A Fairytale Ending

All done and dusted, BB has been handed in to Jared as well as the special edition copy to Paul! We really did push it to the last minute to get this thing done. On thursday Alec and I were still rendering, and yesterday (Pauls meeting) we were still burning it to disc and making the dvd case! We slightly ran over time on friday for Jareds deadline, handing it in at about half 5, so not too bad.

Well, as always, start with the negatives. The animation was rushed big time at the end, and I think I echo everyone in the class when I say that was down to conetexual studies and ROA depriving us of 2 weeks or more. So yes, the animation was not as high quality as I feel we could have achieved, however for most of us the cupboard exit and aniamtion before ROA was great. It was only like the last 10 seconds of each of our scenes which was quickly done.

Secondly the music. Again a rush job on the last day, and something myself and Alec have a tendency to do to our projects. We always slap a piece of unsuitable music at the end because we have nothing else and we're so sick of the project we dont care. Not a good attitude, or result - as is evident with eminem in "Im a gorilla", and now night at the museum in "Bare Bear". We must find music earlier in a term next time.

My final gripes are the bears texture and the book intro. Unfortunately due to time we had to completely change daves dump from an animated scene to a number of faded stills in a book sequence. It was the best option we had with the time left, however if we were to do it again I would make sure the dump scene was fully animated, full screen like ours. It still did the job in setting up the demo story though, and as Paul said yesterday could be substituted for the nice pop up book idea we had before.

Oh and lastly, the bears texture. We ended up settling for a wicker basket texture we found online, edited in PS abnd given a bump. Hmmm, not great I know. We would have loved to of achieved a slightly softer and fluffier looking texture, with the UV's better mapped out - Blue Zoo quality basically. Also as legend Tony Trimmer said, the wardrobe could do with one more layer of dirt or moss in PS to add depth and realism to it. I admit its a bit flat and cartoony at the moment.

Those are all my negatives though, which is a heck of alot less than "If I were a Gorilla". There are many more positives such as our environments - I love the texuring, modelling, and lighting that has gone into all of them. I'm especially proud of my woods scene, and the time I managed to create it in. Parts of our animation are better than anything on kids TV at present I feel, such as Phils cupboard exit and walkcycle - adorable and proffesional. Alec sorted it out in the end and produced some quality animation of BB checking out his suit and sniffing the bamboo in a matter of days - awesome stuff. I love most of the animation to be honest. I'm really happy with the tumble out of my closet particularly as well as my CLASSIC BB POSE! The animation wouldn't have been possible without daves legendary rigging skills though, so congrats to him as well. Oh yeah and the intro is sweet, I love the bear footprints and title.

So we had our meeting with Paul yesterday, and everything went great. He loved the work and complimented us on the standard of it. He is pitching the demo to the BBC in 3 weeks and will let us know how everything goes.

All in all, a great term and a winning formula as far as a team goes. I definately will be working with these guys again next year, and we have all agreed to turn it up 20 knotches for our film. It's going to be the best thing we've ever done, and hopefully a landmark in ravensbourne animation! We're aiming for gobelin standard, so watch out! ;)

Deadlines looming...

Today I finished the animation for the woodland scene. I am not too happy with it as the ending has been rushed in order for us to render and finish on time.

From when BB wiggles his bum onwards has all been done in just over a day, which, lets face it.. isn't cricket. Anyway, yeah so its very blocked out and made up of pose to pose stuff. He gets up from his bum wiggle, spins around, takes a few toddler steps, looks around the woodland for a bit, and then nods to the camera in approval of his new suit and environment. All of this came to approx 7 seconds of animation. I know I can do ALOT better, but again time is too tight to be tedious and finess. One day I hope to go back to this scene and animate it properly, however for the purposes of the demo Paul asked for, it will have to do...




I really wanted to have BB skip off down the woodland path and into the distance for the end shot. Again because of time I will have to end it on him nodding to the camera now. I did start the skipthinking it would be quick to knock out, but as we all know to perfect a decent walkcycle takes at least a few days, so I was simply attempting the impossible with the time left...



I gave up as you can see. There are more important jobs to be done over the next few days before hand in. Tommorow I will send the scene to render (widecscreen - unlike our ROA version). I will then begin gathering sounds and preparing titles and the dvd cover. I will also help my disabled team mates. They are taking far too long to sort it out.

