Animating

Well James and i decided that i would animate the first half and James would take over when Chip and Mike start fighting until the end.

I have started animating and i have found Chip fairly hard to animate. As Chip is rather over weight, his arms are hard to move. There is not much movement i can make to his arms without them looking like his skeleton has broke, or that his elbow downwards are going into the top half when he bends his arm. I did not really think of the limitations, so this shall be a challenge to do. I shall power on through though. As there are less than two weeks to have this complete, we can not afford to use another rig or doubt on the one we are working with.

Here is just a little test to show the beginning of my animating, this is only rough so there shall be smoother movements and the rest of his body shall of course be animated.

Working as a team

James and I have been knuckling down hard to get everything textured ready to animate for Friday. We discussed about how to solve all the animating for our piece, as there is quite a lot to do. So far we have spoken about use doing half each, me doing the beginning and James doing the second half. We are going to think about this tonight and report back to each other tomorrow.

James taught me how to surface ramp which is a toon shader with in Maya. I am really glad that he showed me how to texture, as this makes me feel that little bit more educated towards Maya.
We have been using the very same shades of colour Rave Live are using for there logos towards our animated short. We opened up the Illustrator with the logos and used the eye dropper to see which shade they had used. From this our piece looks very bright, so i am unsure if the Rave Live team will like it or not. I have sent them an email showing them a screen shot of what they think, so we are hoping for some positive feedback.

We have been thinking about which would be the best way to render our piece. We have three different examples, one with a black outline around every object, one without and one with a occlusion layer to bring out the shadows which was suggested by Jared. I believe that James has the images on his blog, so if you would like to see this then i shall post up a link to his work.

Colour

Here are all the colours which Rave Live are using. For each colour James and i are going to include them in our animation piece. Yellow, red, orange and green are going to be used for the fruit. Whilst i am thinking of making the Mike the monkey purple for two different reasons. One being that purple is not common for a fruit and two, which makes perfect sense, is that purple is compulary yellow for the bananas. I will make Chips robe black. Light Blue will be used for the sky, as well as orange for the surrounding dessert. We just have white to figure out, it could be used for our stall, as dark colours attract the sunlight making it hot, white would be able to hold the heat off the fruit for longer.

Modeling

Happy Easter Monday everyone! Well i have started modeling fruit. I am already getting worried about the amount of time James and i have to make this animation. I believe its just under 3 weeks to have everything complete. As my main strength is animating, i thought i could mainly focus on that, but with such a short amount of time, i think James and i will have to do a character each to help me out. I do not mind which character i animate so i shall let James decide what he would like to do.

Below is the fruit i have modeled so far, i am hoping their is not any of fruit to model, but if there is then it can be done anytime, as they will just be in the back ground.

Here are two images of a pear. I wish i had made my pear a bit more abstract, as it looks a little to realistic.

This is of an Orange. Now, i could have made that just a cycle which would have been the easiest thing, but if you look closely, i have made a very slight indent at the top. The colour is going to make what this fruit is, so i did not have to do much to the shape what so ever.

Here is the main fruit we made to make the animation, the bananas. I started this bunch my modeling a single banana and duplicating them to create a bunch. As this is the most important fruit, it is important to also make it look the best as it will be on show a lot.

Here is what i first modeled. I have kept one single, in case i have the monkey holding one during the animation.

The apple which i have modeled also has a little branch and leaf, to show that they were broken off from a tree. This also helps to show what fruit this is not many other fruits normally have natural growth to them.

This strawberry was modeled fairly quickly, and i think i need to improve this as it is not clear what this fruit is. If i can make all the little groves which a strawberry has then this shall help the audience.

Monkey Resources!

Jared has given James and i some monkey books, which he has collected over the past few years. One book imparticular looks really interesting is called Monkeys Portraits by Jill Greenberg. There are some really interesting facial expressions which could come useful for our animation short.

Here are some which i have taken photos (i took photos as i did not want to ruin the book whilst scanning in the images) of which i think could be helpful towards creating believable expressions to show their feelings. I shall state what i would use each expression for.

Pulling silly face once he is about to run off with the bunch of bananas

Hand me the bananas please, this could be shown through this expression if he is to talk to Chip

Looking down from the stall to try and find the bananas

Shock horror to see that there are no bananas

Laughing that he was able to steal what he wanted without being noticed

The monkey staring at the banana which he just stole

I grumpy pose if he ends up with nothing

Thinking emotion of how he could take the bananas

Puppy eye look, as to see why can i not get them bananas?

Laughter for when he has stolen the bananas

This is to show a thought process when figuring out how to take the bananas.

Rave Live meeting

As james and i have only been working on our short for a few days we were a little worried about the type of feed back we were going to get back. Everything went swimmingly well and i am so pleased. James and i made a storyboard this morning to show the team and they really liked our idea, they even laughed at the shots in the story board which was great. One thing they picked up which would really help James and i, and Rave Live was the use of colour. Yellow is there main colour for there project which works perfectly as our short is aimed at bananas. They have a colour theme which could work great if we could somehow place them into our fruit. For example, an apple can be green, and oranges will be orange, i don't really think i need to carry on, i think you know what i mean. So using their colours will help to reflect that this was made just for Rave Live.

