Animation checklist

As rigs are being completed the next - and very important! - stage of production is animation. I have already started a little bit of blocking for one shot, but not enough to show yet. But for when things are underway we have a checklist to ensure no shot or character gets missed out, and to allow everyone to see what stage the animation is at. This is also useful as two of us are animating, so we can see each other's progress as we go.

Andy hasn't yet been assigned to shots; the ones I have been assigned are largely down to the Al rig being the most complete, so I may as well start on as many shots with Al in as possible while Andy continues to finish the rigs.

-Caitlin :)

Near final character models

These are the near final characters, the next stage is texturing and I have to make finishing touches to the hair of each character.

 

This character is bald right now, because his hair has more complicated topology, so it's taking a bit longer.

Stereoscopy demonstration!

For the animatic, we decided to save time and use Maya's native stereo camera setup. For the final animation however, I will be building a camera rig of my own that will allow for complicated camera movements without compromising the stereoscopic effect.  

WIP Background Models

Here are some unfinished BG models of the park, more park apparatus will be made just to fill out the environment a bit more. Obviously the main jungle gym still needs to be modelled by someone.

 Made a start on the swing set here. Just duplicating the seat and chains and it's pretty much done.

Obviously more work needs to be done here in terms of branches and shaping the tree trunk itself.

I believe there was one more addition to the roundabout and that would be finished as well.

Final Model Sheets

Concept Art

Here are some of the concept work I produced for this project for the three characters: Alphonse, Simon, Loretta

Work in Progress!!

Production time has hit for the Inky Squid team, and while some of us are busy modelling, others are planning animation thumbnails and creating shot lists. But before we can block out the animation we need to rig the characters!

This is the current work in progress for the character rigs. So far the basic functionality is now in place for the animators to take the characters and begin step blocking the initial poses for the animation.

The idea is as time goes on, the rigs will be slowly improved, and as they are referenced into the scenes, they will update in the animations without us losing any work. Neat!

The next stages will be to add the facial rigs to each character. Also Loretta needs special attention because she's a girl and does girl things like wears a skirt and has a pony tail. So there is still plenty of work left to do to the rigs, but for now they're in great shape to begin animation.

The models placed on the rigs will not be the models rendered at the end, instead the skins will be replaced during the rendering phase to put nice shiny textured models that make the kids look a fair bit.. healthier. But by having lower resolution models on the rigs means that when we animate, Maya won't slow down because of having to deal with loads of extra polygons and shaders.