Character Dialogue Overall I feel this project was perhaps my strongest allowing me prioritise facial and lip-sync animation above body mechanics to produce a character driven piece that focuses on some subtle details to convey the desired emotions. Throughout the course of this project the greatest learning curve has been understanding lip-sync workflow and facial animation and I believe I have taken great strides in further understanding this process. Whilst I still have much to...
The final company on this list is Quantic Dream who have in recent years revolutionised the video games industry through their belief in motion capture technology to deliver the same engaging, narrative experience of movies through the video game medium. Founded in Paris, 1997 by industry luminary David Cage, they have pursued their own unique take on video games focusing on interactive storytelling that evolves the entire narrative based on the player's decisions. But their...
The infamous Rockstar North, established in 1988 in Edinburgh, are best known for their creation of the Grand Theft Auto franchise one of the best-selling and arguably one of the most successful games ever created both in terms of game design and aesthetic qualities. Their games are often very character driven creating some of the most believable and interesting personalities within the video game medium through the clever use of animation and motion capture performance....
Similarly to Media Molecule, thatgamecompany were recently founded in 2006 in Los Angeles and focus on producing small game titles that attempt to invoke emotional responses from players rather than strive for high production, high risk games like Creative Assembly and Rocksteady. They remain an independent company, not tied to any specific publisher or owner which means their creative drive comes from within the company of just a handful of members. Such freedom has allowed...
Another studio based in the UK, Media Molecule are relatively new being formed in 2006 from former Lionhead employees and releasing its first game in 2008 - Little Big Planet. Despite being their first game Little Big Planet has been heralded as a monumental success for video games pushing the idea of user generated content for gamers to a whole new level. This combined with the games unique aesthetic style, went on to win dozens...
The video games industry is full of creative and innovative teams that are passionate about their products but a few stand out more than some as companies I would like to be a part of. One of these is the Creative Assembly established in 1987 in West Sussex they rose to fame with their original title Shogun: Total War, a historical war game still considered to be a milestone within the strategy game genre. In...
Along with my animations I also submitted my human head rig as well and managed to get some really good feedback on the areas that are working well and those that need most improvement. Overall though its working as well as I expected, the basics are all in and generally the deformations work cleanly with minimal mess. There are however a few key pieces that need further work that were commented on during my first...
In preparation for my dialogue animation piece I decided to create a set of phoneme shapes ready for the lip-sync part of the animation. After watching David Latour's demos I found his style of animation was really effective for lip sync - an area I have always struggled with before. Essentially you create each phoneme shape you anticipate using then using the pose2shelf script save that shape to the Maya shelf allowing you to easily...
For our first submital I decided to rough out some poses and basic shapes I would like to use in my character performance piece and whilst its still very rough, you do get an idea of where I want to go with the character and the acting in general. Some of the main feedback I got was where the character should be looking and who the character is talking to. My original idea was to...
First submittal is very soon so I decided to render out my animations and compile them together in Adobe premiere to show them to the tutors. All the animations are still work in progress but as you will be able to tell, some more so than others. Overall, I am fairly happy with the timings but I feel the poses on a few of them can still be tightened up, so in the next few...
When thumbnailing for the Ultimate Image a few key themes and designs were my initial inspiration. I produced research sheets detailing each idea or piece of research and how I may incorporate such a design into my own work. Initially I planned on creating an aesthetically simple design, using minimalist colours and shapes to create a movie-like poster showcasing the character I am working on for our Echoes game project. But as I researched more I found myself...
Continuing on from my Ultimate Image design, I thought I would post a few of my early ideas and slight variations I considered when designing the whole piece. After various thumbnail testing with the movie poster design I decided that a piece showcasing a characters various emotional states would perhaps better showcase me as an animator. Originally I decided to use a rig by Max Norderfeldt to initially place ideas downs for various images and...
Recently, as part of my Business studies module I created an 'Ultimate Image' which essentially showcases my art and animation ability in a single image. Difficulty with that is, as an animator, my work is usually shown through video and multiple frames so picking that single image or pose to show was going to be tricky. I went through various iterations on the design first showing my the characters from Echoes in action poses or in interesting layouts...
