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Done...kind of...

2008-11-09T19:54:00.003+11:00

Final turn in for class was Friday the 7th, the film was not complete by a long shot but I turned it in anyway along with all the crap I accumulated along the way.

I have spent this week end ripping through scenes trying to piece together some thing that resembles a film so can show it at our exhibition. Many scenes have had to be removed but I think it still makes sense and it looks like I will make it on time to be included. Just need to re-render a hand full of scenes so they look less....crap.

The sound design came along really nice from Colin...the other student did a runner or some thing I think.

Anyway, back to work.

Gathering files

2008-10-29T18:52:00.002+11:00

Spent a good amount of time today going back over the submission list for class and collecting everything to be printed and burnt into separate lists. Suppose it is a good thing that I'm anal about keeping things organized on my computer lol.

Also set the computer to render out the final image required by the graphic students working on my poster and dvd cover. The interesting thing was that four gig of ram was not enough to produce a render at the size I wanted (about 13,000 pixels square). This is the first time i have encountered this problem and it is a good heads up if I ever want to print a bulletin board sized file....*stare*....

Lessons learnt

2008-10-26T11:57:00.002+11:00

I have not finished my cuppa yet so I will keep writing.

- If you are going it alone, try to keep your story as simple as possible! The more complex it is the harder it will be to tell that story visually.

- Story boarding always takes longer than you plan it to, so plan for it.

- Try to limit the number of locations you need to produce. Also if your film is 3D try not to mix your locations, stick to either fully interior or fully exterior. This is film dependent of course but it is a lot more work when you mix and match.

- Test your character rigs, walk away and test them again later as well. I can not stress this enough, my current character rig has a weird bug in the right arm and I missed this in the test phase. I do not know what is causing the problem but it is annoying and could have been avoided had I caught on to the problem earlier.

- Make sure that if the story is your choice that you are happy with it.... because more than likely you will hate it after your social life is devoured.

I do not think I will ever try to create a short film alone again, I really do want to try this with others though because it is a great feeling.

ok I'm done.

Week end work

2008-10-26T11:50:00.002+11:00

Friday and Saturday came out fairly well, I got a lot done. I managed to get a good portion of two very hard scenes done and I even recorded one session :P

The structure of this film has undergone serious surgery at a few points and this is another one of those occasions. Trying to organize the elements that work together so they still read as a coherent story, I have had to lose some scenes purely because they no longer make sense when the previous scene is removed....so that sucks.

In the past week I have run into technical difficulties with some of my scenes that use dynamics to control assets, now while I am capable of fixing these problems I do not have the time so they have been cut. Which sucks to be honest.

Blocking progress

2008-10-24T16:36:00.003+11:00

Blocked out eleven of the thirty two scenes, I have started on some of the easier scenes now. Some of which are so simple that no blocking is needed, the first pass works.

Not posting visuals at the moment because of internet issues.

Blocking

2008-10-22T15:31:00.002+11:00

Frantically trying to get the blocking completed on all the scenes still. Deadline for blocking is this Sunday, I am hoping to have it finished a little sooner than that though.

I picked up two graphics students along the way and they are working together to bring a visual identity for this film. From the early tests I think it is right on track and looking very nice, will post the first draft later today :)

The lessons we learn hit hard and will stay with us for a long time, of that I am sure.

Back to work.

Chopping block

2008-10-13T10:34:00.002+11:00

Sat down today with Mat and we discussed my situation in regards to the remaining time and how much I have left to accomplish. I may end up having to cut things from the film and at the very least It does not look like rendering will be done the way I want.... we will see.

short update

2008-10-10T12:49:00.002+11:00

First up, I know I was going to post some render results..... that idea is not going to work for two reasons. The first reason is my fault because I'm an idiot, long story short, I forgot to check some settings on a computer before I went to sleep and I exceeded my monthly download limit. The end result is uploads only from school for awhile lol.

The main reason though stems from a few problems I ran into with my light rig and the render did not go as planned. The plan was to split the character and background up and for each render off a fill, key and shadow layer and comp them together later. The problem is my light rig does not favor my backgrounds because they are in such an enclosed space, I am working on fixing this.

On the animation side of things, last night I finished blocking in another scene. So in total I have four scenes blocked in at various degrees (in case I have not stated this already i have started with the harder scenes first) which is about a minute of animation.

ok back to work.

