Monster close up

Yay artwork

Facial blend shapes

Help! I need a alternate way to craft facial expressions! I cannot use blend shapes it seems, as My characters are already skinned, rigged and weighted. Let this be a lesson to all you noob animators out there.
Make your facial blend shapes BEFORE you rig your character! Now I'm either completely fucked, or I'll have to use whole body blend shapes. So it's either character animation without facial expressions, OR facial expressions without body movement.

night sky

Dvd Cover art

Interior Shack, Sheppard thinks...

First pass, a bit floaty. Made the mistake of smoothing and relaxing the facial mesh, now I get horrible deformities whenever the Sheppard moves his head. I've tried masking the problem by using the Sheppard's hands to hide his horribly deformed face, as well as reduce head movements. Also thought about lighting the scene very dimly to hide any unsightly features, but so many 'short cuts' are making the scene close to unworkable, so I'll probably have to do it again.
Seems like every teacher I've had will constantly goad me to re-do things. If a character is slightly off, remodel it. Rig has some restrictions? re-rig. Not quite sure if they know the dead line, but i do.
Tis the trouble with working around perfectionists, but you cannot blame them, as their knowledge is something we must feed upon.

This is first pass. I may as well call this an advanced character block. SIGH

Animatic version 5

Squeezed in some more gags, lets hope I can do the same for the final.

Brooding Sheppard

Sheep throw first pass

ZOMG

Well time is running out, and there are still mountains of work ahead of me. I'm trying to source as many people as I can to help me out with the project.

Talking to editors, publicists, producers, voice actors, sound engineers, Foley artists, animators, technical directors, teachers and fellow students.
trying to pool every resource I can get my hands on.

But still, that urge to squeeze in more story is nagging away at me, late at night, whispering.

I've made a rough edit of the duration of the clip, which is looking dangerously long at the moment. The quality is piss poor, but i needed to nut it out so I can give my muso friends the vibe I'm after.

I wanted to squeeze in more gags to break up the tension, I wanted to build the tension into a climax but at the moment it's looking like an all out tragedy.

Few and far between

This hideous rendition made the Monster's blindness quite obvious and extreme, with festering wounds around his eye sockets. I decided to go for a more cartoony approach concerning his design, as this 'wounded sheepeater' might be a tad too scary for the wee little children, or the sensitive eyes of judges when selecting which films to place into festivals.

Early 3d concept art

The early sheep in his most simplest form. With tiny stubs for ears, he required minimal animation, and was only built for limited animation. I didn't give him pupils, as I wanted to remove his 'window to the soul' to make it easier for the audience to accept his death.

Digital Art

The Sheppard was consumed by the enormous amount of work ahead of him. He wished upon a demon, whom said "Take this slave. He is a beast, and will do the work of a hundred men. But be warned, if there is no more work left to do, this beast will devour you."

Interior occulsion pass

Buisness card logo

Sheep animation First pass

Occlusion pass

Day to Night

Within a short film, showing that time has passed requires a degree of cleverness. A change of clothes, sudden growth of facial hair, or simply a clock. I chose a day night transition, as I think the sight is aesthetically pleasing to the human eye. The blending of colors in the sky, and the change of lighting upon the earth is fundamentally... nice. Requires a lot of work, so like a true animator I hand balled the bulk of the task to Jay C. James, a freelance artist with a love for nangs.

Buisness card side project

Freelance animators have to pay the bills somehow. Here's a business card logo I'm currently working on for a client.

Early 3d concept art

Early 3d layout

More early 3d concept art!

Press Kit write up

Religious undertones are often found in Marcus’ work, where in concepts found in biblical scriptures are played upon, never specifically stated, but hinted at. “I never saw the bible as being concrete dogma, but rather a collection of books which simply dealt with every facet of human existence, from shagging your first lover, to being depressed.”
Marcus’ characters are usually crafted out of opposing forces. The Sheppard must be both tender and strong. He must utilize traits central to the female, as well as the male. Character’s like reluctant prophets, cowardly fighters, sympathetic monsters, all of these creatures with opposing personality traits fascinated me. They build tension all on their own, because tension and contradiction are inherent within them, breeding obstacles both within the mind and the characters’ world, as well as any other who would dare cross their path.

