Development Process
During a group call over easter, we discussed how we to split the animation up, initially, we were going to split it up just into sections, but we released it because certain parts that are a lot heavier in character animation we would have to split it up differently to be fair to each group member. We decided to split up the work of blocking out sections among the group, but specific character animations would be done individually. An added bonus was that people would do most of their animation on their own rig.
Splitting it into 5 Sets of shots that after they are blocked out by the person in charge of that section everyone can do their own refined work with rigs in that file
I Blocked out the third Section shots 6-7-8
Blocking out section to match previs using group models I had access to (the cubes replace peoples models who arent yet rigged)
First Draft of full block out
Second Draft improving timing
Third Draft that has additional actions and fixed clipping of models along with grouping different characters.
Final Work on this Section with my character and blocking out fully finished.
Working on refining my character during 9-10-11-12
The animation was too fast during this
Due to a large part of this section being rendered separately without my model there wasn’t much I could add and with the lack of close ups the amount I added kinda goes unnoticed which I shouldve realised sooner, that facial animation were unnecessary
Working on Refining my character in Section 3-4-5
Section 1-2
Draft 1
Full Animation Rough Draft
How I felt about this weeks work
I’ve been very stressed managing university, and work and wanted to get a start on the animation work as soon as possible this led to a lot of stress with some group members being further ahead or some behind. I was also worried about falling behind and started animation in sections before group members had actually finished blocking those sections. I’ve found little time to manage my blog, so I have opted to do this style of big updates rather than concurrent updates. I worry I might misrepresent the work I have done in this format.Onto actually animating my work, I was quite nervous at first, but as it went on, I had a lot of fun, especially with the poses I created in the pose library, I had some issues with IK not behaving as expected, which I resolved when I was trying to make the character fall into the wall in section 9-10-11-12. Overall I quite enjoyed animating. However, I wish I had been present for the group putting together the draft animation, which will be used on thursday, since I had work I could’ve put in. One last point I was kind of annoyed to see due to the time constraints and lack of close ups alot of the more subtly character animation I did goes unnoticed such as when they fall into the wall I used shape keys to create a pained expression and then scared expression. I didnt feel I did it effective enough except for the throwing the staff away part.