Average day

2008-10-05T20:45:00.003+11:00

Today was fairly average, I didn't get as much done as I had hoped but I spent a lot of time thinking while I was working and I have figured a few things out at least.

I spent the majority of today working on the same scene as yesterday and I still have not finished it, on top of this (and currently doing now) I have been banging my head while trying to finish writing this brief.

Also, I know that many of my entries have been purely text and to be honest that would barely hold my attention so I doubt many people are keeping much of an eye on these entries because of this fact. To combat the lull, I plan on spending tomorrow after noon to test out my new light rig and I will attempt to put a few shots completely through my planned render pipeline. (that's the idea anyway....fingers crossed.) If it works, images should be up on Tuesday.

cheers.

Sleep time

2008-10-05T03:36:00.002+11:00

twenty to three and I think I have had enough for today.

The brief is anything but done unfortunately, I put down the basic things I want but have yet to expand the point notes into full paragraphs.

I spent the majority of today on scene twenty five, it is a thirty second long section with a lot of annoying turns. Basic sections are blocked out but I am finding that some parts are too fast when I start adding in more movement. The downside to this is it means I missed the mark on my animatic (probably when I butchered it) the upside is that because this is my project I can stray slightly from the allowed time frame and add in some more.

I also ran into some thing interesting, apparently lightwave some times does not copy across keyframe data. Twice the X translation was not copied when I duplicated a keyframe and I had to manually go in and create the key. I have no idea why this is but it can be annoying if you dont notice it.

Oh and on another note, judging by how long this is taking me I think I am in trouble.....

Short break

2008-10-04T16:31:00.002+10:00

Decided to take a short break and do some work on a design brief that I completely forgot about and is due on monday. No big deal as I already know in what direction I would like things to go, I just need to convey this in writing to a complete stranger...woo hoo.

Inspiration

2008-10-04T13:19:00.003+10:00

Well today my girlfriend is staying over at her friends so I can put anything I want on the tv while I work.....so the list has been made! First up and currently running is Toy story, behind that will be Monsters inc, Flight of Dragons, The Lion King, Brother Bear, Finding Nemo.... That's the list so far.

As far as films go, I have had a few small set backs over the last couple of days but nothing devastating. I have been slowly blocking out the scenes that I can in the roughest form possible. Some interesting problems have been popping up here and there that I had not expected but we plod along anyway.

It's alive!!!!

2008-09-27T14:16:00.002+10:00

Still in its early stages but what we have here is the first run of my first scene, this thing has taken me way too long but I have at least taken a good number of lessons from this scene. This attempt took roughly one day to get it to its current stage, fingers crossed I can keep that pace up for future scenes..I may just get this done.

Dark times

2008-09-25T13:26:00.002+10:00

It has come to my attention that I am in trouble, animation was slowly going along at a nice smooth rate but late last night this began to go pear shaped as gentle pushing of the character became a full blown wrestling match.

After wasting a few hours last night I dropped the lot and went to sleep, this morning I have decided to restart the scene from scratch and pay close attention to everything I do in an attempt to find where I am going wrong. In theory the way I am going about this should be working fine and for awhile it was working with out a hitch. I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have some thing to do with Lightwave storing each bones rotation based on its parent....but I am probably wrong.

Blind fire..

2008-09-24T21:06:00.003+10:00

Today I started animating (only three days late) and already I feel like I'm flailing blindly in an attempt not to sink.

I picked a scene that would test my character rig a lot more than the few poses I threw at it last week, the rig worked in all areas except the neck control (was using relativity follower) but rather than fix the control I just removed it.

As far as animation is concerned things are going slowly, I think I have a decent understanding of the basics but I feel like I am in way over my head with this. I have timed out the major movements and I have gone from pose to pose at each point.....at this rate it is going to take me at the very least another day just to complete this scene! Hopefully I can speed this process up a little or I'm in a lot of trouble.

Will update on this soon....

Delivery...

2008-09-22T17:31:00.003+10:00

Today has been spent on converting the Russel mesh into a delivery driver, turns out it is harder than I expected. The driver is only seen in profile view and so I played with Russel's face a bit, threw on a hat and a long sleeved shirt and now I have a driver mesh.

In the scheme of things I am running a little behind but the project has not run away from me yet so I have not started to panic.

Driver.
Trolley
Van's wheel

Audio

2008-09-19T16:07:00.003+10:00

Yesterday I passed my final re-timed animatic across to Colin who will be creating the audio for this little film, it was also brought to my attention last week that I have another student who will also be creating an audio package for me. I am sure Colin and Rob will both produce some thing special for me and I really can't wait to see what they each come up with.

