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.

Finished the Demo Reel

Hhhhmmm.... I think that I MIGHT be getting just a little bit tired. I stayed up all last night working on my demo reel. Still haven't gotten any rest, though, because I sent the reel in an e-mail to an marketing firm where I would like to intern this summer. Then they replied back (with positive comments about my lighting, I might add!) and so then I replied back again, and... ugh. It's been a long day. Anyways, enough chit chat! Check out my first ever demo reel:

So yeah. Cool ain't it? Yes, I broke down and used someone else's music. It just wasn't worth making my own for this. I think it is funny how both of my December renders are in the front of the reel. You are supposed to put your best work first, and I just felt like the December renders are the most eye catching. I left out animations from The Battle for Axis Mundi, because I don't want to release footage from that until I release the entire film. Hopefully I'll really make progress on that front soon.

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!

You know, that thing where...

Yesterday I did that thing where I start and finish a short video project within one day. This is kind of for a school project. It was basically a proof of concept, showing that I can animate character designs based off of a single still Photoshop file. I basically isolated the parts of the character that I wanted to animate from the Photoshop file, and then mapped them onto identically shaped flat-planes, which I rigged up to be animated with an armature. All of this was done in Blender.

I have to say... I wish that I could find it in me to work as hard and as fast on The Battle for Axis Mundi as I did on this. I really just got down to business... even though it took, literally, all night. I finished rendering out the final animation at 7:55am, just in time to leave and go learn about Photoshop. Hahaha. When I describe it like that, I realize how much I love being in college and studying Digital Media.

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?

It's goin'

When people ask me how it's going, I like to reply with: It's goin'

Just thought I'd throw that out there. When I come up with an equally witty response to the query: "What's up," then I will let you know.

In Axis Mundi news, It's time for an update on the total length. The film so far is 5 minutes and 20 seconds long. A nice update to go along with this is that every scene in that 5:20 mins has music to go along with it. Music that I actually like and I think fits it pretty well. A couple days ago I had a really nice spurt of musical inspiration, and got that done.

So like I said, the film is 5:20 right now. At this very frame, serious stuff is going down. Blows are being thrown, and blocked, and parried. Awesome stuff like that. The RCT3 engine is taking it all in it's stride. I have not had any problems with the animation functionality of the game. Since the film is building up to it's zenith, soon the final length of the will be determined. I'm going to try and make the craziest, most awesome action scene that I can, until my creative strength gives out and I have to say enough is enough. When that happens I'll wrap the film up.

Oh, and I recently showed what I have so far to another Digital Media professor here at my college. He's a pretty frank guy. I've seen him critique a lot of other people's work, and he doesn't hesitate to tell you if he doesn't like something. He was silent as he skipped through my video. (If he watches an entire 5 minute film, then it's either a huge compliment, or he's just being uncharacteristically patient) and right after it ended he said: "So, I take it you like Dragonball Z." He was right. I do like Dragonball Z. He also told me that the animation was good and smooth, which made me very happy. So yeah. Being a Digital Media student and having access to professionals who can give you critiques is amazing.

First post of 2012

I made some pretty good progress on Axis Mundi today. A little animation, a little filming, and a little compositing. I realize that this is a pretty tame start of the month (even though the month is pretty much halfway over already), but as always, I'd like to remember that a productive streak could be just around the corner.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Filming by the book

Today I have been animating and filming according to my animatic. Here's me comparing my shot in RCT3 to my animatic, in order to make adjustments:

So yeah, that pretty much explains what I've been doing and will be doing until I get to the end of my animatic. Then I'll just make it up from my head as I animate and film.

In other news, I've received grades for the art and digital media assignments that I posted earlier. The art project (The December Render) got a 97.5%, and the animatic got a 113%. Although, I didn't really get credit for the extra 13%, because that's not the way that the school's grading system works. The professor just happened to have a grading scheme that can go over 100%, because extra credit is built into it. Obviously I didn't really need extra credit, though.

