A Summery!

Where to start?

Firstly I will get Whack'd out of the way. In the first 2 weeks after my original pitch, I only had two members on my team, Tom and Mu. It was looking bad for 'Pirates' and, at that point it was highly likely that the film would fall through. Dan and Sam approached me and asked whether I would like to join the team, to help with animation. I knew deep down this was Sam and Dan doing me a favour. It was clear they wanted me to have somewhere to go if 'Pirates' failed. Naturally I said 'yes'. However, 'Pirates' lived to fight another day and so I was on two films. In the first terms I did a few concept drawings just for fun but nothing major. At this time I had acquired the music editing software known as Protools. As a little pet project I scored an Whack'd inspired song. After I completed it I showed it to the group on a whim just to see whether they thought it was any good. Dan and Sam really liked it so I became the composer for the film. I had no intention to be, but I was thrilled that they liked it. Over the next few months I produced three new tracks, 'Locked and Loaded', 'Out of the Frying Pan...' and 'Ninjutsu Blues'. Through all of it I drew influence from composers such as Harry Gregsom Williams, Steve Jablonsky, Tyler Bates and many more. I also drew influence other musicians such as surf guitar legend Dick Dale, Blues Virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan, hard rockers Motorhead, Flamenco Master Paco Pena and even horror punk and Country musicians like The Monsters.

Unfortunately with the workload increasing with 'Pirates' all of the time, my role as an animator diminished to just two shots. This was a shame as I really like the film and wanted to be a stronger part of it. However, Sam and Dan were very understanding. Overall the Whack'd team and film is fantastic.

'Pirates'. Where to begin. I never thought that my stupid little idea about Pirates in a supermarket would ever get picked. Just look at it! When you write it down on paper it just looks ridiculous. But for some reason, the class really loved it. As I've said, the first tow weeks were rocky but it evened out. There were many story problems in the beginning, many hours wasted on boards. We must have gone trough three different plot ideas before the film settled months later. In retrospect the film is much stronger now. So all of my moaning was just hot air. My role in the pirates film was overwhelming. I was Director, writer, character designer, organiser, modeller, texturer, rigger (blendshapes), renderer and compositer. Many of the positions I fell into and had to adapt.

The group has seen a little bit of a 'revolving door' membership. I am not going to name names, but I have to be honest. People have let me down this year, more than once. We have had disappearing members, I do not know how many texts I sent around chasing people up. I want these people to know, I do not feel any bitterness toward them, this pipeline is far to constricted time wise to wait around for people. With this kid of mentality, it fell upon the rest of the group to pick up the slack. I modelled, textured and created blendshapes when I was not originally supposed to. All of which were not my strong points and I had to learn as I went along. I had never textured on created blendshapes before so it was a new experience for me. However, the team really came together, we would all tweak each others work so it would look the best.

When time got a too hairy, I employed some of the second years to help out with the film. Fahran, Marios, Mel, Hayley, Carlos and Alex. I saw each of them improve with every piece of work they did, except for Fahran, who blew my mind the moment I met him. All of these second years were fast learners and their unyielding enthusiasm for a film which they had only just joined was inspiring.

So what do I think of the film? I knew we would not get the film completed for hand in. 70 shots, with for characters lip syncing with high octane action... it was impossible. However, Pirates will be finished.

Over this year I have learned so much. Mainly thanks to the pupils in my class. The Splay Polished Off crew raised the bar for what I could expect a student animation from this college to look like. With that as well, they shared their secrets with me and tried to teach me the best they could. Sarah and the little film that could. We both helped each other out with musicians and voice actors, and she has been fantastic. The Whack'd team has been a pleasure to work for, Dan's determination is truly inspiring and Josh's 2d artwork always keeps me on my toes (he's always one step ahead).

