Monkey's Uncle - Animation

Well, the animation is pressing forward, with all the main key actions blocked out squarely, leaving me with only the refinement stage to get past now. i guess the hard part is finding blocks of time in which to get little bits done, but its getting there steadily! Please don't judge the images too harshly they are obviously not anything finished!

Image 01: The simple joys of scratching....

Image 02: Don't Fall Little Monkey!

"Monkeys Uncle" - Set Design 03

Just a short comment, to add a bit more overlapping action, i have rigged up the tree's trunk and feature branch to bend and flex, as well as a bit of fluffy leaf squash and stretch. If i get time i'll record a clip of its movement and back-attach it to this post, but if not here is a pic of the rig controls, the trunk control moves everything from that point, the branch controller on the right controls branch flex and the other controllers just manage the individual squash and stretch on each of the branches..

Supanova 2008

Well that's it, its done, Supanova Pop Culture Expo has come and gone and once again it made for an interesting time. This year my friends and i had the pleasure of attending talks by Japanese anime voice actors (Colleen Clickenbeard and Monica Rial), we were also fortunate enough to sit up the front at talks by Michael Winslow (the sound effects guy from the 'Police Academy' movies), David Harris (who played Cochise in 1979 classic 'The Warriors') and Lou Ferrigno (the original Incredible Hulk and former Mr Universe bodybuilding champ).

On top of the very interesting talks there were alot of other silly things to do to keep us busy throughout the day, there were lots of nerdy people in costumes of animated characters as well as some wannabe pro wrestlers that couldn't act in pain for peanuts as well as my personal favourite the videogame character drawing contest. Now although it sounds rather official in name, its more of a bit of fun where everyone who wants to have a go from all agegroups can sit down and have a bash at designing a videogame character. At the end of the day the winners are drawn and in previous years prizes and freebies were awarded to the lucky (and skillful) fella who claimed the prize.. that was in previous years, in 2006 i won on one of the days and i got all sorts of free videogames and stuff but this year it was handled a little differently. the judges just announced all the pics that they liked (including my own) and those people were called into another room (away from their friends and were given an impromptu half an hour talk on the animation process to add even more salt to the wound the talk was given by an old uni mate who i studied with.. not quite the what i had in mind. But i still get bragging rights enough to keep me cheerful till next year.. :)

So here is the pic i did in sketch form and some rough coloring in i did this morning. I was only able to get a photo of the drawing as they kept the sketch. The idea sort of evolved as i drew it but i was mainly trying to avoid the customary anime girls with big guns.. so i settled on a Rabbit Assassin from Space. go figure!If you are interested in seeing the photos i took from the day i have provided a link to my photogallery on facebook (here).

"Monkey's Uncle" - Set Design 02

Well things are going very well on the monkey front, I have resolved the aforementioned problem with the monkeys animation sets and i have a new selection system to help speed up the progress! i have also just today worked out how to blend different shaders depending on their distance from the camera AND customizable ramp skydomes that dont affect Final Gather renders. (wow was that a mouthful!) For those of you that didnt follow the link and investigate the monkey rig i am using for this piece, here is a pic of the smoothed model so you can finally put a face to the project.

I think the main reason this rig appealed to me was its strikingly simple design, no bells and whistles, a well made rig to be sure, but unassuming and original.

Here is a pic of the environment in its prerendered wireframe beauty; one thing you can probably see straight away is my emphasis on smooth curved arching lines in the design that could have been drawn by a confident hand. Another thing to look for is the light icons near the tree, they are fill lights so that the shadows of the main (sun) light arent too dark and obsuring of the tree's details. Animation scenes are lit in much like an indoor theatre, or a movie set; with spotlights, fill lights etc.

And here is the establishing shot for this short as far as i have worked out. (Things i have worked hard on here: the soft rim illumination and shadow on the hill under the tree, the "Super Mario-esc" rocks to the left and the flat pastel mountain in the distance. now if you can believe it, the mountain and the hill in the foreground are actually coloured with the same shader, but they are behaving differently due to their distance from the camera (this is still exciting news for me as i just worked out how to do it!).

