Project Cheese-a delayed update

So work on the project is running rather smoothly now. At the beginning I'll admit we were a bit behind but now we're bang on track.

Anyway I thought I'd begin this post by rambling a bit about the idea. I'm not actually sure how it arose. I was just presented with the brief "yes, yes, yes, yes, no," and then, *PING!* it just materialised in my brain: there was a mouse, he was stealing cheese from a podium with a mechanical hand, he was quivering with the kind of excitement that only a mouse charged on pure caffeine could do, "yes, yes, yes, YES!" and the cheese was squished, "NOOOOOOOOO!" That's basically what happened.
After a minute or two had passed the idea had evolved a little. The little film in my head was in the style of a Chuck Jones version of Tom and Jerry, which I enjoy too much...I may happen to have had a Chuck Jones' Tom and Jerry box set for a few years...and suddenly, perhaps with the nature of the cartoon in mind my idea became set in a cheese museum.

Anyway I ended up as the director, which I'm actually really enjoying, animator and character designer. I have Brian working on concepts and backgrounds and Perry working on story board and sound. I think my self lucky as they're both doing a great job.

Here is a page from Perry's story board. It's nicely paced and there is some nice composition. This is subject to change and is changing as he is currently doing e new draft.

This is an example of Brian's background work. It's a downward shot and its in mid progress but anyway he's captured the style perfectly. It is epic.

We've progressed since all this work and over all I'm rather pleased with how much we're doing and the pace we're going at. I've just finished some test animations and hope to blog them soon.



Toon Boom

So today I was confronted with Toon Boom for the first time. The lecture was mostly about getting to grips with the interface (especially the storyboard tools).

Toon Boom was designed to make the transfer from traditional media to technical media easier (also this makes it much easier to learn.) Plus it's capable of a large number of applications so looks its kinda evil.

Sooo many tabs!

It is capable of storyboarding, full animatics which encapsulates the use of time lines, the ability to apply sound, drawing tools and the application of cameras. It can also be used to animate so yeah its kinda a bit like flash.

Anyway while experimenting with the interface I couldn't resist but...

Rendering stuff

So this is gonna be a quick one. Today I learned different ways to render in Maya for the perpose of creating separate layers. For example a colour layer or a shadow layer and there are many, many others.

Here was the origonal simple scene rendered.

And bellow are some other render types.

Diffuce No Shadow

One Depth Remaped

One Spectar No Shadow

Anyway there are some examples. Tadah! End.

Project Cheese

So the scenario is we've all been split into groups to create a short piece of animation. The brief is to realise a script with the words, "yes, yes, yes, yes, no," and it can't exceed ninety seconds and must not be any shorter than thirty.

Currently we have the first full term to create an animatic. Anyway with this brief in mind I came up with the concept of a high tech mouse attempting to pull off a heist of which he attempts to steal a highly expensive piece of cheese from a specialist cheese museum and goes like this...
The scene opens late at night, raining. You see the silhouette of a huge building. Lightning flashes dramatically. It highlights a sign. "Cheese Museum." Next you're confronted by a piece of cheese in a glass case, surrounded by lasers. The shot fades to look like that of a cheep flickering TV screen. Then a silhouette slides into view before it. "Yesss." A mouse with techy goggles leans over the screen an moves some leavers. Back in the room with the cheese a mechanical hand lowers from the ceiling and misses the cheese. Close up on the mouse's paws as he adjusts the leavers. Back with the cheese again the arm moves across a little, lowers and grabs the cheese. It ascends towards the ceiling. The mouse leans closer to the screen, "yes," we see the screen over his shoulder, "yes, YES," The hand squishes the cheese. The mouse is still. He twitches. "NOOOOOOOO!"

Anyway that's my idea. Here are a few character concept sketches I created. They are subject to change. There were two things I knew when I started and that was I wanted this mouse to look nothing like Micky Mouse and the other was I didn't want this character to look fluffy or humanoid. Sometimes the best elements of a character can be found by exaggerating elements of the animal itself.

For example when I saw these images I thought big head, round body, huge eyes, stumpy legs.

These were my first preliminary sketches as I was attempting to define a style.

Once I had found a style I was able to create the rest of its from (while just experimenting) and once I was happy with it I continued with facial expressions.

I simplified it a little and added goggles...and accidentally left the whiskers on the bottom image. Bah!

So that's that. I think I may have landed my self with the director roll some how and I think I'm excited by that but maybe I'm just a little mortified. Meh. 

Dem Bones

Today I was introduced to rigging. This is when you build bones or joints for a character or object which will later be used to animate them. In effect its a little like putting strings on a puppet.

This here is a chain of bones.

Creating the bones them selves was relatively simple (and I didn't fall behind. Phweeew! ) The next part of the lecture was spent adding the motor controls to the joints. The first enabled me to grab one end and when pulled the rest would follow and flex accordingly. The second meant that and animator could grab the central point and make the structure pivot let and right.

Anyway I added pictures so my blog is a little more interesting to look at...probably still a little boring though...

Oh and Dell wiped my laptop clean. All is lost...

Nuke

So I decided I would take the post production side of my course to keep up to date with special effects technology (and to also keep up with animation) but I'll continue to practice drawing and the like in my own time. Boom baby!

Anyway yesterday I was confronted with a program called Nuke. It's like a more advance After Effects (and has a very similar visual interface) but it can keep up with you essentially. Anyway the lecture was about layering. We were presented with a piece of footage of an adorable little girl adorned with a pretty baby blue frock and blond pig tales perched on a hill who promptly whipped out a huge bazooka-like-lazer-alien-gun-thing and fired it across the landscape. Upon opening the file on Nuke it came out in separate layers such as a distant hill, the hill in the foreground and the girl. There were more but you get the idea.
Basically that lecture i leaned that these layers could essentially be "plugged in" to on another. I struggled with it at first but eventually got the idea. In the proses of getting lost and catching up I managed to accidentally pick up a couple more skills. Next time I should print screen some of my work so this can make more sense...and perhaps to make my blog look prettier.