Rig!

So my progress is coming along quite well after all the problems i have lately had. I have almost finished the bass guitarist. The main issue i am having is the lack of movement that he has. The rig of the sheep is very simple so i am not able to do much with him, which i never realised until now. My sheep has no movement in his body or legs due to only having one part of a rig for them all which i can not work with. The only movement i could have him doing is going up and down, or his waste can move forward or backwards. All this is not really the type of movement you would do during a stage performance. In the actual video, Daniel does not do a lot of movement his self, so the rest of the band staying in the same type of pace could work better as an overall piece.

In the last few days i have really wanted to change the whole character to the mooom rig as he has a lot more handles to be able to animate. I have done as much movement that i can without messing up the weight of him. Another thing that bothers me is that as he has no hands i have had to use his whole arm to show that he is actually meant to be playing. He also has, head, ear and foot movement.

The thing i am most happy with at this moment in time, is the secondary action i have in the ears, i think this really helps to make the animation more realistic. Even though i do not have much movement, this helps as you give more focus to the head.

The timing has been fairly hard to get when you have all the instruments playing at the same time but i took a lot of time to just focus on this to get the best timing i could. The thing i am most worried about in this is the lack of movement due to the rig and if i had a few more weeks i would change the whole character! Maybe this is something i could work on after this project to see the difference between the two characters.

I am unsure i will have the time to complete my drummer as i only have a week to complete him and i need to think about the lighting as well as, rendering and editing in final cut pro. But the one thing i need to keep in mind is that we were only meant to do a 30 second piece and mine is one minute 10 seconds, so already i have doubled the work, let along doing this with two characters. I have given myself far to much work and i need to set myself future goals because i seem to give myself to much do to which i do not seem to realise until it is to late.
I have still done alot of work and i shall do as much of the drummer as i can, and if i do not complete this i shall post up a playblast from maya of what i had done to give you an idea on what it would have looked like.

For the ending of my piece when the music stops due to a electrical fault. I have decided to have the bassist throw his guitar with anger. This gives other movement and pace to my animation. I am going to have the drummer throw his drum sticks and Daniel walks off stage. With a range of different things at the ending, it creates a different pase and the audience may even think about what could have happened afterwards, like a type of cliff hanger if you like.