New Animation and Inspiration

So I've finally started using Maya again and the "re-learning curve" wasn't as steep as I'd expected.

I've spent my evenings working on getting to grips with the software again and making a quick body mechanics test to try and get my workflow locked down. It's not quite there yet but with one or two more quick tests like this I expect it'll be second nature and I can concentrate on pushing my animation.

For my first test I decided to keep it relatively simple and do some body mechanics...



I've had some good feedback from the guys at work and I'm going to revisit this soon to act on that and give the shot some more polish. For now though I'm happy that I got what I was after out of this anim. At the moment I'm in the process of finishing up a lip sync anim I started about 18 months ago, but after how much I learned from this quick test I'm thinking it might be best to do a few more first :)

I'd like to start posting more about what's been inspiring me in the animation world and any cool tutorials I come across. I don't want to flood this post with everything I've been watching lately but some things that stand out are...

Daffy's Rhapsody


I can't wait to see this, the tone and sensibilities of the originals have been perfectly transferred into 3D. It's just a shame they keep putting them out in front of films I'm not interested in seeing :(

Collapsing Cooling Towers


Fun little eco-awareness ad. Really simple idea, charming execution :)

Zombirama

Zombirama - Trailer from ZOMBIRAMA on Vimeo.

Trailer for a cool looking zombie short. There's something really appealing about this to me, hopefully I'll get chance to see the finished film!

Pedro Sanz's Blog

Not much on there right now but I was really inspired by what little there is. Pedro is currently an animator at Blue Sky Studios.

Tradd Moore's Blog

A comic artist/illustrator who has a fantastic style. He's currently working on The Strange Talent of Luther Strode which is well worth picking up.


That'll do for today, in the future I'll try to keep the inspiration updates seperate from my personal work.

Cheers :)

Hello again!

According to the time-stamp on my last post I haven't updated this website in what's approaching 2 years..

So with that, and the fact that one of my new year's resolutions is to devote more time to animation outside of work, I thought it was about time I made a new news post.

In the time between my last post and now I've worked on a few little pieces of animation which you can see on my Youtube channel. But the biggest news would be that I landed a job animating in the games industry. I'm now working as an animator for Jagex on Runescape, which involves animating so really bizarre creatures as well as humans.

The thing I didn't count on when I got this job was how much animating out of work would fall by the wayside..

So after a looong time of animating purely in work I've decided it's time to get back into working on some personal projects. First off I plan to get back into Maya (we use in-house software at work) by doing some small tests, while working on my drawing at the same time.

Then I'd like to work on a little game in UDK (nothing too fancy), and a short film with some of the guys from work.

This should mean a lot more activity on the website :) Add to that the fact that I want to start posting links to cool animations, blogs, articles etc. and the site should have a lot more content over the course of the year.

Cheers :)

Boo!

I know it's been a while since my last post but rest assured there is lots going on at the moment that I can't wait to get on the website!

In the next month or 2 you can expect to see some great progress on the projects I've been mentioning, as well as some new ones. As well as that I think it's about time I sorted out my gallery page so I'll be collating concept art, renders etc. to give visitors a lot more to look at!

Exciting times!

P.S. - Here's a teaser of one the projects : )

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone has had a good Christmas and New Year : )

Unfortunately this is gonna be another short update, been working a lot of hours lately which means more money but less progress on my many projects 8-)

I've had some time to do some render tests for a style I've had in mind for the postman short I've been working on. I wanted to come up with a way of making the animation look like its made from different pieces of cloth stitched together. I whipped up some sketches so I knew what I was aiming for then started thinking of a way I could actually accomplish this that didn't involve drawing on every frame by hand...

I had a few ideas on how I could do it but the one that I thought would be the most straightforward involved using Maya's vector renderer. I figured that I could render out the outlines of my character and objects with the vector renderer, which would output these as vector paths, which I could apply a brush to in Illustrator to get my stitching effect. Luckily I was right : )

This was my first test using a Helix primitive. It was pretty straightforward in the end and seems like something I could automate using Illustrator's actions so I was pretty happy to go on and do some more tests.

