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Project Summary (Week 7)

Overall I feel this project was successful. I feel that my personal outcome is near enough exactly what I visualised at the conception stage, I feel that its comic beats flow very well and the joke is punchy.

This is the first project in which I have animated multiple characters in a scene, and whilst each characters range of movement is limited, I feel that this has been successful as a first attempt. I think I underestimated the amount of time needed to animate each character to a convincing degree.

This is also the first time I have used animated textures in CG, therefore I have learnt a new skill from this project. I also experimented with using a POV camera for the first time in CG and I feel that it was moderately successful, It was interesting to see how different this was from cutting between multiple shots. 

The animation itself does have some flaws, most notably the jumping elbow during the “thumbs up” in the animation, this is most likely caused due to the elbow controller not being splined between two key frames, unfortunately I did not notice this until I had finished rendering, leaving me no time to go back and fix this problem.

I also did not finalise my soundtrack until after rendering, causing the final roar to not be synced up perfectly, In future projects I will make sure not to make this mistake again.

Collaboratively, I feel that the group got along really well. Every decision made by the group was made with approval and we were all very much on the same page when it came down to production.

During this project I collaborated with a few people, Robyn providing me assets allowed me to move onto animation much faster and improved the quality of finish on my project greatly.

All in all I have learnt a few lessons from this project, and I hope to put them into practice next year.

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Group Animation Anthology

This details the final cut of the Group Anthology complete with credits.

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Group Title Sequence

This edit made by Joe details out initial pass of animation for the title sequence .

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Rendered Animation with Sound Edits

In this edit of the sound I cleaned up the heartbeat monitor, syncing it to the animated texture.

And in this edit of the animation I have included voice lines from 3rd year animation student Conner Nicholls, who recorded lines for the quote and the Gorilla Roar.

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Experimentation Reel

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Group Title Sequence Discussion

As a group we have decided to have our looping animations appear out from a projector screen before the title zooms out of it as our title slide.

I made a quick rig using a model of the Utah Teapot, I wanted to use this as this project is about the history of animation and this is an icon of animation. this is an example of the looping animation that will happen as it comes spinning out of the screen.

Utah Teapot Model - The Utah Teapot by 3D graphics 101 is licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial, can be found here.

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Animation Splining Pass 3

This is a play-blast with the changes mentioned in the discussion with jon previously.

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Render Tests & Discussion With Jon

Low Quality

High Quality

Low Quality

High Quality

After taking these Render Shots I found that there was not much difference in the quality of the render, I was still getting these grainy shadows regardless. I discussed this issue with Jon and he suggested moving the hands to a separate render layer and comping them back in, in post.

While this suggestion may have possibly fixed the problem, the render time for this project is currently upwards of 8 hours at max quality it would take 21 hours, and at this point I do not have the time to set up a secondary render.

Jon also mentioned that the Ben Jackson could use some more rotation in the hips when turning to the character, so I intend to quickly make this change before rendering at a low quality.

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Animation Splining Pass 2

After some thought, I still felt that there was more that I could cut from the animation, so instead of having everyone walk into the room and using the characters to reveal PC Jen, I decided to start using the Clipboard to reveal.

I feel that after making this cut the animation flows a lot better and the joke is more snappy.

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Learning how to make a Heartbeat Monitor effect

I then needed to figure out a way to create a Heartbeat Monitor Effect, so I looked up how to do that in after effects and found this video:

https://library.creativecow.net/video_page.php?author_folder=rabinowitz_aharon&article_folder=CC_Heart_Monitor

I created this using the Vegas Effect in After Effects.

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Learning how to make Animated Textures

As I have never made an animated texture before I had to look up how to.

It turns out that it is much easier than I had initially thought, only requiring you to create an image sequence.

I then made a png sequence in After Effects of a Rendering loading bar sequence with an error message in time with the backing track.

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Week 6 Summary

This week I was able to produce the first pass of blocking for the meeting on Friday.

Robin suggested that the start is unnecessary and it would be better to start off with all the characters walking towards the bed, using Dr. Ben and Ben Jackson to block out and then reveal PC Jen.

Following on from this I then produced a pass of splined animation that made these edits, and I feel that this was an improvement to the animation, and I intend to continue working on this throughout the next week.

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Animation Splining Pass 1

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Animation Blocking

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Week 5 Review

This week I spent more time working on the Branding project than this project, but I was able to make the required edits to the character rigs, and prepare the scene for animating next week.

Moving forward I intend to produce a full blocking and move onto keyframing by the end of next week.

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Character Set Up

I set up the scene in a way to replicate the animatic, and I intend to start animating next week.

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Edits to Character Rigs

In this edit of the Ben Rig, I was intending to make the character more like Peter Jackson, but as time went on I found myself struggling to create believable hair, therefore I changed tactics and settled for a character more like “Ben Jackson”. I made the characters torso slightly wider, added glasses, a clipboard to the hand, and a name-tag stating P. Jackson.

The glasses for some reason did not render properly, therefore I took out the lens’s.

I do not intend to make any further edits to the character.

This is the model of a PC monitor Robyn supplied me with, I made some edits to it to make it more like a 16:9 ratio monitor.

I ended up having to cut off the bottom stand to have the monitor fit onto the head of the character.

I was lucky enough to find a free Gorilla 3D model on Free3D, the model can be found here, and is licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial .

I cut the head off the model and created a swaddle for to imply show that the character is a baby.

In this edit of the Ben Rig I added a head mirror to the model with a nametag stating Dr. Ben, as well as changing the colour of his shirt to white to symbolise that he is a doctor.

I have also decided to use the MAX for Maya rig in this scene to be used as a POV camera, as show above. The credits for the rig go to Peter Starostin, and it is licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial .