Reflections and Rude Awakenings

So our early animations have brought up a couple of issues which was good to know now rather than a week before the deadline!

There have been a couple of issues with the little goat rig, and although the referencing system seems to be working like a charm and upating, a few major changes need to be made to the rig which has been really affecting Yannis and Cristina's early walk cycles which can only be rectified by starting from scratch and re-importing the update rig (sad times).

After a quick meeting we decided a few things.

1. It was best to push back our animating process and spend time actually testing the completed rigs and making any major changes earlier on so we don't risk having to completely redo scenes later on.

Bimpe has finished working on the Mariachi's rig so Yannis and Ritchie have been testing these out and pushing their limits to pick up on any deformations, control issues, attributes that need locking etc.

Cristina has been testing Kaitlin's goat with some glorious /creepy results.

We'll also do the same for Sushma's troll when it's completed. Kaitlin's set up a doc of things to cross-check, and the checkers can alert the lucky riggers to any problems for them to fix up quick smart.

2. We'll be dedicating 1 animator to one set of walk cycles for our characters - this way we can ensure that all the walking styles are consistent! We'll also be making sure that each walk has it's own 'personality'.

3. We're also going back to basics (kind of) Sushma has suggested that we do 2D references for our shots - for the goats in particular - this will give us a bit more direction, and really help in establishing the individual walk cycles for the goats. Natasha has started work on this as she has a lot of experience in this area - so far she has hand drawn these and will animate them in flash.

So it's all re-shaping up... Bimpe's run into a couple of issues with the blendshapes for the head cause Maya is cool like that, bu deformers will be her friend.

Today's glorious animating eye candy - courtesy of Cristina