Ser Alexandria Riten, Dragonknight of Susandra

So it's been done! Alexandria's sculpt is finished and ready for display.

Plans to the End of the Semester

Yup. One more portfolio piece to go and I've got a schedule I needed to make update in order to keep myself on track... Well, it's not really to keep myself on track, it's more like to keep myself from slacking off. And to induce stress. 

Anyway! No guarantee that I'll end up sticking to this schedule (I'll most likely end up falling behind, if all of this semester hasn't said this) but its' always good practice to gauge how well I do.

Plushy Knight

• Chiron's Death Animation - 7/13
• Game Freeze - 7/23
• Game Presentation - 8/3

Alexandria

• Model
• UV
• Head and Hair Sculpted
• Sculpt Finished - 7/19
• Texture Blocked Out - 7/20
• Texture Finished - 7/29
• Pose and Resculpt - 7/30
• Light Render and Composite - 7/31
• This day is going to be a long one
• Portfolio PIece 3 Due - 8/1

Thesis

• Plan - 7/13
• Did I just plan to plan my thesis? I think I did
• Work on Thesis - 7/22
• Obviously, this lil bullet point will be updated with above plan
• Thesis Due - 7/23

 Yeah. I got my work cut out for me. I'll be working on both the thesis and Alexandria at the same time, so that makes me a tad bit worried, but fortunately, the art team will be completely done (more or less) by the end of this week, so hopefully I won't be as bogged down as I'm expecting.

No guarantees though. 

Oh yes, a scope plan for Alexandria:

High Scope (Maya and Zbrush):

• Full sculpt with concept pose
• Fully textured with fibermesh hair
• textures shot back into maya with rendered turn table
• Rendered and composited images

 Mid Scope (Zbrush Only):

• Full Sculpt with concept Pose
• Textured in ZBrush (no maps) with fibermesh hair
• Renders and Composited images in Zbrush
• maybe turntable if time

Low Scope (ZBrush Only):

• Full Sculpt with simple, standing pose
• Textured like a statue
• Rendered images
• turntable in zbrush, if time

Plushy Knight Final Cinematic

And the final cutscene. 

WARNING, THERE ARE SPOILERS

 

Plushy Knight Office Cinematic

Here it is, the final office cinematic product! Well... not really. This is just a preliminary video without the fancy lighting and subsurface scatter and whatnot, but you can see all the animation. :D

Final Cinematic - Polished!

Here we go again! Updated with facial animation and some camera stuff.



It's not the MOST updated version. This version is before I showed it to Brian for critique, and as always, he's always got some feedback to give to me to make the animation look and feel better. Well, you'll just have to wait until the product is rendered out! :D

Final Cutscene - Body Language

Oops! I forgot to turn off the render gate before playblasting this... If you see feet sliding at the edges of the comp, it's because it's not supposed to be rendering there. XP

...I'm a bit behind schedule on this one. Though I was scheduled to be done with this by the 30th, I'm still working on it even though it's 2 days into July! (The thought still blows my mind, btw, I can't believe it's already July! Still feels like the beginning of the year...)

Luckily, this one isn't schedule for rendering until later this week, so that gives me some leeway. Estimated finish date: 7/4, the latest!

There's still two shots missing in this one, since it takes place outside of the church and I"m still working on it. :P Expect a fully comped one this Independance Day! :D



In other news... I received an offer from Iron Galaxy to intern at their new studio here in Orlando! It's pretty exciting, since the studio seems incredibily independant as well as does anything and everything! The chances of me being stuck on one task or on a sports game are slim. :D Best part? I get to work with Tiffany!

I accepted of course. This August 6th, I'll be starting work as an intern at Iron Galaxy Orlando! Pretty excited to be getting some income.

Final Cutscene Body Language WIP

Office Cinematic _ Facial Animation

Facial Animation Update. Office Cinematic is almost done! Just some touch ups left.

Office Cinematic _ Body Language

I'VE DONE IT.

I was actually running behind on this animation, because of so many things. There were entire days were I couldn't work on this cinematic at all, even though I had scheduled myself to work on it then. I was forced to fudge the schedule a bit. Tomorrow I'll have to finish up the facial animations and expressions and polish up anything else that needs polishing up.

And then, shockingly, I will be done with the office cinematic, come Tuesday. 

