This week our assignment was to create an online
portfolio where we will represent two video clips. 1st is a 30 – 60 seconds
long showreel from our character design. The 2nd is a 20-30 second long video
showreel from character aimation.
Seeing as this was a fairly large assignment, with little
time, I made a timeplan right away. I found it would be important to know what
to do each day, and when to do it.
The reels
This piece is of a martial arts otter I made for character creation weeks. The idea started out as an otter who couldn't fish using his hands, and had to use fishing equipment. I scrapped this along the way, and figured I'd much rather do one that uses martial arts. He is heavily inspired by the characters of the Overgrowth game.
This piece is a selection of my best animation this course.
1. Intro is a bouncing ball animation to learn timing and physics, as well as squash and stretch.
2. This walk cycle is of a confident man. I filmed reference of myself, drew thumbnails and animatid accordingly.
3. This assignment was mainly for body mechanics and acting. I filmed reference of me lifting two ducttaped computers up on a table, drew thumbnails and animated accordingly.
4. This is the final animation I did before making this reel. The idea was of a bored boy, who notices a butterfly, and then decides to attack it. He fails to hit it, and becomes bored again. The focus with this assignment was body mechanics, acting and facials. I filmed references of myself acting it out, drew thumbnails and animated accordingly.
The report that is submitted with the assignment;
In this portfolio, our assignment was to create an online
portfolio where we will represent two video clips. 1st is a 30 – 60 seconds
long showreel from our character design. The 2nd is a 20-30 second long video
showreel from character aimation.
Seeing as this was a fairly large assignment, with little
time, I made a timeplan right away. I found it would be important to know what
to do each day, and when to do it. I also checked out some other reels for
inspiration, these are links to some of them;
Modeling reels;
Animation reels;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl9H3qJm-hw
Time plan
Monday
09:00 – 11:00 – Decide
which animation clips would be worth using, and then get feedback on what to
approve.
11:00 – 12:00 – Get
feedback on what to improve on the character model.
12:00 – 16:00 – Polish
and fix the first animation of the reel.
Tuesday
09:00 – 12:00 – Polish
and fix the second animation of the reel.
12:00 – 16:00 – Polish
and tweak the character according to feedback.
Wednesday
09:00 – 12:00 – Polish
and tweak the third animation of the reel.
12:00 – 14:00 – Playblast
animations, add them to a quick mockup reel for feedback. Work on timing and
presentation.
14:00 – 16:00 – Polish
and tweak according to feedback. Fix more animations if necessary.
Thursday
09:00 – 12:00 – Get
feedback on character, tweak and fix accordingly. Do a few test renders.
12:00 – 14:00 – Add
renders to a mockup reel. Get feedback. Work on timing and presentation.
14:00 – 16:00 – Tweak,
fix and polish what is needed to fix.
Friday
09:00 – 13:00 – Render
and playblast everything with high settings.
13:00 – 15:30 – Put
everything together into the reels. Check everything twice!
15:30 – 16:00 – Submit!
Planning and execution
I started by looking at a few different reels, both for
modeling and animation, to see if I could get some inspiration as to how I
would make my own reels.
For the animation reel, I decided to start with my strongest
piece, which was the confident walk cycle. I chose this because I worked hard
on making it feel natural, and I got some good feedback on it. I then wanted to
have something more interesting than another cycle, and chose to add the box
lift from CA04. I chose this to be the second because it was the one I had done
the least on, and would need to fix the most to look good, so adding this
between two better ones seemed like a good idea. The third animation I chose
was the boy attacking a butterfly from CA06. I decided to use this for the end
because I felt it was a fun, and interesting animation, that I had worked very
hard on making, and wanted it to be the thing freshest in the mind of the
viewer.
I started improving on fixing my animations, and the walk
cycle was the first to go! For this one I needed to fix the pelvis rotations,
as well as some foot rolls. I decided to start with this one, since it required
less work than my other animations, and would be a nice way to get into the
correct mindset for the assignment.
On Tuesday I came in early at 7:15 to work on the second
animation until 12:00, since I felt it desperately needed a lot of fixes and
tweaks to look decent. I worked a lot on getting the hands working, and the
spine to not feel so choppy during the squat and the lifting of the box. Making
the box feel heavy was also something I struggled with, but I think I got it
down by making the initial lift slower, and then increasing in speed as it got
further from the ground.
From noon on Tuesday I worked on fixing the otter character
from the character creation weeks. I got some feedback earlier on that I should
fix the speculars, as they were pretty bland, and I decided to tweak the diffuse
as well. I mainly focused on the staff, as the original was very bland and
boring, so I added some scratches and wear to it to make it look more used and
combat proven.
After some more feedback from our teacher, I decided to rig
and pose the otter, and use it for an interesting intro picture for the reel.
Wednesday rolled by and I started working on fixing the
final animation for my reel. On this one, I needed to fix the arm holding his
head up, as well as some spinal jerking and the speed of his jump. The way I
fixed the arm was that I used an IK-controller for the arm while it was holding
the head, and the second it let go to fall down, I swapped it with FK. I had to
do some extra posing, and a bit of scaling to blend them, but it turned out
okay, and is loads better than how it was to begin with.
The spine was easier to fix, and I also got some nicer arcs
and lines of action than it had before. To fix the jump speed, I had to remove
8-10 frames from the final animation. I felt I needed to do this so it would be
a more natural jump, and that you could feel the power behind it.
I playblasted and put the animations together for a mockup
reel, got feedback, and we decided it would be beneficial to the reel that I
added the bouncing ball intro. This because it’s a strong piece, and also
because it serves the purpose of telling what type of reel this is.
I had some concerns about the length of the video when using
the intro and outro, but my teacher said that the intro and outro didn’t count
towards the animation reels maximum of 30 seconds, so that was a relief!
On Thursday I got some more feedback on the character, and
did some small changes to the diffuse and specular. I decided to make a
turntable of the character, using Marmoset Toolbag 2 to get some nice realtime
HDR lighting to show off the specular and normal maps. I rendered out
everything, as well as the intro picture of the posed character, and put them
together as a mockup reel. I got some feedback, fixed some timing issues, added
text, removed unnecessary images, and got some more feedback!
On Friday I did the high quality renders of the turntable,
playblasted all the animations and built both show reels from scratch to make
sure it was as good as it could be! Since I wrote the report after each day of
school, everything was fresh in my mind when writing, to make sure I didn’t
miss or overlook anything in the end.
For the delivery, I decided to submit the work files as
well, since our teacher said we should in case there is something that needs to
be checked out in regards of correcting the assignment.
The music I used on my reels is a royalty free piece called
Dream Music. I chose this because it was a slow and soothing song, which I personally
feel is more fitting in a portfolio than heavy, high tempo music.
Our teacher also advised us to do a screengrab of the time when we uploaded the videos, so it shows that they were uploaded before the deadline, but seeing as it says the time t hey were added on YouTube, I didn't feel it was necessary.
Self evaluation
For this assignment I did my best, and made sure I got a
ton of feedback, especially on the animations, since that is my weakest area by
far. Even though I had influensa most of this week and a fever, I came early, worked hard
and did my best, so I am very happy with how I performed.
I’m also happy I took the time to pose my character for the
intro shot, since I feel it will capture the viewer a lot better than a regular
t-pose.