I mentioned it briefly but forgot to ever post any info up on the bow and arrow rig I created for the centaur. Its a fairly straightforward setup but I certainly had some issues creating it in the first place, trying several different ideas with nothing useful being made. But then my fellow friend and student Joe Hornsby had a tinker with it and showed me an idea that tied all the bones together under...
Just spent a couple of hours cleaning up the controls on the rig making a few custom shapes with the CV curve tool and applying them to the various parts of the rig. The controls are easy enough to use and follow although some more variation in colour would be ideal, something I will have to improve upon next time I am working with the rig. ...
Soon I have to begin animating again to meet the deadlines required for the Echoes project but I feel I can leave the rig as it is for now and come back to it later if time permits. So far though I have managed to create an eye rig and cotroller as well as a control setup for all the existing joints. The eye rig is simple and efficient enough for an animator to use...
Still going with the head rig, I have begun to work into the more fiddly areas of the rig including the nose and ear joints. The nose proved an interesting challenge that I ultimately managed to complete - after far too long having to sort out the weighting. Placing the joints and setting up their pivots and constraints was easy enough but (I believe due to the wrinkles around his nose) it became tricky to...
So far I'm making good progress with the head rig having so far managed to block some weights for the head pivot bones and upper and lower jaw. It is still a little rough and with no real controls setup yet but it gives me an idea as to how the mesh will deform and what areas are going to be problems ones. I have also begun to block in the eyebrow deformers with cluster...
So this week I have continued to work on my Major Project but slightly veered off from animation onto rigging again. I felt that my centaur rig was OK but overall there was room for improvement and the sheer amount I learnt whilst doing it would vastly improve my abilities at rigging next time I tried. With that in mind I decided to rig a human head (something I never really got to do with...
I am now almost half way through major project and on course to graduate uni in less than 4 months! (scary thought). As such, we had a 'sweatbox' meeting where very student compiles their work together and presents to the class for feedback, checking on progress and generally having a nosey at what everyone is making. So I rendered out the couple animations I've done and compiled them together here. They are still are quite...
As posted before, the Centaur rig is complete and been handed over for animation but I thought I'd post up a quick video and walkthrough of the features available to animate with. If more time were available I would love to get back in and fix those IK/FK switches and arms as, after animating with it for a little now, I really miss using FK arms. Using just IK has been fine for the Bow carrying hand...
Continuing on with project Echoes, I have begun work on a couple animations for various characters including the Centaur, Fae (the player character) and the Bark Basher (our boss character). Each character has a very different personality and function so going to each animation requires a different mindset and ideas on how they interact with the environment. The couple of rough animations I have here are the Fae's primary cyclic animations, the Centaur's canter and...
This last month I've been working on creating a rig for the Centaur character (created by Dean Paupe) as part of the game project that I have the privilege of working on - Project Echoes. Creating a rig for such a character was no easy task, effectively being two characters fused together. Yet the greatest difficulty was surprisingly in the spine, where trying to create a flexible spine that could deform appropriately and effectively connect the horse and human...
During pre-production, in preparation for rigging the centaur character, I undertook various rigging tests so that I knew the inner workings of the rig before production began. Each test tried something new with developing my knowledge and the skills I needed to create the centaur rig. Here I developed my understanding of the IK systems by building a set of IK arms with rotation and elbow controls. Overall they worked fairly well and the skinning...
To grasp a better understanding of the Fae character I created a couple sketches with some little variations and changes. As a result, I feel it has aided in my development of the character now able to distinguish between his different movement styles, poses and designs. ...
Still going on with the centaur rig, will have something put together in next few days to show but for now I thought I'd post up a bit more pre-production. This is a little animatic put together for the Fae's attack animation. Generally I think it works fairly well and gets the idea of the forward thrusting strike motion but some further work on the return motion would probably be ideal. I am hoping this...
Leading on from my caricatured designs, I created a few of them using the Morpheus rig testing out how they would appear in CG working within the limits of the rig itself. Mostly, I managed to replicate the core ideas and themes of each character fairly well having to saturate the exaggerated nature of a few of them for a more workable design yet still retain the character's presence and appearance. ...
I am into production now working on the centaur rig so thought I'd continue to post up the work I completed for pre-production. These are a couple of caricature designs I made as concepts for the character in my short acting piece. Originally I was aiming at creating an older male character, probably around late 50s, but continued to experiment with different ages, personalities and shapes. In the end, I have decided to create a...
