Right, off the bat the idea for the '10 second animation' is as follows. From an almost POV/Birdseye camera, the viewers see a pair of turntables (vinyls spinning have the requested logo in the centre, almost like the white label) and all you see are the hands of a cartoon/stylized chimpanzee mixing, scratching and cutting the equipment. There's bananas and such sprawled over the equipment. Despite being a monkey, he'll carry out the mix perfectly. I intend to match what goes on with the music (I have chosen DRONEBEATS7 as my music option) and the effects in it, in time with the monkeys actions. Having been mixing for 11 years - It seemed like a good route to go with.
Above is a basic influence map of the ideas others have come up with which inspired my chosen idea and the kind of style I have decided to take my animation into.
This is a very basic 'story board' of what the animation will show. Its basically just a scribble of my initial idea which I ran with.
And here is a little concept knocked up on Photoshop.
Considering that the hands were going to be the only part of the monkey that you actually see, I decided to sketch up a few hand studies. Nothing too spectacular, just the kind of things that the monkey will probably be doing.
After the initial ideas were jotted down - it was time for modelling.
I decided to get the props out of the way first, as the monkeys modelling and rgging etc. would take the longest.
Here we have a very basic banana prop. Again nothing too exciting, but adds to the surreal kind of flavour I'm aiming for.
The above images are of the monkey arms we will be seeing in the animation (untextured obviously at this stage)
Here we have the rest of the props, including the headphones, mixing desk, vinyls and turntables.
After modelling I decided to get the larger task of rigging the arms and hands. I used the simplest method I knew how which was taught to us during the cartoon character tutorials. The rig is a simple IK rig however my main concern was detailing the weights precisely, as the hands would be seen at a fairly close range.
Here we can see the rig animation test. I'm fairly happy with how the rig came out and the deformations work for the purposes I need them to.
Initially, the shading and texturing side of things was going to look how it did above, but after some test renders I decided that the colours were too overpowering and decided to change them.
As you can see above, the colours I chose in the end are a lot softer yet still vibrant and don't take away too much form the animation.
To counter balance the soft, pastel, brushed metal feel of the environment, the monkeys (Jo Bananas) arms are coloured somewhat generically, as so they don't merge with the rest of the scene.
After this, I had to animate the scene. I used a basic key frame animation technique. The vinyls spun by just rotating them, the LED's flashed by using a clone material with a glow on it, and keying the visibility on and off to create the effect, and the hands were animated using in betweens and key frames. Pretty basic stuff. As is, I'm not 100% happy with the actual animation aspect of this piece, however, I do intend on rectifying some of the issues I have, during the next week or so, so that the animation is contest ready.
Here are a few screen grabs of the animation during different stages
After this, I needed to light and render then Animation. I used a dircetional light set up, facing the camera, and a few extra lights, point light and spotlight, to expose a few areas in greater detail. Below is the final animation and a render of a frame.
So there you have it. Despite not being able to blog, for specific reasons, you can see that the work still managed to get completed on time. I apologize for my absence on the blog, and look to fill it up during the summer with all the new skills I plan on acquiring. Like I said before, the animation is at 100% competition standard yet, so I will continue to work on it before I submit it.
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