I have learnt alot about my animation technqiues and style lately. I really really need to use the graph editor more... well I say that, I actually need to use it! I hardly touch it, which is bad. It means I use far too many key frames to achieve principles that can be done with few keys and different tangents.

I feel a TEENY bit disappointed with some of the decisions made in the team today. I understand time is of the essence, but it seems like massive shortcuts are being made to reduce the amount of animation needed. Kind of a cheat really. Finessing is not priority at the mo. I hope it all cuts together well otherwise the story will be inconsistent and the tumbling out of the cupboard in my scene will make no sense. Phil and Alec have tomo to sort it out. Dave will be working on his book intro which will hoepfully look good if the renders are smart, and the book page presented well.

Its been a while . . .

Friday 22nd may was my last post. Its been far too long, however I have good reasons as to why I haven't been updating as regualry as I had beeen. Firstly ROA happened. This was a massive event in which I had to produce a showreel, business cards, dvd's and prints to display on my stand. Unfortunately bare bear had to be put on hold for a week or so in order to get all this sorted and promote myself successfully at the show. As well as this I helped Mr Grigs in setting up the room, badgering people to put work up, and preparing posters and name tags for our event. All in all it was a great day and everyone who helped did a great job. Made a couple of good contacts on the day and was complimented on my work by many visitors which is always good to hear!

Not only did we have ROA, but the following week we were all bogged down with a contextual studies essay and presentation. Again this took up the best part of a week to write, prepare and present. Not to mention a small PPD essay I had to complete amongst the madness of ROA.

So all of that leads me up to now, 3 weeks since my last post. To be honest theres not much to update as work only commenced again yesterday! It is the final week of the project now and we have been in contact with Paul to discuss a final meeting. We have sent him concept art and clips from our different scenes to which we have had great feedback. He loves the work and has arranged for us to meet up next Monday when the dvd will be complete.

So where are we all at? Well for my scene, animation is still priority. I am nearly finished now, all that is left is for BB to skip off down the forest path - a perfect ending.

Phils is still p****** about with his arctic scene, and now has the bear in a postion ready to be blown back into the cupboard. I think he SHOULD be done by wednesday - latest!

Alec has suffered lately from some serious roatation problems and an unfortunate save overide (my mistake). The bear is still at the cupboard doors, however Mr Smith has assured us he will not let us down in the next couple of days. He stayed late tonight beginning the walkcycle over to the bamboo.

Dave has not been in lately due to his contextual essay taking over, however today he returned to work on BB. Unfortunately his scene is probably the furthest from completion because he had to rig the bear and finish the dump. Today we considered turing the dump scene into a short book intro as we feel the animation simply will not be done in time, to a high standard. He has a mammoth 30 seconds worth of animation still to do - in 2 days! I hope dave begins the book idea tommorow, otherwise it will be a real shame to see his dump scene fail in the last week.

With 3 days left we are really really tight for time now! We still have to animate, render, composite, edit, add audio, titles, burn, and make a case for!
Cmon guys - we can do it!!!!!!!!!!

Todays Animation...

Ok after he dusts himself off. The narrator AKA Grigsby bellows " Wow, What a beatutiful woodland... and your grizzly bear suit!" . This is the point when bare bear notices the change in outfit whilst dusting himself. It was hard to achieve the bare bears moment of realisation with his back to camera, as I had no expressions to play with. I had to make the point of discovery exaggerated and shocked, a step back, lean, and arm extend.

The next pose was THE CLASSIC BARE BEAR POSE. He swivels on the spot to face the audience and to examine his tail. I am really really happy with this part of the animation, as I achieved lots of follow through with ears, arms and head resulting in a very much toy doll resemblence.

After this initial shock and examination he soon begins to enjoy this new suit, and converts to a pose which was much more difficult. I have always had a vision of bare bear examining while bent over with his head between his legs, in an almost playful way. I have wanted this pose in my woodland animation since day 1. Well I can safely say, I pulled it off today. The rig desperately refused to let me to create the pose. Also with such a big head, and small body, its almost impossible to bend him right over without his legs taking off and wierd shit occuring. In the end I managed it, by resorting to extra body and spine handles dave gave me ages ago, which I had previosuly dismissed saying "Naahhhhh Baz I won't need them". I did. So yeah, I got him in position, and it worked out great. The arms need more work, and the head needs to be slightly lifted out of the ground.

