Thanks everyone!

Once again another semester has come and gone. It was really hectic but enjoyable as well and it was really good to see everyone's animations and renders and being inspired by it. Hope to see everyone again in ACM 320 next semester! And to leave off on a good note, I found the official international trailer for the Dragon Ball live action movie. Ignore the Japanese subtitles. :X It will be released in US theaters on April 8th. More information about the theme song here.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Can't wait to see everyone's 3D movies on Monday... I am still rendering.

Edit:
Okay, I am not sure if I left it on a "good" note since some people have different opinions on the live action Dragon Ball. Lol, I guess good as in good laughing material? I don't know. Nevermind.

Finally the final final is final!

All right, it's done! I'm so embarrassed because the animation for the fish is so bad. I ran out of paper at the last minute and had to improvise, sacrificing what I really need and don't need to get this done. u_u It's called "Strive". And it's 16MB so it may take a while to load if you click the picture to stream online below. If you want to just download and view it, I have it on UH's File Drop here as well. The link expires 12/8/08.




The background music is called "Think Tenderly of Piano" which I got from SENTIVE. It's a Japanese free music place. I spent my time while scanning translating and trying to comprehend their strict terms of usage, lol.

It's 1 minute and 5 seconds. I swear it's all because of all the title cards and ending credits! My animation itself is like 45 seconds. :X I swear.

Short Film Second Pass (with invisible fish!)

It's not fully complete but almost. I did some minor changes to the turn-around and decided not to concentrate on that. I also changed the scenes around a little by adding the donating scene before the bonding with the fish scene.

I will need to add a big sigh for him after the second person walks past. He gets frustrated because no one would pay him any attention so he goes to the alley and plays with his fish. But he eventually becomes very hungry and hesitates about eating the fish. I need to rework the timing here with the hesitation. As for the last scene of him eating the fish, I'm not finished with it, that's why it's still animatics. Again, must rework the timing to suit the hesitation. I also cut out the scene where the fish willingly be grabbed since it felt disconnected.




Meanwhile, my particles is rendering so incredibly slowly. Took all day just to render the water blast for the first two seconds of my film! And I haven't even started on the fire yet. I think I'll just turn in 1 picture for Kaveh... >_>"

Short Film First Pass (of scene 1)

This is what I could finish so far. I wish I could clone myself so that I could work on both assignments at the same time. Right now, I'm only half way finished with both assignments due tomorrow.

Dog Run Cycle

I don't know why but after making his back/neck area more humped, he does this snapping thing that wasn't there last night. But either way, I'm still pretty proud of this! We should do this kind of animation plus demo in class more often.

Short Film Animatic/Key Poses

Beware, the fish vanishes and the fish bowl duplicates itself! I focused everything on cutting down the story and animating the boy that I ended up forgetting about the fish! And a note about that one scene in the middle where he fades into different poses, I wanted to do just that as it is to demonstrate that time is passing and he's living in that trash heap. To make it fit 30 seconds, I already cut out several poses there but I think I should add them back. It shouldn't be that long. I also need to drag out some scenes such as when he's hesitating to eat the fish. I hope that's okay...? I'm sure it will be no more than 50 seconds max...




I'm running out of space on the UH server. I was using 93% of the space. After I deleted ACM 216's work, I'm still using 80%. So stupid. I think after this semester ends, I should create an online portfolio somewhere else with all of these assignments to make room at the UH server.

Character Turn-around

Here is my character turn-around and expressions. I'm still working on the key poses and layout so I'll post that later tonight. I'm still drawing the middle of my short film and already there are over 30 frames!

By the way, do you any of you use FTP to upload your things to your UH web space? I do that but I'm using Secure Shell to upload. I was wondering if anybody can get it to work using WS_FTP? I've tried it before with the same settings but it won't connect for some reason. Just wondering, it would make things more convenient for me. Thanks!

Josh

Here are my drawings of Josh. I will post the drawing of Jayna sooner or later, I keep forgetting to get to it.

Emo Film Idea

Character Designs
Thumbnails
Thumbnails (continued) and more Character Designs

Here is my film idea, sorry about the bad quality scans. It's about this homeless kid whose parents (also homeless) have passed away and he is left with his best childhood friend goldfish. He ventures into the city with his fish and unable to fend for himself, he lives in alleyways with the garbage. One day he walks around the city trying to find a shelter/food/job. He asks around some places but people tell him to leave. He comes to a school and envies all the kids playing there. But he is told to leave by an old teacher with a rake.

By nightfall, he still hasn't made progress and he comes to this other poor guy in an alleyway washing dishes. He knocks on the door of the restaurant to hopefully get hired to do the same thing. When the door opens, this large figure loomed before him. The kid was brave to ask that he wants to wash dishes for money and the guy threatens him with a knife if he doesn't leave. Depressed, he sits around in alleyways and mopes for several days. After several weeks, his stomach starts to hurt from hunger and pretty soon, he cannot take it anymore. He realizes that he needs to eat his friend fish but hesitates. Finally, he painstakingly eats him. He decides with determination that for his friend's death not be in vain, he will definitely find a job and make money. He heads off into the city still carrying the empty fish bowl.

