Monday, November 29, 2010

Animation Blindness


After working on one shot for a long time, it's not difficult to become blind about that particular animation. The best thing to do is ask for feedback from people with fresh eyes and rest your own  while eating a chocolate to get back with a refreshed view of your shot. In case that's not possible or if it'll take too long to get comments, there are a few tricks to help see your animation with a different perspective:

1) make it black and white. This is not such a strong change, but might help a bit since you take away some of the usual visual input.

2) if there's sound, turn it off to feel the movements better. Of course, the sound is an important part of the work and the animation needs to be in sync with it, but sometimes this helps a bit to feel the accents, the weight...it helps you get less distracted.

3) hide a part of the character. When the body seems to work, but the arms or head don't you might lose focus about what exactly is or isn't working. So hiding a body part is a good way to make sure you see if the hips are working, then the lower spine and so on. As always, first the root needs to be working before correcting the other parts. So you might want to hide all the rest and check the root – usually it's the hip. You can hide it using the software making the parts you want not visible. Or, if it's a simple movement, you can even hide it with your finger (if it's just the head during a walk for example).


4) track! Track the hip, heels, hands, nose and other parts of your character to make sure you have nice arcs when you should. There are some moments when you don't want nice smooth arcs, but more often than not, you want them. This won't give you a new perspective, but if you're looking for something to improve, tracing the arcs is a good idea.
Tracking the hip


5) flip the animation. This is a very simple thing, but it is really powerful :-) One way is flipping it in a software, like quicktime or windows movie maker. The other, a lot faster and easier is using a mirror.


Oh, and if you have any other suggestions, please share! :-)

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Shot sizes and cutting

I've been meaning to come back to this topic for a while, so here we are talking about cuts once more :-) I'll go through the different shot sizes and some advice for cutting between them. Basic stuff, but it's good to know a bit about it.

Shot sizes
establishing shot

There are different kinds of shots for different purposes. At the start of a scene there is often an establishing shot, a shot that shows the whole setting establishing where the event will take place.



long shot
A wide (or long) shot shows the scene from a smaller distance than the establishing one, but still includes the environment or setting of the scene.

Next comes the full shot which includes the whole character. Then there is the medium full shot, that starts with the knees and the medium shot, which starts at the waist.

Of course this is rough, because the definition of the limits is not always so tight and the names may vary slightly. The images I'm including to illustrate this are from gettyImages.com.


              
Full shotMedium full Medium











The close shots follow, medium close-up, good to show head motions and how head punctuates what you say. In the face close-up you'll see lots of details in eyes, mouth movements, head motions. Extreme close-ups only show a part of the face. They are reserved for more intense emotional reaction.


                  
        Face close-upMedium close-upExtreme close-up








For the shots that are not too close – from full to medium close-up - it's good to include some head room, the empty space above the head. It's important to match this room from wide to medium shots. 

It's good to think about how much the character will move. If he's going to run, he may need more space on screen and if he's sitting still, it's enough to see him only from his waist up and so on.

The head room leaves room for another discussion involving framing: leaving empty space around the character can have different effects. For example, if you leave a lot of empty space in front of a character, he/she can seem more open, if there's more space in the back, we're being kept at a bigger distance. But I guess I'm losing my focus here ;-)

It's also good to mention that usually we keep a bigger distance from the character while we don't know him. So in the beginning of a story we will see the character further away, in a medium or full shot. As we gain intimacy with that character, we get closer to him. Something similar applies to over-the-shoulder cameras filming two characters talking. If they don't know each other yet, the camera won't be so close to the eyeline (an imaginary line from the eyes of one character to the eyes of the other). Once they know each other, we get closer to that line. Check the images below for a more visual example:

closer to eyeline
away from eyeline


Cutting between different shot sizes
When you cut from one camera to another, there are a few things to observe. One of them is you shouldn't cut between camera sizes or angles that look similar, that's called a jump cut and could look like a mistake to the audience: they should understand it's a cut.

Also, when moving from one shot size to the other, if something is moving, it's important to keep the perceived speed the same. So maybe someone is being seen in a full shot leaning forward extending the arm to grab something. When we move to a medium shot, the hand should seem to be moving at the same speed as it was in the other shot. The trick is to know that sometimes the actual speed you'll animate won't be the same in both shots, since when we're closer it seems that the object/character is moving faster.

