Bare Bear - Full Vid

Bare Bear was a live industry brief that four students (myself included) had the privilege of working on based on the success of our Cribbin' short. The client was Paul Shurey, who was head of digital media at Tiger Aspect studios, and the brief was to create a demo to accompany a childrens book that would later be pitched for broadcast.
The story when we recieved it was of a fur-less bear who travels the world to meet different kinds of bear and trying on different bear costumes in an attempt to work out what kind of bear he is. We developed the concept art further, and added the element of a magic wardrobe that takes him to different countries and fits him with the appropriate costume.

My Roles

I modeled, lit, textured, rendered, and did the post production (compositing and after effects design and animation) on the dump scene. I also textured the naked bear model, and rigged for each scene.

As you can see from the film, and as I mentioned in a previous post, the animation in my scene ultimately got cut in favour of the story-book style introduction. While I did not get to finish my animation as a result of this, it also meant I finally got a decent chance to get to grips with Adobe After Effects, and enjoyed composting and animating the text effects on this.

Modelling / Texturing / lighting renders

Here's a few samples of various models / scenes that I composed.

The top left render (the dump) involved the most work, particularly in the field of lighting as it is a night time scene. Occlusion layers and compositing on After Effects played a big part in getting the look right.

The bed and the unfinished building were really just testers that helped me get to grips with UV mapping and various texturing techniques (such as creating psd networks).

The mansion is from Cribs, and was more of a rendering achievement that texturing, as this was the scene where I learnt to use mental ray tools such as ambient occlusion and global Illumination. The textures are minimal, so the look was achieved through polished rendering.

All the models, textures and lights in these shots are my own.

Cribbin' short film

So this was the first short film I ever worked on in a group..

My Roles

My role was to model, texture, light and render the first scene (the mansion exterior) as well as rig two variations of the same character. (Lil' G).

I also animated the camera movements, clouds and doors for this scene.

I enjoyed this project very much, and learnt a lot from it!

Willie Billiams: Full vid

This is the full Willie Billiams character vid; a second year project at Ravensbourne. (Apologies for the quality lost when uploading to Blogger.) The video is essentially a credit sequence, so my roles on the production should be obvious; essentially I modelled, rigged, textured, lit, rendered and did my share of the post production work (using After Effects.)

Animation Samples

Whilst animation is not my strongest skill, (having focused on other areas of the CG pipeline during my degree), as a rigger I have worked very closely with the animators throughout and am therefore competent with fundamental animation techniques and principles. (Such as the use of the graph editor, posing, stepped shot breakdowns and integrating the 12 key principles of animation into a shot.) Below are a few examples of shots that I have animated myself:

This first one is of Lonato getting frustrated while fishing with Nahil and accidently throwing his line in the river. The shot is unfinished, as it got cut towards the end of the project, which is a shame because I liked the way it was going.

This is just a quick animation test of my fishing pole rig: it works very nicely, and I'm pleased with the apparent taughtness and elasticity of the rod as it casts a line.

This is the final playblast tester of my camera movements from Cribbin'. It works well enough for the film, but was quite tough for what it was as it was my first attempt at animating cameras and I was attempting to parody the difficult camera work of MTV Cribs.

This was my shot from Bare Bear before it was decided that my scene would not be animated, but instead be a series of stills to accompany a story-book style opening. The shot was essentially just meant to portray Bare Bear looking generally fed up and a bit loneley.

I was dissapointed by the decision to change this scene, as it meant that I didn't get to finish animating again, but on reflection it was definately for the greater good of the project, and the final scene looked good. (Plus I learnt a bit about animating in After Effects as a result.)

Life Drawing

Showreel

Lonato

The character was needed for a mix of very simple to moderate animation, so I took this opportunity to do my first IK/FK blend setup, making it so the animator can chose which method to adopt depending on the shot. This also meant making an FK control chain for the first time ever, as previously I have only ever worked with IK’s. Luckily this time my knowledge of rigging tools and techniques was more than enough to make it a dauntless challenge, although I did spend a bit of extra time working out various ways of doing the switch and making it work. Ultimately I prefer the spinal setup used in Bare Bear and Jed, but it should definitely prove useful knowing the switch technique. This was also the first character I ever succeeded in making fully scalable.

