[Dialogue] Final + Module summary

Final version, yaaay!

Worked on render (more bloom effect, brighten up, improved quality), hair meshes (now less boxy) and tweaked some moves to look perfect.

I'm happy with this version. Already submited my entry on 11 Second Club site.

Okay, now some words about this project.
With my really easy idea it couldn't go wrong.
It was rather short. I think it took me around a week (implying I would work every day by day) so it's not bad. The tempo was amazing and I really felt good with that.
This project was rather relaxing compared to the Mimes.
I really enjoyed working on this animation.

I think it is a good idea to combine university task with 11 second club competition. It feels like we, the nine master students on Teesside, are not the only one doing the same task. And it is amazing to see more ideas and work in progress animations!
That gave me some boost to produce high quality animation.
And about animation, there are some bits I would still improve like right hand on 'professionals'. It could be better? Could it?
I don't know. I'm really happy with the final results. The eye darts looks amazing and blinks are in the right place (I hope).
I think I can empathize with both characters and that is really important. Especially in dialogue scene.

That thing which I was missing in previous animations - acting principles. I had no idea there is something like that. Now I know what to do, when and.. why.
With group work I've learned how to split to-do things with other people and which is more important - I've gained more experience working with animators.
Finally, for the first time I've sent my entry to 11 Second Club. I always wanted to compete with other people but never had a reason or... I was just lazy.
Now I will send my submissions more often.

Thank you for really interesting module!

[RRR!] Critical analysis

It's that time to write something about mimes task.
Here we go!

Story
I can't count how many times we changed our ideas. And it is amazing, right? How we developed, changed minor parts because this and that. I absolutely loved Siobhan's idea about mime monster instead of mime being late. Then, RRR! came to conclusion that making mime death fest is an awesome idea and should totally develop that.
Then, some minor changes like in disarming bomb, mime #2 stopping half way or mime #3 dying inside the box.
All this little things made our story much more interesting and which is more important - CLEAR.
Two days ago I showed finished piece to all my friends. No body questioned what mimes are doing and why they get injured.
We're awesome!

My contribution
I really don't like this part, because we're a team and everybody did a hard job but... but..
From the beginning:
I was that 'Maya expert' in our team. Teaching how Maya can destroy your life is fun!
Also, Rachel R helped the other Rachel faster than I did! Aaand, British Rachel became friends with Maya so fast that my tutor job was really little. Good for all of us!
I've made Gantt chart with all milestones and weekly meetings. As I planned, I started rendering a week before the deadline just to have some more time for final touches. And guess what? I was right!
To make our team more awesome I did a poster with catchy phrase 'They're dying to get that job'. I still love it :-). Of course it was not required by our team, but I had some free time to do it.
Then, I've created really simple theatre stage (and later Rachel R changed it colours) with lighting and render settings.
Every combined version you saw was sacrificed with my tears and swears. Every time I've imported other mimes, handled multiple Maya crashes, playblasted 4 gig files and edited it in Premiere. Worth it!
Then, the hardest part. Rendering.
To show my suffering I present how my 3x14 hour marathon looked like:
1. Combining three Maya files into one long animation
2. Checking cameras, safe playblasts etc.
3. Changing texture paths to render space due to rendering in Qube
4. Rendering on render farm!
5. Rendering failed frames again
6. Checking failed frames again and again
7. Copying frames from render space to local computer. Our network is SO slow that editing it from render space was pain
8. Baking frames into H.264 file. Working on 20 gigs of frames on our machines was even more painful
9. Editing movie, postproduction - fun part
10. Rendering finished film
And I had to go through that process three times. Gah!
But still.. Totally worth it!

My animation
To be honest I didn't like it AT ALL until we added director and sound effects. It was.. umm.. bland. That's the right word. When the other's stories were hm.. fun (?) my was.. I don't know. I didn't enjoyed it like the other projects.
But.. suddenly.. We've added all these sounds and.. I'm really happy with the results.
Of course if I had more time, I would work on every part and polish it until death. Defining the box could be more interesting (the animation would be longer, though) or there could be more interaction with the director.
There are some parts that I totally love like crawling, running, shaking or walking. I spent some time on polishing these moments and I'm happy with the results.

