Thursday, 6 March 2014
Interim Art of & Son and Personal Pipelines
The Polydoodle Pictures team are at their interim stage of the Major Project. We've been asked to submit an updated 'Art of' to the submission blog complete with mission statement of intent for a final outcome. We're also made individual documents that show our personal pipeline throughout our whole project.
Here's the all new, (updated) group 'Art of & Son' and our personal docs...
Group Interim Document
Here's the all new, (updated) group 'Art of & Son' and our personal docs...
Group Interim Document
Stitch's Pipeline
Sammy's Pipeline
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
Pre-Production: Rigging Barnabas Complete
Hello Everyone,
We are finally getting to a good place with all of this backlog, only being a couple of posts behind now. We thought it best to get the rigging post for Barnabas sorted as it hasn't been long since we got past Benjamin's. Once again we conducted a couple of pose tests to demonstrate the functionality of the rig. It is quite cool to be able to move the characters around more easily now.
The image above shows 5 basic poses from the standard T-pose. These were not decided in the heat of the moment but were in fact conceptualised a while back. The renders above are comprised of 2 beauty passes an occlusion pass and an occlusion plane pass to give floor shadow. We did this mainly because we wanted to see what could be achieved with the rig's functionality being able to achieve our initial ideas.
We are finally getting to a good place with all of this backlog, only being a couple of posts behind now. We thought it best to get the rigging post for Barnabas sorted as it hasn't been long since we got past Benjamin's. Once again we conducted a couple of pose tests to demonstrate the functionality of the rig. It is quite cool to be able to move the characters around more easily now.
The image above shows 5 basic poses from the standard T-pose. These were not decided in the heat of the moment but were in fact conceptualised a while back. The renders above are comprised of 2 beauty passes an occlusion pass and an occlusion plane pass to give floor shadow. We did this mainly because we wanted to see what could be achieved with the rig's functionality being able to achieve our initial ideas.
Monday, 3 March 2014
Pre-Production: Rigging Benjamin Complete
Hello Everyone,
These are a couple of weeks old as you know we are in a bit of a backlog with some posts but never the less we thought this would be best shared so people could experience a bit more development work. This post is about the rigging process of Benjamin in which we have created a couple of poses to show some of the functionality of the rig.
The image above shows a couple of test poses which were created based on the research conducted back in September of last year... Please check out the post here and you will see these poses in their reference and base forms. The renders above are comprised of Beauty and Occlusion passes so I hope you enjoy them... Just for clarity these are not Weta :)
These are a couple of weeks old as you know we are in a bit of a backlog with some posts but never the less we thought this would be best shared so people could experience a bit more development work. This post is about the rigging process of Benjamin in which we have created a couple of poses to show some of the functionality of the rig.
The image above shows a couple of test poses which were created based on the research conducted back in September of last year... Please check out the post here and you will see these poses in their reference and base forms. The renders above are comprised of Beauty and Occlusion passes so I hope you enjoy them... Just for clarity these are not Weta :)
Saturday, 1 March 2014
Pre-Production: Skinning Benjamin Complete
Hello Everyone,
Skinning Benjamin was a bit of a rigorous process as it was the first one. We had to skin weight the little tyke which was done with a combination of weight painting and the component editor. This post shows the functionality of the character at the joint level. At this point no controls have been added leaving functionality to the skeleton and the weight distribution between joints alone.
The panels above show the finger joint rotations, the chest joint rotations and the knee joint rotations. The key here is balancing the weight between joints to achieve half decent deformation.
Skinning Benjamin was a bit of a rigorous process as it was the first one. We had to skin weight the little tyke which was done with a combination of weight painting and the component editor. This post shows the functionality of the character at the joint level. At this point no controls have been added leaving functionality to the skeleton and the weight distribution between joints alone.
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A Change in the Story
The studio have been in talks recently about making a major alteration to our animation. While editing the second take of the animatic it became apparent that the flashback sequence at the end of '& Son' was perhaps not needed, however, we kept it in for the time being. Now we are ready to step into animating territory the issue has been raised again.
Here's the trouble we have with the flashback sequence... the flashback occurs just before Barnabas has a change of mind and decided to alter his business completely... the flashback suggests that this alteration comes from his own experience with his own father doing just the same to him in the past as he is doing to his son now. BUT with the addition of the stronger mother presence at the beginning it feels that the motivation needs to come from her. Gladys (the mother) at the opening is seen to be encouraging her husband and son to express themselves artistically... Barnabas stops this when she dies but Benji carries on as a way of keeping her alive... at the end this should be Barnabas' motivation, to keep his wife alive by living in the way she taught him. Thus, the flashback becomes unnecessary as well as confusing to introduce a character that has previously been absent and also it means that Barnabas' grief is never resolved.
We think that by simply removing the flashback and allowing the facial expressions during Barnabas' change to tell his thought process there is enough reference to the mother to suggest to the audience that she is why he changes.
It sounds a little complicated but please watch this altered animatic below to see how you now read the story and give us feedback on whether it works.
We're also sharing this video on our course blog to gather as wide an opinion as possible.
Here's the trouble we have with the flashback sequence... the flashback occurs just before Barnabas has a change of mind and decided to alter his business completely... the flashback suggests that this alteration comes from his own experience with his own father doing just the same to him in the past as he is doing to his son now. BUT with the addition of the stronger mother presence at the beginning it feels that the motivation needs to come from her. Gladys (the mother) at the opening is seen to be encouraging her husband and son to express themselves artistically... Barnabas stops this when she dies but Benji carries on as a way of keeping her alive... at the end this should be Barnabas' motivation, to keep his wife alive by living in the way she taught him. Thus, the flashback becomes unnecessary as well as confusing to introduce a character that has previously been absent and also it means that Barnabas' grief is never resolved.
We think that by simply removing the flashback and allowing the facial expressions during Barnabas' change to tell his thought process there is enough reference to the mother to suggest to the audience that she is why he changes.
It sounds a little complicated but please watch this altered animatic below to see how you now read the story and give us feedback on whether it works.
We're also sharing this video on our course blog to gather as wide an opinion as possible.
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