Bits N Bobs

Had to tweak things today and make small adjustments....

Bum refining...

Sleeve addition...

Sole addition...


theres more i'll upload later.........

Unproductive

Didnt finish work till 6 today so was not in the mood to sit down and work. However I did spend about 20 mins during a gaming break modelling some more of the floor polisher. Its a pathetic amount of work to upload.... in fact I dont know why I'm updating you.....hardly anythings changed......a dial............and handle bars.........



Tommorow serious shits going down though.

Update

Yesterday I had a fiddle with Jeds collar in an attempt to give it more funkyness. Originally I had modelled a bog standard fold over collar, however I quickly changed my mind and decided an Elvis style stand up collar was more appropriate. The new version is much better...

OLD:

NEW:

I still need to tweak the new one as it needs a couple of overlaps and a bit of reshaping.

I then added a belt and began to create buttons for the shirt but Phil kept interuppting me and needed help 24/7 so I called it a day.

Today however I took a break from modelling Jed and pressed on with the floor polisher. I spent a good few hours knocking up the rough model reffering to orthagraphic imageplanes I set up (made using concept images). Below is my progress so far - its not much, but its a start...

I also played around with squash and stretch deformers, bends, and motor rotations. It all seemed to work perfectly! I cant wait to animate this baby...

Tongue Thursday

Today I progressed with the mouth and managed to blendshape the hardest expression - the tight closed lip. Again it was a case of rearranging vertices until the desired shape was achieved. It looks good but for some reason Maya has a glitch that unsmooths/deforms the model when two blendshapes are used. I think I can figure it out but for now its working when I apply just one blendshape...



I got a bit bored of trying to get the mouth to work properly so I went on to model the tongue and apply deforemers and blends to it. Thankfully that was alot easier....





A good day all in all....

Mouthy

I have an insane amount of shifts at the pub over xmas and so have had to reduce the amount of work I intend to get done over the holiday. Originally I wished for both Ed and Jed to be fully modelled and partially textured, however instead I plan to have only Jed fully modelled and partially textured as well as the first two chapters of my dissertation. I realised that modelling the mouth blendshapes play a siginificant part in the character build process, and therefore it is going to take alot longer to get one character complete.

So today I started testing the dreaded mouth expressions for Jed, and was actually pleasently suprised at the simplicity. I began by modelling the mouth open, allowing myself space for the teeth and tongue aswell as providing extra geometry to stretch and play with. Once modelled in its most extreme position I duplicated the head and attempted to shut it. It was a long process which involved rearranging vertices and edge loops until the jaw closed with hardly any deformation. It was a pain at first because I raised everything until several edge loops were cluttered together towards the top of the head. This was bad news as it provided a nasty movement on the back of the neck when blendshaped....

I then realised that only vertices on the front of the face need to be moved otherwise animation will occur in unwanted places. Noting this I re-modelled the closed mouth only moving the bottom lip geometry and leaving the neck loops to form an almost diagonal pattern. This resulted in a much better blend....

As you can see the second model has a much better edge flow to it, with the mouth rings in a far more effective position...

As I was on a bit of a roll I decided to model the teeth to help me understand how much space is required within the mouth, and more importantly whether or not it was looking any good...

I was going to tackle the tongue but realised the scene was in a state and so renamed EVERYTHING and tidied up the outliner...

I then called it a day after abusing Grigs. I hope to achieve a few more expressions by the end of the week, especially the fully closed lip!

XMAS is Cancelled

Christmas is over for the team now. Unfortunately we are behind and so have agreed to resume production as of today. Every Tuesday we will come into college to discuss work and update one another, except Alec who cannot make the trip. I have hopefully made clear to the guys what we need done by the start of term 2:

-Grigs: Room bock out, Jed texture tests, Room texture tests

- Alec: Life Support Machine Model complete (pipes n all), Texture tests, Bed or Plug model blockout

- Spencer: Wall texture tests, Tile texture tests, any extra models

- Simon: Machine textures, objects textures, skin textures (important)

Term 1 - End

Make way for the longest post in blog history....

