Concepts - Leg Design and Development

Here are some initial silhouettes for the legs design. Following on from the research I did I have experimented with the inverse leg joint to see how they look. I like the middle design because it has a good level of interesting detail with the cogs that will compliment the rest of my design. I also like the difference in thickness between the thigh and calf as this extreme difference will enhance the cartoony appearance of the design as a whole due to the massive body being disproportionate to the legs

Here is some subtle refinement of the leg design. I have chosen the middle because is has the most complimenting features of the three and works better as a design as a whole.

Concepts - Gun Mechanics Test

Here is a quick 2D animation of the gun mechanics from the side:

Here is a test I made in maya:

For the rigging I will be using the connection editor to connect the rotates of each cog. I will need to use multiply and divide nodes in between the connections as the speeds of the cogs will be different. The beginning cog will be the largest, at the elbow and this will be the driver for the whole sequence therefore there will be a nurbs curve controller; orient constrained to this cog so that you can cleanly control the mechanics. The node connections will finish at the gun pole and the actual gun itself will have individual controls giving the freedom to animate all the gun parts however you want.

Concepts - Gun Mechanics

Here I have used the basic arm shape that I have previously designed and used it as a template to design the gun mechanics. Using the big cog in the arm design I have incorporated that into the mechanics that will reveal the gun so that it is now the driving force for the whole system.

Side View:

Front View:

Using the rising centre pole as an additional driver, the side flaps are then able to open up by using this simple cog system.

Concepts - Gun Design and Development

Here are my robot gun designs:

I decided to choose the mini gun one as I think this will be the best suited to my old style mechanical design and also will provide enough parts to make dynamic folding out mechanics.

I have chosen the centre design because it has a nice compact appearance with nice subtle design elements.

Concepts - Arm Designs and Development

Here is the final design for the arm, I have included panels so that the gun will be able to fold out of them. It also has a cog where the elbow is to add a bit of extra interest to the design and could also rotate when the gun flaps move.

Concepts - Head Designs

I have tried out a lot of heads but I think the design I have chosen is the best suited to the body design.

Concepts - Body Development

Concepts - Initial Body Shapes

Here are some initial robot silhouette designs that I have done, I have decided to choose the big round design to develop as I feel this has an interesting shape which will go well as a contrast to the stretchy and more likely thinner other character in my animation.

Research - Materials

Research - Folding Components

To make the animation more interesting I have decided to have a folding gun mechanic involved in the design and possibly other mechanical flaps similar to the iron man suit as seen below.

Research - Mech Robot

Research - Character Exploration

Research - Comedy Shorts

Great Rigging Demo

Here is a fantastic rigging reel by Josh Carey who is a professional rigging supervisor and knows almost all there is about rigging hence the very impressive rigging demo shown below.

After watching this rigging demo I have been inspired to create my own advanced rig which will have a lot of squash and stretch attributes similar to those seen in the video.This will be a challenge however if I can get even slightly close to the level shown here I will be very happy.

Now that I have finished the pre-production for the 'Poseidon Rising' project the next steps will be for me to decide and design the characters I will be modelling, rigging and finally animating.

Storyboard

Scene Animatics

As we have now divided the scenes up between me and the other animator I have now made individual scene animatics to pad out the animation in each scene.

Scene 12: 

Scene 25 Alternative:

Scene 28: 

Scene 30:

Scene 31:

Scene 32:

Final Full Animatic

Here is the final full animatic that I have made so that we have the story and shots ready to start breaking up the specific scene animations up.

Updated Animatic 2

Here is an updated animatic again this time with music and the voice over that we will be using as well. I have also refined some of the movements and shots but still kept some of the scenes that worked from the previous animatic.

Updated Animatic

Here is an updated animatic for the sequence intro. The idea now features a 2D scene (hence the 2D scene title) that George will paint himself and be a flashback to Poseidons past and how he got in the position he is in today with no powers.

For the very first couple of scenes I took reference from the introduction to the movie 'The Shining' which I think has worked out well to set the scene and location of the animation. The final couple of shots where Poseidon steps into the temple is when he starts to get his powers back which is what the blue wisps signifies.