Team work
I think we're awesome.
Okay, we.. or.. I had a crisis with rushing with animation. Yeah, about that.
Why I work so fast? The answer is simple:
I worked in advertisement and post-production studio. We had maximum 7 days before the deadlines. So, we had to do really fast our work, which normally was for at least a month.
As I worked there for a year it is my habit working fast now.
Okay, I had also a bad workflow before (which worked perfectly for me when I was working alone), but I'm really happy that I switched to traditional one now.
Continuing about the team work.. we've met twice a week to discuss our ideas, sketches and animation.
On our Facebook group we kept informing each other how our latest version looks like. In that way everybody had a constant feedback and our animations were better and better. So, even when Rachel R went to France (business, not pleasure! - She studied mimes in their natural habitat) we had weekly meetings on Facebook chat.
I really wanted to learn how to work in a group and how I should adjust my workflow. Now I know! Other two R's! did awesome job. Thanks for a great time spent together.

Summary
It was really great to wok on some body physics. We've worked with professional voice artists and recorded our own sounds in a studio.
That gave experience, which I'm going to use in the final project.
About the final project - if I want to work in a group - now I know how!
Really nice module with great task ideas.
Again - learnt a lot. That's why we're all here for.

[SFS] Parallel Parking

Now that's short and funny!
With stunning attention to little details Yum Yum London created a short animation 'to brighten up your day'.
And it really does!
I love it! I just love it!
Extremely simple story with unexpected ending.

Brilliant!




Source:
http://www.yumyumlondon.com/

[RRR!] The Box

The final version! At last!
New camera, old cuts and still loads of fun!

Project summary and warm words about RRR! team coming soon!

--EDIT--
See the VIMEO (probably better quality) version here:

Renderfarm blocking for dummies

Another day has come and again I was struggling with render farm. Again, same student completely block renderfarm with jobs over the weekend.
Yes, 7 jobs, 1000 frames, at least 1h each.

Em, Scott, Kristian and I went to technicians to do something with that. But.. all what they could do was being REALLY arrogant and saying: 'Then what are you doing here? Go to the labs and make your place in queue. You will have your frames rendered on Monday.'

Annoyed we came back to labs and started rendering on our own computers. Whole this situation is not student-friendly.

Luckily, I found release in creating following image and posting it on TAGERTALK:

Mimes are finished. I will post it in a matter of minutes. About 11 second club.. If the same situation occurs on Monday (because I will leave it over the weekend) I will simply render it on my laptop.

Gah! So annoyed.

Funny title goes here

So, another 14 hours spent at uni and I feel great!

Mostly because I managed to release another version of 11 second club dialogue and.. redo cameras on mimes part. Aaand! Rendered!
I've even managed to bake a two files (beauty and shadow passes) and see the results.
Now I know I'll have to render camera shake again, because one.. one key was on stepped mode and it looks really bad. Like video was corrupted for one second.
But, that's okay. It will take less than 10 minutes.

Tomorrow/today - Rendering missing parts and postproduction for mimes. And probably repairing my bed lamp :(

[Dialogue] Splines_01

Oh hey, it's me again!
So here is another.. rendered version in splines!

Oh.. since couple of days I was working on that really hard. Well.. Can't remember what exactly changed since last version but I know I had problems with:
- Correcting lipsync T, S, L phonemes. Also, first few words. After many many tries I finally got it working
- Wiping move. Rachel helped me a lot with motion trail. This is how I managed to create really nice arcs!
- Robot - Got physics right after few tries
- Final cleaners pose. I think it's lovely now!
- Blinks - Theoretically I know when to use it but.. it then it looks.. weird? But, I've read again Ed Hooks newsletter from March where he written about blinks - when, where and why. And everything was with great example of 'Kara' by Quantic Dream. Now I know and I personally think it looks great!

About rendering. I was struggling a lot with getting really nice interior light. A friend of mine, Tomasz Polak (check out his portfolio here: http://www.tkpolak.com) helped me with correct lights setup. If only we had v-ray at labs.. :( Things would go much faster.

To-do:
Mostly rendering stuff. I think it's too dark. So I will work on that. Also, it's HD 720p render and there are still some rendering artefacts on walls. Looks like low quality or something.. Gaaah! It takes so much time.
Uh.. beside my reading lamp at home everything is fine :-)

Rendering mimes at the moment. It's gonna be a long night.

Oh news oh news

I should be reading my book now ('Erebos' by Ursula Poznanski for those who are interested - http://site.annickpress.com/catalog/catalog.aspx?title=Erebos) but my little lamp just.. flashed, boom, shkghg and it's not working any more :(

So, I will just write how am I?
Good, thank you.

