And then...it hit the fan

So after a productive day of animating, i continued to work into the small hours in order to ensure my shots were ready for the group to begin rendering tomorrow (or rather today) and then whilst saving my shot where the spider crawls out the bin, Maya crashed and corrupted my file, it can no longer be read, there is nothing in the file....my work is gone. I cant tell you the level of frustration at this program and at myself for having not saved a recent version elsewhere. I suppose I am fortunate enough to have an older version but its set me back no end and I've lost whatever sense of relief i was gaining from this project. It seems I will haev to continue to work to get back to where I was....

Just to let you know

and heres the work thats gone...

to redo : clean up the outliner in this file *snoar*

        do the leg climb and slip on the bin

                redo the mass of blinks

                the leans as he tries to get back up

doesnt sound much....but its maaaahooosive so don't even let me hear you say its not.

Sadness....Im trying to pull myself together though *slaps with wet fish*

Breaking News!

Amongst the decaying ruins of a post apocalyptic city, Lunchbox News has discovered these images depicting the mayhem that ensued during the destruction of the city whose name is un-disclosable after a government enquiry. These pictures show the true horror of events as the so called "spiders" rain a seige of terror across the city. No one knows where they came from or why their here, but these creatures should not be approached under any circumstance as eye witnesses recall they were carrying knives and somewhat "shifty" looks. We'll have more news as it occurs

Can It

Where you at Verrall? Weeeeeell my friend....I shall show you. Any feedback welcome :)

tracks?!

is this right?! 

spider lorry part uno

This has two shots within the section. The first half sees a spider crawling under the lorry crashed in the scene and then cuts to the second half where it emerges the other end and runs past camera. Another spider then appears from the inside of the lorry and crawls down to the ground and begins to run. 

Playblast the first: This is a very basic block out i completed (for the curb section) you can see we need more curb modelled here (already mentioned to the bear) due to where the cameras positioned. 

Playblast the second: Here you can see further keys have been added to the curb section, though still very basic and the run has been added. The pink spider is the one running on trax whilst the black one (with previous animated keys hence why it doesnt match) will need to mirror it. I hit a slight problem here though as the trax spider gains a lot of height in his jump which looks wrong, especially from this camera angle. Matt has given me some pointers about not readjusting the spiders height on the floor as this combined with the body movement creates too much information for the eye to concentrate on....back to the drawing board....or rather...laptop!

Sarah wrote: woooot ho! its like gone 1am but i wanna some feedback on this trax jump thats a going going on please.

Playblast the third: this will rock your world....just check out that curb crawling (haha) anyway, further refinement added to the curb section of animation but trax yet to be mirrored.  Here you can see I've extended the scene to allow further anticipation/pauses for when our dear spidey has a slip *bless*. Its strange how these scenes require further time added to them compared to the animatic but I believe that me and Matt and are pushing the scenes we were given to give a variety of character and indeed challenge ourselves with this creepy crawly. Im very pleased with this outcome but Im sure it could be refined further and of course I take on anyones crits so I can improve. 

Relay Spiders?!

I got THIS FAR....

...with this particular shot anways. Not sure how much I will add to it at this stage as its currently up for grabs in the animating department (come on...make a bid someone! give 'im a good home) Dont worry, there will only be 1 spider in the final scene....this is just a breakdown. As per the teams request, I have slowed down the camera but it still seems slightly too fast/off....again, it may take someone elses vision to tweak it as staring at it for hours on hand make you lose sense of who you are and what your doing. Overall, Im sort of pleased with the way things are looking with the animating, Ive sort of taken a different working route to Matt by blocking out all my shots first then tweak tweak tweaking...so I can hardly expect to be a same stage as him can I? PULL IT TOGETHER VERRALL-SON *puts bin on head and eats revels*

from above...the relay showing the spiders full path of motion

whats hip-hap-a-happening dude?

well I shall tell you...perhaps you have only just got through my last very long and insane blog so were probably due another one.

Week 8 Update

Matt and I have been working tirelessly on the Spider walk cycle. Our group deadline was to have it all finalized for the Friday 28th November and four legs seemed an endless headache to the both of us. After quipping Jared's comment about how we were animating *puts on Scots accent* "r yeeeew doing one set of legs and maaaatt doing the other?" to which we replied a disgusted "no?!" it seemed that mysterious Scotsman might have been on to something. Our end result was a combination of Matt's animation on the front legs, and mine for the back legs...you have no idea the stupid backward crab walks I have been doing round the house just to understand the basic principles of leg driven movement. *ahem* With all stupidity aside, it seems we'd cracked it after I returned from London after a studio visit for my case study report. I couldn't quite believe we'd done it, and...just to confirm, we grabbed Dan Dalli and forced him into the level 2 room for his critique....he was actually impressed and after giving us a few pointers, we were nothing short of smirking at the triumph after a challenging few weeks. Me and Matt then divided up the spider shots based on Khalid's animatic and work could begin. I have pre-warned Matt though that I have work on Saturday (funny he didnt really need to know since we work same place) and that my case study would take up the majority of my Sunday so animating would begin next week FOR SURE INNIT.