Initial Animatic

First vary basic animatic to get an idea of some shots we could do for the introduction of the sequence.

The intro starts off with the main character Poseidon riding in on his motor bike with some nice close ups of the bike so that we don't reveal his identity. The camera finally pans up as Poseidon takes off his helmet to reveal himself to the audience. He smiles as he looks into the distance at the temple. The final shot being the establishing shot telling the audience that we're at the temple of Poseidon.

Poseidon Rising Inspiration

Since George is wanting this project to be a hyper realistic cinematic short it will be a good idea to research some already existing hyper real trailers.

To start off, the absolute masters in hyper realistic trailers: Blizzard

World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor Cinematic Trailer

Something to pick up on with all these trailers but can be especially seen in the one above is of how intricate the facial movements are, something I will have to pay special attention to when animating.

Next up is the trailer for the game:

Lords of the Fallen

On this trailer the fight sequence is of special merit to be appreciated, again something that will need a lot of refining in my animation to achieve ultimate realism. There are also so really nice shots in this short that help build tension and reveal information in unique ways.


Dark Souls 2 Trailer

Although in this trailer the faces are covered for all the scenes meaning no facial animation, there is still a lot of complex body mechanics that is to a very high standard.

Finally even though being an awful game series, they do make a good trailer:

Risen 3: Titan Lords Trailer

This is a good example of the kind of scene we want to set with two characters fighting in a temple arena that finishes in impossible odds.

Research - Pose Ideas

Collaboration Project - Poseidon Rising

As the brief says that we have to do at least two collaboration projects I will be working on a project with George Skodras's and Ben Jones. I have worked with them previously in the Red Bull advert project and am looking forward to working with them again.

The title of the project in Poseidon Rising and the general synopsis is as follows:

Set in modern times Greece, the Greek gods are now living among the people withdrawn into solitude after having their powers seized away from them. With a new force ruling the lands the gods are forced to live a mortal life however at the time of the new millennium, Poseidon the god of the sea, begins to gain his powers back. Sensing this he returns to his beloved temple however upon arrival is encountered by an archangel; a dark minion of the current ruling power. The archangel warns Poseidon to leave however he resists, they fight and finally are broken up by the appearance of an army of archangels. The final shot is a shot of Poseidon looking at the large army knowing the odds are against him, but suddenly thunder storms start to accumulate behind him leading to a smirk from Poseidon; Zeus is coming. CUT

This will be a large project with multiple people involved as George (Director) is planning on making it as realistic as possible with a lot of visual effects like smoke, dust and water. This means that we will need to enquire about working with some students on the VFX course.

However my next steps as animator are to start thumb nailing some scenes and planning out the animations as well as storyboarding.

New Project Brief

We have been assigned a new project an uni, this is the brief:

'Create pre-production for the equivalent of 4 projects. Project production and post-production will be part of AA3D02 Final Major Project Production. At least two of the four projects must be collaborations projects, the others can be personal projects.' 

Main Points:

• Each project is to be a month long 
• We can choose from artist, rigging, animation, directing
• Its solely up to us what we do

As I am mainly wanting to animate most of my projects will be animation, however in order to keep developing my other skills I will also be doing some modelling and rigging.

Here is my project break down:

 

Rigging and Modelling Reels

Although I wish to specialise in animation it is also important to showcase my other skills that I have acquired including rigging, modelling and texturing. Therefore in order to do this I need to have separate showreels for both rigging and asset making.

So to start off here are some good examples of Rigging showreels that I have found:



The first being a reel by Matt Schiller featuring a good array of skills from advanced realistic facial rigging with the use of motion capture and then exaggerated toon rigging with squash and stretch attributes. Each clip also features a helpful label describing what exactly is in motion at that particular point for instance 'Layered IK/FK ctrls'.

Here is a good showreel by Evelyn Seng which has an interesting and nice way of interchanging between pieces of work; she shows them one by one but in between features a little animation where the character interacts with the next in line character as if they are all queueing for something. This is a good way of keeping the audience engaged as it can get a little tiresome looking at rigging demo's.

