Final Animation

Due to rendering issues I wasnt able to render the sequence fully however I did make a rough playblast version of it just in case. I added the light onto the lamp in order to set the ambience and added a subtle side light in order to counter the extreme darks.






Over all im really pleased with this animation however I experienced many technical problems and had many frustrating restarts which set me back. I would have liked more time to add sound but apart from that Ive really enjoyed this project.

Rendered Items

With the models I made I decided to add some colour to them. I did this by appliying new material and choosing from the selection. Although its basic I feel its needed in order to enhance the animation. Below are some of the rendered Items.

Animatic

After I had completed all of my models I ported them all into one scene and started to plan out the timing. Rather than create a drawn animatic I decided to use CG as the tool to create one. I positioned all of the objects onto the desk and began tweaking and making changes until I felt it all flowed. I then began crudley animating the sequence to get a sense of the timing. I also positioned the camera so that it captured the whole sequence in one sweeping shot rather than several cuts in order to keep it all fluid. This was the end result.

Desk

The last model I made was my desk which is where my animation will take place.

When modelling I realised that my desk was too thin to accomdate the objects I was going to use to animate so I made the creative choice to lengthen it allowing for more room otherwise the animation would be too tight.

Wall-e Test

I wanted to observe how Wall-e's neck mechanism worked so I made this little test to see.
I hade to manually move each joint in his neck in order to replicate the bending motion in the hinges. I then played around with the key frames to alter the speed at which his neck goes back into position.

wall-e

One of my favourite animated characters is Wall-e and I wanted to incorperate my toy version of him into my animation as hes quite a challenge to model for me.

To begin with I made several basic shapes and begin positioning them together. I then worked more detail into them and using the boleon effect to create the distinct shapes of wall-e's body. Afterwards I worked on his eyes. To do this I recreated the binocular shape and duplicated it twice in smaller sizes and peiced them together. Im really pleased with the result as its taken along time to make him.

Lamp modelling

To further my modelling I wanted to tackle something more challenging so I took some more photos of my desk lamp and had a go at recreating it.

To start with I made the base and built upwards building the hinges and rivets peice by peice. The springs were made by mapping a straight line on the grid, creating a ring around it and transforming it into a spiral shape. I then ported that over to my lamp model and scaled it down to fit.

Afterwards I made a test showing the lamp bending on its hinges. After lots of tweaking I finally got something I think is quite accurate.

Improved Domino test

After making the first domino test I wanted to see how a real chain of dominos would flow in terms of real time. As seen in some of the research videos it seems that the flow of dominos is incredibly fast so I made this little test to capture that sense of speed.

Slide test

This was another quick test to see the timing and how this little set up might work. Its very crude and without any of the little touches applied to the animation.

In reality it would be very difficult to set this up without it falling down all the time however I think it still works effectivly and I might just incorportate this colapsing afterwards.

I made three books in different sizes and also created a mini domino effect set up using pencils, balls and rulers.

I like how its set up using objects from my room and how it seems to be makeshift. This is something I shall continue in exploring my desk theme for this animation.

Lid Test

After making the bin I began thinking about how it would animate so I decided to make a quick test showing the lid flipping.

Continuing my modelling I made my bin and my pencil jar applying the same techniques as before.

For the pencils I creatd long thin cylinders and reduced the amount of sides on it to create that pentagonol shape. I then extruded the end into a point.

The next item was a small drum I had in my room.

Again I created this from a cylinder and used the extrude tool to make the hourglass shape in the middle.

Modelling

After looking at the research videos I decided to choose objects around my room to start modelling with. I took several photographs to use as reference and then went about recreating them in CG.

The first item I tried my hand at was the spray can.

I made this model by creating simple cylinder shapes and applying the boleon effect on the nossle. I then made three different sized ringsand positioned them at the top, bottom and neck of the can.

Domino Test

This was a quick test I made at animating a Domino effect. Its quite straightforward with the general knock on effect being easy to animate and is quite effective.