Finally Pirates. Overall my team is fantastic. Mu is my right hand man. Neil, my ever patient animator. Josh, the mood lightener. Ash and Dean, the cool cucumbers. J.B my technical guy. I would also like to give a special thanks to Tom. He is always patient, always enthusiastic and extremely skilled. Tom has worked like a horse this entire year, and never complained. He picked up most of the slack when team members disappeared and has risen to every challenge. Over the past fours years that I have known him he has improved so quickly it has truly amazed me. He is the star of the show!

In conclusion, the year has been extremely stressful, but I have learned more in this final year, than the two years previous.

Now that the submission is creeping up, It is time to cross our fingers. Who knows one day we might see a big blockbuster movie, with my name in the directors position...doubt it though!

Composite test

This is my after effects compositing test. I used a technique that Dan Edgley and Simon showed me. Basically, you make a copy of you layers (i.e. beauty etc), you then blur that layer and place it on top of your other layers. This softens the edges of the characters and also adds an extra dimension of colour. All in all it makes the piece look better!

Final Animatic

Here is the animatic. I've been trying to get it on here but it's been difficult. Hopefully this works!

This was a bit of a nightmare to compile last weekend but I pulled it off, (with the help of my team!)

My Original Guard model

I forgot to post my original model for the guard. It was the base for what tom would work from.I made it in an hour. I started it u, but Tom really was the master!

WHAT A SHINER!

Hey guys I did the beaten up texture for the guard! I gave a black eye and a few scratches on his face!

Some More Shots!

Blogger is being weird so here is just one of the shots. Mel did the original and i tweaked it, but I got so complicated that i just redid the whole shot again. It turned out OK.

Progress

Today was a long day. But I am pleased with the results. Mu and I (mainly Mu) sorted out some rendering problems. I textured a scene for Tom. Neil and Josh's animation tweaks are looking good. Ash's ship texture is looking pretty great too. J.B sent his storm clouds off to render, and Mu and I set up shot 30 for render!

Whack'd shots

This shot was tricky, hes not doing anything but you have to make him look alive. It was a hard one, especially considering the limitations of the rig. A faked a sniff by moving the vertex points on his face up. I also added some brow and eye movements to emphasise it. Too bad you can not see it here!

This one was also tricky because of the limitations to the rig, especially in the elbow areas. You cannot move the as the rolled sleeves to his shirt dig into his arms. All that aside this was allot easier than than shot 21!

new animatic

This was mammoth it took ages, that all i need to say!

Shot 49

This one was a pain, a real pain! Need to turn down the ol' giggly wiggly on this one!

Shot 35

I spent too long on finishing this shot today. There was a point today were it was going so badly i was thinking of smashing the computer. Luckily after a slew of happy accidents, I managed to get it together. Turned out OK didn't it?

Sniff Test

I wanted a little sniff in between gunfire in this shot for whack'd. This is a little test of me animating the vertex points.

Shot Overload

This is my tweaking of Hayleys Shot.

This is shot is halfway done!

This is shot 30 and it is COMPLETE!

CARDBOARD

This one was just for fun!

Right. I was up till the early hours of this morning re-texturing Walker's head. When I awoke a few hours later, I realised, what I had done, looked rubbish. Clearly I was too tired to know what I was doing. Anyway I had to do it AGAIN! This was supposed to be a quick job but it took most of the day. I thought I could just copy paste my old textures but the UV points had shifted drastically so I had to do it again! After that I created the cardboard cutouts for the supermarket. Here we go!

I can see that!

Hey guys here is breadbeard's line for shot 30. Let me know what you think!

Shot 21 again!

Right guys I took on board what Josh said, and here it is. I still had some difficulties. The hand stopped spazing out for some reason but lets not jinx it. This is not the best animation I have ever done, so I'm sorry. A couple of things have come up with pirates at the moment, so I don't know how much the Whack'd team can rely on me. I don't want to let the team down.

