The last week has been a bit of a blur of rendering, animating and compositing, but I am definitely getting closer to a final animation. It really is difficult to anticipate all the work that comes with such a simple story and short animation, and it is something that I definitely will not underestimate again in the future. Saying that, I'm confident that I will have the animation completed and the story will be resolved at around 2-minutes in length (Perhaps a little longer)

One thing which I realised I have done right is the way I created my sets. I created about four scenes with a very strict set (only works from a few camera angles) which allowed me to pinpoint what needed to be worked on and avoided putting detail into anything that wouldn't be seen. This has been really helpful over the last few weeks when animating, as I can just drop the character into the scene, animate him and tweak the lighting before rendering. It is also true though, that animating has been by far the biggest challenge over the last few weeks, but I'm hoping the characters are portrayed well enough for the story  to come through fine.

Over the next couple of  days, I have about two shots of Pre-viz to finalise and render as well as produce the making of, so there is no spare time floating around.. On a sidenote, I am really enjoying the compositing side of things, working in After Effects with painted backdrops and blending 2D into 3D using Maya cameras, and compositing Effects over the action. I'm considering putting more emphasis on this, and I think I'd really enjoy focusing on this in a future project, perhaps learning the full possibilities of After Effects or finally getting the chance to try and learn Nuke.

Here are a few shots of the later part of the animation, where the suitcase is catching up with the train. The animating has had a few headaches (Everything moving at speed while things are individually animating) but it has also come with a huge bonus of learning how to solve or move around problems.

I think it is very easy to get tunnel-vision at these stages, and forget how the animation looks to an audience rather than to yourself, if anyone has any comments of things that look 'off' through the last few posts then I won't be too annoyed when it comes to fixing them (But I definitely will be a little)

It's been about a week since my last updates, which is quite a while, as we're moving towards the end of the project, time definitely isn't spare and I've overlooked the blog. I've got a folder of completed tutorial videos and images which I'll post up in a big post for Alan next week, but despite appearances, I am working.

The last week or so has mainly been put towards animating, the first Act and a half is animated, and I've spent some time refining the character's movements. I have edited the first minute or so together, and I'm working on the next shots in the sequence. Below are some shots from Premiere after compositing in After Effects.









I'm now working on the 'roof run' animations. The backdrop painting for this will take some work as I want it to show the town, not just the desert.




As I move on to the next part of the animating stage, there are a couple of hurdles to overcome, the main one being the new things my character has to do. I'll be creating a new rig (Hopefully tommorow) for this stage which will include a Tie hanging out (As a make-shift tongue) as well as the ability to snap open and closed. This will be done using the same methods as the other rig. The other shot which will take some time is that of the lasso, which the suitcase will use to hook-up onto the rail-shed roof. I'm confident that I
I'll have time to achieve it, but I'm hoping I'll have enough time to refine it before the deadline.

So Critique week begins, I've stocked up on substances to keep me working so it should be a productive few days!

Yesterday I modelled the suitcase and today I plan on getting the rig and movements sorted so I can finally start to animate. I've read up on ways to make it move, and have created a set-up which I think so far is working.

The way I've 'rigged' it so far, is actually not to rig it using joints or skinning, but to create a selection of deformers and have them controllable by a separate control. I'm now adding some blend shapes alongside this for some more complicated shapes. Below is how I've put it together, I can't see any problems at the moment, but is this the best way of controlling it? Or will I run into problems when animating. It seems to be able to do most of the movements it needs to in the animation.

It has two bends, a twist and a squash deformer.



The movements I have at the moment are these:

I haven't posted in a while, I've mainly been tidying up the environments and trying out some compositing for the final train shots. Below are some stills from the shots that are close to completed, there are still a few objects missing, that I need to add in, but the environments / sets and props are almost complete, and I'm now working on the character ready for animation.





Tommorow, hopefully I can talk to Alan and as a result I will be able to rig the suitcases to perform how I want them to, and then move on to blocking out the character animation. I then have about 3 weeks of character animation, which I am confident I can refine and hopefully the result will be a successful story!

The modelling / texturing stage of my project is going quite well, I still have a couple of environments to do, but so far the system of dividing them up into shots is paying off in time and work. Below is the station set, where the first minute or so of character animation takes place. There are three benches (One that he lands under after falling off the trolley and two which he jumps over / slides under) I'm trying to work tightly to my first animatic. There is still improvements to be made. The render time is quite high (roughly a minute a frame I think) mainly becuse of the lighting and texture sizes, but it should be bearable.

Edit:
I'm still progressing with the environments. I'm modelling the last of the props then I need to refine everything, batter it up as suggested by Alan. Below are some more recent shots of the second environment. The Handcar needs a bump map and more rust and the ground texture needs increasing I think. I'm looking forward to seeing it with painted backdrops, to get an idea of the final look.






Edit: I've started work on the rail-shed environment. I'm going to try and 'batter' up my environments a bit, some loose planks, chunks missing etc, try to make it look like the arse-end of nowhere, which should be aided with my backdrops.

There is a lot more to do on this one, the textures need work, especially the terrain.











As for the second animatic, I've been working on it with ideas here and there over the last week. I started to a animate the suitcase using animation paper and a makeshift lightbox (Sheet of glass and a lamp) this gave me a two-day headache after staring into a lamp, so I put that idea aside! My plan is to have all the environments finished by Sunday, which should give me 5 weeks of animatic and animation (Including the train). Till then I'll continue to rough out the animation and should have a more detailed, moving animatic next week when I can focus on it.