Messing around...

While I wait for Jason to finish on the rig, I've been playing around with some other models. Here's a character named Charlie Hippo I created years ago that my friend Harry McLaughlin and I did as comic books and traditional 2D animation many years ago and then as a short Flash film most recently to promote the launch of Zaptoons.com.

Charlie Hippo is the first character I ever created and I wanted to see if he would translate to 3D. It came out passible. I'm sure that a T.D like Jason would cringe at the topology of the model but visually it works. That seems to be the next major hurdle I will have to overcome. How to CORRECTLY model a character with the correct topology. Sigh, alas my work is never done. ;-)

Many years ago when my freind Harry and I were in college together, we realized that we would never be able to ( at the time) make full blown cartoons due to the man-power it required back then with cell painting and the endless drawings and in-betweens needed. We hit upon the idea of doing comics because that was an attainable goal to produce and CHarlie Hippo was our star.

Most of the stories centered around Charlie going off on an adventure with his best freind Louie hedgehog. It was very similar to the old Floyd Gottfriedson Mickey Mouse comics or the Carl Barks Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories, only not crafted near as well.

I believe Charlie Hippo will be the subject of my next film. if I can ever get him to be rigged correctly.
The story would focus on Charlie, who is an inadvertant adventurer.

I believe Zaptoons. com will be publishing our first 6 issues of Zaptoons tales, which featuered Charlie Hippo in it's pages some time this year.


Of course isn't that just like me to get ahead of myself and think up new ideas before the previous ones are even remotely finish but my mind is a restless one and I guess I really have no choice. Anyway, I only posted this so there would be something new to see.
I hope you like it.

Happy Holloween

Poltergoose rig 1.0

Today Jason delivered the first rig for Poltergoose and I was blown away. It does so many cool things. He's still got some work on it though so this is a work-in-progress. Apparently he was going for a bone controlled facial rig and that ended up not working as he wanted so he's now chucked that and is going forBlendshape driven facial expressions. (which is really morphing from one expression to another) He did add some cool stuff though. Poltergoose's eyes pop now and his tonuge has a node on it that will allow him to stick it out and do a catoony "take".
It's pretty cool stuff! Also now his cowl will go up and down and his legs can't bend backwards in an awkward postion. He's got more planned too but he wanted me to see it and see it I did!
Great stuff so far. I can't wait to start animating!

Most T.D.'s (Technical Director) work this way. They send the animtor the rig and the animtor playdsx with it, mentions things he likes and things he'd like to see added. For instance I asked if we could make Poltergoose's neck be able to move back and forth in addition to rotating because I feel that people move their necks side to side and front and back just as often as they seem to move them up and down.
I also asked for the ability to m ove his shoulders up and down and not just rotating them which I imagine is possible.
So after the rig is done we'll spend some time giving him some textures and then call it a day.
We've been talking about what other characters to populate the cemetary with and so far we thing we'll have a werewolf, a zombie and a mummy as well as Boney. Mostly we'll wait to see what Roger comes up with and go from there.

Poltergoose test scene

Well, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong when I imported inage sequences into Premiere.

Apparently, when you set Maya's timeline to "play every frame" it means 24fps. I figured because the animation was created in the digital world that it would be most likely at the default digital setting of 30 fps but I guess I was wrong. Must be that due to Maya being so steeped in Film Production that they set it to 24fps I guess.

Either way i got both audio and video to jive together so finally here is a post of the first test of Poltergoose. It's a bit jumpy in places but I wanted to get it up here just fo laughs becasue I've been posting this same stupid image for weeks. You will need Apple's Quicktime to view this which you can download for free.

Now you finally get to see a bit of what Poltergoose will sound like. His design is going to change slightly as Jason has incorporated his eyes into his head instead of making them half-circles imbedded into his skul but other than that he should look similar. Of course he'll also have a killer rig to help him move and much better phenomes than my limited rig does but we're finally off and running!
Jason seems to think he will have the rig done by this weekend and I have already delivered Boney to him to rig next.
I will have to get cracking on the set next, which unfortuanatly was just about done before the "Great Milo Hard Drive Crash of 2005"

Meanwhile, Roger is set to show us something on the script by the end of the month so we're really getting our act together.
After that it will be storyboarding and then actual animation!

Jason's Notes

Here's a cool thing. Jason's notes as he rigs Poltergoose.

Here's his post from his site:
When I am RIGGING I keep notes. I find it helps me keep track of my thoughts and ideas..it's kind of like thumbnailing before you design something....I have stacks and stacks of note book's laying around, it is super fun to look back on them ...I am amazed how many COFFEE stains are on my notes......we all got bad habits eh.......

Rigging.....

.....is the process of bringing life to a lifeless 3D model with the articulation to fool the audience in to believing the character really exists. Basically it is building a puppet in 3D for the animator to use. My job is to build a system of control for MIKE (THE ANIMATOR) that allows him to do his JOB and not worry about the T.D side of things...
"THE RIG IN PROCESS"

Rigging Poltergoose has and is a great opportunity for me. I am learning as well as pushing my self each time I sit down to work on him(THANKS MIKE). My goal for Poltergoose is to make him BULLETPROOF , meaning when Mike is animating all he has to worry about is animation and not breaking the rig...


FOR NOW
JASON

Files BACK in town!

