Category: Animated Narratives

I spent this week texturing all of the assets for our animation, which I’m so happy that I managed to finish off:

It was suggested that these should be further simplified, which I will work on so they are in-keeping with the style of the animation! This is a little screenshot of our discord conversation, where I was able to list the revisions we should make and a little idea I had about the Noob ghost’s tail:

I also worked on the rig of my character more; Alec helped me with my skin weights, and then I re-did them after he showed me what to do to get practice at it on my own. I think it turned out pretty well, however I am going to send it over for review to make sure everything is OK! Here is a preview of the ghost model:

I feel so much calmer now, knowing that the bulk of this is done. Over the next few days I will be working on this ghost’s eyes, and the rig for them. Hopefully this is suitable!

I attender my Thursday class, and got some feedback from Mike and my group on my texturing. They all thought that it deviated from the overall style that they had in mind for our animation; I decided to take another run at it, and I’m really pleased with the results:

I think that they now give a more childlike, stylised vibe and are also cohesive – I will continue with texturing over the next few days, with the aim of getting the bulk of it done at the start of next week.

I also UV mapped and textured the noob ghost:

I’m also really pleased with how this turned out, I think he looks super cute and colourful – I will proceed to get my groups opinion on this before settling on the final look.

I also began rigging, which has been a very difficult task for me: It definitely isn’t coming to me easily – over the next few days I wish to try and figure out skin weights for this character:

Over all, I’m pretty happy with the amount of work I’ve been able to do this week. I’m panicking slightly at the amount of time we have left to get everything finished, so I’m doing as much as I can to prepare for deadline!

 

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring home my USB and was therefore unable to start the rig on my ghost. To make up for this, I took a couple of our assets into substance painter and textured them:

*The models above were made by Ciara McGreevy*

I also tried to work a little more on the old-ghost model, giving him a ‘skirt’ and an inner body! I decided that I would wait to model his arms after I get my USB stick back, as I plan on just importing them onto the old ghost and playing around with their proportions to give some variation in shape! As the two characters have the same arms and hands.

This week, Mike introduced us to setting up lighting in Maya. We were given a scene, and shown how to apply lighting to the background, interior and to specific objects:

I found this activity came quite naturally to me, despite being originally apprehensive about it – I tend not to get on too well with the more technical aspects of Maya, so this was a nice change!

I got some feedback on my noob ghost, and how to rig him. I pulled his ‘tail’ down and put more cuts through his arm so that I am able to rig the model: something tells me that this is going to be pretty difficult, but I will do my best!

This morning I looked at the Pre-vis, with the intention on cutting down the length of the animation:

I think because the final scene is around 10 seconds of the pre-vis’ duration, and it includes no animation, we’re looking at about 47 seconds at the moment.

I’m really proud of this, I hope it reads OK but it’s made me incredibly excited to move forward with rigging my character and animating!