Rig issues

Whilst working on this module, particularly the song sequence, I encountered a few rig issues. The Malcolm rig I've been using is a great rig, very expressive, I've yet to explore it's full potential, and honestly, this is the first time I've encountered problems.


Malcolm's limbs have added controllers, to allow the animator to and a little extra bend and stretch when needed, depending on the style of the scene. However, i found they would just bend and often get lift behind, sort of trail behind the rest of the arm.


Fortunately, I was able to key these rogue controllers back into place, but it's certainly an issue I'll have to look out for in the future. I'll look for a permanent fix should it happen again. Another issue I came across was a bit of leg wobble. In the above clip, you'll notice the knees sort of, jiggle as he comes to a stop. Now, the legs are animated using an IK hierarchy, at no point were any keys set for the knees. The problem seemed unsolvable, even switching to an FK hierarchy and manually keying the knees didn't work, the knees remained locked in position, almost like they were linked to another part of the rig that I was unaware of. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a solution. Looking over the support forums set up by the rigs makers proved fruitless too, hopefully this is just a one off bug, and it won't disrupt any further work.

One To Watch - I'm A Monster

I love this. This is a test piece, a test piece! for Barcelona based studio, Headless Productions latest project, "I'm A Monster". Apparently the studio pride themselves in trying to revive 2D animation, and boy, if this is the quality of the stuff they're kicking out, I really hope they succeed. No news as to when we will see the finished product, but I can't wait. In the mean time, check out their blog, it's full of some truly lovely 2D splendour! Headlessproductions.blogspot.com

The Presenter - Spot The Difference Progress.

Been a while since I posted about my presenter clip. It kind of got put in the back burner for a while whilst I worked on my song and dance clip. I started to try and ease the transitions between poses. This is a character with a big attitude. Very full of himself, and this translates into his gestures and poses. However, his dialogue is very snappy, leaving not a lot of time, to fit in an awful lot of gesturing. As pointed out in earlier feedback sessions, it's looking likely that I'd have to chop out or tone down some poses. A little bit more smoothing. Here, I tried to add a bit more breathing space between poses, however they still looked like they were fighting for screen time with each other. Just too much going on, particularly with the hands. The pauses are too static. Okay, started adding some overlaps to the hands and shoulders to try and ease those transitions some more. I'm starting to see an improvement. Still need to work on those pauses though, they don't feel natural, almost forced. I still think some of those poses need tuning down a notch, but the overlaps and follow throughs definitely help. After watching another tutorial from the great Keith Lango, (see previous post), I begin to fix the nagging problems with my pauses, or holds. They weren't moving holds, which lead to the somewhat robotic feel, the piece had before. After adding some eases into and out of the holds in the graph editor, the piece instantly began to loosen up, not in a 'smooshy', way, it doesn't look drifty, but almost just the right amount of drift that occurs naturally from a weighted body stopping and starting motion. Refined the holds some more. After some more feedback, I also dialled back a few of the poses, some of the non essential poses, or even merged a couple of poses into one, to try and eliminate some of the jitters the piece still had. This was hard, as all of those big poses supported the pieces story, and I didn't want to undersell them. I think I toned it down just enough, maybe it could do with a little more...

More Keith Lango - Moving Holds

More Keith Lango goodness. I've been using a lot of holds in my animation this module, and Keith here has just told where I've been going wrong all this time. I would usually use a bounce back, or work in overlap somehow to my holds, and often it would look too much, and I would just go without. Great stuff.

Life Drawing

Some long overdue life drawing. Must remember to go to more sessions... Yeah, I'm a little out of practice. Really need to tighten up my technique, get quicker, build more gestures into my drawing.

Guitar Reference

Coming from a musical family, acquiring reference for a guitar player was no problem. My dad was more than happy to oblige.

Right from the off, I wanted the strumming hand to be a point of interest, with lots of secondary motion. Not too much, as the videos show, there is still a lot of tension in the guitarists fingers, in order to effectively pluck the instruments strings. However, I do want to exaggerate it a bit. My dad's technique relies on strumming with his wrist, he's more of a technical guitarist, lots of fast, complex melodies, than a rhythm guitarist, or casual strummer. I think I'll have my guitarist strum more with his elbow, and the wrist, fingers, and most importantly his thumb, will follow through. Not too much, as the thumb will be plucking the strings.


The thumb and wrist motion will move in a sort of oscillating motion, think of the piston arm driving a train wheel. Hopefully this will create a interesting strumming pattern, exaggerated, but not so exaggerated as the not look believable.

Favourite Animated Moments - Meet Buck

Created by 4 students from French VFX school Supinfocom, over the course of 12 months (6 months preproduction, 6 months production.)Meet Buck has to be my favourite short of 2011. Everything from the texture painting, character animation, and even staging just oozes such fluid, yet electric energy, a kind that is rarely found in any 3D animated short, never mind a student produced film.

Although produced entirely in 3D, any frame from Meet Buck could easily be mistaken for a 2D painted image.

When asked about their choice of art style, the team behind the film said, (translated from French) "When you look at art books, many things are lost in the final 3D rendering... We want to stay close to the illustrations."

Of course, lighting such a strikingly graphical film had it's own set of challenges. Conventional lighting techniques often rendered much of the painted textures unreadable. In order to overcome this, some shading was painted into the characters texture, to define volume, and any other lighting, such as rim lighting, shadows etc, were rendered separately in their own passes, and finally composited together.


Diffuse, ambient, highlight, rim, and shadow passes were rendered separately, and composited together.

Of course, the animation deserves a mention too. The film is full of broken joints and smears, not unlike a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes short.

The above sequence sees the main character Buck being chased by his girlfriends overprotective, game hunter, father. As Buck slips and rumbles his way to escape, he buckles and bends from one extreme position to another. Brilliant use of offsets and broken joints, coupled with added smears, which look like may have been added as a hand drawn effect, much like the rest of the films effect work, I think pull of this frantic, yet slick chase scene brilliantly.As I come to the end of the AP2 module, I'm heavily thinking about my own film project for later this year. Meet Buck has definitely got me thinking about trying something different, jumping out of my comfort zone a little. If anything, I feel I've been playing it a little save with my animation so far, time to break out and try something new and exciting...

Making of insights and images taken from French website 3DVF, translated version can be found here http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dvf.com%2Fdossier-765-1-rencontre-avec-equipe-meet-buck.html