My Wonderful Acting Skills

Video reference!

Wooo!










Mel asked me a while ago to help her out with some of her animations. I acted out the scenes she needed help with, so she could use them to refer to when working on her animatics and maya work.

I've only just gotten round to uploading them. Sorry!

Sound stuff

Since one of my jobs is sound, I decided that it would be a good idea to have a look into sound sfx for our movie.

I did a little list of things that needed sfx in our clip. Here is a picture of it:


The main things we need sounds for are above. We need machinery noises to make it feel as if this brain is a hive of activity. Beeps, whirrs, dings... anything that suggests the presence of mechanics and industry. Main moom takes a few bites of an apple. We need to ensure that he makes the right noise to make people believe that he is eating. The mini mooms use taps and buckets. Appropriate sounds will be required for those. And there will be a lot of water noises too.

-----

In order to get these sounds, I came to the conclusion that the easiest way to get them would be to use the college's bank of existing sfx. I rented the sfx hard drive and have had a good old search through it. I found almost everything I was looking for. I even found some unusual ambient noises and amusement arcade background noise which will help liven the mood. I couldn't find a yawn though. That shouldnt be too hard for us to film ourselves i think.

I just need to show the group my discoveries, so we can pick and choose which ones will be most appropriate.

Your Face

He has a nose and ears.

That is all

Actually no it isn't.

PLAYBLAST TIME



That's right, my animation is pretty much finished, I think. I've show a few of my cohorts and team members and they seem to like it, which I'm pleased about.

This is just one of the camera angles. You can probably see a few errors here, because the camera isnt meant to see some of the stuff. But yeh, this gives you an idea of how it looks now. I've done the eyes and blinking and expressions and have adjusted some parts.

I hope you like it too!

D8

Hello children! I've got candy for you!

Oh man... creepy first expression!

Thought you'd like to see a rendered pic from the animation. The lighting definitely needs some work. The screens behind moom are to overwhelming, and the lighting behind the camera only seems to be able to shine on moom and the buttons. The control panel is barely visible for some reason. Also, I've set moom's body to low quality so I can animate easier.

Oh well, it's quite nice to see him all rendered all the same

Playblasts again

For some reason, the last few vids I've uploaded have started crashing, so I'm going to try uploading these in an attempt to break this losing battle with blogger video uploaders!








I have progressed further in my button bash sequence. I have finished working on the poses in Stepped and Linear, and have now been tweaking everything in spline. I had a lot of trouble with crazy twisting wrists and keyframing things wrong, but I seem to be getting the hang of it now. I am fairly happy with how its going, though I know that it isn't to the highest standard. However, I feel as if I have given it my best and am pleased with the outcome.

I have really tried to exaggerate moom's poses in this, to make this sequence look dynamic. A couple of my mates commented that it ran faster then they had imagined, and I answered that this was deliberately done to set the tone of the clip. Some parts have come out snappier then anticipated, and look a little jerky. I will try and work out these kinks as I go

I still have to do moom's eyes and expressions. Normally showing expression is my favourite part of animating, but I have a feeling this stage is going to be rather laborious. Oh well, we can't have him looking miserable can we? :P

Playblast Spam

Here are a series of playblasts of my blocked out animation I have been working on. This is the button bash scene I have mentioned in previous posts. I have been using the moom rig to animate with, and Carlos gave me the modeled control panel for me to use as a guide of how moom should move.

I'm thrilled with how its been going so far! The music you can hear is from the Chessington's Bubbleworks theme music (again shown in a previous post). I have tried to move moom with the tune of the music as acurately as possible.

Problems I've had? Ermm occassionally moom has to pull some rather uncomfortable twists with his body because of the positioning of the buttons on the panel. The lever next to moom's foot is a little bit short, so moom's arm had to stretch in order to move it.

Other then that, it has gone rather smoothly. It has gone better then I had anticipated. I'm not a very accomplished Maya user, but blocking out the keyframes using the "stepped" setting makes it so much simpler.

I'll let you know how it progresses later on

Sound Development

Me and my group have had a think about what kind of music would be suitable for our animation. We wanted it to be fun and jolly, and suggesting a sense of activity and creativity, since it's a brain we are making. There were a few suggestions such as Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and Bubbleworks ride music from Chessington World Of Adventures.

Below is the Bubbleworks theme. I think I like this the most, because it has some nice cheery brass instruments that give it more gusto and brashness. I also think that main moom will be able to push the buttons to the the same rhythm of the music.



This is the trailer for Willy Wonka. I like the music that predominantly plays in it.



I also found the below music randomly on my searches, and rather liked it. However, I think it would be more suitable for a more watery bubbly scene. It made me sure of my choice of using the Chessington Bubbleworks theme