Animation tweaks

Jumping on the wall.

 Here is the update on my animation of the wolf waking from his sleep. I believe this is a vast improvement to my other playblast of the wolf jumping onto the wall. I will next have him jump from the wall to the floor following the animatic I have created.

Tutorials.

 I have showed Teagan Ball my new version of the poem she is very happy with this and would like to meet up on the 23rd to further discuss the progress of the animation.

I have also been given the opportunity to speak with Paul Barlow from stars and heroes to discuss my work and have some critic on the project as a whole. I have recently worked with Paul and would be very pleased to get his opinion.

 Assistants.

I have spoken with my helpers, Chris Wass is going to composit some rubbish onto the alley floors for me and composit the leaf on the stone stand of the wolf.
Derek Woodmas has been a great help in the sound department and he is happy with being the voice for my poem that will be said over the animation
I also have Charles Beeching working on the music to the changes to the animation he is still on board with the project which I am very pleased with.

Animating

Wolf Awakens

This is the start of my animation on the wolf. I wanted the wolf to shake himself awake. This would show the audience he has been asleep for a long time and has to shake himself awake to get rid of the stiffness. He is also make out of brick so I will be adding tiny bits of rock that are going to fall off of him when he shakes to give that feel of him standing there for a long time. Getting rid of all the dust and rocks that have been settling on him for a while. This is just a playblast. However noticing the animation he seems a little too slow which needs to be rectified, plus the way he jumps on the wall is still not quite right so I plan on working on that this afternoon.

 

Research

I have been looking into the movement of wild wolves, the way a head might bob up and down when running. The way a wolf might hunt or track prey. How the interact with things in their environment and how the might react to things in their surroundings. Here are some links from Youtube.

Wolf jump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA_Ym_7Nh34&feature=related
wild
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rvaOZ5zKf8
hunt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jXxtQRy47A&feature=related
behaviour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCcILsWlTk&feature=fvwrel
prehistoric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7hDJvkzjw&feature=related
bbc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnVkoc7ldrk&feature=relmfu
living with wolves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWmOtXSAr1M&feature=relmfu

Poem

I have also been working on the poem, taking my tutors advise by making some of the lines longer.

I believe it is coming along well and I do like this new version.

Mantled on stone I am positioned in my place

Stiff and trapped my paws itching to bring you my pace

The Circular man with his small and tall hands will awaken me to the night with one strike.

Rays of silver light from the depths of the night are going to give me life.

Holding your breath it makes you tense

The cloaking shadows bringing the suspense

Light to my dark, you shake

In one swipe the light will break

In the depths of silence hear the rumbling of my growl

Hair prickles to life at my howl

Seeing your perfect life drained

As Guardians cannot be contained

Let us finish this mindless chase

Stand proud in your place, face to face

Swimming in my yellow eyes

Find me in your heart as we now have our ties.

You know I have been awakened

First look of the Guardian

This last few days have been tedious as all i have been doing is rendering the camera move to the wolf this has taken 50 frames a day to render this is probably due to my laptop not being the best to render on. However whilst I have been rendering those frames out I have been watching videos of wolf movement and also watching the land of lost wolves documentary which has been useful as it gives me the insight on wolf instinct and behaviour. here is the link to the series http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01fnfrc/Land_of_the_Lost_Wolves_Episode_1/
I have also changed the eye colour on the wolf to yellow with a
black rim around the eye like a real wolf.

I still think it needs to have a blacker eye.

opening scenes

These are the first opening scenes to my animation, I think the leaf needs to be alot slower and I think it needs to have a group of leaves in the alleyway and then a single one landing on the plaque however I have not yet put in some rubbish on the floor yet so I am going to work on that. To save myself rendering aswell I rendered one image of the alley, layered the whole alley so I could hide it then animate the leaf and render that out seperatly and in aftereffects using the mask tool I was able to merge the image and animation together. As I said it needs to be tweaked and slowed down but I think it looks like a good start. I spent an whole week on the alleyway, modelling everything, uv mapped the entire alleyway, then went out and took photos for my textures, enhancing the images to allow them to look dirty and grubby. Adding everything into maya I was then able to mess with the lighting, I feel like it needs more however I am not an expert on lighting so I think it is time to hit the youtube and books looking at tutorials.

renders

These are renders I took to have a look at the end product of my project, the images of the left side are the tests and the right images are my end product to my animation.

texture and uv maps

storyboard

Here is my storyboard that I promised everyone