Reference Footage

Some reference footage taken of my dog, Finlay, while on a walk. Shows a walk and run cycle as well as a sitting down and excited jumping motion. Though Finlay is 10 years old, the basic principles of his movement will still apply to Jake the puppy, but will be slightly different due to difference in age. I have looked at many reference videos for puppys specifically on youtube and other online video archives in order to combat this.
Basically i'm gathering as much evidence as possible in order to strengthen my quadruped animation, as it is not something i have spent a deal of time looking at until now.

William Model

3D model of William has been modelled, uv mapped and an accompanying rig has been fully created. There is a temporary texture. Blendshapes will be made before the rig is bound to the mesh.
A lot of work had to be done to ensure that the topology is suitable for animation, as well as the skeletal rig. Although they are far from perfect, i am hoping that they are to the best of my limited knowledge and will allow me to display a satisfactory animation with them.
I'm going to try and stress that the focus of my project is animation and not this part of the pre production, while still displaying my ability to perform tasks such as modelling and rigging.

Extra sequence



William smiles briefly.

He sits down in his chair, with his newspaper.



He reads it.



He peers over the top of the paper.



Puppy is happy to see him,
begins wagging his tail.



William quickly replaces the newspaper over his face.



He gives in.



Motions to the puppy.



                       



Puppy jumps up too quickly, startles him.



                       

He gently puts the puppy on the floor.

He goes back to reading the paper.

                       

Sure enough, in the morning, the puppy is sleeping peacefully on his knee.

Storyboarding

Revising storyboards, thinking about how to gradually allow William's character to change and showing the arc, while thinking about how to minimise workload when it comes to animating the now-quite-long animation.
Created a short sequence to slot into the story that shows a little more of william's character and shows his gradual acceptance of another's company.

William sits down on his couch and reads his newspaper.
He peers over it, curiously.
The puppy is there, and gets excited to see him.
He quickly recovers his face with the paper, indignant.
Expression eventually changes, he sighs and folds the paper.
He motions to the puppy, who gets too excited and leaps upon him.
He is shocked and slightly hurt and so quickly pushes the puppy off him, reopening the paper.
Fade out, fade in to the puppy asleep on his lap.

Thinking about the opening sequence, a sequence in the film "Requiem for a Dream" springs to mind as being helpful to think about.

The montage that hints about their drug use without actually showing it directly is helpful to think about how to minimise animation workload while still communicating the story effectively.

Excited Puppy animation

Slightly too fast.

Pitch 02/12

Feedback from my February pitch -

Animatic?
Animations?
Human model really needs done
Puppy tests - test rig - movement to make it cute - practice
how to train your dragon - human/cat relationship
Update gantt chart
Dog video - Finlay
Puppies movement, clumsy
Youtube videos

(Revise storyboards to accommodate better use of staging to minimise workload. Think about reusing animations.)
(Add in new bit of story to boards.)


\o/

Excited Puppy

Nico, a rig downloaded from creativecrash.com, is a model far more closely resembling a dragonic creature than a dog. Using a little imagination i have used this rig to practise animation for Jake the puppy. Below is a simple animation of him getting excited, as puppies often do, before realising that it's not so exciting after all. I plan to do more test animations with Nico, it is a brilliant rig and a lot of fun to experiment with.

Puppy videos

Power Centres 2

Media Tests.
Looking at Power centres and trying to re create scenes from my animation using downloaded rigs, to try and show the power centres and emotions of the characters at the time.

William, shocked to find a dog in his house.

Playful puppy.

Agitated, checking his watch. It's too late to still be awake.

Curiously checking the hallway, no one is at the door.

Coming home from work, tired.