"Final" progress after 4 weeks

I'm back home now and finally decided to upload my "final" animation that I got after 4 weeks, when I was in Viborg. If I watched it now after month or two then I can see that there are a lot of not so good things going on but that what I got. Like you can see I didn't got time to really finish and polish even my first part of dialogue, other half is still in blocking (I didn't expect to finish that anyway). Fingers and eyes are quite not done at all (eyes should be actually first thing to make those right :/) I also had to make few changes to my posing because blocking tricked me a bit, so I had more time than I planned for example after grabbing a chip from table so I had to wait more in the throwing position and etc. It's kind of tricky to really time your scene with blocking I think, at least when you are beginner.
I still want to finish it up some day but will see, when it happens then I let you know.

Final rought bloking

Yesterday I finished my first rough blocking pass. I added some poses for last swearing part and edited little bit beginning. I got a comment about dude's first line, when he says "For christ's sake, make a move and STICK with it, would you?". So the word stick kind of relates that the kid almost has been made moves but then he takes them back and that's the thing what makes the dude so unpatient. So it made sense for my and I tried to add that to the beginning. It was a bit struggle for me...I didn't want to add to much more seconds, but I think it kind of works now. I also tried to fix throw part to make more impact there.

Private tent

Last week I set up my little tent around my workspace. There are a lot of people in our little room (16) and therefore quite a lot of moving around and because I sit in the middle of the class, I found myself looking around when somebody moved or just check what they are doing. So I went to second hand shop and got two piece of cloth (40ddk) and set up my little tent to get some privacy and less distraction....also little mood around my computer. Feels like home now :)

And after my camp was up, there were curious classmates sneaking around 8)

Rough blocking

After I set up my scene in Maya I started to plan out my acting (I used referenced models for characters to be able quickly unload second character, because it slows down Maya quite a lot).

I did some thumbnails but I don't feel myself that comfortably with drawing so for me is little bit easier to get poses from video reference or just playing around in 3d with my puppet (but I'm trying to get more into drawing).

A lot of other fellow students did cinematic in flash for they scenes, but like I said for me its easier to do rough blocking in 3d and get the fool of my shot instead of drawing. Another advantage to do like this for me is that, I can immediately deal with real objects and space, I can figure out my steps , table size, chair heights and then position my cameras for best compositions. If u do it in flash then its kind of half way planning and you need to change a lot in 3d I think. Of course it's matter of preference and what works for you, to make quick cinematic in 2d is definitely good thing to do if you feel like :) I also did a little reference video for throwing action to see how and when different body parts moves (what comes first and what follows etc).

This is how my first rough pass looks like so far. I haven't done my dialog part yet but I probably need to concentrate more on that first freak out part and physical stuff there if I want to finish something :)

After this I finish this rough blocking then I start polish my poses and try to add transitions and holds.

Building quick set

When my characters was pimped, then I figured out what I need for my set and modeled quickly those things. I wanted to keep everything light and simple without to much detail.

Colors are easy way to make look your scene better (or actually a lot of other things generally) so if you just match colors in your scene it adds a lot of mood there.

I went to bit darker bg colors to make my characters stand out little bit better (to get better read for my poses).

I also did quick texturing to get some ambient occlusion effect into the corners and added simple shadow under table.

Caracter pimpin'

We are using Norman rig and it's quite open for adjusting it according to your character. So first I pimped my characters a bit, adding hairdo , glasses, some color and that's it, bit more mood there right away.

Hello

This humble virtual place is a little reflection of my final project wip in character animation course witch takes place in Denmark at Animation Workshop school. I've been here for about 2 months and now we have 4 weeks to finish 20-30 second polished animation. It was up to us what we wanna do and I decided to go for dialog from "Bad santa" movie. I liked it because there was also nice part to do some physical action and also room for dialog. It is bit longer than I would like to and I'm not maybe able to finish it in 4 weeks, but it's ok :) (can finish it later).

Dialog goes like this:

Willie: "For christ's sake, make a move and stick with it, would you?"
The Kid: "King me."
Willie: "Son of a bitch! You lousy, cheating little bleep! You're bleeping with me! You did that on purpose. You sit there and you play like the bleeping dead lice are falling off of you, and then suddenly, you're like Seabisbuit all over the bleep damn place. You're a smartass, is what you are, kid."
The Kid: "Wanna play again?"