Week 42 - Starting Monday 28th July

Monday 28th July
Finished animating the dog, bird and biscuit in shot 12:

Used the same animation from Shot 11 of the dog and bird, however I took off the post infinity curves in the graph editor so that I could stop the tug-of-war cycle and animate the bird fly away and the dog react to the bird letting go of the biscuit. I made sure to have the bird look around at the human before flying out of shot - as this is the reason for the bird letting go of the tug as the human is racing over to shoo it away. I kept the dog's face as a growl up to the end of the tug, brought his head back further at that point to emphasize the force between the dog and bird, and the sudden letting go. This shows in the dog's expression also, slight shock, his eyes go larger and his eyebrows and ears go up.

Helped Georgios with the animation of throwing the biscuit in shot 9, there weren't enough frames for anticipation, so i scaled down some frames before to make some room.

All the character textures had disappeared from Shot 12 for the bird and dog, so I reapplied them. I imported the same characters from a different shot to bring the textured shaders back into the scene, then deleted the duplicated characters after. However the bird has a lot of wing feathers which are made up of 6 different textures. So to find out which one applied to each, I used the textured bird I had imported as reference. I also drew out a diagram for reference. This might also be handy in case the textures disappear from the bird character in any other shots:

Tuesday 29th July
Checked Rebecca's animation for 16 and 17, which is now finalized, so I set up the cameras and handed to Kirti to render.
Checked Georgios's animation of the leaves in shot 9.
Looked over Shengs shot 18, re-import the new bird house and Sheng will adjust the bird animation so that it lands on the new bird house.
Re-imported the human character into shot 12 (with my final animation of the dog and bird) so Georgios can animate the human character.

I've started animation for the dog in shot 8. Have turned the dog around to face the other way as his middle doesn't bend very well for him to turn his head (like it does in the animatic):

Tried to bend the dog around but felt it wasn't looking right, plus he felt distant from the action in the shot by facing outwards.

Turned the dog around and will build the mound of dirt around in front of him, to help obscure the bird from him. Feel like he is more part of the shot now.

Need a mound of dirt:

Started with a geometry plane and moved vertices to create the mound of dirt that the dog has dug up.

Finished mound of dirt, made it high enough that it would cover the dog's view when his head is bent down.

Discussed with Kirti and Rebecca credit sequence ideas - ended up with stills of film but in a watercolour style - I suggested adding the sky texture on top of the stills to overlay a watercolour texture look over them.

Wednesday 30th July
Finished animating shot 10:

The dog runs in and stutters to a stop, I accentuated this by having his body low and standing back up again when he stops, to help show that he has just run over. His eyes are trained on the biscuit, until he looks up and spots the bird. I kept him still as the camera pan backs to reveal the bird - showing his shock and focus. After they both look at the biscuit at the same time, I raised the dog's body higher and moved his ears inwards as he starts to growl, to show that he wants superiority and is challenging the bird.

While animating this shot I tried out the technique of having a mirror next to me as reference for expression, as the dog's expression turn suddenly from joy to anger in this shot. Using a mirror is a technique used by 2D and 3D animators:

Animator Chuck Jones

I've also found this myself when I have been animating or creating blendshapes that I subconsciously am making the expressions on my own face. I also found in this video clip that animator Glen Keane does this when he is drawing:

Therefore having a mirror handy to allow me to see these expressions you make when animating is a good reference:

Typed up the credits list for Rebecca and helped organize with Kirti some images to be rendered for use in the credits.
I had an idea for the very end of the credits with the DJCAD logo, could have the biscuit thrown past the logo and land beside it. Since the film revolves around a biscuit, thought it would be the right thing to end on. So I animated the biscuit for the end credits:

Helped Sheng with the dog's ears in Shot 18. Just rotated them inwards to help give the dog a happier expression.

Worked with Kirti to sort out texturing the soil in Shot 8 as it was too green, tried tiling the texture but then could see the seam on the model in the shot.
I then solved the problem by turning off the tiling texture and scaling up the uv's for the border soil that is seen and position over a more brown bit of the texture.
Also uv-mapped the 'mound' quickly so the texture sat better on it, again scaled up the uv-map and positioned over a brown section of the texture:

Had the texture of the soil opened so that I could see where the more brown parts were as the texture wasn't showing up on the actual models in the scene.

The texture file for the soil. 

Also been helping and overseeing the dog animation in shot 20 that Sheng is working on. Shot 20 is the last shot in the film, where everything ends well and happy. Explained the dog's emotional state here so that the animation reflects this in the shot. Suggested to turn the dog's head towards the camera right at the end so the audience can see the dog's happy expression more.