That said, I was INCREDIBLY bad at keeping my blog up to date with my work. Pretty much since the last update I was working on this, and finally managed to finish it on time! I can say with confidence now that I can keep to my schedule. :D

Plushy Knight Opening Sequences

Here is the finished animation with facial animation and some lighting and sound. At this point, the animation itself leaves my hands and goes to Scott for lighting, rendering and compositing! Once that's done, I can put it up on my portfolio! :D

Plushy Knight Opening Sequences - Almost Done!

...Phew. Facial animation for the 3 scenes are done. Not complete of course, but given my time constraits, i really ought to move on. I've still got cloth to do for two characters and all...

Seeing this all together now makes me think i might need to change the camera shots on that last scene...

Anyway! I've learned something today. The difference between straight forward animation and pose to pose. For the longest time I never really understood the point of straight ahead animation, and that;s because I've always animated using passes and then going back through and adjusting timing and the poses themselves as I animated. But when it comes to facial animation, going through with passes makes the process more tedious than it would be. Especially when it comes to lip syncing, it's just far easier to forget the frame count and focus purely on hitting the expression and mouth shapes on the first go. I'm not sure what it is, but the way the face and the body moves, how they move and the kinds of motions they make, are distinct. Might be because of the fact that the body uses muscles to move bones whereas the face uses muscle to move skin. Who knows.

Of course, that said, a part of me isn't too fond of straight ahead animating. Because it's like taking a drawing and starting with the upper corner and just drawing EVERYTHING. No sketch, no gesture, just jump right into the detail. Sometimes it'll look good, sometimes it won't, and it's just harder to pick up on exactly why something doesn't look right.

All my own thoughts just from reading up on a chapter on pose to pose vs straight ahead animation in a How to Cheat in Maya book. Which I'll need to get myself one of these days...

Sanctuary Island Cinematic

Still a bit late on this. I have a tendency to put off playblasts until beyond the last minute. But this lil cinematic just before gameplay is Body Language Done. All that's left is to do facial animation and some adjustments to the title sequence. Next post will have all 3 animations with facial animation and polish up.

The biggest question is how I'm going to render this out for my portfolio. I think I might just set up some simple lights and render it out in Viewport 2.0 in maya, since you can still get some good results in that. Which means I'll have to set aside some time in order to get that done. I'm probably going to be working on that all weekend.

Church Exterior Cinematic - Animation Pass 1

Finished this one relatively quickly! Well, not to say this is finished at all. This is just the first (maybe I'd go so far as to say second) pass of the animation. The camera is probably the biggest unknown in this shot, so I've gotta talk this over with my project lead and my art lead. But I've been animating everything, even if it's not on camera, so it should be pretty easy to just change a shot and move keys around if it comes down to it.

This cinematic has a lot less animation required, so I had the chance to go through and add a bit more to it. Probably should've just moved on, but I couldn't help it! SMALL PLUSHY'S EARS CAN WIGGLE AND ALL THAT.

Plushy Knight Opening - Animation Pass

A bit overdue, but about time I put up some progress on this animation.I had already done a camera pass from last week, but finished the first pass on the animation itself today. Gemma has a mom now! You can see her feet. :D

Maya Fur Test

Played around a bit with Maya fur. Here's what I discovered:

I really suck at it.

Gemma in Mourning

Been a while since I updated this. D: Well, this is a bit overdue, since I should be updating with each deadline I lay down, but I have a tendency to forget. So expect me to throw some other stuff up with not too great quality. I can work on it later.

Actually, these renders below would've had a better render if, for some reason, the mental ray sky wasn't causing horrible banding in Gemma's coat. I have no idea why. So, in order to not spend too much time on this, I just disabled the physical sun and sky and turned on the default light. It looks like screenshots from the viewport. D: Like crap, in other words. But at least you can see the normal maps and spec maps working.

Anyway, this is Gemma in mourning. It was a few tweaks to her coat and her shoes as well as a bit of a texture swap. I'm satisfied to say that she looks like she's wearing pretty different stuff. But not too sure if I should've made Gemma's coat completely black or left it as the dark navy blue that I have it now.

Hm. Probably need to turn it black. Whenever I get a chance to update these crappy renders.

But I've rambled enough. On to the pictures!

Words words words words.

Plushy Knight Ending- Storyboards

SPOILER ALERT!!

