The Living Room

Just started blocking in the living room with rough forms to get an idea of how everything's going to be scaled and how shots will look in perspective. It's nice to see this rough blocking and imagine things to come. I'm feeling three walls should be wood paneling. The side with the window will be wallpapered. Everything will have a dusty, retro feel to it, as if the old woman hasn't decorated since the late 70's.

A Tale of Two Constraint Systems

I've been stuck for the past couple weeks trying to understand how to allow the arms of the old woman rig to function in either IK or FK mode at the touch of a switch. If you're unfamiliar with the difference, FK allows arm movement by rotating joints at the shoulder, elbow and wrist whereas in IK mode you simply reposition the wrist control and the rest of the arm falls into place accordingly. The difference in application is FK allows for more natural swinging motion of the limbs when the hand is free and IK allows your character to grab or pick something up more effectively.

I am definitely a novice at rigging. Even so, the construction of such a system shouldn't have taken any longer than any other step of the rigging, but due to the somewhat complex nature of switching constraints on and off there was a lot of room for human error, which I provided in abundance. After my first attempt the poor old lady's arms were helplessly contorting in a series of excruciating positions just from switching between systems. It was all FK'ed up! After much struggling, adjusting, deleting, reconstructing, testing, repeating, etc. I think I finally have the arms under control in both modes and the ability to switch from one to the next and back again at will. So here are lessons learned from trying to fix the mess I created.

THINGS ALWAYS GO WRONG: I was making quick and promising progress as I worked my way through the rig. Being my first attempt at creating a rig of this complexity I became cocky and eager to get this part of the project done with. The trouble I ran into with the arms was unanticipated and sort of devastating to my momentum. If I had stepped through the process a little more cautiously, not only would I have needed less time to grieve (and rage) over the speed bump, I may have avoided some of the mistakes that led to the problem.

TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT: In a "time-saving" effort I attempted to patch holes in my malfunctioning arms as opposed to just starting over. What happened was every time I tried to fix one issue, two more popped up. If a joint moved out of placed in one mode I'd shift it back, if it twisted one way I'd twist the other way, if a value seemed to shift inexplicably I'd make connections where they didn't belong. Hours and hours of trying to counter bad mistakes with bad adjustments just to avoid deleting my precious work. In the end, I spent a lot more time trying to noodle with something I knew was broken than I did rebuilding an arm that worked from scratch.

YOU LEARN MORE WHEN YOU SCREW UP: I've basically been following step-by-step instructions to complete this rig. When I ran into problems a large part of my horror was due to the fact that I was suddenly responsible for fixing this thing on my own. I had to go through a painful process of trial and error, constraining one thing to the next in a variety of ways. As I went I became very familiar with how each change I made would effect the rig. By the time I ran my last test to see if everything worked I was already confident that it would. My final tweaks were handled quickly since I knew exactly what wasn't working and how to fix it. If I hadn't had to fix these damn arms on my own I would not be able to say I could construct a rig of this nature without some form of direction. Now, with enough time, I think I could probably work my way through just about any simple character rig.

I see my next two greatest challenges as being the facial controls and the skirt, since I'm still uncertain how these are going to be pulled off. There's still a lot more to do, and a lot more potential missteps to be had. I feel a little more confident about the whole project than I did before now that I apparently conquered the arms.

Ship Modeling Progress

This guy is based on one of the concept sketches from my last post. Still a lot to do but I'm happy with the look. Modeling the interior and rigging the whole thing to split open is going to be fun. I still have rigging to do on my characters so I may go back and finish them up before I spend too much time with this ship.

Space Ships

Originally I envisioned the alien sprouting from a meteorite which would be rock-like in appearance but in the course of reworking the script I decided he would be piloting an actual spaceship which crash lands on Earth. I had imagined the meteorite splitting down the middle and opening in two perfect halves, I thought it would be fun if the spaceship opened in the same way. Here are some initial sketches.

The Stars of the Show

The character models are looking pretty good. Grandma is less lumpy and hideous than I had imagined and she's rocking a nice bouffant wig. I've had discussions with various folks about developing the story more and I think I want to make the Grandma less aggressive and more eccentric. And by eccentric I mean out of her gourd.


I've also began the rigging process, Grandma's feet, legs and spine are currently all boned, handled and clustered up. How I'm going to achieve the rigging for the skirt is still a mystery to me but I'm still feeling pretty cocky about the whole thing. No worries.


Having some foundation work complete on the digital side of things is a relief. Once I have a handle on the rigging and the story is totally fleshed out I'll be at ease. Then things will really start rolling along.

Now Begins the Senior Film

Working Title: Grandma VS. The Alien

Premise: A confused old woman is visited by an alien unfamiliar with the ways of our planet. Hilarity ensues as she attempts to fix what she believes to be her broken television, which is actually the alien itself.

Approx. Runtime: 2 min. 30 sec.

Format: CG Animation (Maya)

2010 Reel

It's been a good year. The first year at CCS was primarily the acquisition of foundation skills, which would equate to basic training in the military. Lots of running around and firing your gun without any real corpses to show for yourself. After the hoops have been jumped through, campus explored, software taste-tested and basic drawing skills driven deep into your skull they cut you loose creatively. This having been my second year, the real learning experience began.

There were a lot of artistic gray areas and I was anxious to fill. Early in the year I pushed heavily to improve my ability to generate interesting characters and environments (lucky for me I had the foresite to enroll in a class titled Characters and Environments). There was the exploration of new software or using familiar software in new ways like Photoshop, After Effects and Flash. I also received my first taste of the monstrosity that is Maya and it's 10,000 capabilities. I even got to play with stop motion and some basic experimental animation techniques. The main challenge was the balance of exercising all that important foundation knowledge (head goes here, ass goes there) while pushing the bar further with animation with a focus on interesting story telling. These pursuits coupled with the rigours of life in general made for some stressful moments but I have no complaints. I came through with a host of new skills, renewed confidence and the finest grades sanity can buy.

It's almost eery constantly having several major projects running at once to suddenly be hit with complete freedom. I think I have a mild understanding of what prisoners go through when they're released after years of incarceration. I look forward to enjoying the void and doing some major relaxing this summer but so far I'm predominately keeping to the comfort of enclosed spaces and Maya tutorials.