Character Animation: "Der Griesgram"

[Geddart]

Hey guys, this is my first Character: Der Griesgram. It's a german word for a really pissed off guy.

I'm 20 and want to study animation on a well known animation school here in germany. I hope with this character they'll take me. He's modelled and textured in 3dsmax, rendered with the Speed of light in Vray (...actually Vray was so fast that i simply turned on HDTV as render resolution) I know the animation is not perfect - i have a list here with a few points i definately want to change. (Rain, Feets in the ground and so on) but in overall i'm quite satisfied with the result so far. I really modelled two heads before and learned all this character animation stuff in 3 weeks. Animation is rendered in seperate layers. Most of the time 5 layers. (Sky rendered with Scanline, Background with loaded Imap, Griesgram with Single Frame Animation, a cloud and a rain layer with no gi.)

Here's the Animation, hope you like it:









HalfRez (~15mb)
http://www.lichtecht.de/vray_forum/GriesgramHalfRez.avi

save target as... rename .zip to .avi!
You need xvid codec to play

Have fun!

regards

[Spinoza]

looks great!

[Long John]

this tree looks nice. your work too?

[Geddart]

Thanks! The Tree is done with OnyxTree. It has around 1mio Polies and is enhanced with Vray Displacement.

[jdp]

Maybe it's only me... but your archive seems to be not valid, i've tried download it a couple of time and i always have an error (winzip/winace/winrar).

BTW, i love yours works, I really like the atmosphere in the screenshots you post. I'm just too courious for waiting a rigt file to dwnld. I will be there every five minutes to see the animation... :P

P.S.: what does it means "Griesgram"?

[Geddart]

Hey jdp, cool you like the Shots.
here you go again:

save target as... rename .zip to .avi!
Sorry for the complication but my server will go down further when the avi is streamed.

Griesgram is a german word for someone who is really really pissed off all the time. Someone who sees things just grey. (Actually i planned a greyscale Shot from the Griesgram's view.) An always negative person. Don't know if there's an english word for it. Ok, have Fun

[RErender]

School? you could get a job with that one! Nice work

[Geddart]

Thanks RErender! Job? I already have a job working as a freelancer for lichtecht.
Unfortunately they don't do character animation yet so i had to use my freetime for this project...

here are some WIP Shots...
WIP Montage

...and animation clips:
early Morphtest
Regentanz (Raindance)

Second one is a motion capture File called Bees... maybe you recognize it. Found it kinda funny without the arms. I linked the Cloud with a Spring controller and a rotation constrain to the Head. Linked to the cloud is a PFlow particle System that creates Raindrops that bounce of the Griesgram's Head. ("Why does it always rain on me... ")
Thís way i just had to load a mocap file - and the cloud is doing all the animation for itself. Unfortunately for the later animation i had to unlink the whole thing to animate the cloud by hand (more control) Another weak point is the rain - this pflow line rain looks great in the Viewport but when you render it with a Blobmesh for example it looks crap. Hope i find another solution for better looking rain soon.

Last but not least the original Sketch i created the Griesgram from:


regards

[Joe]

really great spot - cool story nice visuals -

it's great how you tell a story in such a short time -
i think everyone get's the point - and that's very good.

the only thing that's strange are the raindrops -
i would do them a little more natural - smaller and more blur -
not that blobby thing ......

but a great little short imho

go on ....

[TRGraphics]

Wonderful!! Great story in such a short time.

I agree about the rain, but everything else is beautiful. Congratulations!!

Tony

[mc-escher]

Cool!

That makes me think of a Magritte Cloud =)

[tammo]

count me in for the fan club!
great work

[cocolas]

nice work, Geddart.

I really like it......

out of coriousity....what did you use for AA settings??.....


paul.

[gafl]

Very nice images...

The light is very soft , I like it.
Good model too.

Can't watch the film, it's too heavy for my 56ko, I 'll load it later.

I hope you'll get succes with your animation.
Good luck !

Gaël

[tom schuelke]

He Sascha

I am of your opinion too. !

Toooo Bad that we don´t allready do those Charachter things here at lichtecht.de But !!! The chance to make it in the future still is growing. At last we are allready two and a half Guy´s who would love to do it (Ulli also), While i would like you to stay at lichtecht, i can´t await how good you will be after four years of learning. (hope after this you still would like to come back ).

By the way! I´ve found out now how to moddel highend detailled charachters with zbrush and it also works with vray displacement now. Wow ! what a nice combination !. We should post some screenshots..

Until then

tom