NC: Final Crit Presentation and Art of Document.

Crit Presentation

Art of:

Art of Cirque de Caro

Animatic:

Animation stills

Character models

Finished character models for our animation. When skinning I forgot to delete the history on the model, causing many issues later on. Over the next week or so I shall be re rigging and skinning the characters so they can be fully working for the final presentation.

 

 

 

NC: Narrative: Pre-Viz - Assistant's arrival during Knife throw

I have done this playblast for the Assistant's arrival during Oliver throwing the knife. This is a little jumpy and so will need to be fixed, and obviously as this is a pre-viz of this sequence, it isn't properly paced. I am having some difficulties with Mental Ray rendering, at the moment, as it always shows a black screen when I try to render a frame. I, therefore, am using the Maya hardware render settings.

NC: Narrative: Oliver Disappointed Play blast Test.

NC:Narrative: Play blast test : Knife hitting stool.

NC: Narrative: Poster in Maya

In a separate Maya file to our environment, I have made a stand for the poster. I have created simple shapes and added the poster through a UV. I didn't go into too much detail into the design of the stand, as it's only on screen for a few seconds.

NC: Narrative: Poster Design

In the montage section of the animation, there is a shot where one of the knives hits a poster for the circus. I have designed the poster, as you can see below. I tried to keep it as basic as possible, but with it still looking like a proper circus poster. I will need add this to our environment in Maya.

 

NC: Narrative: Environment finished.

NC: Narrative: Fully rigged Assistant

Through the help of Alan, I was able to bind the skeleton rig to the model. I had some trouble with this at first, as I was unable to bind the arms/head joints to the model. However, it is now fully rigged and ready for skinning.

 

NC: Narrative: Texturing the Environment.

So now that the modelling of the environment is pretty much finished I have almost also completed the texturing. I only have to add the wall texture of the tent and its ready for animating! The lighting I had help from Alan so at least I don't need to worry about that! Thanks Alan. :) But the image from the render view came out rather dark. But its all there.

NC: Narrative: Rigging the Assistant

By following the rigging tutorials from last year, I have created the skeleton for the Assistant. It took me longer than I'd hope and due to the shape of the model some things are a little irregular, like the shape of the spine, but it does still work.

NC: Narrative: Rigging Oliver.

Having a little difficulty making the toes, fingers and the jaw do their thing but the rest of the rig works really well. I will have to get that fixed. The restraints on the elbows need re-doing as they don't bend correctly.

Assistant Modeling Process

Some more progress images for the Assistant Model. The images here are taken from an older version of the model. It has no head or feet as I am purely using it to finish up the hands, which I can then copy over onto the finished model.

The oliver model will be using the arms and legs from the Assistant, changing them up a bit then adding them onto a newly built body and head. Which shouldn't take me too long.

As an addition, here is the finished head model for this character.

NC: Narrative: Revised Animatic (No Sound)

This revised animatic still has some problems with pacing as I am unsure about some things, like speech and speed of movement and they were hard to visualise in my head, so some scenes and shots are either too fast or too slow. Overall, like the storyboard, this is an improvement on the original, I think, as it easier to understand.

NC: Narrative: Revised Stroyboard

At long last, I have revised the storyboard in accordance to Alan's feedback in last week's tutorial. It proved to be quite a challenge, for me, to make the story make more sense, and so there hasn't been many changes. I think it is still an improvement, however, and so it is easier to understand what is happening. I had some problems trying to think of the ending and so I left it open to interpretation as to whether he throws it successfully or not.

NC: Narrative: Target board Model - Progress.

I will work on this once everything is imported into the main scene if it seems like it is needed. This is the target board that Oliver is trying to through knives at. I need to remake the texture as it is not circus-y enough this was only a practice and I will switch out the textures when I create the right one.

NC: Narrative : Knife prop models Idea 1

As our main character is going to need some knives to throw I have modeled a knife and duplicated different forms of it. It has a chrome reflective texture and a wooden handle. I will probably improve on the design as the rest of the environment is built as it may not suit the environment I will adapt it.

Assistant Modeling: Neck and Smoothing

Continuing on with the assistant's head. Just need to add the hair then its on to the body. 

NC: Narrative: Circus Environment model Progress.

After I few pointers from Alan I have simplified the chair models to one polygon shape as to reduce their density that way when it comes to rendering it out it will not take to long. I am going to discus with my group members as to what else needs to be modelled at this time as there is not really much else I can do until the characters are finished, therefore I know what scale to put the stage in and what scale the chairs are, how big the knife board needs to be etc. Then I can think about texturing and such. As there only be one light source, texturing need only be simple as we are pressed for time. 

NC: Narrative: Set Pieces - Chairs

So in our set you can see the outline of the audience's seating area. So I have modeled a couple of chairs which can be duplicated over and over to form out audience's area. If  I alternate them from the seat down and seat up position I believe it will look quite effective even in low light.
They were quiet easy to model. Even without a orthographic. They are just a added piece in our set.

Assistant Mouth and eyes Remodeling

After making the base model, I felt like the eyes and mouth weren't similar enough to what I had designed originally. Taking some time this morning, I rearranged the vertices around the eyes to make them more slanted/pointed and decreased the size of the mouth.

 

 

 

 

Assistant Modeling: Head

Over the past few day's I have been working on modeling the assistant. Surprisingly modeling human character's is difficult but ill keep going with it.

At the moment she looks fairly basic, I will be adding in the black outline's around the eyes and making her face rounder towards the end of the modeling process.

NC: Narrative: Animatic (No Music/Sound)

This is the animatic that I have made from the storyboard. I think there are some issues with timing, as some shots need to be a little longer/shorter. I wanted to add the camera pan to the first shot, but my Adobe Premiere isn't working at the moment, so that is something I will look to achieve when sound has been added. As a group, we will discuss suitable music and sound effects.

NC: Narrative: Storyboard

I have created this new storyboard which is based on our new script draft, but isn't completely the same. The reason for this is because I felt that it should be more of a shock to discover that he isn't the knife thrower and is just the apprentice. I haven't shown this in the storyboard, but in the animation there will be visual hints, like posters, that suggest he isn't the knife thrower, and so will make the real knife thrower's appearance more understandable. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, while still trying to show a convincing story.

NC: Narrative: Circus Model Start.

There is a little collapsing happening on the model which I aim to ask help with tomorrow. But here is the start of the circus set we are placing our animation in. It is the ring in which the performances are held and a little pillar set that will connect to the tent's roof structure.