Acting/Dialogue - At the diner

2-week assignment with teacher Mark Oftedal.
Choose an audio-track and create characters and background story, including possible subtext to the acting. I won't bother you with the details, rather I'll let the video try to speak for itself...

I decided to challenge myself and came up with a scene that required animating several constraints and some cheeky switching between object-duplicates.
Good scene-planning really helped speed up my process and I largely avoided technical issues this time. Glad I'm getting over my fear of constraints and making the most of them instead.

This is the scene as I presented it for final dailies, only a few minor details left to tweak, which I will do over the winter-break.



And here's the (very helpful) video reference I shot of myself. I found a way to play both roles, thus being able to take as makes times as I needed to get the timing and the beats just the way I wanted them.

Acting Pantomime

Kevin finally got an internship at the big city news-station, but forgets to bring the right notes to his first anchor-job.




I ended up not being able to decide which ending-pose I wanted, so I tried to fit them both in there, and instead it just mushes the action up. Hm. I should learn to kill my darlings by now...

Anyway, this was fun and Michael Berenstein's method was really helpful to me here.

And while I'm no master at rendering, here's a frame showing the Lighting-rig I set up.

Midway Test: Sneak, Notice, Take

Despite some scary skinning-glitch on the jaw, I managed to copy my process so I didn't have to re-do everything up until the moment I discovered the error. That'll teach me to test the rig fully through before blocking anything out.

The story I made up for this test is as follows:  
Character backstory: Charles is a married man in his late twenties. He is very neat and easily agitated and sensitive. He had a strict mother and an emotionally absent father, which has left him a rather quiet fellow. Even though he is shy Charles enjoys the company of others. He prefers to keep his mouth shut, lest he offend someone.  
Story of the shot: Charles has forgotten his coat at his mother-in-law’s apartment. He is a bit afraid of disturbing her and not wanting to be of any trouble he sneaks back in to fetch the coat on a cupboard. He hears the floorboards creak and turns to see his scary mother-in-law in her underwear (because she was about to go to bed).

Trailer Project: Kwaidan

The final look of our half-year long Trailer Project: a re-imagining of a Japanese, expressionist ghost-story anthology from '64, Kwaidan. With a very interesting cast-choice. Really impressed with the CG Artists of our group, they worked very hard on this and I think it really shows!


I animated four of the shots, as you'll see here at the end of my Midway Showreel, showing everything I've been doing since September.


I feel I've almost gotten comfortable with Maya by now...

Dragons

Some line-less colouring study done in Corel Painter - with dragons, because dragons are awesome...

Parkour escape (2-shot)

First assignment using the Norman rig. He's alright... The assignment required the implementation of a referenced parkour movement, along with some acting constistent with the back-story of the chase-scene...
This young man has been wrongly accused of theft and is now running from the police. The police in his town is notoriously brutal and so he fears for his life...




I'm very happy with how the two shots hook up. Needs few more frames and less exaggeration on the stopping-recoil; it looks a bit silly right now.

Seven faces and a lift

6 faces showing basic emotions, plus an seventh of any choice... Please enjoy my flirty DreamWorks-face...
This was my first test with the Morpheus rig, who, by default, has this Jimmy Neutron hairstyle. This rig can be morphed into pretty much any shape needed, so it's great for many different kinds of characters and body-types...

And here's my desperate attempt at animating constraints... The weight of the box is questionable at best. I regret not using Morpheus for this assignment, since I couldn't switch between IK and FK mid-animation with Hogan here... Poor planning will be punished.