11SecondClub - July 2015

"Call him, see if he'll come save you."

"Yes, Wilfred the merciful, call him."

On first listening to this piece of audio I thought... Who is Wilfred the merciful?!?

My second thought was there are two people talking in this scene but is there only two, or are they both talking to a third?

I then decided to brainstorm two ideas, one which included 3 characters in a scene, the next including only 2 characters.

Idea 1

Two cops interrogating someone in a police station.

Idea 2

Two men sat in a church, one is very old. The younger man puts a hand on the old mans shoulder and tells him to call him, thinking the old man is there seeking some comfort in god/faith, however is confused when the old man calls out to "Wilfred"?!

I decided to go with the policemen idea and the next stage was to film some reference footage, in which I acted out both characters:

This is my sketchbook where I brainstormed my ideas for the animation and sketched out poses to help with the animation process:

This month my animation ranked 64 out of 151 and had some good constructive comments which I would like to use to help improve this piece of animation :)

- Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com
- Morpheus rig by Josh Burton, journal.joshburton.com.

11SecondClub February 2015

February's 11SecondClub audio clip was rather different from last months! This one felt more serious and philosophical:

"See, everything outside of our dimension... that's eternity. Now, to us, it's a sphere. But, to them, it's a circle."

My first thought was "Whattt..." but then i got brainstorming and listened to the clip a lot. There were quite a few pauses in the dialogue and i thought this was a great opportunity to challenge the acting skills where there was no dialogue.

My first idea, and the one I ended up using, was this was a lecturer in front of his blackboard. I also liked my audience at the end idea, which is a shot of the students in the lecture theatre, and all of their different reactions to this professors unusual theory, which I thought would add some more humour to the shot, but I decided it was best to stick to one character for now to create as high quality an animation as I could:

I also had some fun creating the texture of the blackboard and the drawings on it:

For the final shot I rendered out an Ambient Occlusion layer as well, as I think composited with the the master layer it created a better look, especially as his hand comes in contact with the blackboard, so it added some more shadow there:

This month my animation ranked 65th out of 205 entries, which overall is better than I did last month, so I'm glad I'm moving up and not going backwards! :D The comments were nice and constructive this time so I would like to revisit this piece of animation and make some improvements to it:

-Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

11SecondClub January 2015

During the month of January I gave myself the challenge of completing an 11SecondClub animation and submitting it into the month's competition. And that's exactly what I did! :D

After listening to the piece of audio at the start of the month I knew it was going to be a fun one!
To me it sounded like a drunk women giving a speech - and i tried to think where would her speech of 'feeling excited and wanting to party' be the most inappropiate and therefore amusing... a memorial service! These are the pages from my sketchbook, writing and drawing out ideas:

I also had the idea of a second character to react to the main character to make the situation even more amusing and understandable. It also added the challenge of animating a character interacting with another.
I shot some rather funny reference footage which became very useful!

(used a water bottle and a pen as my wine glass and microphone...)

With my more elaborate idea this time, a more interesting background environment was needed:

This lead to me creating an older looking version of 'Malcolm' - therefore all the characters in the scene looked like they are related:

I submitted my animation and it ranked 67th out of 179 entries which wasn't too bad for my first submission! I also took part in 11SecondClub to see if I could get some critic and advice from the others on the site. Overall the comments said I had a good idea and a funny scenario which was great to hear; and things I need to work on is polishing my animation and looking out for things such as 'floaty arms'!

- Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Lip Sync November 2014 challenge

This is the first ever piece of lip sync animation practice I've done. I decided to use the November 2014 audio clip released by 11SecondClub.com. That way I was able to see how others were getting along animating to the same clip by looking through the forums on the site. The website is also completely full of great examples of lip sync and filled with good advice.

I listened to the piece of audio first and then brainstormed some ideas. Once I decided on one of the ideas I shot some reference footage. Next I downloaded AnimSchool's Malcolm rig (free to download from their website). I think it's a great rig and character to use for animation practice - the rig and controls are easy to use and the Animation Picker is an amazing tool!

These are pages from my sketchbook where I wrote out the audio, drew quick sketches of my ideas, and started to note down advice from 11 Second Club and Digital Tutors about lip sync and facial animation:

For the scene, I had the idea of a man giving himself a pep talk in a mirror. I had to work out in Maya how to create a mirror effect and I ended up achieving this by using a Phong shader in the colour black with the reflectivity turned to full:

experimenting with mirror effects...

not quite there yet...

success! :)

- Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com