I was pretty happy with this render of the Postman model, but I wasn't confident in going on without a motion test.

With my lack of free time I decided to do a quick camera move rather than an animation test. I'm glad I did now because I learned some things that would have made an animation test a waste of time...

This made me realise a few things...
1. I animation would have to be quite limited almost stop motion style
2. The camera would have to be static
3. The stitching needs to be bigger

Since then I've been working on some animation tests with the above in mind, but... the postman character is very awkward to animate :(

I'm going to try and see if I can work on the rig a little to help but I'm pretty sure it's a design problem. It's a fairly big set back but I've designed and built enough characters by now that it doesn't take me too long anymore.

As well as this I've been thinking a lot about Growing Pains. I get at least 1 good idea a day on how to improve it whether that be story, visually or something technical. I'm going to make a start on that as soon as I've finished these "stitched" shorts.

This year is going to be a busy one for me but one of my resolutions was to have Growing Pains out by the end of it and I intend to stick to it!

Cheers.

Hello World!

Hi there! I realise it's been a while since my last update. I've been having computer troubles over the past few weeks that have stunted any progress : (

On the bright side, that's (almost) all been fixed and I've been working hard on a few projects I'm really excited about.

As well as continuing work on Growing Pains I've been writing scripts for a couple more animated shorts, and coming up with some concept work alongside that.

I've also been working on a low-poly character that I'd like to animate some cycles for. Eventually I'd love to get the character running around in engine (most likely as a custom character for UT3). At the moment I'm just finishing up the low poly model so I'll be sure to update the site again when that's finished. I'm really looking forward to getting this guy into ZBrush!

Lastly there should be some work coming soon in the development of a short me and some guys from uni are working on. The script (by Andrew Leeke) has just been finalised and we're ready to make a start on the design stage : )

As always there's a few other projects on the go, very busy times at the moment, so hopefully there'll be some more in the way of images and animation over Christmas, and especially in the new year!

Hope you're all doing better at Christmas shopping than me this year!

Cheers : )

Mini Update

First week back after my month at RJDM hasn't been has productive as I'd hoped..

I had a great time at RJDM, learned a ton and got lots of valuable production experience. As well as all that it left me eager to make a start on some of my own projects!

Anyway, I started a job as a ward clerk at Chester hospital this week, mostly training and shadowing someone who knows what they're doing. My plan was to work for money during the day at the hospital and then come home and work on animation in the evenings. Things didn't really go to plan..

I'm putting it down to the fact that I've got so much to remember from my day job that by the time I get home I just want to chill out and let it sink in. I'm quickly becoming a lot more comfortable with the job though so I'm optimistic that I'll get into my animating in the evenings routine within the next week or two.

The weekend hasn't been much more productive than the week really. I've started work redesigning my main character from my final major project at uni. I worked the story into something I was really happy with so I'm eager to make it into a finished short.

Click here for the animatic for Growing Pains!

I don't think much needs to change storywise, I'd like to work on the pacing a little though. I think some more time with the size changing of the main character would help. One thing I'd like to work on more before getting started animating is the design side. I was never really happy with my final character design, the design of the whole thing actually seemed quite bland to me.

Now I've got a bit more time I want to correct that. I've got a lot of designs in my sketchbook but I haven't scanned them in yet. This quick Painter sketch should get the idea of where I'm going across though..

While it's not a massive stretch from the original character I wanted a design more influenced by the story. My original design for the character remained the same while the story went through all it's changes.

As you can probably tell, I was going for something organic and plant-like with the new design. I'll upload one of my more finished drawings soon where you can see how his legs actually look like tree trunks/roots going into the ground, and obviously his head is shaped like a tomato : P

I'm actually pretty happy with this direction, and I'm looking forward to animating the character with his bendy arms and legs!

