A Wee Western (animation)

[dredgemcmac]

Heya Ryan,

Good to see you got this finished by the end of the quarter. I like the character a lot. The animation is a bit stiff but the texturing and modelling look great. Good work!

[KG420]

pretty good, dude. funny.

[ryanfedyk]

Thanks,

Animation is always something I struggle with. All in all it could use some tightening up but I am pretty pleased for the most part.

[dude5487]

It is definetely put together well with a great presentation, the lighting is great, the set up is great, the music fits well. It loads up right off the bat no delays in the 7 times I played it and it was enjoyable to watch. Props on that.

One thing about the music, and this is my opinion on it, you might play around with the idea of stopping the music at parts, possibly when the hat is up on top of the cactus and when he kicks it down, then have the music kick back up again, or atleast tone down the volume on those two parts. The audio just seems too strong at points, but this is just me.

You said that you were happy with it now, as I am sure you had a course deadline so you dont want to mess with it anymore at the moment, though I would go back in the future and refin some of the animation. Loosen up the arm movement and get his back more in the movement of his arm when he is yelling. Also when he kicks the cactus is the part that needs cleaned up the most. His kicking is just stiff and happens too fast, the falling of the cactu happens way too fast, more anticipation. I have lived in AZ my whole life and when Cactai fall they dont fall that fast.

I thought the model was done well and the scene set up nice, especially the work with ZBrush and his clothes. Good stuff!

I really like the short. Props on it and keep up the good work!

[ryanfedyk]

Thanks Dude!

Yeah, I may go back and update the animation a bit after break. On the speed of the cactus falling, I kind of liked the comedic timing of it, even if it is not physically accurate, just kind of the quick finish.

[dude5487]

I can see where you are going with it. Even with the timing you want, it just feels a bit too fast. Its just me though. No worries its good overall I think so im not gonna keep on it. Looking back on it now I didnt even notice the cactus being smashed in at the bottum, looks cool. How did you do that?

[ryanfedyk]

Hey dude,

As far as the smashing of the cactus goes, I just used blend shapes and timed it with the kick of the foot, it was a pretty simple solution but I think it turned out pretty good. Thanks again for the feedback.

[dude5487]

Yeh I figured that that is what it would be. It did turn out well.

What was the rigging set up like on the character? If you dont mind me asking.

[ryanfedyk]

For the body I used a pretty standard rig, pretty much what you would find in any tutorial (or the gnomon rigging DVD). For the face I used a combination of a few methods, it was actually kind of over kill for what the animation ended up being but essentially I used: a jaw bone and eye joints for soft fleshy eyes and jaw. There is a book called The Art of Rigging that is really good, I used some of their methods and also a book called Hyper-Real Facial Rigging that is amazing.

I then went in and built a spline controller to incorporate blend shapes and my bone structure.

Oh yeah and for the body I used the wrap deformer method to bind a low poly mesh to the hi poly mesh.

You can see an image of the facial rig here:
http://www.ryanfedyk.com/facerig.jpg

You can see the rig in action here:
http://www.ryanfedyk.com/cowboyrig.avi

So you basically just attach the spline shapes to the rig using constraints or set driven keys, its alot of fun to play with once you have got it set up.

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