My E4 Sting 10 second animation...

This is my E Sting animation completed, all I need now is for the competition to open!
Feel free to comment, is it too big, too round, does it bounce upon the ground?

E4 Berry Sting from marshall on Vimeo.

What I achieved last week...

AD109: E4 Stinger
It took a while to get my alpha channels rendering properly from C4D so that I could bring the animated berry into After Effects without any of the background layering. Basically last Sunday night I thought I had it sorted and left the first 60 frames rendering over night (the whole render was going to take 29 hours (and then only if everything went to plan)).

Unfortunately Monday morning left me with unusable footage and what's more it was impossible to get onto After Effects or Cinema 4D all day due to the college licenses all being booked out.

What this test render did do was point out the need for considering reflections of the flying character in the shiny surface of the berry, so I set about animating a fixed shape silhouette of the character around the berry in C4D, I had to match the position of character as best I could bearing in mind the character will be composited in After Effects to the C4D footage.

The character was set up not to be seen by the camera but the berry was set up to see its reflection thus giving the illusion that something was moving around. It's subtle and you probably wont notice it but without it it just looked wrong.

Reflection in the berry created by animating a crude silhouette in C4D

I finally established all the correct settings and also learned that After Effects CS3 interprets a series of TIFF files generated by C4D as one movie file. Whereas my ancient version 5.5 does nothing of the sort. Never mind, I'll have all the up to date necessary software eventually maybe.

I then set about adding the wings, after setting them up in C4D to be slightly transparent, self luminating and flapping I dropped the footage into the background and with the camera locked matched the movement of the character frame by frame by placing the wings at the size, shape and angle they would be at if they were on the characters back. This was then also rendered out in an alpha channel on its own.

Wings created as cut out animation in C4D, the position was animated to follow the footage frame by frame.

Now by mid week I had some of the berry animation rendered and wings were ready to drop into After Effects. My next problem was that the footage was no longer in time. For example, I knew I had rendered a 20 frame section of the berry but it was longer than this in the time line and everything everywhere in both C4D and AE was set at 25fps. This meant further problem solving until I found a blog that stated this:

Don't import into AE without it.

Things were now starting to work. My next trick was to at a subtle shadow (created in Photoshop) frame by frame in AE to follow the characters position:

Shadow added to follow beneath character.

By Thurs I had a working sequence with wings. With an After Effects time line looks much more complex than it really is. The berry was rendered in separate short sections over a series of nights or periods when I wasn't using my Mac, the flying character was split into 3 parts to enable it to fly in-front
and behind the berry as were the wings also adjusted to be in-front or behind the character.

First experience of After Effects and it's actually quite easy to get your head around the basics.

Thursday and Friday was pretty much spent in Photoshop rotoscoping over the top of the new footage using a drawing tablet (for the first time ever) to add firstly the glowing antennas and then the big tongue. Again this was drawn frame by frame to match the movement of the character.

Rotoscoped antennas and tongue.

I pretty much achieved what I wanted this week on this project. All that was left was the mist, the camera movement and sound. Up until now the scene has been static other than the movement within. I set up the low lying mist in C4D over the weekend and rendered it out ready to composite in After Effects on monday (today).

Making fog in C4D is easy. Then exporting as an alpha.

I dropped it into AE twice, masking the bottom off for the background and the 
top + around the character as it moves in the foreground, feathering out the middle.

Over the weekend I moved house but also managed to record a few sounds for my animation, both ambient bird sounds outside and a weird buzzing synthesiser noise for the insect character. On top of this i wanted some kind of funky tune to relate to the animation and started messing around in Garage Band.

This weeks plan of action...

MON
AD109 - Rendering the berry in Cinema 4D (render time approx 29 hours). Create wings and animate onto footage.
AD102 - Develop details on colour and text etc on character sheet/shorten legs!

TUES
AD109 - Create and rotoscope antenna and tongue in Photoshop

WED
AD109 - Add shadows and render out from After Effects for Final Cut editing
AD102 - Build on character box construction

THURS
AD109 - Edit camera movement in Final Cut. Start to create sound track and effects.
AD102 - (PM) character development in Cinema 4D

FRI
AD109 - Focus on sound

SAT/SUN
AD109 - Finish sound and final edit for ready for Monday

End Of Week Progress

Progress for this week hasn't quite gone as expected, but then I expected that so maybe that means it went to plan?

AD102: Character Design
I have completed the design, elevation sketches and coloured up versions in illustrator. I'm happy with the results, it is strange seeing my character in such an upright (jesus) pose as he will actually be hunched over. I deliberated on whether to work him up in nothing but his bath towel but figured that for my first fully 3D character construction it maybe be easier to have him clothed and the story in which he exists isn't solid yet. Maybe I can construct an alternative body once I'm a whizz at doing so, from our brief encounter in box construction of the character in Cinema 4D yesterday it is obviously going to be a while before the techniques are hammered home.

