Aran Saunders - CG animator

11 Second Club WIP 06 - Last day

2012-02-29T03:04:00.000-08:00

OK so this is the last day to do work :O ... She is pretty much finished, just need to touch up on her hands/fingers and clean up her arcs a little bit.

He just needs VERY basic animation, i'm probably going to try do a cycle on him I don't want him to distract too much.

If I got time I'll animate her pony tail, it's good that i got the option to lose it and change her hair but i reeeaaally don't want to!

Here's last nights progress!

I won't post the final until after the competition has been voted for so please look out for my animation on the 11 second club and vote!

11 Second Club WIP 05 - Last 2 Days!

2012-02-28T02:04:00.000-08:00

Okkkkkk I still have loads to do but i'm starting to get in to refining it all now! Here's what I am going to work on today - ARMS!, hands, adjusting body movements for the line "toilet thing" and facial animation. tomorrow I will focus on the male char he doesn't need to do all that much to be honest and of course her hair then. HOPEFULLY It will be to an acceptable standard I know for a fact it's not going to be as finished as I want it to be, there are so much improvements I could make but I just have see what I can get out of this now.

Anyway check it out this was where I got to end of yesterday.

A bit more refining

11 Second Club WIP 04 - Getting somewhere

2012-02-24T16:28:00.003-08:00

Ok I've already started cleaning up the start of the female character I'm pretty happy with how it's looking so far. Obviously the face needs major adjusting lol I'll get to it!

ONE MAJOR change is the timing on how she get's up.. It looks REALLY crude at the moment, but I ultimately felt it would be better timing If she starts to get up after her line and FASTER! It gives her character more urgency to leave. I'll clean it up soon but I hope you can all see what I mean by the timing adjustment!

11 Second Club WIP 03 - Blocking to Spline

2012-02-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

Oops! I've been updating vimeo but not this hehe >_<

I finished my blocking and was now starting to switch in to spline now and again. Here was my final blockout though I probably could have done more to be honest.

Blocking 03

Here it is in spline from block

Spline 01

I decided to carry on in spline because I have been working with that method in my previous jobs for a while now and I got used to it. I do appreciate a good block out though I'll prob do more blocking next time I do another animation. I know that the more blocking you have the better!

Spline 02 - A bit cleaner with the arms and some minor adjustments

Here I mainly focus on the lower half of the female character running to the bathroom, it's an awkward angle to get it looking right but I think I'm getting it. It's also the 1st time in a while I've done a walk/run off the world controller! In my last job I got used to adjusting walk cycles while dragging the world controller along.

I also changed how she enters the bathroom, I think it's a more interesting pose. I know where I'm going with it I just need to sort out the top half of her character!

I skipped posting Spline 03 because they are pretty much the same but with very minor adjustments.

Spline_04 - Getting the run down - change of end position

11 Second Club WIP 02

2012-02-17T08:23:00.002-08:00

A bit more blocking, breaking it down some more. I tried animating a big arm gesture just before she clicks her fingers but It looked too over the top and stupid.. I'll upload it later so you can see what I mean. For now here is some more blocking and breakingdown.

Blocking & Breakingdown

I thought the finger click action could have been a lot more subtle than what I had blocked previously, so It no longer looks as over acted as before.

I turned the walls to wireframe so I could work easier while keeping a boundary. Hehe :D You can see where she goes out of sight that It doesn't matter what she is doing If the camera can not see it.

11 Second Club WIP

2012-02-16T12:38:00.001-08:00

Hoping to finish this before my broadband is cancelled hahah! Here it is so far!

Initial Previs

Previs Edit

I added a shot at the beginning to give her a reason to get up and leave, I think it helps with the story a lot more! Also tried changing the camera though I didn't think It was working too well..

Camera Locked off - Initial blocking

I think this camera works well, and I have now layed out a basic initial block to work off!

MORE TO COME! :D

Morpheus Rig - Female style

2012-02-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Planning on entering this months 11 second club!

It's been 1 week and i've got most of the set up complete now :) I did plan on using the morphues rig but I was not very familiar with it. I did set it up and made my layout with it but I felt I was using too much time setting up selection sets etc.. However I did manage to morph him into a female! I think it turned out quite successful!

Just looking at the head and face.

WIP

Initial thoughts; smaller nose, eyelashes, smaller eyebrows, smaller mouth, changed to more blushy texture.

again different angle.

Bigger changes to make it more "cutesy"; Bigger eyes, smaller ears, bigger lips, forhead slightly bigger.

Again different angle; note the lips are a bit duck like which I didn't find appealing. jaw is shaped as good as I could get it :s

FINAL; less ducky lips, hair added! I drew over the jaw area on this quickly with paint to show what type of jaw line effect I would of like but couldn't achieve :(

Overall I'm happy with how it looks, I think it has decent female proportions!

Trex in the Atrium

2012-01-08T04:54:00.000-08:00

This was a short vfx film I worked on during university in 2010, directed by fellow a student Ryan Bedwell.

