Mr Owls House/Ross Wilkinson

BYE BYE BLOG

2008-06-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

Thats it...its all over! films are finished blogs are finished, hopefully im not finished!

All i can say now is roll on degreee show, I WANT A JOB!

Compositing

2008-06-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Two more days to go and i am finishing up the compositing for the scenes the lads have given me!I have had around roughly 12 scenes to composite and the remainder of them will be done by des or ash as soon as they are rendered out!

Credit_Video

2008-06-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

Credits_animation from Ross Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Credits

2008-06-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

I have been blitzing through some credits for our film! its actually quite nice as it has given me the opprtunity to do a little anmation. below is an image show part of the sequence and when possible the video upload will be on the site.

Video

2008-06-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Untitled from Ross Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Opening shot for film

2008-06-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have been working for the last two to three days compositing a scene consisting of models produced by ian, some by myself, ash, and texture work by MOSTLY rey as well as some myself. below is an image of the scene composited in after effects.

When i can i will post the video file, its just taking ages to upload.

Time to Blitz

2008-06-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

Now that i have all my textures complete as well as the textures given to me by outside sources...'Thank you Rey' i can now start to develop scenes. I have been quite lucky and been given full responsibility over the complete layout of the opening shot! i hope to have it done within the next 5 days

EVERYTHING IS TEXTURED!

2008-06-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished texturing the interior and my parts of the exterior (just the cafe). Desmond can now render with the animation that ash and des have produced so far! Sorry for the quality of the shot below!

Lighting tests!

2008-05-22T15:17:00.001-07:00

These are the results from some render tests within our environment, please take into account that the environment is not fully textured! there is very limited lighting and the overall render takes around 1 minute on my home machine and about 40 seconds in college! happy days!The settings were posted previously for the ambient occlusion.

Rendering

2008-05-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of days i have been experimeting around with rendering an render layers to establish how easy it would be to render ambient oclussion as well as our colour pass. I was fairly successfull and the entirety of the render takes around about one minute a frame. Below is a screen of the settings established in maya.

Environment finished

2008-05-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

The environment has been being worked on for a while and has been taking a back set every 5 minutes for something else. Considering there wasn't to much left to do on it, i have got the remaining UV mapping and modeling finished in less than a day, considering ive had most of the creative control over the look of this film, i have laid out the environment in a way i feel will best suit the story! A majority of it has been modeled myself, but me good mates ash, Desmond and jenny have modeled the following :

Ash - Menus, Reserved Signs
Desmond - Lights, Cutlery, Espresso machine, Till, Pots
Jenny - Plants

next things on the list are texturing, and establishing render settings! As you can see i have been playing around with ambient occlusion in these renders below, it is a a render setting that i will experiment more with for the final look of the film!

Desmonds old man done

2008-05-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Des's Old man is now textured! after an intense amount of stress surrounding him i might add! Looks good though! one of the UV texture maps is shown with the rendershot. The next thing to do is establish some render settings for the film.

Waiter is finished

2008-05-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

After a short spell of texturing the waiter is finished! in my opinion he has turned out better than hoped! well done Adam Smith for such a lovely model, with such nicely laid out uv's 'thumbs up' dude! heres a pic with the texture applied, as well as the main texture map.

Rigging and texturing finished!

2008-04-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

At long last all the texture work and weighting of the old lady is finished! it has been passed down the chain to ash for him to now work on the animation! Below is a screen of the old girl showing the rig and texture via a single pose! I have also posted the main body texture, this does not include the hat/hair/eyes/belt/and glasses that have also been done by myself

Chew test number 3

2008-04-07T17:21:00.001-07:00

The knew chew test with textures and the knew rig. Its a very random post but is here just to show that the knew set up on the old lady works. ide also like to point out that only a handfull of the textures are done on her up to this point and for the next week or so i shall try and finish them!

OL_chew from Ross Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Schedule!

