This is a pose I just did for the rough-pass of the shot when the Mean Girl says “Oh I’m SOOO Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!”
…And this is me being a total dork. But this makes me think that I should recreate the full Birth Of Venus painting using the Mean Girl as Venus and her three friends as the 2 winds and the chick holding the cloth! Admit it, that would be hilarious.
Anyways, Happy Monday!
More to come!
So Fall Semester will be over in 3 or 4 weeks, and after that, all the time I have left to work on my film is Spring Semester! (And any breaks that happen from now until like, April)
So because of this, the question that’s certainly on my mind, is CAN I GET THIS FILM DONE IN TIME?!?!?!
Well, let’s look at the numbers.
Also, in each shot of animation, I need to do the following:
– Shoot Reference footage
– Animate the main body motions
– Facial animation (both for lipsynch and emotional reactions)
– Hair Animation (if I have time)
– 2D Animations for some shots
– Occasional Special effects
But how many total individual shots are there in my film? (as in, camera cuts): THERE ARE 74. (not counting opening and closing titles)
Oh but I think I will, brain. After all, those 74 shots can be consolidated together into scenes. And currently, I’ve grouped those 74 shots into 30 different Maya Scene Files.
I know, I know, but calm down! ONLY 17 of those 30 Scene Files include intensively-animated 3D Assets
And if you want to break it down even more, there are 27 different instances of animation in my film (this doesn’t count characters who are standing idly in the background, but this does count each time a character does or says something. So if there’s a shot where one kid rolls a ball and another kid kicks the ball, I count that as two different instances of animation)
Trust me, it’ll take time. But I think it’ll fit in the time-frame. After all, I can get a pretty good first rough pass of one character done per day, at least. In fact, that’s the minimum work-rate I’m holding myself to, and I’ve been able to keep that pace up consistently for the last 5 or so days with no problem. So at that rate, I will most CERTAINLY have a rough-layout animated version of my film done by the end of December (which hasn’t started yet). And if I really can follow through with this pace, then I’ll have a rough-animated version of my film before Spring Semester even starts.
Also, to prove it, check this video out:
In this shot are (what I consider) 3 different “Instances Of Animation”:
1) The mean girl saying “Sure! Roll me the ball”
2) The Hero rolling the ball to the girl and then jumping in fear when she kicks the ball
3) The mean girl kicking the ball
And consequently, this shot was completed over the course of 3 days. And this is 3 out of the 27 shots!
So with that said, at this rate it’ll seem that I’ll have all of Spring Semester to get my Final Animation completed. And once that’s completed, then… well, then it’s completed! And of course I have to render, composite, do special effects, bla bla bla, but the main hard work (and the main focus of my work, since I want to be a 3D Character Animator) will be done, and boy will THAT be exciting! ;D
Nice catch, brain. And while you’re right that I haven’t really factored the 2D assets in, I feel like that will actually not be too much of a problem either. After all:
– There are only 2 lines of 2D Dialogue
– There are only 2 shots in which 2D characters do something other than dancing that doesn’t involve any 3D assets
– There is only 1 shot when a 2D character and a 3D character actually touch each other and make contact/interaction
– There is only 1 shot in which 2D characters do something that causes a reaction in some 3D characters (when the monsters all scare the Mean Girl Gang away)
And the rest of the 2D animation, literally, is just monsters dancing. And since I’m not super-focused on making the 2D animation impeccable (in fact I want it to have a somewhat rough look), I’m not stressing myself out too much about it. (yet)
So yea. Don’t worry! This project will be completed. And as always, there is lots more to come! And since this post didn’t have any pictures in it, then let me post this picture of Kate Bush I just discovered today, because she’s so pretty in it. 🙂
The first one is stupid so I’ll get that one out of the way:
…yea. Sorry I’m a dork. Also sorry I didn’t put any effort into making this image not-creepy. Hopefully you don’t have nightmares tonight after seeing this.
Anyway, hopefully this second image will help make you happier:
This is me working from video reference! Woooo. Hmm and now that I look at it I realize she needs to bend her neck more to hit that pose. But yea! I thought this image was funny seeing me acting and then seeing this character making the same pose. Also yes that is my desk I’m sitting on. (I needed something to sit on so that my feet weren’t touching the ground.)
Anyway, yea! Just workin’. And Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
More to come. 🙂
So a while back (way before I had even started creating the Mean Girls’ Friends) I created stand-in versions of all of my Maya Scene Files so that I could just get that shit out of the way ASAP. But now that I have all my 3D Characters pretty much ready, I can finally PUT those characters into use! So I figured it’d be cute if I did a before/after shot.
