Modeling Progress

During the weekend, I've been doing some modeling work. I added a Kitchen with a refrigerator, stove, and counters. I touched up the lamp, the chair, and the coffee table. There's now some books occupying the bookshelf. I also added a hallway next to the TV that the picture doesn't show.

On the plane, I added ribs.



Modeled a plane for outside shots

I've done a little bit of work on the rig, trying to organize the outline, but other than that, not much to show.

By the end of this week, I hope to have most of the modeling and character rig done to decent level. Modeling will just need smoothening and beveling later on and the rig will just need finalizing.

Animatic Update

Added a few more shots to the animatic, mostly at the beginning and end of the short.

Schedule

Here's my schedule for this shortfilm as it stands right now. So far I'm on track.

Style Reference

This is along the lines how I would like my shortfilm to look. It's like a mixture between the traditional 2D style of animation and a 3D look.

 I like how this one ties elements that you would typically see in 2D animation, such as the 3D stars or lighting.

Refernces and Face Rig's Plan of Action

I did some research into old cargo planes from back during WWII.

Here's the inside

Here's cockpit views of some old planes:

Here's more of a newer plane

When it comes to newer ones cockpits are a bit more organized and lesser screens:

My idea of the cockpit in the film on the bottom of the image:

All the planes that I've seen follows a two pilot system, while my short film revolves around a one person pilot.

Face Rig:
Here's my plan of action

I'm going to make a joint chain in the snout to rotate it as well as squash and stretch.
The lower jaw is going to have a system to accommodate a cartoony jaw drop.
The eyes are going to be in a lattice and wrapped to the head, which is going to be in another lattice to squash and stretch head.
Eyebrows, eyelids, and lips will have controls to manipulate.
Ears, hair, tongue and the round dangling thing in the back of your mouth, will also have a joint system.

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Animatic

I noticed that the animatic that I posted a little while ago, didn't upload, so here is the animatic that I recently redone. The new shots are in 3D and I have the 2D shots in the upper left corner of the screen.

Progress Rig and Angle Shots

Recently I've been working on rigging Johnny in Maya, doing a bit of modeling, and changing some of the camera angles.

The rig right now is just a simple proxy model. At this point in time, I didn't finish the fingers, a head control, the mouth, eyes, or stretchable limbs.

Here's a few shots that I changed the angle on. The first 3 shots is when Johnny is twirling around the plane

 

    

 

These are only a few examples of the shorts that I either changed or just simply made the shot in 3D.

These are a few pictures of what I'm working on:

 I worked on the stretchy limbs. Only the rig stretches, not the proxy, when I end up skinning it, it will of course be stretchy then, but for the mean time, it's proxy geometry. The stretchy leg works fine, I used utility nodes instead of expressions.

The stretchy arm works fine, until I either undo a move or put the hand CTL back to 0. the CTL moves back, but the Distance locator doesn't. But as soon as I move the CTL again, the locator jumps back to follow the CTL. I'm thinking it might have something to do with where I parented the locator. Right now, I have parented straight to the IK handle and I'm wondering if I should parent it to a group instead, which I'll have to try. 

I added a hip and shoulder shoulder CTL (the little diamond shapes around the hip and chest area), that can also make the joints stretch, but I can't figure out how to connect it, I'm trying to study my professor's rig, but the setup is a little foreign to me.

I finished adding the FK neck system, onto the IKspline.

Here are a few examples of the eye with a lattice. I've been having that when I would rotate the eye geometry, the geometry would pop and dent in and out. I think I figured out the solution. Select the Transform all points in Lattice option. Which then, I redid the eye on the rig:

I added seperate eye lid inside the lattice, which will make it a lot easier to rig, right now, he looks a little unergized, which is a little un-characteristic for the this character.

Also figured how to duplicate lattices, which will be good, when I want to add blend shapes.

Summary:

Redone eye with eyelids

Redone angle shots

Added Stretchy limbs

Added an FK rig onto IKspline

Modeled teeth and tongue (Teeth are an in case if I ever will need it)

Things that I still need to work on:

Figure a solution to distance locator on arm

Connect hip and shoulder to IKspline spine

Add blend shapes to head

Organize the outline into a group

Connect neck and head rig to geometry

Animate

Senior Animation Studio

During the summer, I will be working on my showcase animation short. Its going to be about my ferret character, Johnny, falling asleep while watching a TV program about planes. He then starts dreaming about him flying a plane. The plane starts to go out of control and he spends the majority of the time trying to regain control. He wakes up and goes back to asleep on his chair. As the story ends, the plane program ends and another program comes on about the wildlife in the Sahara.

The short is going to be in 3D (Maya) and is going to be going along the style of the slapstick of classic cartoons. By the end of the summer session, I hope to have the rig of Johnny animation ready, have the model completed, and reach pass 2 of animation.

Here's an animatic I've done during pre-production.

Some of the challenges I'm going to face:
Rigging: With very little experience with rigging, this is going to be a huge learning experience. I am relying on tutorials on Digital Tutors and on one of my professors, Erik Westlund.

Skinning: This also goes along with rigging, because I've never had to rig anything, I've never had to skin anything.

Rendering: I haven't had too much experience in rendering, and to get the style that I'm looking for, might need some advance manipulating that I'm going to need to learn

2D-3D: The process of transferring hand-drawn storyboards into a 3D environment.

Planning: Since this is the first time I've had do this big of a project under a time constraint, this is going to a learning experience of how quickly I can get things done.

Keeping Hand Rotations Realistic: I have a tendency to reverse the hands, where the thumb and the fingers are on the wrong side. I ended up making this mistake on the Loft commercial, when animating the Dude character.

Staying Motivated: In the past when I tried to learn rigging, I ended up getting overwhelmed with information and I stopped for a while. So, I need to stay motivated and not get overwhelmed... going to be easier said than done.

When I presented my concept to the class, the feedback that I got:
-Change the name
-Have the plane go through the intro
-Change the music (keep at 2 songs (plane song and action song). - Post-prod
-Work on composition (Hierarchy, Focus, Depth)
-The door that Johnny comes out of is a bit confusing.
-Johnny should react first to the boxes before shooting into the escape hatch.
-Fix the hand when he presses the button
-Research 60s/70s/WWII cargo planes.
-Tail looks a little wierd
-Arms are too small