Here is the final in the rigging segment of this post by Khaled Samhan. What I like about this showreel is that similar to the previous is that in between the individual rigging demos he features small animation segments like walk cycles. They are first shown normally and then shown with the controllers attached and rendered, this is a nice way of reinforcing the content of the showreel and what its actually about.

  

Now its time to see some Modelling showreels.

Here is very good show reel by Romain Chauliac featuring some high quality industry standard work. The main thing I like about this portfolio other than the incredible work, is that he teases his most prized work at the beginning by only showing the back of a beautifully lit superman, it is only shown until right at the end. A very good technique that keeps the audience interested and also encourages to watch again as it can be played in a loop.

Here is another reel by Johan Lithvall, which although the quality of work is not quite up to the previous' standards it does however features nice presentation techniques of having a full body turnaround on one side and a close up on the other with a fade between the two. A definite bad point about this showreel however; is that the quality of work is substantially better in the second half than the first. This is a bad idea as the employer will see the first half and probably not watch the rest as they will already have a bad impression of the level of work.

The final reel in this post is by Danu Navarro which is more of a cartoony modelling show reel. I like this reel as it features some dynamic colours that are pleasing to the eye with the models being gold on a grey gradient background with letterbox black edges. He also includes four head poses of the characters before every turn around of which is a nice touch that helps link the show reel together as well as his four bar image at the beginning and end.

Character Animation Showreels

Here I will explore some more specific showreels for the industry sectors.

First up is Animation, here are a few showreels with varying student work that I think work well in showcasing their work:

Here is a showreel by Alaa Aldeen Afifah which has some really nice character animation with some great body mechanics. The clips are all very short as to not bore the audience and express a great variety of skills from up close facial animation to general full shot body movement. 

Another by Daniel Meitin who is a professional animator working in the industry including some top companies like disney. Here is his character animation reel that has some great expressive and fluid body motions. Another good thing to note is his clear labelling at the top of each clip with his individual responsibilities, something that is essential for when an employer is viewing your reel.

Here is a fantastic example of a creature animation showreel by Alex Yaremchuk. Mostly game animation however still useful to see as it gives a varied consensus. Another point to pick up on is the professional animation reels feature a lot of animations with only simple plain backdrops so that the attention can solely be put on the animation and nothing else.

Here is a pure body mechanics animation showreel by Tim Sormin. This is another showreel that again features a lot of simple backgrounds with normal texture-less boxes and obstacles so that they don't detract from the animation. It also has a nice clear and concise label at the bottom of every clip similar to Daniel Meitin's work however this tells us what project it was instead.

Examples of Animation Showreels

Here are some unique showreels that have great use of colour and text that make a nice dynamic display of imagery that constantly keeps the viewer engaged.

The first is Oliver Sin's 2013 Reel:

This is a great example of a good showreel: interesting and dynamic from start to finish. Oliver uses quick cuts to keep the audience on their toes accompanied with beautiful illustrated transitions between shots. At around 1:33 it is also in the perfect timing region for a showreel.

Here is another showreel by Steffen Knøsgaard

Similar to the previous this showreel features dynamic and engaging visuals that carry you across the work effortlessly. I will explore these ideas in my own showreel.

How to create a good showreel

In this post I will be looking at various articles and combining the ideas and opinions on what makes a good showreel.

1. Start Strong

A popular comment made in a lot of articles is to start your showreel with your best work as this is the first thing the employer will see so it needs to have a big wow factor to keep them interested.

2. Cut Ruthlessly 

As well as starting strong you should also only include your very best work and be ruthless with what you put in, remove any sentimental value that you have to a scene, if it doesn't truly display your best work then it shouldn't be in your showreel.

3. Keep It Short

Studios receive vast amounts of showreels daily so in order not to bore your audience you want your showreel to stay short and snappy. "we would recommend for them to be roughly one-and-a-half to two minutes in length," says Claire Anderson of The Mill.

4. Captions Where Needed

Captions will help the viewer understand what they are looking at. Keep captions simple and use a bare minimum number of words. I recommend captioning a shot with the role you played in creating it; for example ‘Character animation’, ‘Effects animation’ and so on. This will especially help distinguish what you did in the project if it was a group project.