2008-04-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

I also forgot to add that a schedule has been drawn up by the group. Although we all contributed, a majority of it has been produced by Ash and Desmond.

The interior

2008-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Back from dissertation hell, and back on track. Here is three days worth of modeling on the interior environment! it is as far as i can go at the moment as we need to meet up this coming Wednesday to block out the interior so that ash can begin some basic animation will me and desmond go away and actually place the assets in their rightful spot.

Dissertation finished

2008-03-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

After a three week extension the dissertation is finished. if im honest i think the film has taken another hit because of it and the speeed of which i am working needs to be doubled.

A test with a bit of depth

2008-03-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

This is just a little mess around ive had with the character as she stands at the moment! obviously their are areas of her model still missing and areas of her not yet textured. But for now shes looking quite funky.heres a render test i have done with a bit of lighting and depth of field, it is a shot from the film, and i am reasonably happy with the result! obviously its not the finished piece but its a step in the right direction.

There may be trouble!

2008-03-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

I have run into quite a BIG snag! My blendshapes have encountered quite a massive error and will have to be re done. What has happened is that the movement on the jaw does not effect the mesh when a blend shape has been applied. This can be fixed via the meshes input option, but considering that the head has been combined with the body, the input does not recognize this as the origin for the blendshapes and as such will not do as its bloody told! I am having to redo all the blendshapes which is a pain. Unfortunately i cannot get a screenshot showing the where the error has occurred, so below are images showing the knew blendshapes as they are.

The good old tongue

2008-03-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

I have rigged the mouth. I used clusters on the tongue and an IK spline to give the animator the opportunity to play around more freely with the rotation and movement of the tongue. Below are images showing this.

The jaw rigged and ready!

2008-03-07T18:56:00.000-08:00

The jaw has now been rigged quite nicely. I have rigged it so that the animator has the freedom to rotate the jaw on the X,Y, and Z axis. It should provide some nice movement. Below are images showing what has been done.

Set driven keys

2008-03-06T15:25:00.000-08:00

Set driven keys give the animator an easier time of controlling your rig. I have created set driven keys around the fingers and feet, this was at the request of our project director. Below i show the image of the full body rig, and the set driven keys that are assigned to the curves shaped like hands.

The Rigging

2008-03-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

I have almost finished the layout for the rig. I have included curves that act as controls for certain areas of the rig, such as around the arms, the waist, the jaws, legs, etc. This will make it easier for the animator to work with! the following images show the layout of the rig!

This Weeks Agenda

2008-03-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

This week is going to be a challenging one in regards to my 3D skills. I am setting myself the target of properly rigging a character, This may over run this week as it is an area i have not tackled since the first year of my animation course!

DISSERTATIONNNNNNN!

2008-02-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness gracious me, this is having a major effect on my film work! i am not impressed with the speed of which i am churning this dissertation out.

mouth_test_2

2008-01-31T05:26:00.001-08:00

Here is the more recent chew test done using the knew set of blend shapes created. As you can see there is alot more movement around the face, which adds alot more realism to the action. Yet ash is still not happy and has asked for a bit more movement around the face.

Chew_Test_2 from Ross Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Mouth test

2008-01-27T13:16:00.000-08:00

This is a quick animation test i have done using the blend shapes made so far. Understandably Ash the director is not to happy with the lack of movement in the face, and as such these issues will be corrected and shown within another animation test.

mouth_test from Ross Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Testy Testy

2008-01-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

I have been steaming ahead with the blendshapes and am acumulating a nice collection of them. As i am nearing the end of the blend shape proccess i have decided to in my spare time prroduce a 'chew' cycle that should prove to me and our films director whether or not these blendshapes are ok for our film.

The love of a good texture!

2008-01-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

I have completed UV'ing the old lady and am now ready for the next thing on my list, which would seem to be blendshapes. I will be giving myself A fair bit of time to produce these, maybe a week and a half possibly two considering the sheer amount we have!

