The long process of animation

Here is the clip that I plan to re-do. As cute as it may seem, there are a few details that I want to see corrected. After this video is a brief outline on how I plan to recreate the scene.

Once the character is modeled, the armature is put in place. The armature is the structure of bones that are used to pose each character.

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Normally an animator would refer to a hand drawn storyboard with all the different positions he wants his character to hold. But, I am too lazy for all that, and thus go straight to the posing.

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Once all the key poses are mapped out, Blender will simulate the animation. The hair was intentionally left out because it slows down the program.

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Now, Blender will process each individual frame into a video format. Here is the result with one character temporarily complete.

What's the difference?

These images were created using the latest Blender3D software and rendered through its new Cycles rendering system.

This new system takes the light source that you provide and repeatedly bounces that light on all surfaces. The older Blender rendering engine wasn't quite that sophisticated.

That's right, these shoes have no laces. But, ooh they're shiny.

Hair and shoes.

Hair is the worst part of modeling these characters. Trust me on this, people. The. Worst.

For the record, I'm learning how to model shoes properly. These particular shoes have no laces. Get over it.

Back to the modeling stage. ( It's what I do... )

This is hard work...

Creating a 3D model based on a real live human being can be hard. Hard, I say...

I was having trouble getting the mustache to render properly. Grrr...

Still not looking the way I would like, but it's close. Maybe even close enough.

Support Your Local Fine Artist

1) It's very rare that I purchase a print of artwork from anybody, let alone post a shot of it on my website. However I am trying to find ways to show some support to those struggling in the field of fine arts. ( The internet may be part of the problem, that's a whole other conversation. )

2) Can my nails be any longer? Seriously, I'm not tall enough to have these crazy narrow Arsenio Hall-like fingers, am I? It's just weird. Okay, I'm done.

Animated clip complete

So my little experiment is finished. Although the image is way too grainy for my taste, I'm rather pleased with the results. Perhaps, I'll pic another clip to re-do starting tomorrow.

Caution: Animator Guy at work.

So, there is this 3 1/2 minute video that I animated and posted on YouTube last year. I named it My O7 Project. Since posting it, I've learned a few new tricks, became aware of a few new techniques and now I'm curious about how they would apply to that year old video. Here is the 14 second clip that I'm focusing on, today.

The woman dancing was supposed to be a caricature of Janet Jackson. It's close, but not a very good job. The face wasn't done well at all. The fingers are stiff. Her hair is the wrong shape. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The man at the keyboard was supposed to be music producer Jimmy Jam Harris. Again, I should have done better.

So, here's the plan. First; use a more refined armature underlying each character. This armature will control the fingers as well as the facial movements if necessary.

Second; rebuild each character to make each one a little more life-like. That includes the faces, the textures and the clothing.

Third; rework the poses and choreography. Although I like what I did in the first video, after looking over the original Janet Jackson video of which these moves were based on, I now believe I can work this better than that first animation.

Oh, did I mention that I already started the process? Here's how it looks thus far with only the Janet character.