Thursday 31st July
Worked with Sheng to finish Shot 20.
The dog needed to look more happy at the end.
Opened the dog's mouth more at the end and stuck tongue out a bit more.
Changed confused brows blendshape for surprise/happy brows.
Added a dip to his head as it turns.
Tail bends towards his head at end.
More smile as well... done!

Fixed camera in shot 18 and 20 and cleared the scenes, so they are ready for render.

Animated the dog in Shot 1, he is moving towards the owner as she is raking leaves, his tail wagging as his emotions are happy and playful at the start of the film:

Here is a closer up view of the dog's animation, gave him a bouncy run and stop up to the Owner to give him a playful nature at this point in the story, his tail also starts wagging when he looks up at his Owner, he knows she's got biscuits:

Sound effects - made a list for Sheng who will start searching for them:
-rumbly tummy for the bird
-ball deflating
-dog grrr
-dog beg - whine
-background garden noise
-bird tweeting

Been gathering up-dated shots and adding to the animatic.

Checked animation for Shot 13, which is being animated by Gary Welsh:
Not as much movement on the dog's tongue, translate head forwards as she brings arm back to accentuate the dog stretching towards the biscuit more.

Friday 1st August
Had a quick catch-up Supervisor meeting, showed our updated work. Just got to keep cracking on with it all.
Checked over the final animation for Shot 13, and have set up the camera, ready for rendering.

Organised with Kirti to have a biscuit alpha rendered for Rebecca for the credits and also shot 1 being comped with the title in the sky.

Asked Tom about smoothing out the soundtrack, will get up-dated animatic to him at the start of next week to work on.

Gave Georgios advice about the running human in shot 12 (mostly for the feet and legs, keeping the back foot on the ground for a bit longer to push off of, not having the knees come up as high, and adding some follow through to the feet flying through the air. Also bring both feet in when in mid air so they don't travel outwards in their passing positions. There were also some adjustments needed for human in shot 1, as she is holding the rake's handle quite high up, her raking movements seemed a little extreme, so just needed some smaller movements.

Finished animating Shot 3 dog bringing ball back in and searching for the biscuit.

As the dog doesn't bend very well at the middle, I made him take quite a few steps to turn around when he is searching for the biscuit. This quick turn I think added to his confused emotional state, wondering where his biscuit he just left there has disappeared to. This left not very much time for the dog to enter back into the frame with the ball. I used this to my advantage and created a quick, almost prancing, walk cycle back into the shot - which helps him to look over confident and proud at having found and captured this ball. His head moves slightly from side to side in this walk as if he is showing off the ball. I also added some follow through to his body when he comes to a stop, to show his sudden surprise at the biscuit missing. When he starts to turn, I added in looking back once more at the spot where the biscuit was to emphasize his disbelief. Coming out of the turn, he spots the bird before the audience does, so I pointed his head in the direction of the bird, where his confused expression becomes focused, before the camera pans up to the bird.
One of the references and inspirations for this shot was this reference footage here of my dog finishing her biscuit and searching for any remaining crumbs, looking all around the ground:

Been reviewing the rendered shots and have been noticing the eyes have been coming out dull and dark. Investigated one of the files and found the problem. The the inner eye had the same texture pumped into the transparency... so broke that connection and informed Kirti:

Georgios finished shot 12, so I have passed shot 2 and 9 to him to animate the biscuit throw
and animate the dog in shot 2.

Imported and animated the ball in shot 3.

I created the squash and stretch principles to the ball by just keying the translate, rotate and scale manipulator since the ball did not have a rig.

Also imported a second dog, this time the one from shot 10 so that there was some walk I could use as a base to start with, to save time. It also helped to use 2 dogs to separate out the animation for this shot as the dog enters the shot, exits and enters again during a 355 frame shot:

2nd dog waiting out of shot to enter with it's own animation.

Weekend
Went into uni on Saturday, Georgios has given me Shots 2 and 9 to animate the biscuit, and I checked over the dog animation for Shot 2 which was finished today.

Finished animating Shot 3 by adding in extra details and follow through, sorted the speed of the jump out:

The dog runs up to the biscuit happily before his attention is captured by a ball bouncing into the garden, his eyes are wide and trained on it, and then goes chasing after the ball out of shot, his run bouncy to show his excitement. Also added in a blink to show his current shift in motive, from biscuit to ball.

Onto the dog in shot 9 now...