My old girl is nearing the end

2008-01-10T09:33:00.001-08:00

Here she is almost finished! all i need to do now is model the inside of the mouth then move onto UV's! You can also see from the images that the hair has changed. This was as it will be alot easier for me to put a texture on the hair as a separate mesh than to do it as part of the body mesh.

model update!

2008-01-02T22:23:00.000-08:00

Here is the model as it stand in the new year! i am dissapointed with the progress i have made, even taking into account the christmas holidays.

Update so Far

2007-12-20T13:43:00.000-08:00

This is the model as it stands for now! still alot to do! hair/eyes/inside of mouth/ belt/ buttons

Time To model

2007-12-14T20:25:00.000-08:00

i have to be honest and say that i have not bee very successfull when it has come to keeping on track with the timetable set out for us by desmond and ash! It would seem according to this timetsable that i am a month behind with modeling considering i should have been finished around the 17th of december. Its full speed ahead if im to regain some ground! Here is a copy of the timetable.

Issues of money!

2007-12-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

I am having to do alot of overtime at the moment in order to fund myself for the second term! this is having a very big effect on the amount of work i am producing at the moment! this is something i can honestly say i didnt compensate for within my timetable! lets hope it doesnt distract me to much! I will try and Have the old lady modelled to a point within this next week or so.

Templates!

2007-12-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

With the term over we are now gonna go full steam with the modeling. I have produced two templates for the two main characters.

Essays

2007-11-17T20:46:00.000-08:00

For the next week or so i shall be focusing on getting both the esays done as well as helping Desmond with a majority of the drawings within the animatic.

Thumbnails the sequel

2007-11-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Desmond started to producing the animatic a while back, but we felt after reviewing the thumbnails we originally had, to go away and re draw and layout scenes we felt were not strong enough. here are the new thumbnails, as they stand now, but they still might need alot of tweaking
!

The new colour boards

2007-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Here are the colours boards i produced for some of the main scenes within our animation.

Time for Some thumbnailing

2007-11-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

Heres the thumbnails weve been working on so we may move on and produce a very professional animatic! it took alot longer than exapected, and that was most probably as i was left alone to produce the thumbnails. there are parts that need improving on, but for the time being these will be more than good enough.

Conceptual stuff

2007-10-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

forgot to add the pictures, woops

Begining the thumbnails

2007-10-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

After finally coming up with a structured story, with character designs etc, we are now ready to move on and visually develop the idea. We will start story boarding at some point this week, and aim to have it finnished within a week or two.

2007 - A doughnut odyssey

2007-10-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

The team has been working very hard on a script, and everything that accompanies it! For this week we hope to have an understandable and proffessional script that will accompany our technical abilities! we have had the luck of knowing someone on a broadcasting course who has been kind enough to offer his skills in this department.

Every cloud has a silver lining!

2007-10-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Well it would seem that my idea was not picked by the tutors! this was quite a dissapointment to me and a suprisingly large amount of people who came up to me afterwards and said they wanted to work on my idea! but it was not picked and so the show must go on! I have chosen to work on ashes project called 'cafe le doughnut'! this is as i feel with the limited amount of environment and character modelling i will be able to produce some fantastic models to accompany this very animated piece!

How bitching is pitching!

2007-10-02T19:56:00.000-07:00

have finally got to pitch my idea! i was suprisingly nervous to begin with but got into the swing of things after a while! the response from the class was in my opinion excellent, i had alot of feedback and alot of people seemed interested, even coming up to me afterwards asking a tonne of questions! the tutors seemed to think the idea had allready been milked, but i have never seen any animation, or live action for that matter with signs that are alive, i even ravaged the internet for anything that could even resemble my idea and there was nothing, so i think that the tutors are a bit confused!
Below are the images i used to present my pitch....

The begining of a new - the pitching process!

2007-09-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

After spending a majority of my summer break working at framestore CFC i didnt have as much time as i would have liked to work on my pitching! however i dont feel that what i have produced is lacking, and should hold its own when i come to pitching the idea.