I then attempted a tail waggle, and hip wiggle, but that part needs loads more work, as I did it at the end of the day quickly. Below is all the animation I did today....

Ok. After I attempted the quick tail waggle, I thought he could maybe do a little dance when Grigsby says "You look great!". Alec and Phil HATE the idea. But. I'm quite fond of it. I'm not sure really whether it suits his character but I tested it anyway. The arms and head have not been animated, its simply the body rotation lol. Let me know what you think guys, if enough people like it, I'll keep it! Watch at the end . . . . .

After about 50 different tumble endings - this is the one!

Attempt 1:

I don't have a video of my first attempt as I have recently saved over the Maya file, but essentially it ended up with bare bear landing upside down on his head. He then waved to and fro for a couple of seconds and then collapsed backwards. The problem was a) he would never in a million years just stop instantly on his head after taking the first to extravagant bounces. b) the rig was messed up and rotated and so glitches occured upside down. c) the collapse backwards left him in a nasty finsihing position, far away from camera and with his back to us and sideways on with the cupboard. I scrapped it.

Attempt 2:

Back Flip....

AWFUL! Alec is to blame for this insane idea. Totally out of character, and lame ass animation done in 2 mins.

Attempt 3:

An extra roll without momentum...

Definately getting there with an extra roll. However as my good friend Yaniv pointed out - it needed more momentum at the end. You would never stop rolling instantly. It lacked follow through, especially for a rag doll toy.

Attempt 4:

Previous action but with the added momentum. I also have animated the following actions after this final roll. The stand up, and dust off...

Animation finally begins...

Tumble entrance blocked out today....



Needs alot of refining and secondary animation but the key poses are down, and its roughly timed out. Had a few issues with the rig and closet doors which set me back the whole morning. I really wanted to capture the rag doll effect as he tumbled out. The idea is that he has just escaped the raging blizzard in the arctic and so all the wind and stuff force him to burst through into the woods scene.
Team moral was low today though, as we all forgot how to animate - coompletely! God I hope we improve over the next week or my dreams of how this thing will look are out the window. Cmon guys!

Updated scene & colour corrections

The original renders straight out of maya - and then the PS edited versions. The difference is incredible, and proves just how effective post production can be. I will alter the final woodland footage in after effects to achieve this look...

Textured Cupboard

Today Phil brought in the amazing cupboard model. It was someones job to texture the thing, so while Alec and Dave were busy with their scenes and rigging I made a start with the aid of phil. it was fairly simple to be honest. I planar mapped each side of the cupboard, aswell as the doors. I then applied a panelled wood texture found off the net. I had to make various adjustments to the brightness, colour and contrast of the texture as the physical sun and light messes everything up. I then added lighter brush marks and patches of moss in PS to add to get rid of the photographic effect and consistancy of the original photo. I also created a bump map for the planks to enhance the gaps between each. This was a simple case of creating a black and white version of the file. Below is a screen grab of the cupboard in the Arctic environment after we finished texturing it, and the relevent texture files....

Getting there slowlyyy....

Todays work - Mushrooms textured, trees textured (need to adjust planar slightly), rocks added and test textured, glow sorted, log textured, depth of field added (post), and everything sorted out a lil bit more. Sik.

So y'all can see the scene layout....

Texture I made for tree...

Forest Progress

Ahhhhh, nowhere near where I want it yet, but here's todays progress. Played about with lighting, backgrounds, and a few textures.... aswell as continuing to model of course.

Inspirational pics and research from todays sess....

Initial Woodland Designs

Note: Concept method is completely inspired by Philly B's PS style - simply because I tried my own and it was TERRIBLE!!! so "cred" given.

It's only my rough first design but hopefully it gives the guys an idea of the sort of scale and shot I am thinking... needs developing slightly. I plan on using Alecs 3 plane distance method with a log silhoutte central in mid plane. 2 foreground trunks either side give the shot a nice composition and as for the distant trees I am planning on using an image plane with mist etc.

Research

Below are images which helped me gain an idea of the type of things I'm after in my shot...