December Render

I can't believe that it's been more than a year since I started working on the model of the Pagani Zonda. But here we are, almost a year removed, and I have yet another "December Render" to share. Hhhmmm. March Madness and December Renders. I really enjoy all of these little traditions that I am slowly instituting here at Hard Core's Film Updates.

So, without further ado, here is the second official "December Render!!!"

Yes! It's all snowy and icy and watery! And stuff! I kind of half did this for fun, and half did it because I needed to make something for my 2D Design final. I printed it out on the super-nice printers at the Digital Media Center where I go to college at ETSU. The image is 4800 by 2700 pixels, which is exactly the right resolution to be printed on a 16 inch by 9 inch piece of paper at 300dpi. So that's what I did. The critique for my class's final pieces will be tomorrow, so I might add to this post or make a new one once it has been critiqued.*

Oh, and in case you weren't bored by the technical details mentioned earlier, here are some more to ensure that you get a healthy amount of bore-induced snoring today: The image was rendered in Blender using the Cycles rendering engine, using my GPU (A GTX 485m). It took about 12 hours of rendering to get this quality, which is actually very fast when you consider that there is virtually no noise in it. A similar image would never have cleared up this much in 12 hours if I rendered it with, say, Luxrender. So far Cycles is proving its self to be really, really valuable.

*I had the critique today. Nothing special, really. It went pretty well but people weren't drooling over it or anything. The class wasn't geared towards digital art, so I'm not surprised that not many people really "got" the image.

A scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi

So... I decided that I would upload something kind of out of the ordinary for me. It is a preview of a scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't generally like to upload "previews" of my stuff before it is done, but I felt like I should make an exception in this case. Firstly, because this preview is not using footage from the actual film. Secondly, because it has been so darn long since I started this thing, I feel like people should get to see some indication of what is in the works. The animatic takes place about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the film. That's how long it is right now. So basically over the next few weeks I will be working on making the very scene that you see in this video. But in RCT3 with fully animated 3D characters. So go ahead and take a look at what I am talking about, and then I'll give you some more tidbits:

So yeah. Kinda basic, but you get the idea of stuff happening. You also may recognize my slightly Derpy drawings as the Warrior of Light. You also may see a creepy spiky dude that you have never seen or heard of before. I guess I am kind of revealing him here. Oh well. I don't think that it matters that much that it stay a secret. Since I have shown you a 3D model of the Warrior of Light, I might as well show you a picture of what this bad guy, who's name happens to be "Evil," looks like in the game:

Now you are officially kinda-half spoiled. But not really. Because the point of this film is the animation. And I haven't made anything close to these animations before. So hopefully you don't feel too spoiled. Given that this is the biggest update for Axis Mundi so far, I kind of feel a little let down. I was expecting to be like OOHHHH YEAAAHHHH CHECK IT OUT ITS AN ACTUAL VIDEO ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR AXIS MUNDI WOOP WOOP!!!1!!1!!

Maybe I'll feel a little more excited once you guys start talking about it. Wink wink nudge nudge.

Alignment Issues

Over the past week I've gotten 100 frames of animation done, imported, and filmed in RCT3, and about 100 more animated only. The second 100 frames are proving difficult to import, because there are two different rigs interacting with each other. In theory, this shouldn't be a problem, because I have technically done the same thing in an older shot. When I did it before, though, there was one complex armature and one armature with only one bone. Right now I am trying to import two complex armatures. They don't want to import in the same scenery file, so I have tried separating them, but there are major alignment issues that I have yet to fix. As I write this post, I think I recall that when I animated interaction between two models before, I imported them separately as well. So I should probably focus my efforts on correcting the alignment problems, instead of trying to get both animations to import in the same scenery file.

