Reference!

Last Thursday I borrowed Scott and Kristian to act for our reference. We tried to do some ourselves but I think the biggest problem we had was we had the animatic stuck in our brains and couldn't think of alternatives! Another problem is something we cannot help, we're just not boys so can't really act 'laddish' very convincingly (pointed out by one of our classmates).

So here is the raw reference we shot. I plan to edit it properly (when I've finished with the scene I'm working on) and clip the bits I like together to use as reference for the appropriate scenes. I will talk about the bits I thought we should consider now.



 Even though our animatic is silent and we originally intended for no dialogue, I let Scott and Kristian speak and say whatever seemed natural. It was mentioned by someone that there should be at the very least mouthing of words when the brothers interact. It's something that humans do when they either don't want to shout or feel there's no point in shouting but want to communicate. We also put on a massive fan for them the shout over! The sound of rushing air is something we definitely need to consider when having the brothers communicate and for the soundtrack as well.

 It is really difficult to find a youtube video of skydiving without music over it! Finding an example of the wind and someone screaming/shouting/anything took me a bit and couldn't find anything better than this:


    


 This makes me think; should we do funny faces on the characters? Ha. The lads shoved each other about a bit which I thought we should definitely incorporate into the scene. Always needs more brothers shoving each other. Also, Aaron (played by Kristian) pointing down to get Malcolm's (played by Scott) attention away from his back so that Aaron can shove him was a really good idea. 


 I really liked Scott's expression when he catches sight of the watch (altimeter) on Kristian's wrist. Definitely want to get that expression in! I also liked the idea of Malcolm falling out of the tree when trying to get to Aaron at the end. We talked about it and the idea of Malcolm chucking a rock from the bottom (off screen) would be a nice touch to keep them even.


As I've already said, I'm going to edit the reference to get the bits I thought were good together to use for our blocking of the other scenes. 

Rachel's Blog

Jump Linear WIP

I added some more breakdowns in the first 200 frames and adjusted the timing. I also animated the background (which will probably be tweaked later on, depending if it needs to be faster or slower - it works for now) to complete the look.

 I think this is looking good enough for me to leave for the time being so I'm going to leave it here, unless feedback tells me of a change I should do, and begin blocking more breakdowns in the later frames. After that I would like to start blocking another scene if possible so that we can keep to the schedule (which I will upload when I figure out how as it's a .PDF file.)

Rachel's Blog

Linear Arm Timing

Changed the timing of the arm movement. It works better now I think though it could probably stand to be a bit faster.



  Rachel's Blog

Linear Arms

Moved the first 100 frames of the scene I was working on into Linear to see how it looks. The timing is the biggest thing that needs sorting out.



The timing of the arms was the most obvious so I've added some breakdowns and I'm going to tweak the timing next.

 

  Rachel's Blog

Jump: Blocking Test 6

After figuring out how to animate visibility I added some more blocking, specifically the last bit with the sign. Hoping I achieved the ideal look that I mentioned in a previous post.



 Will be sending for feedback. Next I'll work on what Penny suggested by going straight ahead with the beginning. After that, unless there are any major changes/tweaks that need to be made, I'll be looking at sending this scene to Rachel so that she can work on Aaron. Plan! Rachel's Blog

Animating visibility.

Was having some trouble following Scott's instructions so I had a look on the internet and managed to find a good short video of how to animate an object's visibility. Turns out I was looking at the wrong visibility option (I hate Maya for this sometimes...)

 

 Pretty simple when you know which bit you need to be looking at!

Jump: Blocking Test 5

This is a quick playblast of where I'm up to now. I'm about to start blocking in the part with the sign which I anticipate might be a bit difficult as I will have to animate the visibility of the sign too.


I asked my classmates if you can animate visibility in Maya (I imagined you could but didn't know how) as it was something I used in Softimage a lot. I used to animate parenting too which I've also asked about. Scott answered "Yes, right click on the visiablty in the attribute editor, then select - key selected" What I'm most concerned about is the manner in which the sign appears. We wanted a Looney Tunes style hammer space from which the sign would appear. However I don't want the sign to look like it just appears in the character's hand. The best example I can think of this is from The Sims games, where objects would just appear in the game characters' hands. We don't want to sign to be visible on the side of the character it is not coming from nor before it is whipped out. As the sign idea was very much influenced by Wily E Coyote, what better example of this to use than from one of the masters of hammerspace! Here is what we want the bringing out of the signs to look like, only in 3D animation of course. Rachel's Blog