Week 9: Festivals

These are the ten film festivals I might be interested in.
1. Brooklyn Film Festival: Deadline is March 31st, 2011
2. Buffalo Internation Film Festival: Deadline is N/A
3. Ottawa International Animation Festival: Deadline is May 20th, 2011
4. Siggraph: Deadline is April 15th, 2011
5. Chicago International Children's Film Festival: Deadline is May 31st, 2011
6. Sundance Film Festival: Deadline is September 2nd, 2011
7. The Animation Show: Deadline is TBA
8. Toronto Internation Film Festival: Deadline is TBA
9. NY International Children's Film Festival: Deadline is TBA
10. 2D or not 2D: Deadline is N/A

Week 8: Start of Animation

I finished the rigs for the characters but I have to fix the proportions for two of them so they fit with the cop. I could just fix the cop's proportions, but his rig is complex and it'll be easier to do the stick and the skateboard. I'll bring the cop into the town just to get an idea of how the scaling of the town should be. After that, I'll start animating the motion paths of the two vehicles. Once the motions are done, I'll bring in the characters and start animating their actions. I'll probably do the simpler animations first, which is when the stick and skateboard are in their car doing their little motions with the glovebox, the candy eating and their little hand/eye motions. That should be simple. After that, I'll work on the primary scene, which includes some walk cycles, various parent constraints with the candy box and particle effects with smoke from caughing and car speeding off. Another sequence I want to add is a dance sequence with the cop. That'll be somewhat simple and may even be animated in a seperate file just for the black background. Here's some pics of the rigs.

Week 7: Still Rigging/...Lighting.

I plan on finishing rigging this week. The stick is fully rigged with weights painted on most areas. The paints need to be cleaned up in some areas though. The cop character is nearly complete. I need to finish the ribbon arms and then his spine will be a spline IK and his head controllers should be simple. The skateboard will be tough, but his overall movement will be simple. He's rolling on his leg wheels, so I won't need to do anything crazy with them as far as attributes goes. His axels will stretch out, but I've gotten used to stretchy IK and that should be simple. His spine could be an FK spine since it won't be bending too much. His axel arms will also stretch, and I might add a ribbon to the stretch on them. I won't do the FK/IK switch on that as it was complex and I just don't want to do it again.

The town is pretty much done. I just need to add lights to streetlights, and the vehicles. And maybe some lights to some signs to give them a neon sign feel. Otherwise, I should be animating over break for the final vehicle movement. I'll probably build a path for them, and use a tanget/geometry constraint on them, just to give it a better feel. Right now, I have some rough vehicle movement set up. But it's only in one direction, and the vehicles do turn at some point in the film, so I'll have to fix that.

Week 6: Continued Rigging

So far the Stick character is practically fully rigged. I've yet to add some deformers to him, but they may some later additions, as I'd like to concentrate on finishing the rigging for the other characters. For the cop, he's almost done rigging. I just need to finish his right arm, and then add ribbons to both the arms. I also have an IK/FK switch for the arms. After doing the ribbons for the legs, I've gotten used to the process, so it shouldn't take too long to repeat that process on the arms. Same goes for the Stretchy IK I added to the cop's legs, after doing that twice, I feel safe to do it on the his arms. The rest of his body should be simple (head, neck, eyes). I've built the skeleton for the skateboard and I think I'll just do stretchy IK for his leg wheels, and then I think I might do a ribbon for his arms wheels with the stretchy IK as well. I hope to complete those within the next few days and jump into the animation.

Here's a screen-shot of my cop's leg ribbon. He's not binded by the way.