Texturing and importing

So that model I was talking about. I textured it and imported it. Now I am even closer to filming some more. Thats's pretty much it. But I am going to try my best to work on The Battle for Axis Mundi as if it is a project for school, because I seem to be able to work pretty hard on those. I figure I ought to be able to have at least same amount of dedication for my own personal projects as I do for those that are assigned to me. Cross your fingers.

Yay 3D

So just now I actually made something in 3D! Yay! I love 3D! I should do this productivity thing more often. So anyways, it wasn't animation, but the start of another model. I know that I started another model around this time last year, and I only just finished it to the point where it can become a part of the film a few months ago, but I'm really thinking I'm not going to put as much time into this. In fact, I might even say that I am completely finished modelling it. Yes! I am completely finished modelling it. No if, ands, or buts about it. I will now simply texture it, import it, and film it! And there will be PROGRESS!!! MUAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!

Cold feet

I got a good amount of the re-edit in Premiere done this weekend. That's about it, unfortunately. I feel like I am avoiding doing the animation that I need to do next, almost like my subconscious is panicking now that I actually have all of the assets that I need to get most of the film done. It's trying to find a way for me to get stuck on some minor detail, but there aren't any details left. It's an open road, I've got a full tank of gas, but my foot nervously hovers over the gas pedal. Almost like it is too good to be true. Hopefully writing this will help me overcome that feeling.

Frame by frame

So I got my walkcycle animation set up to be properly synchronized with all the particle effects and other RCT3 factors that I can't directly control (not always an easy task), and chugged out 150 frames/5 seconds of final footage! Woohoo!

It kinda seems sad that I am celebrating over getting just 5 seconds of my film done, but hey, at least I am making progress.

In other news, my college classes continue to be ten times more fun than regular schoolwork. Using Adobe Illustrator, I am tracing over the robot sketch that I posted a while ago. I'll post that when it is finished.

Productive Procrastination

So I just finished some really productive procrastination. When I was going to be working on a paper, I worked on the walk-cycle and got it to a presentable-enough-to-film-it level. And now I can work on my animations more this week, unless a boatload of unexpected stuff happens, because I just finished the paper! But I think I'm going to go to sleep now.

Practical animation

I remembered something I read a long time ago today. It had to do with computer animation. It was one successful animator's specific workflow (can't remember who it was). Basically, he animated the body first, completely ignoring the legs, and then animated the legs after he got the motion he wanted with the body. I remember thinking that it was a really good idea to try once I started animating stuff. I had forgotten about it until today. That's what I've been doing, and it seems like it might work. I've got the body animated the way I want, and I've only just begun to see if I can get the legs to follow along in a believable way, but I am hopeful. It really does make sense to do the body first, since shots in films tend to focus on the face/head first, the body second, and the legs might be included if the shot is wide enough, but they are almost never the center of attention. So why let them define your animation? Well, that's exactly what I had been doing up until now... I was animating the legs first, and it was making my character look completely weird. Even if I don't get the legs looking completely perfect, though, I think I will still be able to use this animation. The particular shot I want it for doesn't actually show the legs most of the time anyways (surprise, surprise!).

IK, You K, We all K.

I have now (kinda) figured out how to animate using constraints, including IK constraints. Makes a lot of stuff easier. For a while I was having a hard time getting the constraints to bake, but I've got it sorted. My first animation with my new model is now working successfully in RCT3, so I'm going to go to bed and then start animating and filming as much as I can tomorrow.

Logo Animation

I did another one of those one-day video projects. Last night I modeled and animated this video. It's a pretty awesome feeling sitting in class, knowing that during all the time you spend studying, something nice and shiny is being rendered for you back in the dorm. Anyways, the video features the logo for the "Edge Club," at ETSU. The Edge Club is basically where all the Digital Media people get together and have discussions about Digital Media awesomeness. The logo that they have for the club is this alien spaceship type thing, so I made it fly around and come to a rest in the logo. I used Blender for the video, of course, and Mixcraft to make the music.

Oh, and there's more info about the edge club here.