Tutorials

I had redone the hand waving scene by removing the head turn as it looked to awkward and had made the boy more timid when he is waving to the monster back and forth to give it more feel to the boy’s fear. I had my talk with the lecturers about this scene and they say it improved but I need to follow my reference correctly as well as making the animation much slower when waving. 

Afterwards I had done a small one second head turn with the boy looking over to the window which is connected to the last head turn I did with the arc. Which needed no improvements whatsoever.

Finally I did new sketches to fill in the backgrounds for my next animated rough shots to move onto after. 

The boy’s bedroom with the hallway in view

The boy’s bedroom door

The boys bedroom with the curtain in view

The boys curtain in view from below

I also added more detail to the bedroom using Dylan’s reference of the bedroom.

Tutorials 

I had successfully re-done the arc movement for the boy in his rough animation with the detailed background and fixed the timing of the head as it seemed to fast for it’s pace of moving. Since it is in the rough stage I will focus on other animations at the moment with more sketches of the backgrounds to aid Dylan so we have backgrounds to animate our scenes. 

Here are some backgrounds sketch’s I’ve done for certain shots using my storyboard for the project as reference and Dylan’s completed room view for the boy’s bedroom and the hallway to the living room using Krita. They are only sketches nothing too detailed yet but there to hep animate future scenes. 

Tutorials

This week Sarah wasn’t present but showed progress on her previs of the monster waving. As for me and Dylan showed our progress on our progress. For my animation with the one included on this page has too have a proper arc with the head moving and more exaggeration with the examples I looked online for reference. As for the animated shots as we have problems lacking behind certain backgrounds, my role now is too sketch concept art of the rooms from different perspectives and sides to help with the animation process with Dylan so can up our speed with the background shots. 

Here is the animation I had worked on and what I need to improve. I looked examples online by Gifs, YouTube videos and Websites to aid me with my improvements for the 2D animation with the boy head turn before next week.

Animation for Beginners: How to Animate a Head Turn | Envato Tuts+ (tutsplus.com)

Tutorials one to one

Unfortunately, I was absent that day but still submitted my first rough one one shot with Dylan’s background of the Boy’s room with the boy looking around from left to right from the sound coming from outside which wakes him up. Here is my first rough to test out the background with the boy on the bed lifting his upper body with his hands on the cover.

Aodhan gave pointers on my rough and how the head turn was a bit too fast and needed a proper arc for the head with a bit of exaggeration to sell it. So I took what he said and tried out a new scene with a arc as an example to see if would look better this time before moving on to the next scene. 

Group Tutorials 

For this weeks progress after completing our presentation assignment last week, I had updated our asset list on Miro for Dylan to add certain 2D assets in each room and other assets that are optional for the short film itself to make it real life setting. I also updated the animatic from one of the shorts that needed to be changed for Sarah to edit finally fixing and improving minor mistakes before animating. The rough I did with Sarah needs a little work as we await for Sarah to finish her sculpting and her previs to be animated and done by the end of the week. 

My plan before next Tuesday is to continue animating other scenes which Dylan has given me one background to do but only with one shot where the boy looks around the room when he hears a strange noise in rough animation. I will continue chatting with the group two times a week before and after classes and watch videos to help with my animation process for the weeks ahead so I know where I’m at.

During the Christmas break and January month, I continued onward with my work and finished my animatic featuring the middle and end scenes to collaborate with Sarah’s Intro which was then completed. Afterwards we held a call meeting after the Christmas holidays to see where we were at with progress with our production. There had been some issues with one of our team members not finishing with their dissertation. For me I had to wait patiently for Sarah finishing up the layout of the 3D environment then I could animate the one scene which includes the boy waving at the beast and the beast waves back at him. While being patient I had looked at tutorials on YouTube to see any simple techniques or tips for hand waving and how to make it look smooth before I start animating my rough with the 3D backgrounds.

We then presented our production presentation to our lecturers Aodhan and Sarah with the work we had done over Christmas and the rest of January. We included a list on what we had done, assets for the environment, character sheets, the cabin, animatic, first rough test and updated schedule. We received their feedback/opinions on the presentation since we have made so much progress from our last stage in the pre production. There was some minor mistakes that we can improve and add on before fully animating for the weeks ahead but it was an overall success and better than the last two presentations. We have our destinated roles these months so we can continue on with production to our post-production. 

Here is what I had contributed to the presentation as well as setting up the slides and text for my teammates and my own:

Tutorial Talk

Our tutorial was quite brief today with the group (one was absent) to see how we were for our progress. For me I showed my lecturer Aodhan my progress for the middle part of the animatic which Sarah Elliot needed help with and what I was focusing this week on before our very last class in Major Project. Aodhan found the animatic very great as that was the progress he wanted to see and I told him I would be focusing on the third and final part of the animatic which I would send the videos and frames to Sarah to edit them altogether just before January and around Christmas as well. Here is a glimpse of the middle part I have worked on.

I asked about the production stage and for the presentation about animating one scene which should have a detailed background during January before our next and last presentation on our progress on our animations. In the meantime we were given time to focus on our dissertation’s for next week as it comes first for December giving us time to focus on one then on the other.  

Tutorial talk 

Our lecturer wasn’t able to attend this week like the others however, he looked at our work online discord and wrote feedback on each of our work and progress for this week. For me, I focused on redoing the character sheets from Aodhan’s feedback last week so I went online and researched and looked at other examples of character sheets to help improve my own and go for straight normal poses. I looked at this video below, to aid me to draw proper character sheets which included adding lines for the structure like the head, main body and legs to demonstrate the height and appearance of characters with turnarounds to see the whole character as a fictional character with a 2D appearance but almost real like a 3D object. 

After the boy and his father were completed and redone the proper way, I brought them together to show off the height difference between the both since the boy is half the height of a wooden door and the father is an inch less then a door. 

Tutorial Talk and 2D Workshop

This week we started the morning with Dan Wilson on After Effects with the volcano effect for the first session and learning new techniques on after effects with layers, colours and the effects of it making it look animated. It was a fun activity and gave me ideas for our hybrid animation for our main project this session which I introduced the idea to my group after the morning session as were aiming to use Blender for both the 3D and 2D. Below is the picture of the volcano that Dan sent us in photoshop, and the next one shows the camera angle and layers we learnt about which I haven’t known about using tools that are new to me and finally made a video of it for this exercise. 

 

The afternoon session was our tutorial time with Aodhan, for my progress was the fixing of the final design of character sheets which I almost done and my next target goal was for making a list of sound that will be used for the project which I would help Sarah when she is redoing the animatic so we could input the sound to match with the scene. Aodhan made some pointers on my w.i.p.s of the final designs and the scare o meter which I did for the boy’s face from 0% to 100%. For the boy for his final design he told me to watch out for the arms, so they are both the same length and are done and coloured this week before next Tuesday. This talk gave me time to make sure I wouldn’t be doing what I had done for the pre production week so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.