The Final Video - Conclusion

All rendered and encoded! Here is the final video including a bonus scene after the credits!

 

Overall I'm quite happy with the video, as I said in a previous blog post I think it could have benefited from a music track and some more detail to the environments. The issue with morpher also reduced the overall quality of animation that I was aiming for but I feel that the video meets the brief intended. 

The character is identifiable with a cartoon villian while being silly and humorous enough to not be too scary for the intended audience of 7-11 year olds. I implemented multiple poses and hand gestures to create body language relatable to villians and created a believeable backstory for the character which I hope came across in the animation. 

I am dissapointed that I was unable to get any animation with the character's mouth working due to issues with the CAT motions system, Skin modifier and Morpher. Hopefully I have demonstrated my knowledge with morpher and facial expressions in previous blog posts and that, if I had more time to work on the animation I could have succesfully implemented some. 

If anything I have learned from the mistake of making the character model as one large model and would be better off creating smaller peices, head, chest, hands etc. For future reference this makes modelling and rigging easier and inparticularly makes modifications later on a lot less hassle.

Post Production - Rendering and Encoding

With the deadline for hand in of the project in less than two days I decided it would be best to just render what I had and make do. If I had had more time I would have gone through the scenes and added more enviromental details as well as better lighting.

I rendered each scene in high quality, frame by frame and then stitched the frames back together in Adobe Premier Pro where I spent some time adjusting the position and timing of the scenes.

Premier Pro

I added as many decent sound effects as I could from the website FindSounds.com the sounds on here are either free to use or royalty free which should be fine for this project. I also added in some title screens like the credits and since I had to cut the scene where the doctor builds the machine off screen I added a "some time later..." title in between scenes.

Unfortunatly I wasnt able to find suitable free backing music for the video but I think the sound effects work well enough for the scope of this project.

Animating Process - Scene 14 & 15

The final scenes of the animation! Scene 14 is a quick and humorous shot of the toast as it pops up from the control panel in front of the doctor.

Simple Toast Model

Ding!

After the toast unexpectedly pops up the doctor, shocked with what just happened, slowly looks down at it before drooping into a sulk due to yet another of his failed inventions.

Whats this?

God Damnit...

Without the use of morpher I had to make do with animating the characters head in general, his arms and luckily, eyes. He drops his arms and they swing slightly to look natural as well as drooping his head and closing his eyes. He is clearly dissapointed.

Animating Process - Scene 12 & 13

Scene 12 continues from the previous scene but from a side shot camera angle of the button itself as the Doctor presses it.

Scene 13 involves a bit of environmental animation. The machine begins to rumble and emit steam as it works away. In the background the doctor shakes his hands (much like Wallace of Wallace and Gromit does) to simulate his excitement.

See youtube video at 1:14 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAJMiGv5SxI

Super Particles!

Steam Texture

Bit more steam and animation on doctor.

I'm fairly happy with how this scene turned out. The only downside is that the doctor doesnt look as excited as I would have liked. Perhaps some extra animation, figeting, jumping around etc would have helped here. However time being short I have decided to make do with this.

Animating Process - Scene 11

Scene 11 is an over dramatised view of the doctor reaching to press the button to start the machine. The animation itself was quite simple thanks to the CAT motion system.

I created a new layer with the pose of him about to press the button and blended the layer in over the top of the last one.

Reaching for the button

Camera perspective, high field of view

The high field of view on the camera really emphasises the effect I was going for. It is also animated to zoom backwards to reveal the button behind it.

Animating Process - Scene 9 & 10

Scene 9 is just a quick shot of the control panel with the start button on it so I wont detail that here. Scene 10 however was probably the most complex animation so far.

In an attempt to mimic the hand motions of Dr. Doofensmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, previously mentioned in the blog, I had to individually animate each finger and make sure they were synced correctly with the other fingers.

Animating the wriggly fingers

It took a long time and some fiddling but I managed to get a relatively fluid looking animation. However I had only done one hand so far. In an attempt to find a quicker solution I looked online for some advice and came across the option to save and load animation clips.

Right clicking the palm and selecting save anim

Saving the animation clip

Saving the animation of the palm includes all child bones, in this case the fingers. After saving the animation it can then be loaded on any similar bone.

Right Click, Load Anim

Loading the Animation

The load animation option is quite flexible and allows the animation to start at any frame. In this case I only needed it to start at frame 0 like the other hand. Double the work in half the time!

This complex animation however revealed that the skin envelopes around the fingers were less than perfect so I had to readjust them to prevent bulges and other unnatural shapes.

Fixing the fingers

Modifying individual vertex strengths.

Here is a preview of how the animation looks so far. Not bad, just wish I could give him some facial expressions. As of this moment I have had little luck with morpher but hopefully I will have time yet.

Animating Process - Scene 8

Scene 8 is a quick shot of the doctor standing up after finishing his machine and removing his goggles, its a pretty simple scene but adds a lot to the continuity for the next scenes.

Crouching

Positioning the hand around the goggles

 

Pushing up the goggles

Not much to say here. I simply created a CAT motion layer where his hand is on the goggles and blended the layer in to quickly animate the motion. I also had to use the FDD 4X4X4 modifier on the goggles to get the strap to look right as it moved.