So as you can see there have been developments in the background department and although i havent posted animated footage, many hours of work are going towards getting the animation to where it has to be.

"Monkey's Uncle" - Set Design 01

my original plan was to overlay the 3d animation over my 2d photoshopped treebranch but while I've been blocking in the animation and trying to get all my key poses working and ive repeatedly been running into the question: how can i do all the acting i want to do within this one fixed camera frame and it still feel dynamic and full of life?

one idea was to pick a number of fixed camera frames and hand-paint them so i can get some variation of camera frame while maintaining the 2d element but then i would run the risk of the background just being distracting and taking away from the action. but as i sat down to work on the problem again after arriving home from work where i'd spent 8 hours building photoreal polygon trees (a pandanus and a frangipani) i figured i could probably build the darned thing in 3d and solve all the problems in one go; i would be able to pick and choose my camera movements to show off the animation with all the added flexibility of being able to edit and rig movements to the tree's limbs.. Now we're talking!!

Seeing as i'd already been animating the monkey to a blocked out mesh that matched my original 2d tree plate (seen below) i had to proceed from that without changing the relevant parts of the tree too much till i came to a design that i could sign off on.

I think a great design solution is one that makes me unable to return to the original design because the new solution is so simple and strong that it seems the only good idea in retrospect..

So this is the basic design of the centre stage of this piece.. its cartoony feel allows me not to feel too compromised by the change from the original idea, and it also gives the short a super strong design edge that has been lacking in alot of my previous pieces.. (im still not sure what to do with rest but im definately happy with the tree).

see you soon!

"Monkey's Uncle" - Movement Research

Just a small note, i thought you guys would like to see one of the more embarrasing stages of the animation process, where sometimes you have to try to work out exactly what you want to do with the movement in your scenes. these images are for a bit where the monkey is monkey dancing:

These next ones are to help with a bit where the monkey recovers from his backflip, that i needed to pantomime in order to get right:

If youre curious: i filmed myself with my wife's Canon Powershot G9 with the Disney's "Monkey's Uncle" playing in the background, when i got all the footage i needed, i brought the files onto my computer and analysed them back in slomotion and extracted the necessary frames for reference using Media Player Classic (great for that purpose).

I guess we all know who the real monkey is :) As i hit the "publish post" button im fervently hoping that i dont live to regret this post..

"Monkey' Uncle" - Premise and Storyboard

I got the idea for Monkey's Uncle from the desire to animate something with full bodied uninhibited movement. The rest came from listening to one of the abscure but funny songs off one of the disney soundtrack cd's my wife owns also called Monkey's Uncle. The song brings to mind austin powers dancing and beach-boyish guitar riffs so it really got me thinking "what if i actually animate a monkey doing monkey stuff to this song?"

Round about the same time I was trawling the pages at highend3d when i came across this lovely monkey rig (Monkey 1.0.0) with a fresh look and completely unrealistic proportions so as i started picturing what kind of environment such a funny creature would live in and i realised that if it was going to be anything it had to be something with a soft handpainted feel. the next logical step was to actually sketch and paint up something appropriate for the job. after about 6 minutes (at work when everyone else was on a lunch break) i had something i really liked that i could imagine my monkey scene to take place in:

The next step was to actually put some of my motion ideas down on paper, and after unsuccessfully storyboarding a sequence at my desk at home i found i had much better success in different places around the house and within an hour i had this (roughly drawn) sequence from which i could move forward:

On a strictly technical note, the piece is being animated in Maya 8.5, the final output resolution will be 1024 x 576 pixels and the piece will be 41 seconds (1075 frames at 25 fps). The monkey rig will be keyframe animated with IK and FK but unfortunately neither Wade Ryer (the monkey's creator) nor i thought to add Maya Character Sets to the rig so i am having to finish it predominantly the hard way.

Anyhow, i project that the piece will be finished soon so hopefully i will be able to share the finished clip in the next few days! hope everyone is having a great day!