Nelly Luckett : BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

Egg Cups http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/maya-egg-cups-tutorial.html Ray Gun http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/ray-gun-block-model-maya-tutorial-2.html Scooter http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/scooter-model.html Digital Alley http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/digital-sets-alley-part-1.html http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/alley-digital-set-finished.html Common Shaders http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/common-shaders-maya-tutorial.html Basic animation (car, rocket, chain etc.) http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/maya-lectures-basic-animation.html Felix Jnr walk cycle http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/3d-animation-walk-cycle.html Pose to pose animation - Pirouette http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/3d-pirouette-animation.html Squash and Stretch http://eleanorl-caa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/toadstool-squash-and-stretch-animation.html Anticipation and Follow Through http://eleanorl-c...

Animation was one of the sections of this first year that I found arguably the most difficult. I feel like I have improved a lot as the year went on, however it has really highlighted for me some areas that I need to work on over the summer. These include doing more drawing from life in a quick paced environment (eg. on public transport etc) to get my drawing of people and capturing of positions quicker and ultimately more sucsessful. I think this unit also taught me that I need to get better at organising myself when doing a planned out animation so that I do not have to go back and alter it as much as I had to in some of these shorts. However, I believe overall my animations communicate well when viewed by an audience and are ultimately sucsessful. I also discovered that I definitely find animating with cut outs and Maya much easier than hand drawn animation.

Life Drawing by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd I have really enjoyed life drawing this year and it is something that I ultimately believe has helped me to develop and widen my work and abilities as an artist. I have learnt to not look at the human body as a whole, but rather areas of light, shade and shapes, and that this breaking down can aid our understanding of how the body works. I intent to continue taking life classes over the summer in the hope that this will continue to improve my drawings of characters and aid my animation.

So fantastic voyage is over and it brings us to the end of a rather packed year. This project was by far the most intense that we’ve had, and presented me with the most challenges but equally resolved to be the most rewarding. My film is not perfect, neither are my characters or modelling, however I can safely say they have come a long way in the short few weeks and I have learnt a lot. Despite a large a amount of technical issues along the way, I have still managed to produce what I believe to be an overall successful film with a charming and informative style. There are a few things I would like to go back into and fix. These include animation glitches, which although small, annoy me hugely; solving the unknown skinning problems with Charles’ hand which causes random spikes to appear on it; as well as cleaning and sharpening up some of my matte paintings. These are all thing which would improve the overall aesthetic and style of the piece, but I simply ran out of time to do them....

While I'm putting the finishing touches to my animation and getting everything exported and packaged up, I thought I'd release a little Sneak Peek of the final thing, so here you go!

This is one of the sections of animation that I managed to get rendered out properly. This caused me to notice a few things that need to be fixed: Clarissa is way too dark, so she needs lightening in the hypershade, or the gamma needs correcting (I'll fiddle with this and see) The background looks fuzzy - this is a photograph rather than a scan of the background so will be rectified when I scan them today Her globe "brain" still isnt glowing like its meant to. I'm gonna have to find a different way of doing this, probably through compositing. 

This is the final soundscape for Clarissa and the Cardiac controllers. I am rather happy with this, but would like to stick some more detail in it when I have more time, however this works well at the moment.

This is not the final background, I am waiting to scan those in on Tuesday at uni, however I wanted to test the transparencies animations and start getting the files set up. This test told me two things: I need more than one directional light, otherwise I get the strong shadow that's seen behind the hand The glow on the "brain" sphere isn't working. I need to find a new way to do this.  So I need to do these changes before moving onto the final renders.

After having lots of problems with skinning and rigging (a lot of which were due to inexperience, much practice needed over the summer methinks), I finally have a working rig for Clarissa, to decided to animate with her to eliminate any bugs with the final skinning. Anyway, here is the test animation.

I found some unposted half finished concept art, so decided to finish it while Maya was doing other things, so here you go. There's others I'm yet to finish too, so they'll get posted in the next couple of days.