AAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDD

Done.

I would just like to thank the academy and everyone in the world. Without your support I could not have accomplished this amazing short animation. The awards and job offers are already pouring in, to be honest it's a little overwhelming, even for someone of my caliber but It's going to be fine and I'm well on my way to 1 million dollars. My goal is in sight, watch this space and as always

CHOW

Film's animated - Compositing has been Composited - Just Sound to go - Smiley Face

As you can probably tell from the title I am oonnn track!

I have finished animation and have edited the film together. It is 3 minutes exactly and it's looking pretty good. There are some issues still with flickering in the eyes and flashing grass but I am in the process of righting these problems to make the most polished film I can.

The compositing is complete on the Burger Barn explosion shot and I'm very happy with it. The explosion looks great and really adds production value to my animation.

I have started the sound design for the film and have managed to find foley for a lot of the sounds I need. There are some that I can't find however so on Friday I will be going to the recording studio to create the last few foley and sound effects sounds.

Next week after Friday I will be working on the score with my composer to add some life to the film with music. I'm pretty excited about this part because music is one of the most important parts of your film and when it's added your film really comes to life.

But yeah, everything's looking good and I'm definitely on track!

Chow

Super Update

Heyo

So the animating is done for my animation bar one little shot and I've just been rendering these past couple weeks. Some shots are better than others and some needed several re renders but I only have about a quarter of the film left to render before mid November.

I am having this weird issue where textures are blurry in some scenes but are crisp in others. So my coupon that I want to be readable is very pixelated in some shots but perfectly crisp in other shots. It's very weird and annoying and I have no idea how to fix it. But I'll let future me worry about that.

My compositing shot still needs to be rendered yet. I have a hefty explosion in my animation that really slows down the computer and is awful to work on. I have it looking how I want and the building explodes how I want but the burger pole next to it doesn't get affected by the explosion because I haven't made it into an nCloth yet. That's going to be a pain but I still have to do it eventually. Soon really. Also the shot after that where the coupon burns up I still have to animate. I've tried several ways of achieving the effect but I can't work out how to make the polygons actually disintegrate. I can get them to break apart but then I have a shite load of little tiny squares floating around which isn't ideal.

Oh well I'll figure it out soon enough.

I'm going to be applying to lots of animation jobs for next year which will probably mean me moving somewhere else and bigger which is a little scary but I guess I gotta grow up and get a job sometime... well maybe not grow up but definitely the job thing.

Anyway that's about all I'm up to at the moment. I can't wait to see everyones films and animations and to read all the graphic novels, The end of this year is going to be awesome and terrifying at the same time so that's exciting and nerve wracking.

PS I'm also working on a side project graphic novel. Here's a picture of the protagonist just so there's a picture that goes with this blog.

Chow

3rd Year Project with TRENT

I'm making a 3D Trent animation for my end of year film. I've got Trent modeled and a script ready that I'm pretty happy with. Here's what he looks like as of right now

There's still quite a lot to do yet so I better get back to work and stop writing blogs.

Chow

Charlie Floyd - What I learned

So Charlie is basically done now. I would like to reflect on my experience of this film. Sweet lets start

So my position on Charlie Floyd was Rotoscoping TD. This is a very time consuming role but looking back I'm glad I took on this role. Rotoscoping is described as "easy but takes a long time to do" which isn't technically true. Sure it's "easy" if you want a sub par looking roto when you're finished but if you actually spend your time rotoing trying to get better and not just get the shot done then it becomes quite a challenging task indeed. After completing over 60% of the shots myself I became far better at rotoscoping. I became faster and more accurate. In the end it would have been faster to do a lot more of the shots that other people came and completed because I was faster and better and I also had to go back through and fix quite of lot of shots others completed because they weren't up to standard. It's not their fault they just didn't have as much experience as me. If I were getting paid to rotoscope I think I would be pretty stoked to be in a job that I know I can do well and fast, even though I didn't expect to want to do something like this before I took on the roll.

Charlie Floyd taught me that even if something sucks when you start out if you push through you can gain skills in areas you never thought you would which is pretty cool. I would be absolutely stoked to get a job rotoscoping now and I never thought I would want to do something like that before Charlie.

Chow

Charlie Floyd coming to an end

The film is picture locked and we're this close to being completely finished with the project. I have been finished for many weeks in my department so I have been helping the vfx team with some of their shots. The rotos are looking good and I'm happy with the work I've put in and the effort of my roto team, which consists of Krystal and Chris. Others helped but my main team was these two. The film looks good but IS it a good film? Cough.

Chow

Big Update

So Charlie's almost done, just a few more shots to finish up but my job is over. Handed in The Mummy animation today. The title might be misleading but that's all I've really got to update on. I might put The Mummy online at some point but as of right now all my attention is going toward my final animation for the end of the year.

Chow

It... is.... ALIVE

Animation is awesome!

Rigging, texturing and uv unwrapping, not so awesome, but animating is SUPERFUNTIMESWHOO

Rotoing still sucks but the roto team is quite large now. We have Me, Jaimee, Chris, Krystal, Joel, Ruby and Danny working on roto shots right now, hopefully we get this mess done in time for the holidays....

No relevant picture again but here's last weeks Trent comic.

Chow

Just finished texturing everything. Putting in some lights now. Going to start animating soon. :D

Rotoscoping

I hate it....

I'm sooo close to finishing the hardest shot of the film. It has taken me 15+ hours so far but it's almost done. It's messing with my head a bit though. Every time I close my eyes I see roto points but the worst part is... they're not in the right place. So in my head I see incorrect roto points....