Guys please read....

Ok guys, i'm quitting. No I'm joking - sorry alec.

Ok I've been doing alot of thinking and with the way things are at the moment Dave has pretty much finished the dump 70%, all it needs are several objects. Phil you've got the arctic and the suited bear animation in your scene. Alec you have you have modelled your china scene and will have your animation in your scene. What I'm basically saying is as far as my showreel goes and for fairness I would like to model my own scene to animate in, as at the moment all I will have is the bear I modelled, animated naked in an environement which lets face it, is Daves. I dont really think thats enough for my showreel, as you guys can all put scenes up that are entirely yours. I think Dave can finish the dump by himself and claim it as his, whether it's after rigging or before hand. Any extra objects needed we can all chip in with, downlaod or borrow. So I now have nothing to do till animation as Alec will be texturing the bear.

So I have decided I would like to model a really simple but nice woodland floor scene. The cupboard can land at the end and he can come out in the brown suit - as a grizzly bear, and he will enjoy it smile etc. and that will tie up the whole film anyway, rather than leave it after the arctic. I know I'm capable of modelling and texturing the scene before the riggings finsished ( week max). I will keep it simple, like bottom of trunks, mushrooms, log, etc. All this leaves is someone to animate in the Dump scene, and I think Dave , you should give it a stab mate, as its your environment. Any early finishers can help out. So 4 scenes, split evenly - safe.

Your all probably screaming NAHHHHHHHH at the screen but I'm about to start concepts now for the woods, and start modelling monday. We have bare time! The character was finished way earlier than expected. Even if we dont get my scene finished by ROA we got the 2 weeks after anyway for bak up.

Unclothed bear progress

Not too good... needs alot of work

Script

Below is a script sent to us a while ago by Paul Shurey. We will need to consult it in the next week or so to help us plan out and time our animation sequences, as well as record dialogue. The script needs to be developed to fit our demo's narrative...


This bear is bare.
He hasn’t any hair
Who will take care
Of this lost little bear?
And since he’s so bare
He’s quite unaware
Of what kind of bear
Is this fur free Bare Bear.
(map animation)
"So Bare Bear is going on a journey around the world, to try and discover what kind of bear he really is.
Is he a Polar (Arctic) or a Brown Bear (Russia), a Sloth Bear (India) or a Panda (China)? A Sun Bear (Indonesia) or a Spectacled Bear (South America), a Black Bear (North America) or a Koala (Australia)?
By seeing the different bears in their natural habitats, and observing their behaviour and eating habits, Bare Bear hopes to unravel the mystery of his identity, to find his true home and to be re-united with his family."


(fur suit changing sequence)
"And on his travels Bare Bear will acquire a collection of bear suits allowing him to become any kind of bear he wants to be!"

Little Big Planet

Thought I'd whack a few images up here to display where our inspiration derived from for bare bears knitted suit, as we originally were planning on using fur.




Love the simplistic design and the quality of the fabric and wool textures used. If we can achieve anything like this I will be happy.

Bare Bear Model & Texture Tests

Today was a very productive day as we finally got maya work underway as a team. I had the simple task of modelling bare bear and so began by referencing the final concept designs for him. For previous character models I have always scanned in front, back, side drawings to use as image planes however for bare bear it was unnessasary because of his simple geomtric design.

It took me pretty much a day to model the entire character clothed and naked. The clothed version was simply a case of duplicating the naked head and creating a pouch like opening for his face to peep through. I then scaled it and only inserted the visable faces of the naked head within the hollowed out hat (saving on polygon count). I also modelled a beautiful zip to emphasise the fact he's in an all in one suit. Plus I can get some awesome secondary animation on it when the time comes.

The body was a very simple cone shaped mesh, curved with the back straightened. I also sculpted in a seem line for the stiching running down the centre of the bear, as he is after all being stylized as a toy. We all agreed the legs and arms did not need to be physically attached to the body as they would look more stitched on and floppy hanging from a point. It won't affect the rig at all.

Huge debates occured over the shape of the legs and arms, stumps, paws, cones, sausages, thumbs, no thumbs, mits etc!!! We should have established these fine details before modelling really but I soldiered through the stress and went with what I thought looked best; a mitten shaped palm with a thumb (for when he picks up objects during animation), and a wool stuffed arm in a cone like shape. Legs were also debated but I insisted stumps would look crap and there would be no nice heel role for animation. I therefore included rounded feet, again which looked like fabric stuffed with wool.