Ok, this was a quick overview of shot sizes...I will probably go back to cameras sometime soon as they are very interesting ;-)

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Playing with 3D Studio Max

Last week was the break week in AM and I used the time to rest and to play a little with 3D Studio Max. Before Maya I had done a small animation in Blender, but it's been a few years and I think it's good knowing at least the basics of other animation software.

I decided to do something really really simple, just to break the ice with 3ds max. I downloaded Max, a free rig lots of people use from this link.

I chose a reference from aniref on vimeo, a cool place to look for (and share) reference.
Here's the video I chose:



And the result of my exercise:

It was interesting and, in a way, simple, after all, the tools used are similar to the ones in Maya. Before starting to animate, I watched the instructional videos that come up when the program is first opened. That helped make me more comfortable with the interface. I found it less friendly than Maya, but part of this is because I'm not used to it.

At one point I didn't know where to find more specific controls like footroll and eyelid movements. Also some general things like navigating and setting materials to locked body parts demanded some getting used to. Well, in the end, I found the answers to my questions in the internet or by pressing buttons and seing what happened :-)

Friday, September 3, 2010

Good book for improving Maya skills

I recently started reading the book "How to cheat in Maya 2010 - Tool and techniques for the Maya Animator". It gives you a lot of "cheats" for working better with Maya. Actually, it mostly talks about tools that are available in the software, but if we don't know about their existence, we obviously can't use them ;-)

The book gives some tips about how you can improve your workspace in Maya, how splines work and how to work better with them, how to make a transparent IK/FK switch, how to use constraints, how to use animation layers, the basics about rendering and assigning materials...well, it's a long list :-)

It's really cool that the chapters are short and objective and you don't have to read them yeah in sequence. There's an exercise for each topic where you can practise what you're learning. And most of the things work for older versions of Maya -  Ah, a maioria das coisas vale para as versões de Maya anteriores também - when I started reading it, i was still using  2009 (actually, this was until this week) and, as far as I know, everything worked for that one too.

Another cool thing is it comes with a DVD with Maya files for almost every chapter, so it's a lot easier to do the exercises, since everything is already prepared ;-) There are also 5 videos about constraints and parenting.

I've been using Maya for a year and a half (I know, it's not that much) and working on animations since then and, though I already knew several things that are covered in the book, I've learned lots of interesting things (and I still have to read the other half!). It seems several of the tricks will speed up my work and others will make it even more fun :-)

Friday, August 27, 2010

Playing with the Norman Rig

It's been a some time since I started using the characters given by AM. They're great, supereasy to control and the models are flexible so we can customize them to look taller/smaller, more feminine, etc. I did want to experiment other rigs though, mainly to see how different rigs are build and work. Of course, the basics are the same: you need controls for the different body parts, there may be IK/FK controls, etc, but some details are different.

I have seen the Norman rig on several animations and it seemed pretty flexible. I found this page (www.romanim.com/norman_database.php) where you can get different customized Norman rigs: different female, male and kid models. This was great, because I didn't want to customize it right now, but just play with the rig. First I thought I'd try a model I had never used, so I downloaded the wrestler...

First thing to do was to plan the animation...well, I had never done a parkour shot...and to try a new rig it seemed a nice idea to do a body mechanics shot. Short stuff, a couple of seconds or so. I had recently seen a female parkour video which I wanted to use:


Of course...I can't use that reference for a big heavy man...so I decided to leave the wrestler for some other time and downloaded a light female rig ;-) Ok, I could have looked for a heavy man doing jumps, but I wanted to use that reference (not really lazy, just more inspired by that).

I chose a simple jump over an obstacle (they call it kong) that appears a few times in that video and made a few thumbnails...very, very rough stick-figure sketches. Marked down the estimated frame number where those poses would happen and went into blocking.

I didn't do any research about how to use that new rig, went right into Maya to figure it out because it's pretty intuitive. I confess though that I counter-animated a little while until I realized the IK hands were linked to the chest rotations and unlinked them. I had not worked with this before, but I suppose it's pretty common (and handy!) to have the possibility to say with which body part the hands should move along with. This was the main thing I learned doing this first shot with Norman.