Yesterday I did a sneaky easy shot just to give myself a "break" from the ridiculous hard one. I don't have any pictures of the roto for this post but here's a Unicorn Rambo character I'm working on. He doesn't have a horn because it got chopped off :(

Chow

Getting there!

Just finished modeling the set and spent a good few hours making a burning torch to light up the tomb. I've got the mummy looking nice and comfy in his sarcophagus now just got to unwrap and texture a whole lot of pots and the set then I can start animating WHEW.

UPDATEWHOOO

The Mummy moves!

So, Rotoscoping sucks and it takes too long.

60 frames took me from 10am til 3pm and it's not even half the shot I'm working on. There's about 70 something shots to go also.... ARERGHGJG!

Cough, anyway I have recruited some helpers because I'm gonna snap otherwise.

V48 was fun but that's irrelevant.

Just a butt load of 3D animating and a butt load of Rotoscoping to do super freakin quickly.

I just wanna draw cartoons :(

CHOW

Finished Mummy

Weta, here I come :D

What else...

I've rotoscoped a grand total of one shot from the group film, I'm basically half way there. It looks pretty good so far but it was the easiest shot in the whole film to do.

Really I have just been making this Mummy, waiting for more shots to roto and drawing pages for my graphic novel. 

Where I'm at

Yep

Roto tests and what not

So I tried out some rotoscoping with Nuke and it's awesome. I completed a fairly straight forward shot that runs for about 15 seconds in roughly 2 hours and the outcome was very pleeaaassiinngg. I didn't need to go back and fix much if anything. Emma was happy and so was Joel so looks like it's all happy.

But apparently there's 160 something shots in this film............ and a large chunk are going to need rotoscoped.......... and they will all be a bit more involved than the one I tested with.......... plus I didn't exactly do it as professionally as I will be with the actual shots and it still took around 2 hours for 15 seconds.

Assuming I get faster and better with practice and assuming only 80% of shots are going to beed rotoscoped (probably more but just for the example). Then assuming the shots will only be 7.5 seconds on average then this is going to take around 130 hours of rotoscoping.

Also I'm terrible at math.

Let the fun times begin.

PS I look like a bushman

This cartoon is really cool beans

Out of sight

This just makes me want to do more 2D.....

Anyway here's where I'm at with the Mummy model

Character Boards

Updates

SO everything seems to be moving ahead smoothly. We have a pledge me page up for the group project that has raised $775 already which is pretty good if you ask me. The goal is $2,500 so hopefully we reach that.

Handed in the character boards for my Mummy character and did a presentation about it.

Yesterday was our first lesson in Maya and it was a lot more fun than I had imagined. It's extremely easy to screw something up in that program.

Anyway, here's a picture of what I made for dinner the other night

PEACE

Mummy Digital Painting

Just finished my digital painting for my character

looking pretty sexy

Working on the Character Bio next. At the moment I'm struggling to find any personality treats but I'm sure I'll figure out what the devil that's supposed to mean :D

Getting underway

Right we have an idea!

Finally we've decided and the ball seems to be rolling. All we need now is an ending... but pfft that's hardly important... yeah...

Anyway, most of the group was happy with the decision, some weren't so happy, not going to mention any names but one of them rhymes with Masper Daywood.

Still have a lot of pictures to scan in but I'm sure I'll get round to those.

Maybe

Peace

Book

Yo

Photoshop Realism Exercises

Drapery

Nose

Nailed it

Vue Baby

I like Vue

Balls

This is my western movie idea about a big ball and his epic struggle to defeat the cactus menace.

It's a romcom 

Pitches

So the class pitched their ideas for the group project today. I missed it because I had another class but apparently it went well. So as a group we voted on the best three and the ones that got chosen were "Pirates" "Bunker" and "Doors"

I have some other stuff to upload but my hard drive is way over there so I'll do it next time :D

Logo for group

 I designed a logo for our group "Electric Shoelace"

Get it cos liek there's lightning in his shoelaces

It's pretty funny

Doing some research

I have been looking for some Mummy's I can base my character on. Here's a couple I have found.

I'm going to have my mummy still wrapped up in the bandages. There weren't as many 3D animated Mummy's as I thought there would be so that's interesting.

What I have found is that Mummy's don't just look like people covered in bandages, they just look like old dried up dead guys. I have found some more images that I want my Mummy to look like.

At this point I'm not sure if I'm going for a realistic looking Mummy or a cute cartoon looking Mummy. I'll probably end up with a mix of both. Personally I hate when 3D animations try to look too real and prefer them to still have a cartoon style.

I'm also not sure what to do with the face yet. I feel like I want to have some of the Mummy's eyes showing but not sure if it will have a distinct mouth yet. Although it will be easier to portray it's emotions with a distinct mouth, I don't know if that's the look I want for my Mummy.

I am going to be doing a whole lot of drawings to try and get the Mummy looking right. Stay tuned!!

Class Exercise!!!

Shaded some balls the other day

It helps if you squint...

First post and first look a The Mummy :0

Why hello there :D

My name is Sam Ruffell and this year I am doing a Post Graduate Diploma in Animation. I graduated with a Bachelor of Digital Media in 2012 where I learnt to be a filmmaker for 3 years. I've decided I want none of that so I thought I'd do a year in animation where I feel more comfortable.

This year we have to create a 3D model of a character and I've decided to model a mummy. Today in class I drew up a quick doodle of the mummy then gradually added detail as the class progressed. Finally, I ended up with this little guy you see here. I doubt the final mummy will look like this but it's a good start.

That's it from me for now, kthx bye