Final Project - Storyboarding

Storyboarding is an essential part of the animation process. Every event, camera angle and piece of dialogue for every scene of your animation will be noted here. I have found it to be a very useful means of fleshing out the idea i wish to take forward for my final piece.

To make the process more manageable and let me think more in depth to develop my idea, i used a 3-stage method.

1) Firstly, i create a very rough write up of the events of the animation, this would appear in the form of a brief, bullet-pointed list.

2) Secondly, i take this initial write up and flesh it out with detailed descriptions and camera angles.

3) Finally, i take the detailed write up and apply it to a storyboard template, allowing me a visual representation of the events of the animation that i can then take forward to Maya to create the real animation.

I feel it's worth noting my awareness that this heavily simplified, elongated storyboarding process may not be necessary given the general 'roughness' of the storyboarding stage. Regardless, i felt it allowed for a more manageable workflow and provided me with a great way to visualise my animation and in the process provide me with new ideas.

[Final Storyboard]

Final Project - Reference Videos

Given that i wanted to try and catch the personality of the Scout's character as he is portrayed in Team Fortress 2. I thought it'd be best to refresh my memory of how his character moves; i'm already well aware that his characters peronality is sharp, boisterous one. This is no more evident than in his introductory short video "Meet the Scout":

This is just one of a series of videos for each of the classes that appear in TF2, and the scout appears in many of them, but in this he is the focus and we get to see his bold, cocky demeanor reflected in his expressions and all of his movements. It is this essence i would like to capture in my animation.

"Meet the Spy" (above) is another good reference as it features the scout heavily, though if you watch the video you'll see why I'm a bit dubious about that statement. Nevertheless i believe it's still something that can be taken into account.

Finally, "Meet the Medic" features the scout briefly, but still demonstrates some of the scouts character:

Together with my knowledge of the scouts movements in-game i believe i should be able to recreate his personality to at least an acceptable level.

Final Project - Ideas

Here you can see all my ideas for this animation project. I have deliberately kept my ideas simple, trying to involve settings that require little modelling on my part, environments will be very bare so i can focus on the animation of the character. I will download models where necessary.

Okay, i realise it is good practise to have multiple ideas, but the single idea i've had, heavily influenced by the scout model and its only included prop model, the bat, is something i feel leaves me without the need to think of more. Though admittedly at this time i do not have a complete story in mind.

Testing out an angry/strained facial expression, this model really has been fantastically rigged!

Scout and his Ball

In this idea the scout is seen alone, in an unknown location, hitting a ball against a wall and catching it, he does this for a short time before he has a bad shot and sends it flying up too high, but for some reason it doesn't go over, even though it should have. The ball falls to the ground and the scout picks it up confused. It is revealed to the viewer that the ball is rebounding on an identical version of itself and falling right back down. this leads to the discovery that above this wall is a window into an identical, mirrored parallel universe, with the only difference being that the scout on the other side is wearing a blue t-shirt, not red.

From the discovery of the scout on the other side, i'm not sure where to go with the story, i am also apprehensive about the amount of work that would be required to create two instances of the same animations, as mirroring animations would be difficult, although i may be able to overcome this by building the wall along one of the axis...

Final Project - Scout Model

As i mentioned previously, i was considering the use of models from the game Team Fortress 2 as an option for creating different characters, i found this rigged version of the Scout through a simple Google search.

After some issue with the textures not working (this was simply down to file location issues), i was greeted by the model you see above.

It's a very well rigged model, nothing is done through direct interaction with bones, it's fully controller based. Here couple of poses i whipped up, well i say whipped up, this is a very complex model to pose, so it took rather longer than i'd have liked and is making me re-estimate how much time this project will take me.... *gulp* anyway, here they are, i'm particularly happy with the second (despite the awkward left arm):

I believe this model will be great as an asset and also as an aid for my idea's, with this model i have a theme i can build around.


Notes on the scout as a model/character:

- Given the amount of time taken to pose this model i believe i will have to re use animations like run cycles where possible, by storing them in negative frames.

- Scouts character is very sarcastic, i can try to imitate this or create my own character using the scout model, however, i find that seeing a well known character given a new personality to be quite jarring. I would like to avoid this if possible.

- Scouts character is very quick and agile, therefore his movement will have to reflect this.

08/04/13 - Final Project

Today we were informed that for our final assessment we must create an animation that is at least two minutes long.
Important notes!:

- It can be about anything
- We can use any animation package we choose as long as we show the creation process
- We do NOT have to create our own assets, we could even use the models we have used throughout the term 

It's a fairly exciting prospect and i will be posting my ideas up as soon as i have them!

As for the software package, i would be tempted to use Sources Filmmaker as it provides an easy way to create something that looks professional, though there are some drawbacks:

- I am fairly unfamiliar with the software
- Due to the ease of incorporating pre-made animations into your film i would have to make it very clear which animations were my own, and that it was truly me who had created them.
- Animations inside the software are hard to do so i would hope that there is a way to import my own animations.

UPDATE:

After a quick Google search to see if importing animations from Maya to Source Filmmaker is possible i have found that it is, BUT, sadly it seems the method is rather complex and it seems that the payoff will most likely not be worth the hassle. link

Despite this i may try and obtain the TF2 models that are included in the Source Filmmaker files, i believe these come pre-rigged which is a bonus.