Before I finalise this design though I need to make this character more interesting. At the moment he's still nameless and has a pretty boring personality. I'd like his personality to influence his design, and vice versa, so I won't be modelling until that's locked down.

Other than redesigning this character I've been looking into how to rig bendy arms and legs (and some tools that would rig these for me)

Like I say, not the most productive week but it's all progress. Next update should be further design work for Growing Pains and some animation for the postman and sofa shorts I'm working on (depending on how productive this next week is)

Cheers.

Quick Update

Just a quick update to explain the lack of updates for the past couple of weeks!

I've spent the last week and a half working at RJDM studios helping out on a couple of their projects. The tight deadlines of the apple project prepared me pretty well for the kind of timeframes I need to be working to, though I'm doing a lot of 2D work at the moment which isn't my strong point...

The benefit is that I've learned a LOT of After Effects, though I'm still planning on using Nuke for most my compositing.

In other news I've got a full time job lined up back home once I've finished at RJDM but I'm going to make time to keep animating. I've got a few ideas I really want to get started on; one very stylised, one very "CG" and a few just pure animation (which I'm really missing at the moment).

So for the next week or 2 there probably won't be much life on here but hopefully once I have a bit more free time the ball will be rolling as fast as ever!

Cheers.

New Website!

My website is finally live! I've had that placeholder splash page for way too long...

It's a pretty bog standard portfolio site really but I'm happy with it. It's keeping in theme with my Showreel DVD which some of you may have seen.

Depending on when you're reading this there could be a few pages which still aren't live yet. These should be finished within the next couple of days!

Finally, on the off chance you're reading this on my blog here's the link to the website:

http://www.autymation.co.uk

Cheers.

New Showreel!

Another quick one here. My new showreel is online : )

Click here to watch

Cheers.

Apple Slice

The apple is done!! Well... I'm going to come back and touch up the animation and render a few more passes to help integrate it but for 2 weeks work I'm very happy with it. Especially since a lot of that time was spent researching : )

CLICK HERE TO WATCH!!

Next on the agenda is getting a new showreel and website together then back to the postman and sofa animations. I've also written a short story/script I'd like to make into a short animation. I'll post that up when it's a bit tidier and some of the bugs have been worked out.

Cheers.

Rendering!

I need to get back to work on this so I won't upload the whole progression of how I got here but there are a couple of videos on Youtube if you're interested and maybe I'll stick a few images on here in a later post.

Anyway this is where I'm at...


The scene is a photograph projected onto some basic geometry then another camera zoomed in slightly with an automated camera shake is making it look more like footage (all suggested by an old coursemate Andy). There are some things that are happening that shouldn't be happening and some that aren't happening that should be but it's a good solution that takes a LOT less time than the alternative.

Maya scene...


Right, back to work. I should be animated by the end of tomorrow so I'll upload something then!

Cheers

The First Cut is the Deepest

A bit late uploading the apple model but I thought I better get straight to rigging. I want this whole clip done by the end of the week really so I'm neglecting the blog a bit.

My idea for how to cut the character in half worked out fine, it's just gonna require a bit of on the fly rigging during animation but its all really easy stuff. I was tempted to try some ideas I had on building the cut functionality into the rig but on the time frame I've got it isn't worth it.

Maybe I'll come back and use this character again and pimp out the rig a bit. For the next few weeks though I've got enough on my plate.

Will upload animation blocking/render tests soon depending on what gets done first : )

Cheers

New projects!

Well the deadline for the postman and sofa shorts has been pushed back to December which gives me more time to add polish and relax a bit!

I'm gonna keep working on it but progress might be a bit slower with having a few new projects on the go! I would like to get one shot from the postman short totally animated and rendered in the next few weeks though.

New projects are a group project with a bunch of old coursemates and a little art test for a company back in Leicester.