After many years, the scene fades in with a shot of a person's hand cutting into a steak dinner. We see the empty fish bowl on a pedestal as a man puts food in his mouth. Cut to a shot in the perspective of the fish bowl, this man is eating with a family. The man's head turns to look at the fish bowl and then cuts to a close-up of his face, and he smiles sadly.

Zoo Sketches

Here are my sketches from the zoo. I don't think I was able to capture the motion of the animals because it was just a pain trying to draw them when they're walking around.

Dialogue Final Pass

I've tried my best to perfect it and I have nothing more to add to my animation so I guess this is it. Will try my best for the next one.

Dialogue One-Pass

Here's my one-pass. I totally forgot to make her do something during the long pause after she says "they're dead". Plus, I'm wondering if I should cut out the last part where she stabs the knife in the table because she's not even stabbing the bear which makes it kind of pointless.

Sorry for the line-shimmery thing. I think it's because I applied a contrast on the light lines. Maybe I should just not apply contrast at all. Will try to upload a better quality version by tonight. Must finish Kaveh's lighting project first. :[

Dialogue Keys

Here's my dialogue key animation. If you're wondering about the first and second frame where her body goes lower, I was gonna make her pant or breathe hard but after putting the keys next to the audio, I realize how short the initial few seconds of silence is so I think I'll just make her stand there instead. Rather I should be thinking of what to make her do after she says "dead" in that long time frame.

Also, instead of killing a cat, I decided to do a teddy bear because this way it makes the girl more insane. Haha~

Portraits from Wednesday

Why is it that every time I add eyes and mouths, it ruins the picture!? Well, the second one has sunglasses. But they don't look as cool as the real thing. Here, they look like aliens. :[ I will post my dialogue animation keys tomorrow.

Dialogue Animation Thumbnails

I chose the "Dead" one from the sound clips page. I'm in the mood for Halloween. So basically this maniac killer killed her own parents and is now set out to kill the cat. The cat is seen hissing at her for the entirety of the animation. In the second frame, the girl tilts her head and jabs her thumb behind her saying that "they're dead". And then she hunches down at the cat and points saying that the cat is gonna be next. Then the cat jumps away and the crazy maniac lunges after it. Click for a larger image.

Catching Up

11 Second Club Vote

The above is what I picked for #1 because I thought it worked really well where the lady is a maniac and admitted her crimes and then went on to kill the inspector as well. The timing was good.



As a side note, I thought the one pictured above had a really great opening scene that panned in on the interrogation. I thought it was composed really well with dark colors.

Final Short Film Idea

So I've come up with this idea for the short film. This guy (protagonist) is at a cafe enjoying coffee and reading a newspaper. A rich snob (antagonist) sits at his table. Protagonist recognizes him as the person his wife is having an affair with but Antagonist doesn't know that Protagonist knows and is here to break it to him. Antagonist had secretly installed a bomb (or whatever it is, I don't know what yet) below the Protagonist's chair before he came and is waiting for the show. He goes to the bathroom to call the Wife to come and witness the show as well. But little did he know, Protagonist already found out and has switched the bomb onto the other chair while he was at the bathroom. The Wife arrives only to witness the rich guy getting blown up or whatever. She decides to go back to Protagonist who sees that she is a player and then pushes her aside.

So how long is this short film? And does it need to have dialogue? Where do we get the dialogue? I think this is too long and complicated so I might come up with another simpler one. XD

What's in the Box Keys

Gesture 2

So here are my gestures of Kevin Won. As a random note, the mysterious hand in the first picture is not supposed to be there because it's from the next page. Haha! My animation key frames for 316 will be posted later!

ACM318 composition and portraits

Please click on the picture above to enlarge it. And below are the portraits I drew on Monday's class. Guess who they are!

ACM316 ball throw (2nd revision) and box gestures

I changed his arms moving forward before catching the ball instead of the ball floating into his hands. I also made his head turn first instead of having his body turn and still facing front. I also added some eye blinks at the end. As for the running stop, I still cannot get it. Actually, I think I made it worse...







Here are my "What's in the Box" gestures. As for the little blurb in first person: "Euurggh, I don't want any medicine. Take it away! Do I really have to drink it...? *gaaaasssp* Holy crap, it's a PS3!!!!"

Gesture 1

Sorry for the late comments, it was late last night so I just posted the picture. Anyway, here is my first gesture drawing for ACM 318. Actually, is this considered a gesture? I see everyone else in the class posting their one-minute gestures as well. I did not scan that because my one-minute gestures are too squiggly and messy.

