Sneak Peak

So, technically, my academic is over :D. Never thought I'd see the end! And that means I have time to actually post more stuff on this blog! I know it's been gathering it's fair share of dust lately, but when you all see the copious amounts of work that will be posted in the coming weeks, you'll understand.

I'm posting this screenshot and character turn-arounds a sneak peak into the animated short that I've just spent nearly five months slaving over. Once I'm moderately satisfied with the piece, I'll post it in full (along with everything else that went into it) on the site. Hope you dig it! :)

isaac turnaround 1 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
seb turn around 1 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

Mid-Year Exam...Eish

the demon knife cabinet from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

So this was my effort for our mid-year exam. We were given three short soundclips, and we had to choose one of them to animate to. The objective was to come up with a coherent story, using the characters we'd created over the semester, and sync the story with the soundclip...a lot like the 11 Second Club does it. I ended up picking the clip that made the most sense to me...but it definitely wasn't the easiest!

Honestly, this could have been SO much better. We had a pretty limited amount of time to do this (two and a half weeks), so naturally, there's a lot of stuff that needs work, particularly the character animation. But anyway, there it is.

Below is the progression of the clip, from animatic to blocking.


June Exam Animatic (V2) from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.


exam shot 1 pass 1 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.


exam shot 1 breakdowns from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

The model sheets for the knife cabinet...

The final 3D model for the cabinet

 

Some of the planning...

The 1st Semester Reel

Kwabena Sarfo 1st Semester Animation Reel from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

And voila! I have my first 3D animation show reel! Its a compilation of all the principles of animation work done over the first semester. As I've said elsewhere on this blog, it's always humbling to see that you're not nearly as 'advanced' as you think you are, and I feel like that's been the case with me so far. I've still got a LOT to learn. Having said that, I'm pleased with where I'm at as an animator so far, particularly as a 3D animation student.

BTW, the track used in the reel is ''Hidden'' by Bonobo, King 7 and the Soulsonics

In Living Colour

Just applied some basic textures to the little guy...

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. 

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.