The group project needs some story ideas to be done in about 2 weeks, no final script of anything just an outline so I've been getting my story cap on lately and seeing what I can come up with. Reading a lot of old mythology and one norse myth in particular could be translated to a short well. I've got a concept for that story but there isn't much meat to it at the moment so I'll work on that. Aswell as that I've got some old story ideas I've been sitting on so I'll start writing them too.

The art test is to make a well lit, well integrated character. I've been looking into mental ray and how to get some really nice renders out of it, and doing some quick render tests. I'm building the character at the moment, without reference which is never a good idea but it's pretty basic so shouldn't be a problem.

I'll post some pics up when I have em, hopefully the character will be modelled by the end of the day!

Cheers

Modelling and Rigging Done :D

Over the last week I've been working on getting the characters for the first 2 shorts modelled and rigged. It all went surprisingly smoothly once I remembered how use Maya, especially since I only had to rig the postman then used a modified version of the same rig on the builders : )

The pic at the top is how I want the eyes and mouth to work on the characters. I've got it all worked out in my head but implementing it is a totally different thing... I'm confident it'll work though and, as well as looking cool, it'll be a massive time saver.

Anyway the characters are all below. The postman is definitely my favourite of the 3, probably because I let myself spend a little more time on him. Textures are going to be flat colours just to seperate elements like jeans from belts from t-shirts etc. I'll do those a little later into animation.

Builder 1

Builder 2

Postman

With those done I finally get to start animation! So I've knocked up a shot list for the shorts. Making a shot list like this helps soooo much in the long run. Ticking the boxes as you go along is always satisfying too!

Right I've got a few more things to do before I can start animating but once I've got some scenes blocked out I'll be sure to upload them onto here.

Cheers

Some Quick Scans (As Promised)

Old Concepts

Newer Concepts

Builder 1

Builder 2

Postman (plus bonus angry old man)

I've been modelling the postman but looking at what I have I think I'm going to need to make some big changes. "Postman"and "Sofa" are the first 2 I'm going to do so I need to get all 3 characters modelled and rigged by Monday.

I'm mad aren't I? Oh well, there goes the weekend....

Cheers

Story Time

I've spent the past week working on story for the project I've been talking about. The idea was to have 5 stories about how bad things happen when things don't fit. Originally the idea was to have these bad things cause a chain reaction which escalates into an epic disaster but with the time constraint and the style choice it didn't seem like it was going to work.

The new approach is to make 5 individual stories which are more intimate, about one or two average joes coming across problems with things fitting. I've spent a lot of time working out the pacing of these stories because I'm aiming for it to be very consistent from story to story.

I came up with a structure that all 5 shorts what have to fit in to:

1. Establish Character
2. Set Up Situation
3. Fitting Problem
4. Attempts to Overcome
5. Something Goes Wrong
6. Final Punchline

I decided the first shot for all the shorts would be about 3 seconds of the character walking in their environment. Their walk, design and environment should establish the character and help set up the situation he/she's about to get themselves in.

The final scene would also have to be consistent too so I decided they would all end with a cut to the company logo (as the client requested) and sound effects to deliver that last punchline.

From there I took some of my story ideas and fit them into the structure I'd come up with...

Postman:
1. Postman in uniform with bag walking down a rural street
2. Postman arrives at house looking nervous, looks inside to check on the dog house in the garden. He then gets out the parcel he has to deliver and sneaks across the garden to the door.
3. Postman finds out he can't fit the parcel through the letterbox
4. Trying to stay quiet he attempts to push the parcel through the letterbox
5. With his last hard push he manages to get the parcel through but his arms go through the letterbox too and get stuck. He hears a growl and turns towards the dog house
6. Bite noise and screams

I did the same with a story about a pair of guys moving in a sofa and a drunk guy who tries to fit his car in a parking space which is too small.

Over the last couple of days I've whipped up some quick storyboards and made them into animatics.

Postman

Sofa

Drunk

I had the idea of making the camera angles kind of CCTV/peeping tom angles to add to the feeling of intimacy with the characters. Like we're watching this story play out from the sidelines. I'm not sure how strongly that will come across but another advantage of this idea is that only having 3 static cameras works well with the style I'm going for. Moving cameras and too many camera changes could disorient with the static textures layed under the objects.

