Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

A couple of weeks ago I was introduced to this very quirky film (with a mouthful of a title!). It was produced by Sony Pictures Animation -- a company perhaps not well-known in name, but they have made films such as Open Season, Surf's Up and The Smurfs, as well as producing alongside Aardman on Arthur Christmas and The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!.

This movie is a real treat, and a surprise. It's very polished in its production, with carefully thought out characters and colours, and more particle/fluid effects than I think I've ever seen (a lot of food rains down from the sky and flows across the ground, etc.)!

The animation is excellent, with such comedic exaggeration you'd think they couldn't get away with it, but somehow they do and it works brilliantly in the film's favour.

It was the superb humour that stood out most to me. The timing was perfect for those moments of shock-humour, and they utilised the background of the frames more than I've seen in any film -- you could always trust that something funny would be happening behind the main focus, even as far as to distract you from the lines of speech being delivered. It made me feel a little sorry for the animators having to do so much work!

I don't have a whole lot more to say except that it is genius. More and more animated films are finding this perfect balance that allows both adults and children to appreciate them -- and I can't resist some slapstick sometimes! This humble-in-reputation company pleasantly surprised me, and I look forward to the sequel in a year's time.

Caitlin :)

Walk cycles!

Walk cycle #1 - with tutorial
After posing we moved onto walk cycles in Maya using MooM (the nice, friendly rig). We were to follow Penny's tutorial to a T to create our first walk cycle!

He obviously has something odd going on... I couldn't work out what was causing it, so I decided to leave it and see what happened when I started afresh on my second walk cycle. Still, I think it's pretty good -- despite the wiggle it's consistent and steady, and he has some purpose.


Walk cycle #2 - without tutorial (dun dun dun)
Next I opened Maya and worked on a walk cycle without referring to any tutorials. I did it in about half the time, and it turned out twice as good since I could focus on the animation rather than the order of doing things.

So MooM is not wiggly any more! I'm really proud of this. He looks almost normal. ;) And if that much improvement can be made from one cycle to the next, I am excited to see how much more my work continues to improve. A personality walk will be coming next (along with the other work finished off)!

Caitlin :)

Some posing works in progress

The first pose I did was the laid-back 'I'll take you all on!' pose. I used MooM first for ease, and then moved onto Dee for some more realism (I think MooM looks more aggressive than Dee, though!).

I then tried the more forward version of the pose and found it had much more impact and told the story a lot more clearly. You tell them, Dee! Penny brought up the point that the above pose could be read very differently given a different facial expression. But the below definitely couldn't mistaken for a gesture of love!

I then moved onto 'troubled by result', which I like a lot. The vacant expression really finishes it off too, I think. Dee still looks a little too upright, but I was having trouble bending his body without either his hand going through the box or his arm having to be greatly diagonal...

'What's under there?' will happen at some point when I'm not swamped with my other, more immediate module deadlines. :( I miss you, 3D...

Caitlin :)

Ball playblast

This is my animation as of today. I've mostly blocked in the movement -- though the ending especially needs some tweaking -- and I've started on the rotation of the large ball. I'm pleased with it so far as the contrast between the two balls looks really clear one after the other.

I still want to work on making the fall of the large ball look more laboured and like it's hitting the ground really hard, as it seems to sort of float down at the moment. The roll off the edge is a bit rushed, too. I still have yet to add squash and stretch, of course, which should make the small ball look extra springy and make the contrast even more obvious. The large ball will probably have next to none, though, so it looks more solid, like a bowling ball. I'll see how it looks.

Caitlin :)