This was the first time I have worked against live action and I really learnt a lot from it! I animated the last 2 shots of the trex using 3d studio max.

It was awkward animating it because everything was at an angle in the program itself to match the camera tracking, I am unsure why but I don't really know much about the process of camera tracking. It was the 1st time for a lot of us to try all these new techniques but It was a fantastic experience and a great learning processes! I think the film turned out REALLY well, so here is the full piece!

Dig animation

2012-01-02T06:43:00.000-08:00

Another year 3 character animation. This was a pain in the arse of an animation which i learnt a lot from! 1st of all the initial idea I really liked! I thought it was a funny idea. However with this animation I ran in to the wonders of constraints and gymbal :D After working on this I don't think I've ever had another problem with gymbal lock!

Initial Idea - Animatic

Blockout

I remember blocking out the 1st shot then once I switched to spline I had realized the errors! Controls were flipped all over the place due to constraints which I had little knowledge of how to use them at the time! This taught me to always check the graph editor and check the animation in spline mode more often!

Spline

Due to the technical difficulties I just concentrated on finishing the 1st shot. Unfortunate because I really liked my initial idea! :(

Final

I was just glad to get this shot done by the end of it though... Looking back I think I relied too much on the computers inbetweens.

Boxing

2011-12-31T15:02:00.000-08:00

One of my stronger pieces from year 3 of university. This was the 2 character with no dialogue task however I tried to make it in to a short short :)

Initial Idea - Animatic

I'm pleased with the animatic I had a lot of fun doing it :D I think it all worked well however during a critique among the class there was a lot of confusion toward the end. In my mind the red guy has a delayed knock out effect but no one seemed to catch on to that. (Also my drawing skills arn't the clearest!) So it took me a while to come up with an alternative ending that I would have to come up with during production stages!

*Blocking to be posted*

Final Submmital

Overall I am really pleased with how this turned out, and it stayed true to the animatic (apart from the ending). Of course I would love to have it more beautifully rendered and with a much nicer modeled arena, crowd maybe and lighting (flashing cameras too). However I devoted my time to the animation as that is what I would get marked on. Also modelling and lighting is not my specialty nor did I have time to learn.

Business Trip

2011-12-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

(3rd Year - 2 Character dialogue)

In the 3rd year we moved from 3DStudio Max into Maya, so getting used to the new interface was a bit more awkward but wasn't too bad! Again Same exercise as the Tramps Animation

Initial Idea - Animatic

I remember doing very rough, hard to understand animatics in the past and I wouldn't always stick to the animatic staging/timing etc... This time I wanted to make sure I got down a lot more clearly and make sure it all worked! I didn't go for any great drawings, just getting the idea down clear was what I wanted to make sure of!

Blockout

Not entirely completed blockout, but I remember really trying to do a lot of detail with it. I probably over blocked most of it. It's all a learning process though right :P

Final Submittal

I was happy enough with this submittal but there was many area that still needed cleaning up or redoing! I'm happy with how much I stuck to the animatic :D

Tramps

2011-12-13T05:15:00.000-08:00

(2nd Year - 2 character dialogue)

Initial Staging and Idea

Again similar to the character exploration only now with 2 characters. I wanted them to be tramps because it set up the small joke about making enough money to sell a box (house). At 1st I was setting up they were at a docks or pier somewhere as it went with the idea of them discussing boating. But it wasn't obvious they were tramps so I changed it to an alley and gave one of them a toy boat.

Staging Change - Blockout

I really liked this set up better, although I think I could have made it more obvious that the box was the house they were discussing, maybe gesture to it more obviously? I also tried to avoid showing the fireplace because I CAN'T CREATE FIRE! I'd love to know how though hehe. So I just tried to rely on the lighting.

Final Submittal

I really wanted to do a subtle animation piece, though looking back some of the actions they do seem off, or out of place and the speed in which they change some of their expressions bother me hehehe. Though there are things I am still quite happy with :) The 2nd before last shot I remember being real happy with! The lighting although basic I felt worked too! The background was very basic, just a jpeg environment and wall textures but it was enough for me so I could concentrate on the animation! I am pleased with this as the final submittal

Systems Check

2011-12-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

Felt the need to fill up my blog a bit more, by talking about some of my animations.

(2nd Year CG Animation - Character exploration)

This was the 2nd time our course assigned a character animation piece to us. This time we all used the same existing rig and animated in 3Dstudio Max 2009. This was treated much like the 11 Second club animations however we had to find our own dialogue to animate to. I really like how this turned out at the time though I can see many areas for improvement!

New Blog

2011-11-13T06:17:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to my new blogger!

Unfortunatley I lost my old one because I deleted the gmail account... thinking It wasn't being used for anything... oops. I tried and tried to retrieve it but with no luck. *thinks angry thoughts about google*

Sooooo its going to have to be a fresh start for me and my blog. At least now I can be a little bit neater with it and not post so much junk! It will be a while before I get used to it again and get my pages up and running and get all my contacts back!