le peenk bush

slapped a mask on the bush, unsure about it just now. Oh and the ink trail following the boy is still to be tweaked... but another step closer to the final thing! :)

Scene 06 Update

Thanks to everyone who got back to me about scene 06! I took all the comments on board and have spent the last couple days fixing and finalising the scene. It looks great now, and I've passed it onto Erin for clean-up.

Here's the scene with the new dog and ball layers:

Scene 06 Final Dog & Ball from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

I fixed the slide on the Dog's feet which itself re-timed the run, so now the whole thing happens a lot faster, which a lot of people felt should happen.  Because of this I then had to re-time the ball as the Dog began to overtake it.  I then re-drew the Dog Walker (who I've affectionately renamed Doug Walker after my dear friend, Doug Walker) to match the new frames, and altogether they look like this:

Scene 06 Final Dog, Ball & Walker from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Finally, I added in the Girl layer to see how everything looks so far, and it looks AWESOME!  The new timing of the Dog, etc, couldn't have worked out better!  Very chuffed with how it's all looking now:

Scene 06 Final Girl, Dog, Ball & Walker from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Let me know what you think!

x L

Scene 03 Bear & Ball

Just a couple of short, finalised layers from the wonderful (read: bane of my life) scene 03, the girl on the see-saw scene. The first is the tumble of the teddy bear as it falls off the see-saw:

Scene 03 Bear from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

The second is the ball which slams into the back of the Girl's head:

Scene 03 Ball from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

I love animating these short wee layers, they make you feel like you're getting a lot done and ticking a lot of boxes.  I drew myself up a more precise list of What Needs To Get Done, which looks a little like this:

The lack of ticked boxes scares me.  Wish us luck.  5 weeks to go.

x L

Getting there...

bush shake shake shake da roooom

Here is the bush animated for scene 4. Please excuse the shade jumping about like a lunatic!

No swirl

I removed the swirl for Mein Führer.

aaaaand in colour!

Ink Ink Ink Ink

Some more rough ink tests. STILL haven't settled on a final ink look, and in true Bambi style, I made one I was extremely happy with and didn't save the flaming file! Urgh. Jamie is unhappy with the swirly movement at the beginning of jump so that will be getting changed... *cough*slavedriver*cough*

He's IN COLOUR!

Scene 06 Dog Walker Layer

Been having so many problems with the Dog Walker character in Scene 06 and would very much like some advice on the matter, if that's alright? All that I need to happen is have the Dog run by dragging his poor owner behind him, but I cannot for the life of my get it animated to look right. Something's off, but I don't know what. WHAT IS IT? It's a very quick scene, the whole thing is over in a second, but it feels slow. Why is that? If anyone can give me some pointers that would be DOSS, many thanks in advance!

x L

Little Boy Coloured

Here's the final colouring for the little Boy in our film! There's not much difference between the reds, they're very subtle... BUT it still took me ALL of last night and this morning to finalise though. Getting too pernickety for my own good.

Got our first scene coloured this weekend too, many thanks to my colouring assistant/flatmate Jenny for sorting that out for my today whilst I was at work!  Will get it to our comper Bambi tomorrow and should HOPEFULLY have our first scene FINALISED!!!  WOOO!

The end is in sight people!

x L

Scene 06 Girl, Dog and Ball Line Test

The wonderful Tara Vaughan-Smith has been kind enough to let us borrow her awesome creature animation skills for the Dog in our film!  Yesterday I stolez the layer she's been working on for scene 06, cleaned it up and added it to the line test along with the Girl and the bouncing ball.  Here's how it's looking with the original background:

Scene 06 Girl, Dog and Ball Line Test [Final Background] from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Here's the same line test, but this time with a more basic background so that you may see the action of the characters a little more clearly:

Scene 06 Girl, Dog and Ball Line Test [Plain Background] from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

To make sure the scene isn't too busy, we're thinking about extending the Little Girl's pause as she looks in the bush until the dog has run off the screen.  This way the Girl gets our full attention, because right now, it's difficult to know where to look with both actions happening simultaneously.  The pace of the Dog's run cycle was taken straight from the animatic, which was quite roughly done.  We're starting to think it may be too quick, considering the dog will be dragging a full grown man behind him as he chases the ball.  This line test shows the dog at his original speed (played at 25 fps):

Scene 06 Dog Layer Final Inbetweens 25 FPS from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

I've slowed down the following line test of the dog to 16fps for comparison:

Scene 06 Dog Layer Final Inbetweens 16 FPS from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Feedback for this would be awesome if you have a few minutes to spare!  Any comments are always welcome.  Just need to complete the debris and Dog Walker layers and this scene will be finished.  BOOM!

x L

Scene 06 Girl Layer Inbetweened

Here are the wonderful Erin Thomson's (THANKS LOVE!) inbetweens for Scene 06 (Girl goes over to bush to confront Boy).  She didn't have access to the layout (I stolez it) to line test it altogether, so you will have to imagine the Girl raking through a pink-stained bush in order to get to the Boy.  There's one frame at the very beginning which is off slightly, but I have a feeling it was my keys and not Erin's inbetweens.  It will get fixed.

