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.

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

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 :-)

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. :-)