My Last Words About The Project

When we first started out on this project i was happy to see that we had a very hard working group and we all had different skills. It was alot of long days at school and we slowly got to know eachother better. Anders was the guy that had mad skills at drawing, Aleksander the all knowing when it comes to most stuff, David the Zbrush guy and me as, well i dont really know what i would call myself. I dont think i can compare myself to any of theese guys in my group, but i did my best whenever i could.

Im not really good at any one point when it comes to 3d's max, but i wanted to focus on modelling and thats how i became the enviroment guy, modelling mountains and cactuses. Since the models was pretty basic and simple i didnt really learn alot of new stuff when it comes to modelling, But when i started to animate with the new rig we used, it took a day or two to get used to the controlls and how everything worked, but it was pretty easy to learn. And when i learnt how it worked i could animate pretty fast, i got some hints thrown at me at times how to do things better and that helped me alot.

I will probably use puppetshop in the future when animating characters, it might seem alot of things to move around for beginners but it just makes the animation better and easier to make the movements you want. I didnt texture anything because i simply am that bad at it, i dont want to ruin anything with my texturing skills so i just kept modeling and animating.

All in All i learnt alot of new skills i can take with me to my next year, it was a fun half a year with my group. I want to thank everyone that helped us to finish our movie and hope you liked how it turned out in the end. Good luck to everyone and hope to see you in the future:)

Things that did not make it into the blog because i forgot but now it is here!

Here is another scene i finished animating.
The idea behind this one is that when the dragon gets past the window of the plane the air is pretty strong so it pushes the dragons legs and arms and he flies through the air until he manages to stop.

And here is the part where he pushes the eggs to make room for his running and jumping scene.

We had to have the egg shells of the egg he came out of so i had to add that and animate it at the last moment, but it turned out okay.

And this one is the part where he has to rescue alston from the plane that lost controll.
it was a pretty easy scene to animate and was done pretty fast, as long as everyone was happy with the animation.

And here you have the final version of the scene with the running, jumping, flying and falling scene. It was about 23 seconds all together when i first started, but i managed to speed it up remove useless parts and make it faster and better. i had to fix some parts of it so it would match the new nest and mountain but it wasnt too hard. and i added the part in the end where he bounces up a little after he hits the ground, makes it look better in my opinion.

All in all im happy how it turned out in the end.

There was alot of hard choices to make and alot of scrapping and starting from scratch when i was animating. If my group didnt like it i changed it or made it from scratch until they liked it, it was important for me to get everyone happy with the scene or i wasnt happy. There is alot of things we could have done better, like have more scenes to fill out some parts, but there was something called time that worked against us. We had to put our foot down and make sure we didnt overdo our schedule too much. Some parts we had to cut down to finish in time, but we worked hard and got most of it finished.

Last sprint to the finish

We are now at the end of our project and everyone is working very hard to finish the project.
At the rate we are going now it looks like we will make it on time, things are starting to come together and looking good.

It started with a blue screen

Today i completed a scene (for now, might need to do some changes).
Here is preview and a picture of the scene:

Here is another scene i finished, aleksander is going to make the fuel line rip and lots of stuff happens. not much trouble animating this, everyone liked my first animation on this so i finished it pretty fast.

Its a good day.

today i blocked out a new animation, this is just an overdone version of it.


And here i made the first half of the nest animation from scratch because my group wanted him to run and jump on the edge of the nest and then jump into the air and thats when the second half of the animation kicks in.

Working on my animation

Im going to finish the first half of my dragon scene before i finish the second half, im going to put up some previews of the first half soon, and hopefully it will be finished early next week.

More flying

Today i have fixed a couple of things on the animation, (like the wings).
Still not 100% finished tho, so im going to work on it a little bit more and then ill start fixing the first half of the animation. (the part with the eggs).

I still havnt combined the animations but this one is nearly finished, i ended up speeding things up in the finished version to make it look more fast paced.

New flying animation

Here is an updated flying animation, still some work to do.
(don't mind the wings, still haven't fixed them)

This is the animation we ended up using in the final, with a few finishing touches ofcourse.
When i combined the first half with this half i had alot of troubles with the rig jumping around and sliding places i didnt want it too. Aleksander helped me out with that in the end and we fixed it.