EDIT:  I've gone and uploaded a new line test of this scene without moving holds and added in the background.  I felt like the moving holds were causing too much of a boil effect on the line test so they had to go.  I have also fixed the jump at the beginning, so these are the final, final inbetweens:

x L

Scene 3.5 Keys

Here are the keys for a sneaky little scene we've added in last minute, right smack in the middle of Scene 03.  It was suggested by the Independent Examiner for our course, Paul Wells (yes, THE PAUL WELLS :D), and seconded by our own wonderful mentor Wayne Thomas.  It's basically just a tiny three second close up of the Little Girl sad and lonely on her seesaw.  We have the wonderful Sarah Rettie doing the in-betweens as we speak!  

Here it is:

Scene 3.5 Final Keys from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

:D x L

Getting there...

The boy is finally in the environment! All that's missing is colour... one step closer!

Scene 06 Girl Layer Inbetweened

Here are the wonderful Erin Thomson's (THANKS LOVE!) inbetweens for Scene 06 (Girl goes over to bush to confront Boy).  She didn't have access to the layout (I stolez it) to line test it altogether, so you will have to imagine the Girl raking through a pink-stained bush in order to get to the Boy.  There's one frame at the very beginning which is off slightly, but I have a feeling it was my keys and not Erin's inbetweens.  It will get fixed.

Jamie Bell hook me up with some comments on this'un and I can see if we can't get it cleaned-up YO!

x L

Continuing on..

Just another update of water particles as I'm sure you are desperate to see it...

What do you think? Haven't tried out the suggestions from my last blog post yet but I will be doing that soon. Of course there will be clothes and foam also in the washing machine so look forward to being bombarded with that in the future...

JB out

Scene 06 Girl Layer Rough Keys

Like the post says, yo, here be the rough keys for scene 06!  BOOM!  Hating this girl's hair a wee bit.  I'm still not totally happy with how it looks at the back, but I can't keep going back and forth and designing and redesigning so I've just settled for it looking the way it does.

These bad boys still be rough, tbh I'm only putting them up 'cause I needs my boy Jamie Bell to have a looksie at them.  Comment me up JB!

Scene 06 Rough Keys from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Peace!

x L

Wishy Washy

Boo to particles!

Still trying to get particles to look watery.. Getting closer...?

I still need to get a decent texture that doesn't look like ghost water and it is still a work in progress but I feel like I am getting somewhere... It's a lot more difficult than I thought. Still have a few tricks up my sleeve but I'll just have to keep soldiering on. Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

Quest for Particle Perfection

I have been fiddling around with maya nParticles to try and get a good effect for the water in the washing machine but this was all I could come up with....

Not great, I know.. I think the way it behaves works well and I'm pleased with that :) However it looks nothing like water yet! The liquid is waay too blobby, which I have tried numerous times to fix by fiddling with the settings, increasing the number of particles and decreasing particles sizes but still couldn't get a realistic looking effect.. Buuuut, with a little help from a friend (Pat Imrie FTW) I think I may have a solution which I am off to experiment with now! Updates soon to follow :D

Ball Bounce

More faffing about with masks. Just slammed in a few to see how they look creating an ink splat on the ground. Overall, the technique needs much improvement but I think the basics are there. Close up it looks better, I swear! haha. I also animated masks as the ball makes contact with the ground, to convey the movement of ink from the ball into the atmosphere. Lots of work still to be done...

Playing with Text

Just messing about with text ideas and masks... all about the masking. mask mask masks.
Besides the masks I've also used a 3d camera, ramps and Easy Ease...in...out...shake it all about. Played with Blur and Added animators and Fractal Noise. Many many layers...

Pink Wave

Pink... this time with an end width of 50... just more tests. Not a fan of this one though.

Ink Flow 02.

Same as previous, simply a longer lifespan and lower velocity. Just messin' aboot.

Inky Wave

Previous tests came across more like a fabric moving around, rather than the inky texture we're aiming for.  I've played about with some coding and inserted a slider to control the opacity as it moves and I feel that this test is moving in the right direction.  The bold outline of the wave has been radically reduced and the tail-off is more blurred to give a paint-like texture.

PINK WAVE

Ink flow

STRESSING beyond belief, the fear has finally set in and hit me hard! Today I made this ink flow movement by manipulating yet again an abundance of masks [I could do it all in my sleep now], radio waves and merging compositions. Also a cheeky bit of coding in there too!  Massive thanks to Jack for taking the time to translate tutorials for me today! 

