MEL script 0.1

Over last 4 weeks I have been learning MEL script for Technical Scripting class. Its not very hard, reminds me of VB (Visual Basic) a lot. Just like with C++ and VB I don't enjoy spending more time on debugging it than actually writting it, though MEL is not so bad so far I didn't spend much time debugging my own code, only forgot semi-colon here and there. I think I spend more time helping people to debug the code we are given from out tutor in tutorials. Which is kinda annoying, you'd expect the code that we are suppose to copy and paste to be correct. But anyway, over the weeks we had to do different lab works while we were learning different stuff. The week 4 labworks includes them all pretty much.

I have taken mine bit further than we were suppose to in the UI design and layout, I like my things to look pretty. It wasn't always easy because making procedure for dynamic file path work BEFORE I knew about procedures was a pain, just like was looking for how to include image. Which is really simple but nowhere on the net I could find it, my file paths never worked hence why I ended up using procedure for dynamic file path. Since Blogger wont let m upload text files or even just use kind of spoiler tool (like on forums) I wont be posting the scripts, sore are just too long. Here are just some images of what they do. The first is from my very first script, it makes cubes to be arranged in LILITH formation. Then the other two are my Week 2 and Week 4 UIs.

Overall I think MEL can be useful, its not that hard to understand and I will probably use it my future projects. Don't know about developing my own tools, but you never know.

Maya 4.2

Today we talked a lot about subtle movements and body language for characters, how important they are to show emotions and non-verbal communications. I have decided to research sad/depressed/submissive emotions for my homework. I am also thinking making different animation, I want my character to be really really sad.

I did this animatic for my current storyboard, its not perfect because of lack of good software, I need to find something good and reliable for making videos out of images. PhotoLapse failed me and Windows Movie Maker sucks, so the animatic is about three times longer than it should.

Animated Yorkshire

This was an event I have attended on Sunday 9th with my classmate Sarah. It was a workshop about Stop Motion, run by Ashley Dean from Broken Pixel studio. There was lots of people so it wasn't very technical but we got to design and make a character and then animate it a bit. We used small blue-screen set-up to animate them, which was interesting to see how easy and quick it was with a camera and peace of blue paper. Apparently the animations we did will be combined with bigger animation and it will played on Bradford Animation Festival this year. I think it will be great to see my character on big screen.

This is picture of my character, party Zombie Bob and then me and Sarah when we were leaving. And as you can see there are happy Goths =D

Video Production 0.2

Today was actually fun too, instead of operating cameras and recording we were learning how to use EditCut Pro on Macs, which was kinda annoying because Apple Macs are just weird. I managed to see the recordings we did but unfortunately I was able to only get a copy of the recordings we did before, with the girl mentioned in previous post about Video Production. The editing was fun, it was just lots to take on at once so it was fast, but once I understood the functions it wasn't hard.

I was trying to get screenshot of the video and PS was doing something really bizarre. I PrintScreened my screen with the video on, pasted into PS but when I tried to shrink it or move it the image of the video wouldn't move, everything else did but the still of the girl didn't change, no matter how many new files I made or layers, just stayed the same and appeared only in frames of the video player too, regardless of its size. If it doesn't make sense... it didn't to me either.

Anyway, here is the image after I finally found my way around it.

P.S. Fuck QuickTime player and DivX, all fancy and shit and can't play damn MOV video. I had to download VLC player to be able to see it.

Maya 4.1

No animation or modelling today but I have done my first story board for the clown. Tommorow I gotta finish all the other stuff for animation class, like callendar and self-assesment. Might even do more storyboards and will do an animatic, dont have Flash though, so might just use Maya or Photoshop, it will be only a simple thing. I think thats all about that. Took on some more projects but those are about 2D graphic, so will post about it later.

Here is the storyboard and some sketches. The character is going to be simple, but should give enough for Squash and Strech, different timings and overlapping animation. The clown basically will sadly walk into the shot, then bring his unicycle forward so he can sit on it and then get up. He will ride forward, the camera will zoom out and he will turn around and go the other way. Then she slows down and almost falls back, though instead he falls down forward. Sitting on his knees he starts to cry.

Might actually make it a girl clown, will see when I start modelling it.

Maya 4.0

Somehow Maya 2012 refuses to install on my PC, which was a bitch because I uninstalled 2011 first and then had to install it again after successfully failing in getting 2012 installed and of course they are switching to 2012 in uni so half the files I wont be able to open at home. Anyway, we have to do some practice animations for anticipation so I made one with combined stuff we practiced over the two weeks. I have to get down story board for Friday, I either want to do something with a pixie or a sad clown. We have list of emotions and activities, so for now I am thinking Sad Circus Perfomance, I was thinking a clown with unicycle looking really depressed and sad or maybe a Pixie opening a small present while angry. Both might be fun to do.

For the week 2 practice I did character animation about a space rocket, models were given to us. Oh yeah and I got Youtube channel now too, Flickr is annoying with video limit and blogger was bitchy to upload vidoes the other day. http://www.youtube.com/user/LilithPeterAnimation

Maya 3.9

Okay, I didn't finish that plane yet... but I started doing animations again. In this semester we are doing Advanced Character Animation which seems more fun, just not sure what I want to do yet, I think I will do something with fairies/pixies, kind of like a tribute to the work I did in college for my last year assigment when I was learning Flash.

So far we were playing a bit with Graph Editor for animation and then had to make a combined animation with stuff moving in it. We had few practice scenes with target and arrows and ball and such.Here is what I did, here is just a link to Flickr, Blogger was taking a piss uploading it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterlilith/6212489508/