Bad-Ass Mouse :)

This was when we had to actually render and composite the character into an environment. I wanted to try and make the background look sort of like a dojo. Don't know how successful I was though...

These are some of the seperate passes I made...

Logo

sarfo crazimation studios logo from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

We kinda had to brand ourselves by making a 3D animated logo that we can use in future show reels. My version's based on all the motion graphics stuff on ESPN and grafitti tags...

Push and Pull

bee boy door open from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

 This was an exercise that combined acting with body mechanics. The IK on the hands and arms (for those who know what that means) of the character just refused to work for some reason; hence the hands going through the wall and door-knob at times. I just didn't have the heart or the time to go and fix it for every single frame...

These are some of the thunbnails and planning drawings done for the exercise.

Making the Mouse Awesome

After we made the face shapes we had to pose the character in dynamic ways, and compose them in various ways. This was REALLY good prep for when we had to actually animate the character.

These are the silhouettes of the poses, just to see if the poses would still be clear if they were only seen in this way.

Needless to say, this meant that we had to fully rig (give the character a working skeleton) and weight paint the character. This was...painful...to say the least. 

Just Because...

Surprise!!

little dude take (seriously, again) from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

This was our first animation exercise for the second quarter. The aim was basically to make a character do a surprise take. The fancy animation term is a 'take and an accent'. The character we had to use was pretty limited in terms of expression, so I'm pleased I got as much out of him as I did.

Facial Expressions

We next had to make facial expressions (the CG term is 'face shapes') for our characters. These are some the ones I made. I'm happy I managed to get the outrageous 'toony' looks I was going for.

The mouse LIIIIIIVES!!

Yay! We finally got to character modeling! :) Seeing as we were heavily advised to keep our characters as managable as possible, I decided to go back to my old mouse designs from years ago. They're fairly simple, so I figured they'd work well. Seeing as they were the first characters I fully animated (in 2D), I figured they'd help me out in the same way in 3D. I just made a generic design that'll act as a blueprint for all the other mice (or 'Sarfo Rats' as one of my friends calls them) that I'll model later. A 'universal mouse', so to speak. We had two weeks to complete this project and there was a LOT that I learned.

These aren't textured, I just lit them all fancy-like...

I gained a whole new understanding of polygon-flow doing this...

By the way, the design for these mice is very much influenced by Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. Not to mention Charles Schulz's Peanuts characters.

Maggie Smith

Inspired by some of Ken Anderson's drawings of Victorian age women...

Roundhouse Kick

roundhouse kick from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

I officially hated 3D animation whilst working on parts of this. I came to understand just how TOUGH it is to get a dynamic pose when the model and rig you're using isn't really capable of being twisted in such ways. Then there's all the interpolation stuff! Sheesh! Anyway, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It was our first real body mechanics exercise. I used one of the kicks in this video I found as my reference. The only thing I wish I'd done differently was exaggerate it a little more. I shouldn't have stuck so slavishly to the reference. Below are the prelim drawings I did...

Big Dreams

Some concepts for one of the characters in the final film I wanted to make this year. But seeing as making and animating this character decently within the limited time frame we have would be nearly impossible for one person, these concepts are gonna have to be put on ice for a while :(

Run Cycle

bee boy run cycle from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

We were given a spot test where we had only a few hours to present a fairly finished piece. We were given a few options of what kind of piece to do. Seeing as I felt character animation would cause me less pain than all the other options, I chose the run cycle option. My first thought after finishing this was that it looked completely horrendous. But after seeing it again after a few days, I thought it was decent. Obviously it still needs a LOT of refining....

Full Walk Cycle

bee boy happy walk 2 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

So after having got the basics down, we 'graduated' to animating a full-bodied character. This is basically an adaptation of the 'Milt Kahl type strut' (the animation nerds will know what that means). After having completed this, I felt a lot more comfortable animating in 3D.

Pendulum 2

pendulum 2 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
We had to hand in two pendulums, so for this one I referenced a USB drive dangling on a lariat, because I wanted to get that sense of weight hanging on the end of a string.

Pendulum 1 (3 section staff)

This was actually done before the walk cycle. Its just a basic pendulum swing, but I made my life a little more difficult by actually making it stop. If there's one thing that's definitely missing in this, its OFFSETTING! If I'd offset the various sections of the staff the animation would have felt a lot more limber. Alas...

Bot Walk Cycle

bot walk cycle from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
Our first walk cycle exercise. Seeing as we needed to understand how the legs and hips, the most important parts, function during a walk, we were given a character without arms to animate. I was pretty anxious about this, so I'm pleased it turned out the way it did.

Bouncing Tennis Balls

bouncing tennis balls (show reel) from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
Its amazing; no matter how advanced you think you are, the more you realize how much you're not when you have to go back to the basics. That was definitely the case with our first principles of animation exercise; the good old bouncing ball. The foundation of any animation education. So simple, yet SO crucial. I'm basically happy with this, though it took me a lot longer to do than I'd anticipated...

Lighting!

The next thing we had to do was light the room in a variety of ways. Seeing as I'm a sucker for drama, I tried out a bit of mood lighting :)