Animatic v15

Some kids go to Cabo for Spring Break. Some kids go to New York City, or Catalina Island.

 

I go to North Hollywood to spend the week with my boyfriend, and while he’s off at work ~12 hours a day, I sit in my underwear and fix up a new animatic for my thesis film. And I also do some 2D Animation. I’m working on it, I promise.

 

But what I’ve basically been working on for the last week is render out playblast after playblast after playblast, getting every moment from my film at every conceivable angle (but without breaking the 180 rule, though, don’t worry), and then once all of that was done, I mash them all together into something that… hopefully…. works much better than the last animatic.

 

Check it out here:

 

 

There’s a lot of different stuff in this one, so I strongly suggest you check it out. Also, since I like putting images in these posts, here’s one I captured when I was setting up the “DARK” animation for the opening title:

 

 

Not pictured there is the tiny camera that’s inside the hole of the letter A, haha.

 

Anyway, hope you enjoy it! Right now the two things I’m working feverishly towards are 1) getting the 2D animation up to speed so that it’s acceptable for picture lock (luckily the amount of 2D animation that my film needs has gone down pseudo-drastically since the last animatic), and 2) getting the edit of my film absolutely perfect. Because THAT’S what picture lock requires. Yikes! I’ll see y’all at the end of the tunnel.

 

But until then, I hope y’all have had good Spring Breaks, and if you aren’t a student/this week wasn’t your spring break, then I hope you had a good week anyway. And until next time — there’s more to come!

On The Verge

Hey!

So I’m on the verge of getting many things done. Let me list the ways!

– I’m finally getting on the ball and will (*fingers crossed*) hopefully have completed some voice-actor auditions by the end of this coming week. I still need to lock down the room though so that’s in the air.

– In order to avoid becoming super fucking lazy, I went ahead and started up the Scene-Files for 14 of the 30 Scene-Files that will comprise my film. (Before today I had only started up 4). Now, I haven’t actually animated in any of the new ones, but just the fact that they’re set up now means I don’t have to get over the mental-block/procrastination-fodder of  “I don’t wanna have to set up the shoooottttt” anymore, because it’s already all set up. Time to animate!

– Speaking of animation, I’ve gotten 2 shots ready to show to people who I trust to give me good advice on how to improve it. And so that process shall begin like, 30 minutes from now!

– I got a message from my OTIS student friend, Theo Aretos (who I also interned with at Dreamworks) recently saying that he’s almost done with the concept designs for the environments for my film. So soon I won’t have ridiculously-crappy-looking standin-environments for my film! Wooooohooo!!

– I heavily revamped the 4 friends of the Mean Girl of my film (and by this I mean I changed their bodies) and all that leaves is fixing their faces some, and then I’ll have a second pass on them to show around to people! Woohoo.

So basically, there’s a lot of potential in the air. Will I persevere and continue to make progress? Or will I just open up a bag of Doritos and never finish my film?

Just kidding, of course I’ll persevere. PERSEVEERREE!!! (I really need to stop making these posts after 2AM)

But in the mean time, here’s at little something I did for homework for another class:

You’re probably wondering what the fuck this is. This is my homework for my Lighting And Rendering class, and we had to demonstrate Caustics (aka when light is refracted through transparent objects like water or crystals) and Subsurface Scattering (which is used to make skin look real). So I figured, what the hell, I’ll put the Mean Girl from my film into a sassy pose and turn her into an ice sculpture and a skin… sculpture… thing. She kind of looks more like water in the ice sculpture one though, and she looks a little waxy in the skin one. But whatever. I’m not trying to be a surfacer…

More to come!

My Weekend Of Non-Animation

Yea I haven’t animated these past two days.

I hate myself too.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been productive!

First off, I modelled windows! Starting with an arched window for the Monster Mansion.

(I’m deciding if I like it with or without the drapes or not. I’ll probably have it be a mix because that’ll look jankier and more run-down, non?)

So that was cool.

Also, I’m in the final stages of getting the Mean Girl rig ready (aka getting her body ready) and all that’s left, modelling-wise, is figuring out what hairstyle I want her to have (because oops I haven’t locked that down)

One of these hairstyles is very reminiscent of the old TV show “Reboot” and I’m going to let you have 1 guess as to which one that is.

I’m kind of satisfied with none of these haircuts, but I think I’ll figure it out soon.

EDIT: Everyone’s saying this, so I realized I need to make a disclaimer: I know that mean girls always have long straight hair, but for rendering/dynamics/simulation/animation purposes, I can’t deal with that shit. Sorry y’all.

What’s I’ve REALLY been spending my time on, though, was getting the next location-setup ready (the interior of the main character’s bedroom) and to be honest, I really really like what I did with his bed.

This is totally how I feel right now

Like, obviously the room itself is not at all what it will look like in final form (especially those colors, gross!) but the bed actually looks really nice. Also, shout-out goes to NURBS Curves for helping me make those bedposts. Yeaaaaaaaah.

Now you MAY be wondering to yourself right now: “Hey Max, if the main character is going to be lying on a bed, won’t he need some bedsheets?”

And to that I say “Yes. Yes he will. And I’m way ahead of you.”

This is a video of me playing around with the various variables that Maya nCloth has to offer. It’s lots of fun! And to all those non-animation people reading this: Don’t worry, each of these playblasts took a minute or two at most each. So. Yea. Spendin’ my time wiseley~~…… I guess.

Buh.

More to come!