So here's that blocking:


Then I went ahead and worked on splining it. I removed the black color on her arm, so it was clearer what was happening while she was jumping. Also made a simple camera animation to follow her. Here's the final animation:


It's a very short shot, but it quick to do and also great trying a different rig and a jump I never did. I really enjoyed trying out this different rig and still have to explore it more, since I didn't use everything it offers :-)

Monday, August 23, 2010

Masterclass with Guilherme Marcondes (2)

Guilherme directed several commercials and it was interesting to hear how sometimes one of his works influences another. He told us he directed a promo for BBC2 in which it was required that the character's head was a photography:


The way this was done is fantastic!!! The little world that we see inside the mailbox was, in fact, created inside a glass box which had little plants, lights and that strange machine inside. Because of the way the box was assembled, the scenery inside the box is reflected by its walls (which work as mirrors), so that the setting doesn't have the clear boundaries of the box. Awesome!  :-)

Because the character's head was a photo, he was contacted by British Gas to direct another commercial, which should also use photos for the characters. This time, the body and the face should be animated. He stylized the faces a little so they blended in with the rest of the scenery.

And what a scenery!! The initial concept was "my home is my world", so each house was placed on top of a different world. These planets were all maquettes, created very carefully, with typically British constructions on top of them. This was an important part of the project: the target audience was British, so it had to be clear that it happened nowhere else in the world. British Gas described exactly how they wanted each planet to look like and a maquette was created following the instructions.


Guilherme has created several advertisements for this campaign from British Gas and slowly he started using 3D because it simplifies a few things, especially when dealing with the interior of the houses. But the characters still follow the initial concept, they're 2D :-)


I found the Masterclass so interesting that I wanted to share a bit of it here. Learning with other artists always helps broaden our horizons, after all, the creative process for creating a short like Tyger or an ad like the one from BG isn't an obvious one. To see what exists, how it was done, where some ideas came from, getting to know other artists and techniques, etc - all that not only helps us understand how the process works for other people and the possibilities that exist, but certainly motivates us to find our own style and breaking some barriers.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Masterclass with Guilherme Marcondes (1)

I was lucky to watch the Masterclass given by Guilherme Marcondes at the Anima Mundi Festival in São Paulo. For those who don't know him, a quick presentation: he graduated in architecture in São Paulo and soon started working with animation and then directing advertisment both inside and outside Brazil. He also directed a short called Tyger, which won over 20 awards over the world. More about him here: www.guilherme.tv

It's always cool to learn a bit more about the trajectory of someone in our field, something beyond what we can find in the internet. So I felt happy I could hear Guilherme Marcondes talking for a few hours about his career and showing and commenting on some of his work with more detail. 

--Tyger--

This is a work he's clearly fond about. It was made originally for the Cultura Inglesa  Festival in 2006 using mixed techniques.

The inspiration came from several places. The festival required the project to be based on an English text. He developed the concept with Andrezza Valentin and they chose the poem "Tyger" from William Blake to "guide" the animation. Add to that his hobby of making  night photography of São Paulo and there you go, the story takes place in the darkness of the metropole, with neon illumination that reminds us of Bingo neon signs. He commented that, in the end, the movie is more about São Paulo than about the poem. Still, it's an abstraction, just like a poem is considered to be: there's no clear beginning, middle and end. It doesn't necessarily have to tell a story.

The chosen song (from the group Zeroum) also keeps a rythm, just like it happens in some poems. There is a clear and almost hypnotic beat that goes with the visual development of the animation.
Around the time he was working on the short, he had recently seen a children's play from his friends where the characters were puppets moved around by people dressed in black. The eye of the viewer "erased" the people and followed the story of the characters. This delighted him and so he decided to make the main character (the tyger), a puppet that walked in the city.

silhouete art from Lotte Reiniger
Another inspiring work were the silhouette animations from the German Lotte Reiniger. He decided to use characters created by the illustrator Samuel Casal. To animate them in flash and obtain results similar to silhouette animation, he partnered with Birdo studios. There were certainly other influences and inspirations, but these were the main ones, besides the creative process the author necessarily goes through while developing the film, which depends on his background story.


"Sapo" from Samuel Casal
Made by João Grembecki (Cia. Stromboli), Tyger is an articulated puppet that most of the time was manipulated by three people (João Grembecki, Cassiano Reis, Fábio Oliveira ). Only a few times did they use a device to move the tail. The color of the tiger was white, so that his color in the movie was defined by the color of the light on him (most of the time it's an orange tone, like the street lights).


There were several challenges regarding the manipulation of the puppet, since the people doing it were used to presenting on stage and in a film one has to pay attention to how each one enters and remains in the scene. There's a moment this attention to the positioning of the manipulators is very noticeable, when they enter the screen before the tiger does, on the top of a mountain (around 3:02).

The tiger and the manipulators were filmed in front of a green screen, and later the film and the animations were composited with the images of São Paulo.

