The year in reflection

Just submitted my work! Wow.

It's been an incredibly gruelling term (and more to the point year) and I've literally had no sleep the past 2 weeks to ensure I'm as far along with the project as I could be.

The bottom line is we were unable to finish the film for submission, which both myself and Guy were annoyed about. We had animated about 30 shots altogether over the past few weeks, and I think we did pretty decently especially considering we were just a group of 2 people (with some additional help for 4 shots from Nick and Joe from the second year!). As for submission I'm disappointed with how it turned out as the shots I submitted in my folders were not what I'd consider the standard of work I can actually achieve. A lot of the shots were reworked upon quite a few times because I didn't have the right mindset when working on them. It's best to animate "slowly" and calmly but I panicked quite a few times which caused the quality of animation to suffer.

We had a few compatibility problems when Guy gave me his shots to render, the problems we were having were related to the 2012 mental ray and caused all of Guys shots to become over saturated when rendered. This halted things a bit because I had to find a workable solution, and I eventually did. What seemed to fix this was to render the master layer out as Maya Software, and luckily the ambient occlusion wasn't affected by this weird glitch. In terms of the rendering I was initially going to render off the shots with the renderfarm at college but the renderfarm was having a lot of issues and I later decided to do it on my home computer, which luckily doesn't take too long to render with.

I sadly doubt we'll get the film done for the degree show now, aside from a quick 30 second trailer demonstrating some of the "finished" work in rendered form. I will be still animating all week as much as I can, but there's a lot I want to do to some of the shots I've already animated. I believe we can finish the majority of the shots by thursday but the rendering and sound are the biggest reasons it wont get done for then. This is incredibly disappointing but it WILL be done for Skillset since it gives us a few more weeks to work on the film and finesse what we have. We've got to both maintain the pace we've had over the past few weeks whilst also going through every shot with as much attention to detail we can. I'll be working heavily under schedule and ensure the film is to a great standard for the 10th July which would be just in time for Skillset.

So what would I do if I had the chance to start from scratch? Well for starters I'd have a larger group of people working on the film, which I did try to get in the first term but most people were already taken by other groups. If this was the case we would've been able to speed up the process a bit because we'd have a dedicated team working on it like a few of the other groups. Alternatively having a small group made the film feel far more personal and meant I only had to rely on Guy and myself (and the additional people who made a few assets for the film). I've also learnt directing really isn't for me (at least not yet).

Aside from the problems it's been a great year and it's such a shame these 3 years are up. It's been a pleasure working with some great people which will make leaving even harder.

A day before submission and another shot finished!

I managed to "finish" Shot 4 of the film! And I'm actually somewhat happy with how it's turned out.

I managed to get it blocked out this morning and this was the result.



From there I soon managed to spline the animation and went into the graph editor to ensure it all looked decent enough. You will notice the wing feathers mess up occasionally and that's sadly a problem with the rig. Clym told me a way to fix this so I'll have to do it to all the shots which feature the problem.



I'm happy with how this has turned out and I believe it is essentially finished aside from an extra level of polish.

Shot 20 and Shot 23

I've literally just started work on this shot and so far I'm happy with the movement of Ernest (the egg!) however neither of the chicks have been given any attention at all in this shot, which is why they're both at a very early stage. I've ensured this shot fits in nicely with what I had animated for shot 24 and so far the timing seems to be fine between the two shots!



I've also animated shot 20 but currently Tate and Taren are both "placeholders" and will be reanimated in the near future. I'm not entirely sure what movement I want from either character yet which is why it's at such a basic state at the moment. Along with their animation I'm not at all happy with the camera movement yet, so I may very well place the camera in the same position as shot 23. I added the camera movement to test how it would look but in reflection I don't like it at all.

Shot 11

I recently went back and looked at the old version of shot 11 (which was once known as shot 7) and I discovered it really didn't flow with shot 12 at all.

Because of this I started to re-animate the shot today.

I really don't have time editing it anymore, but rest assured it will be far more polished down the line. I'm also thinking it'll have to be a bit longer than it currently is but I'll have to see when I do a playblast edit of the entire film.

Compositing breakdown

Breakdown of the rendered shots below!

Shot 1

Master layer



Ambient Occlusion



After Effects



Shot 14
=
Master layer



Ambient Occlusion




After Effects



Shot 27

Master layer



Ambient Occlusion



After Effects



Shot 37

Master layer



Ambient Occlusion




After Effects




I didn't want to go too technical when it came to rendering of the film as both myself and Guy wanted to tell a good story along with showcasing good animation. But I've attempted to ensure the film has a nice soft and appealing look which (hopefully!) will blend nicely with our story and animation style.

Shot 24 and 25

Here's the latest version of Shot 24! I've simplified it from last time and I think it looks a bit better. Before it had more body movement, with Tate stepping back as Ernest was falling on him but I really didn't like how it flowed after further inspection. I think it's far better to keep this and other shots in the film simple so that I can tweak it far easier at a later stage.



Shot 25 is slowly getting there as well, but I think I need to add a bigger impact on Tate when Ernest falls on him.



I will still need to go in and finesse these shots but they both work in sequence with each other thankfully!