They showed a liking to the characters and i even put in a joke about the man (named Chip) was working on a fruit stall to help him lose weight! They could already tell that the monkey (named Mike) was a cheeky lad by stealing Chips bananas.

Some things to think about since the meeting. Colour will be really important to our piece so we need to make sure that we think about this through-out our project! They said that the colours should not be to bright though, so maybe we could think of using pastel colours? I think this may be something to experiment with. Emily also put in a point about not to many flashes within the short, which is a good statement. I would not have really thought about this, but i need to think about the audience to make sure they do not fall ill or anything along them lines.

Our name for our animation piece is called Chip Goes Bananas, which is a little cheesy, but sometimes it helps. Below is our story board we made. This shows a range of different camera angles.

Chip is sorting out his fruit stall for the long day ahead. Long shot to show lack of people.

A mid shot of Chip still laying out his stall. this will show some facial expressions.

Chip bends down to get weighing scales. Mid shot.

Chip is stunned to see that their are bananas which have disapeared from the shelve. High angled shot

He bends down again to replace the ones which were gone. Mid shot

He places them onto the shelve. Close angled shot

He slowly turns round to see if there is something/ someone stealing from his stall. Close up shot

Chip sees a monkey trying to steal Chips bananas. Low angled shot

Chip goes to grab the monkey and take back the bananas. High angled shot

This turns into a fight. A cartoon stylized smoke shall be around the two characters. Mid shot which will lead to a long shot.

The stall breaks down into pieces and the monkey makes a run for it with the bananas. Low angled shot

Monkey running into rhe distance with the bananas. Mid shot which will lead to long shot

Research on Monkeys!

As you all know, as i want to do an animation piece on monkeys, i have done some research on a few different type of things they do.

More fruit

Here is a sketch of what i think would be the best choices for the stall. I know that strawberries and grapes are a popular fruit, but it is something which becomes a little harder to model and again would create a bigger Maya file. I do not really see them as something that will be important to the stall. So below is what i think would suit best.

I shall get a second opinion from James as there may be a few more fruits which could be included like peaches from example. From top the bottom i have drawn a, banana, apple, orange, pineapple, watermelon, pears and lemon.

Fruit

Okay we all know what fruit looks like but i still think it is best to get a little research, well images mainly. I need to think about what type of fruit would be best on my stall. If i am having a monkey in my animation then bananas are very important! Every other fruit will probably be what is most popular to consumers. I don't really know what i could write for each one as it is pretty simple. But i am looking at the shapes in which can help me to set out the stall, most are oval.



Here are a wide range of different fruits, i am not looking to have this many as this could take the audiences attention away from the animation as there would be a lot to look at. This would also take longer to render when the piece is finished, so i need to think about how much Maya can handle.

Sketchs

Here are a few drawings of different types of stalls i am thinking could be used for our piece. I need some advice from James so i shall update this when i have spoken to him.

Changing my mind

Well since me last post, i have changed my mind on a few things. I said before that i wanted to work with the third years, but since then i have decided to create my own 30 second piece for Rave on Air! I had emails from two of the three groups about being an animator but within myself, i do not feel happy to carry on with my first choice. I think this is mainly due to thinking that i do not feel that i will be to the standard they need, and i really do not want to let them down, or worse still, get down graded for my work. I know it is silly to think this but i must do what is right for me and everyone else. Plus i feel i can be more creative with doing my own piece.
As you do not really have much choice in what you can do, its pretty much do what they need and just be able to put your own little take to the re-actions of the characters.

So since then, i have been thinking about what to do for 30 seconds which would capture most audiences. I am thinking of doing something a little slap stick which would include a monkey either stealing from a little market stall or he would be selling bananas on a market stall. I have not figured out which might work best yet so i need to do some bullet points for each to create a little story.

I asked James if he would like to join me and he said yes, which is great. I know he is not really able to draw, so i have started a few to think about, for when i see him next.

Here are just a few images from the internet to start thinking about how i would like the stall to look. There is a little market which happens regularly in Croydon, so i am going to head down there soon to have a real feel for a market.

spoilt for choice!

I had my first day back for the new team and i already have a lot to think about. We have three different paths we can go down, which are: working with the third years for there final film, work with Rave on Air to produce idents or a 30 second piece, or you can create your own brief.

Michelle, Emma and i were thinking of working together to create a 30 second piece for Rave on Air, but as the presentations were performed, they decided that they wanted to stick with there main path way, which is 2D. I do miss doing 2D myself but i just feel that as i have not done this for a while, it may be the weaker choice to pick, so i am going to stick to 3D.

I am thinking of working with one of the third year groups. It would be great to be part of there team and as they already know what there structure is, I feel this would be a more organized and smooth environment. As for which one though, i can not be sure right now. They are have positive sides, so i guess in the end it comes down to what i think i would be able to animate better and who's project i am drawn to the most. I think each group may be doing there own little test for animating, lighting and texturing. I do not mind which group i get the chance to work with as i like all there ideas, i just hope i get picked for one.

Back to the drawing board!!