Guilherme and Tyger
(Veja SP  - August the 2,  2006)

Something Guilherme really liked about Tyger was the freedom he had  to make it, which is usually not possible in advertisment. He commented that in some places the fact that the short doesn't have beginning, middle and end caused some surprise. Another thing that seemed unexpected for some viewers was that he didn't remove the manipulators...which would actually take away some of the charm of the short, since they are part of it.




Next post I'll write about the second part of the Masterclass, when he talked about some of his work in the advertising world. Till then!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Planning the mouth shapes

Back to the dialogue shot! There are basically two ways of setting mouth shapes...one is very simple and actually doesn't demand planning another that is a little bit more complicated but more precise.

Do everything in Maya
This is the way that doesn't really demand much planning, you actually do it as you go. I don't know (yet) how it works with other software, but in Maya, you can import the sound file and there's a pretty cool feature there that allows you to hear the foneme that's happening on each frame. So you scrub through the timeline with the left mouse button and hear the line "sound by sound". This is great and you can easily go on listening to the sound and setting keyframes for the mouth as you go.

The problem with this method is...sometimes when you click at the timeline in Maya, the sound you get isn't the sound that will be on that frame when you playblast it: you have to playblast it all the time to make sure it's working. So it's a handy and simple method, but not too precise.

Plan it!
You can plan where each mouth shape will happen by using a sound software to see for how many frames a certain sound actually is played. There's a free software that can do that (yay!): http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Open your sound file in Audacity (or the sound program of your preference) go to View->Set Selection Format->film frames 24 fps, so you can see the time in frames. Now you see the spectrum of the sound and can scrub through it, pretty much like you'd do it in Maya. Make a table and write the sound on one side and the frame where it starts/ends and there's your plan! It's a very simple x-sheet actually.

Here's an image to explain the basics:


1) this tool allows you to select the region of the sound wave you want to focus on

2) zoom tool so you can see that section of the sound clearly

3) ok, this is the play button, of course. But if you have selected a part of the sound, it will only play that. This way you can isolate the sounds.

4) here you can check the frames where this sound is played

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Intro to dialogue


This is my first dialogue shot! Started working on it in the end of class 4 and ended it in the first few weeks of class 5. Lots of work and it can be improved still :-)
It's a big step moving to a scene where there are facial expressions and lip synch! So this will be a simple introduction to animating a dialogue.

1. Body pass

To begin with, as usual...reference! I made the reference for the body movements first and animated that (going through blocking, first pass, etc). I played with eye movements and blinks at this point a little, just so the face doesn't look too stiff. Also had a bit of jaw rotations going on too, but just very simple mouth movements. This is how it looked when this body pass was over:


2. Animating the face

To start doing the facial animation, I did another reference video so I could see the expressions clearly and also the mouth shapes. This one was done sitting still in front of the camera. I did check the other reference every now and then too: although I did it mostly for body reference, there are some facial expressions there that make sense, besides, it's still helpful if I want to improve the body, etc...

Using the reference and the sound file I planned the mouth shapes (visemes). First it's necessary to write down the line that will be said but the way it sounds. Each sound is called a phoneme. So for my line, for example
"I...I haven't totally decided...he can ahm...he can live or... (inhale)...he can die"
I wrote the sound as:
"Ae...Ae heven toudaly dicided...hee kenah...hee ken leev oah...hee ken dae"
This transcription has to be done in a way YOU understand it, after all, you're the one animating it. Then it's good to mark the important visemes, the mouth shapes that yo MUST HAVE there or the viewers will notice something's wrong. The order of importance as I learned in AM would be:

1.both lips – p (as in play), b (bye), m (mom), w (wine)
2.lips and teeth – f (four), v (vote)
3.tongue tip and teeth – th (thin)
4.tongue tip and ridge between teeth – t (tick), d (date), s (sue), z (zoo), n (noodle), l (lemon)
5.tongue blade and palate – sh (rush), j (rouge), ch (rich), r (run), y (yaw)
6.tongue back and top of throat – k (back), g (lag), ng (sang)
7.vocal folds – h (hey)

You have to be aware that one sound may affect the mouth shape of another sound. That's called co-articulation. For example, when you say "cold" and "key" you say the sound "k" in both. But when your mouth is saying the "k" it's already preparing to make the next sound. In the first word (cold) the shape will be narrower and the jaw rotation a bit more open, anticipating the "oo" sound that follows. For the second word, the shape will be wider.

