Mother Rig

So i continued to work on my shots and started to play around with what we have of the mother rig which is pretty exciting. i managed to complete the animation for scene 4 and started working on the latter shots of scene 5 with the mother.

I am pleased with my progress and feel more comfortable with the rigs and the 3d in general the more i do with it. i have gotten used to playing to the camera and breaking and morphing to exaggerate the actions.

Nailed the walk

Finally got the walk i had been working towards for a while, i am quite pleased with the poses but more importantly the timing is spot on what i was going for which i am verry happy with.

Interviews

As well as working on the group project today we also had our interviews for eligibility into the bridging course for the degree. It served as a minor distraction but i was glad to be one of the first so i could work focused for the rest of the day more or less. I started cleaning up my bouncy walk and compared it to the original and got some opinions, it was brought to my attention that there are some assets that need to be addressed in order for them to be in working order but the team i feel is up to the challenge despite our time frame.
I'm just trying to keep as many people on board as we continue to try see this project through.
I worked on compositing more of the teams updated shots and put in cameras for shots that needed them. It is coming together quite promisingly.

Bounce

SQUASH AND STETCH

Today i tried to push Tubbs quite far in terms of squash and stretch. Pushing the rig to breaking point and getting extreme poses out of him.

Wednesday

Today i worked on the walk some more. i settled for a walk with quick steps but with his arms out to keep himself balanced. i cut the shot to sort out some pacing issues.
I added the shots the team has progressed on to the edit and it is looking really nice.

I started another walk with the floaty bouncy feel and i think the squash and stretch will be more apparent and in turn more interesting and entertaining. I am beginning to remember my original vision of how i imagined Tubbs moving after hearing that our animation lacked the 2d feel which i have learned is achievable through the movement and cinematography even though the characters and environments are presented in 3d.

23/06/2015

On Tuesday i worked on my scene with the hallway. I also have made the appropriate adjustments so Tubbs walks from left to right in the back of the kitchen scene instead of the previous arrangement that didnt work nearly as well but stuck to the layout of the house. The transition reads far better.
James and i have been going through many walks and found many references for walks and the main thing they have in common is their short but very ridiculously quick steps which timing out without looking like a bobbing action figure, is very difficult to achieve. I will attempt the floaty bouncy kind of teddy bear/baymax-esque walk, which i had originally intended when coming up with the story tomorrow.

Review

22/06/2015
On Monday we had a review from the panel based on our current edit. They had a lot to say about our film and it was all very constructive and helpful. The main things i took from the review was that we should push our poses and the rig to the limits to emulate the 2d storyboard as best to our ability. We also discussed how we focused too much on semantics and other unimportant details that we could easily sacrifice to make the film read clearer. Another issue was that a lot of our shots were very flat and uninteresting, so i will go through with the team and their shot to review more interesting angles for the sake of appeal and storytelling. An idea was to lead the audiences attention with the camera. We also discussed how we need to resolve how the cat will get down from the tree, and we came up with a few gags that sound really appealing.

Walking

Today i got some feedback with what i had been working on, and it was really helpful. i found that something i should have also thought about with the way Tubs moves is his attitude and emotions a the time in the story. varying when he is energetic or neutral etc, can make his character more clear and interesting. i also worked on timing and seeing how his body should move.

Mannerisms

i'm going through different references of existing characters as well as life references to mould the mannerisms of tubbs character. it is proving very difficult as there are aspects and ideas that i like but kind of clash instead of working cohesively, so i need to make solid decision especially soon so the team can make his movements consistently.

Running

Today i had an epiphany of sorts and decided to make some mannerisms and actions of tubbs significantly exaggerated and cartoony. As much as i fell in love with the  idea of tubbs acting sort of dumbed down and oblivious, i thought that for the sake of the stroy it would be better if it was clear that he was desperatley trying to imitate the actions of a super hero.
I have found that with a lot of issues and big decisions with this 3d project that all come back to how cartoony/realistic i want different aspects of the film. Although the film is in a 3d medium it doesnt necessarily mean i have to restrict the amount of cartooniness to match the medium which as i look at more and more reference is quite exaggerated in itself for the sake of story telling and appeal.
I want to make Tubbs act like a live bouncy teddy bear, with a heart of gold. This comes across very strong in the model/rig of tubbs and i believe it could really come together quite effectively with his animation.