Annnnnywho... feast yer eyes.

Finished Background...Hurrah!

Today I completed a background yay! Hopefully Bambi will be able to change the opacity of the grey, so it looks like it is getting whiter throughout the film :) Cant wait to see the characters in this scene.

Red Line Test

Quick test to display the outline in red. This is not what the final outcome will look like, there will be bare minimum detail in the scene until the pink gushes in, highlighting the detail on the trees, ground...sky etc. I will upload an example in a sec!

Scene 04 and Clean-Up Test

Hello!

Been far too long since I last blogged.  Since November I've been having a lot of health issues, so getting better has been a big priority of late, and things such as my blog, and unfortunately the film, have had to take a step back.  I'm still currently "under investigation" at the doctors, and on waiting lists for this treatment and the next, so I am back at uni as much as I can muster and learning to cope with permo-lightheadedness.  

I have managed to finalise a full scene!  Here I present to you Scene 04:

Scene 04 Final Keys from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

The one where the Boy jumps into the bush.  It is being inbetweened as we speak.  Spent this morning looking at what we plan on doing for clean-up.  I worked on a film last summer for Masters student Mark Haldane and he used ink in his clean-up process, which I have decided to go on and copy, with wonderful results (short test so best played on loop):

Scene 04 Clean-Up Test from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

Everything's very tense in the studio just now, everyone's feeling The Fear.  It'll be an interesting couple of months in the lead up to final hand-in (30th April).

More soon!

x L

Playpark Props

Suba here! Today I have been working on completing the design of the props . And  I think it has turned out pretty successful. I have decided to have block colour for all solid objects and then have all organic props have shading and pattern on them.

Colour Scripts Part 1

I finally got round to doing a colour script. Yay! I just did rough little sketches on Photoshop to show the colour scheme of the whole animation. This is the first one completed today :)

A dash of red

Purple socks?

Yella'

Some more very basic and rough colour tests.

After a discussion we had the the studio we thought we should experiement with different colours, just to see y'know. Needless to say I'm still most happy with the red and pink because it's strong and conveys the idea of a red sock in the wash... can't really say I've ever ruined my washing with a yellow sock...

Scene 04 Rough Keys

It;s about time I got some keys up here don'tcha think??  I've personally been not-so-great on the whole health front of late and so the animation has suffered a minor setback these last two months.  Finally got the semblance of a scene done today so I thought I would share my first ROUGH set of keys with you.

Remember ROUGH, and I am ILL.  Be nice.  There's still arms to be added and a key or two, here and there, but you get the jist of where this scene be going.  I am loving follow-through just now.  The Boy's hair is so much fun to play with!  I also really enjoyed doing the jump sequence, mega fun to draw.

Scene 04 Rough Keys from Lynne M. Laurenson on Vimeo.

The main thing I'm not 100% sure of with this scene is the Boy's hands, are they too small?  Kids have small hands, right?  I'm totally not sure and have started contemplating making them bigger.  Just a thought.  Think I'll run it past the ol' Director tomorrow.

Anyhoo, enjoy!  More to follow!

 x L

Town (final one...I promise)

Ball & Ink

More grief = more work.


Here's a very, very basic ink test for the ink splats from the ball. I really feel this sequence is way too fast and therefore it's difficult to put in detailed ink moevement.

Flythrough scene

I am blog illiterate.

Recently I have been working on modelling the flythrough scene that Susan is going to rotoscope as well as trying to figure out particle physics to imitate a washing machine, modelling and texturing the 3D environment for our animation and helping out with rigging for other projects (as if that wasn't enough, I thought I would take up French this year...nice one Jamie, nice one).

This is the result of the flythrough scene for the beginning of the animation. I tried my best to follow the backgrounds that Susan gave me for reference and this was the result :-

I am looking forward to seeing the end result with Suba's terrific backgrounds. (Also, the floating ball will be a bird at some point)

I hope to have some successful attempts of the washing machine and environment up soon too.

Ink Bleed

Sooo, I've been testing loads of colours and after constant badgering from Mr.Bell I've finally got round to uploading something. There's a variety of colours to stick up but here's a rough one just now. The masking technique has come in very useful for out ink effects and after many, oh sooo many different attempts we've finally come back to the very first one I tried! typical. 

Trees for "Inked"

Dog Runcycle

Hi there, Tara here. I've joined the Inked crew to provide the canine animations, as I have gained a sort of reputation for being a four-legged animator! Here's a basic inbetweened run-cycle for pooch, first shown on ones, then twos. There are a couple of mistakes including the chest fur popping, but once I've got to the finished thing I hope it will be both realistic and bouncy!