Final Project part 20: Bird Food Blues... Finished Animation Plus Extras

Last Friday I was able to finish my final animation for uni and although I could see some errors here and there, I am very proud of how it came out. It was not easy to accomplish this but I am very glad that I was able to finish my animation.
Here it is if anyone is interested to watch


Bird Food Blues...



For a little extra I have also finished making my Demo Reel. I was actually aiming for a minute long video but with all my turnarounds the video came around just under 3 minutes. Good thing I have found a piece of music to keep it entertaining.


Shahbir's Demo Reel 2012


Next is the Making of for Bird Food Blues. This should show how much hard work I went though to make this final project.Making of Bird Food Blues

The final bit to my work is my Technical Paper. In this document it explains how I have made the Squash Stretch control for my worm character.

Technical Paper Squash and Stretch Blend Shape 01

This was definitely my toughest animation, yet felt slightly easy when compared to my minor animation. I really did enjoy this project because I had a lot of freedom to do what ever animation I want. I hope I did everything I could to show off my animating skills.

Final Project part 19: Bird Food Blues... Pre-vis Collection part 3 and Second Image Render

Here is my latest set of Pre-vis videos, I have also added some head shots of the worm's lip-sync because I felt that when watching the actual animation you don't get to see much. Another thing to note is that the pre-vis delay slightly which makes the audio and the video not syncing properly.











I have also added an updated render version, this time the making the shadows feel more natural. I still have a few bits to sort out like making the trees a bit lower to the ground and add some spots underneath the trees to make it look like the ground is moist.

That is all I have to show for now.

Final Project part 18: Bird Food Blues... Pre-vis Collection part 2 and First Image Render

Here is the latest update for my project. I have made some more pre-vis videos and some scene test renders.

The first pre-vis is an update animation on the worm singing inside the bird. This time his tail moves, it is meant to represent a finger/foot tapping to the beat of the music. I actually had trouble doing this, as mentioned on the group blog the entire worm is mainly controlled by the tip of the worms tail. However I was able to resolved this (with some help) by using the bend deformer for the tail. I won't lie this was actually tricky but I was able to get it done. I am pround of the out come but when I have time I will come back and fix this.

The second pre-vis is the second part of scene seven for my animation where we the worm actually singing to the bird. Here I am trying to get the head movements matching the rhythm to the music as well as have both characters interacting with each other. This is what I have got so far, I am almost done just need to get the bounciness of the bird's head right because to me it still feels off.

Also here are some test renders for my animation, I was using highlights to my animation look more interesting when rendered. The first image was just applying the highlights to the body and the wing for the bird while the second image has all the objects in my scene except the ground and sky having the highlight applied to them.

Image 01

 Image 02

This is all I have to show so far, so until next time have a nice day.

Final Project part 17: Bird Food Blues... Pre-vis Collection

Here are some pre-vis scenes from my animation. The first scene has the camera panning to the right and we see the bird trying to pluck the worm from the ground. The second scene is a whole body shot were the bird finally pulled the worm from the ground. The third scene carry's on from the second scene where we see the bird eating the worm, however he suddenly hears a noise and started to look for the source. The forth scene has the bird finding the source. The fifth scene has an inside shot where we see the worm singing inside the bird. The sixth scene has the bird rising up with a surprise look, and finally the seventh has bird still surprised and started to look around in confusing.






















Getting the movements feeling natural was very challenging mostly trying to make my bird life like. However I still feel like there are some room for improvements. I believe this is when I really need some helpful criticisms so if any fells have some good advice to make my animation better then please let me know. Also I know my worm needs some life to his tail but his rig is kind of messy so I need some help on that.