I had a little extra time on my hands as we near the finish line and after some feedback from the director i added some blood splatters as the wolf carcass i animated in 2D to place over the 3D animation hits the bed:
Sound Recording and Editing
About a week ago Fincher, Sandra and I recorded our voice actors (including myself) for our Going Live project!
Niall Calder as Grandma:
Joseph Black as Little Round Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
Throughout the project Sandra and I have worked closely together on the script, I edited the final version in preparation for recording our voice actors, and Sandra made some notes including ideas for extra ambient sound the actors could provide as improv that may be useful for us in the final editing process.
Sandra and i are currently gathering final foley and slotting in our chosen voice clips in preparation for the final comped version of our film!
It ‘aint over until the fat wolf splats….?
The final shot of our film for Going Live shows the wolf’s corpse sliding off Grandma’s naked body as Little Round Riding hood looks on in horror and then spews in her basket. We debated doing the effect in either 3D or 2D,
A 3D initial test was produced by Olly, and then i added some additional movement to the head and arm, i also modelled temporary rough objects (legs, tail, blood, ribs) in order to make 2D rotoscope easier when the 3D camera moved:
My 2D test i produced in Flash:
To help me animate the gross bloody effect i first looked at David Stodolny’s work on youtube- i admire his animation and especially love that he puts together detailed making-ofs to cover all of his FAQs. I particular i paid attention the the animation of the blood explosion effect he goes over in this video at around 8:00:
2D animation was approved and i produced the final effect in photoshop by keeping to the keys i set out when animating the wolf head and arm (which will remain as 3D animated objects in the final comp), i also added texture to the tail and grandma’s dress. i rotoscoped the 3D camera zoom frame by frame using the 3d objects i created. This is a low-res preview of the animation, which has been handed over for final comp on top of the 3D animated scene.
Going Live: Developing Title Card
I was given the task of designing a title card for our film that will appear in the night sky before the first scene commences.
First i did some research on retro story book title designs…
I especially payed attention to German designs:
I was inspired by some of Rob Ryan’s whimsical cut-paper designs, especially the round ones…
Some of my own sketchy ideas….
I then made up some digital concepts based on my own sketches. I found the fonts for free public use online.
I personally prefer the silhouetted little round design even though it moves away from the german- feel of my other designs… it feels more hand-made and unique to our project, rather than just downloaded fonts…
Going Live Animation progress: Completing My Scenes!
I was given the task to animate Little Round Riding hood’s mouth flapping. There is no specific lipsync, and the camera will be very close-up. There will be “mi-mi-mi” sounds for her voice and the narrator will be translating her speech into english over the top of these.
I experimented with using different 2D expressions at different speeds and consulted my team for quick feedback. The final animation can be slightly sped up or slowed down as required and also cut down since i deliberately made it a little too long (according to animatic time).
I was given the task of animating Little Round’s reaction to her grandmother forcing her way out of the wolf’s body.
I was having trouble getting an expressive enough reaction without any eyes to work with so i filmed some reference of myself, and this gave me the idea of adding secondary action into her shoulders and head to give the reaction more emphasis.
I’m satisfied with my final animation but open to feedback now if others feel like it needs tweaks. The camera still has to be set up and animated.
After overcoming initial problems Scene 1 is now complete and ready for render!
To help me with my 3D animation i’ve been following a tutorial by Ron Friedman on Digital tutors, he has a background in 2D animation and his tutorial was based around animating a sneaking burglar character: both these aspects of the tutorial attracted me. I was hoping to capture something of classic 2D Wil E Coyote in my skinny wolf character, and coming from a 2D background and comfort zone myself i felt familiar with this tutor’s way of thinking. The sneaking burglar character had a lot in common in terms of motive with my skinny wolf aswell!
Going Live Animation progress!
To get started with animating the first scene featuring our skinny Big Bad Wolf, i filmed myself acting out different movements and gestures:
I then expanded on that research by creating 3 versions of basically the same sequence of movements ranging from simple (only 3 main keys) to more complex involving more gestures in-between: resulting in a short, mid-length and long sequence.
My director also gave me some feedback about the acting research i showed him and advised i go with a cartoony “smear” which could be added in as a 2d frame to get the wolf quickly from foreground to background in the same shot.
Short version:
Mid-Length:
Long Version:
Working out the animation- still coming across a few problems:
First of all i’m worried about how far away our wolf is in this shot… as you can see from the playblast… he’s hard to make out… We will discuss adding in a closer- up shot perhaps to make his action at the door of the house clearer.
Also, as you can see the action better in this
I noticed how the tail and foot twist weirdly twice in the sequence… i didn’t key these twists, in-fact they are meant to be pauses…. the keys are the same! i copied one and pasted it to create a pause in the action, the values for the tail controler and foot controls don’t change… i have a feeling this is something to do with the graph editor and i am working on resolving the issue.