Failed Animation

Today i tried to add a little more movement to the flying and i slowed down the wings so at least they look a little better. Alot of work needs to be done here and you will probably see some small changes later.

And this one i overdid a little:)
it looks kinda wierd and its not very realistic.

Getting there..

This animation was too slow, we didnt want to make it too boring for people to watch so i had to speed it up and i still had to combine it with the first part of my animation. see next posts.

Cactuses

I made a couple of Cactuses today, here is a picture:

We needed a bit more stuff for our enviroment so i made 3 cactuses but i dont think we used any of them because i made them a bit late, but here they are anyway.

Airborne

Here is some work in progress flying:

In this part the dragon is supposed to fly out of his nest and fall on the ground. Since it is supposed to be his first time flying i thought it would be a good idea to get him to test the wings a bit before he actually takes off into the air.

More cool animation

Work in progress:

Same as last post, i scrapped this one, but here you can see the start of the other half i had.(the part where he flies out of his nest)

Update

Today i started working on the real animation, this will most likely take alot more time than what i have already done so it wont be daily updates of my work.


This one was also scrapped by me, i didnt like the way he carried it and how he got up from the fall, i could ofcourse fix it but i had a better idea so i started working on that instead.

Fixed mountain

I made one of the mountains a little better:

There wasnt much to do, but i smoothed the edges a little to make it more the same style as the others.

Before:


After:

Update

Here is a new mountain i made today:

This is the last one i will make, now its over to texturing and animation.

Mountain 8

Here is a new mountain im working on:
This one ended up ok, maybe a bit wierd looking compared to the others? but i call it finished.

Update

Here is Mountain 11 Finished:
Im very happy with this mountain too, i didnt have any major problems with making it, just some confusion with how to make the shapes right.

Dragon animation

Here is some more animation:

Dragon animation

I started animating the dragon today, about 70% complete.
This animation was scrapped because we have issues with how the eggs were supposed to be placed and so on. I had to remake this scene a couple of times before we found out what was the best one.

Dragon lair

Work for tomorrow, animate the dragon in his lair.

Here is a picture of the dragon on top of a mountain:

New Mountain

Here is what im working on today:
This one is going to be one of the bigger mountains, and im taking my time making it. not too much troubles so far.

Video Update

Here is a small video of mountain 10:

Update

Here is another mountain i made today:

Im happy with how this one turned out aswell, its simple and looks good, there wasnt much trouble making this one.

And here is a Scene with all the mountains ive got so far (exept 1):

Another mountain!

Here is my work for today:

This mountain im pretty happy with how it turned out, its a bit more detailed than the others, but its still pretty simple, some small rocks around it to make it look more attractive and voila, it looks great.

2 Nye fjell

Here is a new picture of 4 mountains ive made:

Update on what im doing

Im working on a personal plan on how to... well, work. This is how i get myself to work harder, it worked for me before so im giving it another go;) No new pictures today.

Back to work

My holiday has finally come to an end and im back to working on some more Mountains for the Enviroment. Stay tuned for more Updates.

My third Mountain

Here is another one, only 50% complete.

this one was a bit harder than the last ones, to get all the pieces to fit together i had to move some things around, not much but just a little. it ended up pretty ok, but we had to do some minor finishing touches to it later on.

Another New Mountain!

Here is my latest masterpiece!
There was supposed to be more detail in this one, but i found it more cartoony and simple with less detail, and i ended up making it like this after some trying and failing.

What am i doing now?

At the moment i am working on some more mountains for the enviroment, more pictures will come up soon.

New Mountain

This "mountain" is very basic and easy made, we didnt want to make it too complicated and we wanted a simple style and this is the first mountain that was made , everyone was happy with it and therefor i continued with this style when i made the others.

Today i made a new mountain in 3d's max, here are some pictures:

Enviroment

The Last few days ive been working on the enviroment, testing rocks and mountains in 3d's max. I have also tested a few textures for the rocks and ground, but its all just tests at the moment. Here is a picture of my fantastic work:

Work done so far

We are about finished with our story and are at the moment working on sketches of the enviroment, objects and characters.

Stay Tuned for a bigger update soon (pictures coming up later).