Before inserting all the characters:
I used gray cubes. Because it works.
But now that I have the Mean Girls’ friends ready to go…
It’s Lights Camera Action! Except really just Camera and Action. Lights will come later. YES I KNOW THIS SHOT IS BLOWN OUT, I’LL FIGURE OUT LIGHTING LATER.
But yea. Oh and LOL I just noticed that Edgar’s feet are falling through the roof of the play structure. Haha! Luckily this play structure is just a stand-in as well. Ha ha!
More to come.
This post is mainly for any non-animation people who may be reading my blog, because I just tried out for the first time what is generally considered the “correct” way to animate in 3D, and all I can say right now is… yea, it’s definitely better.
Watch for yourself:
OLD WAY: Creating key frames that aren’t stepped, thus forcing me to focus on getting poses, timing, and movement right all at once:
It’s ok for a first pass.
NEW WAY: Creating key frames that ARE stepped, thus allowing me to only focus on timing and poses, leaving movement for later:
(Keep in mind that these are both ROUGH PASSES and neither are meant as final animation)
As you can see, the new version, while not complete, (the timing is off in places, and I need to run it by people to make sure the poses are good) clearly packs a lot more punch, especially with that one big pose change in the middle as she throw her arms out in bitchy exasperation. True, there’s no ~literal movement~ between each pose, but this method, I have now learned, gives a much better sense of the poses and timing earlier on, which in turn, acts as a stronger base for the body mechanics and final acting to build off of.
So yea! Fuckin’ exciting! I figure if I work at a rate of at least 1 or 2 of these shots a day, I’ll have a rough pass of the entire film by the end of December! Which would be suuuuuuper awesome.
Yayayayayayayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
More to come, of course. 😉
Today I had the truth tea spilled twice for me, which was admittedly mortifying, but for the most part entirely useful and awesome because if I heed the advice I received today correctly, my film will be awesome.
TRUTH TEA PART 1: This tea was more difficult to drink, but it is ultimately more easy to follow. Basically, Bethany Sparks (USC Sound Technician) sat in on my class’ CTAN 401A class to give sound-related critiques on our films, and I was excited as hell to hear it! (And I got lots of really great advice, as well as a new shot suggestion! Y’all will see…) But my heart couldn’t help but drop when, right after my animatic finished playing (which includes my official voice actor recordings), Bethany said to me, “So, this isn’t your final voice audio, right?”
O__O
Luckily, the issue she had was only that the Main Character’s voice is too low, which — is something I already knew, but I gotta admit — I was totally ignoring/denying it until now. (Mainly because I figured I’d pitch it later. Y’know, the whole “I’ll get around to it” thing that eventually leads to one’s artistic destruction.) Also, she said that the mom’s voice sounded weird (and I was like “Drag-Queeny?” and she was like “lol yea..”) and I explained that I had pitched it down 2 whole notes so yea that kinda fucked her voice up as well.
BUT THIS IS WHY YOU ALWAYS KEEP ALL YOUR OLD FILES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!
And you better believe that my Animatic has ~already been updated~ with fixed versions of the voice audio, because I of course have the original un-pitched versions of all my best takes, because girl, I’m organized. Z-Snap.
(sorry I’m being sassy today. I’m feeling delirious for some reason.)
Anyway, the PART 2 OF TRUTH-TEA DAY was much easier to take because it was animation advice that I got from USC Animation Grad-Student, Greg Jones, and he basically broke down the basics of good animation to me in a really great way:
1) Great Timing
2) Great Posing
3) Body Mechanics
4) Attention To Detail (going the extra mile)
Which makes complete sense, and yet it was so enlightening to hear, and I’ve now written those 4 tenets and pinned them up on my wall above my computer, haha! Also, Greg taught me how to turn on the thing in Maya that makes your keyframes stepped (and not curved together with splines) which is useful for getting the poses/timing down.
Anyway, I know this post is boring, so in return, here’s a link to a video of Raven and Jujube from Rupaul’s Drag Race: All Stars lipsynching for their lives to the song “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn, because let’s face it that lipsynch was epic.
http://mynamekyle.tumblr.com/post/36181638031
More to come! Oh and Happy Thanksgiving!
Like I said, all there is to do right now is finish my location models and do the damned animation for my film.
So first off, here’s the latest animatic with a couple more scenes animated (but everything’s at the utmost-roughest state of animation, so–)
And here are some images of the models I’ve been working on!
