Going Live - Final Film and Presentation

Presenting the final film - 'Concerning Dragons':

Click here to watch the film on Vimeo.

To present the making of the film to Axis Animation, we all decided that a PowerPoint would be best to showcase everyone's artwork and video-work. Myself and Kieran worked out the structure and order of the presentation. I then took on the task of collating everyone's work, including backgrounds for each slide created by Rebecca, together into the PowerPoint - all 30 slides. I made sure that work was fairly represented for each slide and correctly credited at the bottom of each slide. Also the rest of the class viewed it before the presentation day to make sure there were no corrections:

(all the black squares are video files)

As all of the work was being compiled together for the presentation, I wondered if there was a better way to present rigs instead of just a screenshot. I searched for a way to make rigs visible in renders and came across a relevant tutorial and article. Link Here. I passed on this tutorial to others in the class to use for their rig renders also. The steps I followed can be viewed on this blog post here:

Final render of visible rig for 'Tree-Hand'

On 30th April, all of our class went through to Glasgow to Axis Animation. Myself and Kieran presented the PowerPoint to Axis, I talked through the pre-production stages. Afterwards there was a detailed Q&A session with everyone.

Some of my notes for the presentation

Here is all of us at Axis Animation to present the final film:

Photo taken at Axis Animation by Phillip Vaughan

Going Live - Production

The Going Live Production Board changed as we went through production, starting from moodboards, research and storyboards through to character designs and then to Shot Lists:

As Production Manager, in order to help us all keep track of each shot and how far through production we were, this was the Shot List I drew up after discussing the shots and schedule with Kieran. I put it up on the Going Live board in the studio and will be used for checking off each stage of the 4 shots:

In order to keep production organised, I kept a production diary/notebook which included important information such as the brief specifics, production roles, schedule, and web links. This was useful to have at group meetings. The notebook also just happened to be Hobbit themed and even provided some visual reference and inspirations with the Hobbit illustrations on the first few pages:

Going Live - Animation

The animation I worked on is in Shot 1. The Tree unravels as a hand, follows and shoots up through the flying eagle, as if to grab it. The eagle is knocked out and starts falling, before it transforms into a dragon and flies past the camera, sweeping to the next shot.

Before starting the animation I sketched different poses using my own hand as reference, to explore how I might pose the 3D model:

For capturing the Eagle, the Tree-Hand was required to follow the Eagle and then expand. To achieve this I used a lattice deformer: 

Looking through the final camera, the Tree-Hand was expanded just enough to surround the Eagle:

Final Tree-Hand animation - Starting curled up and twisted in disguise, the hand unravels finger by finger. I added a slight swerve to the hand as it follows the Eagle up, almost like a snake chasing after it's prey, which makes it seem sinister. It finishes with a quick snatch and curl to capture the eagle:

Tree-Hand animation in final frames:

Turntable of the animated Tree-Hand (rendered and composited by Kieran):

These are some thumbnails Kieran drew out for me to explain what is happening in Shot 1:

I had some gathered reference material on my laptop and also over on a Pinterest board:

I then did a few sketches to work out how the Eagle might be posed during the sequence:

Final Eagle fall and transform animation - the wings I made sure to force up ad close in to emphasize the point where the hand shoots through the Eagle, to add some force to the hand. Also added more fluttering to the individual feathers as it falls to make it look as if it is falling at quite a speed:

Eagle animation in final frames:

I collected together some clips from films of animated dragons for reference - Pinterest link here:

This clip in particular was very useful to reference, from Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (2005). The Dragon swoops down and out of the frame and then sweeps past closer to the screen, with follow through on the tail - which is what we wanted our Going Live Dragon to do, fly out of shot and sweep past screen into a transition shot:

Final Dragon transform and sweep animation - the dragon starts sideways to the camera to assist the compositors in the transformation sequence. The dragon starts slightly disorientated before flying off with new found purpose - emphasized with the wings following the body round before flapping with force to exit the shot:

Dragon animation in final frames:

Here is a video with all the characters together. The eagle and dragon animation overlap to allow the compositors to blend between them for the transformation. I've put it on X-ray view so the eagle and dragon can still be seen. I also animated the camera for this shot:

I've also uploaded these playblasts to vimeo, the quality is slightly better to view over there instead of on blogger:

Tree-Hand: https://vimeo.com/92246473

Eagle: https://vimeo.com/92246472

Dragon: https://vimeo.com/92246471

All together, X-ray view: https://vimeo.com/92246470

Going Live - Animatic

I helped out with sorting the timing and rough animation/layout for Shot 1. There was a limited time-frame to fit in the tree-hand grab, eagle transformation and dragon swipe. Kieran had already started it and animated about 7 seconds in of the eagle flying. This is one of the first drafts I did:

Feedback was to remove some of the pause before the tree-hand shoots up. Also to start moving the camera back when the eagle starts falling, to give a sense of the viewer falling with the eagle. For when the dragon swoops down and off screen, by moving the camera back, the full size of the dragon can be fitted in. This will also allow for some nice sweeping animation of the dragon.

Here is the latest version I made:

Working on this shot for the animatic was a great way to start helping to block out the animation and timing - as I was going to be doing the final animation on this shot.

Going Live - Rigging

After finishing the 3D model of the Tree-Hand, it was onto the rigging. Treated the rigging as a normal human hand, with dual joints for better deformations. Made sure all the joints were orientated the same way:

I did a quick test once some of the joints were in place to check the fingers/branches were moving in the right direction:

Checking the joint orientations as I go:

All the joints in place and in the right hierarchy, next step was to Bind Skin of model to the joints:

Weight painting - came across a problem at first where weights I had just painted were being re-distributed when I moved onto another joint to weight paint, fixed the problem but locking the weights in the paint skin weights tool:

Continued painting skin weights:

Made sure the branches on the back of the hand only moved with the wrist joint so that they would still stand up fairly straight when the hand is first curled up and distorted:

The next step was to add controls for the joints, I colour-coded them for each finger/branch to make selecting them less difficult to see:

 Testing out the finished rig and controls:

Last step was to add a Global Control, which allows the rig and model to be scaled, moved and rotated together when imported/referenced into a scene:

Here are some rendered images of the rig controls:

Going Live - Character Modeling

Used one of the concept designs I had done previously as reference for starting to model the Tree-Hand 'character' which captures the Eagle:

This is the first version of the model - unsmoothed:

First version of the model - smoothed:

Wireframe - I made sure to use topology techniques that would normally be used to model a 3D human hand, as the tree-hand will be animated, therefore it needed to have correct deformations. I added more edge-loops around the joints of the fingers/branches:

Tried adding a very simple rig to test quickly if the geometry was going to do what we need the Tree-Hand to do:

Realizing that the model will be smoothed, in order to retain the sharper edges to match with the rest of the paper world, I added in more edge loops for the edges of the fingers/branches and roots. Elongated the branch/fingers slightly to add a bit more creepiness to it and this will probably allow more freedom for movement and entwining as well. Also modeled the second hand/roots which is curving in around the main tree-hand, based on the original concept design:

Discussed with others in the team about the hand looking more tree-like before it 'grabs' the Eagle. I suggested maybe adding more trees/branches behind it. These could then be entwined with the hand and then fall away to reveal the hand. Or another suggestion was to just make the finger/branches more contorted and entwined with each other before unfolding to look more hand-like. So there were a few things to try next!

As the Tree-Hand model looked a bit more like a hand than a tree, some extra modeling was required.

For a very quick test I made copies of the branches/fingers and attached them behind the main model. This showed me that they needed to be smaller and more subtle:

Decided that smaller and thinner branches would look better:

The tree-hand starts twisted around and is first seen from the side in the film. This also helps to disguise the 'hand-like' shape:

Showed the Director, Kieran, the updated model and it was discussed that more branches could be added to the back of the hand and knuckles. When the hand is curled over to begin with, these extra branches will be stood up and also helping to disguise the hand as a tree. I modeled them at an angle as they will be moving with the hand, so when it curls over they will follow. If they still are not at the correct angle when the hand is curled, some extra joints will be added into these smaller branches to move them:

Turnaround of final 'Tree-Hand' model - I adjusted the model slightly for the turntable in order for it to sit flat (rendered and composited together by Kieran):