The nose and eyes were simple spheres shaped slightly to look like black beads/buttons. The mouth has yet to be modelled as it was looking noticeably like a moustache when attempted. #

I then called upon Alecs help to run a few texture tests to see whether the model was working, plus lambert default depresses me. We worked together with a few fabric textures we had found earlier in the week to recreate a wooly suit and cotton face. We only played around with the clothed bare bear for today. Below is the progress, which I am fairly happy with.... for tests!!



For the above render the same fabric texture and bump was applied to both suit and face (colour changed in PS). Hmmm it's ok. Lacks depth and cosyness. Bit of a cheat to use the same file twice but hey it looked suprisingly good. The suit needed more of a noticably different texture I felt, more of a knitted look. The two textures used can be seen below.





For this next render the cotton texture was left on the face as we felt that worked as his bare skin. However the suit was given a dense wool texture an bump very similar to that of the sack boy characters in little big planet...



As you can see from the render above, it was a slight improvement and highlighted the difference betweeen his bare skin and suit more, in terms of materials. It definately still needs work, but he's already looking alot more snug! Below is the texture which is actually a photo of a wicker basket found on a texture website, but works perfectly for woven wool.



Tommorow I need to sort out the mouth, zip seem and tweak the textures alot more to match the lighting in the environments we will be using. I want to experiment in achieving a higher quality look to the model, as I feel it looks slightly like an in game character at present.

Old Storyboard

Above is a storyboard I have been meaning to post up for quite some time. It was the one I produced over easter for the meeting with Paul in week 1. I had no idea of what bare bear looked like or how we were going to go about getting bare bear to each destination during the break so the whole thing was done in a very simplistic loose style. I had however seen the illusrations from the childrens book prototype and so I knew the bear was at the time just a bog standard old school design. I made this primarily to show the client how the transition could be made from country to country using a map sequence/transition depending on where bare bear was travelling to next. I also sketched out rough background designs for china, the arctic, Austraillia (now scrapped) and the woods (now changed to the dump) as I knew those were the teams favoured locations for the demo. I was very unsure of how the bear would arrive in each location at the time so to save time I simply skecthed him being dropped from the sky in each establishing shot, not very creative I know!
As the meeting with the client never took place unfortunately it was never used but it definately helped us to develop our ideas and get a narrative structure to our demo. Hopefully I can show Paul this old storyboard in our next meeting as evidence of how we have made progress.

Character Development

Over the weekend I was assigned the task of developing the initial character design produced by myself and Philly B. The others are all busy developing environment background designs. I tried to play around with the few concepts we liked from our original brainstorm session however I always seemed to develop back to the favourite first design! Below is a selection of my concepts showing my thought process and favoured styles...



Here I sketched various possible shapes for the torso and arms for my favoured design.



Above is a range of head sketches I produced in an attempt to develop the design me and phil agreed on (top left). Unfortunately I hit dead ends with most and again favoured the first!



Of my many head variations one look I stubled upon was the addition of an almost hoody style hat. After I drew it I realised it was very similar to Kenny from South Parks design. I scrapped the nose and mouth as I liked the idea of the hood being draw string pulled so tight it only revelaed the big puppy dog eyes. I liked the cutness of the design, however it wasn't bare bear for me, and would lack expression when it came to animation.



These 4 were a selection of my favourite designs and I felt were all unqiue in that they were totally different in size and shape. Top left is a square shaped bear which i felt would have been cool to incorporate the head in the body as one big square with limbs protruding. Bottom left is a fat grizzy bear design which I think would have worked well as an extra character, say a bear that bare bear met on his travels, but not for the main character. On the right and slightly larger is the favoured design again however I developed the head into more of a rugby ball shape, and curved the whole thing out if that makes sense?! I really liked this design as you instantly feel sorry for the character due to his weak stance and limp limbs. The middle design was me trying to throw together a combination of the square design and the rugby ball headed one. Didn't work as his face annoys me rather than persuades me to feel sorry for him! Jared agreed the rugby ball shaped design was the winner so far.