Cookie Short - WIP

#1


Hi everyone! I’ve never posted any of my own work on here, though I have been on this board for years. However, I have been working on a short film that I started a long time ago to help practice animation and have always wanted to present some of it. It’s more a labor of love at this point and sometimes I go months or even years without touching it. Mostly I can only work on it during the weekends or week nights if I have the energy.

While I had finished the layout around 2004, the whole thing got put on the back burner for several years. When I finally got a bit more free time, I started an internal(local) production website to help me track my progress on a shot by shot basis with the intention of sharing this at some point. It started as a table with just text entry dates for when a shot was worked on and a blog style homepage where I write about what I’ve done. It has since been fleshed out with thumbnails, media, history, etc. Each shot can be accessed and seen, different progression versions can be brought up, or stages switched such as layout, animation, comp. This has helped me see actual progress in a visual form. My short term goal was to finish scene2 to from animation to comp and then publish the current form as a wip. So, that is what I’m doing now.

It’s hard to say if I will ever finish it since there is so much to do, but in the past 2 years I have made a big dent to hopefully give me some incentive to finish. Now that I have published the site online, I will try to update this thread when I make updates to my progress. Probably just mirror my blog posts here. Currently I am hiding the thumbnails, info, and videos from scene3 and 4 so as not to give anything away. However, since it is a wip, I do want to show progress and may post a few shots that I’m working on as steps are completed.

I hope you enjoy the small section I’ve done so far as well as exploring the production site. Below you can see some example pages and direct links to videos. Currently there is no sound.





Links:

HomePage:
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_home.htm

ShotsPage:
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots.php

ShotsHelp:
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots_help.htm

Scene2 Video on ShotPage(flash):
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots/ck_shot_big.1000.php?version=6&shotNum=sc2&stage=comp&seq=Hallway&seqPath=seq2_hallway

Scene2 Video download 720p.h264 (151megs):
http://www.242animation.com/videos.quick/ckShort/comp/Cookie_Sc2_Hallway_v22_lightH.mp4

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#2

There’s one thing that really stands out in your scene 2 clip, and that is when the alien throws his doll the first time. I think you need more impact there by making it pushed to the wall, to hint it would be to animate the limbs of the doll to get more pressed against the wall from the force of the throw. Now the doll just gently stops at the wall. Get this fixed and you have something really nice in my opinion.

#3

Shot 10:
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots/ck_shot.php?shotNum=10&stage=comp&seqPath=seq2_hallway&version=4

Thanks for the feeback. I’ll give it a shot. Might have to rig up some deformers to have some squishy-ness in the stomach and limbs. The bear is so fat, pushing it into the wall might look too clipped. I already have some of that going on when it turns and slides down, adverse clipping that is.

#4

If you check the right side leg, the limb there is pretty thin and dont move when it hits the wall. I’d try to bend and align that limb along the wall and see if it gives more sence of an impact. I dont think that you nessesarly need to make the character squishy as he looks pretty wellstuffed - that might only look odd.

#5

When I started this thread I was on a pretty good roll and thought I’d be able to update fairly often. However, the past few months I haven’t been putting much into it. I’m really only posting here because I don’t want this thread to get closed if too much time goes by becaused I’d rather not start a new one.

Anyway, just been fixing a few rigging and maya2012 issues. Hopefully I will get back to animating soon…

Latest update:
http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_home.htm

FINAL FANTSAY XIII and GRAB BAG · 22 FEBRUARY 2012
Man, February is almost over and I’m just now getting back to this project. I blame Final Fantasy. I have IX on PSP but haven’t put much into it. However, I did finally get around to plaing XIII which I loved. Today is the first day I haven’t played it since starting earlier this month. Even though I finished the story last Monday, the combat was so much fun I went back to see if I could beat some of the more challenging boss monsters.

I’ve been meaning to return to this project for quite some time but just haven’t felt the inspiration. Last weekend I did spend some time testing my rigs out in Maya2012 and have been trying to convert for some time. I converted all of my custom buttons to the new color scheme, figured out how to enlarge the fonts, installed the latest drivers for my Quadro4000 and loaded the new subscription service pack. Had to buy a compatible liscense of the picker I love and while testing my rigs this weekend, discovered my space snapping scripts break in 2012. It was simple to fix them to work with both 2010 and 2012, so I spent a bit of time doing that.

That forced me to look at all of my space switching scripts and I discovered that what I thought was so clever about my grab switching for when a character is holding an object, is actually quite confusing. My first attempt at re-rigging the Free controller resulted in the dreaded cycle-check loop error. However, after a few days away from it, I came back tonight and made it super simple without breaking the rig. I simply constrain which ever “grab” I need to the location of the object before switching it and then delete the constraint. It’s sooo much simpler now. You want the object to move with the right hand, you press the R button, left hand, L, want the object free, the F button. I can also ik snap the hand to the object and have them controlled by it and themselves at the same time. Basically, I took 8 scripts and reduced them to 3. I reorganized the picker to be more intuative as well and removed the confusing buttons around the hands. It was almost a year ago that I wrote those scripts and I have no idea what the heck I was thinking when I did the grabs. Ah well, lesson learned.

#6

I was going to post this last weekend, but noticed some holes in my website. If you clicked on shots or stages that didn’t have any “info,” you’d get a bunch of spam errors at the top of the page. Locally it just shows blanks, but published if it doesn’t find a file, it returns errors in the php code. Should be fixed now.

Anyway, started blocking shot 19:


http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots/ck_shot.php?version=6&shotNum=19&stage=anim&seq=Kitchen&seqPath=seq3_kitchen

[color=#fffffe][color=wheat]UP AND RUNNING · 26 FEBRUARY 2012
For some reason, I didn’t really want to start with this shot to get back into the swing of things. However, I decided to go ahead and block it out. Sometimes going in order is just easier on my brain. Funny, when this year started I thought, if I could just animate one shot per week, I’d be done in around 30 or so weeks. There are so many easy shots I could have done between January 1st and now. Ah well, perhaps I can get back into a roll and make up some ground. I have also been forcing myself to adjust to Maya 2012. It’s basically the same as previous versions, but there are lots of little interface quirks to get use to. Annoying interface quirks that is.

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#7

Just a little update, trying to get back into the groove of working on this.

Animating on shot 19:


http://www.242animation.com/base/animation/ckShort/ck_shots/ck_shot.php?version=17&shotNum=19&stage=anim&seq=Kitchen&seqPath=seq3_kitchen

[color=#fffffe][color=wheat]HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! · 4 JULY 2012
Pretty much four months went by inbetween working on this short. Actually started up again on June 26. March and April were gone since real work took up all of my time. Late hours and 6-7 day weeks for an unannounced project. It was quite fun but took up all of my time. Oddly, while I really didn’t want to do that much overtime, I didn’t mind it so much either. After that much focused intense work I was spent creatively and just could not get the inspiration or energy to work on this. Trying to get back in the groove is so difficult, but I am forcing myself. Spending almost four months between blocking and splining this current shot is not ideal and I’m not sure I like the results, but I really want to move forward so I just went with it.

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#8

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.