Lonato was Also my second proper attempt at making an animator friendly facial GUI, and modeling blend shapes (I did about half of them). Since the Willie Billiams attempt I've generally become a lot more comfortable with rigging techniques and manipulating curves, so this GUI was considerably better than the first; for starters this one actually resembles a face!

Splay/Squ

These cuboid creatures from the film-noir world of Splay were great fun to rig. Splay in particular (due to his unusual body span) is so far the only character I have rigged that relies more on skin controls than it does on joint control. His main body section has plenty of controls hidden away that are linked to skin clusters making his oblong geometry fully deformable. Squ however does have an IK spine, and while I did make it stretchy I did not give it any FK controls, as there was really no need. The Legs on both characters are kitted out with fully stretchable skeletons, moveable from the foot or the hip, and are weighted in such a way that they adapt a more curve-like pose when bent- which was more true to the directors requirements. If these little guys taught me anything it’s that simpler is always better!

Jed/Ed

Easily my most complex undertaking to date, this colourful and wacky duo caused me no end of grief! The primary challenge I faced with Ed and Jed was learning to make IK setups fully stretchable. The director needed to use them for some very dynamic pieces of animation- In particular with the dancing hospital janitor, Jed. I learnt a lot more about MEL, expressions, and utility nodes through doing this, and ultimately succeeded in making the legs, arms, spine, and head (which also need an IK spline handle setup) fully stretchable. The second biggest challenge of these rigs was getting the stretching to work with all the other controls, although through trial and error I eventually succeeded in this and at the same time made it was possible to bend the limbs after they were stretched as well.

Aside from this, these characters (mainly Jed) tested me on many other little things as well: Jed’s oddly shaped feet meant I had to re-think the normal reverse foot setup; the afro needed to be able to do secondary animation, but not with the limited Jiggle deformer; proper eyelid/eyeball setups; multiple squash and stretch deformers; and more that all needed to work with each other. I had to really push my problem solving and experimenting skills to the max to get everything working, and overall these guys may have had me on edge for a while, but I came out of it a better person!

Bare Bear

Bare Bear was a tiny character who moved around like a toddler- he therefore didn’t need to be too flexible, nor did he require much in the way of blend shapes, so for the most part I was able to get away with a standard IK setup and therefore completed the body rig with weighting in one day. I did however experiment with a better spine setup incorporating an FK joint chain that also worked with the spline IK. The result was a spine that can be animated with both FK and IK controls. I have re-used this setup since, as it seems both effective and popular amongst decent downloadable rigs. (I.e. Moom, by Ramtin.) There was however one shot where he tumbles out of a wardrobe that required some in-scene adaptation to the rig allowing him to summersault.

For Bare Bear I was also in charge of modelling, lighting, texturing and rendering the dump scene.

Willie Billiams

Willie was the first character I modelled, textured and rigged myself. He was a bit more complicated than Lil’ G, as he required a spine, antennae, individual fingers, and a head setup with a GUI for controlling the facial blend shapes. Through this project I learnt how to model for rigging and texturing more effectively, and also picked up several key rigging skills such as IK Spline setups, using constraints to eliminate the need for counter-animation, and individual finger control attributes. I also got the hang of painting weights with this one, as well as touching on MEL and expressions while creating the facial GUI.

Lil G rig

This was the first character I ever rigged for myself- he was a lot of fun; spineless in character, and also spineless in anatomy, meaning I could focus my learning on standard IK leg and arm setups, reverse foot locks, set driven keys, creating attributes, using the connection editor, and other basic rigging skills. His face was essentially also his body, and required very few facial expressions as his shots were limited. I also threw in a butt-clench attribute, as required by one shot, and a squash and stretch control for the whole model, and for the secondary animation I put a Jiggle deformer on the afro and an orient control for his zipper.