Animating

today i worked on animating some 2d reference to help the team with the shots that are not clear on the storyboard. I also worked on my scene and the walk of tubbs, we also discussed the mannerisms of his character which i need to hash out so that we all animate him consistently. 

We also got a quick rundown on unique controls for tubbs that make him easier to animate with, which proved to be very helpful.

Tubbs Walking

today i worked in flash to get some ideas fdown for the walk and other intricacies of Tubbs' character. I want to show his heaviness as well as his age in his movements.

Scene 04 Shot 02

Today i tried to work on the second shot for scene 04, as the mother is still getting ready for animation as my last few shots involve the mother. i will try to stay busy and help out in other areas.
animating in 3d continues to be challenging although i am getting used to working out what the heirarchy for moving the models are. the order of operation is very important in getting the desired look efficiently.

Step Animation [2]

Today i continued to step animate my first shot. There is a lot to think about when animating in 3d like what controls affect each other. Keeping all this in mind aswell as trying to make a nice piece of animation is quite difficult.

i also had a go at cutting up the shots so they are in their own composition so when we implement them in animatic we can do so seamlessly.

Step Animation

Today we got organised and started to animate some of our scenes. in order to do this we all gathered around to make sure our file management was up to scratch and our layouts were ready to be referenced in for the scenes.
I started to work on my first shot in scene 05.

Tree

09/06/2015

Tuesday i worked on getting some notches into the tree so that Tubbs has something to grab hold and push off when he scales up the tree, which has been an ongoing issues with the story. i tried to keep them subtle and not gravitate too far towards realism and keep it cartoony.

Housekeeping

Today we had a review for our progress from last week. The changes in the animatic thoroughly improved the way the story reads, and the test animations looked pretty impressive. Frans was curious as to how much Tubbs could stretch to make him appear a bit more 2d like in the way he is animated. we concluded that his torso squashes and stetches very convincingly however it emphasizes the fact that the limbs do not which we are going to consider ammending.

We also did a bit of housekeeping and discussed our lax folder management and naming conventions, ana aspect somewhat over looked a bit which we needed to address so that progressing forward we do not encounter any problems in terms of referencing and importing scenes when we animate. Our meeting was very productive and we felt very much like a team again which was welcoming. we look forward to animating.

Animatic

I made the some adjustments based on the feedback from the tutors which i think make the story and where everyone/thing is a lot more clearer. the exagerated camera angles make a huge difference too.

Revising Animatic

I continued to review the animatic and got some feedback from frans and some of the other tutors which is always really helpful in getting the story to be more clarified. I added the scene of tubbs walking passed his mother and flipped it for conitnuity for when he goes outside, but further feedback recommends i widen the shot and also maybe include the door to the front on this shot so when he appears outside it isnt too jarring.
aside from that i have some timing issues with the actions but other than that it looks like its getting better.

Animatic revision

today i revised the animatic some more and added a shot where it is a close up on tubbs face so you can see his expressoin change when his mother pats him on the head. feedback yesterday was that the reason for it was unclear but i think that seeing his facial expression change helps show he wanted the affection of his mother. i trimmed other shots aswell and the narrative reads more clearly.

i continued to play with the tubbs rig and push it to see how extreme it can go. other feedback suggested we try tto capture the snappy slapstick cartooniness of the animatic in the models and rigs. a challenge i feel the team is up to.

Feedback

I played around with tubbs some more and am starting to get quite familiar with the model/rig.
we got some feedback for our pre vis and animatic and the advice we got was really helpful. changing the camera angles of some shots to emphasize Tubbs extreme view of the world more often yet subtly is what i got out of it most so im applying these changes to the animatic. i also am sorting out angles to help fill in the gaps in terms of the story telling, like an over the shoulder of tubbs looking out the window at his cat running from the hose. i also am adding a shot of tubbs running passed his mother on the way to battle the hose just to introduce her a bit earlier.

29th May2015

On friday i played with the tubbs model and tried to sort out some layouts for the scenes so we could start animating. we had some issues with the scene opening differently on different computers and we continued to try resolve this. the tubbs model is really good and great fun to play around with he is coming along really well.