Karris Palmer - BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts: May 2019

At the start of the year, Maya was one of the things that I was dreading the most as I had no prior knowledge or experience with it. While I did (and still do) find it fairly difficult from time to time, it was nowhere near as bad as I'd expected.

I've learned to deal with the problems that it throws at me every now and again by revisiting what I've made and trying again, as if something stops working, there's more likely than not always going to be a fix for it. Learning different shortcuts and other tips that help make the process less frustrating (like deleting history, centering pivots and freezing transformations) was also very useful. Another thing I've learned is to save incredibly often due to the amount of crashing that I've had to deal with over the past year so whenever it does happen, the work I end up losing is very minimal.

I think the part of Maya which I enjoyed the most has probably been animating and modelling (even though I have found the latter to be very frustrating at times!). One of the things I struggle most with, however, was rigging so I intend to revisit some of the tutorials over the summer and try and improve my skills before moving into the second year.

Life Drawing

As I'd done a couple of life drawing lessons before, I had some idea of what to expect already when it came to experimenting with different materials and time limits on different positions that the model would hold.

I do think that I have improved throughout the year (particularly after the December session) and it's helped me get better at proportions, how the body works in motion and working quickly on paper. I found the sessions to be entertaining and even somewhat therapeutic at times as they were perhaps the least stressful part of Toolkit. It's helped my confidence grow a little bit in terms of getting proportions and anatomy right.

I do think that I'll work hard to use colour more often in the second year and break out of my comfort zone even more as well as trying to experiment with more abstract methods in my work. I'll also work on drawing faces and hands more, as they're my two least favourite things to draw during life drawing sessions as I find it quite difficult to get them down quickly - so I'll be working on trying to draw even faster as well! Overall, I'm really looking forward to having more sessions in second year.

Animation

Overall, I think that the animation workshops is where I managed to improve the most; at the start of the year, I struggled with the basics of animation and understanding what goes where and how secondary movements work with primary ones. Towards the end of the year, however, I ended up learning how to do proper squash and stretch and character movement, mostly when doing the flour sack animation.

I was surprised how much I actually ended up loving 2D animation by the end of the year as it grew on me quite a bit and I got to understand it a lot better. It's made me appreciate it a lot more and I think I'll try and revisit Animate and 2D animation in general during the summer as I find it to be enjoyable despite the amount of effort that's needed to go into it - I found out that the end results often pay off massively. Another achievement I made is that I also finally began to understand how overshoot works and how it helps the animation 'pop' more.

I think if I were to try and improve further, I'd go back and redo some of the earlier animations in the year as I feel, as said previously, that I understand a lot more now and think I could make them look a lot better.

Toolkit 1: Autodesk Maya: Submission

Intro to Autodesk Maya (Lego Vehicles)

Lego car part 1: Modelling

Lego car part 2: Texturing and lighting

Lego car part 3: Rigging and animation

Lego car part 4: Rendering

Lego truck part 1: Modelling, texturing, and lighting

Lego truck part 2: Rigging and animation

Lego truck part 3: Rendering

Digital Set Modelling

(V1) Part 1: Creating half of the chicken coop

(V2) Part 1: Creating a tool shelf and half of the chicken coop

(V2) Part 2: Finishing the chicken coop and UVs

(V2) Part 3: Creating the barn

(V2) Part 4: Finishing the barn

(V2) Part 5: Barn UV layout

(V2) Part 6: Fence modelling

(V2) Part 7: Ground modelling and UVs

(V2) Part 8: Ground texturing, scene layout, and basic sky

(V2) Part 9: Texturing

(V2) Part 10: Final sky and compositing

Texturing

Texturing with Photoshop and Mudbox

Previsualisation

Distance tracking shots

Animation

Anticipation and follow through

Bouncing ball (on the spot)

Bouncing ball (travel and rotation)

