12:00AM in RCC, 4 days till show time

MJ takes over the entire lab...

Here is another progress update straight from our computer lab in RCC where we have been spending many long nights. Tonight is our second camp out night as we are going to work straight through the night to get a lot done. So far we have gotten several scenes rendered in the past 2 days thanks to the 20 something computers in here. We have also gone through several cups of coffee and thai food. We still have to finish off some difficult scenes which Ferry has been concentrating on while I keep on rendering everything. Of course we still need to edit the video and add sound, will we finish.....anything can happen, who knows this may turn into a 4 day camp-out. For now I leave you with some short footage and pictures from the lab.

Watch a quick 11 meg movie of us working here.

A render

Mmmm..loove me...

Photos:

Ferry taking a quick nap

Me and MJ

10 days before the show

Wow, we have been working at this so hard now just to make sure we finish and we finish with something we can live with to show at the upcoming New Media show. We have been in the lab pretty much all of last week and are going to be camping out in there most of this week and the coming weekend as its our last chance to get things done before the show. So far we have had a lot of Maya crashes and corrupt files, had to start from scratch several times, but managed to pull it off. We have approximately 1 minute animated and I am guessing another minute to go which we HAVE to finish this week. At the same time we are going to start doing overnight renders in the lab using the 20 something computers to our disposal. We have our opening scene ready to render for tonight and it's looking really good thanks to Ferry's persistence and my direction :)

Anyone interested in watching the short and seeing other new media projects can drop by 122 Bond St, downtown Toronto, it is going to run from March 22-24th.

MJ on Ryerson.ca

Here is a fresh update to start with. I sent in the WIP render of MJ to showcase on the Ryerson.ca frontpage and it apparently did show up. At the moment it's the first one on the page when it loads and was put up March 3rd. Not sure how long it will stay up there but go over to http://www.ryerson.ca to check if it's still there. A screen capture is provided above.

Progress Work: The Beginnings Animated

So I managed to get our first few seconds of animation done. This 4 second animation (click here to view) is part of the intro where MJ is flying by in the distant while Billy is faking his dead below. This is going to be inserted into the final render in post production which is why You cannot see anything but the dark figure. I think this took 5 hours...and it looks better than it is after I applied the motion blur :)

Progress Work: Creating the set, lighting

Well, I am starting to set up the actual set. I have been playing with the three point lighting system that Shervin drew out for me last week. This is how far I have gotten, I threw the funk pose in for fun. The lighting is not where I want it, nor is the bg colour but I will get it closer by Monday. In the meantime enjoy the high render above!

Public Presentation Strategy (PPS)

Below is the Public Presentation Strategy for our project for the festival in March.

Audience Experience

The user will see our animation playing on an LCD TV from a distance and walk up towards it to see what it’s about. As the user walks closer sound will be more understandable and possibly attract the user to see what more is happening, the user’s anticipation may grow. More of the image/animation will be clearer as the user walks closer; they will be able to tell that it is a computer generated animation.

The user will be exposed to the story as it is playing. The user will keep watching to see what happens next, if they walk in near the end of the story they might stay to see it start again or walk away, or talk to the artist.

The user will experience Michael Jackson in a role never seen before, as "Superman". They will most likely get a good laugh out of it but also might question why MJ is depicted as Superman. They might feel sorry for him near the end of the story or they might feel happy for the kid.

The user might walk away thinking that in reality Michael Jackson may have been taken advantage off by a child just like in the animated story. Or the user might side with the child and think that the child did what he had to in self defence and that Michael Jackson is a very mentally disturbed individual.

The user may also respond by being:

• Offended at how MJ was portrayed in the story, they may be MJ fans
• Surprised to see MJ as Superman, the combination of the two has never been done before, often MJ is put side by side with deformed animals due to his face.
• Happy at the end result, they might walk away satisfied with what each character did and the end result.
• Entertained due to script and the way the animation plays out, it might just be funny
• Unhappy with the kid's actions, maybe the kid just got away with something he shouldn’t have
• Curious: how was this animation put together, what work went on behind it

Technical Information

Equipment and Software:

We need an LCD TV and DVD player for this project to be presented on. Both are going to be provided by us. Samsung is going to personally loan us a 40” LCD TV, and we will be supplying an HD-DVD up-scaling player. The TV will come with necessary cables to power it on, and we have cables to connect the DVD player. We will need an extension cord to power the TV and DVD player depending on how far the nearest power outlet is from our installation location. The extension cord should have room for 2 plugs. We also need a stand to put the TV and DVD player on. This stand should be tall enough so that when the TV is placed on it, it is close to the eye level of an average-height individual. Preferred colour for the stand would be white; it could be draped with a white cloth if needed. We would also like something that could secure the TV/DVD player to the stand or wall, some sort of security measure so that the equipment won’t be stolen.