On a side note, 'starry Sky' has been completed by freelance artist Jay C James.

Creepy

Me

Just so you know.

playaround with claymation

Irrelevant!

More early concept art

Cloak and hat required way to much animation, so in the end it was scratched.

early concept art

Early concept art I dug up. Scratched due to 'Sheppard' looking a little like the grim reaper. Monster was too large and clunky to be effective in 3d space.

Render Still of the snare load

The Sheep eating Monster

Should be pretty obvious that he's blind now.

Monster hands

Render shot of the monster's hand.

Working run cycle

30 frame run cycle, still needs a lot of work.

Mile stone almost complete

Sheep scene almost complete with some in between tidy ups to go.

Dvd Menu

Working dvd Menu, and working title.

Playblast

Opening scene play blast. Rough character blocking and a few keys. Need to tidy up the timing at a later stage.

New playblast

zoom out scene, reveals the monsters hand.

Sheep stage mid shot

Week 5 looming mile stone

Looming Week Five Milestone:

Animate sheep Close Up scene.

The background being quite simple (see pic) has already been crafted.

The sheep character has been fully rigged, bar one problem with the eyes rotating strangely..

Description: "The sheep does three takes. Left, right, then centre. His ears with his head movements"

The monster, which sneaks up from behind... will have to wait, as Chris has %80 textured Lee's "old man" hands. Given a blinn, or a nice soggy wet look, these old man hands can be turned monstrous.

Sheep's deformation test

The deformation test reveals flaws in the character's skinning process, where in incorrect weighting results in bad deformation.

Not a lot of effort was required in weighting, as I used Jack Parry's influence technique to rig the character, wherein extra joints are placed inside the character's mesh to help keep the shape. Those new to Rigging may find the influence technique quite intimidating, as the number of joints are almost tripled. Seemingly it's a confusing eye sore, but if placed correctly the animator saves alot of time and stress when it comes down to applying weights.

Painting weights in Maya is buggy, and the technology is haphazard at best. By removing weights from the arm, the programs default reflex is to place that excess weight randomly over the character, giving you almost no control. This piece of knowledge is something that is learned the hard way, as no pop up informs you of this.

You can systematically weight each joint, then return to check on the very first and marvel at the randomization of all your hard work. Frustrating, but we found loop holes and ways around this.

The problem with this character, is that his mesh tends to look quite jagged and harsh around the nack, and the body. Smoothing edges has softened him a bit, but there are still some weighting issues that need to be smoothed out.

early pencil test

Pencil testing, though a time consuming aspect of the pre-production process, is invaluble.

Early Layout

Discovered an early layout, wherein almost everything has been scratched or changed to make room for more efficent enviromental modelling. Though it looks nice, most of the objects were unworkable. Tis the trouble of balancing 2d design skills with 3d skills.

Lighter, and darker. Contrasts

eyes on the prize

Trouble with pouring countless hours into a single piece of art, is that it's easy to become so absorbed by it, that imagining the eye of the audience or the viewer becomes hazy.
It's handy to pass things around and get feedback, as long as those you show are credible and trusted, and not some one who desperately enjoys the rare opportunity to jump on their high horse and pretend they know what they're talking about.

The footprint scene needs to be exactly that, a scene which reveals the monsters presence through the gaping massive footprint he has left behind. But does this look like a footprint? I feel it's not clear enough.

Some more sculpting work is in order.

I think I need an aerial shot to help show off the footprint, though it was not planned in the storyboards, and will require more work, but this is all apart of the process.

Facial expression and lighting

Pose

Is this a convincing enough pose?

It's often tempting, when in scenes you have limited animation to help the audience anticipate the coming action, to go ahead and squeeze more in then necessary.
But what concerns me is the pose, the singular held pose must be strong.
Does it look like the character is barricading himself indoors? using his body weight to hold the door shut?

Another Problem

Seem to be having a great deal of trouble attatching my characters eyes, to his face.
I created both the Shepherd, and his eye balls as sepperate objects. I made a simple eye rig which works for the time being, though rigs seem to have sneaky ways of breaking down the track...