Secondary action and overlap

Squash and stretch

Hard Surface Modelling

Part 1: Wheel and base

Part 2: Handlebar

Part 3: Body and basic texturing

Organic Modelling

Part 1: Body and temporary eye

Part 2: Mouth and throat

Part 3: Teeth, tongue, and eye

Part 4: Legs

Lighting

Sampling

Ray depth

Light filters

Adobe Illustrate, After Effects, and Maya

Cube animation

Text animation and locators

Rigging

Part 1: Legs and feet

Part 2: Spine

Part 3: Arms and hands

Wednesday 8 May 2019

Fantastic Voyage: Playblasts (Part 4)

Fantastic Voyage: Playblasts (Part 3)

Fantastic Voyage: Playblasts (Part 2)

I will be compositing these with some of the 2D pieces I made.

Tuesday 7 May 2019

Fantastic Voyage: Updated Lighting

I experimented with the spotlight more to give me a more intense look to make it more obvious as to which machine is being highlighted and prevent any confusion.

Fantastic Voyage: Rigging (Part 4)

For part of the claw machine, I used the set driven key method to get the opening and closing effect on the claws. The only thing I have left to rig now is the actual cable and wire which lift the claw up and down.

Monday 6 May 2019

Fantastic Voyage: Playblasts (Part 1)

I decided to move on to animating as I'm having difficulties with the claw rigging, so I started with the menu scene which only involves lights switching around so I can cut up the footage for the scenes it is needed in.

Fantastic Voyage: Rigging (Part 3)

I rigged the door on my claw machine using blendshapes and attaching them to a layer and a control. I duplicated the original shape and made a new one and altered the vertices until it looked how I wanted it to.

I then stuck the second shape onto a layer and moved it into position and tested that it worked with the sliders.

Then I created an attribute on my control and used the set driven key to attach the blend shape to the control.

Finally, I set limits on the attribute so it doesn't go below 0 or above 10 and then I renamed the layer. All I have left to do now is rig the claw itself and then I can start animating.

Sunday 5 May 2019

Fantastic Voyage: Rigging (Part 2)

I started off by making my controls again and putting in attributes for what I wanted. I then figured out that I could apply multiple deformers to one object, so I added an extra attribute to accommodate for a second bend deformer that would affect only the top portion of the seaweed. This will hopefully allow me to create more interesting shapes and animate it more naturally rather than having the entire thing sway from side to side. I then applied this to the medium and small pieces of seaweed and then put all of the deformers that I've made so far onto a layer so I can hide them.

Fantastic Voyage: Matte Paintings (With Text)

These are all of the paintings with the appropriate text on them, including the title card;

Fantastic Voyage: Texturing (Part 6)

Since I did even more texturing and making more duplicate models for it, I decided to make it into its own post. I made a new fish model, a new coin model, new screens, and new carbon, hydrogen, and bond models.

I made the second coin so I could have it rotating on one of the 'stage complete' screens and because it is needed in the recycling game:

Its texture map:

For the machine screens, all I had to do was duplicate the existing screens and apply a blank surface shader onto them and turn their visibility off. This will be relevant for each machine as when one is selected and an object is inserted, the screen will switch on before the game starts and the camera zooms into the screen itself, so I can change the screens by adjusting the visibility.

I had to make another fish model because this one belongs in the 'game over' screen to show that the 'player' lost all of their health/lives. As it is static, I didn't need to touch the rig that was set up for the other fish.

Here is its texture map:

Here is the now (what should be) complete set of models:

Here's an extremely quick test render of the glowing effect:

Fantastic Voyage: 2D Assets (Part 2)

These are two of the animated text boxes, illustrating where ocean gyres are located and a landfill animation respectively:

These are the food chain animations:

Once they are composited onto the scene, it should look something like this (but there will be animated water from Maya in front of it because of the scene):

Here are some more 2D pieces to be composited in:

Fantastic Voyage: 2D Assets (Part 1)

These are some of the 2D assets for my film that I will animate using After Effects. I still have to finish making all of the text boxes for the relevant scenes as well as two (possibly three, time permitting) small animation. I have been trying to keep to the retro arcade feel and having things coloured in a way so that they match the scene they are composited onto.