Jeremy Bernstein and David Anthony Gibson

I was looking into Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and came across these 2 animators…

Jeremy Bernstein
http://captainyolk.blogspot.com

Animation department:

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Monsters vs Aliens
• Kung Fu Panda
• Shrek the Third
• Flushed Away
• Over the Hedge
• Madagascar
• Shrek 2
• The World of Stainboy
• Family Guy

Has worked on lots of 2d animation, here is some of his hand drawn animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZLIBcGG4XM

David Anthony Gibson
http://davidanthonygibson.wordpress.com

Visual Effects:

• Beverley Hills Chihuahua
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
• Enchanted
• Charlottes Web

Animation Department

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Here is his animation reel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGthEZbO3cI&feature=player_embedded

Walking Robot!

In the seminar yesterday I created my first test for a walking robot. I’m quite pleased with my walk as it’s reasonably simple with a bit of a head bob to make it a bit more fun.

http://www.youtube.com/v/igvmoEyWScU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&

This method involves creating a walk cycle which is very simple as I only created a step with each foot and then repeated it. The robot is walking on the spot and I used the triangle pointers under it’s feet to help me with steps and lining up where the feet should go. I thought this was very simple and am looking forward to applying this to my animation project.

Creating a City from a Plane

A couple of weeks ago I started creating a City from a plane in Simon’s seminar. I find the process of making this quite boring so I’ve been making adjustments gradually over the past week. I have extruded some buildings and I started adding basic materials to them using sub-object materials.

I then decided before I extruded the rest of the city I would have a play around with some materials for the buildings I had already made. I added some noise to the grass to make it a bit more realistic. There’s more that can be done but I will do these in stages and develop the quality of the materials as I go along.

I wanted my tall skyscraper to look like it’s made of glass. I feel I have a got a relatively good glass texture, however, it’s too transparent as a building because you can see through it and realise there is nothing in the building at all. I will adjust this at a later date.

Here is an overall view of my city at the moment. I will continue to work at it alongside my other projects so I have a completed City by the end and hopefully it will look quite realistic!

Robot Legs

These are the legs I made in the seminar with Andy last week. I have made a quick animation of the robot legs jumping. It looks a bit weird in the middle of the jump, not too sure what it is but I will work on animations to get a better idea of how the body moves with different actions. I will watch animations and pay particular attention to detail of the movements so I can learn from these and use them.

Improved Toy Train Model

After completing my texturing tutorial the other day I decided I would improve the train model I created in Simon’s seminar. I decided to add a wooden look to the toy train and some more gloss/ shine to make it look varnished. I can still make further improvements to my train and will probably do so over the course of the term. For now I feel my train looks better than the previous post and I can notice the improvements I have made in creating a more realistic look.

Compare the images with my last post!

http://sophie-magnante.blogspot.com/2009/10/toy-train-model.html

Robot Arm

In our seminar with Andy last week we learnt how to model and rig a hand and arm. Since doing this in the seminar I have attempted it again and only had one problem with it where I had left out a stage. I learnt how to use IK Chains and to link all the sections of the arm together in the correct order. We made a ‘wrist control’ and a ‘shoulder control’ in order to have complete control over the features of the arm. By selecting everything apart from the controls and freezing them makes animating a lot easier.

The following images are stills from my animation showing the different positions I have moved my hand into.

Here is the animation I was able to produce. I am hoping to work on a few more animations in order to gain smoother movements which look a bit more realistic. By practising the movements I will be able to learn a better method of animation which will help me when completing my term 1 project.

Toy Train Model

In our first visualisation seminar we were given the above image of a toy train to model. Mine is slightly different but I have included the key elements of the train and swapped around some colours. I’ve only put basic materials on but can improve this at a later date.

Hierarchies and Systems: An Orrery

http://www.youtube.com/v/29Gqw7-AN1k&hl=en&fs=1&

First piece of animation of the year. This was quite an interesting seminar and I found it useful recapping things we learnt to do last year as I’ve been quite lazy with 3d work over the summer. I found the select and link tool to be very useful and I will try applying this to animations in the future as it’s reasonably straight forward and gets a quick animation.

What did I Learn?

In 3ds Max you are able to link objects together to create animations quickly. It can be used to automatically affect one object when another moves.

It made me think about how careful I will need to be when creating animations because movements which are obvious may be missed as I don’t think about, for example, what other parts of me move when I move my arm etc. When planning animations, if I recognise which things need to be linked together it will make things a lot easier for me.

Timing using the curve editor was very straight forward and I think this tool will come in handy when animating in the future.

Up vs. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

<!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> <!–[if gte mso 10]> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} <![endif]–>

Both incredible films with a lot of similarities but a large amount of differences as well. The first major difference I noticed was how quickly Pixar engage the audience with the characters. Within the first ten minutes of Up me and friends were welling up completely unaware the film would be sad in the slightest. I thought the pace I became connected to the main character was extraordinary! Sony weren’t too far behind and as the characters developed in the film you grew to genuinely care about them. Hoping to go into this field of work myself, I am worried about how to make my characters this engaging to an audience and am hoping to learn this over the coming years.

The levels of detail in both the films are totally different. I think that Pixar were paying particular attention to specific details in the characters and the environment whereas Sony concentrated on the unusual shapes of people’s bodies and the world around them. When I watched Up I was amazed at the intricate stitching detail on clothing and how I could almost see individual strands of hair. Also as the adventure in the film developed and the characters were away from home for a longer time I noticed how they added stubble to the old man’s face! This kind of detail wasn’t apparent in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. However, watching the film I struggled to see any similar characters. They were all different shapes, sizes, proportions, etc. It was obvious they had paid more attention to this than to intricate detail. I really liked the artistic way they had used shapes to create characters look so unrealistic yet believable as people. You can tell from looking at them they wouldn’t be able to function in their proportions, but in the film are moving just as a human would do and it’s completely believable.

Another thing I noticed was how weather played quite a key role in each of the films. Obviously Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was about the weather but in both films the weather is used to portray emotion. Different types of weather cause trouble in the films bringing suspense and worry for the characters survival. The colours used reflect this anxiousness the characters are feeling. While, on the other hand, when a good event in the film happens the colours and weather highlight how great this thing is and the joyous emotion the character is feeling.

I would recommend both these films to everyone. They’re clever, funny and entertaining (even my mum enjoyed Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs). The stories are completely ridiculous but that’s the point! Animation enables things to happen which can’t in real life and I really like how these kinds of films really utilise this ability and hopefully I will in my work.

Avatar Almost Complete