Working on the ending...

This week was another week of stepping sideways. I am still working on the ending of the film. I was having problems setting up the shots for the ending. From the start, I have not really like the fact that there is black inside the last room and that you can see it. My idea from the start was to not show any of what is in the room, but I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it and still tell the story. After class on Thursday, I now know how I am going to tell the end of the story. It feels good to have finally solved this issue that has been bothering me since the storyboarding stage.

more work to be done....

This has been a rough week for our film. Doubt about being able to finish the film as started to creep in. hopefully we can all get on the same page, change the things that need to be changed and get back on schedule. This week it was my job to work on the end of the film and get all of the rough animation done for the last hallways shots. I ran into some problems, with this task. First is the fact that Hugh’s feet are just too large for him to get up off the ground in any realistic way. I wasted a lot of time on that shot and tried 3 or 4 different ways, and none of those looked any good. I am just going to have to rework the shots to make it work. I think I am going to just have him stand up into frame and that should solve the problem. After I post this I am going to go work on those ending scenes, there is a lot of work that still is needed to be done.

more shots....

This week we did the first half of the animation. It feels good to be finally working on the character stuff. I was expecting some sort of issue with the rigs, but it went pretty smoothly. Hugh’s rig held up and I only ran into one problem. Some weird thing happened with the upper part of the rig were I couldn’t rotate or translate the controllers. I tried everything and couldn’t get it to work. So, after a good hour or so I just re referenced the Hugh rig back into the scene and it worked fine. It was weird animating a small thing like a close up on the Buddha wheel for 42 frames, but seeing it work in the rough cut was pretty rewarding. As of right now I am working on the end hallway shots. I am running into some issues with how the shots are framed, but I’ll figure something out. I am happy with the way that the film is turning out.  

Let the Animation Begin...

Finally finished with the blocking for our film. Some of the shots still need to be tweaked, but over all I am happy with the shot composition. This week I have to animate the Buddha room. It is going pretty smooth. No major problems with the rig, other than the wrist “candy wrapping” a little bit. I haven’t made a rig in a while, and forgot about the forearm roll joint. It’s not the end of the world we will just have to work around it. Not being able to turn Hugh’s hand is going to be a bigger problem, but GH should be fine. He doesn’t have to turn any door knobs. In the end I have faith we will work it out.