With every game, I believe, the ending must be the most satisfying moment. After all, it is where everything is resolved, and all the events in the story come back around and complete the experience. Below is the storyboard for the cinematic.

While the ending cut scene isn't necessarily going to give the events and plot twists of the game away, it is still how the game ends. You have been warned!

Plushy Knight Opening - Storyboards

Plushy Knight is currently a video game in production here at FIEA, which I am lucky to be a part of. It is a heavily story based game, and because of that, requires cinematics in order to tell that story. 

Below are some storyboards I drew up for that very opening. Currently it is in 3 pieces (because they were technically different cinematics), but they play consecutively during the game.

Alexandria Concepts

Alexandria Riten, Alexandria the Bloodthirsty, First of Her Name, Dragon Knight of Susandra, Champion of Gilderhall.

At 20, Alexandria has already earned a fair number of titles for her actions in the world of Unity. Despite the glories that come along with such accolades, Alexandria is still a simple human being, easily hurt, easily scared, and quick to worry for her companions. Her duty as a knight has placed her in a position to protect, something that has always come naturally to her. But even as a knight with such notoriety, the burden to protect can be a heavy one.

Alexandria has been a character in development for a few years now. Her design was focused on presenting exactly what I wrote above: an accomplished warrior, but still human and still vulnerable. Above are her concepts

My portfolio

Hey! I just got a new portfolio site up, using Blogger. You can go to it here:

My Portfolio

I actually have my own website with my own domain name and everything. Unfortunately the site itself has been so hard to update since fall semester of my senior year in college. (Meaning I haven't updated it since then, not really). It's not even 100% yet.

Not to say that this website isn't much more updated. It's still a work in progress, but it will have the most up to date stuff that I can offer.

Summer Portfolio

For all intents and purposes, this blog will house the progress of the projects I'm doing during my summer semester at FIEA. Though, as a student, I'm supposed to have 3 portfolio pieces done before the 1st of August, it would be more accurate to describe my portfolio pieces as 1 cinematic set and 1 character.

But that's just semantics! Here's an updated list of portfolio pieces with due dates! Please note that the estimated finish dates for the cutscenes aren't including the render time, lighting and post process. Those will most certainly be done by the end of July.

Piece #1: Plushy Knight Opening Cutscene (1-3) Est. Finish Date: 6/6

• Storyboards
• Camera and Character Placement Block
• Rough Pass (5/25)
• Body Language (5/31)
• Facial and Lip Sync (6/4)
• Refinement (if necessary) (6/6)
• Pass to Scott for Lighting 

Piece #2: Plushy Knight Office Memory Cutscene Est. Finish Date: 6/16

• Storyboards
• Camera and Character Placement Block
• Rough Pass (6/7)
• Body Language (6/11)
• Facial and Lip Sync (6/14)
• Refinement (if necessary) (6/16)
• Pass to Scott for Lighting 

Piece #2.5: Plushy Knight Ending Cutscene Est. Finish Date: 6/27

• Storyboards
• Camera and Character Placement Block (5/21)
• Rough Pass (6/17)
• Body Language (6/21)
• Facial and Lip Sync (6/25)
• Refinement (if necessary) (6/27)
• Pass to Scott for Lighting

 Piece #3: Alexandria the Bloodthristy, Dragon Knight of Susandra Est. Finish Date: 7/28

•  Model Axe (6/28)
• Finish Sculpt in ZBrush (7/13)
• Sculpt Refinement (7/13)
• Texture (7/20)
• Pose and Resculpt (7/25)
• Light Render and Post Process (7/28)

Thesis

 So. For my study here at FIEA, I have a thesis to write/do/make. Considering the nature of my portfolio, and because I've gained a lot of experience animating cinematics just from the one year study I've had so far at FIEA, I've decided to write my thesis on cinematic animations. 

Pretty vague, yes. I'll be covering topics of processes and tools that I go through in order to create a cinematic, ranging from storyboards to mocap vs. hand animation, to animation layering, etc. I have yet to decide what these topics specifically are, but be sure that I'll be updating this post as I come across them while I work. 

Here's some that I've come up with while working: (not really topics as much as points of note)


-The Importance of storyboards!
-Using Cycles in the Cinematics (with Animation Layers)
      -Using them in conjuction with the base animation to create pauses and stuff
-Keep everything easy to change (referencing files)