Well, I finally got some of my files back from the dreaded computer failure. My hard drive apparently went belly up and I lost all of the Poltergoose files to date. Yes, I know... why didn't I back up my files. See I'm one of those kinds of guys that makes new stuff so frequently that it's all but impossible to back up everything. I have four hard drives and all of them are pretty filled up. I do back up but I missed these files.
Ah well... anyway thanks to this great program called Stellar Phoenix
and the help of my good freind Harry McLaughlin, I was able to pyull some of my files back from the dead!
Woo Hoo!
So I'm back in the saddle again.
Haven't heard much from Jason or Roger lately, both are busy with other venues at the moment.
I finally tried to get another render of my first test scene with Poltergoose but something is going wrong. When I render out each file individually as tiffs it works nicely but then importing it into Premiere makes the files not sync up with the dialog. Wehn I render as an avi I get weird anti-aliasing. Check it out. It's 4mb so it might take awhile to download.
Very strange indeed. I think it has to do with the avi not being able to process the motion blur in the frames.
I'll figure it out eventually. I remeber this happening once before but I do not remeber what the issue was then. Old age I guess.
The files look sweet though and I'm getting some nice shadows going on so I can't wait to figure out what the problem is. I bbet it's something to do with 24 vs. 30 fps. But I can't figure it out yet. Too many other things going on in the meantime.
In the meantime, go see some of my latest Flash endeavors Joe Dugan-Mailman Episode ONE.
Joe Dugan-Mailman Episode TWO and Joe Dugan-Mailman Episode THREE.
Eh, it's not 3D but it's funny! Check it out!

Computer troubles

Well, I had hoped to be posting a quick animation that I did for an old rig of Poltergoose by now but unfurtualtely my entire hard drive seems to have gone kaput.
Of course I tried a drive recovery tool and wouldn't ya know it? The ONLY thing, and I do me the ONLY thing that didn't come back was... you guessed it.

My Maya folder with all my scenes in it.
I could cry.
Actually I did cry.
Makes me want to vomit. Wait I just did. I am very sad.

Fortunately for me Jason is rigging the real model not me. Mine was crap. True, it was something that I had spent countless hours on and all my hard earned sweat had gone into it.... but eh, who cares. I do have the knowledge I gained from what I did and no one can take that away huh?
Sad.
Of course then there's always the realization I did not lose my entire studio like Aardman this weekend which is horrifying.
I am thankful for what is left and that will have to be enough.

ALL ABOARD

Well I guess I better introduce my self. My name Jason Mcarthur but you can call me JASON that's fine with me. I come from the GREAT WHITE NORTH( Canada EH!) . I have never met MIKE or ROGER face to face. But through the wonders of modern technology (THE INTERNET, we are working together to create something to make you GIGGLE, and this is where I come in, not the giggling but the tech side of things . I will be the CHARACTER T.D. on this project. Basically I am building puppets in 3D so MIKE can Animate.

FOR NOW
JASON

Writer on Board

Howdy! Mike asked me to come up with a script for this short and I readily agreed. Besides being a talented animator and all-round good guy, he's feared by much of the industry. To refuse Mike is to do so at your own peril!

Poltergoose Expression Sheet

Poltergoose Phenomes

Here is a phenome chart of some of Poltergoose's mouth poses. I'm hoping to do an expression chart as well.

More on Boney and more ponderances

So, Boney is going to be what Kevin is to Jay Leno. He laughs at every stupid joke Poltergoose throws out there, Sometimes literally busting a gut in the process. How I'm going to get him to bust his own gut; in other words, make his rib cage open and fall apart, I have no clue.

Maybe if I use the "hide" method where I just key the original ribcage as being viewed and then when he busts a gut I can hide the full rib cage and unhide the broken one.
Dunno...

It might work.

Things like fog, which I'll need to make the cometary seem eerie and yet also give it that smoky "club" feel, should be no problem because of Maya's built-in ability to render fog.
One thing I'm trying to figure out how to do is have a character come up through the dirt. I mean, how do I do that? Do I animate each clump so it falls? I could use Maya's Rigid Bodies tool which makes one thing react to another's collision but I'm not sure that will work: or that I can get it to work.

Boney

Here's the new design for Boney; Poltergoose's band leader...

Tombstones

Here's a bunch of tombstone saying for Poltergoose's graveyard...
Tombstones
-------------------
-------------------
Here lies Fred
woke up dead
-------------------
Here lies Alvin
biggest commitment
he ever made...
------------------
Here lies June
Keeper of the saloon
-------------------
Here lies Jane
she couldn't refrain
ate too much
died in pain
-------------------
Here lies Bert
he blends with the dirt
-------------------
Here lies Masood
He's now worm food
-------------------
Here lies Mr. Rewd
buried in the nude
-------------------
Here lies Elvis...
We think...
-------------------
George is buried here
but it's ok we gave him beer
-------------------
Here lies Ernie
along with his gurny
-------------------
Here lies Walt
may he rest in peace
when he farted out loud
it sounded like geese
-------------------
Here lies Pete
died from the stink
of his very own feet
-------------------
Here lies Tim
shoulda been Jim
Sucks for him...
-------------------
Bob's dead
lost his head
-------------------
Oh that Mabel
got to drunk
fell off the table
didn't get up for
nearly three days
we left her there
so the rats could graze
-------------------
Our Cook
what a tragedy
Jacob has died
.made the best darn eggs
either scrambled or fried
-------------------
London Paris Tokyo
None were too big for good ol' Joe
So many friends
but death was his foe...
-------------------