Here I have the important mouth shapes in red:
"Ae...Ae heven toudaly dicided...hee kenah...hee ken leev oah...hee ken dae"

In order to know when to set each mouth shape, it's very helpful to make plan on which frame each sound occurs. I'll talk about this in another post. So I set the mouth shapes following the planning and the facial expressions following the reference, did another polish on the body and the result is what you saw up there :-)
There's a lot more to dialogue...but this is a start! I'll talk about planning the mouth shapes in the next post.

Friday, July 16, 2010

cool video - How to break into animation

This is a great video from a speech by Steve Hickner - Dreamworks Director/Producer. Here are a few things he talks about:

  •  you may not be the smartest/talented, but if you're disciplined and stick to stuff until you get it, it pays off.
  •  another thing that counts a lot is attitude - animation is a very collaborative process, so that counts a lot, you need people that can contribute with optimism and great attitude
  •  if you want to get into the business, you have to take the iniciative and do stuff nobody else would do
  •  he tells some funny and inspirational stories, like the guy that found out where the sound people got their pizza - he wanted to work at a sound place in hollywood - and got a job at the pizza place at night, so he'd deliver the pizza to them. And after a while delivering he told the guys he wanted to work there and he got hired! Gotta think outside the box :-)
  •  you need to watch movies to get better, everyone is influenced by other people's work, the best people are.
  •  never turn down a combat mission...it might lead to a great place (even if it doesn't look like that)! He did that...it's great to see him tell his story.

Ok, I'll stop with the bullets, just watch it, it's worth it and he's fun to watch :-) Very inspiring and motivating!



Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Camera cuts

This week in AM we learned some basics about camera cuts. I found it very interesting, so I thought I'd just share a few things I learned.

The idea in a video is giving the audience the „best seat in the house“. So for a scene, we might have to show views from different angles so the viewer can see everything that matters. For that, we may have to cut the scene from one camera to another. For example, we could first show a person saying something and then cut to a different camera to show the listener reacting to that. The cut should happen seamlessly so the audience doesn't even notice it.

When cutting, it's important let the action end. When something moves, usually the following steps ocurr:
1. Element is at rest
2. Reaches maximum velocity
3. Slows down and keeps constant velocity
4. Full extension/Impact
5. Recoil/Bounce Back

And to cut, we should wait for this whole cycle to end, or the audience would feel interrupted, which we don't usually want. Of course there are exceptions: like horror movies, were the idea is actually interrupting the audience's thoughts, frightening them, etc.

One example that was given was about ballet dance. There are lots of moments were the arms/legs extend and that pose is kept for a little while. So, if you want to cut, wait for that moment to arrive, include a couple of frames to let that image sink in the viewer's brain and then cut. You could make a cut in the middle to zoom in to the arms reaching out for example. But we didn't go into this too much, as it's more like an introduction to the theme.

Another example I think I should mention too is when cutting a walk, we shouldn't cut when the foot reaches the floor: let the body go up a little so that movement is completed.

Dialogues!
When cutting on dialogues we also have to find a point where the idea has been „closed“. There are 4 rules for cutting a dialogue:
  1. You can cut on a period. One could make an analogy to the silence of the period with the element coming at rest again. So that's a place were you can have a clean cut. Remember to cut 1 to 3 frames after the sentence ended – they call that giving it a bit of air.
  2.  Cut on a comma, which could be considered like a small period in the middle of the sentence. Then you could cut to the interlocutor to show the reaction the speech had on them while the speech goes on in the background. Like before, let a little bit of air before you go to the next cut. 
  3. You can cut in the middle of pauses that last long enough.
  4. Cut on a plosive. That would be a powerful more emphasized word in a sentence. It was explained that for a split second, there's some disorientation in the brain because of that strong word, so while the brain reorganizes itself, we can cut to a different angle. This usually happens in the middle of physical action scenes and very agressive verbal utterances.

So, except for the last rule, let pause hit, some air settle and make the cut. This way the audience always follows well what's happening. These are just the basics, but when you see movies try to notice how those rules are applied :-)

Well, this was only a part of the lecture, I'll come back to this theme soon!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

tip for those who stay long hours at the computer

I love free software...recently I found out about a very healthy one:



"Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit."

It's possible to configure when you want to reminded to go on a break. It also suggests stretching exercises. When animating (or programming) we tend to lose track of time so it's really useful. I started using it recently and it's pretty nice :-)

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Personality

After discussing body mechanics for so long, I guess it's time to move on to acting. I'm just starting to learn more about it, so this will be a brief text about a few of the things I found interesting and learned in AM.

