Putting everything together

I'm putting everything together in premier pro, its the only program I have to do it.

It's a little bit of a nightmare, its such a slow program, I have to keep waiting everytime I wanted to do something.

I also rearranged the photos before I put it into premier pro so they would be in order, (I did this on my laptop), when I put the folder on my computer for some reason it messed them all up again and wouldn't let me rearrange them.

It seems like everything is going wrong just to make the whole process of putting it all together more frustrating.

I've decided that I'm going to go into uni tommorow morning and put all of my images together using final cut pro. Premier has made as my images of my stopmotion a lot larger than the stage, I don't want to re-size them because it means all my images will be slightly different sizes and will make the animation jump about. I remember when I used final cut it didn't do this. I don't really want to leave it till the morning to finish everything but I think thats my only option.

Searching through the photos

Looking through the photos I noticed a lot of inconsistances. The clock is the most annoying thing throughout the whole animation, if you watch it you notice sometimes its fallen down, and then its propped up again, and then in the next scene its completely dissappeared and then it reappears again.

After I had done the alarm clock scene I should have clued it to the table so it would go anywhere. I remembered to blue tac all the furniture down but I didn't think about the clock.

Final things that need doing

While my computers rendering out the CGI section, I'm going to use my laptop to just edit some of the stopmotion photos. In some of the photos the monkeys sleeve has rolled up and you can see the foam underneath, so I'm just going to edit that out.










It's only a slight change but I have some spare time on my hands while I'm waiting for my CGI section to finish rendering.

Rendering CGI Animation

I've just set my animation to render so lets just hope my computer can cope with it. I've had to lower all the render stuff so the the file size would be smaller and so it wouldn't take as long.

Even though I've lowered all my settings on my animation, the render is still taking a long time because I have to do it in several separate sections,

It took 13 1/2 hours altogether. Luckily its not the first time I rendered something out on 3Ds Max so I made sure I left a whole day free to render everything out.

CGI problems

I haven't had many problems with my CGI stuff apart from someting I've only just noticed and thats 3Ds Max perspective is wrong and I don't know how to fix it.

Ahh I feel so stupid now I've just realised why the perspective weren't working, I hadn't put it in perspective view.

3Ds Max unexpectedly crashed on me, it also wouldn't allow me to open that file any more. That was the only file I had of it as well so if I couldn't get it to open I would have lost all the animating, and texturing I have already done.

I couldn't get the Max file to open but luckily it had made 3 backups of different intervals of my work and I was able to open one of them. I deleted all the mistakes which made it crash in the first place and saved it twice under two different names so I would always have a backup.

That was lucky.

Monkey Test

I've done quite a bit of my stopmotion and put it all together to see how it looks and to see if I need to change some things. I looked through it all and realised that the monkey was missing his tail on the walk section, pan up to the mirror and when he sits on his drums, so I'd have to re-do those sections. I had to re-do the walk section anyway because it looked a bit jumpy and needed more frames adding to it.



I was holding the monkey when doing the walk cycle so it made it quite difficult to tkae the photo and move the monkey. I made something to sit on the sets walls which would allow me to hang string off them, to hold my monkey up. This would keep him steady as well, (well steadier than my hand).














Another reason for doing this test was to see whether it would look better if my monkeys plastercine arm came out and actually hit the mirror images to make it look more like a mirror.

On the test it look a lot better with the arm in but was really difficult to create, I had to take off the monkeys head and try to angle the arm so you couldn't see the rest of the body. When I re-do this section I'm going to create just an arm, so its easier to angle and get the shot.

Stopmotion failed attempts

While animating the stopmotion section of my animation I realised how easily things could go wrong meaning you would have to start the shot again. To start off I couldn't get my computer to pick up the camera while using either stopmotion pro or helium frog, so I decided to take the photos anyway and just be extra careful of how much I move the character, as I wouldn't be able to use onion skinning.

Second thing was I had my computer on stand by while animating (my sets opposite my computer). Throughout animating my computer kept turning itself on and then off again, which gave my animation a blue haze every now and then. I also kept moving the jacket of my character and I kicked the set half way through animating. When I played everything back there was a blue flashing light in the background, my characters clothes kept ripplying and half way through the set just jumped. I think it was easy to say that I need to re-shoot that section of the animation. When I do I'm going to make the morphing into a monkey slower, so just adding very tiny parts of plastercine every 2 frames or so.