Target Shot 21

Right guys, I don't want to sound like I'm winging, but I found it really difficult to animate with this rig. The controls are fine and the weights are good, but there are some issues that i personally had. One thing I don't think there is enough blendshapes for this shot. I mean, we can still cheat it though. The other thing is i cannot really control the fingers, also i cannot key the wrist rotations, which means I can't get any follow through. The eyeballs also poke through the mesh when you make the character blink. This is my progress so far, the animation is pretty poor, as my computer was lagging so I could not really see what I was animating. So the animation is not great guys. To top it off, his left hand decided to have a right little spack out for no reason, I did not key it, I DIDN'T EVEN MOVE IT! Please ignore his spacktacular hand and try and concentrate on the animation.

WALKER!

Hey all. Finally I have finished Walker. I have been hard at work at him all day but he's done. I have to say, I find texturing a little bit of a pain. I mean I'm new to it so I'm a bit shaky. Anyway here he is, tell me what you think.

Mu! I noticed that the model's eyeballs a just a fraction too high, they poke through the mesh. When weighting, just lower his eyeballs appropriately!

Images for Website

PATCHES

Hey Guys. It took a good part of the day but here's Patches all textured up. I think the occlusion layer was a little too heavy in this render, it's tooo dark! But anyway, let me know what you think!

Breadbeard

Hi guys heres Breadbeard's texturing so far, it looks OK but there are little parts that I do not like, mainly the beard. It will be sorted out though!

Guard Texture

Hey guys, I have been texturing the Guard all day and this is the result. It is the first time I have textured a character. There was one problem, with his badge, I could not get the UV's for it, even when I clicked on it. Weird, but anyway, please comment and tell me what you think.

Texturing

Hey Team! I've been texturing all day. It's the first time I've ever done it so, i was sort of fumbling around a bit. I've done more than this but this is just a taster of whats to come. Please give feedback on what you think!

Group Progress

Right today was a real kick start. The unfortunate cancellation of the dummy project has given pirates a new kick start. J.B is really energetic and seems to be having fun with the ideas. With J.B's dynamic shots in mind, we have decided to focus on the lightning sequence so we can start rendering it next week. I'm really happy about this. Getting some renders would be fantastic and may give the group some inspiration. I teamed up Marios with Ash and have got them working together, which has worked out nicely. Mr Dean Ha has handed over the environment work to Mu. I know Dean is quite shy, and he should know he is an important member of the team. If Dean feels he has let the team down, believe me he has not. The assets he made were great!

A little texture test

I couldn't get the lovely uv's that fahran did, to show up on my computer so I decided to do some texture examples. These are for breadbeard, here is his lovely blue coat, and red leather gloves!

Animation Update

I did some graph editor practise done with this shot. I can't really see much of a difference.

I did a little change to this animation, whilst taking on peoples comments. I've been trying to observe Pixar animation and emulate it!

This is me trying to emulate pixars eye animation. They often make the pupils shake a little, as well as having one eye blink one frame after the other. These little touches give life to their animations.

SHOT 32

Hey guys, this is shot 32. This is where the Guard is frantically looking around. It still needs some work though!

Shot 30 update!

I've animated this shot more. I realised I had him turn around twice in the same shot, and with the speed, it looks stupid. So it took the first turn away. I also added more animations i.e, arms, hands, fingers as well as more head and waist. I have not touched the line editor yet. I need to ask some people what they think of the animation.

Patches Update

Hey guys this is how I've gotten on with patches so far. I battled with the rig most of the day. I'm not yet happy with this animation, the key poses are not strong enough and its a bit stiff. For some reason I could not move the fingers at all, that's kind of important because he has to point!

He's Got Our Treasure

Hi Guys, thought I'd make a a dent into our animation by doing Patches' one and only spoken line. I only animated the lips. It took me two hours, I've been trying to get ppd out of the way today! Let me know what you think!

WALER BLENDS

Looking at Neils, blendshapes, I realised there wasn't a sufficiant amount for lip syncing, and some of them where a bit strange so i deleted some and added some more. Here they are.