I haven't been updating this thing in the last couple of weeks because mad amounts of work had to be done. I think the last time I blogged was the weekend before the final week, and so much has happpened since...

The team was working overtime to try and meet the 2nd pitch deadline (23rd Nov), in which we had to present all our pre-production work as well as a finished animatic. Meeting this deadline required everyone to pull their wieght and get on with the jobs I had dished out....

I gave Alec the task of producing the animatic frames in flash earlier in the term simply because I had been experimenting myself and realised the potential the program had. After creating a few rough drafts we decided to go ahead with a fully coloured and partly animated version, and so he set off with my drawings to reference from.

Grigsby was given the job of gathering sound fx for the animatic. He spent alot of time searching the sound fx hard drive, the internet, as well as recording a few himself. This was mighty handy and enabled us to build up a library of sounds ready for the final editing.

Simon willingly agreed to put together our presentation slides, making sure everyones work was included as well as hitting all of the brief criteria. He had to pester people for all their work and organise all of our public folder material ready for the slides. It was not the most creative of tasks but a vital one. Everything had to be branded up, layed out, and condensed into something like 18 slides. He also nailed budgeting for us.

Phil was still bashing out his animatic which I have to say had fallen miles behind due to serious amounts of story changes. He definately wasn't going anywhere near P.O. It wasn't nice to see him have to start all over again so late in the day, and I felt like a right knob at times because the team seemed to be doing so well with P.O. It was no ones fault, but because the story wasnt decided no one could really help with the animatic until Brooks had made a decision. Unfortunately it was never really resolved and he only managed to get the prologue and beginning finalized - which was beautiful and left everyone wanting more. As far as I know he is going to produce the final animatic over christmas.

Spence had been working heavily on Whaked at the time and so sat out the animatic process, but he still popped in every now and then to check progress.

That left me to produce all of the other work needed by the deadline such as contracts, a script, pose sheets, ending thumbnails, and more importantly music. Whilst over seeing the animatic I realised it would be a hell of a lot easier if we had the final music composed now rather than in term 3, as it would allow us to time our jokes to the beat and gain a better understanding of Jeds rythm and cutting pace. I had two meetings with a good friend of mine named John Solly, who has produced beats and sound fx for me in the past. He was more than happy to get involved and so I explained what we needed....

Jeds headphone music - It must open to the beat of Billy Jean, with a funky retro feel. We wanted a similar sound to that of the Bee Gees and saturday night fever. He suggested drums and trumpets would capture that 70's movement. I reminded him that it needed to increase in tempo throughout, lasting approximately 2 minutes, and finsihing with a big climax. I also explained the characteristics of Jed, as well as the story to help him gain an understanding of the whole situation and the emotion the beat should provoke. I also said if any Bee Gee vocals could be sampled towards the end that would be great. He got to work straight away.

So with 7 people all working at once I thought we had it in the bag....

However, time was against us and essays loomed. We were constantly knocked back behind schedule because of lectures and other units getting in the way. Eventually I had to jump on board with Alec and help him draw the animatic frames as well as gather the remaining sound fx because Grigs had to help out with Splay.

The college peed us right off with its lack of Adobe Premier liscences, as we were only able to find 2 machines with it installed. We were lucky enough to nab them for a few days and came ever so close to finshing on the friday before the pitch. At 7.00pm we were kicked out with one scene missing from the animatic - the crucial plug scene. Unfortunately me and Als had to meet up the following day to work on it over the weekend, along with several magners and a pizza.

To cut a long story short, we just about made it - it was exported Sunday night ready for the morning. John had given us the 2nd draft of the music just in time and simon had finsihed the presentation. That left us half an hour on Monday morning to practice.

The pitch went really really well, with a great response to the animatic. We were so nervous about people not laughing, or not getting the joke but it was the total opposite. I am confident the story is ready now, and pre production is officialy over. As soon as all of our Kieron essays are finsihed we aim to begin production right away and hopefully meet up over xmas. The goal is to have both characters and the basic room modelled for when we come back, along with texture tests. The characters simply have to be rigged in the first 2-3 weeks or we will fail.

