Spring PPJ #8 – Will Reardon

This was our team’s last big animation push. Our animation lock was the twenty-first and we pushed right up until the end. Our shots all look a lot better than they did before and I think this big push towards the deadline helped our team.

I started the week by extending the mans walk in the first scene in order to keep him animated for the full hold of the title during the shot. This was roughly another two seconds of animation to be done. Luckily, it was more of the same and extending his walk cycle was not too difficult. What took a little more time was polishing the extent of the walk so it could be ready for the lock and rendering.

Next, I worked on finishing the dog’s animation in the first scene. This meant refining his jump, which is his large action for the scene, as well as giving him just more motion throughout the scene. There were parts where he was static or drifting that had to be further animated. The hardest part there was transitioning the dog from where he looks at the man to where his jumping-off point is. I had to do it quickly but give the dog enough time to fully follow the man with his head and then think about following him.

After animating the dog I got critiques from the team and our adviser on both of my scenes. Then it was back to polishing with the critiques. I worked right up until the end like the rest of the team and I think my shots look a lot better after this final push.

Spring PPJ#3 Aidan Dougher

Did I work this week? Yes. What did I work on? No clue. Been logging hours on teamwork so obviously I did something. I worked a lot on the new Matte paintings for our sky for this week and am still waiting on our professor’s approval, but it seems that even though I sent them to him to look at on Thursday, he still hasn’t really seen them. Which is concerning because they have been done all weekend and I don’t think he knows that. I re-shot some reference footage on Friday so that my newly re-blocked scene can animated. I also worked a little bit on the lighting for my scene, but I mainly focused on trying to get my lights to look like day time but not look like I have a ton of over exposed plants. Which my scene, for the past couple of iterations has had a ton of over exposed plants. But Anna found a fix for it! Yay Anna! I made another blend shape for when the dog has the needle sticking out of his paw. I worked on Easter which wasn’t fun but was necessary, and I worked at my job all weekend. I’m so tired and the term has only begun.

The Good: Animation is getting done, the Matte paintings are done.

The Bad: Communication with our adviser seems to be amiss, and we only have a few more weeks to lock everything down before we are presenting. I’m tired already.

nightsky

afternoon

daytime

not over-exposed

WE BROKE HIM

Into the Void

Go home Maya you’re drunk

The Man seems to have a bit of a problem, but hopefully we will be able to fix him by tomorrow, cheers.

PPJ#8 – Aidan

This week I focused a lot on trying to implement the Blend Shapes for the dog correctly. I have successfully implemented all of the facial shapes for the Dog, however, there is one shape that isn’t cooperating with me. The dog needs a corrective blend shape for when he sits, and I have been able to implement the shape in different versions of the dog with varying degrees of success, but  it seems that I will have to go back and reshape out the Dog’s sitting position before I am able to place it into the rig.

This week my team and I also did test animations with our rigs, I had the Dog Walk up a small hill. I am working on a Man animation for this week and then next week we are moving on to animating out stories. Each member of our group has been assigned a shot from our animation to animate. We each will be drawing out (storyboarding) our scenes this week for our adviser. I have the Scene with the Danger Flower, which I will also be modeling and animating within the next couple of weeks. Our Team has a lot to do, but we are just getting started.

We also divided up some environment art for the background so that will be fun to model in the coming weeks.

The Good: Animations are Fun, Modeling environment art is Fun.

The Bad: Time is our enemy, we have a lot of deadlines to meet in the coming weeks and I hope we are up to the task.

The Pictures are Snapshots from my Dog animation, my Man animation and there is one Shot of the Dog’s Blendshape Face.