Also there are some weight painting issues i believe, and i am working with the group to resolve these on the master model. As there are still some other tweaks to made to the weights around his eyes to allow him some more expression, this mane stretching issue will be added to that tweak list:
Also the animation is only playing through in the perspective window and not in the camera view unless I click through the timeline and this is pretty annoying, i’m also trying to resolve this issue.
Lastly: I’m having a little trouble posing the wolf because he doesn’t have any knee controllers… i have communicated this issue to the group and we are working to resolve this.
Going Live has taken over!
Okay, i’ve been busy working on our going Live project and it’s gone through some major changes! First of all i was in charge of modelling our hybrid character: the wolf eating grandma!, so i used my existing skinny wolf mesh and added a new head around existing Grandma- already modelled by Fincher
UV mapping the hybrid, it then went on to be textured by Fincher.
Texturing my Skinny wolf model! Textures made by Sandra, applied by me
After feedback from our clients, our project assets had to change a little. Little round riding hood was criticized as “not looking finished”. I designed some concepts to add minimal detail to her existing mesh…
i got to work adding some detail to her existing mesh that would help her fit the polished look of my skinny wolf model, which was praised
UV mapping and texturing LRRH’s new details: Apron and bow with improved sleeves and braids. textures made by Sandra, applied by me.
Morphing my hybrid model to make an exaggerated blendshape. I used soft selection and the lattice deformer to achieve a more extreme progression of the big bad wolf’s difficult meal.
We made some serious cuts to the length of our project after feedback from our clients that it was too ambitious to be completed to a high standard giving the time and man-power we have remaining.
The new (much shorter) animatic that i put together!
The group feels a lot more confident about being able to complete the project to a high standard now.
Reflection on Practice:
I need to update this blog more…
The goals thing i was doing has slipped a little, and i really need to pick it up again especially since it’s crunch time for our research module and mid way/ kick off for animating on Going Live, AND me and a few others in my class have decided to go to a 48 hour animation event in Glasgow this coming weekend! http://theanijam.com/
I’m really proud of the commitment i made to perfecting my modelling and texturing for Going Live. But i am still falling behind with tasks that involve stepping out of my comfort zone. So i need to be braver and take these tasks by the horns! Now more than ever i need to stay in control of my production management role since my co-manager has to take some time away from the project.
My personal project has fallen far down my list of priorities which i am not proud of… i hope to pick up the pace on it again this week after conducting some research that links my personal project with my research paper.
Going Live updates
For the past week i’ve been working on adding bits and pieces to my model for our Going Live project. I’ve also been liaising with actors and re-working the animatic according to group feedback.
Going Live and Reflection on Practice
I’m not sure how much i’m allowed to reveal on a public blog, but i feel the need to record the work that i’ve been putting into the Going Live project this semester. For the past 3 weeks my roles have been: 3D modeller and developer for a main character, actor liaison, script editor & story developer and animatic compositor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhBeW4ds30g&feature=youtu.be
I’ve been trying to set realistic goals for myself to complete, both for uni and unrelated, so far this has been helping me feel like i am progressing. I say “realistic” goals because of course i’ve been setting goals, both daily and more long term, for myself for a long time but have always struggled to stick to these goals- i find that often the goals are over ambitious for the timescale that i set them for. This leads to me not completing the unrealistic goals and therefore punishing myself for failure, this leads to me slowing down in progress because of generally feeling down. I say goals for outside of uni as well because i find that if i let personal issues slide because of uni work they can start to weigh on my mind and again- make me feel like i’m failing.
I’ve been trying this new, more realistic system for the past few weeks and i’m proud of myself for largely sticking to it so far. It has resulted in a more even spread of tasks for various modules being up and running simultaneously much earlier than i previously would have hoped to start work on assignments: it seems to be encouraging a “one baby step at a time” mentality for me which is definitely helping me feel less overwhelmed than i did last semester.
Something else that is helping me take one step at a time is my new effort to separate pressing commitments from fun commitments than can wait.
I’ve been actively using a notepad daily to record group meeting notes, daily goals and thoughts, and then referring back to it later, this is helping me organise my thoughts, feel a little calmer and helping me relax a little better at night, knowing that i don’t have to remember everything i have to do for tomorrow- it’s written down already.
Going forward from this i’m definitely going to carry on utilising the same methods: i may start to refine my weekly goals to make sure i include a goal for each separate project. I’d definitely like to dive into production for my personal project as soon as possible however slow and steady the start may be owing to Going Live, so i want to push myself forward faster with that. I also need to find time to start working on more paintings to sell at Dee-Con- a personal goal i set myself around about christmas when i re-discovered my wacom.
Slava Lawson: Animation & Visualisation 