I'm so proud of my team this term, and although we didnt meet our deadlines we have achieved a working story with successful designs - which is the main thing. Below is the final animatic in all its glory.....

Poster Designs

Grigsby requested I produce a couple of rough sketches for him to edit in PS. We've had some brilliant ideas for posters.

Pose Sheets

Finally managed to get Jeds pose sheets done today. I did my presentation for Gareths unit this morning, which went really well and then spent the afternoon sketching away whilst listening to the other ones. For each pose I referred to stills of classic dance moves, making sure I captured the exact posture. With each drawing I became quicker and more loose with my lines, improving my ability to draw the character with ease. The rougher the lines, the more he appeared in mid dance. Looking at them all next to each other you get a sense of movement and life, something a concept has yet to provoke.

I will post up a dance moodboard at some point next week which will include all of my reference images.

Admin

I have created a personal contract for each team member which they all must sign. Below is my one...


I also wrote up our current script....



Just hitting the brief criteria.

ENDING POSE SORTED.

Whilst helping Alec with the animatic today I had a flashback from a film called "Risky Business". At one point during the film Tom Cruise slides into frame before bursting out into dance. After looking at it again on youtube it hit me that Jeds final dance pose could be just this. The floor would be shiny and clean by the end, meaning he could simply slide in and turn off his floor polisher with ultimate coolness. I can imagine this shot perfectly now, whereas before I was undecided on how he would come to a standstill. Ed will die in the bed from a side on angle leaving the frame perfectly set for Jed to slide in bedside.

Headbanging Tests

I didn't fancy another day battling the collar and so moved on to something a little bit easier. I decided to run some funky headphone tests. I modelled a very basic headphone (half a sphere) and began squashing and stretching it, as if it was pulsating to the music. I then ran a few animation tests, and it actually didnt look half bad. I think we're definately going to be using the S&S deformer to its full potential with this one.

Collar issues

3rd day of modelling, and all the old demons came flooding back. The last 2 days have seen me model alot of Jed with (touch wood) not too many problems, but not today. I focused on his boiler suit collar but it caused all sorts of issues. I tried so many methods of modelling it attached to the body mesh, mainly by extruision, yet nothing worked when smoothed. A collar doubles in on itself about 4 times when extruded, which causes all sorts of nasty overlapping and surfaces to appear. In the end I managed to get somewhere by extruding edges rather than faces, but even then alot of tweaking and rearranging of vertex had to be done. I left with it in the stage you can see below, but I am definately going to adapt it to a higher more Elvis like design!

More Modelling Man

Another day, and another session of modelling. I continued to work on my file from yesterday, mainly adding to what I had already achieved. I ran into some trouble when trying to extrude the two legs from the base of the body, however with some much appreciated help from Ferhan I solved the issue. He advised I model just one side of the character and then mirror it at a later stage, which I had learnt before but for some reason thought I could do it the Edgley way - I was wrong. If you focus on just one half it makes life ten times easier as you can just extrude away having the peace of mind that maya will fill in the gaps.

I also made progress on the hands, adding extra digits and shaping the thumb and palm more. Work still needs to be done on the knuckles and overall shape however.

The feet were the simplest and fastest thing to model, yet I feel they look the best! I kncoked em out in a minute, which leads me to believe maybe they need more work? A heel, shoe rim, worn detail? Or maybe I'm not taking Jareds well remembered advice from Bare Bear...

"So what if it took you five minutes? A race car driver doesn't pass the finish line and decide to do another lap! You won, stop worrying about how fast you did it!"

I then added more detail to the fro, legs and bum - however as Alec keeps reitterating - the bum needs more more roundness, a fuller chunkier arse. I agree. Enough for one day though.

Production?!

