Kane Pickerill | Character Animator

For the past two days I have been focusing my efforts on my first character’s facial expressions. Following this tutorial I have managed to create a fully workable facial rig with added slider efficiency. Next step will be rigging the body. I have taken into account other programs to auto-rig, but I think a manually made rig will suit my needs a lot better.

So far I’m on schedule for my client project, and deep into the modelling stages. The last few days has been spent solely on the mouth of my first character. It has taken awhile to get something that I’m happy with. I’m going to go ahead and rig up the face with sliders, to get a better understanding of how I can show some extreme expressions.

I have now completed my first artefact. This has really helped me learn a bit more about the use of strong poses and how vital the graph editor can be when splining out the animation at the end. The next artefact I will be doing will be based on the emotion of sadness. Feedback welcome.

Artefact 1: Happiness from Kane Pickerill on Vimeo.

Bathtub V from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

…it’s a real time-lapse. Incredible.

With the deadline date looming ever closer, progression of my client project is now well underway. Below are the two characters that will be featuring in my 60 second short… More details on the way! Time to get back to storyboarding…

Following my research document, I have decided to base my artefacts on the six basic emotions: (starting with) Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Surprise, Fear and Disgust. Each artefact will represent a specific emotion via an 8-10 second character animation sequence using the Andy Rig for Maya.

I will be including dialogue in each of my artefacts to run along side the character animation. These will be utilised from other films but will not be influenced by the on-screen acting. I feel dialogue like this will give me a better guide into how the emotions can be displayed.

Following our latest SPP3 lecture, we have been given an outline of what we have to do and deadlines to reach. They are as follows…

SPP3 Assignments

Job Applications – Find 4 real world, fulltime animation jobs currently being advertised. Create a moc application for the jobs discovered.

Course Applications – Find 4 post-graduate courses that are currently being advertised. Create a moc application for these courses. *DEADLINE: 2/3/2010*

Folio Images & Text – Create a minimum of 8 images suitable for my catalogue entry (past work inside and outside of uni). Write text to accompany these images in the catalogue entry.

Rationale report – 1000 word rationale, describing your selection of images and text supplied. This should seek to clearly outline how I position myself as a practitioner inside my creative discipline. *DEADLINE: 24/3/2010*

Client Project

Proposal – Submit 1,000 word proposal that shows designs, planning. *DEADLINE: 29/1/2010*

Main Project – 60 second animated short, featuring a maximum of 2 characters. A limited location/set must be used to emphasis the focus on character animation.                                                          *DEADLINE: 26/3/2010*

Evaluation - Submit a 3,000 word evaluation of your live client project.                                                                                 *DEADLINE: 30/4/2010*

Research Project Artefacts

6 Artefacts - Variety, originality, coherence and quality of ideas that is most important and not final polished product. Brief 300 word summary to evaluate each.                                                                               *DEADLINES: 1/2/2010, 15/2/2010, 1/3/2010, 15/3/1020, 29/3/2010, 5/4/2010* – Self set deadlines

Artefacts Presentation – Via Voce, present artefacts, supporting material and written conclusions.                                                *DEADLINE: Week 43 (17/5/2010 – 21/5/2010)*

Hoorah! Christmas is over, the Turkeys are dead… I should have posted this before, however, Vimeo was playing up! This is a little work in progress of a run, jump and anticipate sequence I’ve started in Maya. The rig was downloaded and modified slightly to suit my needs. Comments welcome