daniel-lim.co.uk

Well, it’s done. Ok, so perhaps it’s not done as in there’s a tiny bit of animation missing, but I’m not going to work on it any more. It’s been a fun project but I’m disappointed that lots of stuff got in the way of me starting animation and as such it’s perhaps not as polished as I would like. I was actually pleased at how well it came out on the big screen at MPC - much better than on a small monitor or TV in fact, so that was good. I’d just like to reiterate my many thanks for everyone that has helped me to complete this project, be it in the form of actual assets (such as sound design) or just giving me suggestions and advice.

• My tutor, Phill Allen
• My housemates
• Vangelis Papageorgiou (Music)
• Efthimis Tikellis (Sound Design)
• Scott-Harrison Sargeant (Screenwriter)
• My family
• Anyone on any forum that may have given their input on my project

Thank you all.

Screenshots (video link at the bottom of the page):

And now without further ado, I give you Nightshift.

I’ve finished my Masterclass project. We had to do the concept drawings (front and back) ages ago, but then circumstances beyond our control put the deadline after the exams. 8 days after the exams to be precise. Naturally, having not had the foresight (or time) to make a start, there was a fairly tight timeline to work on it! As if I was going to change my working practices for the final deadline of my degree!

The design of the character isn’t that original (I was playing a lot of Prince of Persia at the time) but my ulterior motive was to have a fairly athletic character that I could eventually rig and skin for some game-style animations I want to do. Essentially the character has been latched onto by some parasite that’s trying to take over his body (think Venom from the Marvel comics) and since it needs him alive to survive itself, it helps to defend our hero. I’m toying with the idea that it can do Carnage-esque transformation into various weapons (swords, axes, whips etc.), but I’ve no idea how I’d model and rig that suitable for a game engine! Perhaps in the future!

Here’s the default pose renders (click to expand):

Here are the various texture maps (click to expand):

And finally some dynamic pose shots for you troubles (click to expand):

I may do some more work on it in the future, tidy a few things up and what not, maybe skin it properly, but the hand-in is over and I think I can safely that it’s the 3rd year project that I’m most proud of (i.e. I actually liked how it turned out :P). It was a really fun project (even if I was a little rushed) and I learnt loads of new stuff about Photoshop and have done some proper texturing for the first time in 3 years! Goodness!

Well, the Innovations project hand-in was on Friday and I’ve finally got round to releasing the product of said project. Please give a big, warm welcome to dlScript! dlScript is a MEL tool designed to generated animated textures using light-baking. Originally it was going to be used for generating animated wet maps, but I soon realised it had applications in a variety of tasks! The script assumes you already have animated occlusion objects that are intersecting the surface that you wish to generate a texture for. For more information and to download dlSCript v1.0, please check out dlScript on the Tools page.

The first part (of two) from my Specialist Project in the second year (BACVA2). The brief for this project is quite broad and you can pick more or less any topic you wish. As a result of the character animation work I did in the Group Project (link to come later), I wanted to push my animation skills further and see what I was capable of. I was also adamant that I wanted to try lip syncing: yes, this is my first foray into full facial animation with dialogue.

I actually found this to be the fastest part of the production: I drew up dope sheets (images to come later) for both sound clips and whacked out the lip movements in a day or two, after completing the body movements (which took considerably longer). This animation (being the second one done in terms of starting, the first in terms of completion) took my a lot less time than the Metal one - this is probably due to the fact that the character is sat down in this clip which significantly reduces the amount of animation required, not to mention the soundclip was much easier to work with.

In this soundbyte from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, we have Emperor Palpatine (played by Ian McDiarmid) informing hero Luke Skywalker that the Rebels are inevitably doomed so he might as well just give up now and join the Dark Side. The great thing about this clip/character is that the Emperor really enunciates every single word. This means you have great fun really over-doing the mouth movements and it all still fits perfectly.

Emperor Palpatine
“I’m looking forward to completing your training… In time, you will call me Master…”

The rig used for this project is the famous free-for-use Generi Rig by Australian animator Andrew Silke, creator of Cane Toad. I chose this rig as opposed to modelling and rigging a character myself because I wanted the project to be solely about animation. This is an excellent rig, with fantastic controls and only a very few niggling limitations. It’s a popular choice for animators submitting work to the 10 Second Club.

The second half of my Specialist Project in character animation from the second year (BACVA2). This soundclip is from the animated feature, The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird. The clip sees (or should that be hears?) scrapyard owner and part-time Beatnik Dean McCoppin (voiced by Harry Connick Jr.) trying to explain to the Iron Giant (whose diet consists of metal, metal and yet more metal) that he can’t just go eating anything he likes!

Dean McCoppin
“There are two kinds of metal in this yard. Scrap and art. If ya gotta eat one of them, eat the scrap. What you currently have… IN YOUR MOUTH… IS ART!”

This animation was a lot more stressful than the Master piece. I actually started this production on this animation first, got incredibly stressed out by it, started Master and came back to it after Master had been completed. This is probably due to a lack of planning on my part and constantly rethinking what it was I wanted my character to do (not that rethinking ideas are bad - it’s just when you rethink but don’t replan what’s going to happen!).

If you would like to read more about the project, please go here.

The rig used for this project is the famous free-for-use Generi Rig by Australian animator Andrew Silke, creator of Cane Toad. I chose this rig as opposed to modelling and rigging a character myself because I wanted the project to be solely about animation. This is an excellent rig, with fantastic controls and only a very few niggling limitations. It’s a popular choice for animators submitting work to the 10 Second Club.

Goddamnit! Why am I still awake?