Post-animatic - organisation, previs and a rig

My last post was about the animatic I created to demonstrate the length and timings of my "life of a student animator" idea. It ended up running nearly two minutes, which is naturally concerning when I'm doing a twenty-week project! I decided to create a shot list - something that would not only tell me how many shots I have, what is in them and how long they each are, but would also include estimations for how difficult I deem each shot to be in terms of how time-consuming the animation will be.

The shots are in order down the left (with some greyed out that I will probably not use), and there is a key at the right showing what each colour means. I have then totalled up how many of each shot difficulty there are, how many seconds they add up to, and the percentage of the whole piece they take up!

(Click image to enlarge. You can also go here for the live version, which will be updated as I go along.)

With the shots I cut out my piece is still ninety seconds, but I couldn't really refine my idea any further just by looking at the sheet. My supervisor suggested I move onto the 3D previs (previsualisation - the next stage up from a 2D animatic) to get a feel for how the shots work in 3D space. The previs involves almost no animation, having the characters just sliding around the scene purely to get a feel for the placement and timing.

In Maya I built a very blocky environment that the character could move around in the previs. While I want my finished environment to still be very simple, it will have more detail than this as it doesn't take very long and I already have the skeleton now. I will also add basic colours.

It is just a simple, yet nice, student bedroom, designed from a mix of two rooms that I have lived in as a student. I put the window where it is so that when the camera is watching the student working at her computer, we will be able to see the time of day through the window behind her.

The rig I have chosen to use for my piece is called 'Bonnie'. She was made by Josh Sobel, and you download her free for Maya here. She has detailed controls and nice textures, so that added to the fact she is free makes her perfect!

Here she is in her new, grey bedroom.

So… onto the previs! I will update again once it's done.

Caitlin :)