Patches

There are some serious problems with the controls of this rig. The arm and leg controls make it almost impossible to animate. The blends however, work well. Apart from the fact you can't view your key frames meaning you can't edit it in the graph editor. ARGGGH.

WALKER BLENDS!

Tom and I took a look at Neils blend shapes for walker and we found that every one he did with the eyes looked pretty...disgusting actually, he looks really disturbing. So I sorted the out!

BreadBeard Blendshapes

Oh my God. Breadbeard was awful today. I started work at half past nine. By 2pm I had almost finished the blend shapes. Then my computer went nuts and corrupted the file. Meaning that I had to start all over again. After finishing the shapes and sending them to Tom. I wanted to show some examples of my work. Now my crappy computer won't even run the breadbeard file. Great!

Patches Blenshapes

Patches Blendshapes are done! Now onto Breadbeard! There was a little senario with maya, so I had to start patches again!

Todays update!

Today was interesting. After some terrible instances with patches' blend shapes, i have to start them again! Oh well. I went down to see the guy from the 3d department with Dan SHuffzilla, so the big D and myself are going to try and sort the little models out next week.

I got some more animations from the second years. Some were quite good. Mel's one lightened up my morning with the most random thing I have ever seen.

Cinesite came to look at our films, but did not get around to the Pirates crew. I forgive them.

Once Tom is done with Breadbeard's giggles he is going to send it over to me, to blend. In the meantime, Patches ahoy!

Blend Shapes

Pirates of The Produce Aisle 2: The Rise of Patches

Patches blend shapes are on the way for some reason they would not blend, which is annoying! I don't know why but it is a little worrying!

Guard and Patches Blendshapes!

Hey. I completed the guards blend shapes today as well as getting about a quarter way through patches'. For some reason I could not activate the mental ray plugin for patches so the render looked crappy. I wanted to create a little playblast of all the guards facial animations, but for some reason, I could not key anything...weird. So you'll have to settle for these renders.

My Goals

By The end of Wednesday I'm supposed to have all of the Guard's blend shapes done and about half of Patches' done.

By next week I hope to have Breadbeard's blend shapes done.

Bring it on!

Guard Blend Shapes!

Mouth Right

Bottom Right Grr

Top Right Grr

Top Left Grr

Bottom Left Grr

Narrow (ewwww this one is horrible!)

Wide

Frown

My Neutral Position

Dean's Neutral Position


Howdy one and all here's the Guard's blend shapes so far. I was looking at all of the Maxformaya expressions and trying to incorporate them into the guard. One in particular sucks!

More to come!

SECOND YEARS

We pitched to the second years on Tuesday and, apart from a horribly delivered pitch from myself, we had quite a good turn out. I've emailed some of them and will finish off emailing the rest soon. I've seen some of their work and it's pretty impressive, some extremely so.

Basically I want to create a folder for them in the public folders. In there I want an environment, some assets (for texturing and lighting), the character models (for uv mapping) and a rigged model of Breadbeard (for animators).

From there, they can do some tests and we can see if they are up to the challenge.

Progress

Right guys.

It's official, we have to work our butts off. I chatted with Dan and we need to employ second years to help with almost everything.

Ash, it's unrealistic to think you can texture the whole film by yourself so I'm trying to get another UV, texturer, possibly two.

We could possibly do with a rigger.

We also need someone to help with the lighting.

Finally we need a load of animators. They have to be good but we need a lot. We have 70 shots!

I'm pitching to the second years again tomorrow so hopefully, my award winning personality could possibly attract them to the film.If I get the second years it does not mean that we can relax. We will have to work our behinds off.

On a lighter note, if all goes well the film should be not awful....which is good.

PATCHES UPDATE!

Patches! I updated him the other day, then Tom and I worked on him on Friday. Today I gave him some fingernails and tweaked some of the verts. He's looking pretty good. For some reason I couldn't mirror him though, my computer was being really bad!

PATCHES

I was working on little patches' head today. Hopefully he wil be finished tomorrow!