Update: if we are forced to use the photo studio, we need to be located in a 3x3 meter area, close to a power outlet. We will also need three large white walls (2m wide) and four small white walls (1m wide) as well as two strong light sources.

Sound

Our project will have sound so we do not want it conflicting with any other piece with sound. The sound will be played through the LCD TV’s speakers. People should be able to hear it clearly up to a 3 meter’s distance from the TV. The animation will have a comical sound track in the background but mostly the sound effects from the characters will stand out the most; such as grunts, taunts and screams. The animation will play in a loop so there will always be sound coming from it every few seconds.

Site

We want our project to be placed in a location of its own not sitting right next to another project, a location that is not a hallway or a very big room. We want the TV to be sitting in a small sized area but one that is visible to the audience from a far distance. Our ideal location is the main entrance to the Image arts building. As you enter the building there is a fair sized open lobby area on the right side where the main office is. We would like to put our project there. Not only is this area the perfect size but also has an area for sitting if the user chooses to sit and keep watching the animation.

Our second back up location would be in the photo-shoot studio on the main floor. We would need to use the white wall panels to create a small room of similar size to the front lobby and place our TV inside it. If we go this route we will need to use some of the lights in the studio to light up our “white room”.

Floorplan

Below are floorplans for our two possible locations. (click to enlarge)

Main Image Arts Entrance

Inside the photo studio

Progress Work: MJ-Rigging the face, test animations

I finally got some decent updates to show. I went back and re-rigged the entire character with a better bone setup than before, now he moves properly. I got some test animations done for the facial blend shapes, I still have to make the eyebrow and eyelid blends. I also got half a walk cycle going, checkout the videos below.

View Facial Blend Shape Test
View Walk 1 | Walk 2

Progress Work: Fun Wallpaper!!!

I just figure that since I have to create some poses for both characters, might as well make wallpapers out of them ^_^.

So here they are, they're 1280x768 (specifically designed for widescreen monitor) in resolution. If you wanted them in different resolution please feel free to contact me.

Progress Work: Billy's Walk Cycle

This is a .mov file of Billy's walk cycle that I've created for today's presentation. Any comments is welcome. Enjoy.

The file is 4MB in size so if you have a slow connection, please be patient. Thanks.

• Billy's Walk Cycle

Progress Work: Pose Animation

I know I haven't been updating for the past week but due to some family issues I had to be sidetracked from the project but I was away for most the time I did manage to render pose animation for both characters. Here they are, ENJOY!!!

PS: The files are 3MB each so bear with it if you have a slow connection.

• MJ Pose
• Billy Pose

Progress Work: MJ Body Rig Done

Well, it's not the greatest...Shervin pointed out modeling mistakes that would have made the rig come out better, but it's animation ready finally. I forgot the hair, I will insert it back tomorrow. Textures of course are default at the moment, we haven't polished anything in that area yet. Tomarrow I will get the face expressions done so there is more life to this character, I am sure I can get some sort of animation up this weekend, stay tuned. And yes he has 3 fingers...

A TV for the Show, courtesy Samsung

This is just a quick update, not more so with the progress of the work but rather the installation. I wanted to have our movie play on a nice TV at the show so I contacted a source at Samsung Canada. They will happily lend us an LCD/PDP TV for the show which is great news. Now all we need to decide is if it should be wall mounted or stand based, and where to exactly place it in the show.

Where are we this week? Jan 22

I haven't updated for a bit for good reason. I have had a fair number of setbacks. I started getting into face rigging and was making progress however when I showed my MJ model to Shervin yesterday he spotted a few problems that needed correction. My character IKs were messed up and I have to now go back and do the body rigging again to get it working right. Also we are now presenting our work in progress on Jan 30th, and I am afraid we wont have our first bits of animation to show for that day as Ferry has not started rigging yet. Hopefully I can re-rig the character quickly and get back to the face rigging and get this character moving a little before the end of this week. The rest falls on Ferry...

