Witness Progress 08

Well... sometimes things don't go as planned. Lots of complications since last update. A power outage left me unable to do a lot, and then the usual shaking off the dust of not having animated for a few months means I overestimated my abilities. I did not get the full layout pass that I wanted. Instead I ended up animating a few minor scenes, trying to get back into the groove of animating.

Here's one of the scenes I did. Again, I'm shaking off the dust. It's been a month or two since I've animated, and a few more months since I animated human characters.

Anyway, by next update I hope to have gotten a few more scenes blocked out. I'm hoping for like, at least one scene a day, maybe two. Really solid blocking, and maybe some full-on, first-pass animation if it's a short scene like this.

Witness Progress 07

Today's update is a little different. It was basically a lot of setup without anything to really show off, so I'm including an "audience reaction" GIF to predict your reaction. So without further ado, here's what I got done:

I re-recorded the dialogue, and mixed it with a new copyright-free, royalty-free, free song. Then I adjusted the timing of the animatic to be funnier, added the important sound effects, and exported each scene's audio.

How does the audience feel about that?

Then I imported the audio and referenced the characters and background into maya files for each scene, and in each of those file I set the camera into roughly the area it needed to be (like a really really rough layout). Then I recorded reference videos of myself performing the short, so I could get a feel for the acting.

How's the audience doing?

And finally, I organized everything into folders. Each scene has its place for the maya files, audio files, and render files. All the reference files are organized.

Audience?

Yeah, so today was a kind of boring update. Just a lot of organization, adjusting minor things, and setting things up. Not sure what future updates will be like, because I don't want to spoil anything, but from here on, it's just going to be animation. I'll probably just show screenshots, and maybe GIFs of scenes I'm proud of.

By the next update I plan to get an actual layout pass done, with significant poses, and final camera angles.

Golfing Astronaut

A silly character I sketched a while ago. I'd like to model him in 3D some day, and then I also have an idea for an animation with him. But for now it's just the sketch, and that drawing in my portfolio.

Witness Progress 06

Got Frankie all rigged. I think for the final animation I'm going to have his hands in IK instead of FK so they don't move around as much, but this was just a rig test.

By the next update I plan to have organized all my folders, broken down the animatic into shots, gotten the audio ready for the lipsync, and fixed the minor rig issues I noticed.

Witness Progress 05

This weekend I modeled the final character, Frankie. He still needs UVs, and some minor work done, but he's just about done.

By the next update I hope to have him all rigged up and then I'll be ready to animate.

Witness Progress 04

Since the last update, I changed Johnny's proportions to look more appealing (His head was HUGE. and his arms were lanky), and I got him all rigged up and ready to animate. He mostly stands in shadows and lends intimidation to the scene, so his face rig isn't super detailed like the two main characters.

I also got texturing done for the Boss and for Johnny (although I usually change the textures during the lighting process so these textures are almost final, but not really).

By the next update I plan to have modeled the last character, Frankie.

Spongebob Sketches

 

Spongebob was a huge part of my childhood. Here are some drawings of the characters I did for fun.

Witness Progress 03

This weekend I modeled Johnny. He's mostly going to stand in the shadowy background and lend intimidation to the boss.

I also fixed the other characters' rigs, but that's not something tangible I can show.

By the next post I hope to have rigged this character, and gotten textures done for him and his boss.

Zombie Doodles

     Had a silly idea for a short animation about a superhero zombie, so I started drawing a bunch of zombies.

Witness Progress 02

I've been working on rigging the past few days. Got Lou's rig done... except for some reason it seems to crash Maya a lot, so I have to figure out what's wrong with it. I think it has something to do with the referenced files because the face rig was acting weird.

And I'm pretty much done with the boss. Just some minor weight painting issues I noticed while making the gif.

By the next update I'm going to try to fix the crashing issues, and start working on the next character. I'm aiming to get these updates out every Monday and Thursday.