I worked 14 hours today/yesterday and mostly it was wasted time, because I have to render everything again. Normally, I wouldn't mind but.. recently some %!!@$!@$ student blocks whole render farm with his animation where one frame renders AT LEAST one hour. So there is no possibility of me using render farm now. However, I managed somehow to push my animation in render queue (or was I just lucky?) and got what I presented to fellow team mates today.
Later, I had to render again camera shake because it stayed on stepped keys (really, long story with cameras and you don't want to hear it).
So, after rendering I had to copy all the frames from render space to local computer, because working in Premiere via local network is commonly known as suicide.
And it takes time. 20 GB of frames.
Then.. To edit everything smoothly I have to 'bake' frames into movie clip. It takes around 50 minutes.. at least.
Then, it's easy way. I import the new file, edit sounds (and it takes time..) and.. render the final file.

Ugh.. I really like postproduction (however it is REALLY tiring; not as carefree as animation). But when I have to do same thing third time and I know it takes ~10 hours my mind is blown after whole day and I write notes like that. Yes.

Meanwhile, I work on 11 second club task. It's going really smooth and I enjoy doing this. Probably, if everything goes right, I will release another version tomorrow/today. 26/04 it is.

But now, I will try again repairing my bedside lamp, because I really want to know what's going to happen next in 'Erebos'.

[Dialogue] Linear_03

Okaay!
Another version.

Added some personality to Turbo Cleaner. As Rachel said, if I decide going that way I should exaggerate it. Still unsure. We'll see.

From other news:
Added more distinguished wiping (doesn't look awesome over here, in splines it will be much more better). Added some more hand gestures. Repaired eyes.

Also, different ending! More self-confident pose.

[RRR!] The Box RC1

Release Canditate 1




This version was shown today.

[Dialogue] Linear_02

And that was shown on today's show n' tell

[Dialogue] Feedback 24/04/12

• Wiping more distinguished
• Watch elbow at this part
• Miranda - Left hand too static - add more gestures
• Offset Turbo Cleaner - more interesting animation
• Andy - Make more definite eyes/head animation when the other character is walking off the scene
• Instead  of being sad at the end - make pose like 'Because fuck you that's why'

[RRR!] Feedback 24/04/12

• Camera a bit lower
• Sound effects a bit higher
• Cut going up on Mime #1

[Dialogue] Meet the characters

This time instead of writing long and boring character analysis sheet I present quick look at Miranda's (the boss) desk:

My inspiration for characters comes from 'The Devil wears Prada' film. When I heard the audio for this month's 11 Second Club I automatically thought about Miranda Priestly and how gorgeously Meryl Streep acts.

I want to achieve personality of Miranda (yes, took the name for my animation - couldn't resist) with even that single look:

(High power center)

As for Andy (name also taken from the movie), the outfit and personality inspiration is from 'Maid in Manhattan':

(Low power center)

And relations between them should look like:

(One picture tells more than thousand words - Above: Perfect example of what I want to achieve)

Personally, I love this task! It is so nice to do something else than mimes. That's why I will do my best to create really nice piece of animation.

[SFS] Don't Go

This time something light and funny. Perfect explanation of cats chasing invisible things or.. Pinky!
Anything particular in this animation? Beside of really nice render combined with live action footage and cute cat - character. It's simplicity. One big eye, non human proportion body allows 'cheating' by adding toon physics.
Really nice piece of character animation!

Great job, Turgut Akaçık!






Source:
http://pinkydontgo.tumblr.com/

[Dialogue] Sketches

Finally made my way to scanner.
Sketches for 11 second club animation:

Andy:

Miranda:

Turbo Cleaner 3000:

Key poses

[Dialogue] Linear_01

First linear version.
Still misses lipsync and better face expressions but that's not what I was concentrating at.
I love the kick part; had good reference.

I think I should work more on arcs. It's hard to achieve perfect arcs in linear but I will do my best.
Also, I didn't do much with cameras - to be continued.

[RRR!] Audio test 01

Now that's brilliant! That is that tiny little bit this animation was missing. To be honest before adding better quality sound I didn't like this animation.. I mean, I was okay but I didn't feel THAT something.
And now! I love it!

Awesome job at recording studio!

[Dialogue] Reference

What more to say.. Reference for 11 second club animation.
Looks great, especially with face expressions.

[RRR!] Splines_06

Oh boy! It's a new video from Raff!
Tweaked reaction on opening the box and crawling (palms).

[RRR!] Splines_05

This was shown today.
Version including feedback from 17/04.

[Dialogue] Feedback 18/04/12

• Cameras. Think of different shots
• Professionalist more visible on second shot

[RRR!] Feedback 18/04/12

• Delete reaction pose on opening the box /  monster popup
• Crawling - hands going down more dynamic
• Think of scaling (somehow) character. Too tiny.

[Dialogue] Blocking_01

Here goes nothing! First try on blocking with feedback changes.

