Doing everything, like a pro

Today I did everything I said I was going to do in my last post which is quite the achievement. The animation is finished and the environment has been build, here's a render for proof. The blocks are all coloured with the primary colours (Red, Yellow, and Blue) the sky has been given a starfield texture, and I've placed a blueish fog around the floating blocks.

After the environment was finished I referenced it into the animation, here's a short clip for proof that I did actually do the work. The stars seem to move around which that shouldn't because it's just a texture and not animated but I believe this and the fact that the fog doesn't look very smooth is because this is just a playblast and not a rendered clip.

(Just look at that quality)

Building environments like a pro

I haven't done a post in over a week because I keep forgetting but that means I have a lot of work to post. To start with I have finished the core animation with my rig, I was advised not to go with the falling animation and instead have him crash land on a floating block. From here I could cut to a 3rd person shot showing off the environment. The shot should look something like the crudely drawn picture below.

Other than this I have completed my environment. The world my character is running through consists of giant floating blocks in the sky, these blocks move around which meant that I had to animate around 50 blocks moving around without colliding which is tedious work. There's probably an easier way but I was too busy doing it the hard way. All that needs to be done to the environment is colouring in the floating blocks, adding a cloud/mist/fog effect and adding a blue gradient to the sky-dome which encases the entire environment. This list of things I still have to do renders my first sentence redundant. 

After this I only need to do all my after effects work, render the video, finish up on my essays and scan in all my  brainstorms and storyboards which I'll upload later. Plus the scene needs lighting, which is important because otherwise no one would be able to see anything.

Animating like a pro

Tonight I did some more animating but didn't get much done due to the Internet being so distracting. Despite this I believe I have solved or at least improved a momentum based issue which was causing me trouble yesterday. I now have a shot where my character is swinging his arms around as he falls through the sky so I'm using the "Bioshock infinite" trailer to help me get the movements correct.

I lied about the storyboards, the won't be uploaded today. Maybe tomorrow. 

What I did today

Today I did some storyboarding to work out how I want the final trailer to look, this then made me realise how much work I need to do so I began animating. I've also changed the design of the scene to make things easier on myself and to have a better overall design, so far I've blocked out the part of the animation that features the design overhaul and have began refining it. Here's a picture of me doing some animation.

Storyboards will be uploaded tomorrow. (Maybe).

FMP Overview

My final major project is to create a trailer for a video game. The game will be based on parkour and will be made in Maya and edited with Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects. The animation should advertise an imaginary game and act as a portfolio piece that shows that I can animate in Maya.

Before I started this blog I have been researching my target market, products that are similar to mine and how the audience reacted to these products. This research will be used to make my final project better.