Update 45: Flow

Hello all!

As I think on projects. I’m always considering what might ‘have worked’ about the previous piece, as I reflected on DVA’s time in high yield,  A lot of people seemed to like seeing the process of people being inserted into the machines. The process of ‘capturing’ as it were.

I’ll admit it’s something I stopped doing a lot. Since the box really. It seemed to me that that was an important element to a successful animation : get into the action fast. 

First items on the agena this month was getting all the new kit rigged.

Very happy with how this machine came out

And as an artist who’s livelihood relies on the success of your product. You put a lot of thought into the individual elements that might make an animation a success, was it the character I used? Was it the fact that the action started quickly? Was it just that I continue to gain experience and thus it was technically better? Was it that I figured out jiggle physics?

Well. I’m still not sure, but that ‘seeing the process’ is something I’m using this current project to experiment on, stepping it up a notch showing someone literally walking into the machines clutches.

You don't wanna know how many takes it took to get the mocap right here

There’s a reason you don’t see it a lot though. It’s challenging work. It’s the good kind of challenging. The ‘I’m glad I did that’ kind of challenging, but no less daunting. Walk cycles are one of those deceptively time consuming things to do right. 

It’s made it to be quite a big animation, so I will see if it’s viable to split it in half (like I said I would do with things that are longer than 10 minutes) but it might not be -that- much extra time to just finish it off, so I’ll see how it feels as the month progresses, projects are strange like that, once you get into your flow, some days feel really productive, and some it doesn’t feel like you get much done.

I have learned to trust my instincts though and know when I'm onto something that feels good, and I'm very pleased with how this is shaping up.

This is the MOST WIP shot I've released so, trust me when I say there's quite a bit to do before this is considered complete

Most of that extra runtime is all the warmup and setup that’s in this scene, which has been really fun to plan out and see evolve as I continue to animate, it feels like this is something akin to some of my earlier work, but with loads more detail and experience helping me realise the vision closer to how I intended it, it’s very exciting for me, and I’m hoping you will all agree when it’s ready!

Once again, a big thank you to for all of your support and patience, more news as it comes.

Ciao for now.