Rigged

2008-09-19T15:57:00.003+10:00

Thought I should show off the finished rig for the Russel model, this thing took a lot more effort than I had first anticipated, but I am reasonably happy with how it turned out.
I have set this up so it uses both Ik and relativity on everything except for the hands. The controllers are also clearly visible and it is fairly easy to work out their functions.

I will post some more shots of the rig in action soon, animation begins this week.

Still alive

2008-09-15T10:47:00.002+10:00

Finally back online, I had some dramas that threw me into a tail spin and subsequently removed me all but temporarily from the 'scene' so to speak. Removing that from the forefront of my mind I find myself picking up the pieces and using a lot of glue.

- Sound, I have a student of sound jumping onboard to lend assistance where my skills are severely lacking. Colin seems to know his stuff and I am really looking forward to seeing what he creates.

- Animatic, this has been tweaked but needs another pass to add in more detail to assist both the animators and sound design.

- Russel, after creating a full rig for this character it was brought to my attention that I had done a few things incorrect (read rigged in -Z instead of +Z). The rig has been recreated and I must say it is a lot cleaner this time around and I have removed some bugs that previously plagued it.

Some minor things need to be fixed up in regards to deformations, this should be taken care of on Tuesday after I get some feedback on my weight maps.

Colouring has been done with simple surfaces and for the moment it will remain that way.

I still need to flesh out the facial morphs again.

- Assets, I'm currently missing some assets that are required (three to be exact) for animation to proceed. On top of this there is a list as long as my arm of objects that I still need to produce, most of which could be said to be optional for the first draft of the film.

The film over all looks like it will be running in at around 7 minutes.....this is much too long I think for the time I have. I am hoping that with a little input from clever people I can have that reduced some what.

I will try and get some images uploaded very soon.

Rigging underway

2008-08-31T16:43:00.003+10:00

Started rigging Russel. Basic bones are in place and I just finished correcting the orientation.

Now I need to get some files in order for tomorrows class and the presentation we need to do, once that is out of the way I will start working on the IK setup.

Glue is drying..

2008-08-31T00:06:00.002+10:00

Bits and pieces glued together to make a whole....
Still small things here and there I want to correct, but at least he is at a usable state now so I can drop him as soon as time runs out on the clock.

Second shot is over exposed, sorry :(

Hands - formed

2008-08-30T18:14:00.004+10:00

Two shots of the hands so far, I am a little iffy about what is 'required' to make the geometry animation friendly so I'm staying with the minimal approach until I get some feedback.
I still need to add finger nails (tried once...failed miserably) and I want to add a litte more definition to the fingers.

Over all I am happy with how the hands turned out, it proved more difficult than I first anticipated thats for sure.

Back up and running

2008-08-30T14:59:00.003+10:00

Formatted and all nice and clean now so I'm back online :)

Two quick pictures, didn't get a great deal done yesterday, the plan for today is to push around the pants a bit more and make them a lot more relaxed. I also hope to have the hands and feet mostly done today and the clothing closer to completion.

Virus Found

2008-08-29T15:39:00.002+10:00

My laptop picked up a virus yesterday, I lost mainly system files (explorer) so it is more annoying than damaging.
As such I wont be updating the blog for a day or two until I get the laptop backed up and formatted.

Work still continues on the desktop though!

Oh and for those watching, this is unrelated to the God Box debacle unfolding at the same time as this....weird eh!?!

Russel - nights over

2008-08-28T00:08:00.003+10:00

Ok I've had enough for the night.
I will probably scrap the ears and start those again, the mouth is iffy...I suppose it will do but I don't know how well it will work.

The eye area is a pain the butt, not sure on where I stand, will probably play with those some more. The deep inset is kind of what I had pictured but it doesn't work as well.....

Top of the nose has some pinching that needs addressing, unsure how to go about fixing that.

Crawling in the dark

2008-08-27T19:18:00.003+10:00

Progress is slow, I spent today working on Russel's head.

I am still creeping forward with this and I feel like I have a blind fold on some times. I'm not sure how I will go about animating large parts of this....fingers crossed.

I still have pinching along the bridge of the nose and the eye lids need some work. The ears have a ways to go as well.