Stage 1 - Chosen Character to develop (one of several options worked up)

 

Stage 2 - Elevations drawn in the Jesus pose

Stage 3 - Elevations coloured up in Illustrator

I want to really head my head down and push on with what we've been taught so far in Cinema 4D character construction but I'm way too distracted with the following project at the moment:

AD109: E4 Animation

By the end of this week I was aiming to have all the assets I needed to be able to start compiling the animation, and I guess in a way I am but there are a number of elements that cant be animated until the first part is complete. The status so far:

1. Pixilation footage 

This has been shot compiled into a sequence and tidied up.

2. The infamous giant blackberry

Has been developed and animated for the 10 seconds needed, also detail has been taken in developing the correct lighting effects to make this seem real enough to sit along side my footage.

3. After Effects 

I've never used After Effects before Wednesday this week. I've adopted a crash course in After Effects pretty much by searching for tutorials online in how to create masks on each frame. There has been some deliberation on my part as to whether to keep the entire footage shot as it is or seeing as how I'm cutting out the character anyway (so as to pass in front of objects) should I consider enhancing/replacing the background.

A test render decided this for me, due to the hand held nature of the footage the blackberry and shadow seemed too disembodied from the background. I know there are motion capturing techniques but the footage really is made from 125 completely separate shots, there's no smoothness to them by their very nature, so they don't fit with the blackberry it appears to float.

So I'm now masking out my flying character frame by frame in After Effects. This needs to be complete by Monday latest

4. Background 

Number 3 above has lead me to start to create surreal background ideas:

5. Wings

I have started testing the principles of animating the wings in either Photoshop or Cinema 4D, I may paint the basic shape of the wings in water colour and bring them into photoshop to add the E4 logo and motion blur effects.

6. Tongue and antenna 

This will be tackled and rotoscoped at the end of next week when the above footage has been compiled together.

So I'm relatively pleased but so much time has been taken up experimenting, problem solving and adjusting frame after frame rather than actually producing the animation, but that's what it's all about I guess.

Research of 5 random character artists

TADO:

FRIENDS WITH YOU:

FONS SHIEDON:

GASTON CABA:

ARON MARTIN

(seems to be good at drawing pandas and cats)

It has to be said that I find most of these artists work to be too cute, what I do like is Fons Shiedon's bizarre accumulation of weird and wonderful characters.

My targets for this weeks are:

MONDAY
AM
AD102: draw up elevations of character in Illustrator
PM
AD109: continue work on blackberry assets in Cinema 4D

TUESDAY
AD109: Shoot character with green screen if possible

WEDNESDAY
AD109: cut out characters to place into animation

THURS
AD109: compile assets as necessary depending on status of the above
PM:

FRI
Animate sequence from frame 1 onwards

My pixilation experiment

I managed to find a volunteer to jump around in a field for an hour yesterday...

This is the sequence I would like to base my pixilation on.

I planned out a route on paper and the number of frames that I needed to end up with from one point to another based on animating on 2's. So 125 shots later (excluding the 100 or so missed timed and re-shot jumps and a very tired model) I had exactly 10 seconds (250 frames) to play with.

 But I'm thinking that it's likely I'll re-shoot the character on a green screen, simply because if you imagine the character is buzzing around a central object (the giant pulsating blackberry!) then it will mean masking out a great deal of frames where the character is in front of that central object, it's possible but cutting out from a green screen has got to be far less time consuming.?

Dylan Shields - Moving Gallery

I spotted a little exhibition being advertised by the Moving Gallery, it's a strange one, it's on the top floor above the pub/bar Barkollo.

I tried to get in to have a look yesterday (Thursday) at about 11am but is seems it's only open when the bar is open so I went back later in the evening. 

Walking through one of the two doors we were greeted by someone who asked if he could help us, I told him we were here to see the exhibition to which he then lead us up two flights of stairs to the top of the building. He promptly switched the lights on and pulled the exhibits back into the centre of the room and apologised explaining that the exhibition was better lit earlier in the week but one of the bulbs had blown.

I have to admit I could only chuckle to myself while looking at the cardboard sculptures before me, not because they were bad or anything, the work that had gone into their construction was great, it was just that you simply felt like you were in the top floor of an empty student bedroom, if the same exhibition was places in an all white minimalist exhibition hall it would look great. The difference that could have been achieved by blocking out the radiator and the walls with some kind of white backdrop would have made all the difference.

Despite this, it was free and it was worth popping in to see the construction techniques, it just seemed quite relevant to one of my E4 animation construction ideas using cardboard and recycled materials.

If you are interested in going don't expect to spend more than 3 minutes staring at the display before feeling awkward about feeling as though you've seen everything there is to see.

The Moving Gallery at:

Barkollo, 22 Leazes Park Road, Strawberry Terrace,

Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 4PG

The Mill - Industry Talk by Rodrigo Sobral

I went along to the talk given by Rodrigo Sobral (Creative Director from The Mill, London) last Wednesday evening at Northumbria University.

