Like an electric eel

So... I guess we saw how it went over the past few weeks. Not very many posts, I have to admit. That does not mean I have not been working at all, however. I have animated 94 frames of both characters in The Battle for Axis Mundi since my last post on the 11th. Slow progress, unfortunately. I don't have much homework this weekend, though, so I'm hoping to use it for Axis Mundi. I was able to work on it today, so the weekend is off to a good start.

Oh, and sorry if the title shocked you....

Like an electric eel.

A little bit' o progress

Last night I was able to animate some frames for Axis Mundi. Not that many really, but I need to post cause' it's March Madness. So yeah. Unfortunately I can't work on it right now, cause I've got other things I have to do. Spring break just ended for me, so we'll see how everything goes over the next few weeks.

The Corresponding Frames

So today I unfortunately only ended up animating the corresponding 77 frames of animation for the other character. I was hoping to do more. Tomorrow I hope that I will use my time more wisely. I decided that I was simply not going to go to bed tonight until I at least did those frames, and so I stayed up late to finish them. It's not that they took that long to do, it's just that I had not worked all day and it was already late, and so I just stayed up for a little while and made an even later night out of it so that I would not have gone the whole day without animating a single frame. This is how we roll in March Madness. We don't stop till we get the job done!

March Madness 2012

It's March again. I think this has been one of the fastest years in living memory. Of course, my memory of past years becomes more and more vague all the time, so I probably said the exact same thing last year. But anyways, since it is March again, it's time to make a bunch of posts and a bunch of progress. Today I am doing just that! I'm glad to say that I was able to work on animating The Battle for Axis Mundi today, and I got 77 frames of animation done, for one character. Still have to animate the other character during those 77 frames.

Also today I remembered how many hoops I have had to jump through to finagle this workflow to the point where it is possible. By that I mean that there are a lot of extra steps to go through in order to animate characters and render them in RCT3. It's making me look forward to being able to do a project where I use tools that were designed to do what I will use them do. So, happy March Madness, and I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow!

What's new?

So, January was a horribly slow month. What's new? That's what it is like every single year. I have worked some this February, though. A few frames here, a few frames there. I guess it is coming along.

Don't you like them super-short posts?

Vector Drawings

So I finally finished the drawings of the robot for my class. The lines were drawn in Illustrator and everything was colored in in Photoshop.

Still not more than superficial progress on Axis Mundi. I need to remember that post I made a while ago. There's no reason why I can't be working on The Battle for Axis Mundi as much as I can during my free time.

Even Closer

Today I successfully imported many of the vertex groups for the model. That means that some parts were deformed by the animation, and some weren't. I'm going to slowly add groups until I find the one (or ones) that are causing the problem. This post is very good news, because it means that there's nothing wrong with a good number of the weight painting that I did. So I can at least keep about half of my weight painting at this point. I'm hoping I'll just narrow it down further and further until there's only a couple of vertex groups left, and those will be the ones that are causing problems and have to be re-done. And then it's on to texturing!!!!

Tongue Twister Tues.... Aw crap, it's Wendsday

I didn't get to do that shot yesterday. So that's what I did today. I did the shot that I said I'd have done by yesterday, today.

Try saying that 5 times fast, haha.

That's pretty much it... I can't give many details about the shot, except that it was pretty short, and required impeccable synchronization between Animated CSOs, and the fireworks mixmaster. We're talking an acceptable margin of error of 1 frame. And I got it in 2 tries. BOO. YA.

Post 2 of March Madness, COMPLETED!

March Madness

Well, it's that time of year again, whether I am prepared for it or not. That's right! It's time for....... MARCH MADNESS!!!! It's time for me to make a crazy amount of posts in one month! I have a feeling that I will break last year's record, considering how I am starting at the very beginning of the month this time. It may very well also help me make faster than normal progress on Axis Mundi, since I am having to post so much! I know it has made a difference today, because I got back to work today because it was the beginning of March Madness!

So, about said progress; as of the writing of this post I have finished one new (animated) shot today. I will probably get another one done tonight, though. Also, the last time I gave a length of time for the film was a while ago, so here's a new one: 4 minutes and 16 seconds.

That's about 36 seconds of new footage from when I made this post, which was the last shot that I did before I stopped filming to do Research and Development on the Animated CSO aspect of the production. So you could say that I have done 36 seconds since January 15th, which is pretty much when I was able to start animating.

Excited

Today I got to polish off those 200 frames of animation I was talking about, and I imported them into RCT3 and filmed them. And.... oh man this film is gonna be awesome. I can't help but be excited at this point in the production. I guess that it's normal to be excited when everything is starting to come together.

Texturing

I made a little bit of progress texturing the warrior of light today. I'd say I'm almost halfway finished with his shirt; I got his back and the sides of his chest done. Now I need to do his sleeves.

I don't want to over do it with the screenshots, so just picture it in your head.

Modeling progress

I've been modeling some more today. Here's how far I have gotten:                                                                                

And of course, I am still waiting for the results to come in from SCAD. I'll find out if I made it on October 15th... a little over half a month from now.

Making cuts

I have been making some progress on "The Battle for Axis Mundi." I'm still working on a new pre-action sequence. The total video time is actually getting shorter, which I guess is a good thing, because I am removing long, confusing stuff with short-and-to-the-point stuff. Hopefully that means it will be easier to understand, and more entertaining overall.

Oh, and I got a new monitor. It's sweet.

Progress, and a one-day video

I got to work on the voices for Axis Mundi today. I also filmed a couple of green screened shots, but I have yet to film the backgrounds for all of them.

After all of that, I had time left over to fool around in Blender a little, which is always somewhat educational. You can always learn more about Blender. Anyway, this fooling around resulted in me finally figuring out how to tile textures, and discovering a way to produce a natural-looking sky:

If you ask me, it looks a lot like Crysis. In fact, if I didn't know that it was made with Blender, then I would think that it WAS made in the CryEngine 2.

EEkkk

Don't ask about the title. I just felt like it.

Anyway, I did some voice work today, and I'll probably be perfecting it for a while. It's for the beginning of the film. I have yet to shoot the footage that the voice overs will, uh, go over.

So yeah. Very small progress.

What I did today

I got to work on the RCT3 Film more today. I added in some of the special effects, and I tried to work on the music. Unfortunately, today I completely whiffed in the music department. It is really annoying that I can't do things as easily as I was just the other day.

Mainly Editing

I have been making progress on my RCT3 film. However, I have mainly been editing the footage that I filmed last August. So far the video is 3min 13sec. I am still not totally finished editing what I have so far. Once the 3:13 is truly edited (right now it doesn't have music, I still need to apply some effects, etc.) I will start filming again.