Today I took a break from story and concentrated on modelling Jed. According to our schedule we should have both characters modelled and ready to rig by the end of term. Unfortunately due to story development, essays, presentations and other P.O work I do not think this will be the case. Instead I will be happy if we get both characters roughly modelled for christmas, so we can apply some texture tests over the break and have them ready to animate within the first few weeks of term 2. We noticed the mistake previous years made was not allowing enough time to animate, so we are planning ahead.





Imported the front, back and side drawings into maya as image planes and began working on the basic shapes. Alec and I hummed and arred on the decision to model in metres, however we decided to go with it as it is industry standard after all. So far I have only managed to get the body, arm and section of the hand mapped out, but a good start!

Dance Reference

'Nailing' Thumbnailing

I cant wait to nail the final story. Things are bad at the moment. After continuing with the flash timing test this week it became clear the story wasnt working. It lacked pace, rythm and appeal, and so unfortunately we had to cease production and go back to the thumbnailing stage.

Alec, Grigsby and myself have spent a tremendous amount of time the last few days downstairs in the old BA area reworking the story. On the whole it was ok, but the beginning didnt allow the audience to breathe and absorb the calmness of the room. It started with fast cutting and too much action - this was not good. To resolve this, we added a couple more establishing shots, and extended the duration of exisiting frames. The beginning now has a much more subtle, calm before the storm feel - perfect.

The Jed reveal shot was lovely, it really was. A nice big pan up the character, from polisher to face. HOWEVER - it had zero personality! There was no build up, anitcipation, excitment, funky freshness. It was a camera on a pivot, revealing him immediately - Nah mate. We reworked that whole section and have settled upon something alot more creative. I must hand it to Grigs because the new version was his idea, and he had been saying we needed it from the beginning. Jed is now introduced using a clever arrangment of cuts, to show hands clicking, feet tapping, polisher revving, headphones beating, bum shaking - all of which will be timed to a beat. Alec suggested I take a look at the Madagascar 2 trailer, in which they reveal the characters in this very same way....





The two following gags - the mirror and bed scoot were actually working quite well, so we left well alone tweaking only timing.

After the aerial shot however, things went pear shaped - bigtime. We had no idea where to go next - how does Jed get to his final pose? How do we build pace? do we slap in a moonwalk? do we slap in a monatge? does he scream more? or does he die more? whats Jed doing? Arghhhh! The questions were endless, and could only be answered through hard work and choreographing. We stayed to late thrsday and friday, working into the night, trying our hardest to solve the issue. We knew how the story ended, with the machine coming back to life, Jed leaving, and Ed reviving, yet we still hadnt even thumbnailed it.

To coclude, we still havent progressed much further than the aerial shot. We left on friday having thumbed out a really nice scream section - Ed inhales, screams, the camera zooms out to reveal Jed doing soemthing stupid, zooms back, repeat twice. After the 3rd scream we attempted a fast montage but it just didnt feel the right time for it. We alos thumbed out some of the ending, after Ed dies which wasnt difficult thankfully!

Considering Pixar took 3 of the 5 years it took to make UP just getting story right, I think we're right to be spending this long.

Jed Character Sheet

Mr. Smith has been banging on for a while now to complete the front, side, and back views of Jed. In order to model him in Maya I must have an accurate understanding of his shape and form in 3D. I have a tendancy to design characters which work in 2D, but when transformed to 3D, fail miserably, or just look really ugly from one angle. I think this is because I love to draw characters from perspective, therefore I always give them one eye bigger than the other, a slanted browline etc etc.

So with storyboarding a main issue at the moment, I decided to take a break from it and complete his request. I spent a morning sketching out the 3 different views on A2, making sure that proportions were correct from each angle. I also had to check with a ruler that eyelines, waistlines, necklines etc. all matched up.

I then spent the afternoon and the following day cleaning it up and colouring it in using PS. I used one of grigs' wall texture tests as a backdrop to give me an indication of how well Jed would stand out in the ward. This turned out to be a valuable excercise as we all agreed immediately the colour schemes didnt work together. I had to desaturate and tone down the original wall colour as his skin was blending into the background way too much. The wall is now more of a murky, pale grey colour, with a hint of turqouise, rather than the striking baby blue beforehand.





