Title Renders!

Rather Happy with the way these turned out in the renders, just a quick note to share them!

Dinosaur Update...

Here I am working on the Vanilla'd Walk cycle for my Show Reel.  

And a Roar, in it's early days, but I can't possibly resist doing this, as not only will it look explosive on the Show-Reel, but to have such a great, functioning rig at my disposal for this mini project, I may as well make the most I can out of it. 

Dinosaur Animation Piece development...

So one thing I do want to improve is my ability on Walk Cycle's. I feel like there is a constant need for improvement on this subject for me, especially in Autodesk Maya; so after looking out at the rigs I can use and testing out some... I came across this one

Modelled and rigged by Harry Gladwin-Geoghegan of CreativeCrash.com, I found this rig to be versatile, easy to use and as a firm believer that the animator has to feel comfortable using the rig; I found this enjoyable to move around, so i'm looking forward to having a play around and seeing what i can make her do. 

Trying a little Motion Capture with Autodesk Motion Builder...

James Ensor and I have been getting to grips with a little Motion Capture. It's been something that we've wanted to try for a while now and we wanted to learn the fundamentals behind using it in the Production pipeline. The video above shows a sequence of Motion capture (A C3D file that is readable in Autodesk's Motion Builder) that is moving in realtime. We took the movement and assigned a figure to it, and learned the process of exporting the file, sequence and character movement to and from Motion Builder and Maya - and we wanted to discover where we can go despite our lack of knowledge in the subject matter and our limitations, but we will be moving forward on attempting to assign a character to this rigged movement in the near future.

Skeleton and motion points joined up to create the human anatomical structure. 

And a rough character model applied to the motion in Autdodesk Motion Builer. 

Explosion Complete...

Thumbnail Keys for Boom Boom Explosion scene...

The other short Animated sequence I previously mentioned will be an effects piece of animation that will again make use of my ability to draw well - this in turn will compliment the bird sequence. But it will essentially follow the same principle as The Bird, that narrative and design will flow through into the piece as well, so it's not just some silly explosion that blows everything up! Below are a few thumb nails and little sketches that I am currently working on.

1 - The Snap, that simulates the explosion quickily,

2 - The Explosion emits from a central point from on off side- lower right position and cushion the next frames until the explosion fades out. 

3 - Cushions into 4

4 - Then breaks into 5 where the central hole begins to show. 

5

6 - With some inbetweens bridging the gap between what will be key 5 and Key 6, this will all cushion nicely. The explosion beginning to fade out as the central hole of the explosion appears to get considerably larger with time and the edges of the explosion begin to thin out and meet eachother at the ends. 

The Bird Development Drawings

Whilst applying a bird-cycle animation to this scene, it's important to get to know the design of the character I wish to apply this to, and so here I show the processes and sketches iv'e gone through to bring the titular 'Bird' to life. 

In regards to the colour palette, I have chosen the top line of colours, due to their bleaker nature, which in turn will compliment the layout's colouring. Anything too bright and poppy - say the pink hues in the second line of colours may distract from the overall feeling of the piece that I wish to convey.