Welcome to my University of Portsmouth, Animation study blog. Here I will be posting the majority of my work both in progress and completed. I will also be posting some of my personal projects and studies here too.
To start the project, we started with putting together our own inspirations from both the music and the short story that our animation is based on.
Composition and Mood
I also did some 3D experiments using textures on an old model. This was looking very unique and I like it alot.
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Since we are looking at the concepts of confusion from the characters perspective I did a test in 3D using multiple web images of lamps. This is to convey his confusion of vision, where he can clearly understand what an object may be, but not fully grasp the details it withholds.
Initial storyboard and ideas conception.
I made a 3D version of the character.
We experimented with various different music, going for some that were slower or somewhat discordant but we found these were difficult to think up ideas and agree on an overall progression. In the end we settled on something more upbeat but still has some amount of discordance within.
Sadly because of the lack of budgeting my time I did not get around to fully fleshing out my animation before deadline. I am very disappointed by this. I did not take into account how long animating would take. On top of this I am devastated that I did not manage to render as it means the animation does not show off the displacement details BiRB has.
Its taken a while, much longer than expected to rig BiRB among doing other units. I guess I didn't take my other work into as much consideration as I should have when doing this project. Overall I have definitely learned a lot with rigging BiRB and hopefully improve again with my next character rigs. BiRB is fully rigged, minus a couple follow through aspects that I decided aren't immediately important such as his tail feathers and head comb. I am also aware the as the character design goes I have missed out his Wattles on his chin, I am not too worried about these as he still looks like a chicken without them.
I made sure to do renders throughout the process of rigging to test how the displacement affects my deformations.
Overall I think BiRB's rig is pretty solid and ready for animation.
Rig Feature Overview
BiRB Turntable Render Full Time-lapse of BiRBs Creation
sorry about the lack of music, I know its a long video and I will release an update to this video in future.
After submissions I plan to release this rig to be available free to UoP students.
Lisa Yates reached out to me for some help with how she may go about creating a tail rig for her mermaid character. I took the time to quickly create a rough ribbon rig to demonstrate how I would approach the task.
In the end Lisa imported the rig and used it for her project to save time. I generally enjoy helping others when it comes to Maya, if I know exactly how to help its generally pretty quick and if I don't well, I get to learn something new.
Project Development
I started by sitting down and writing up all sorts of different ideas surrounding my research, to get a general overview of each of the potential directions I could go. I find writing these ideas out and thinking on them is much more effective than exploring each one visually as I can quickly overview each of my potential ideas and choose which ones interest me quicker.
I knew I wanted to explore creating some of my earlier concepts in 3D so I started with the 'Clock Expanse' based on this early illustration of a clock graveyard type place.
I created a clock, animated it so that it would do a full correctly timed 12:00 hour cycle at 24fps, referenced the clocks into a new scene, placed them around and added a very simple day-night cycle and other lights for effect. Taking images from different times of the 'day'.
I considered this to be an piece that could be used on a large display in a public place to fulfil the need for a clock. It would both be visually interesting, but also look different depending on the time of day you went past the clocks. potentially useful in isolated environments that may not see sunlight such as underground. Giving a sense of day-night while also telling the time. a bonus aspect would be adding in weather effects that correspond with the season.
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Taking these images into Photoshop I began to explore different visual styles.
I also started sketching different types of clocks, mainly ones I have seen myself as they're fresh in my visuals but each have different appeals and situations. This was a moment when I had the thought to open my animated piece with a compilation of different clocks, in different situations and cultures to introduce the audience the concept of time is universal before confronting the unnerving concept of infinite and finite time and how time rules over the way we live our lives, whether we like it or not.
More exploration for ideas, exploring new concepts that come to my mind. One of which I decided to jump into Maya and create. Though I didn't draw the idea, the exploration lead into it.
A pocket watch with multiple rotating rings. Texture painted in Photoshop. Each ring represents a unit of time, seconds, minutes and hours going from inner to outer respectively. Similar to the above clock sequence this one also correctly time-keeps at 24fps.
(currently the animation is backwards due to an oversight)
Storyboard of events. Sound will play a large role in conveying each of the environments. The desert scene with the fan clock will have the sound of an Azan being broadcast in the background whilst the pool will have an ambient echo of splashing. Not only will each clock have a different sound associated with both ticking and chimes / alarm but will also be distinctly different in how the clock-face is presented. For example the pool clock is there for swimmers to time themselves and to be seen in a large space so it is large and has the seconds printed on largely to see how much time has elapsed more precisely, the second hand also moves smoothly around for more precise timing that ticking while the digital clock is silent and efficient, telling the time as it is and without displaying any seconds besides the flashing of the 2 dots between the minutes and hours. For ease of reading the storyboard doesn't have the final design of clocks such as including roman numerals.
The general idea here is that of a compilation, increasing in drama through closer shots of each clock and their ticking function. my plan is to involve a much larger range of different clocks in the sequence.
Acquisition of Clock
Because I went to my grandparents to look at their clock and spoke about getting a clock of my own to salvage parts out of to do some interesting mixed media pieces using the clock parts they managed to get me a nice little mantle-piece clock of my own. I really like this little clock and have been exploring around it and living with it in my room, its been a good reminder for the project and the research I am to be looking out for. Having this clock around means that I have started to get attuned to some of the smaller less noticeable details in the wear and tear of the frame, the dents, scratches, wood grain and brushed metal, looking at the different materials and how its made.
I took my clock into the studio to get some pictures and to sit and do various drawings of the clock looking closely at the details.
Sketches of clock
When in my room I experimented with lighting the clock using my colour changing lightbulb
What I would like to do next is to do a 3D scan of the clock and import this into Maya / Sketchfab