I also had some issues with the placement of the afro from the side. In the past I had drawn it protruding from his forehead, but in reality the fro would be covering his eyes if this was the case. It was simple to solve, I just had to move it up, so it began where his head finished! Feet were quite hard, because from front on they looked like small triangles rather than long curled flippers. I angled them slighlty to achieve a more satisfying design, however when modelled and rigged they will have to be poiting directly forward (sarah!).

Name Badge

A quick post - knocked up a name badge in PS to give you guys an idea of the type of manky old design I think we should go for. A handwritten name, metal frame, clear plastic panel, and a nice dirt map. Although I agree with Mike, it needs slight personalization i.e a flower, smiley face, sticker? Anything which represnts Jeds frame of mind - funky.

Flashin it larger

An update on yesterdays post - managed to draw some more frames today and fiddle with the timing slighty. The more I progress with this file the more I worry, is the story right? are the camera angles correct? Is there any rythm? Is the pace increasing? I dont feel like we have a working momentum at the moment and unfortunately may have to go back to the drawing board at such a late stage in the game.

Flashin it large

The team have urged me to make a start on the time test for our film. In short, I needed to trasfer our thumbnails into flash frame drawings and whack em on a timeline. The purpose of this is to gain an idea of timing, rythm, and comic appeal. I have never used flash before, so Al's had to spend a while giving me the low down and explaing the basic tools. After a day I achieved the first couple of scenes . . .

This is by no means the final animatic, as quality is poor, shots aren't final and sound is absent. However I really enjoyed learning the program, and was shocked at the speed and efficiency of storyboarding within it. I am now seriosuly considering porducing the final animatic as a flash animation rather than a hand drawn premiere sequence.

Funky Phones

Final headphone design (for now anyway . . .)

I also managed to thumbnail out more of my story today with the help of the guys, especially Phil. I owe him a big thanks for spending time away from splay to help tie up some of my loose shots. I think I have thumbed out about 70% of the final shots now. I hope to have a working thumb board for friday, ready to be storyboarded next week.

Hmmmm

For some reason the team has struggled to focus lately, with all of us feeling slightly lethargic. I dont know why, it just seems like the energy and drive is sucked out of us as soon as lunch is over.

We had a dissertation session this morning which was kind of helpful, but I would have much rather of been getting on with work for P.O. I then sat down in the afternoon to design what I felt was a very important prop for the film - the headphones. The others disagreed, blasting it as a waste of time and unessasary. I understand where the guys are coming from, as I am technically behind schedule with thumbnailing, but I am ahead on other things such as modelling and story. Anyway I disagreed as I want to build my pre production folder and make sure every last detail is planned for the modelling stage. I dont want to say to someone - "go model the headphones" in 2 months time and get "what do they look like?" as a reply. I feel like things are being slightly rushed, and I know for a fact it can come back to bite you later on.

After a few sketches I gave up as I was just too tired, as were the rest of the team. We decided to call it an early day.

This evening I felt guilty, and so after a rest I decided to try again. My first aim was to research the damn things. I needed to know how they fit together, the way the plastics molded, where the screws are, how the headband attaches, the texture of the muff, etc. The best way to do this is to gather a number of different styles and designs and produce a moodboard for reference...



I also remembered these sweet adverts made by a company called Candylab who I used to do some work experience with...



They were made for nokia and are beautifull modelled, lit and textured. I want to aim for the same level of quality, but obviously with a much much more simple design!

I then set about designing loads and loads of cartoony variations, trying to keep the style consistant and funky. I wanted "chunky, rounded, muffs". I eventually settled on one which look feasable, and took it into PS for a bit of sprucing up. I've begun to add colour and texture to gain an idea of the final look, as well as to help save time in the production stage. I'll keep you updated...

