Golden Poses Done

Technically there is only just one golden/storytelling pose. The animation and acting is incredibly subtle in this piece and Sam doesn't actually move into any other pose. I have established about 6 major poses that he goes through in his delivery of the line and those will be considered my kind-of golden poses for this instance.

I will move on to cover all the extreme poses in the next few days and should be able to move on to splining sooner than expected due to the subtlety of the piece.

I haven't timed the poses just yet but will do tomorrow, so expect a playblast soon.

More quick renders

Worked more on lighting. And filled in the background with more gun props. I intend to light the background separately but I will come back to it another time. Now it's time to crack on with the animation blocking!

Scene setup and quick render

Been spending today posing my character in his main pose and setting the scene up with models. Not quite done yet, but here's a quick  render:

Work Schedule

Here is a work schedule that I will do my best to adhere to:

Scene setup by 16th April
Full blocking by 20th April
Full body spline by 23rd April
Full facial animation by 1st May
Polish by 3rd May
Render by 4th May <- hand-in date!

Character Design

Here is the character design for Sam. It's not final yet and more modifications might be made later on. It is using the Morpheus Rig by Josh Burton. I wanted Sam to look old and slightly overweight. He hasn't had to keep fit ever since his time in the army and has since put on some pounds. I also gave him a slight tan to show that he has been out in the sun often, and gets around.

I haven't really bothered with his lower half of the body because I have decided that he will be behind the counter for my scene and we will only see his upper body.

Establishing the Character

I have decided to make my character (Sam) a 50 year old army veteran. He has served his time in the army and has since retired and now owns a gun shop. His time in the army has made him very tough and bitter in some sense.

The situation is based in his gun shop. He is approached by the authority (off screen) and he isn't intimidated by their shiny badges. What the authority want him for is all up for discussion and interpretation by the audience.

Initially I had wanted to have him in a restaurant eating his breakfast as he gets approached by the authority. Then upon further listening to the audio clip, I felt it would make more sense if he felt secure and safe in his own premises as he delivers the dialogue. I made a note on how he says, "...come down here..." and figured it would make more of an impact if I show that he owns the gun shop and feels safer in his property (authorities are more limited to what they can do).

Analysing Voice Clip

Below is the sound clip in written form:

I eat breakfast three hundred yards from four thousand Cubans who were trained to kill me so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash your badge... and make me nervous.

After listening to the audio clip numerous times, I have broken it down into identifiable accents. The underlined text above shows where I believe the accents are located - this is simply a change in the tone and way of speaking that will often benefit from body animation changes.

I actually quite like that the character has no large accents in the first few seconds of his speech because it gives good contrast to when the accents come in a bit later. To be fair, most of these accents are very subtle anyway so this will be quite a challenge to get right.