"Guess it's time to roll the credits."

Second update of other stuff.


I made a video with Alan in the style of an R-type/Gradius/Space Impact game (I will admit that the idea came from watching Nigel and Max's Final Fantasy/8-bit theater video) using the white board and cut outs. Here is the video without sound, which will hopefully be added tomorrow.

The colours were inverted to make it more of a spacey background. When we were making it, we had all these ideas suddenly pop up (there should be a narration with talking heads, and a squid formation etc) which were great until it turned out it meant 2 hours stood up drawing green lines for lasers, hence the cop out ending. Maybe next year if this was done on Flash instead it would be easier (once I learn how to do it), because it did come out quite well, although it needs to be darker.

Here's the newer version with sound, but it was shrunk by Premier much to my annoyance and I need to figure out how to the change that (the original had help from Bryan, much obliged). I suspect I won't be able to fix it just yet, but 'd recommend trying to play the videos together so you can get the audio for the larger view, just to get an idea of what it would be like.

The audio was a lot of fun to produce in trying to find all the bleeps, so it's a real shame that I can't fix it. Yet.

"Is that the end?"

Is this my final post for this year? I don't know. Certainly, it's the last one on this term although we've finished with the assessments and everything, so this would probably make it late. it'll be the last one using a Silent Hill theme, it's getting terrible trying to theme the titles around them. I could use normal titles actually related to the subject I suppose...

Anyway, the final assessment was a walk cycle and a walking 3D model using an androgynous rig, which really bothered me with it's creepy dead eyed fishface, but more on that another time. The walk was based on two walks I did and had to use as reference to see if I could not directly copy it position for position but to get the general feel of it. I chose the second walk, simply because I couldn't get into the stride of my usual walk with the first one so it would end up looking like stiff armed marching (although my right arm really doesn't like swinging much. Too much muscle or something).

Here's the footage-

(I didn't actually recognise myself during the assesments, which was very strange and a little but creepy to be honest. University has obviously changed me...).

2D first-

When I made this, there were originally an extra two frames but the walk came out needlessly slow in the passing position so I cut them, so it's at 18 frames. I thought it didn't work that well and looked more like a normal walk than the bouncy one, but I think that's down to the height of the figure not moving much when the figure is stood on it's tip toes to give it an extra bit of bounce.

3D-

Will be up at another date. I don't have the file currently.

I preferred making the 3D one because the video reference was at hand straight away and i could Ctrl z whenever I wanted, but when I saw it back I can see little things that niggle me, like the pop of the knees as they swing forward and the overall speed of it. I'm happiest with the pony tail bobbing on this, mainly because I think adding a little bit of secondary animation helps improve the overall look of my animations in the same way adding colour helps an image ( although with both of those things they don't cover up mistakes).

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The presentation went....actually, I can't even estimate how it went. I know the research we put into it and the writing took forever, but I think my choice to use basically an essay rather than cue cards might have damaged the presentation.

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I forgot to upload the walk cycles from the week before last! Oh dear.

Here's the 3D walk using the Burt rig. I found it difficult to remember all the movements that are meant to go into a walk like hip rolling and the shoulders moving (although that's not going to happen on this one)so thanks for the people who came over and pointed out what was wrong with it. It's far from perfect and I need to remember in future projects to actually remove the rigging from the final render (is that the word? 0_0) but its my first go with CG walking, so I'll put it down to that.

I wasn't pleased with my final 3D animation so I made this as just a random animation test. there was a bit more, with Burt leaping to an alert position, but it came out terribly so I kept the opening part and ditched the rest.

The 2D walk wasn't great. It's a walk that I know has something wrong with it, but I didn't want to go back and change it because I'd spent so long staring at it. Photoshop may not have been the best choice to make this in, although it did cut down on paper and mess.

Any other stuff I put up is going up in a seperate update because it's not really related to this work, more personal stuff, and it's easier for me to organise them like that (I'm worried about file size uploads as well).