Monday Catch up.

This week I have been working of several shots..

It took about half a day to assemble all the characters into the maya scene file, all grouped separately and on their own layers, I think its worth spending at least an hour or so making sure the scene is set up how you want it, as it makes animating and organising animations a lot easier.

As the first two shots are sequential, (breaking chains and throwing table) I was playing with the idea of them becoming one shot, So as the prisoner breaks his chains, whilst pointing to the sheriff with his left hand, he swoops his right hand down and throws the table. This worked quite well, but matt was keen on having the two different camera angles to allow the table to end the cut. As it would be better to not have the middle animation between him breaking his chains and approaching the table, I recommended matt to add a quick shot of the Marshall looking surprised which would allow me to move the characters dramatically from one pose to the other.


Throw table shot -




Today I have been working on the first fight scene. So as the train falls vertically the prisoners and the marshals fall into each other and start to scrap. I thought that as the last prisoner has so far been sat down, being too dumb to realise what is going on, he would still be sat down, enjoying himself. This allowed one to one combat between the other four, with the sheriff ducking and diving out the way.

Playblast from moving Graph editor from stepped to linear tangents: so still work in progress -






The shot in the animatic and storyboard was from the other side, behind the prisoners looking towards the el bandito, the marshals and the sheriff. But as I started to animate the scene I found that all of the action was only viewable from the other side. I think it adds more weight to the prisoners from this side, and adds a sense of danger for the marshals perspective.

This week I need to finalise the previous shots, finish this shot, and move onto the next fight scenes which shouldn't be too hard because they are near enough just still posing. I am currently on schedule with the shots, but want to make sure I have extra time at the end to sort out all the dynamics for everyone's shots and make sure everything is working in order.