5.  Match Your Reel To The Vacancy/studio

This is a very important one because for example if you showing a modelling reel to an animation company not only will you ruin your chances for that job position but also could offend your employer as they will see it as disrespectful due to you not doing you research into the work they provide.

6. Keep Things Simple

Many of the articles have said it is better to show something simple done well than something ambitious done poorly. However I don't think that means you shouldn't challenge yourself and put just a simple bouncing ball animation into the reel as the employer will find this boring and lacking in imagination, it simply means not to try and do a feature length film to yourself.

7. Show Breakdowns

Although you may find them pointless and think they look rubbish the workings out and breakdowns are a valuable thing to see to an employer as it shows your work flow and in general how you like to work whether it be through thumbnails or LAV's. This does not mean however show it for every single clip as this will then become to similar and will bore the employer with the repetitiveness. Instead show the breakdown for a particularly hard shot that took a lot of working out.

8.  End With A Bang

Finally similar to the beginning you should also finish with one of your best as well, as hopefully your employer has made it to the end of your showreel; you want a good lasting memory of your work.

Cliches To Avoid

"Dragons, robots, cameras endlessly flying round sets and worlds populated by supermodels and manga heroes." 

"The work can’t look at all corny. It needs to be quite sophisticated, or at least handled really well."

More tips can be found at http://www.creativebloq.com/audiovisual/perfect-showreel-top-tips-9134570

What I want in my showreel

Now that we've finished the last project of the Red Bull advert, during the transition into the next project I am going to take a break and really decide what I want my end of year showreel to be about.

As I am a CG generalist my skills are broad so I will have a lot of varied material for me to include in my showreel. However that being said I still want to predominately be an animator so the main bulk of my showreel will be animation.



As I am looking to work in films, the animation I want to include will be mainly character performance pieces to show the acting skills. So that to keep the viewer interested they will only be short snappy clips of different scenes, that some could be taken from the http://www.11secondclub.com/ competition.

The other skills that I will be showing off will be rigging and modelling. The rigging I will experiment with various different set ups, hopefully look into advanced facial rigging and cartoony squash and stretch rigging.
For the modelling, I prefer doing more fictional character design as opposed to hyper-realistic model sculpting.

Therefore with these aspects in mind I will be working my final project around these guidelines.

Final Animation

Here is our final animation for the Red Bull advert project. I am very happy with how it has turned out, I think we have achieved a unique twist on what is to be expected from the normal Red Bull adverts.

There are some areas where the animation could have been improved but I think overall it is to an adequate standard. The scene I am most happy with is scene 09 where the character is falling as I think it has great motion to it, accompanied with the cartoony speech bubble giving the scene an extra edge above the rest.

Animation Progression Reels

Here are the progression reels for the final animations with the various development steps beginning with initial thumbnails leading up to the final render.

Scene 04 Progression Reel:

Scene 05 Progression Reel:

Scene 06 Progression Reel:

Scene 07 Progression Reel:

Scene 09 Progression Reel:

Speech Bubble Test

The thought bubble is to reinforce the idea that Red Bull gives you wings so that the audience knows his intentions. So that it fits with the rest of the animation it will be still animated in quite a cartoony way, accompanied with the stereotypical popping sounds. 

For the speech bubble I will be using this image that I have drawn, then I will separate them into different parts as individual PNG files then edit them over the top of the animation in premiere.

Here is a preliminary test that I have done just to try the general concept. 

Can Model Turnaround

Here is my modelling turnaround for the can model that I made:

Final Rigs: Bird

Bird Deform Test:

Bird Rig Demo:

Final Rigs: Man

Man Rig Deform Test: 

Man Rig Demo IK:

Man Rig Demo FK:

LAV's

Scene 03 LAV

Scene 04 LAV

Scene 05 LAV

Scene 09 LAV

Modelling Preparation

As I am modelling for this project as well I have started to do some research. First starting off with the Red Bull can.

Next is the skip which first I will do some research, then model concepts and then draw up the final design.

Rigging Preparation