1611 Project Timmy

So here's my concept pass and some reference with a quick pass to analyze it and a look at the quick rigging job I did on the thang flying. Yes, I said thang. Again I'm using a painting from my one a day challenge, this painting really nails the feeling of the world my little guy lives in. The main creature element in this painting was in the original story, and he visited me in a very vivid dream years ago when I was writing and doing some visual development on the project. The model he flies on is something based on a pen & ink drawing I had modeled awhile back when I was trying to interpret my drawings into 3-D to bring into Timmy's world. Below this is a concept test I did years ago to rough out that creature and visualize who it might look and move. It's a simple primitive block out , rigged & animated quickly with a few effects to texture & dirty it up.

More play and passes

So here's a look at me throwing a different idea into the mix here for the layout. I want to have something to start playing around with the final look of the character and world. I'd like to get a lot of layering and atmosphere into the scene. I'll be playing with more layers of animation, hand drawn, digitally drawn, and who knows. The pipes will be belching smog and I'd like to learn how to layer this and give some depth in a limited but noticeable way. I did do some more work on the character animation, but as usual it could still use another pass or two. This is just done using viewport 2.0 and some lights and a bit of motion blur.

Pass, maybe 4, who really knows..........

Alright, I pushed forward and reworked my poses with the aid of the grease pencil sketches and then dove in and added some fun stuff for him to slide, hop, land and pose. Working for yourself, you tend to continue to add to your actions, at least I do and I'm sure many other artists would say the same. To me that is exploration and practice, that's where the growth takes place in you the artist. When you work on a production, or for students on a project for class, you should work closely with your director/ lead/ instructor and work to their directions. They are there for a reason and will help you make smart choices, adhere to requirements and focus on a workflow to get the job done quicker, with more focus & help you develop a workflow that will serve you in your career as well as your personal work. There is always room for your input and ideas even within the requirements of production and school assignments. I'll probably take another pass to finesse and smooth this out a bit. I had a fun time applying what I learned last month when I copied a piece of animation from Hotel Transylvania 2, a style of animation that I enjoy and would like to add some of that style to how I handle my character. Check that out on a previous post below on this blog.

Moving forward

Ok, moving forward and reevaluating my animation. I jumped right in and started pushing this towards completion, rethought my camera and wanted to add more animation to the end instead of just having my character slide to a stop. This test is less about the animation and more about connecting the style and world I would like to create moving forward with my character & his world. So I only did a very quick thumbnail sketch to prepare, and then dove in. Stopping for a moment and focusing back on the animation, I couldn't stop myself from drawing over my animation and push my and finesse my animation exaggerating the poses and cleaning up the arcs, and staging. I would definitely suggest that students try using the grease pencil in maya to evaluate and quickly try out edits to their animation. Another thing drawing over your poses does is free you from the limitations of your rig. I'm not too concerned about hitting the exact pose, but I will get creative and do my best to push it more in this direction. Getting used to dealing with the limitations of your rig and how to creatively achieve the performance you want takes time and a good understanding of the principles of animation. Now, I'll go back and push my poses closer to my scribbles, and yes, scribbles are good simple and quick; they are only concerned with the over all motion and core performance.

Breakdown

Ok, second pass. I'll try and finish this up quick from here on, so I can have time to start playing with rendering. These next few test I hope to be able to figure out how I might texture, light and render my scenes. Time to go back to school a bit for myself; lot's to learn and play around with. I want to find an interesting balance with space, making the flat 2-D & 3-D elements work in a way that fits with my sensibilities in how I create my art and designs. I tend to work in limited space in my own personal artwork for a number of reasons that interest me, I'd like to see how I can bring that to my animated world.

Block out

Ok, here's pass one. This is a bit of a hybrid scene, more concept than animation. The timing is from my thumbnail pass. I'll worry about that later after I break it down a little. Since the layout and distance my character is traveling is very different, the timing I'm using on the thumbnail pass will change. I tend to not worry about timing much until I get further into the scene. And yes, I put a deformer on the frame I added to help change the shot from something very flat to more spacial.

Scene set up & rigging

Quick look at the scene set up. This is me testing some ideas on how I might create my interactions with my characters world. I've always loved the multi-plane camera that was used in the classic Disney movies that interesting play you can get between the layers. Lot's of play and tests to do to start to understand how I might create Timmy's world.