After skinning the character, i then moved onto binding the eyes of the character by;
1. Combing the eye ball mesh with the character mesh, then skinning both. But this didnt seem to work, as when the character moves his head, the eyes ball stay in their default pose.

2. creating joints for the eyes. This works somewhat, but the eyes tend to rock on some sort of hidden axis, failing to follow the head, and the eye rig which from memory was an aim constraint, stops working.

Making grass.

After watching Pixar's 'Up' and dealing with the usual diminishing thoughts that such a massive studio instils upon a student, I marveled at the grass.
I have sphereical planes with some texture and bumpmap work to create the illusion of grass and follage, but sadly It still looks flat, and unconvincing.

Usually I tend not to get bogged down on enviromental props, as I feel an audience without the critical mind of an animator only soaks up background imagery subconsciously, however this inability to create realistic grass is bugging me.

Fur physics in Maya could achieve this, though the scene I wish to add is already quite compilated to the point of slowing down a computer with decent ram and graphics card, the fur could be it's death.

Obviously I could render different sections of the scene, but having a camera move complicates this, and keeping it all together is a more time consuming render, but more controlled and less work in compositing.

Pixar creates beautiful intertwining grass, but I'm sure whatever script or technology they have up their sleeve, will stay hidden for a good long time.

Help! Whats a render effective way to create grass?

snare

500 w Summary

This entry celebrates the sad end of the Pre-Production process. Though I’ve loved picking up new Photoshop skills in painting, learning neater more professional ways to construct storyboards and character sheets, I have still had enormous trouble getting my 2d art style to translate into the 3d realm. I am happy with the results, and pleased to hear that Pre-Production skills are invaluable to any production company.
I was itching to begin production, and sneakily I have jumped ahead. I tried to get pre-production knocked out of the way fast, and poured most of my efforts into a colour scheme, and an effective narrative.

Layouts helped somewhat in constructing scenes, and references collected from John K's blog added to my knowledge of colour schemes and other aesthetics. I fear I wont be touching my pencil much anymore, as Winter has fallen, Production begins.

The hardest aspect of pre-production for me, was the fact that I could conjure up a fantastic image, reeking of cute and cuddly characters. But when applied to the 3d world, a lot of the characters lost their cuteness. Similarly the fantasy styled environment, has made way for a much more spooky, eerier land scape, which was I did not predict, but am happy with none the less.
Seems like a lot of happy accidents occur, and a lot of disasters when forcing the loveable aspects of 2d into 3d. Some say its foolish to jump from pre-pro to production, and back and forth, modelling and redrawing eating up so much time. But I needed the learning exercises of modelling characters, so many attempts were definitely executed, with sad results. Interesting results, but the character looked nothing like the 2d version.

Character model sheets

Character colour scheme

I Whipped up some nice, almost professionally neat Character sheets, using Paper walker's blog as a guide. Keeping the background colors in mind, I selected character colors that would either blend, or stand out.
Production begins very soon, so I'll have to force feed all of my assignments in order to move ahead quickly.

Pan scene = %80
Need to separate scene into 4 or 5 layers.
Sky, Background, Midground, Foreground, and Monsters hand.
Need to Light each layer accordingly, then do 3 lighting passes.
Also I should experiment with HDIR lighting globe.



Shepherd = %80
need to fine tune textures, and fix pole vector problem on rig. Also need to get JDT_rigging tools operational.


Sheep = %60
Need to fine tune textures, complete rig, skin and weight ears if necessary.

Monster = %20 Not completely happy with his look, nor his functionality. Might have to remodel. No Rig at the moment.

Footprint Scene = %45 Need to Light scene, and perhaps correct layout so the Characters can be animated on a flat surface, rather than something circular.

Interior Shack: Finish Lighting and shadows. Build props= Table, Snare (rig snare) Monster schematics and trap schematics.

Sheep stage Front on: Almost fully textured fence. Need to light and considering background.

Sheep stage Aerial: For the background I can use the Pan scene, just need to remove the shack for the sake of continuity, and raise mountains on each side. The fences themselves will be difficult. I'll have to construct his pen out of the all ready textured fences, as oppose to the cartoony ones in Pan.