Week: 4 – 10 October

After a long summer break, the term 4 begun this week. The university and classes have been opened, so some of my classmates and I went to the class physically instead of online like the previous term. This is also the first time I met with my classmates face to face.

There are 2 classes in the term 4, which are FMP and Thesis Development with new professors; Alan Postings and Nigel Mairs. During the first class with Alan, we were having some discussions regarding the FMP and then each of us shared the progresses of our project so far.

I showed the six-legged ‘crab’ character that I modelled several weeks ago to Alan. I also told him that I still don’t have a concrete idea for the story. Initially, I planned to make a short animation with 2 or 3 different six-legged characters doing something together or having a conversation while walking and running to demonstrate the animation studies of six-legged creatures that I’m currently doing in my thesis. The short would be some kind of comedy sketch with a cartoony animation style.

Alan gave a suggestion for me to make an animation about the characters being interviewed by a TV reporter, similar to the concept of the famous stop-motion animation by Nick Park from Aardman. I used to watched this animation since I was still in school, so I really like the idea! I probably can make the characters being interviewed while they working out in a gym with some of the characters doing the jumping exercise, walking and running. I will think about this and finalise the story as soon as possible.

On Friday, we have the first class with Nigel. Everyone gave a brief introduction of our topic for the thesis and projects to him. During my turn, Nigel told me that I have a lot to research as my topic probably don’t have many resources. He also shared that he once animated a multi-legged creature (crab) and mentioned that it was tricky.

Week: 1 July – 3 October

During the summer break, I accompanied myself with 3 major works; FMP & thesis related, working with my friend from Malaysia to update our PC and mobile game, and continue involving with the Indie Film project that I blogged in the previous entries.

Indie Film Project

When the term 3 came to an end, the Indie Film project was still in the post-production phase. I’ve completed all my tasks for this project (camera tracking and animation) and not involve in the post (lighting and compositing), but Luke messaged me if I could continue helping with the project to take over the lighting tasks from Mariana as she is very sick. I quickly agreed to help since I can learn new things especially to improve my lighting skills, which could be useful for my final major project, plus the lighting and compositing part was led by the external tutor, KK Yeung from MPC.

Long story short, the works took about a month to finish which involved several lighting retakes, car model reference replacements, rendering problem on the farm and compositing. I’m not doing the lighting from scratch but by using and modifying the templates created by KK, and re-setup the layers and render passes for the animation files. I learned several new things especially in the technical aspects when using Maya for extensive model reference with different object categories, lighting, materials, layers and passes. I also learned and understand more on how to use Nuke to composite all the layers even though I’m not doing the final compositing from scratch.

During the final week of the works, Giulia, Diana (from VFX course), Luke and I pushing to complete the rendering as quickly as possible after Luke mentioned that all the computers that we currently working on at the university will be wiped out as a preparation for the upcoming term and student intakes.

FMP & Thesis

I don’t have much progress for my FMP and thesis during the break since I was very busy with the Indie Film and the game project.

But from time to time, I still continue collecting materials for my thesis paper and has found quite a handful of previous researches that can be related to my topic. One thing that I found interesting was that there is a very limited number of research for six-legged animation that come from the animation industry itself, but I found many references from multiple robotic researches that studied the anatomy and movement patterns of six-legged creatures such as insects to be applied to the robots.

Regarding the FMP, I managed to finish the initial model for one of the characters for my short animation which is a crab-like character. I made a simple sketch of the character as a guide before I begin the modelling in Blender. The crab character were based on the design of Chet and Waternoose from Monster University and Monster Inc.

The modelling process was almost similar to ‘The BatteriX’ characters I did during the Term 3. Most of the body parts were built from a modified sphere objects. Several modifiers like Mirror and Solidify were used to assist the modelling process, and Subdivision Surface were added to smoothen the low-poly version of the character which set to only visible in render. I didn’t texture and rig the character yet as I want to have all the character models finished first. Below are some of the modeling progress that I captured.

The model is not finished yet especially for the antennae and mouth area.

After I sent the proposal of my thesis and final major project (FMP) on the 14th June (https://kamil.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/06/14/thesis-fmp-proposal/), Luke messaged me for his feedback on my topic.

My original topic for the thesis was ‘A Study of 6-Legged Creatures Animation‘, and Luke suggested me to change the topic to be a bit less specific which is to study the animation & movement of non-quadrupedal creature. I agreed with Luke’s suggestion.

As an early preparation before I go further into the topic, I made a quick list of things that I thought I need to find and prepare.

Thesis:

Video references to study the movement:
a) Record real-life creature; ant, crab, spider (if I can)
b) Slow motion video from online
c) Creature from existing movie and animation

Writing:
a) Draft points
b) Note down finding from videos & references

FMP:

Design:
Creature characters with different legs design and movement mechanism. Probably 3 characters for the short animation:
a) 6 legged creature with ant or crab style legs
b) 6 legged creature with horse style legs
c) Squid or octopus style character

– I need to make design sketches for the characters
– 3D modeling for the 3 characters
– Rigging
– Storyboard
– Record background plates