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.

MagnoJack Model

I have finally finished the MagnoJack model now. It took longer than I anticipated to make it, there was a lot of detail that I hadn't included wich I found out after receiving more pictures of the model.

My client has approved it and it is ready to be textured and rigged in the next couple of days.

Some of the smaller parts are not included in the model, as they are not elementary to understand its use. I also asked my client whether to include the wires in the back or not, but I was told to not include them. The reason for that is that the plan in the future is to hide all the wires.

Some of the geometry around the battery and the hydraulic is not as complex as the original model. But once again, this does not take away from the coming animation.

Previs/feedback

I have showed the previs to a couple of my teachers and my client, and a lot of the feedback that I get is that it is too much information in a short amount of time. It is also hard to see a definite style in it, and it all just seems a little over the top, and not simple (which I am aiming for)

I have realised that I give a lot of info in this previs, but not enough about MagnoJack itself. I fell in love with fun facts and fancy deformer animations and lost my head during the process.

After thinking it through I have come to the conclusion that I have to rethink my strategy.

Instead of showing all of this fancy stuff, and talking about the damages from not having a MagnoJack, I should rather show off the product, even more, give it a fair introduction to the audience and demonstrate its use.

I am not deleting any of the old stuff, I am saving it for later as this has an opportunity to be a scalable commercial. I am making the short version now, and later on, if my client wishes, I can extend it and include the environmental information.

I do not consider this as a loss, But rather as a great learning experience!

previs

I have added a coupple more elements to the previs now. Additional to this I have contacted GoSoundtrack to see if maybe they would like to help me with background music and voice over.

The truck

Before Christmas, I was working on a truck that was going to enter the scene and pick up a container. After I started on the animatic I discovered that I had a plan for a lot more to happen separately than what I had time for. I went way over the maximum of 60 seconds that I am aiming for. So I have now experienced why people in the industry use the phrase “kill your children” I had put a lot of energy into this truck and I had also planned to rig it so that the hook lift was functional.
I found that it is not enough time for this to happen and that I have spent a lot of energy on something that shouldn’t have taken up so much of my time.
Because I have chosen to go for a simple style, the commercial doesn’t suffer a loss from it, and now the container is simply just exiting the frame by sliding out on its own. I found that as long as this isn’t something that takes away from the message that I try to convey it is a more efficient solution.
I will use the truck in another scene where I demonstrate the amount of E-waste that is being generated worldwide. Because of this, I am removing the hook lift and just adding a container on the back of it.