Monday Matters

Above is the work I produced over the weekend. I painted the floor polisher concept I produced on friday in PS, which Im really happy with. I feel like I'm improving my shade and toning skills in PS rapidly. Im also beginning to develop my own unique style which is something Ive been after for a while now. I can colour in my designs fairly quickly now, and if I had a tablet I think I could paint them even quicker. A purchase is neccasary.

I also spent Sunday evening thumbnailing a few important shots I wish to include in the film. I used biro, and kept everything very loose and rough. Their main purpose was to help me describe the angles I want to the rest of the team today. I focused on specific parts of the film, such as the collapse, the moonwalk and spin.

I used them as reference this afternoon when thumbnailing with Alec. We managed to get a bit of a pace/rythem going as the tempo of the dancing and struggling is getting faster - faster cutting and more obscure angles. I'd say we're about 2/3 of the way through thumbnailing now, so thats good news.

We then had a meeting with Dave from Aardman, in which I had to update him on the progress of the film and talk him through decisions that have been made. I also had to pitch the thumbnails to him, and explain the shots which I actually really enjoyed for once. I was gaining laughter which as he said "is always a good thing". He was impressed with the gags and the way we'd planned out Jed's movements. He also pointed out that a clock or calender is vital if I want the reoccuring joke to make sense. Another suggestion was to have each scene within the film start on a positive and end on a negative. in other words, Ed attempts to make contact, nearly succeeds to get attention - then fails. The beats need to be consistant, postive, negative, positive, negative, very much so like "Oktapodi" which he disected this morning. It was a good session and he gave good solid advice. It seems as though we are heading in the right direction, we just need to continue working at this rate!

Gooday mate

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have a lecture by the G man a.k.a Gareth Munden. We discussed budegting, distribution, animation costs, promotion etc. We also had a talk about how animated features made in britain cant compete with those made in hollywood because of tax and lack of funding from the goverment. Apparently art isn't a neccessity over here! As far as P.O is concerned, the rest of the day was spent beginning to thumbnail with Alsy babes and sorting out Grisby. Unproductive.



Today we spent the morning critically analysing films with Kieron. Everyone brought in a film they wished to show to the class, and we watched a scene or two before discussing themes, mis on scene, camera angles, colour etc. The list included Robo Cop, Momento, Being John Malkovich, Rear Window. It was facinating to learn how directors use different techniques to achieve certain effects and provoke emotion within us. Hopefully I will get to show a film of my choice next week, so I better browse the dvd collection tonight.

Anyway that left half a day to dedicate to the project. Friday is never a very productive day due to end of the week antics and tiredness kicking in, but somehow I managed to sort it out. I sketched a page of inanimate objects that could be found in the ward. I kept the design style, rounded, cartoony and bulky to match that of my previous concepts. I then knocked up a final floor polisher design by merging parts of my favourite polisher concepts from last week. I did an orthagraphic drawing (top, bottom, side) as it will aid me in the modelling process and help to define shape. I hope to colour it in PS over the weekend.



All in all, a much better day.

Thumbs up

Me and Grigs sorted out story today. We spent a good few hours down in the old BA room with just some post-it notes, a whiteboard, and a pen. I came out sweating - thats how hard we worked! We basically choreographed the whole dance, cut some unessasary gags, planned each characters actions throughout the film, and marked them out on a layout of the room.



Jed:

- Bobbing/kick a leg/head banging/going with flow
- Spinning/afro swing
- John Travolta pose - bum shake
- Dance with polisher, mic/rose pose
- Turn Off
- Moonwalk back to plug

Ed:

- Sleep
- Awaken
- Pats himself
- Grabs throat
- Waving
- Takes off mask
- Screams
- Wheels bed
- Reahes out to touch
- Slumps
- Hand twitch

Decisions:

- Cut high five
- Always holds polisher
- 70's, 80's, MJ, Saturday night - era of dancing
- Slumps right side of bed
- Fast cuts between both characters mouths - scream/sing
- Almost touches Jed while in microphone pose, slumps, Jed stands up, turns off, steam
- Head down moonwalk
- Pan up polisher to Jed

- Thumbnails, explain shots, reasons for.