From Script to Screen - Art Of

Toolkit - Maya Long Jump Animation

In Simon's class today we had to pick an action and animate it using a pre-existing rig. I based my animation off of a long jump. Here is the playblast for what I did in the lesson:

From Script to Screen - Online Greenlight Review 2

Toolkit - Pre-Visualisation Continued

In Simon's class today we continued with pre-vis shots. Here's the playblasts from the lesson:

Distance and Tracking

Shot 1

Shot 2

Shot 3

Shot 4

Camera Coverage

Individual Shots

Final Edited Scene

Toolkit - X-Sheets & Lip Syncing

In Nat's class last friday we did lip syncing for the first time. I thought it was really fun, especially because I've never done it before! We also learned about x-sheets. Nat set us the task to pick an audio clip from a website called the 11 Second Animation Club, and then animate the lip sync to go along with it. I picked a clip they published a couple of months ago from Star Wars, and started to plan it out on the x-sheet template Nat had given us. Here's my sheet:

To help me with the mouth sketches that I drew out, I went online and looked for a diagram with all of the mouth positions for different sounds, and I found this one which was really helpful.

The link to the website below also helped and gave me some good tips for my first time lip syncing!

http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/lipSync.htm

After I finished my x-sheet I used Adobe Animate to make a start on the animation. I imported my sound file in and used the frames I'd written down on my sheet as a guide... However I noticed that I hadn't got my planning completely accurate, so once I'd drawn the frames I had to reshuffle them a bit to make it actually look right. Here's a sketched out version of my animation that I managed to complete in the lesson. It still needs a bit of tweaking, there's a couple of mouth movements that are a little bit out of time. But for now, it's a good start!

Now I've finished the sketch stage, I want to add some more detail to the character's acting, because at the moment he's just stood like a statue. Hopefully that won't take too long to do, and I can move on to drawing up a cleaner version.

Toolkit - Non-Linear Deformers

In Simon's previous class we had a look at non-linear deformers and what they can do when modelling in Maya. We tried each of the options in the menu and I thought they all did really interesting things! In future I think it'd be fun to make an animation using the deformers because I looked a bit like they were dancing when you rotated them around! Here's some screenshots on the experimentation we did this lesson.

Simon also asked us to look at the deformer tutorial online, which I had a look at and also found really interesting. It talks more about using the deformers in animation, which is something I'd definitely like to experiment with in the future.

Toolkit - Adobe Dragon Roar

Today was our first Adobe Audition class, and I've found I'm not very good at editing sound, even if it interests me! The lesson started with Kat teaching us about different kinds of sound, about foley, and ambient sound. After this we worked on making a dragon roar, using animal audio clips, based on the picture of a dragon we found. I decided to use one of my drawings because I couldn't really find anything I wanted.

However the sound I made didn't really match my dragon at all. In fact, it didn't really sound like a dragon. It's a bit of a mish mash of strange noises. I don't think there's a way to upload audio files in Blogger - I'm not sure if anyone else has found out a way? Because of this I've taken it into After Effects and exported the picture of my dragon and the audio into a quicktime file that Blogger will recognise. Here it is:

I'm trying not to be too bothered about how bad it is, since it is the first lesson after all. Hopefully I'll improve next week!

Toolkit - Maya Alley Details & Rendering

Today in Simon's class we finished off our alley! Mine isn't completely done because I need to put the crates in still (I'd also like to play about with the lights a bit more!) Apart from that, I'm all done, and I've got a render that we edited in Photoshop to make it extra polished. I think it's looking really good so far!

Toolkit - Maya Textured Alley

Today in Simon's class we continued working on the alley. I have now textured it and added in lights, but I'm a bit behind with my lamp post and crates as I still need to put these into the scene! Hoping to do that soon, and then I can finish off the alley and continue tweaking with lights after I have all of the objects in there.

Here's a render of my progress so far!

Toolkit - Parallax

In Simon's lesson today we experimented with the parallax effect in Photoshop and After Effects. We started with a painting that we had divided into foreground, middle ground and background. Then, in After Effects we imported in the Photoshop file and made a video to make it look like the painting was moving! Here's the painting I did in the lesson (not very finished!) and the final video. This is definitely something I'd like to try again in the future!

Life Drawing

Last week's life drawing! I really enjoyed experimenting with a water brush and pens.

Toolkit - Maya UV Layout

Finished the cube tutorial in Maya. Hooray!

Life Drawing

This weeks life drawing!

Toolkit - Timing in Animation

In Nat's lesson last week we worked on timing. I wasn't in this lesson, but I managed to gather enough information to understand what I needed to do! In the GIF below are the examples I've made that I'm pretty sure was covered in Nat's class.

The top ball is travelling at a constant speed from one side of the screen to the other, whereas the one below it eases in, speeds up, and then slows down to ease back out again. To ease it in, you need to include more frames at the beginning, then do less to make it speed up. The class then applied this logic to a pendulum swinging back and forth.

In this pendulum example, you can see that the ball is swinging at a constant speed, and it doesn't really look that natural at all. However, if you apply the 'ease in, ease out' principle to it, and add in an arc to give it a more natural swing, the whole animation suddenly looks a lot smoother:

It was interesting to apply this logic to different scenarios, and I can think of lots of different ways in how it can be helpful in animation, such as a car speeding up and slowing down, a ball, or other objects. Hopefully I've accurately covered all I missed in that lesson, this is as much as I could gather from talking to Nat, my classmates and also looking at their blogs!

Toolkit - Perspective, Composition, Rule of Thirds

In one of Jordan's earlier classes we worked on perspective and composition. I wasn't well for the class but I've caught up looking at other people's blogs and looking at the material from the lesson! This blog is about a month late but I'm finally trying to prioritise getting my backlog of work all uploaded and finished, so expect a lot of previous stuff in the next few days!

At first I worked on perspective. I've already done the perspective exercises traditionally, but I've also completed some digital ones too. Here's what I've done to practice:

I've also researched on making a good composition which involves the rule of thirds. The teaching is that by drawing a 3x3 grid on your page you can use the lines as a guide to create a 'good' composition. The horizon is meant to sit on the lower horizontal line, and points of interest are meant to fall on any of the lines (or at least close to where the lines are, or where they intersect). I've included a photograph as an example below.

The 'What If?' Metropolis - Digital Thumbnails 1-8

Following Phil's advice, I've scanned in my sketchbook and made my first set of thumbnails digital. However, I don't really like the outcome. It doesn't look right to me! I'm wondering whether its because the blue doesn't show up too well with my scanner. I'll have another go to try and improve the quality soon!

Life Drawing

I had such a great life drawing session today! I feel like I can really see the improvement in the first drawings I did compared to these ones today.

Life Drawing

Some life drawings from last week! I really wish I had a way to take better pictures of these.

Toolkit - Maya Texturing

Today we worked on creating textures in Maya. We made 7 spheres and used the hypershade to create different surfaces for each of them. We explored all of the basic materials like lambert, blinn and phong. Here are my spheres:

After this, we moved on to making different kinds of common materials. Here are some of the examples we completed in class. I really enjoyed doing this!

Silver

Chrome

Gold

Glass

Glow

Toolkit - Maya Alleyway

I have completed the first video for the alley. Here is the lamp post, start of the crate and alley environment.