Pics

Some pics of animating the 2nd walkcycle:

And one of a shot I recently completed, I'm not going to show the real shot, so here's a shot from a different angle:

Walkcycle

At the moment I'm really busy with the robot walkcycle. I took some key positions off of frames I shot with the robot. Now I'm making a test animation in tvpaint to figure out the timing and the spacing.
If all goes well I can animate the robot using the pencil test as a guide, it's pretty tricky though since the robot is a bit clunky and large, so there's a possibility that he can't hold all the positions like in the pencil test.

In a day or two I'll find out!

Robot pictures

It's been ages since I've updated, alot of stuff has been going on in the meantime, which distracted me from posting any new stuff.
Currenty I don't have my own workspace, haven't worked on my film for over a month now due to the Christmas vacation, and the fact that my school has not assigned me a new workspace yet (apparently they don't want me to graduate?).
I have been enjoying the time off (which I really needed) and been working on some freelance stuff. It's gonna be a little tough to start up again, but I still need to set up and animate more than half of the shots for my film.

Anyway, some more robot pictures in this post.

Replacement mouths for the robot.

Robot on rigging block for torso shots.

Robot ready to be animated.

Time-lapse

A short time-lapse, this was a 9 hour animating session for about 8 seconds of animation.

Robot in motion

I've finished two new shots this week!
They are the first shots I animated with my robot puppet. I try not to show too much, so instead of showing the shots, I will show you one of my test animations as a teaser. I will try to post some time-lapses too, when I get the time to edit them a little.

It's not much but that's all I can show right now without spoil too much.
I did some more little tests like this to get a feel of the puppet. The animations in the final shots will be better :)

Set Building & Animating 3

I feel really original making up these names for my blog posts.

I've moved from my father's studio to a room in my school, I had to move ALOT of stuff, materials, props, setfloors, equipment, etc. This forces me to leave my house to actually work on my animation, instead of sitting at home like a hermit. So I guess that's awesome!

I've animated a few scenes so far, still too few according to my "schedule", one I haven't updated in weeks since some stuff happened that "slightly" delayed my shooting schedule.
Anyway, here are some obscure (and blurry) photos of the studio and the set.
I try to resist to not post all of my final shots, since that would ruin the final animation I guess.
So that's why I'm posting these here photos instead, yes!

Animating a warning sign for my first shot.

Setting up a post-apocalyptic shot in the city.

Unpainted city ruin props, I already have alot of them (both foam and paper), but I still needed lot's to fill shots and for matte paintings.

Set Building & Animating 2

Some photo's of the set from the previous post, from a different angle.







The size and proportions where all done by hand, looking through the image capture application. For the dirt road I used string and needles so I could adjust the road to get the right false perspective, before actually painting the road.
For this shot I had to create some mini props, like the rocks you see in the distance, and the streetlights. The most fun however was trying to make an even thinier car wreck than my other car props.



The material is quite delicate, so cutting out the tiny windows was quite the challenge. If I had the time I would have put some wheels on it, but the car is too far away to notice that anyway.

Set Building & Animating

Finally, animating!
I started building the first (and might I add the largest) set for my film a few weeks ago, unfortunately I got ill for a few days, so the process was a bit slow.
It was quite tricky because it's a false perspective shot :)

The following shot is the first shot of my film.



To show you the scale of my set.



It's still the raw unkeyed and uncomposited version of this shot, but here it is, I animated the focus-pull by hand. Check the full HD version!



My next post will feature some making of pics of the set, to show you how the set looks from different perspective.

Props

I've been way too lazy/busy (yes, that sounds very contradicting) to post lately! Some more props and buildings were made. I made two checklists, one for my storyboard (of which I finished the final version about a month ago), and a how-many-thing-do-I-still-have-to-build checklist.
The latter is almost finished, and soon I will start setting up the sets and props in the studio. I still have some setbuilding to go though. I need to paint the boards for the setfloors, some additional props and mess around with the greenscreen/lighting set-up some more.

My estimate is that I will be animating my first shot in about 2 weeks.

Here some props:

A radio tower.


And a building, there will be little dancing people in it.

Back to zhe storyboard

Well, back to storyboarding!
The last time I checked my storyboard I thought, damn, there's still alot of boring shots in it! And since I will be making use of the green screen alot I can make some shots even bigger en better :)

I'm not really a fast storyboarder though, and I tend to overthink alot of shots and choices. I'm lucky that I already had a decent board lying before me, but there's still alot of shots who need to be redone in different angles, or where some elements have to be added.

Here's some of my new shots (just imagine the first version was pretty boring, can't be arsed to post the old ones):