Animation grim and the cat

This week i have been thouroghly stuck into animating scene three. it is a reallly longs scene and grim needs to be animated in just about every shot.
I have continued to keep in contact with Josie and sending her more backround animation to do for the film.

Cat rig complete

This week i have completed the rig for the cat character i have created including paint weights and proper setup for him.





I have fixed the last bits of aniamtion for scene one and have also done all the animation for scene 2.
i have been in contact with wan about the effects we need for the film and he has also fixed some problems me and John were having with some of the rigged characters moiving very slowly
I have emailed Raphael to find out how he is getting on with the animation but no reply yet.
Spoke to Dan this week to see how my animating was going. it was decided that i should aim to get a scene completed a week to stay ontrack to completeing the film.
i aslo made sure that each time i completed a scene i made and animatic using playblasts to chech that the film is coming together ok and to be somthing more accurate which ben our sound designer can work to.

Scene one animation complete

This week we have finished animating the first scene of the film. I have finished animating the Grim Reaper as he makes his way through the graveyard. doing so has reveiled a few little problems as well aas one problem which has buged me whilst animating. grim's sleves are a bit of a mess. it isalmost imposible to move or rotate the arms without the sleve deforming very badly. to make it worse thecontrols i carefully planed do nothing to help the way they deform.
i dont know wether to fix this problem before continuing or to just work with it as it is.
i feel frustrated when problems like this are out of my control as idealy the sleeves would not be modeled in this way with them already hanging dow from his wrists as it make it extreemly hard to make the model look good in any other position than the default position.
i feel that it is very important to understand the who prossess when contributing to a production. for instance the model which is intended for rigging shold not be done just to look good in the on position but had thought behind what is intended for it animation wise. i feel frustrated by this many times with James models, for example grims sleeves, its all fine making them droop nicely when the has his arms streached out to the side of him but it make it imposible for me to create a rig which can then make the sleeves look convincing once his arms are at rest by his side. its amazing how small things become big problems further down the line.

Finished Rigging Grim

This week i have completed rigging the main character for our film and i am quite confident that it will work well or all i need it to do in the film.

Crow!

I have spent this week making the rig for the crow and fixing various problems i am having making the wings fold and move properly.

I have also rigged Johns Bob character for his appearance in the graveyard.

A dillema

This week has been a bit of a problem week for our group we have lost a member, Patrick who planned to help me with the rigging of the characters this week. At the begining of the week however we managed to find a first year animation student willing to help us out with some basic rigging and also some help rigging from Wan.
This week I have been working on the blend shapes for the character Bob who says hi to grim in the graveyard, he is the only charater in our film to talk properly. I have also been playing around with rigging so that I know what to do when i come to rigging this week. because this week has been so occupied with other problems i have fallen a bit behind with the schedual, i really wanted to start animating this week. so I will have to work really hard this week to make sure all the rigging is complete and the characters are ready for animation.

Textured the characters!

This week i have been texturing the remainder of my characters, I really enjoy painting the textures for my characters althought it can be a little time consuming, especially making the feather texture for my crow below. it was quite chalenge to make him look natural and acheive the look of feathers. i alpha chaneled the feathers to make it appear like i have modeled the individual feathers which i think has worked well. Hopefully when I add a rig in with the model I can close the wings properly. I am a bit dissapointed this week as i planned to get alot more of the blend shapes done for my characters this would have got me back on target with my schedual. Next week I plan to get most of the rigging done for my characters. Its not really enought time for me so i am rather worried.