The Mill produce a massive amount of top end big productions and production effects for film, TV and advertising.

The whole angle of his presentation was all about the importance of 'the story' and the established formats we use, that being -  BEGINING / MIDDLE / END.

He spoke of how stories were originally passed on through generations by word of mouth and so they would evolve or be embellished upon over time, he translated back to perhaps one of the first established recordings of a story that we still refer to today, that being The Bible, through to the creation of the Gutenberg press making it possible to mass produce stories, setting them in stone which enabled the likes of creative writers such as Shakespeare to generate works that are still being read and adapted in films and screenplays 400 years later.

Rodrigo also acknowledged that the format for story telling has transformed with the advent and growth of the internet to the point where the story no longer ends at the end anymore due to the interactive nature of the internet so that part of the marketing and advertising strategies today encourage and cash in on this evolution of story telling to their own benefit.

From a personal and selfish point of view it would have been nice if he presented more examples of the type of work The Mill has produced and heard him talk about the construction techniques and how it was made, but then I guess that would be a different lecture and at the end of the day you can see for yourself on their website. http://www.themill.com/

As a 'fresh faced' student animator who has only just recently accomplished making cut out animated figures bump along for the first time, the complexity and invisibility of some of the effects used in The Mill's big productions is pretty daunting!

This is their current 2011 show reel:

http://www.themill.com/work/the-mill/group-showreel-2011.aspx

Forget planning for the week, this is my AD109 plan for the month...

This will no doubt change as it goes along. But it seems like a good plan to me.

This is based on my 'E4 is 4 Elephant' idea, if it becomes apparent there is time for the other one then all the better.

Nothing to do with anything I'm doing at the moment but...

This short animation by Tiny Inventions stopped me in my tracks a bit. It's the detail and the materials used to make the characters, cars and scenery are great, visually it looks absolutely nuts...

It uses a whole feast of techniques:
After Effects, Stop-Motion, Pixilation, Drawn on Paper, Flash, Live Action puppets

Something Left, Something Taken- Full Version from Tiny Inventions on Vimeo.

if you like this, you might want to see how they did it:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/redgianttv-video.php?id=55

Also by the same people, the music video 'Electric Car' by They Might Be Giants,
you can see how this might have paved the way as a prototype for the above animation:
(and also how experience and techniques grow over time!)

E4 Stinger Research cont...

I've actually been struggling to find any reference to anything similar what I want to achieve in my E4 Sting idea. Which maybe is a good thing, there is not so much computer animation combined with stop motion pixilation out there, not in the way I'm hoping to produce it anyway. Maybe that's a bad thing, maybe there's a reason for that.

What I have stumbled across though is this animation sequence that does composite animation effects onto pixilation effects but in a dramatically different way to what I'm aiming for. As a music video it's actually pretty good, it's not always using the pixilation technique to it full potential and the good bits come and go but as an over all effect its well, quite effective...

Its starts off a bit lame, but once it gets going it's pretty cool.

Heart of Glass - Skin Diary cover from Animishmish on Vimeo.

Jelly Toothpaste

We had some fun today constructing a tube of toothpaste in Cinema 4D, I've previously ran through a few exercises from a Cinema 4D manual but this is the first time I could relate to what I was actually doing, to a point where I know I could actually create something else in the same way using what I've learnt today.

I decided to finish off the animation at home, making the toothpaste more like a clear green Bonjela type consistency and playing with a reflective texture for the floor. It's nice to be working in 3D at last.

The devolution of a chicken

My Chicken Blimp experiment is complete..

Given enough time chickens really do turn into blimps!

The Chicken Blimp Theory from marshall on Vimeo.

Created from 84 separately hand drawn frames which were shot on 2's using Dragon. 

The first 3 frames were repeated for 100 frames or so, as were the last 10.

This is my cut-out styled animation entitled "Batton"

A wise man once said:

Do not fear of going forward slowly, be only afraid of standing still...

Untitled from marshall on Vimeo.

The brief we were given for this animation was simply 'CIRCLE' 

and to develop an idea using a 'cut-out' animation style in Cinema 4D.

I wanted to explore a more 3 dimensional environment than you would traditionally associate with cut out animation and also explore various methods of animating within the program. This lead me to moving characters using keyframe animation, pose to pose and simply stretching and squashing characters to give them movement.

Gaining insite into the 'Batton' world leads you not to presume that the physical boundaries in which the characters live are like our own, the holes that come and go are not always holes or circles to start with and neither do they act like them should you fall into one. The slow cycle of pursuit in which the characters are perpetually locked remains an eternal loop questioning whether it is worth chasing their prey in order to have the advantage of an additional appendage. Is it all worth the effort after the much sought-after leg is passed on, that they then find themselves in a long slow, perpetual existence.

Well, what do I know, see what you think.... 

This is my visualisation of that world.