New Production Blog!

I've started a new personal project while i'm being a resident animator at DJCAD, you can follow the progress on the official blog or like the page on facebook :)

The Final Film

For everyone who missed the screening of the completed Dancing Nina at the DJCAD Degree Show 2013, it's now available to watch on youtube at your leisure :) The film also acts as my showreel for animation as it's the only thing i worked on within that particular specialism in my final year.

Enjoy!

Me with my framed work on the opening night of degree show :)

Turnaround for Hand in!

Here's the model i made ages ago for 3D Dancing Nina that never got made, but i will be handing in this beauty as part of my finishing competence:

Scene 04: the LEAST important scene that became the MOST important.

So, a while back, I made a very seeeerious decision....

I would have to cut a sizeable few scenes from Dancing Nina, and join up the remaining space between one half of the film that was almost finished, and the last half that was almost finished as well, if I was to have any hope of finishing it.

These are some of the blocked scenes from long ago that will now never see the light of day since being cut and replaced (THANK GOD)

(this scene still exists starting from the spin and has since been animated by Robbie, cleaned up with dress effect added by me and comped by Stan)

So, a meeting was called (it's been a while since that's happened) between Freya, Robbie, Joanna and I to try and brainstorm a do-able solution.

Our problem was that we had to realistically and stylistically join up two parts of the film, get Nina from one standing position on almost centre stage to extreme foreground and spinning with minimal effort and time.

We danced awkwardly and talked, and then sketched awkwardly. Although i was keen to keep Death out of the scene since i had effectively got rid of him in the previous scene- a convenient little mood swing from Nina (these are cleaned up keys, since this test they have been inbetweened and comped):

Others felt it was necessary to bring him in in some form to provide great enough force to throw Nina into a curve that would end in the position, spin and momentum we needed for the following scene.

I ended up compromising by introducing him as a force; sort of tendrils pulling Nina off to the right:

However i decided Death needed to be there as more than just a force after doing these initial tests and ended up finishing of Nina's timing with the intention of placing Death in the scene mirroring Nina's movement perfectly before using some elemental force to yank Nina backwards from the heart or stomach, and continue to pull her to the right after having transformed into a cloth (and therefore saving me a lot of 2nd character animation). The idea of Death using invisible force to pull Nina backwards and the mirroring idea came from this video reference, Thanks Jo! (for invisible force part see: 1:38)

 These were Nina's keys with the timing sorted:

These are the final cleaned and inbetweened linetests, now waiting to be scanned and comped, The scene was meant to be a simple solution but ended up taking me 2 weeks and getting quite complicated with weight and transformations etc. but i'm pleased with it, and proud that i managed to improvise it with some help at the initial stages and block/ key/ inbetween/ clean it all myself :) I think my time spent observationally drawing dancers at the space definitely came in handy for this scene, with the strange perspectives and thinking-on-the-spot work that was done.

part 01:

part 02:

I Am Art and Comping is GO!

So I'm just starting to think of putting together my "making of" when THIS pops up on my radar, and i think hey, why not? I'll give it a watch maybe i'll get some ideas for structuring the "making of".

Little did i know i had just stumbled upon the animator behind some of my favourite parody animation: Harry Podder. I had never found out who made it until now!

More importantly though, I laughed very hard at how much David Stodolny takes the piss out of artsy fartsy nonsense  with his animation style and how much the style he animated his short "I Am Art" with is so very similar to the way i've animated Dancing Nina...

Well my deep, artsy cover's blown, you got me Stodolny!

Any ways, here come some semi- complete shots!! (disclaimer: the colours will probably change, this was a test comp)

These are from Scene_03 part _03. 

This was an early line test of the scene with only Nina:

This was the final inbetweened and cleaned line test:

The timing was changed, and some anticipation added, a breathe and an extra key was added to make the face touch look a little less like a slap.

This segment was blocked, keyed, inbetweened and cleaned entirely by me. Mainly because believe it or not it's faster this way, when i inbetween i don't need a clean up stage.

This is the scene i will be talking about in my Final presentation for the section "finishing competence" as i feel it has one of the best examples of acting in my film. It's a quiet scene in which the characters mainly observe and react to each other. (It was also the first to reach comp but sshh)

I got the extra acting ideas like the face touch (which was not in original choreography) and the smile Nina gives Death at the end from primary research i.e myself and Joe acting out this (full) scene; And research on Nicole Kidman's character Satine in Moulin Rouge led me to the decision to have Nina smile at her partner.

Saving Scene_06

Scene 06 is now scanned and tracked ready for comping but i thought i'd just share the arduous journey it took us to get to that stage.

The scene was blocked roughly by me and then handed to Freya to animate at her own pace, Freya keyed it and then handed it to Jodie to inbetween.

Now it came back looking a bit like this:

I wasn't satisfied with a s few things, once again Nina's head and face were causing inbetweeners trouble, and also it seems some timing issues may have remained from my blocks or the keys, we're not sure. I also was not happy with the smoothness of the head role, and not sure if the long hold was entirely necessary.

Becasue we're so close to deadline, re keying the whole scene was impossible, so i re-jigged the timing, took out some inbetweens and added some. Re-drew a few keys more on model and re inbetweened as necessary, shortened the hold and added a blink, and cleaned achieving this result:

I'm still not entirely happy with it, but i spent about 3 days fixing it and i don't think i'll ever truly be happy with any part of this film, so hey ho moving on!

4 weeks to go... PANIC STATIONS

Okay here's where i'm at. The plan is to finish cleaning scene 1 over le weekend, scan it on Monday. Also finish in-betweening scene 3 part5 over the weekend (cleaning it simultaneously) and scan on Monday.  Block scene 4 THE DREADED LINKY SCENE over weekend, test on Monday.

MONDAY 8TH:

• SCAN scene 1 and scene 3 (part 5), TRACK both (try and find slaves to scan)
• TEST scene 4 blocks and amend
• finish amending/ cleaning scene 6 and TEST

TUESDAY 9TH:

• SCAN scene 6 and TRACK
• CLEAN keys for scene 4

WEDNESDAY 10TH:

• INBETWEEN scene 4 
• DOJ-CON meeting

THURSDAY 11TH:

• TEST scene 4 and SCAN (unless amendments needed)
• CLEAN scene 2
• LIFE DRAWING meeting

FRIDAY 12TH:

• DOJ-CON PHOTO OP
• Match up DRESS KEYS for scene 2, CLEAN
• INBETWEEN dress layer scene 2

SATURDAY 13TH:

• FUNDRAISER: DOJ-CON ALL DAY