It is extremely important to give your character a clear personality. After all, that's why people still remember some characters long after watching the movie. So try to establish the personality right from the start.

Personality is what makes us different from each other, even if there are many things in common. Two people with similar age, job, looks, doing the same thing would do it in a completely different way. After all, the person's history influences the personality a lot, and no two people have the same past.

That's why, with the same character rig, you can create an infinity of different characters. You can see that in live action too of course, where an actor performs so differently in the movies he/she makes it hardly seems to be the same person.

There are characteristics many people have...but each person shows it differently. If two characters are shy, it doesn't mean they'll show this shyness in the same way. So BE SPECIFIC in your choices! Think about the walk that a particular character would make, the movement, rythm, etc... Finding a characteristic pose can be helpful. It's not a pose to be held all the time, but a pose the character goes back to often, that helps define him.

Think about how the characters are internally, the background story, the needs they have and then how that is translated into their actions.

Creating contrast can create interest in your scene if you have several characters there. Having a variety of personalities interacting can make the scene a lot more dynamic.

Contrasting the external and internal traits of a character can also make it fun. Like the cat in Shrek 2: he looks very decided and proud all the time, but at some point, he makes himself look very vulnerable to inspire pitty, opening those big eyes so Shrek takes him along.


Don't make the acting choices based on your first idea, which it usually is the most obvious thing. You don't want to end up with cliché acting.

There are many places to get reference and inspiration from. Animals, plants, even objects! And while studying them a lot of new ideas can pop up.

Background characters can have personalities too, but shouldn't upstage the main characters.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

tip for practising sketches

It's always nice to practice sketching. It heps improve planning the animations, gives new ideas and also helps train the eyes for some details that may usually go unnoticed.

In www.posemaniacs.com there are several possibilities for practicing. You can choose to make 30 second drawings to make quicker sketches or choose negative space drawing to better understand the outline and shape of the body.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

new Pixar short!

This is just for fun...soon Toy Story 3 is coming out and the short they're releasing with it looks really, really great! It's a very cool concept mixing 2D and 3D very creatively...so here's a preview of Day and Night and some comments from those involved ... :-)

Monday, May 24, 2010

Blocking to Final

This is the last animation of the magician. All three of them were done during advanced body mechanics class (that's term 3 in AM) so the idea was to make the character do things that demand working on getting timing and spacing right, the feeling of weight, balance, drag, overlap, etc...all the principles, so that when we start working on acting (term 4) the body mechanics are already there. That's why this magician does some things in a very exaggerated way – so that I can practice my body mechanics skills ;-)

This final shot shows him getting out from beneath the tank, getting up, making one last magic trick changing the tank back into Tailor and thanking the audience. I'll just make this one like last post, showing how I went from one version to the next.

So here's the blocking of the idea

The main comments I got from my mentor:
  •  the pose at 85 is too twinned, too even
  •  make the pose on 127 bigger and have him hold that
  •  there's not enough time for the audience to read the bow in the end, so simplify it. After all that quick action have Stewie simply lift Tailor and have Tailor thank the viewers.

So here's the re-block, after changing those things and starting to spline:


I see now that this still looks very even, seems all the movements happen at a similar speed - but while working on it I couldn't see this. Here are some comments I got on it:
  •  correct the weight around pose 85, shift the weight slightly or it'll look like he'll fall over.
  •  I was in doubt about how exactly I should keep Stewie alive in the end while holding that final pose, after all, the focus was on Tailor, not Stewie at that point. So my mentor told me to shift Stewie's weight after catching Tailor, have him raise the hand quickly then overshoot and settle.
  •  track the tip of the hat. Especially in the beginning, there is a very irregular movement going on there. Well, I mentioned this in another post...this pointy hat has this problem.

Here's the version that followed:
Now some comments start getting subtler, more specific, she said I still should work on the holds and break up the timing.
  • pick a primary pose and ease the other poses into it. So speed up from about frame 25 to 46 - have it happen over 15 frames. Then then hold 46 for 5 frames.
  •  on frame 73 let it overshoot and settle back the hip
  •  drag toe on 112 and on 118 shift his weight so it's on back foot
  •  128-158 is taking too long, could be 10-15 frames. Have Stewie catch Tailor just before he falls.

And finally:

It always helps seing which comments people get on their shots an how they progress. So I hope these posts about how I arrived to the final version were interesting. I tried not to make it too big so didn't write about all the comments I got, just the main ones.

