WEEK 15 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - 1st of April, 2019

WEEK ENDING - 7th of April, 2019

MONDAY - Fantastical Creatures Modelling workshop

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/04/fantastical-creatures-skollcrabb.html

WEDNESDAY - Showreel Premiere Pro Induction

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/04/showreel-premiere-pro-induction.html

"Since this was just a practice with the program, I had some fun with the titles and put in whatever just made me laugh! This little session taught me a couple of new basic techniques that're going to make the actual showreel's production a lot easier. All in all, this was a nice little session that was calm and I enjoyed it!"

THURSDAY - Lip-Sync

Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/04/lip-sync-colours-and-feedback.html

"So now I have this feedback, I'm gonna work on making the head look better and more consistent! Honestly, I'm glad I got more to work on, because I feel like I worked a bit too quickly on this task. That's not to say it's rushed, just that made it in a very short amount of time. But now I have something to do with the extra sessions we have on lip-sync!"

SUMMARY
The work on the Fantastical Creatures project has essentially just been working on the model of Skollcrabb. I'm trying to make it look like an amalgamation of my original design and my maquette, taking my favourite elements from each one. Most notably, I took the legs and eyes from my maquette, and the bottom jaw and claws from my original design. I think from here, I just need to keep working on it and making sure it's finished. I've also got to texture it, but I'm still a ways out from there yet.

For the showreel, I've got most of my clips all together in one folder, so that I can move it all around in one place, instead of constantly having to relocate files that are scattered all over the place. I've also found a nice font to use for my titles, called Back Issues. It's meant to replicate comic book speech bubble text, which fits with the kinds of things I make. These showreels are meant to be personal and reflect our style of work, and given how much influence I have from comic books and cartoons, it seems appropriate.

With the lip-sync task, I'm glad to be getting more to do on it! The feedback I got from Helen has been really great to recieve, since it means I can keep working on making 2D animations like I want to. Plus, I felt like I was going really fast and was worried that I had eventually done something wrong... and I kind of wanted something to be (unintentionally) wrong so I could keep working. But now I have more to work on once I get back after Easter!

LIP-SYNC - COLOURS AND FEEDBACK

This Lip-Sync post is about how I coloured the animation and the feedback I got on the animation I considered finished.

Unlike my preferred animation program Adobe Animate, TVPaint's layers work more like digital illustration layers. What I mean by that is that they are able to fully interact with each other, to create lighting effects, the ability to choose a source layer, etc. I took advantage of this when colouring the animation.

I had three layers of animation that needed to be coloured; the main body, the head and the eyes. For each of these layers, I created a new blank animation layer underneath it. Using the paint bucket tool, set to use the layer above as a reference, I coloured each piece of animation on it's respective colour layer.

After I applied the colour, the animation looked like this:

I got some feedback from Helen on the animation. She was approving of my "less is more" method with the mouth, approving my justification for using less mouth shapes to fit my cartoony style.

The main thing to work on is consistency. The hair isn't consistent the entire way through, with it changing shape and size. One clip in particular showcases this in particular, when the character says "complicated"; the hairline keeps shifting.

So now I have this feedback, I'm gonna work on making the head look better and more consistent! Honestly, I'm glad I got more to work on, because I feel like I worked a bit too quickly on this task. That's not to say it's rushed, just that made it in a very short amount of time. But now I have something to do with the extra sessions we have on lip-sync!

SHOWREEL - PREMIERE PRO INDUCTION

This is a one-off session on the showreel unit.

For our showreels, we're going to be making them in Adobe Premiere Pro, an editing program part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. I've had experience with this program for the past 3 years, so going into this session I felt pretty comfortable with the program.

The entire session could be split into two parts: the basics of Premiere Pro and the fancy stuff. The basics were mostly on how to set up projects & sequences, import & insert clips, audio dipping, etc. While I knew all of those already, there were some basics I hadn't known up to that point which are going to be really helpful in the future; specifically, Ripple Delete. Ripple Delete closes gaps between clips and audio, and bumps everything up that applies.

And like I said, we also moved onto the fancy stuff Premiere Pro can do. I'd never noticed the multiple tabs at the top of the workspace, including Editing, Effects, Graphics, etc. I'd only ever used the editing tab, since that's all I used Premiere Pro for. We went into the Graphics tab to find lots of title & graphics presets, the kinds used for news reports and sports channels. Their text is all editable, and different attributes can be messed with the create the title graphic you want!

In the end, with all the steps followed, my project looked like this:



Since this was just a practice with the program, I had some fun with the titles and put in whatever just made me laugh! This little session taught me a couple of new basic techniques that're going to make the actual showreel's production a lot easier. All in all, this was a nice little session that was calm and I enjoyed it!

LIP-SYNC - CHIN AND CLEANUP

This post is a further update for my TVPaint lip-sync animation. This time, it's on the chin movements and line cleanup.

There wasn't anything too complex to this, honestly. There were only two steps involved in this cleanup.

Firstly, there's the chin. In my rough stages, I specifically left the chin static so that I wouldn't be too focused on that when blocking out my main motions. I deliberately left it for this part of the process. It was simple enough to do, I just went through and drew chins on a new layer, that react to the extremities of the mouth shapes. When the mouth is closed or in a very small shape, it stays in a neutral position. But when the shape is more open and wide, the chin goes back down.

The rest of the animation just had to be traced over essentially. I took the opportunity to clear some inconsistencies with the body, especially with the collar and tie.
So from here, it's about colouring and getting feedback.

FANTASTICAL CREATURES - SKOLLCRABB MODELLING 1

This session was modelling my Skollcrabb creature in Maya.

When starting to model the Skollcrabb, I already had an idea of how it works in a 3D space, thanks to the maquette. But now came the part where it actually had to exist in a 3D digital space.

After our session learning how to start modelling characters last week, I felt like making my Skollcrabb would be a lot easier than if I hadn't had that session. Each part was made up of different poly shapes; the skull, body & eyes were made from spheres that I had edited to resemble the shapes I wanted more, the bottom half of the legs were made of cones, the top half of the legs were made of cylinders, and the bottom jaw.

The most complex shape by far was the skull shell; where other parts of the Skollcrabb didn't require too much modification, the skull needed constant changes and modelling techniques to make it resemble what I wanted.

I also tried closing off as many gaps as I could with the skull, but it's going to prove difficult in later sessions, just due to how I made it. By the end of the session, the Skollcrabb was in pieces:

The only real next step is to just carry on modelling. I still need to add the arms and claws, and then bring it into texturing software to make him colourful and textured!