Ze Final Upload iz here.

Final output, using the rEnDeR fARm.
Was quite good actually, saved lots of crunching at home.

Objective.

I've been much more looking at animation much more objectively, wondering if they really are animated 'correctly', and i've had a little look at Eric's site, and his animation tests and found that some are quite static. I think, as well as making me a better animator, it's made me appreciate and realise what good animation looks like. I think i'll revisit some of the classic pixar/dreamworks movies, and study the animation.
ERICS 
I guess if I can find what's wrong with them, then i can apply that to my own animations.
I've also been looking at past and present 11 Second Club entries, writing down what i thought was wrong with the animations, then watching the critique, as a sort of test, to see if i can see the same issues. Or if I'm way off target, and need to focus on something else.
11

more tweaks..

This time taking much of what Mike had told me on board, i tweaked lots of the key positions, 'pushing the pose' to get a more dynamic flow and aggression from Brian.
I also had to favour many core keys, and gave the shoulders much more life. (though would have loved to translate the shoulders, but i missed that control in rigging.)
This is brian lip syncing only:

And this is a playblast with the tweaks.

Scheddy.

Schedule for this project...erm...yeh...it's late.

Tweaking.

Have been tweaking the animation much more.
only just realised what people meant by 'off setting' the keys. It's ace...takes a while, but really pays off.
More realistic movement, more so than making everything on splines...so it's not A to B robotics.

After reading a few notes mike sent us from NY Framestore Senior Animator "Seth Gollub", i set my scene up to animate in silhouettes. 

NEXT!

Not sure if i should quite finish here, but it's nice to get something out of a project.

[edit] After watching it back it seems quite different to when i was working on it. 

I think in future i'll stick shadows on for playblasts to really gauge the speed and fluidity of movement. 

Polishing Shit.

I loved animating.
Cleaned it all up as much as i felt was necessary.
So having fun with texturing.

 Also made a cool animated texture node made from only one sequence.
He pees on the floor, making an alpha'd specular map, that was coloured using a ramp on reverse.
good fun :P

HI BRIAN!!

Brian is the new spy.

A bit more.

Just a quick WIP to make sure my blog is bloated :)

Research vids

Some research vids for the little clip before, and hopefully the future ones to come.

Moon Sucks Balls

I saw him.

I'm not keen on the lack of facial controls, so i'm using my own rig (i know!! scary!!)
It's the Queen from the monty python pitch, hence why this blog is locked to other people :O

This first vid was just the lips, then facial keys, tilting of the head and the brows (which brought so much life to the animation).

I struggeld with keying one of the controls (it was rather fugly and wouldn't key effectively as IK) so i edited the rig, and exported the animation out to fit with the new rig. awesome little plug-in called AnimExport.

This is much better now, and im wondering whether to move on and key in the rest of the dialogue, or tweak this. I think it's good enough, and quite simple. There are only about 14 components animated here (including all the blends).

The Full Shabang

It's going well, just blocking out the lip sync.

I think, more to please both sides of this character animation fence, i'll make the lip sync a trax clip, so it doesn't distract, then animate my key poses.

Not even sure if this should be my final sound clip, it seems a little hard to get great..we'll see.

Lying to women is bad..mmkay!

NO PHIL!! PISS OFF!

First proper lip-sync attempt.

Research for Lip sync

research:

First trial:

Blogger's Buggered.

Blogger decided to let me hit the 'upload video button'.
Shame the bastards didn't let me upload anything.

But i have been working!!!
I haves!!