I think one of the things that got a lot clearer to me during advanced body mechanics class is that we should always know when to simplify. Also, it's good to exaggerate and do all the crazy things animation allows us to do...but need contrast too, to have a nice texture in the animation...crazy can get boring too, if it's just that all the time.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Polishing and Final

Now it's time to start polishing! The main comments I got on it were:
  • the movement in the beginning, when he's preparing to roll on the floor is too linear, track the tip of his hat to see the spacing. We should always try to make the movements as interesting as possible. A linear movement in this case doesn't work well and tracking the tip of his hat will give an idea of his speed.
  • have Stewie anticipate that jump in the end and have his feet planted when he falls. Also make him bounce once, slightly. Though he's caught by surprise, he has to gather energy to jump like that. This way,it reads better.
  • he doesn't have to swipe his head in the end for the audience to understand he's relieved. That's too much. No need to be so dramatic. He can only look up, happy he survived and then let his head fall because he's exhausted. After all that action, he doesn't need to do that broad „pheeew“ movement. As my mentor told me: the complex needs to go with the simple.


And about the ball/tank:
  • think of the car as a heavy bouncing ball. Also make it go up a bit when it's trembling to have a small anticipation, then have it fall down quickly and bounce a couple of times. This anticipation should be there to show the audience what's going to happen. We also need to sell the idea that the tank is a threat, therefore it should look really heavy and bounce like something heavy.


Here's the polished animation...




After that one I got some more comments before reaching the final animation:
  • track the tip of his hat. With that pointy hat, it's really easy to notice if there's a weird arc happening. So it helps tracking it to have that looking good. So there should be nice clear arcs when he's leaning back in the beginning and then when he bents into the roll. Also throughout the roll the tip of the hat should follow smooth arcs.
  •  have the ball make a more interesting movement, like a simple figure eight, but not enough to get more attention than Stewie. Also have the ball get smaller and then the tank growing bigger and overshoot so it's a nice transition from one into the other.


And at last, the final animation:


Yes, it can get better, but the process of going through each step and getting lots of feedback already helped me learn so much!! This is why the next animation is nicer :-) I'll comment on that one next week!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Re-Block

In order to start this second pass, first I addressed the changes suggested by my mentor: mainly pushing some poses and changing the timing at some places...but the biggest change my mentor commented on was changing the camera angle.

The reason for that is, when I finished the last shot, the magician was standing on screen left and the ball was on screen right. So, if we start the next shot with that flipped, the audience might get confused.

There's a rule about this called "the 180 degree rule". It's quite simple: draw an imaginary line from one character to the other and keep the camera on one of the sides only. By doing this, you keep the characters clearly on their sides and even if one walks over to the other's side, it's clear what's going on. So you avoid confusing the viewers.

Ok, I'm explaining this rule in a very superficial way. For further explanations check out this link. It has a really nice thorough explanation about the rule – and when to break it.

Changing the camera angle certainly made me go back to the poses, so they worked well for this new view. Here's the new blocking:



After making the corrections, I started splining – getting the curves in the graph editor out of stepped mode and into splines. So now the transitions are smoother. The ball has only been roughly animated, because I wanted to focus on animating Stewie. Here's the result:



And since I'm showing you the progress of this shot, you might be interested in this really cool link showing the different stages of some great animations:
http://animationprogression.blogspot.com

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Blocking

After giving an overview of the animation process last post, let's see those steps in more detail. The animation we'll be going through now is a sequel to the last one. So Stewie (that's our character's name) is now standing in the same pose he finished the last shot and looking at the ball to see what's gonna happen next.


The ball – actually the bewitched Tailor – will then start floating and Stewie will see it going up. Worried about his next actions, our magician will make a dramatic roll on the floor to better position himself for another magic trick. This trick will not work very well, and Tailor will turn into a heavy tank which will fall on a scared Stewie, that will fortunately have time to lie on the floor to protect himself.

After analizing the reference video, I made the planning, defining the key poses and the approximate timing. With that in mind I made the blocking you can see here:



In blocking I leave the tangents that define the transition from one pose to the next in stepped mode. So we stay in one pose until we get to the frame when the next one should start and there's no fluid movement going on. Here's a snapshot illustrating that:



#1 – 19: Stewie is looking at the ball. He'll actually be moving slowly into the next pose, but as mentioned before, this is blocking, so the transitions are abrupt. As I mentioned in those posts about poses, we should always look for nice arcs and clear silhouettes, so his arms are sepparated from his body and there's a nice line of action going on.
 

