The end is nigh

The film now is nearly fully cut togeather with all the sound added. Samir has been working on rendering it all out and cuting it togeather. Alltogeather creating this short film has been a huge learning curve for me. I now know how much hard work is involved and how important the rest of your team is. I supose i could have worked harder at certian times of this project. but now i know just how much is involved. Id like to say thankyou to the rest of my group and now i still have lots to learn so i will continue with that.

More animating

Here are two other animations that i have done which i forgot to upload to this blog.

The rendered look

Samir luke and rey have been doing an amazing job on getting to look of the film right while i have been doing my bits. It really looks now like a final film. Coming together. Well done the lads!

Credits

Luke and samir have been working on some pictures for the credits. He sent me this one he done and asked me if it was ok and if i could do anything with it. The only thing i could think of was to change the shape of it slightly to look more like a chick and to make the colour pink!

Broom shot

Here is another animation that i have done. Its simply the chick thursting a broom down his throught so that he can lay an egg. Enjoy

Cuts!!

The other members of the group have decided that in order to introduce the main character quicker so that people can empahtise with him, they want to cut the farmer out of the film altogeather. I can see what they are saying and it does make sence. But that means that all the hard work i put into animating that crappy farmer rigg was all in vain and will go to waist :(
Oh well the film will be better for it anyway

More animating

I am still carrying on with some animation shots. The one that i have just done is the vetrain chicken laying eggs. We wanted her to look a bit crazy like laying eggs for her is a war zone. so i have animated her laying them rapid fire to add to this extreem character.

Heres how it looks from the back side:

Promo Research

I have been looking breifly at what the costs of promotional merchandizing would be for this short film when it comes to the degree show. I would like to get the film put on propper printed DVDs and possably make some T-shirts to ware at the degree show. Here is some of the things i have found.

This screen grab shows how mush printing 100 DVDs would be with a picture that we could make from the movie. It turns out its 195pounds for 100.

And this is about the cozt of printing T-shirts

Chicken walk

Now that the farmer intro sceens are done its finaly time to start animating the main character. My first attempt at this is shocking. Again becasue the chick uses the same style rigg its not great to animate with and every time i key the left arm they are deleted when moved. Here is my first ugly attempt...

I have decided to start the whole animation all over again to get it looking better. I have now figured out how to use the rigg a bit better, espeicaly with the roleing of the hips. When i tried to do it on the farmer rigg it always moved the whole upper body instead of just the hips. But now i have worked out the controler and it works much better. Here is my second attempt. All it needs now is secondary animation which will be done by luke.

Meeting with dan

We have just had a meeting with dan as he wanted to check our progress so far. He seemed to think that we were very far behind like most other groups and wondered what kind of tutorage we had been getting in the previous two terms. The meeting was extreemly benifishal because he really made us see how much work we sitll had to do. He told us to plan out exactly what we still had to animate so that we could see how much was left and manage our time better for compositing.

So after this meeting i went away and typed up every shot that was in the film and how long we should idealy spend animating them. Here is the word doc that i made.

KABLAMO!!!

Door kicking sceen

I have been animating some more shots. After samirs animation of the farmers hand comes the big dramatic door kicking shot. I have been given this to animate as well. Im still not too happy with this rigg but ill have to work with it the best that i can.

The animation isnt quite finished because i still need to sort out the role of the sholders. But for some reason i cant animate the haed without the whole body going everywhere. This is another example of how the rigg isnt the best for this character.

This is the animation form the shot that we will be using in the final render

Animating!

I have finaly started to do some proper animating. Luke made an attempt at animating this shot recently but it didnt look great. So i have taken the file and started from scratch in an attempt to make it look better. This animation was very tricky becasue of the unworkable rigg that the character has. I now know the importance of having a decent rigg and character model to animate with.

Here is the animation with the camera in the position it will be in for the final render

This is the same animation but form a different angle

Re weighting the farmer

Just as the rigg of the farmer is questionable, so too is the weighting. Simar origionaly painted the weights for the farmer. But then we had to rescale the model. He thinks that when we done that the paint weights went all out of sque too. Whatever happened i have been recently re doing the weights for the farmer so that i can animate him.

Farmer animation

Its nearly time for animation!!

I have just started to look at the rigg that the farmer has and begun some test animations. The rigg itself i am finding very difficalt to work with as it uses both IK and FK to animate on the arms. Its hard to always switch them and key them correctly

Meeting with MIke and Story changes!!

Whilst everyone has been working on the production of this film, in the back of all of our minds we have always been thinking about the shots. There have recently been some signifacant changes to some of the shots which we hope will make the story work better.

We have just had a meeting with mike hursh who has done alot of explaining about the flow of the story and how things should be introduced. He was telling us that there is no point in haveing a cirtian sequence in the film if it wasnt nessercy to tell the story.
With this new knoldge in hand samir made the suggestion to cut out the robbery sceen altogether. At first i wasnt too sure because it was a funny sequence. But now thinking of it, it was the right thing to do considering time restraints.

After i decided that it would be best to wright down every shot that we would have to work on so we could scale better the amont of time we had.

