Monthly Update: October 2020
It’s update season, and boy do I have some updates. Well, truthfully not much has changed since September. This past month has been almost entirely focused on a handful of complex shots. One of the ways I like to work is to layout scenes in very general, broad strokes, and then animate a pass of a character moving in a general, three dimensional sense. Then I’ll go back, adjust the cameras, and tweak the animation to work better to the finalized cameras. It’s not the way it would be done in a normal animation pipeline, but since I know more or less what angles I want and what the animation will look like, I can afford to be iterative in this way. This particular piece of animation proved to be a bit tricky, though. Top to bottom, the full action was about 500 frames long, and it was far easier to animate it in one go than break it out into smaller shot files. This way I could maintain continuity of action in the cut, and I could make animation and position changes that would affect all angles equally. The cinematography of this action also changed significantly during the process.
Initially the action, which consists of the main character climbing an object, jumping over a gap, and the aftermath, consisted of about 4 fairly wide shots. Upon assembling the rough edit, it became apparent that the shots, while technically functional, lacked a bit of zest in a moment that could use it. So 4 static shots became 2 more dynamic shots, without being too in your face. Finding that balance was a bit of a challenge, but I’m happy with how it has come together. That animation is now complete and in Unreal. It still needs lights and FX, but I’m excited to put the finishing touches on it. As of now only one more shot remains. Well, one and a half, truthfully. The last shot of the episode, while fully animated, needs to be moved in space a little for continuity reasons. Aside from that, I’m about 70% finished with animation for the final shot. All that remains is clean up, and a lot of detail animation - fingers, straps, other secondary animation, etc.
Other than animation, I passed a pretty significant benchmark this month. All of the characters are now completely modelled and painted. I was able to whip up the final 2 characters during my weekday night work, and I’m very happy with how they’ve turned out. All they need now are rigs, and being relatively simple characters, I’m not too concerned about that. But, rigging is a bit of a pain, so I may push that down the road a ways, probably into next year.
I aim to have animation complete for episode 3 by the end of this weekend, or into next week sometime. It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s almost there. From that point, it’s onto lighting and FX in Unreal, and squashing any of the various minor problems that may arise. Then sound, music, and publication. So, I’m still on track for a late November/ early December release. Part IV will be interesting, in that I’ll be able to reuse a few pieces of animation from the pilot to save time (minor spoilers). That being said, it’s a very minor slice of that episode, so that won’t be out until early 2021 at least. I’m very curious how things will progress post Part IV, as that will be a huge jump in animation complexity. Part V and beyond will have complex interaction between multiple characters, facial animation, and more dynamic action. I can’t wait to get into it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my output slows somewhat significantly. But that’s not for a while yet.
