Rainy august

Figured it'd be time for an update here on this rainy sunday, in the beginning of august, in the lovely country of Denmark - yay!

So, no pictures today, just words. I'm in a pretty creative process right now, working on a short film. The designs are coming along, after a couple of months of agonizing and frustration.
I've started on the storyboarding which I have a pretty ambivalent feeling about. On one side, it's such an amazing tool where you are forced to think about even the smallest detail in a very visual and concrete way.
On the other hand though, it's just so extremely difficult and tough. There is no cheating, no short cuts no nothing. Everything has to be crystal clear and figured out.

But at the end of the day, you just gotta do it. There is no way around it, and a nicely fleshed out storyboard is just invalueble for the rest of the process.

That was it for the short film. On another note, it just got very official that I'm accepted into the bachelor line at the Animation Workshop, so as of september I'm officially a animation student. To celebrate my self (lol!) I decided to buy two books, that I really think will help my.
They are both titled Drawn To Life, one about humans and one about animals. They are based on the learning material that was made availble for the disney animators in the 1980'ths and still today (I think). I cannot wait to get my greasy hands on them, and learn a bit about how to draw for animation.

That's it for now. I might post a small teaser on the storyboard later on, but for now, I'll keep it all off web.

Cheers.

Final Weight lift exercise

Here is the final rendered version, animated in maya, rendered with mental ray, with rendertimes around 30 sec. on a super crappy laptop.

I've really tried a new way of animating (the Jason Ryan way), so I feel I've learned a lot, which is probably the most important thing.
I'm fairly happy with the results, although I see troubles a couple of places. I can't really be specific about it, so I can't really make any changes.
Maybe in a couple of weeks I can see all the flaws :)

Weight Lift exercise from Christoffer Andersen on Vimeo.

Cheers

Finalizing Weight lift

Okay, so I've continiued to throw down breakdowns, untill I've got the motion I want.
Now I have let the computer fill in the blank frames with inbetweens and I have polished the motion a bit. I can still smooth out a lot, but I'm also afraid it will get too soft and smooth, and end up looking floaty and cg, which I why I did all the breakdowns in the first place.

So with all that said and done, here is what it looks so far.
I can probably still iron out kinks here and there, but overall I'm pretty happy with the result.
Here it is:



At a later point, I will upload the final version and a nice rendered version as well.

Stay tuned for more.
Cheers

Weight lift exercise

Hi there.
So between character design, storyboard and frustration, I decided to take time and do, what I really love to do: ANIMATION.
I actually havn't really tryed any of the known animation exercises, such as bouncing ball (just few for fun), lifting heavy box, and so on, so I thought I'd try that out.
I've been reading and studying animation, way more than actually animating, lately, so I figured an actual animation exercise would do me well.

First I did some video reference, of me lifting a somewhat heavy box. It's captured with my super awefull mobile video camera, so the quality is horrific. But it gives a good idea about broad posing and timing.



Next I choose the most important poses, and sketched those down on a piece of paper.
I havn't got a scanner with me, but once I'll have that, I'll scan it in for you.
Then it was basically just a matter of taking those poses, and put them into maya.
I roughly used the timing the video reference gave me, but as you might notice, the timing changed a bit from the reference, to the blocking and into the breakdowns - guess you could call that refinement ;)



Then it's time to do the breakdowns. This is - to me - the most difficult part. Going from the keys to the final animation is very hard. I struggle with keeping the life and snappyness throughout the breakdowns. I've really tried to work with as many breakdowns as possible to minimise the risk of floaty/bad computer inbetweens. I've keyed on every second frame, througout the first half of the animation, and it's pretty clear when it stops.

It's still a bit rough though, but once I get it refined and let the computer fill in the blank frames, it should be all smooth and nice.




So this is where I'm at now. Hopefully I'll find time to finish it, and add in breakdowns for the last half of the animation, get it refined and smoothed out.

So far I've worked about 5 hours on it... on and off, but with msn and facebook, that's a lot off ;)

Btw: the rig is from this dude named Jason Baskin. Make sure you check them out, they are AWESOME!
LINK TO HIGHEND3D

Cheers and have fun!

Concept sketches for Departure

Okay, I guess I should update again with some more concent from my short film project.
This is a nother quick drawing I did yesterday with a black marker on some cheap-ass paper, slapped it onto the scanner and threw in some faster colors.

It's basically four different elements from the film drawn into one page/composition/whatever.
I hope you like it, and that it gives a small clue on where I'm going with this one.
I'm still working out the designs and stuff like that.

During juli I hope to get the storyboard completed, so I have a clear idea about what it will look like, and what obstacles I will face.
I guess I'll post a board or two when I'm done.





















Cheers