through the project so I wish I could have worked more on the post production end of things, but my partner took over some and handled it very well in my opinion.
Overall I would say that this project went on a lot better than my previous partnered project. For one my partners actually got their work done on time, so that was a big plus. I'm not stuck with a half done animation by the end of the module. I don't know whether or not ill be putting these scenes into my showreel but I'm considering it. I like a lot of my other work much more and although Ive warmed up to the idea of an environmental animation, I'm still not sure if I want it to represent my work as a whole. Overall I would say I enjoyed the work in this project but not any more or less than any of my other projects. If you asked me whether or not I would do it differently if I had a second chance, I would probably do some things different, but I like what I did for this and It's good enough to that I can feel proud about what I got done.

Animation Post-Production Pt.8

We all decided to use the Epic Mountain song Into the Wild for our audio track on the animation. Joe contacted them for licensing and got permission to do such and I think the song mixes with the narration very well. to listen to it you can go here:
https://soundcloud.com/epicmountain/sets/direct-music-licencing/s-xWkPQ

Along with that we also decided on what font to use. Although it was the last decision we made I think that the font we used worked very well with our animation the font itself was ADAM from DaFont made by Adam Free. On the website it says that it's free for personal use, so if we wanted to use the font in a commercial setting we would need permission to do such. Since this is a school project however and no such permission is needed we decided to go ahead and use it since it worked so well with our animations aesthetic. We finished the titling and the sound three days before the due date. I'm glad I'm going to be able to enjoy my weekend for once.

Animation Production Pt.8

This is the last and final scene I had to do before I was done with my scenes for this project. It was a scene of a forest fire, which I thought was simple enough to do. I didn't know what I was getting into though. Getting the scene together was easy enough, the hard part was putting in the animated fire everywhere. I had to first cut out all the fire pieces from the vector trace they were made from. Then I had to import them to after effects and put each of them in their own composition. I needed them to be animated so I put each frame down and I realised that it only lasted 8 frames.

I used this technique to make the pre-comp repeat itself after the animation was done. Once I got done with that I had to duplicate each of them, and then change the frame they started on for each of them so I wouldn't have the flames all repeating at the same time. I moved them in and out of the trees, and added a noise effect onto them to make them look like paper. I'm now finished with all the rest of my scenes for this project.

Animation Production Pt.7

 This next shot I had to make was about the logging industry. I needed to show how the logging industry can help attribute to the causes of deforestation. I needed a log so I put in a vector trace into photoshop, since no one decided to laser cut a log for an asset. I wanted it to look realistic so I put in rings on the log and bark on the sides of it. Then I imported it into After effects and got to work on the scene. Luckily I had enough assets to make a chopped forest scene and thats what I put together first.

Then I added the logs by fade in over time so It looked like more and more were piling up as time went on. This scene was done as successfully as I it could have without real paper cut logs being used I think.

Animation Post-Production Pt.7

My friend told me today that he won't be able to get the music done in time for the turn in date. Apparently his computer has been crashing repeatedly whenever he tries to open any of his music software. I'm really bummed that I wasn't able to work with him for this project considering he's my friend but I hope I'll be able to do a project with him sometime in the near future. He told me he's going to work on getting a new computer so he'll be able to work again. I might get him to help me one a project over the summer if I can.

Animation Production Pt.6

I was told that the scene for this was supposed to be a shot of the four pre-comps I did breaking apart into the next shot. I wanted a break from that so I decided to use the earth shot from the beginning of the animation and break it into 4 pieces. I did the other scene just for good measure but I didn't want the scenes to feel like they were repeating. This scene was simple enough to make since joe made the scene in photoshop so I could just chop it up any way I wanted. I just edited the photoshop file and imported the pieces of the earth into after effects. I also decided to make my own space background for the stars. I used a custom brush to make the actual stars and through adding and erasing I managed to get it looking the way I wanted. After that I put in an overlay of colour to the stars of light red and blue. I imported all this into after effects and put the scene together. I don't know if it will be used in the final animation but I like how it looks.

Animation Production Pt.5

 I finished the rest of the forest biomes and pre-comped them into a larger Composition. Callum asked for me to make them come in from all sides and into the frame simultaneously. This part was as simple as moving solids around in After effects. After that was the hard part. I had to sync all the pre-comps together and have them all changing colour at the same time. So I went into each pre-comp and slid the key frames around until they were all starting and ending together. It wasn't difficult so much as it was tasking.

Then I had to sync up all the video with an audio bit for the Outro. I shortened the composition to 15 seconds and had to re-slide all the key frames in place. The end turned out alright.

Animation Post-Production Pt.6

We still haven't figured out a typeface for our animation. But Joe and Callum have figured out a backup plan if my friend doesn't finish the song in time, he told me he would figure out whether or not he will be able to do it by Wednesday of this week so I'll wait and see if he gets it done. Otherwise there hasn't been much going on in terms of post production. Me and Joe have started to put scenes together for the final cut and its been going well.

Animation Production Pt.4

 I've finished the Alpine forest today. I used the same method as I did the first one, but with different assets for it. I had trouble figuring out the placement of the trees, as well as how they would stand out from each other. I used key light to take off some edges that I didn't manage to get when I cut out the images in photoshop back in february. Apart from that it was pretty easy. I made the sky a different colour from the other one just so that they don't blend together.

The only other problem I had was the hue change aspect of the scene. I had to somehow turn these white trees brown and I was having the hardest time doing it. I ended up changing the brightness down so that they looked burnt which I thought was a nice effect.

Animation Production Pt.3

I've started working on the Outro scene since i haven't gotten some of the cutouts i need to finish the first scene. In this scene I was supposed to make 4 different forests, slide them together into the same frame then make them all die out. I just finished the first scene I need for this. I basically did the same thing I did for my last scene, but in a 2D way instead of making it into a parallax shot.



I'm planning to make 4 different types of climates for this scene, just so that they don't all look the same. Im thinking of making two deciduous forests, an alpine forest and a taiga forest.

Animation Production Pt.2

Ive finished the first part of the first scene, and I've started working on the next few parts of it. Initially Callum wanted me to make each of the parts of the scene slide out of view so it looks like paper craft, but Martin said that it took too long for each piece to go out of frame. So instead he's making me do this page turn effect on after effects. This is what it looks like.

 I personally don't like this effect, since it reminds me of a Microsoft movie maker scene changer effect. It just looks really cheesy to me. I wanted to do straight cuts, but apparently its already been decided for me so i'm basically forced to do it. I won't like it but It's easy enough to make it happen. I'd still prefer a straight cut to another scene though.