In other news E&E has been submitted! Woo.

Shot 37

Ok here's the work on Shot 37 so far and I must say I'm happy with how it's turning out!

I recreated the walk cycle that Guy had created because it didn't quite fit with the camera angle annoyingly, but I did use his shot heavily for reference. Once that was done I added in the fall and also added in the run cycle that I used for the previous shot.



The slide was a lot of fun to do and it reminded me as to why I want to get into the industry!

Since working on shot 39 I've cut shot 38 from the film (which I luckily hadn't started yet), this is because I soon learnt when animating this shot that it works best without shot 38 being there. Shot 38 was a shot from in front of Tate having just stopped showing Taren running directly behind him, it really wasn't needed and it doesn't break the flow at all.

Render stills

Here are a 4 render stills from the film!

These 4 shots were the only shots I've rendered from the film so far.

The look I wanted on the film was something that was very clean and not too over saturated on the eyes.

Shot 1



Shot 14



Shot 27



Shot 37

Sorting through all of the shots

I requested all of Guy's shots so far so that I could add in the environment into all of them, and so far so good!

It halted the progress of animation but it needed to be done. I only decided to do it today because the main scene file light and setup wasn't quite ready yet.

9th June update!

Just over a week to go till submission, am I stressed? You bet!

We've been given another few days to work on the film after the submission, which means the deadline for the film is the 23rd instead of the 17th. I've worked out the film will not be finished for the 17th, and to be quite frank I'm glad since it means I can work on tweaking things more without rushing at all.

I've started rendering out the background for a majority of the shots which will save time, and since we've essentially been given another week I have a bit more time to finesse the animation for the film. Once it's what I deem as good enough then I'll start rendering the characters, which will (if all goes to plan) begin this weekend.

In other news I was today sadly informed by Joe that he'll not be able to do the 2 additional shots I set him, but instead just 1 of those shots. I trust what he produces will be good, but either myself or Guy will have to take it into our own hands to produce the other shot I sent him. Nick has started work on his shot (shot 19) and I've already given my thoughts on what needs to be worked upon.

Shot 36

I'm not happy with the wings of Tate yet but as a whole it's getting there.

If I get the time I may come back and make the shot a lot less consistent in movements, with occasional flapping of the wings to show he's attempting to fly.

Currently as of yet Taren has yet to be animated for the shot.

Shot 12

Shot 12 has been a shot that has deeply frustrated me.

I believe the movement of Taren (left) seems to be fine, however I've never been able to get the look and feel of Tates movements perfect. This is the third time I've reanimated his movements and it's causing a lot of frustration to me, I know it's not perfect and I really want to go in and sort it out but it's proving difficult.



I'll be taking reference footage of myself to get the animation of Tate down perfectly, but I really doubt I'll have the time to do this before submission sadly this is because I really do want to get the majority of the shots blocked out by submission if I can. It's also sometimes best to come back to shots after a few days if it causes frustration.

Shot 21

Here's the progress of shot 21 so far! It's getting there, but I just need to ensure it fits in perfectly with the soon to be animated shot 20!

Update: 3rd June

All of the shots have been blocked out in one way or another, and 10 of my 24 shots are "finished". I will be going back and editing the shots when I get the time, but it's far more important to go through them all first to a basic stage. The 10 shots I've animated have taken roughly 2 weeks to do, and in getting into the mood of animating again I'm getting faster at doing it again. If I can get the shots finished by the end of next week that'd be superb.

As for rendering I've been rendering off the environments for some shots, which I'll show this weekend. Since most shots are static in the film I'll be rendering the characters on a separate layer, which is good because it gives me the chance to render off a large bulk of the film already.

I do believe we'll get the film finished in time for the degree show, but if we can't we'd have to settle for Skillset. Getting it done for the degree show however is my main priority, but of course I want to make sure the quality is good enough.

Unlike the films from last year I wont be rendering the film in HD, instead I'll be rendering the film in 576p. In the future after the degree I will re-render the film in HD, but I really don't want to waste time when I could be working on the animation some more.

My folders are essentially there, and I have 2 weeks to ensure they're at the best quality they can be. The animation folder is my main folder, and the other 2 folders are very much full up.

Time to crack on again!

Finished branch

Here's the finished branch!

All that needs to be done now is to place it into the shots both myself and Guy have been animating for the film!

I'd like to thank Marios for UV Mapping the branch which enabled me the chance to give the branch a texture!

Shot 22

Here's the progress of shot 22 so far



It's slowly getting there I believe, but I really do feel the character is missing something.

I'll be taking reference footage of myself for this shot along with shot 21 to get the best possible level of subtly and also so that the audience will be able to easily tell what's going on with the shot.

Aims for today: 1st June

I aim to get 3 additional shots animated today, which would mean a huge chunk of my animation would be completed! I've just got to ensure all of my shots are finished by the end of the week if possible, and that next week I can spend tweaking and finessing the animation to perfection.

I'll be posting up my updates for the 3 shots today, which in my opinion are all somewhat hard shots. If I were able to get more shots animated today that'd be great, but I'd rather put my focus on these three.