Early character model

2008-08-26T22:14:00.003+10:00

So today was the first day of character modeling, my first attempt was a complete joke and I scrapped it fairly quickly. This is my second attempt and its coming along slowly, mainly because this is my first attempt at this kind of modeling and I'm trying to take small steps so I don't smack my face on the ground when I fall.

Long way to go from here....

State of the Animatic - A days work

2008-08-21T23:15:00.000+10:00

Well the animatic is almost done, I have found a small hole in the story that needs to be filled up and also I need to draw two more panels.
The story is not going to be changed in any major way, if anything I am going to remove one small piece and streamline the ending slightly. As to the 'exact' ending, there are two choices at the moment. One is already done, that is the shotgun one, the other however sees the computer tower turned into a foot stool and the monitor into a fish tank (I know, its not possible...shush :P) If i choose the second one I will need to make a few more panels for that as well. I think I am done for today though.

Tomorrow I will look back over what I have done so far and maybe in the afternoon work on the missing panels. The plan is also to knock out a heap of interior models as well, there are some things that are optional to model and those will be done on sunday.

last note, the film looks set to be roughly six and a half minutes with the current ending.

I'm a bad man....

2008-08-21T10:02:00.000+10:00

So I did some thinking when I woke up and decided to skip class "oh noes"

I know this is bad but I need the time to work on my animatic, its ten in the morning and I have had two coffee's and some breakfast. Now I shall sit down before the all mighty computer and finish this animatic if it kills me.

Upon pondering my current problems it has dawned on me that I went about certain things in the wrong manner, namely my story boards and also the amount of time I allocated to them. I believe I needed more time to put them together and I also believe that I was too precious when dealing with them, they needed to be faster and a lot more loose (giving me more in the same time frame).

I also believe many of my initial time estimates where off, this will undoubtedly come back to bite me in the proverbial.

My nightmare!

2008-08-20T17:18:00.001+10:00

I have found some thing that not only am I not able to pick up and do....but I feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall.
The all so important animatic! It is my bane....nemesis...foe and all round nightmare!
I have tried filming myself doing the scenes, but this is taking far too long. Importing stills into my editing program I see the images flashing across the screen and I try to visualize how the film will run but I can not seem to do it. Five hours into making this thing and I feel like screaming in rage, it looks shit, it feels shit and I know that it just will not do! I know this is important and I know I must do this.

I have a list longer than my arm of models I need to finish modeling by sunday, because of that I only have maybe two days I can spend on the animatic before I fall behind in my schedule.

This is what I imagine drowning is like.

Sound of Silence.

2008-08-17T18:29:00.000+10:00

Audio
Yesterday I spent the majority of the day listening to old songs in a vain effort to find the 'sound' of this little project. This is not an easy task for myself because I'm not a very audio based person, I was not one to listen to music growing up and as such classify myself as a musical 'muppet' in the most derogatory sense of the word.

So far I have settled on only one real tune, that being 'Ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive' sung by Johnny Mercer. Not so much the Upbeat sections but the soft beat that runs between and behind the main song.
You can listen to the version I liked a lot Here

3D
On the 3D side of things, production has been slow today. I spent a good chunk of the day working on the TV, which turned out to be a lot more complicated than I first expected, but I think it is finished atleast.
Adding also to the list of things that I have finished are the main dinner table and a static version of the computer manual, all though I'm not completely happy with how the table turned out and I may redo it at a later date.

Animatic
The Animatic has stalled right now, I borrowed a video camera off one of my friends to help me act out segments for the timing, however I did not grab a cable to transfer the files across for editing lol. So...the plan is to grab the cable tomorrow in class and spend all monday night putting as much of it together as I can for viewing on tuesday.

3am update....Modeling

2008-08-16T03:30:00.001+10:00

Ok so its three thirty in the morning and I'm done for the night. This is my current progress for today, the render came out with a few errors because of the plugin I used but I am too tired to redo it tonight.

Good night.

Modeling - Started Internal Props

2008-08-15T18:51:00.000+10:00

In order to stay on track with my schedule I started modeling my internal props today, slowly chewing through the long list of crap to populate the house with. Trying to keep the poly count low where possible.

Storyboards - 95% done

2008-08-15T13:12:00.000+10:00

So the story boards are nearly finished, I want to add a some minor changes to a few areas still as I have already mentioned. C&C are welcome from the hand full of people who actually read this.
Taken mid-edit, so if something looks weird that may be why.