 #20-25: He's looking at the final position of the ball. Since he's very dramatic (and, yeah, we want to push the poses) he's not only looking up with hands in his pockets, instead he's bending his body to the side and back and putting most of his weight on screen right (SR) foot. Yep, never forget the character needs to keep in balance when he's standing still!!

#26-27: Preparing to roll, looking at the floor, starting to lower his body to start that movement.

#28-30: Nice arc on his spine, going towards the floor. Extending arms to help him roll. Looking to the floor.








#31-33: One elbow preparing to help support the weight and SR hand starting to contact floor to push body. One leg supporting the body, the other almost lifting for the roll.

#34-36: In the roll

#37-41: Finishing roll. Not so clear silhouette, but when he's in motion we'll understand well what's going on.








#42-46: starting to get into the kneeled position, using one hand to push him up. Not a very strong pose, but it's needed to get him up.

#47-51: Looking at the ball up there, preparing to do his magic. Bowed forward. Attention, SR arm is in front of the body, bad visibility there, but sometimes we simply can't escape that.





#52-54: Anticipation – body twists to his right to gather energy to cast the spell. The hand with the wand goes back and the other hand counter-balances going to the front.






#55-58: Starting to come forward, one knee lifting...

#59-69: Abracadabra! Pointing wand at ball, looking at the ball too. One foot's planted on the floor now. Clear silhouette, clear line of action.







#70-79: Breathing in, fill lungs (Gotcha!). Still holding the Abracadabra pose

#80-88 : Breathe out, still holding pose, moving slighlty so it doesn't seem frozen.

#89-93: Move body forward preparing to get up, still looking at the ball to see what happened.

#94-97: Still getting up, the body needs to be over the SL leg so he can lift the back foot. Using arms to balance.







#98-101: Up now, still a bit curved, looking up curious about what's gonna happen next. Stepping forward slowly.

#102-106: Straightens up, looks down for a moment, thinking everything's all right. Pose is a bit boring I have to admit now.








#107-114: Realizes there's something huge up there and panics. Tried to avoid twinning legs and arms here to make it a more interesting pose.






#115-131: Falls flat on the ground so he can have a chance to survive (dramatic :-) )

#132-146: Looks up to make sure everything's all right, he made it.

#147-150: puts some weight over SL arm to lift the other one and wipe his forehead.

#151-154: Finishes „Phew“ movement

So this is an overview of what's going on with the poses. I could make a lot more comments about them, but it wouldn't add much I guess.

During blocking, I played around with the timing because it wasn't exactly the way I had planned it. After all, it depends on the character's body structure as well and what feels right for him: it's not just applying the timing we have in the reference video.

So I had to move some poses poses around a bit in the timeline to have him do those poses in the way that seemed appropriate for him. This also involves giving him time to think. That's a very important lesson I learned throughout the development of the previous animation. So when he's under the tank, for example, he keeps his head down for a while, then raises it and thinks, „Yeah, I made it!!“ and only then wipes his forehead.

Hope this was interesting to someone...Next post will be about the feedback I got from this blocking, how I changed the animation according to that and how I went into the next phase. It changed a lot, you'll see :-)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

a simple introduction to the animation process...


Ok, so I've written a lot about poses and how important they are and haven't been discussing animation directly. So let's break this inertia and get started! :-)

This will be a short post to discuss the main stages of animation. What you saw up there was my first animation from 2010 (yay!). So how did I get there?

First I chose the theme for the animation: a magician that gets very confident after putting on his hat and that notices he's being followed by a creature and performs a magic trick on it. Then I had to gather reference for it and, of course, I acted it out so it was just what I wanted it to be.
Next, thumbnailing. I went through the reference video frame by frame, identifying the key poses. This really helps organize the main ideas of the shot, chose the key poses and define the timing roughly. The first page of the planning can be seen below.



As you can see, it's not very elaborate, but helped guide me through the process. It makes the next step a lot easier. Now we start the software and get the main poses in there. This is the blocking stage. No worries about having a smooth animation, about breakdowns or in-betweens. But get the timing right. Here's my blocking:




And now...I added the breakdowns, adjusted the tangents, corrected some poses and incorporated the comments my mentor (and peers) gave me. Oh, actually, each step incorporates the critique I got on the one before. This stage is called blocking plus.


Ok, I know this was extremely superficial, but that's why I called it a simple introduction to the animation process. :-)
Related Posts with Thumbnails