PRJ350 - Week 13 Progress Journal

A huge effort this week went into working on getting the blocking pass done - it took a lot more work then I expected, but animation always does. I'm still not particularly happy with the first half, but from the moment when he pulls the sword on I think looks great. Good weight, good action and follow-through, and enough poses to make the splining pass a snap, at least to get passable motion. Funny enough, with the character design, I almost prefer it without the splines - the stepped poses actually give it sort of a stop-motion feel.

The below video is another playblast of the viewport with the final camera postion. I need to revise the timing of the initial walk-in and the spurprise pose, add in a couple poses there, and add in a couple poses for the goblin looking around to see if he's being watched when he goes into the cower pose before the first pull. After the first pull, I need a couple eye darts and slight shifts of weight when he surveys the sword and anvil. Beyond that, there's a couple other acting choices I could make, but the clock is definitely ticking.



I also spent a little time working on the lighting, trying to get softer shadows on the god light that comes down on the sword. I worked with Professor Chun Lu and reviewed some notes she gave to our Maya class last semester and found the settings I needed. The final result gave me this:

This week is going to be a mad rush to get everything done and rendered - the project has swollen to 900 frames, meaning I'm looking at around 24 hours or more of rendering. Really need to get the last little bits in and start the process so I can get it composited and submit it in time.