There should be updates soon with the character designs I promised to show and some modelling progress. It's going to be a very busy week, same as every week lately...

Cheers

Making Progress!

This past week or so I've been working on the virally marketing stuff I mentioned in the last post. It's basically going to be a series of shorts about how bad things can happen when things don't fit. Right now I'm working on stories!

I need to have 2 finished animations (they're all around 30 seconds each) by late September, so I want 2 animatics done by the end of the week and 3 more stories in the beginnings so I know where I'm going with the whole project. I'm trying to think of ways to link these stories together too but that's something for another post.

Anyway I've got some pretty pics n vids to show now from the style tests I've been doing this week...









These 3 vids were working on an idea for a style I wanted to explore. I started by working with stills and a quickly made character to see if the idea could work, then went on to some very quick and dirty renders that you can see above.

Here are some of the stills I worked on if you're interested:

Test 1 Test 2

Once the scratchy line and underlaying texture style was locked down I started working on concepts for characters and what the world would look like. Where I'm at now is pretty much what you can see at the top of the post. That was a quick mock up done in photoshop that, with a few tweaks, is pretty much what I'm aiming for the final animations to look like.

I think the backgrounds need more work... I need to find a style for them that fits in with the rest of the world but lets the characters and props stand out at the same time.

I'll scan in the rest of my character concepts soon and upload them! They're a bit out of my comfort zone which is great, I've got too used to doing kiddy designs over the last couple of years. I'll have to do a sculpt soon to make sure these guys are gonna work in 3D, I'll take some pics and upload them too.

Right, back to work...

Cheers

Busy busy!

I'm just about settled in back at home now so it's time to get back to work on some animating.

I've got 2 projects on the go at the moment...

First off I'm working on some online viraly marketing stuff for a friend's business. The launch of the company is in mid-late September though so the work load is gonna be a bit mad up until then. I'll talk more about what that projects all about as I go, I'm working on some tests for it right now so shouldn't be too long.

Secondly I'm going to be producing a animated segment for a charity roadshow spreading recycling awareness for high school kids. Waiting on a script for that at the moment and quietly hoping it doesn't arrive until after I've finished the first project :P

So a bit of a mad few months coming up, I really wanted to do some more one day animations and a few lip syncs but I don't think I'm gonna have time, at least for a couple of months...

Oh well, back to work! Looking forward to updating this with some pretty pictures soon :)

Cheers

Website!

Finally got round to getting some hosting for my website. Haven't got time at the moment to work on anything fancy so I've knocked up an "Under Construction" page.

http://www.autymation.co.uk

I'm hosting a few friends' sites too so I'll post some links when they're up. It's been a while since I've posted an update on here mostly due to working on the degree show website and other degree show things.

That website is finished though so I can move on to the fun of making business cards and all that...

Anyway here's the link for the degree show site. Should probably expect another update in a few weeks when things have calmed down a bit!

http://www.dmuanimation.com/

Crunch time!

I haven't posted this one up yet because I never got to finish it. I didn't get to spend very long at all on it so I was gonna come back and give it a couple of hours of finishing.

With the degree show coming up though I'm probably not going to have time to do that though, let alone start any more. From the 3 I did get done though I learned a lot that'll prepare me for these next few weeks of stress!

One Day Animations 03 - Disgusting Drink

I'm going to carry on doing these once I get some more free time, if I can get a really tight workflow and start getting these 3/4 second clips finished in one day I'll be chuffed.

Right now though I need to spend some time on degree show pieces which'll take more than a day to get done. The good side is I'll finally get some work on here that's past the blocking stage!!

Updates in the next few weeks be shots from the short I'm working from, a fun test or two with a brain character from my last short, a Hi-Fi system monster test and maybe some work with an old martial arts master character from 2nd year.

Lots of work to do then. Good times...