The wire I'm using for my character is really bad, I'm able to move it about 10 times and then it just snaps. I don't really have time to buy some more wire so I'm just going to have quite a few sparre parts.


Luckily greg gave me some of his wire which means the drum scene won't be as frustrating and I should be able to get a better walk cycle.

When I re-shoot I'm going to make sure I blue tac everything down because I keep knocking the bed and bedside table.

New Updates

The monkey set is finished

The crowd is modeled, rigged and textured.

The mirror images have been drawn out but not coloured in.

The Box set is finished

The other characters for the CGI are almost finished

What needs to be done.

Finish modeling the other characters, texture and rigg them

Put everything together onto one stage

Colour in the mirror images

Carry on shooting stopmotion


I have a lot to do and I'm starting to run out of time to get it finished I think that means a lot of late nights.

Song Ideas

Iv found a Phil Collins song which can be cut easily so its around a minute long. The only problem is I'll need to add in the drums myself which could be quite interesting. I'm going to try and recreate the drum solo on pots and pans but if that doesn't work I'll just recreate it on garage band or something.

Re-creating music on pots and pans failed misserably and so did using garage band. I did however find another version of Phil Collins song which was easy to cut and included the drums.

This doesn't however have a clear piano playing.

StoryBoarding

I have sketched out the storyboard. I'm going to make an animatic of it to see if it all works with the music.

I changed the story to what I had previously decided on. I thought it would be funny if my punk rocker was obsessed with Phil Collins and actually gets drugged at one of his gigs.

The storyboard isn't very clear of whats happening I tended to just draw images of the start of every scene. It makes sense and works in my head but wouldn't be very clear to anyone else.
















The animatic is very rough and I'm planning on making the fade in and fade out longer but over all I think it works. I did get rid of the section where my punk rocker kisses a photo of Phil Collins as it didn't seem to flow as well with it.

I've had to cut it up in five sections to be able to upload it to my blog






Looking at the animatic it made me realise that I will have to plan out my animation really well to be able to hit those beats (for example when the alarm clock gets turned off.

3D model of punk rocker and other characters

I modeled a general human looking person first and then I would edit it to make all the other characters. I didn't spend a lot of time on the people in the crowd as they wouldn't be a focus point and you wouldn't really be watching them.

This is my second time at trying to model something on 3Ds Max so I'm really rubbish at it, it takes me a long time to do something very simple.

After I while of trying to make facial features I gave up and decided to just make the eyebrow and nose shape separately and just group them to the rest of the body. I made the eyebrow shape out of a dougnut shape and just bent it the nose was just a squashed sphere. This took a lot less time than actually creating the shapes from the face, it also looks pretty cool.


I only gave the punk rocker, Phil Collins, the drugger and the guitarist detailed texturing. The crowd wouldn't have any close ups of them. I also didn't want them to draw attention away from the main characters, especially since the punk rocker is surronded by people and needs to stand out.

Finished set for box project

The whole set was finished the only problem I still have is that the curtain rail doesn't like to stay up for too long, I try everything, PVA, super glue, epoxy and blue tac and none of them wanted to hold it up. If I was to use this set for an actually animation I would drill little holes in the side of the wall to slot the curtain rail in place. The curtain rail is also a little too thin to support itself so if I was to re-make it I would use thicker doul to make the curtain rails.

If I had chance to re-do it I would also use a pritt stick to glue on the wall paper and floor because they went really crinkly with PVA.









I'm really impressed with the fire place I left a hole at the back of the set, which would effectively be the chimney. Theres enough room for me to me able to stick a lamp there making it look like the fire is glowing.

Changes in Punk Rocker's Room

I didn't like the wallpaper I firstly used in the punk rockers set. I chose this textured wallpaper, glued it on and painted it black. I didn't think that I would want to put images on the wall later. The images and the textured wallpaper would just look really odd. I ripped off the texture wall paper and printed off some black paper and used that instead, however the printer wasn't very consistant which made the walls look patchy.








I decided to correct this by covering the whole wall in images (posters). I thought it would be quite funny if I covered the entire wall in images of Phil Collins, to make it look like he has a serious obsession with him.

Finished Props for Box

The props I'm using are large dinner table, cutlery, plates, wine glasses and a few other things like a large plate for the half eaten turkey, wine bottle, gravy boat and a large bowl full of mash potato.
I also have other props like drawers and a cabinet full of books just to fill out the room.