Progress Work: Rigging a perfect shoulder

I got to talk to Shervin again today, thank god I did. As usual I had to go back a step which meant all my hours cursing at my computer this weekend were a waste. Shervin provided some AWESOME tips that really helped in doing some good rigging today, "ALWAYS ADD never subtract". Following these wise words of Shervin wisdom I went back and adjusted the skeleton and started re-rigging MJ today. It's 2 am and I got the perfect shoulder movement done in 1 hour so I am sure I can now move much faster and get a fully rigged character by tomarrow night if I work straight through Ed's class. All of you who do character RIGGING, you are true masters...Now I know how hard it is!

Progress Work: Billy The Kid (Textured Ver. 2)

Ah... This is a rendered version of Billy The Kid using a better graphic card. I'm not sure if you guys notice any difference in it but I did update the model slightly and change a few texture. So let's play "Find The Difference"!!!

I should be done with Billy's texturing now. Its off to rigging for me which will be a total PAIN as Asim had mentioned :(.

Progress Work: Rigging MJ, Painful

No he's not screaming.

Remember Murphy's law? "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". That's exactly what happens during the rigging stage, everything goes wrong. This is the part that I HATE the most. If there is anything its rigging I hate because you can spend hours and things still won't work out right. So far I've managed to correct most of the distortions to get MJ animation ready. Unfortunately I was not able to meet my test walk cycle due date for this weekend. Sigh! Season premiere of 24 was on.

I need a lot of Shervin's help in class Monday, hopefully he can help me correct alot of the little things that are bugging me alot and I can move onto a walk cycle tomarrow night. As long as Ferry's character is UV Mapped correctly we can have him start rigging tomarrow in class. It's sad really, I am taking Shervin's class without getting the credit, I need that class so bad. Oh well...

Progress Work: Billy The Kid (Textured)

This is the textured version of Billy the Kid. I'm going to post a cleaner and better graphic of him tomorrow. It seems like my computer at home didn't have a powerful enough graphic card to produce the maya rendering I desire.

Progress Work: Updated Billy with a Touch of Magic

What can I say? Wasn't this much better than it originally was? Once again KUDOS to Asim!!! I'll start texturing it today and hope to meet the due date on Saturday. In the mean time, enjoy the render images above ^_^.

Progress Work: First Look at Billy The Kid in 3D

First of all, let me tell you guys that I'm alive and well. And second, KUDOS, to Asim who applied his magic touch to the Michael Jackson face which I had created and turning it 100 times better than it originally is. You're SUPERB!!! Loved the whole costume too!!!

Putting that aside, this is the first progress work we'll be showing of Billy The Kid in 3D ^_^. This is the basic model that I've created and awaiting for Asim to apply his magic touch (again) to make him better. Than it'll be down to texturing him which we've already predicted should be done by Saturday.

We've also been assigned for our next presentation which is scheduled to be on January 23rd which is in less than 2 weeks. We've decided that by that presentation we'd like to have at least finished the first scene of the movie to be presented in class to get feedbacks about it. So we'd have to get both characters ready (created, textured and rigged) by that time.

Overall Update: Week of Jan 8th

I got a chance to talk to Shervin this week and got some tips on how to add more life to the character with textures. I also learned that I UV Mapped my character in high res and should go back and do it in low poly form. That took out 2 days, but the character is now UV Mapped in low poly. The UV Mapping is simple to start with, I didn't do proper stitching for areas we wont even apply detailed textures to, my main concern was the face and chest so I spent more time on those maps and setting them up. Maya's UV Texture editor is just a PAIN to work with. Tonight I am going to add any final adjustments to the face and mouth maps and move onto rigging the character for animation. I will skip detailed texturing for now as I feel it is more important for us to have maximum time to animate. I could spend weeks on just texturing but we don't have that sort if time. Our characters are also stylized and not hyper-real so I won't get into texturing till we are ready to render our first scene. Ferry's character model is coming along he is a few steps behind me but he can catch up when I move on to lighting and setting up our set location for shots. I want to still stick to my goal of having atleast a walk cycle done this weekend. This week is running on 6 hours of sleep and lack of GYM time, which sucks...