here is a walk cycle I did with the latest Raven Rig (there is a new model i need to get hold of this week)

Here is my work for both "Leap of faith" and "Storytelling of Ravens" .
So far, I have assembled the scene for leap of faith, characters, props and environment. Unfortunately the modeler Nathan modeled in Maya 11 and I am using 2010. So what has happened is importing it an the material images, they have not been connected. So apparently in maya 11 when you open a file, provided all the source images are in the source image folder and the project is set, the images should automatically be assigned to their appropriate parts of the environment. I did all this and the material images didn't assign, so these will need to be reattached manually. Not a big deal, I just need nathan to reassign all of them for me.

As for Storytelling of Ravens, I have to wait for a redesign of the model to arrive, and be textured before I can work on animating each scene. So time is slipping more and more away for me to get those shots done t the quality i want. We have a second year, Jure redesigning the model, so hopefully I will get hold of that this week as I want to start animating ASAP.

For now I have just been working on walk cycles. There is a technique I was taught by Sophie, i nthe graph editor I can highlight the first few steps keys, and go into curves and put them on a loop, and I should get a good repetitive walk cycle. I can bake animation as well, making it a bit less work to copy all the frames. For some reason this is not quite working, it is creating keys but not duplicating the ones i already made, so i need to go through that with Sophie today.

So for now I am focusing on getting leap of faith worked on. I may do a walk cycle for the Old lady.

Also here is a new version of the block out for the sound design people.

Final Term of College, here is what I have been up to lately

First off, the models i need to work on both films still aren't ready, AND ITS FINAL TERM. So if the films are not as polished as they could be at the degree show, then this is the reason WHY, NOT ENOUGH TIME.

On the plus side, i have blocked out every shot for both "Storytelling of Ravens" and "Leap of faith" and the crews are happy with my work on the block outs and are willing to go ahead with those. So the crews are putting their faith in me to do a good job in the animation. I should feel intimidated, but i dont in the slightest. This is within my abilities as a digital artist. I am competent enough to get it to look at least decent. Like i say, with only 8-7 weeks left to go before we need to hand them in, there is only time to do one pass, maybe two if i get it done really fast. But ultimately, we will have to settle for whatever I produce.


I want the films to look as good as they can, so in an ideal world, the models would have all been completed by the MIDDLE OF TERM 2, and by the time we got to the easter holiday, we should already have a first pass of the animation. BUT it seems this is no longer possible. On the plus side, we have trimmed alot of the fat away from the storytelling of ravens project. Eventhough, we have recently completed a new draft of the script, with the help of a professional script writer, it involves all nine of the ravens all havng cameos, which is not possible to deliver on in the time. So instead we have gone with a version of the story depicting only one of the birds, the one the class all agree was the more entertaining. So the film is not at all what we wanted, but at the very least, the audience should feel entertained, and I think that is fine. The other draft will be shelved until after college is over, and we shall see, maybe Sophie and I can collaborate on a much more elaborate version of the story and have all the time in the world to make the new script happen. Storytelling of Ravens in its current form is only 8 shots, which may or may not include a flash animated intro, since we haven't heard from Andi benett lately, so we dont know how that is going.

here is some screen shots of the model we are working on at the moment:



The model is great, i am working on a walk cycle right now. The reason i am not working on the shots now at this late stage is, Sophie is working with a second year modeler, Juri , who is "Frankensteining" a new rig together , using wings body and legs an The movers and combining with another model with a different head. So trying to combine the best of previous models into one.I have been promised it will be modeled and textured some what by some time this week.

actually, one reason i upload the pictures is, something i didn't notice while trying to make a repetitive walk cycle. When you lift the feet, their is another mover which seems to control where the floor is. Some times, i was accidentally animating this instead of the foot, so when i went into the graph editor, needless to say i was confused to find no keys.

But anyway, doing a decent walk cycle is getting easier and easier. our next E&E session is not till wednesday now , apparently. It was meant to be tuesday but its been rescheduled. I will be coming in on tuesday anyway for Depah Masih's group, to give her all my block out shots for the leap of faith film, as she needs to give that to sound design students to add a score to.

Anyway, I think this week will be tons of animating, actually the next 2-3 weeks will be a mad dash to get all the shots for both projects done as quickly as possible. like I say I am positively confident i can deliver on time and have some great looking animation. My only complaint is the short amount of time to make changes and the like.

I have been promised this rig will be ready

ALSOOOOOOOOO

Since I haven't posted it on here and its been a week, here is my Munin the Raven Lip sync animation, done using Clym's model, and there's not much work been done in the graph editor unfortunately. Mostly because i had to fight with the Rig to get it cooperate at certain points. Not good. But we are doing away with this model as it isn't quite as real and easy to hand as Sophie would like. But anyway, i got a pretty decent looking bit of lip sync animation out of it. And BTW my Girlfriend provided the live action reference. But since we are tossing out the female characters dialogue and shots, I will just be going with the male Ravens' shots.

Clyms latest Maya Raven Model

a decent piece of work, But i think asking any more of Clym might be asking too much as he's pretty busy. Sophie is hoping to rope second years in to work on the model.

But for now I will like to have a go at animating with this.