This is the plan out:

Scene 1:
Shot 1- Camera follows the truck across the screen following left.
Shot 2- The truck comes into screen left and stops. Farmer walks over to the barn.
Shot 2b - The farmer comes to the door and tries to open it.

Scene 2:
Shot 3- Cut to inside barn beside the main chickens coop. Farmer kicks open door and chicken pops his head out and looks around rapidly.
Shot 4 – Cut to chickens P.O.V. shot looking around (snappy)

Scene 3:
Shot 5 – Cuts back to main chicken as he steps back with a scared expression on his face
Shot 6 – He goes over to the hole and begins stretching
Shot 7 – He then begins straining to lay an egg

Scene 5:
Shot 8 - Camera then cuts to inside the down tube/pipe, of the chicken coop. The chicken looks down into it to see if he had produced anything.
Shot 9 – The camera then cuts back to him looking worried. (Possibly the farmer walks passed hic coop)

Scene 6:
Shot 10 – Camera cuts back to the chicken as he gets ready.
Many shots - He then begins lots of different methods to get produce an egg e.g. laxative, broom, hover etc

Scene 7:
Shot 11 – Cuts to chicken as he does one final almighty strain. He then turns into a cockerel.

Blend shapes

Now that the character its rigged and weighted luke has been working on creating the blend shapes for the main chicken. He has done a very good jobe since it is extreemly difficalt to creat an expreshion with a beak. However he has asked me to look over it and touch up any bits that need it.

I hav only changed a few blendshapes so that they flow better and so that we can get maximum expreshion out of it.





I have also tried my hand at a bit of rigging although it mostly totaly confuses me. I was going to do a basic rigg for the generic chick that ian made but it turned out that i was using the same tutoral as luke so he said he would do it again so it was done faster.


Here is some of my attempt

This is the foot role that i made

Farmer

I have also told luke that although the model and textures are very good. he shoud try and do something about the texture of the knees. Because it didnt sit right when i bent the characters leg. After i told him this he went away and came back with a slightly tweaked but much better texture.

Consulting

Luke has now finished and textured heis model of the farmer. After looking at it there wasnt something quite right with the way it was modeled. So he gave it to me and i tewaked the legs so they looked better.

Befor After

Weight Painting

Now the main chick has been modeled and rigged properly it is time to paint the weights on it. I heve started this but it is takeing longer than expected. On this model it seems to be very sencitive to heavy weights. every weight applyed must be faint. here is some screen grabs of the weight painting that i have been doing on the main character.

Say Cheeese!

This is a photo of some of the assets i have made and ians shead all togeather.

Generic chick

This is how my generic chicken model has progressed thurs far. I have nearly finished modeling the head. Unfourtantly there has been another chick already modeld by ian which the group liked and have decided to use. So my atempt was in vain

The Tractor

For a while i have been working on modeling. I have now finished the model of the tractor and it is ready to go in the extior sceen with the rest of the things. Im not enterily sure if the camra work is going to allow it to be seen but its there if it is.

As you can see i have keept the model very basic since it will be in the background. But it still affectifly connotes a old time tractor. Hopfully with some of reys masterfull textures it will look alot better.

Character modeling!

Whilst everyone else is modeling the main features for the fillm i have taken it upon myself to make a start on modeling the generic chicken. The only problem is that i havent done any real modeling since the start of the second year. So its going to take me a while to get back into the swing of things.

Iv started off with the eye using nerbs and converting them into pollys, simply becasue this is the way i was told to do it a long time ago. Here is the pic of the start of my modeling.

Light asstes

A few of the other members have already created some lights for the barn. But when i think of a barn the kind of lights that pop into my mind are the heavt duty durable ones. So i have made this modle to show the others and see if they like it. It still needs some work but this is the basic idea.

Here is a quick lighting setup for the light to give you an idea of how it will work.

More assetts

Here are some more things that i have been modeling for the sceens to be added in as extras.

A very quick render to see roughly how it will look

Assetts!

I have started working on modeling some assetts for the sceens. From doing this basic modeling i have relised how little i enjoy modleing. But they have to be made just as the main things need to be made like the characters and the enviroments.

Here is some screen grabs of a broom that i have modeld.

Out house

Normaly on a farm there is several buildings. Ian has modeled a shead for the tractor that i am makeing. I also intend to make farm tools for it like a tool shead.

MODELING

Although i am not a modeler by trade, i have to do some modeling for the sceens to fill it out. I will be working on some of the things that will be in the backgrounds of the shots as they are just as important to make the sceen look realistic and rich.

I have just started work on modeling a tractor. It will bi in the opening sceen somewhere near the main barn.

More shot tewaking

After looking at the opening shots again, i have decided that it would be better to not have the camra panning accross the chickens as they are laying eggs. Instead I would like to see a POV shot from our main chicen on the other side. This was in the origional anamatic that i posted. My only fears are that a moving POV shot is very hard to pull off.

We have also changed another part of the film. The sceen when the chicken is trying to steal the egg. After thinking about it for a while samir has come back to consult me with a new idea. Instead of the chick ziplineing all the way accross to the other side to steal an egg. We have decided to have him absailing down his side and climbing back up. That way we can have the farmer in the shot doing his rounds which adds more tention. And as he is climbing back up the wood snaps and thats how he looses the egg.

This is how it might look.