Pie Eruption

Here is the ending of my animatic.

Stages of Background

I have decided to used a Toon shader on the house, the shader consists of two colours; one, the main colour of the house and the other gives the impression of a shadow. I also put an out line on the model to give it a more cartoon feel. So because of this, I have changed the shading of the background to match the effects I've used on the house.



INITIAL SKETCHES FOR BACKGROUND ...



This is possible layout for the establishing shot, the camera will move through the woods and end on a close up of the ground floor front window, the house will be modelled in Maya. I've used Adobe Photoshop to paint the initials shot. As the house is a 3d model I decided that it would work better if the house was placed to the right of tree because the camera won't be tracking straight towards the tree and house but instead it will curve round and close in on the front window, this will work fine for the house as it is 3D but the tree will look wrong as it is placed on a flat plane. To get round this problem I am going to put the layers on different planes in maya instead of putting the house render and the images together in after effects, I'll move them on the same path as the house and render both the plane images and the house out at the same time.

Character Designs

These are some of my initial sketchs for possible squirrel characters. I thought of having a squirrel as my character as I thought it would make more sense being a woodland animal.

Here I was just playing around, trying get used to how the mouse will move. I need to move the ears and cheeks up and down too.

House Modelled In Maya

This is an idea of what the house will look like in the scene. I've modelled it in Maya, the modelling side of it is finished, I now need to map it then add the texture.

Ambiant Occlusion - House Modelled In Maya

Possible House Layout/Colour

Storyboard

... End of the 1st Year ... On with the 2nd ...

This year we are working in groups of four to six. For this year my goal is to gain confidence in 3D modelling and lighting in Maya. I was originally in a group of six, but decided to leave the group and work on my own as I found it quite frustrating because I didn't feel that a fair amount of work was being given to me, for one example, I was told to model a medieval house which I thought was a great chance for me to hone my skills, having started the model I brought it in for feed back from the group to find it had been give to another in the group without my knowing, when I questioned what else I could do?! I was told "from now on you can concentrate on modelling vegetable and plant pots." I thought to myself modelling vegetables for 4 months... I think not... So politely, I cut and ran.

I think working on my own will be a great opportunity and a learning curve as I have never worked alone before, hopefully it will show how to pace work and schedule the load in order to get it finished to a standard I'm pleased with.

Here is our final animated sting for the third years' final end of year degree show. these stings are to played in between the third years' degree films. For the sting I sourced the sound effects. I then layered the sounds together using Adobe soundbooth, making it louder for example where the carnival passed the window, the song at the end of the sting was a bit of fun, to show the energy which the old man character still had inside him. I did the backgrounds for the animation and coloured Amy's animations for the old man character I ended up putting the animations onto the backgrounds with the use of Adobe After Effects, this was great as I spent so much time messing around with the buttons and time line, I now feel more at ease with the program and think that in the future I will be able to get straight on and use After Effects.

I am currently in my first year of uni studying animation. As our final end of year project we have been asked to create short 20 second stings. I am working as a duo with Amy Callaghan. Amy is good at character designs we decided that it was be best for her to animate the old man character to keep continuity in the animation. At the moment I have enjoyed layout so I have done the backgrounds and colouring the old man character and the backgrounds for the sting, I have sourced the sounds which haven't been added yet but, will be for the final Sting. It has been quite tough working as a pair as we found that there was more work included in making the sting than we first expected.

View from livingroom window

Different angle Livingroom

This is my design for when the protagonist is leaving the shot to join his friends in the carnival. I found this particularly hard to draw as I had to think about keeping up the continuity, keeping the objects in the room consistent with the establishing shot. I feel that this shot works quite well as it gives the character good space to exit the room, also by keeping much of the same furniture on show it makes it clearer to the audience that he is exiting the same room.

Improvements on Livingroom

Here is the improved design for the living room background. I have left the view out of the window empty as there will be a parade passing by in the final animation.

First design for Livingroom

Here is one of my first designs for the living room. I plan on developing this further by adding details such as peeling wallpaper, dirt on the floor, ceiling, sofa etc.

Animatic

This is an animatic for the Carnival animation.