Making A Stand, then he catches an umbrella! Fun times!

Again, just a quick render to see how it looks when he throws an umbrella up in the air and catches it.

It's bit fast. I need a longer pause between making the stand and throwing the umbrella. Otherwise, too much is happening at once.

Happyman Makes A Stand

He makes an actual stand. An umbrella stand. Well its more like an umbrella holder.

Just a quick render cos I wanted to see what it looked like being made.

Are you still bearing with me?

Don't really need to say much about this one!

Did you bear with me like I asked?

Ok, this is a rough idea of what I am planning for this scene. But it absolutely must be finished by today, because I do not want to waste any more time on this, I have priorities!

bear with me

I have a plan for this...bear with me and I'll explain all in the next video...

Golf again...

Another angle...

And again...

Okay, trying this again...

Additionally, I have also just rejigged the golfing scene. Again, to make it look like there is more of an interaction between the golfer and the ball he makes. I thought a nod should suffice for this scene.

Hows this?

Okay, so how about this? I have given more attention to the childs hands as he is making a lollipop. Better?

Hmm, perhaps the kid in front needs to be slowed down, it's too fast now.

Next shot

Here is one of the subsequent shots after the initial overall shot of the dome. I'm hoping that this shot and the shot after it with the golfer will hopefully communicate the idea that everyone's imagination is coming to life.

However, it may need emphasising, as it has been brought to my attention by others who have watched this scene that objects just seem to be appearing from nowhere, with no indication that the characters are making them. I will work on this. The snowman in the background of this scene seems to be the clearer example so far...

Shot 02

Looking up at the huge orb at the top of the dome. I want to put lights and stuff on it so that it appears as though the orb is making all the items become real.

And again from a sightly different angle.

Rocketboy

Another character from the background.

Who hasn't imagined having a jetpack on their back? I do it all the time when I am wearing a backpack! This child is doing the same, throwing a snowball why not?

This.... No words...

No words for how much things like this make me cringe. It's horrible, it really freaks me out. And I can't undo it either, so I'm stuck with this.....sin against nature. Eeeugh.

Scene 003 Shot 01 Part II

Originally it looked like this, but this is the massive massive file version. Note how the new one has a lot more going on, and is a lot smaller.

Also I did a little moving around of certain items...

Scene 003 Shot 01

Finally, here is the slightly incomplete version of scene 003 shot 01.

I'm going for a really busy scene.

Changing clothes

Another background thing going on.

This first scene in scene 3 is quite big, but thanks to all the work I did this weekend, it is only 120,000MB instead of abour 400,000! So excellent!

Jacket II

Well, it turns out after a few hours of copying exactly how my original jacket was rigged to get this new jacket rigged, it still didn't work. Why? Because my original jacket was poorly rigged too!

I have fixed it now, and have smaller file sizes! Score!

Am remaking scene 003 shot 01 using the same movements as before but with much smaller characters, and it's working already! It may have been time consuming, but it will be so worth it!

Step Back

Ok, it feels as though I have gone backwards. The files I am using are too big...AGAIN. So here I am going back to earlier states and redoing some bits so that previous smaller files are completed and still saved small.

I have remade all my background characters. They are now 7,000 each instead of 99,000. Now I'm working on the two main characters. Luckily I already had a mostly complete version of Unluckyman that was half the size of the one I was using, so I'm using him instead now. I have a bit more work to do on Happyman though, his hands need doing (I bloody HATE rigging hands, I'm always rigging hands...) and his jacket seems a bit off. His head was completely undone so I have added new morph targets and rigged the head up again. The jacket is what I'm doing now.

here is a video of the jacket on it's on, moving like it is in a scene. I just wanted to see HOW off it was. The collar is the main thing that needs sorting...

But yeah, this feels like a massive step back. I need to work on my animation, but here I am doing stuff I was doing back in Semester 2.

Don't know

Here's what I don't understand. It happened last semester, and its happening again!

Look at the size of some of these files. On average, it should be around 20,000KB but my main characters are 100,000KB. That's five times the size it should be. Considering that most scenes have two characters in, that's 200,000KB. I'm struggling with a scene at the moment that is over 400,000KB because of multiple characters. But why??

If you look closely, you may notice two characters called 'skullhead'. They both include a full rigged body with the same polys, but one is 7,000KB and one is 95,000KB. Bizarre!

Imaginary Friend Part III

Aaaand finally, the imaginary friend complete with the child who originally thought him up.

This is the child I have rerigged as part of my edit of all previous models. He has eyes now, which is always good!

This is going to go on the end of shot one, scene 3. You will see it when I upload it...

Imaginary Friend Part II

Here as another attempt at the Imaginary friend. Look he shoots confetti! yay!

Chopper

Helicopter?

Again, motion blur.

New golf

Here is a slight edit to the golfer.

A tad bit slower, plus there is a motion blur on the ball and club.

Yay motion blur!!

Golfer!!

As I promised!

A golfer. I'm not too sure how I feel about this, it's much better that the very first time I tried to animate one last year (which I can't find) but I think his arms are a little bit off or something.

