George Quelch - VFX

Here is the finished version of the monkey bars swing, I'm pretty pleased with this, apart from the angle of the dismount at the end going slightly to far to the side, I think everything is ok. This took no where near as long as the ball throw animation, although there were no constraints in this that needed to be figured out, it still only took a fraction of the time which is good. I found blending between IK and FK came really easy, I was worried I had forgotten how to do it but it didn't take long to figure out.

Today on the Animation to-do list was practicing FK and IK switching. I decided to go for monkey bars, just because it seemed fun and would mean I could practice switching the arms into IK and the feet into FK. Here is the first version, this is in no way finished, I just wanted to upload some of the process for this task.

One of my tasks was to make the Bony rig pick up an object using constraints. I had to spend a whole lot of time practicing with just a sphere and a cube to really get my head around constraints, but it was definitely worth it. I feel I can confidently use constraints now and that will be really useful for the future. I decided to combine this task with practice on the Tails rig which would help me work on the follow through on the tail. This took a lot of problem solving as I couldn't use the the point constraint we had been practicing, although after some messing around with the sphere and cube I found a setup that did what I needed. This is definitely the piece animation I'm most proud of so far, I still think it isn't perfect, the ball leaves the hand to late in the throw so the arc doesn't look realistic. Some of the timing in the middle is to slow, as well as the movement during the throw. However I'm still really happy with it, it was good ...

This week our task was to animate a character of our choosing jumping onto a diving board and into water. Naturally, I chose a pig. Priscilla The Pig Youtube The main aim of the animation was to get the right reaction from the diving board and the splash from the water. The splash took me a long time to get right, especially working out what looked good for the water on the 3rd and 4th frame of the splash but I think the final result is decent enough. Kicking the pig with the boot wasn't part of the brief but it is entertaining to watch.

This is my attempt to fix the hand turn animation principle task from a few weeks ago, it's now much smoother and I definitely prefer it to the original. Here is the New version: Here is the Old Version: I still don't think the animation is perfectly fluid but it is better than the original

This is my first attempt at doing something new with the Monty Character. I initially started off with just the jump, but I wanted to experiment with the eyebrow setup and try to make him angry about something he saw on the ground. I blended these ideas together to have it all in one sequence.  I like using the emotion built into the rig, this was quite an interesting experiment. I think the timing is off towards the end of the animation, the whole thing is to stiff and slightly to fast.

This is the 3rd walk I have done with the Bony character Rig, I love using the rig, and I still have plans for more walk cycles. I now want to blend the walk and the push animation we practiced in session into one, more polished, clip. I am quite pleased with this, the anticipation into walk is much smoother than in previous exercises however it is still not perfect. The timing is close but not quite right, I think shifting keyframes in the dope sheet around would help to fix this by making different movements happen at different times, making him seem less stiff. However this walk does have a lot more character to it and I'm really pleased about that. My goal was to create a character with exaggerated hand movements and really prolonged steps, and I did achieve that, now all it needs is work on the timing to really improve it.

I created this as a music video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers Song "How It Ends" The project took a few weeks to complete, all of the assets used were created by me. Although I was reasonably with happy with how the project came together I have since decided to redo the animation with a new set of rigs, I also plan on working more into the timing with the song and how to lyrics and camera movement sync up.

I used the Bony rig we were given and squished him down to make a chubby version of him. I wanted to try working at a more stylised walk for the character, one of the main focuses was making him squish down and noticeably stretch out on the lows and highs of the steps. Bony Chubby Walk Youtube I like the smoothness of the hands, I animated the hands using the FK setup and the steps using the IK rig. I found it really easy to use the FK arms. I don't like the anticipation pose I started with, I used a very similar one to what I did with the wall push, I think I would really benefit from getting up and trying the animation myself, I did this to work out how the hips should move and it made it easier to put into the character.

This week the Animation Principle was to make a looping smoke column. I chose to do it in Flash instead of hand drawn. Looping Smoke Youtube I am quite pleased with the actual loop of the animation, I think it is difficult to tell where it starts and ends which is what I was trying to achieve. I think the animation is playing to fast, especially near the smoke stack, it would have been better if the drawings were further apart ti slow the speed of the smoke down. I drew the smoke using the pencil tool as opposed to the brush tool that I usually stick to, I like the more squared off effect it gives however it was sometimes frustrating to watch flash change my shape drawings into perfect squares, which Isn't what i wanted. 

My second life drawing session was similar to the first in what we tried, however we were shown different techniques which were designed to help us give the drawings  more weight, this technique really helped me. The top drawing were the first few I did in the second session. The one below it shows the technique we were shown. The idea is to draw the model first made up of simple shapes to form different parts of the body.  This helped me move away from the outline drawings I had initially done and started to think about the model in more of a 3D sense, to really capture the weight in the drawing. This works when using circles and cylinders because the shape implies weight, whereas a cube has to be drawn with more sides to show it in 3D and to have weight, a circle can be seen already as a sphere, which has weight. I feel like bottom drawings were really a step in the right direction. I t...