seanfindlay-animation-blog

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Showreel

 (Add in Video)

As I have had experience with premiere pro before I managed to use all my skills to create a showreel that I really liked, however, this ended up being deleted so I needed to restart it again. I used a soundtrack by the band A.R.T who allowed me to use there song and I thought it worked really well. The finishing clip was good however I'd like to revisit the showreel in my own time and make it again because I know that I can do better.

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500 Word Statement Of My Findings

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My Part Of The Group Presentation

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Group Presentation

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Lip Sync Final

 (video here)

The video shown here is my final outcome for my lip sync. I originally had more animations planned for the sequences such as a more prominent head turn as well as the hair movement however I ended up running out of time and managed to not finish the design I wanted. However, I think I might revisit it later to make it look even better. I decided to focus on the mouth movement more than the head-turning as I really wanted to make sure I could understand the lip sync process.

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Lip Sync - Mouth Chart

(2 pictures)

I started my mouth chart by looking at already made mouth charts and decided to put them all together to then make my own mouth chart. I thought the mouth chart looked good and I had the sounding words all written down as well ready for my lip sync animation. However, when applying my created mouth chart to a test model head I made, it didn't look right. I instead decided to change the look for a quarter view to a front-facing view as it looked better and I felt was good practice from this direction. Ill later come back to this a fix my mistakes on my test mouth chart so I'm able to do the lip sync from all angles.

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Monster Finished Look

 (Picture)

I finally finished my character model however he didn't look as good as I wanted him to look as I wasn't able to add fur to the model as Maya kept crashing/ freezing up every time I tried to add it on. I ended up leaving it and he still looks good through the render. Although I have trouble knowing how to render, I found rendering this image very easy after a while because It kept failing to export the image in the correct format but after trying for ages I figured it out and felt proud of what I produced. I would need to watch more videos on the matter as I still struggle with certain features in  Maya.

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Cast Line Up

 (Picture here)

As the project went on my group's characters changed a bit from their original idea however they all kept an aquatic creature theme which is good because it makes the cast line up look like it makes way more sense. I decided to not Photoshop each of my group's monsters and instead decided to redraw their design in my style then put them all together. I also added in a silhouette of the characters which came out looking quite nice in my opinion as well. Although Nathan's character doesn't look aquatic, he's meant to be a diver who hunts down the creatures of the sea whereas the other three live in the sea.

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Monster Composited Images

 (3 pictures here)

Posted above is my finished composited images for my creature design. Whilst not entirely as immersive and as natural looking as hoped, the images still reflected what my creature could look like in a real-life habitat. However, I picture my creature to live in the depths of the oceans where the only light available is from his glowing body. As he is an aquatic creature I would say these images don't really fit his character type but as I said they reflect what he'd look like in a real environment.

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Monster Turn Around

 (video here)

Here's is my turnaround for my monster, the reason for him looking different from the drawings and concept arts is because he doesn't have fur on him which is because Maya kept crashing/ freezing up every time I tried to add the fur on, so I decided to just leave it out and continue with the model turn around. All in all, though I think that it came out looking quite nice. Also, the template on the VLE didn't work for me so I decided to make a podium for him to stand on which would turn with him.

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Mystery Box Experimental Reel

 (video here)

For my mystery box, I've been instructed to create an experimental reel showcasing all my work for this project, which includes storyboards, video referencing, Maya attempts and the final outcome. I decided to keep it very simple compared to my showreel as I wanted to show a progression from the first initial idea to the final outcome. All in all, though, I believe that the reel came out alight. However, I must add that I found it longer than expected to get all the clips together as I was trying to figure out some of the rendering settings of Maya for my mystery box.

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Introduction to CG (Radio)

When I first created the model I found it very difficult as I wasn't really sure about how to use all the controls on the Maya software. I managed to add colour to the radio but never got the chance to render it. However, I learnt a lot from the creation process of the radio such as duplicating shapes, moving and turning them, adding in colour, etc.

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Introduction to CG (Pencil + Bird)

(Bird) 

I found this exercise extremely confusing and difficult to do however I ended up colouring in the bird with some help from the teacher. But the process behind it is something I really need to learn as I suspect we will be doing it a lot in the following years.

 (Pencil) 

As the pencil was one of my first uses of the Maya program I found it challenging but looking back at the creation process of the pencil, I think that I could make it much easier now and making it look much better. As you can see from the image some of the proportions for the pencil is off (as I didn't understand it yet).

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Introduction to CG (UFO)

(UFO videos from phone) 

Unfortunately my original save file for the UFO sequences was lost however I managed to record the sequences with my phone at the time as I was very proud of what I managed to come up with. In this session, I really like the idea of doing CG as it showed me a little look of Maya's capabilities. Although it was still hard I found this part of this project very fun and entertaining to do.

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Creation Process - Showreel

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Creation Process -  Lip Sync