I had just finished making the cutlery and plates and bowls out of clay. I got up to go wash my hands, came back turned on the TV and an advert came on about a magazine for 99p where all those items come free with it. I found that quite amusing as it took me a while to model all those things and I could have just bought them. I'm going to just keep the ones I made anyway and still use them for my box set. Even though there not as precise as the ones you would get in a magazine, I think they look quite comical.

I didn't make any presents in the end, I did try but they look really tacky so I'm just going to leave them out.

The cards look pretty cool, I just found them on google and glue them on to pieces of card.

I was a little disappointed with how the bookcase turned out it looked all eally neat and tidy but as soon as I clued the front on the plastic I used went really cloudy and made it look quite messy. It also turned out a little big as well.

I found some really cool paper from a model shop that looks like floorboards I got some for the box set and also got some for the punk rocker set.

Images to help with Box

I was a bit unsure on how to involve the grandad in the room whether to have him slobbed out on a sofa or fallen asleep at the dinner table. I thought him falling asleep at the dinner table would make the set smaller and easier to re-create. I wanted the set to look a bit messy, with the chairs pulled out making it look like the other family members have got so bored of waiting for the grandad to finish his chistmas meal that they just left the table.

I want the set to look quite christmasy, I'm going to base it around what my house looks like a christmas. I might just have a couple of christmas cards hanging up and a couple of presents in the corner. A fire blazing away and the christmas meal. I might steal a few aspects of the holiday thanks giving because that has a huge meal quite like a christmas dinner and its really easy to find images of a thanks giving. I also got a few pictures of a sunday roast that my mum had made so I could see what the chicken would look like when it had been carved up.
















I didn't realise how purple the chicken was until until I took these photos. I shall include these colours in my bird bones, even though its a turkey and not a chicken I'm guessing it would look very similar.

The colours used in the chistmas meal and the entire room are very warm. I want to try and recreate that warm feeling. To make the interior of the house look even warmer I might show what the exterior of the house looks like, for example you would be able to see there neighbours house from the window and there would be snow all over the trees and grass.

Materials Needed

The materials I need to buy

MDF
Epoxy Resin
Super Glue
PVA
Materials (for punk character and for my box project)
Sponge (to make the matress and pillow for the bed)
Kitchen Roll (to stuff the duvet)
Clay (to model the plates and cutley for the box project)
Coloured card
Pictures printed off for the wallpaper and other bits around the set)

I also would need plastercine and paint but I already have them.

Ideas for set

The Ideas I had for the set for my second assignment was to make the punk rockers bedoom. I would probably make the walls black with a couple of punk posters hanging up. Props I will need are the bed, sink, mirror and a drum Kit. I might have some exta bits of furniture in the room just to fill up the space. I already have a drum kit which I made a while a go out of clay, I might try and use that.

I'm going to get some wallpaper from a DIY store and just paint that black. I haven't decided what to use for the floor yet I might just try and paint it a wood texture.

Ideas for box

The idea for my box was to make a scene too show after a christmas meal. I have looked at a lot of images and people tend to be slobbed out on the sofa sleeping, plates stacked up.

Things I shall try to model

Plates
Table
Sofa
half eaten chicken
wine glasses with left over wine
Old man fallen asleep on the sofa
knives and forks scattered about
burnt down candles
party poppers
crackers
old man


Things I'll need to buy

Table Cloth
MDF for sofa and table
Clay to model knives, forks, plates half eaten chicken,
Card for the crackers, party poppers
tissue paper for napkins
Material for old mans clothes

Assignment Ideas

The Box Assignment

The event that has occured would be a christmas meal, it would be after the meal has been eaten so a lot of mess and a man sleeping on the sofa with a bit of a podgey belly.

The.. Assignment

The music video will be based around a punk rocker. It will start of with a CGI section. The rocker would be on the stage with his drums but he gets booed off. He decides to drink this weird looking potion which his manager gives him to hopefully improve his skills. The scene cuts to stopmotion version of the rocker sleeping in his bed. He starts to morph into a monkey. When he wakes up he sleepily walks over to the mirror. The reflection in the mirror would be drawn animation. As he slowly opens his eyes he realises he's a monkey, screams and somehow makes it over to his drum kit. He realises that he is a lot better at the drums as monkey than what he was a man.

I'm not 100% sure about how everything is going to happen so the story line might change slightly throughout the project.