Monday 9 February 2015

Advanced Animation and VFX WEEK 1

Week 1:
The project brief has been given to us and I began generating ideas. I initially thought of pyro simulations but settled on animation. I wanted to animate interaction between two characters, as although animating a single character can be challenging, interaction has it's own difficulties which, as an animator, is a challenge which must be conquered. As a fan of wrestling, I decided to have my characters fighting. During the University's Future Fest, I attended a workshop and lecture by Chris Lackey who tasked us to create a layout for a comic page. I had set a sequence based on a Seth Rollins and Rob Van Dam fight.




Using this initial sequence, I expanded it out to create a 38 second sequence. Taking inspiration from the Seth/RVD fight and incorporating a CM Punk/John Cena fight (For the GTS)



Models I plan to use are both created by Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin. The Heel Character will be portrayed by a model called "Ultimate Beefy": http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ultimate-beefy



The Face character will be a model called "Ultimate Bony":  http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ultimate-bony

I chose these models for their stark contrast to each other. The muscular character playing the Heel as larger characters are often made Heels in WWE (Big Show, Triple H, Kane, Bray Wyatt) and the thin character as a Face (CM Punk, Kofi Kingston, Dean Ambrose)
The lack of face on the characters would allow me to focus more on the body language of the characters, which is a key part of character animation, allowing appeal. 

MOOD BOARDS

Faces in Wrestling

Heels in Wrestling

The Ring.



Animation will be done in Maya. I have been spending a lot of time using Maya since Summer, preferring to use this more than 3Ds Max. 
Maya's use in Industry ranges from it's use in films such as The Matrix, Avatar, Rango and Frozen, to television series' such as The Walking Dead, Futurama and South Park.

Cameras within Maya. I would use a 50mm camera due to it being a "normal" setting. By "Normal" or "Standard" I mean that the image rendered will match the human eye. 
Lighting set ups. I will be using real world WWE lighting set ups as a basis for the setting in the piece.
Real world example

A 3D rendering of the lighting set up and Titantron

In my scene, the spotlights facing the crowd will not be necessary. These are primarily used for the themes of the wrestlers.

3D Animation Pipeline. http://youtu.be/sgvfMfsBmRk

REFERENCE FOOTAGE/INSPIRATIONS.
The animation I plan on doing isn't exactly something you can comfortably do in the living room. The moves shown are performed by highly trained individuals. Even simple moves require a lot of training. The two moves shown in this piece have the ability to go very wrong if you are not properly trained, both for the move and physical fitness.

Seth Rollins - Curb Stomp

CM Punk - GTS

Zombie Cagefighter - Rubber Onion Animation, Stephen Brooks
A 2D animation updated to be on 1s and in some sections, 2s. Excellent staging and a great example of character interaction.

Suplex Wrestling Fatality - Pavel Barnev
More character interaction. Excellent secondary motion.

Power Rangers Origins *LEAKED TRAILER* (Low Quality)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZStdULolg0
The character animation in this video is just awesome. It's all in the super hero poses.


Block In - Preliminary
A preliminary section of blocked in animation. This footage is very early and will very likely be reworked before the final piece.
Blocking in animation is used for timing purposes. Creating Blocked in animation in Maya is done in the Trax editor. Using this editor can be found in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avhszxFS2Mw

WEEK ONE GANNT CHART:
Each week, I will show an updated Gannt Chart


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