[RRR!] Feedback 17/04/12

• First steps again. This time change body curve. That might work
• Looking inside the box. When going up, rotate eyes down
• Crawling - rotate wrist instead of arm

[Dialogue] Feedback 17/04/12

• Books too colourful
• Change the design. More matching
• Get rid of the lamp. Put some picture
• Change cleaner's outfit
• Add rubber glove for professionalist
• Change Cleaner's duster for similar to Turbo Cleaner's one.
• Work on cam shots
• Add behind shoulder shot

[Dialogue] Characters

Here it is! Used the same method as in previous task (presenter task in AP2) - painted textures in Photoshop and reapplied to rig.

Easy way to get the look I wanted.
As for Andy character - I've had to model the pinny and attach to the spine bones. Did it this way because character will not be moving so much (bending; extreme twisting etc) so it is 'safe' way for this scene. Normally I would have to put bones or ncloth material. But not here - pheeew!


Miranda aka Professionalist

Andy Crawley

Okay, it's high time to get some break.

Character sheets coming soon.

[Dialogue] Turbo Cleaner 3000 speed modeling

And here is Turbo Cleaner 3000!
Did it in 3.15'.

Not so bad.
The cloth will be in dynamics. I will not bother rigging it not. Not important at all.

Currently customizing characters for tomorrow's blocking.

[SFS] Meet Dr. Brock

This time 2D short, because it's the idea totally took my heart.
The story is really simple: Unknown monster want's to force eating vegetables instead of sweets.

Vanessa Tam made this short for her senior year thesis at Sheridan College in Ontario.
Beautiful animation with even better layouts made this short really memorable.

I should focus on 3D shorts, but this one is great inspiration of colour variations. Everything works perfectly that is why I wanted to show it to you this week.

Have a look at her wonderful drawings at: http://www.nessart.net/

[Dialogue] Scene speed modeling

Speed modeling of my 11secondclub scene.
Time spent: 2.5h

Feedback 10/04/12

• first steps again. Look on right leg staying too long in the same place
• opening the box - Rotate head down, wait a sec, rotate up showing the reaction
• more physics on crawling, like umm, better timing, right?
• ok sign with left hand, rotate head to the camera

Not so bad. Slowly getting there.

[RRR!] Splines_03

So, here is the newest version including feedback ideas.
Which were:

• Add more anticipation on opening the box
• Rotate shoulders/head on seeing what's inside
• Passing position/down on walk. Normalise the curves.
• Crawling - more grabbing the floor. Move that body!
• Calming down: not bending - just go down
• Camera shakes - put on off stage sounds part instead of running around. YES!

Also, I've added blinks and eye darts.

I like it!

[Dialogue] Storyboard

Based on April's 11secondclub clip:
http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/april12

I've got my idea so far:

Place: Mansion
Characters:
1. Old lady, owner of the mansion, boss
2. Young cleaner without skills but with ridiculous cleaning tools

Story:
Owner is not satisfied with the cleaning results, puts rubber glove (old ways are the best) and shows there's still dust on the bookshelf.
Camera goes to surprised young cleaner holding many cleaning accessories. She also has an hand-cart named 'Turbo Cleaner 3000' with a lots of pipes, flashing lights etc. It suppose to clean better than human.
In the end (after last line) it starts to smoke.

Next thing I'm going to do is drawing some concept sketches of characters and Turbo Cleaner 3000.

[SFS] Escalade

"Escalade" is one of the winning projects in the 2011's "Cine Ambiente" competition. This competition is an effort by the brazilian Culture and Enviromental offices to foster and promote short-films with environmental themes. Our film is about sustainable consumption and tells the story of a cube-shaped island and its inhabitants.

Cute short animation with a message. Great combination of 2D and 3D animation with lovely music. Also, the undergrounds reminds me of 'Minecraft' game.
Really good short with unbeaten rule K.I.S.S.

By Birdo studio. Directed by Luciana Eguti and Paulo Muppet.

Don't miss making of section on the official site:
http://www.birdo.com.br/work_58_escalade.html

[RRR!] Splines_02

Version prepared for today's feedback.

[RRR!] Feedback 03/04/12

• Add more anticipation on opening the box
• Rotate shoulders/head on seeing what's inside
• Passing position/down on walk. Normalise the curves.
• Crawling - more grabbing the floor. Move that body!
• Calming down: not bending - just go down
• Camera shakes - put on off stage sounds part instead of running around. YES!

[RRR!] Linear combined

So took me a long time (you know how Maya loves creating big files) but here it is!
Ready for tomorrows feedback session!