ACM316 ball throw (updated)

Managed to scan this at my workplace but still cannot control the shimmering lines caused by my setting the brightness and contrast in Photoshop. Anyway, I added squash and stretch, fixed the body turn and the weight shifting. I also made a new opening and ending pose.

ACM316 ball throw

Sorry for the bad quality this time. I had no access to a scanner and had to use my Mac's Photo Booth to take the pictures. I've also forgotten to make in-betweens for some keys so it looks like it skips in some parts. And worst of all, I've forgot about squash and stretch when he's walking...

I will re-scan this when my scanner arrives in the mail! Argh, this is my worst animation ever. Now going to complete my Maya homeworks. *grumble*

Animation Final (Updated)

I actually just noticed during Monday's class that I forgot the character's mad expression after the fall! So I overwrote the old video file with the new one above. I also added the sign shaking when the guy hits the ground.

Animation Final

Here is my final animation final. It seems I forgot to add the happy segment before the walk. As for the jump, I did add a very subtle squash and bounce. I think I should've made it more obvious? Unfortunately, I don't have access to a scanner after Friday. :[

Animation Final (Rough)

Here is my rough animation final with only the key frames. Please ignore his baldness for now. :X The hair and the arms will come later, I'm just concentrating on the legs for now.

Pose to Pose

Here is my pose-to-pose scenes. Sorry for the smallness. I really hope the background can be laid under the animation in layers... And I've also decided to not make him get up after falling down because that is another task in its own. Instead, I have the sign fall on his head and him reading it.

Character Designs for Final

So here is what I've come up with for my final project character designs. I wanted to keep it simple this time so I can work more on the concept of movement, balance, and weight. My character designs ended up not looking like my initial concept at all! My consistency sucks. But anyway, I will be using the design on the first picture, top right corner, and have him trip on a rock.

3D Walk 3

I know she told me to turn Auto Stretch off but when I do that, it's like he's walking on air. I reset his foot settings to 0 so he's standing normally on the ground. Then I turned stretching off. And when I moved one of his feet forward, it eventually comes off the ground, even when I set the Toe Heel Roll. I cannot bring the foot down either.

For now, I (tried to) eliminate the knee pops, added a very slight shoulder turn, and a head bob.

3D Walk 2 (Fixed)

Am uploading this before I forget since I won't come back until tonight. I know this video has some weird thing going on where the previous frames are visible. I converted the AVI movie from Playblast into a MOV using Vegas Video 4. I know I did something for my cat walk last time that worked but I forgot the settings! I will try to fix it tonight and upload a new version or something... Problem fixed! For some reason, the Max rig was set at 25 fps even though the timeline on the bottom was 24 and I couldn't change it. So when I set it to 24 fps in Vegas Video, it made those weird things. So I had to set the frame rate as 25 fps in Vegas Video.

I used the Max rig for this one because the textures on the Andy rig was screwy and laggy. I am not sure why this walk is so fast though, it is the same as the cat one below at 24 fps.

By the way, I am not sure why I made the hands like that. I only realized it just now after looking at everyone's walks. Haha! Just pretend that Max walks like that. :P And will there be time to go over hip sway, I'm having such troubles with it.

3D Walk

Here's my 3D walk animation. Can anybody help me on the butt sway, I got so confused at which sides to go up or down and then the whole thing screwed up. x_x"

Also, I realized that my Fcheck program is different than the one Kaveh uses in that it doesn't have a "Save as Movie" option. It only has a "Save as Animation" option but it doesn't let me save as a MOV. It is definitely Maya 8.5 though. Crap, what will I do about my fruits... All 240 frames... Should I use Playblast instead I mean isn't that basically the same thing as rendering...? :[

Expression Fixed + 3D Ball Bounce

So here's my attempt to fix my expression animation. Or rather, I changed it. Again. I tried to make her head come down and then turn but it doesn't look right. Instead, I tried to do something that would make her snap. And here it is, insanity! :D I actually added stuff by repeating some frames (such as the grimace at the very end of the clip) directly inside Vegas Video. But it doesn't look natural, I guess I should've drawn actual in-betweens for those... By the way, this is exactly how I feel every time I use Maya.




And here is my ball. For some reason, Maya seems to make the ball resize as it drops instead of doing the squash and stretch. I cannot make it any different than this at all! Plus, it's just easier to select "movieplayer" in the Playblast settings in Maya so that it can save directly as an AVI instead of reconverting it to MOV which lowers the quality and increases the file size.

Expression Animation

This project was utter FAIL! I was too concentrated on trying to draw a correct slight head turn but I did not know how. Little did I know until it was too late after I scanned it in that I made the hair follow-through too fast for the slow head turn. But I think the head turn looks okay. However, the head becomes distorted. I don't know how to draw heads turning!

Just For Fun

This is something I did just for fun because I'm crazy like that late at night. I never knew tablets sucked so much with line width variation in Photoshop... I was too concentrating on her expression that I forgot to tilt her head! Oh well.