I have a Showreel!

Taa-dah!
If you have a minute (+4 seconds) to spare, have a watch (:


Rachel Man Showreel 2014 from Rachel Man on Vimeo.

Client Project - Blocking and more environment modelling

Seeing as I have the inside environment pretty much finished..I figured I might as well do a little blocking...here's a little playblast in super bad quality...(and no sound apparently, apologies)

Need to get the lip-sync in next!

Hospital has finally been built as well and I'm pretty happy with it (:

Working on getting Jess animated into this scene - started to block out some of the skipping animation at the start of the scene, hopefully..this should be done and smoothed out by tomorrow.

Client Project - Environment Modelling

Lots of modelling has been done! Aside from the front of the hospital now, everything for the inside of the hospital/MRI room has finally been built!

I've had to do a little rescaling of some objects after referencing my characters in and realising the models were a little too big in comparison to both characters.
I think it's time to start animating now...

Client Project - Blend Shapes!

I may have gotten a little carried away doing this...and made some rather pointless blend shapes that I won't use...but blend shapes for Jess are done!

 

Mudbox decided it didn't like me after the seventh blend shape..so I stuck to reshaping in Maya for the rest.

Migraine is an understatement for this...

Research Project: Artefact 3 - Shifting Power Centres

After looking at whether my focus group was able to identify a character's power centre and define their personality through a series of still poses, I decided to look at the shift of power centres within a character.

Through this artefact, I wanted to see if my audience was able to see where a power centre was shifting to and from within the character and what they thought might be happening in the clip.

These were the clips I presented:

 Having presented these to my focus group, I found that most people were able to identify the movement of the power centre and generally had an idea of what the situation was. However, as I finished this artefact, I realised that I've gone slightly off topic from my research question, so I'll need to try and refocus my artefacts for my 4th and 5th artefact.

Client Project - (Semi) Finished Piece

I can't say I wasn't tearing my hair out in the last couple of days before the deadline...

I 'modified' my idea 3 days before the deadline after realising I would never have enough time to finish what I had originally planned to do, so 'Nottingham Loves Events at Old Market Square' quickly became 'Nottingham Loves Game City' (purely because I had the arcade machine built and ready to animate...and it has 'GameCity' plastered on the side of it...)
Even after changing my topic though, I was still quite short on time, so I have some sound effects..and admittedly, my camera shots are pretty rubbish. I'm planning on working on these things over the holidays so that I can resubmit.
I'm honestly gutted that I had to change so much of what I wanted to originally do, but I guess that's just the way it turned out to be. I am happy with what I managed to get done in the short time I had left but definitely needs a lot (a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot) of improvement.
For now...(excuse the bad quality..I don't feel like this should be uploaded anywhere else atm..)

Client Project - Short walk cycle

I'm getting there..slowly but surely...

And looking at the curves in the graph editor hurts my eyes.

Research Project - Reading List

Just a little note of resources that I'll be using for my research project work...

The Animator's Survival Kit - Richard E. Williams 
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation - Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
Acting for Animators - Ed Hooks
How to Cheat in Maya 2013: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation - Eric Luhta, Kenny Roy
Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right - Jason Osipa
Gesture Drawing for Animation - Walt Stanchfield, edited by Leo Brodie
Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief and World-Making in Animation - Donald Crafton
The Disney Villain - Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas

Cartoon Brew:
The Milt Kahl Head Swaggle
Why Is It So Difficult to Make Cute Cartoon Characters?

Cartoon Research

Power Centers and Personality - Keith Lango

Power Centers and the Importance of Body Language - Tea Time Animation, in a lecture presented by Frank-Joseph Frelier

Posing a Character

Animation Studies Online Journal

Gesture Generation by Imitation: From Human Behaviour to Computer Character Animation - Michael Kipp, 2003

I'm about 80% sure there's a very important reference that I've forgotten here...