Further development of the Ikea store idea

November the 18th 2010


Today I started to throw together a quick floor plan of the section of store that the scene would be featured in, I have decided to take a relatively small section of the store but instead intend to pack in plenty of attention to detail to give an authentic look, Here is the top down concept that I threw together in photoshop.

As you can see, I decided to split the store into a workable environment with two main departments, The warehouse department, and the Lighting department, I feel building the environment this way would give me plenty to work with and a nice canvas for the animation to unfold on.

Going ahead with the new idea

November the 14th 2010


Today after talking with Sonia I decided to go ahead with the new idea, I intend to start development in the next few days.

Pixar Jr Lamp Rig

November the 13th 2010


Following completion of the Generi Rig walk cycle, I was given the task of animating the Pixar Jr lamp rig,  We where asked to create a scene where the lamp was to interact with another object and where told that It should be about 10 seconds long, I decided that I would produce a small scene where the lamp was situated within a kitchen environment, My idea was that at night time the lamp would come to life and interact with various items inside the kitchen, things like pots & pans, cups and glasses.

A change of ideas

November the 12th 2010


Today following Sonia's lecture I decided that I would change my idea from the kitchen environment, I decided that I would prefer to attempt something a bit more ambitious as I felt that I was confident with Maya and would decided to choose something that used some more of my previous environmental design skills, The new idea came to mind after watching an Ikea advert on TV (see attached video) which featured cats and kittens being let loose on an Ikea furniture store. The new idea which I had featured the lamp interacting with various objects and generally reaking havoc inside an Ikea furniture store once all the staff had left at night time. I really liked this idea as I had a good image in my head of how to build a realistic store environment.

Getting Started

November the 10th 2010

Following Sonia's tutorials I felt that I was ready to go ahead and make progress with the Generi-Rig walk Cycle, At first I had difficulty with this as I had never done anything like it before, It took me many tries to get it right. For the first attempt at animating the walk cycle my main problems with the animation lied with creating realistic footsteps, I totally under-estimated how difficult this was to achieve, and it wasn't till my fourth attempt that I got it right. Here is my process of development with the walk cycle: