RaffBlog

So, another 14 hours spent at uni and I feel great!

Mostly because I managed to release another version of 11 second club dialogue and.. redo cameras on mimes part. Aaand! Rendered!
I’ve even managed to bake a two files (beauty and shadow passes) and see the results.
Now I know I’ll have to render camera shake again, because one.. one key was on stepped mode and it looks really bad. Like video was corrupted for one second.
But, that’s okay. It will take less than 10 minutes.

Tomorrow/today – Rendering missing parts and postproduction for mimes. And probably repairing my bed lamp :(

Oh hey, it’s me again!
So here is another.. rendered version in splines!

Oh.. since couple of days I was working on that really hard. Well.. Can’t remember what exactly changed since last version but I know I had problems with:
- Correcting lipsync T, S, L phonemes. Also, first few words. After many many tries I finally got it working
- Wiping move. Rachel helped me a lot with motion trail. This is how I managed to create really nice arcs!
- Robot – Got physics right after few tries
- Final cleaners pose. I think it’s lovely now!
- Blinks – Theoretically I know when to use it but.. it then it looks.. weird? But, I’ve read again Ed Hooks newsletter from March where he written about blinks – when, where and why. And everything was with great example of ‘Kara’ by Quantic Dream. Now I know and I personally think it looks great!

About rendering. I was struggling a lot with getting really nice interior light. A friend of mine, Tomasz Polak (check out his portfolio here: http://www.tkpolak.com) helped me with correct lights setup. If only we had v-ray at labs.. :( Things would go much faster.

To-do:
Mostly rendering stuff. I think it’s too dark. So I will work on that. Also, it’s HD 720p render and there are still some rendering artefacts on walls. Looks like low quality or something.. Gaaah! It takes so much time.
Uh.. beside my reading lamp at home everything is fine :-)

Rendering mimes at the moment. It’s gonna be a long night.

I should be reading my book now (‘Erebos’ by Ursula Poznanski for those who are interested – http://site.annickpress.com/catalog/catalog.aspx?title=Erebos) but my little lamp just.. flashed, boom, shkghg and it’s not working any more :(

So, I will just write how am I?
Good, thank you.

I worked 14 hours today/yesterday and mostly it was wasted time, because I have to render everything again. Normally, I wouldn’t mind but.. recently some %!!@$!@$ student blocks whole render farm with his animation where one frame renders AT LEAST one hour. So there is no possibility of me using render farm now. However, I managed somehow to push my animation in render queue (or was I just lucky?) and got what I presented to fellow team mates today.
Later, I had to render again camera shake because it stayed on stepped keys (really, long story with cameras and you don’t want to hear it).
So, after rendering I had to copy all the frames from render space to local computer, because working in Premiere via local network is commonly known as suicide.
And it takes time. 20 GB of frames.
Then.. To edit everything smoothly I have to ‘bake’ frames into movie clip. It takes around 50 minutes.. at least.
Then, it’s easy way. I import the new file, edit sounds (and it takes time..) and.. render the final file.

Ugh.. I really like postproduction (however it is REALLY tiring; not as carefree as animation). But when I have to do same thing third time and I know it takes ~10 hours my mind is blown after whole day and I write notes like that. Yes.

Meanwhile, I work on 11 second club task. It’s going really smooth and I enjoy doing this. Probably, if everything goes right, I will release another version tomorrow/today. 26/04 it is.

But now, I will try again repairing my bedside lamp, because I really want to know what’s going to happen next in ‘Erebos’.

Release Canditate 1

This version was shown today.

Okaay!
Another version.

Added some personality to Turbo Cleaner. As Rachel said, if I decide going that way I should exaggerate it. Still unsure. We’ll see.

From other news:
Added more distinguished wiping (doesn’t look awesome over here, in splines it will be much more better). Added some more hand gestures. Repaired eyes.

Also, different ending! More self-confident pose.

• Camera a bit lower
• Sound effects a bit higher
• Cut going up on Mime #1

• Wiping more distinguished
• Watch elbow at this part
• Miranda – Left hand too static – add more gestures
• Offset Turbo Cleaner – more interesting animation
• Andy – Make more definite eyes/head animation when the other character is walking off the scene
• Instead  of being sad at the end – make pose like ‘Because fuck you that’s why’

And that was shown on today’s show n’ tell

This time instead of writing long and boring character analysis sheet I present quick look at Miranda’s (the boss) desk:

My inspiration for characters comes from ‘The Devil wears Prada’ film. When I heard the audio for this month’s 11 Second Club I automatically thought about Miranda Priestly and how gorgeously Meryl Streep acts.

I want to achieve personality of Miranda (yes, took the name for my animation – couldn’t resist) with even that single look:

Personally, I love this task! It is so nice to do something else than mimes. That’s why I will do my best to create really nice piece of animation.

This time something light and funny. Perfect explanation of cats chasing invisible things or.. Pinky!
Anything particular in this animation? Beside of really nice render combined with live action footage and cute cat – character. It’s simplicity. One big eye, non human proportion body allows ‘cheating’ by adding toon physics.
Really nice piece of character animation!

Great job, Turgut Akaçık!

Source:
http://pinkydontgo.tumblr.com/