My Week in Review

First up, I'd like to welcome my new assistant, Jake Walter, to the Robiety project. He was one of the lone souls who knows Flash and to that I am very appreciative for his help. Jake has been helping with coloring, which I am very happy with, and he is now jumping head first into animating a couple shots. I'm anxious to see what he comes up with as I'm sure it will be awesome.

I also have my good friend Andrew Jakubowski working on some basic toon shading for the 3D cityscape which will be used for quite a few backgrounds, so I told him to make it look nice.

I've just been animating everyday doing what I can. Only a few more shots need inbetweens/cleanup/colors and then everything should be good as far as main character animation. I still have some backgrounds to paint and the implementation of sound, but I got dissss.

[Begin Rant]

So, last week was a very hellish week for me. Usually I go through my weekly routine with no bothers and have been doing so for the entire semester. I've been having issues with one of my LCD monitors since last fall where it would begin to flicker upon a cold boot.

In the beginning it would only last a few minutes, so it was bearable. Over the weeks and months it got progressively worse. The constant flickering would take an hour or more to cease and recently took 15 straight hours before it decided to stop being a shithead.

At that point I figured to leave it on 24/7, disabling sleep mode, and turn on the screensaver. That worked for a week until I cleaned my room and turned off the PC and monitors for 10 whole minutes. After that, all hell broke loose.

After 72 hours of being on, the flickering wouldn't stop and I deemed the monitor unusable as of early last week. I went back to a single monitor set up from the days of old only to have my other monitor crap out in the exact same way, only it took all of 10 seconds to kill itself. I turned it on, it flickered for a few seconds, and went dim to the point where it looked like it was off.

They're both 3 and 4 year old Samsungs and were quite expensive when they first came out, so I can't afford to go out and buy new ones. I did some research and it's a common problem after the 3 year mark, right after the warranty expires.

I cracked open both monitors to find that the capacitors on both boards have been blown out. A normal cap has a flat top whereas the bad ones have a raised top with some inner goo leaking out.

I had to desolder the bad caps to remove them and of course Radio Shack didn't have the correct capacitance I needed so I had to special order them and am waiting on those to arrive before I can hope to attempt to fix my screens. So for the time being, I've been using an 11 year old 17" HP CRT that takes up 90% of my desk and has a max resolution of 1024x768 at a refresh rate that almost doesn't kill my eyes.

tl;dr
fml

Roh-bi-eh-tee

The official Robiety logo and title card.

Edgey.

Pretty nighttime shot.



Still working on inbetweens, cleanup, and colors and hope to have that done soon because I'm tired of worrying about them. More and more shots are finding their way to completion with just a few outstanding shots. Maybe it's just me but sometimes there are shots that I just avoid like the plague until I grow a pair and tackle it. I've got a few of those scattered around that are always on my mind. Hope you guys like what I'm doing and if you don't, too bad.

Enter SIMB

This is a near-final composite of SIMB's introduction shot. I spent most of this week cleaning up and coloring this shot. It took a long time but I'm very pleased with how it came out. Down the line, I may tweak pixels but for now, I'm happy with it and moving onto finish up some other stuff.

Here's a view of the timeline and all the glorious keyframes I had to draw and manage:

And here's the pretty movie version:

New and Not So New Stuff

I haven't posted anything lately because there is nothing worthwhile to post...at least that's in a presentable state. I tend to bounce around a lot in my workflow, not spending too much time on any one thing at a given moment. That could be viewed as bad or ADD and I wouldn't argue it, but if something isn't working after a few attempts, I'll move onto another shot. If I'm doing a shot and it's coming together just fine, I'll move to another shot because I get bored.

The hardest time I have is starting something new, be it a shot or a background. If I get all of the starting points knocked out real fast, I can simply build upon the foundations little by little.

Here is a background painting of the junkyard which plays a pivotal role in the movie.

And here are a couple finalized shots that will give a good indication of how the character animation will look. The green are for keyouts in post; they're not the actual final color.

I Lost Count

Here's some stuff I've been working on the past few nights.

Oh yeah, and happy new year.

This is the city wall which surrounds the entire sector.

This is the back of an elevator.

Inside rails of the factory.

Propaganda.

Wastelands outside the city.

More to come soon!

Day 7 of New Work

Here is a background shot of the cliff in the waterfall scene.

I started painting a set of curtains for an office shot. It's too muddy and needs more contrast, but it's a start.

Day 6, The Day That Skipped 5

I did not do any work yesterday. Sad, I know. I did however finish the waterfall background tonight.

Christmas is upon us so no work will be done for 2 days. Hoping to crank out more backgrounds and finalize more designs come next week.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Day 4 Continued Work

Not much to show but I spent the entire evening on working and reworking these rocks, at one point deleting about 45 mins worth of work because I didn't like the result.

Day 3 More WIP Backgrounds

I took the weekend off to chill but got right back into production this evening.

This is the start of a closeup of the grass and water.

This is a shot of what will be an animated waterfall.

Hope to work on them both more tomorrow.

Day 2 of Work

I worked on the grassy field background a bit more, adding in more details and got it to a place where it looks pretty good. I'm happy with the result.

Another shot of the grassy field, but will be used for a closeup.

Ideally one background a day would be good, but I'm not setting any goals other than to consistently put work into the project, alleviating the workload come next year. No doubt there will be some exploratory color designs in the coming days which will slow down production, but it must be done to achieve the look I am striving for.

25 Days of Robiety

Not quite, but sort of. Over Christmas vacation, I plan on getting some major things done for Robiety. In an effort to maintain motivation and keep production going, I will be posting what I have worked on during the day and show any progress that I've made.

I have tried painting a few different backgrounds in different styles, trying to decide upon which fits the movie best. This is what I came up with for today:

It's not complete but it's a step in the right direction. I'm happy with how it's looking right now and if I don't hate it tomorrow, then it's probably a keeper.

The Big Post of Layouts

These are some of the background layouts I've been working with, used to determine position and spacing for characters. Some are good, some are bad. Most of these are preliminary and will have detail painted in when I get around to that phase of production. As for now, they work for what I need them for and I hope to show more animation tests in the coming weeks.

Robiety Stuff

I've been long past due for a progress update. This past week I've been designing and modeling the city of where the story takes place. It's not totally complete, but for most of the shots it will suffice.

Welcome to Sector51.

Still playing with render settings, so nothing is set in stone yet, but it will be toon shaded to fit with the movie.

This is the first shot in which we meet our protagonist, SIMB. We learn of his role in the factory workplace, see how he is treated amongst other robots, and much more in this single shot.

Robiety.com Coming Soon

Last week I set up robiety.com as the official site for the film. I hope to have it complete sometime early next year. I don't plan on devoting a whole lot of time to it right now as I am still developing content for the movie. The animatic is done for now; I'll go back another time and tweak some shots most likely, but my main focus at the moment is cranking out background layouts and designs. The final movie will be in 1080p HD, but for now these images are scaled down.

More to come within the next few weeks.