Scene 02

Here is my WIP from scene 02, I spoke with my client and he wanted the MagnoJack to be seen inside of a container at some point during the commercial.

Therefore, I the scene is set inside of a container. I look a little boring at the moment but keep in mind that there will be a voice over playing in the background.

when I worked on this scene I realized that there were some issues with the wheels at the back of the model.

The pivot point was set wrong so that the y rotation did not work.
Because of this, I had to go back and do the wheels over again in the reference file.

When I tried to change the pivot point on the ctrl_curve, the geometry followed. Because of this, I ended up just deleting the nurb curve and making a new one. On the new curve I sat the pivot point to its proper place, then I parent constrained the frame holding the wheel to the curve and parented the wheel grp to the frame.

Now I am able to rotate the wheel as I wish without it looking weird.

I discovered this problem after me and a couple of my co-student were shooting reference footage for another project. We used a stretcher that had the same type of wheels. I filmed it to have some reference available

Scene 01

After all the changes that have been made to the commercial I had to make new animations.

There is going to be two different scenes where the MagnoJack is demonstrated whilst working.

This is where I am at with scene one at the moment.

The rig is working, but I might go back and do some minor changes to is. When animating I am referencing in the rig to the work scene.  

Something new

After all the feedback and all the thinking, I did some major changes to the commercial. I have split it up into six different scenes and sent it over to the soundtrack people so they know the timing of what they are working with.

It looks horrible as it is a combination of playblasts and test transitions in After Effects, but it does the job at this stage.

The timing of the words will change a little as I am timing it to the new voice over. It is easier for me to time the appearance of the words to the voice over than it is for the speaker to time the words to the visuals.

New intro

I have been working on a new intro for the commercial!

I got a tip from one of my teachers to check out kinetic typography, I did and I really liked it. I think it works well with the context of my commercial when I get the impression that the words are stacking themselves on top of each other. 

I haven't decided if this is the exact colors that are going to be used. This is something that I probably will work more on when I start to compose the commercial in AE. The color change is a quick fix when I have decided on what to use.

(The voice over is temporarily just to see how I can time the appearance of the words to it)

GoSoundtrack

I have contacted GoSoundtrack to see if they would be able to help me with the voice over and background music.

We are currently working together to polish the manuscript and setting the mood of the music and voice over.

This is the latest version of the manuscript that I sent them

Texturing MagnoJack

Lately I have been working with the textures on the MagnoJack model. I have little experience with mental ray materials, but I have recently been introduced to the MIA materials and I really like them.

On the models "body" I have used the MIA preset "chrome" and changed its color. I had to do a lot of tweaking to the material, and after that, I think it is safe to say that it is custom made.

On the magnets, I drew my own texture and bump map in PhotoShop. I have also made the alpha map on the grid in Photoshop. The sticker on the back of the model is the actual template that is printed on the real product, that I asked my client to email to me.

After some render testing and more tweaking, I decided to include a bump map. I made that one in Photoshop as well, just by using a scatter filter.

 

 

Rig

I have finished the rig on the MagnoJack now. It is a very simple rig, but it does the job I need it to do in the animations that I am making.

It is made using a combination of parent constraints, orient constraints, BlendShapes and a simple code in the expression editor that rotates the wheels when the rig moves forward and backwards.