Finally!

There were some problems in the rendering stage.. For some reason certain facial controls were not rendering leaving the character expressionless sometimes. I checked softimage and I couldn't see any problems there, the controls were still there and there were no mysterious disappearances of anything. In fact, it played fine in Softimage. So I have to render a couple of times to get this right. Still have no idea why it was rendering that way... weird.

Anyway, final render of another one bites the dust :)

Another One Bites The Dust: Quick capture

quick capture after I made changes to the ending, I'll be working on the walk after this then rendering (less than 3 hours to go!)

Another One Bites The Dust: Test 3

Added the hip wiggle and rendered it properly. Excuse the black patches everywhere, some parts obviously failed to render. Will be re-rendering for the final version anyways.



I didn't realise how little emotion I'd put on his face... could have sworn I put some more smiles on him at least. I'll be working on that next!

**EDIT - Just noticed the walks are a bit stiff.. or rather the top half of his body is. Will try to smooth that out a bit if I have time. Need to work on the presenter animation for the time being.

Another One Bites The Dust: Test 2

Feedback from my classmates pretty much said that the first step Malcolm takes is abnormally fast. I was concerned about the microphone being in front of his face too much but they seem to think it's ok. I might change it slightly anyway, just to satisfy myself, if I have time. Here is a quick capture of the fixed animation.



Next I'm going to give him a hip wiggle (to the beat) when he stands in the 'Freddy Mercury' pose... which is this by the way!

Statue in Montreux. Image from Wikipedia.

Another One Bites The Dust: Test

Worked on 'Another One Bites The Dust' a fair bit. I've changed the camera angle since the feedback. I've also added more breakdowns, the lip syncing, couple of bits and pieces for the background and lighting and I've now put the animation on splines.



Ever since watching Keith Lango's video on cleaning up your animation I've been taking more care and changing the way I clean up my animation. When someone told me my animation needed cleaning up or needed more polishing, I'll admit I didn't really understand what it meant. Or at least I realised I didn't understand when I watched that video. It was like being hit in the face with a brick epiphany. I didn't need to add more key frames, I needed to take them out! So I've started the cleaning up process much sooner than after I've completed all the breakdowns. I've started noticing keys that don't need to be while adding breakdowns and delete them.

It's great :D

As for my animation, with the change in camera angle I'm now a bit worried that the microphone is in front of his face too much so that the lip sync can't be seen much. I'm sending it for feedback so I'll wait and see what my classmates think. Other than that and the obvious and inevitable polishing it needs, I think it's coming along nicely :)

Another One Bites The Dust: Blocking 2

Feedback from my classmates said that it seemed odd that the character didn't look back when he was moving backwards and to look more at people walking backwards as the walk did not seem right.

I've added a head turn to look backwards and am part way through fixing the backwards walk (still not happy with it). I've also added more breakdowns.

Found some reference videos of people walking backwards here:

Man 1 (Front View)

Man 1 (Side View)

Going to need to take some reference videos of myself walking backwards..

Anyway, sending this video away for feedback. Still needs some more breakdowns and more work on the backwards walk but I like to hear what people think. In case I missed something!

Rough Blocking: Another One Bites The Dust - Better Render.

Rendered the rough block without all the controls visible. And I fixed a couple of things. This video I'll be sending for feedback, though as said before there is still a lot to do to it.



Timing still needs working out and more extremes need putting in. I'm watching the animation process video I posted before a lot because I want to adopt that way of working. This is the first stage. Next stage will be putting in extremes.

Rough Blocking: Another One Bites The Dust.

Here is the first (very rough!) blocking for the song and dance task. It's just a quick capture video (hence why the controls are visible).



No where near anything I can call 'almost done'. Still a hell of a lot of work to do but uploaded this for an update on what I'm doing.

Quick capture test - Another One Bites The Dust

Just taking the first part of the blocking off stepped curves for a moment to check I've got a good rough timing to work with. It's hard to tell without rendering a test sometimes. By all means, this is no where near even at a rough stage. There's much more work to be done. I just wanted to make sure that the heel is hitting the floor at the right beats before continuing.

Another One Bites The Dust: Reference clip

While at uni today I also asked for help with the song and dance reference. The song I chose to do is the first chorus from this song!



That's 'Another One Bites The Dust' by Queen... just in case.
I was having trouble deciding what I wanted the character to do. All that's needed is jigging about but I still wasn't sure on what to have the character do! So my lovely classmates and tutor had a go:



Definitely helped. I'm thinking of animating as it is in the clips, maybe with some more pointing at the person (Rachel - the other one again) playing the guitar.