Still, not too bad...

Background

Just a-making more background characters! Watch this space for the golfer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMtQjnsoD8c

This is a video I am watching for research on how to animate a golfer. This video has several angles on swinging a golfclub, it's almost as good as having a real golfer teach me!

Longlegs

Another background character.

This is the character that appears a lot during my animatic. A normally short man who dreams of being tall, walks around on huge stilt like legs.

The first two clips show my first attempt at making this character, simply by making the biped legs bigger whilst they were still rigged. This made the legs fatter as well, no matter what I did. I played with this idea for a while but ultimately decided that it would look better if they were spindly thin legs.

So I took Happyman and coloured him differently, gave him a new head and remade his legs, this time longer. Then I re-rigged him.

Voila! The last two clips show my new character, longlegs. I think it works quite well.

Imaginary friend

I have spent most of the past two days re-rigging the child character I did last year. Just like I had to remake my two characters, I have had to remake him as well. His original design did not have eyes, and the hands were not very well made. And because I had to remake him, I also had to begin the rigging process again. If I have time, I will also remake the baby character as well, but there is still the possibility that I will have to cut him from my film entirely.

Anyway, the thumb is proving difficult, so I am taking a little break. Here is a little experiment in rigging for one of many imaginary friends in the dome. Most will be animated in 2D but I wanted to see if I could make simple ones in 3D as well. This is Bip, the creature made of circles. He will follow one of my children in the background of various scenes.

He has an umbrella, cos everyone seems to have one lately, haha. His is slightly different to Happymans though.

Turning around that didn't work.

Originally, I was going to have unluckyman looking around in awe at his new surroundings. In doing so, he turns around whilst walking forward, to get a full 360 view.

But why would he do this, when he is at the entrance to the dome? The only thing behind him is a wall and the door outside. Besides, trying to animate him turning around was an epic fail. As you can see here.

Instead, I shall have him turn around to look at everything after Happyman leaves and as he goes to catch up with him.

What to do with an umbrella?

Ok, so here is the 'problem'.

I was going to spend days and days working out how to model an umbrella that can open and close smoothly. But I ran out of time, and considering it is only for the sake of one shot, Happyman closing up his umbrella so he can put it inside an umbrella stand, I figured it wasn't worth the work. Especially as I am running out of time.Instead, I modelled two umbrellas. One open, one closed. My original solution was to cut from one shot of him with an open umbrella, to the dome montage and back to Happyman, with his umbrella already closed.

However, that seemed like it would be inconsistent and would look more like a continuity error than anything.

So here is my solution. Add a morpher target to both sets of umbrellas. Give the open umbrella a clone that is really open, almost flat. The closed umbrella needs two clones - one that is more closed than usual and one that is slightly closed. Then I can cut from the umbrella open, to the umbrella really open, then slightly closed, then really closed and finally just closed. This will give the impression that the umbrella closes, without it ever actually closing.

TADDAAAA!

What is going on

Do not ask me why it starts off so white.

I have fixed the audio now the video is messed up. Lame.

Sigh

Scene 01 again

What was with the random noise on my first original upload??

Dunno where that came from.

Here is a new upload. New scene even added. Lets hope it works better!

Edit

I've decided that the middle shot in my scene needs to have an extra character walking into the entrance. It looks a bit blank at the moment. The original idea was that the two characters were looking t the entrance to the dome, but you can barely see it, so I have made this little alteration.

Scene 01 rough draft

Ok, the rough edit of scene 01. It differs lots to the original animatic, and is obviously still unfinished.

There are a few timing issues that I do not like, and background characters need to be made and animated. So I am a long way from completion yet...

Pyrats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYDquzEPLsw

I like this video, it is a good mixture of 2d and 3d animation. Good times. That is all. Thank you.

Lol

Freaked out for a second. First I thought this was a drop of water on my screen. When I tried wiping it off and it remained, I started to think it was a chip of some kind in the screen.

It was just the Happymans umbrella.

Gee I feel foolish now.

Right, add the background to this shot and see how the whole scene looks...

First scene

Almost entirely finished the entire of the first scene. Just a few little bits left to tie together. Hopefully, scene 2 will move much faster.

Although, the next scene I will be working on is scene 5, the final scene at the end. If I have the ending and the beginning sorted and I begin to run out of time, it allows for easier editing in the middle to decide if there are any particular shots that can be deleted without damaging the story. Unfortunately, it is looking as though robot baby is not going to be used. The model for robot baby is not even modelled yet, so unless I find a large amount of time somehow, it seems unlikely.

I have until about May sometime. I will need to ask for specific dates, but if May is the final deadline, then I want the whole film finished and ready to render in April. That's not a lot of time...

Swiping card

Here is a scene where the Happyman gets his card scanned. It's a brief shot, but requires a lot of trial and error. As you can see, here are a few of my attempts. I began with a front on scanning, but the angle of the wrist looked completely wrong, so then I started tilting the hand to the side instead. It looks more suave, but still needs work...