I’ve actually made texturing the Exterior of the Monster House my final project for my Lighting and Rendering class, which is great because A) it’ll force me to get that done, B) texturing this model is sure to be difficult due to how complex it is, and C) getting the texturing on this done correctly will be a HUGE help for my film, since making the Monster House look right and scary/the way the Monster House looks is a very important pivotal element of the film.
Also, here’s a close-up on some grunge I attempted with the golden grown above the central window:
…Yea, it all still needs work. But it definitely looks better than the colors I’d put on it before!
Also, my fabulous and super-talented visual designer friend, Theo Aretos, got some designs to me for the Monster Party Room! Here are the 2 paintings he did for it. One is more of a color-study and the other is a diagram-version of the central party area.
We met up this past Saturday at CTNX, though, and we both discussed/agreed that it needed an entrance-way appended to it so that there would be a better opportunity for camera angles showing the grandiose-ness of the party area.
Anyway, here is the progress I have so far on the Party Room:
Just the central cylindrical area (cut-out version):
Interior shot (with poor lighting) of the central area, including the appended entrance area:
So yea! Imagine that area full of crazy lights and shit. Also, it seems like the Disco Ball is working better than I anticipated as well! Hey heyyyy.
So yea. Just chuggin’ along.
More to come!
…ACTING.
Yes, I have finally really hit the point in the production of my film where all there is to do is to ANIMATE. But of course there were a few roadblocks left I had to overcome today before I could start.
1) I needed to edit together the best takes of the reference I shot of all the Dialogue. (And I still need to shoot some more reference, but I’ve done the bulk of it today and yesterday)
2) I also needed to import Archer, Bil, and Edgar (the mean girl’s three friends) into one of the shots so I can start animating it!
But alas, I encountered a minor issue with that — Having 6 rigs in one Maya file will cause your computer to SLOW. DOWN. Like a MOTHERFUCKER. To the point where it’s just not workable anymore. And when I encountered this, at first I was like “shit shit shit shit shit” because I got a film to animate, man!!! But this problem turned out to have a really simple solution: Layers! Basically, the visibility of each character has its own layer, and when I’m animating a character or two characters interacting with each other, I only turn those layers on. The rest can just stand there invisibly, haha.
And with that said, I now have my first shot set up and ready to animate (it’s the scene when the Mean Girl gets the Hero’s ball, kicks it over the wall, and the Mean Girl’s friend tells the Hero that he “ain’t getting that ball back”), and it’s SOOOOO EXCITINGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111
But that took pretty much all day today to set up and figure out. For now, though, I leave you with a pretty render of the Mean Girl and her posse of cool friends.
Gnight y’all! And of course, More to come.
I now have the final audio put into the animatic!!! And this only means one thing:
I have no stumbling blocks ahead of me (aside from, you know, ANIMATING THE WHOLE THING)!!!!!!!!!!!! Literally all that’s left for me to do for now is:
1) Finish rigging the Mom
2) Finish modelling/texturing the environments (which will slowly happen over time as I animate, haha)
Aaaand
3) FUCKING. ANIMATE. LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.
And after that, of course, comes lighting/rendering/compositing but that’s not something I’ll have to think much about for a while. For now though, really all I need to focus on is hunkering down with Maya (and occasionally Plastic Animation Paper) and GET CRACKING. ‘Cause I got no other excuse now haha.
More to come!!
Here’s just an update on where I’m at on things.
1) I modeled the Hero’s Mom FINALLY!!! I won’t show it for a couple more days though because I feel like that deserves its own post. But I’ve gotten a really great first pass on the head/hair/body of the Mom character, and it’s actually looking really good… right now I’m just trying to come up with last changes to do to it but to be honest I’m not totally sure if I want to do much with it at all.
…Oh, OK fine here’s a render of what she looks like:
Notice how her hairline lifts from her forehead a bit there. Yea, I still need to fix a few things…
2) I have FINISHED editing together the dialogue audio!!! What that means is that all the lines in my film that involve characters saying actual sentences, I now have final versions of those lines. Aaand I’m really happy with them! The audio for things like Gasps or Pantings or Screaming, though, I haven’t gotten final versions edited together of. But whatever. The dialogue is the more important stuff, I would say, haha.
3) I’m currently putting together the 7th version of my Animatic, which will include this finalized audio, and once it’s done, I’ll throw it up on this blog. So stay tuned, Phantoms! It gets brighter and brighter all the time. 😉
More to come.
MmmaaaxxxRubinThesis 