Sorry for the size of this post btw.

For Frank.....

2008-08-14T16:52:00.000+10:00

There is a back flap....promise....

First outfit

2008-08-14T13:19:00.000+10:00

So this is the first outfit and the one I am leaning towards. I played with the hands a bit to get them the way I wanted they look fairly close.
I have also reduced the width of his head slightly to better suit the depth.

The hands, feet and head are slightly larger than they should be based on his size, I'm hoping this adds to the feel of the film.

Russel....

2008-08-13T23:05:00.001+10:00

Stopping for a break, uploading progress....
Glasses...yes..no?

Early Russel ortho's

2008-08-13T18:28:00.001+10:00

Because of how far behind I currently am on my own schedule I wont be pushing the design of Russel much more, I do like where I left him off so only minor changes will be made as I take the few sketches I have and transfer them to orthographic shots for modeling. The main thing at this stage is what he will be wearing and how I am going to go about modeling it.....

Story flaws.

2008-08-13T15:00:00.000+10:00

In the process of working over my story boards getting them ready for animatic stage I have found a few areas that I have completely missed (stupidity or tiredness...you choose), this includes one entire page.

I also think I will change a section where the lights are turned on, I believe the light source needs to be a more directional object like a lamp to better suit the shadow puppet section.

Only a short post because I have a cake that needs to come out of the oven :D

Venting....

2008-08-07T23:49:00.000+10:00

This post has no real updates and is purely to fill time while the kettle boils!

Well I have spent the last eleven hours straight getting my story boards on track to be finished. The downside of this is I know HATE my story, I have found a good number of holes that I missed when writing it that I can not change this late in the game. I am also sick and tired of drawing, as much as I have been dreading it...I really want to start animating just to get away from this crap. (yes I know it is important)

On the up side I have come up with some new camera angles and a few moves that I think are a lot better than the first ones I did, I am also getting a lot faster all round and I am feeling significantly more comfortable using both Photoshop and my Tablet.

I have roughly 13 pages left to finish the boards, after this is complete I 'intend' to go back over and flesh out certain sections with character sketch frames to be used in the animatic so I can get better control over my timing.

ok I'm done.

Storyboards - First Half

2008-08-07T00:47:00.000+10:00

Firstly, these are unfinished and have a few errors that I need to fix. This represents roughly half of the storyboards for my short film and the others will be finished in the next couple of days (I hope).
During the process of creating my storyboards I have had to make a few changes to the storyline in order to make it work, there were a few things I had not considered when writing it.
On a similar note, tonight I came up with a new 'ending' while I was driving home.... should be interesting to see it added to the story boards.

These boards are currently still missing all action arrows and junk like that, sorry.

StoryBoard style

2008-08-02T21:44:00.000+10:00

This is the basic storyboard template I put together. The storyboards are printer friendly I think, the going is fairly slow though. As you may have noticed, the character is slightly generic, this is because I have not finished the characters final design and the boards are on a deadline.

House

2008-07-27T22:17:00.000+10:00

Due to my schedule and time line, I have started modeling Russel's home. The design I decided on in the end has forced me to make changes on the fly while modeling (unfortunately) because parts of the design did not work as expected.

First render checking that it 'works'....

Story board thumbnail

2008-07-27T22:13:00.000+10:00

First page from my thumbnails.

Early Russel Concepts

2008-07-27T22:10:00.000+10:00

Two pages from my concepts for Russel, the design is fairly close to what I imagined from the get go....

Some old men.....

2008-07-17T21:11:00.000+10:00

These are a few of the old man pictures, from a excessively large collection that I accumulated while researching for this flick.

The Log Line

2008-07-17T20:24:00.000+10:00

"A technophobic old man is taken to the brink of insanity by the purchase of his first computer."

Animation sites

2008-06-30T13:24:00.000+10:00

Spent some time looking for a few things to make life a little easier down the track.

http://www.vangaans.com/
This site has two tools that I think will prove invaluable.... the first thing is an animation dope sheet, the other is a stop watch program he has made and put up.

http://fliponline.blogspot.com/
This site has alot of ideas on animation that I think will be helpful (after I finally finish reading it all) the main of which is a few posts on work flows for animation.

http://www.animationmeat.com/index.html
I just think this site has some nice little resources and is worth a look.

http://www.battlestarvfx.com/
This site is about compositing in a Lightwave/Fusion environment and is very well done and gives a great insight into a production pipeline.