Semester 1 Summary

Semester 1 Summary

I am going to try ans summarise this module now for my final submission.

My overall animation project has wavered a bit this semester but is still on track. In all I did 5 sets of animations, some of which had several small animations amongst them. Some of these have been reasonably successful in terms of the technical side of animating in Maya. I have been able to get 

more efficient with the graph editor which has helped me immensely to fix small problems and also to help me create smoother curves and also adding exaggeration.

Some of those animations though are seen as perhaps not failures, but not exactly successes. They have all been useful though in terms of getting me to this point so far, to the point of toon animation. They have helped me to narrow down my project somewhat.

Some of them perhaps could have been worked up more but I felt that would have been just for my ego more than anything, I had gained what I could from them and moved on. Some of them had turned out good though which was managed in less than two weeks. I don't think I spent more than 2 weeks on an animation, in semester 2 though things will be different and I should be spending more time on those animation allowing me to work them up as best I can. The reason I spent no more than 2 weeks on an animation is because I was using them to learn and I moved on once I felt I had learned all I could at that point in my development.

I also did some animation/scene analysis for this project. I did them to help me see how industry professionals have gone about creating character performances and to see how they have composed characters in a scene. These helped me think about my own work in terms of character performance. The Looney Tunes analysis has made me consider the relation of two characters in the same scene and the Toshiro Mifune one has allowed me to observe the ever changing eye contact of some characters. Depending on the personality, and mood, of a character their eye contact will be different. Someone nervous will look erratically around a person (avoiding eye contact in most cases) whereas someone calm will have steady eye contact with other people.

In conclusion, these media analysis have been a good way for me to breakdown how to gain believable character performances and how to stage a scene between two characters.

Semester 2 will see me undertake 3-4 animations that focus on character performance that are based on what I research for my dissertation. I will have plenty of time in the semester to focus on these animations and to work them up to the best that I can. I will think about the sort of scenarios I would like to animate in semester 2 during the holidays; because they will be more substantial than the animations I have done this semester, I will do proper storyboards for them in Photoshop before animating. These storyboards will consider acting, there will be actions and reactions and conflicts. I don't want to just show animation skills, but also some narrative.

One big contingency is that if I end up putting a lot of time in the dissertation then the amount of animations I do is more likely to be 3.

The only problem I have going into semester 2 is my uncertainty, the uncertainty of what I am doing. Is toon actually what I want to do? If I say no then what do I do instead? These are questions that will be answered during the holidays as I prepare for story-boarding at the start of semester 2.

Hare Animation Update 04

Hare Animation Update 04

Today I have altered the walk cycle from yesterday to try and fit more into toon animation. Below is my version from yesterday before Brian had looked at it. It is a very muted performance, and one thing that has stuck with me from reading the history of animation is that if a character is feeling sad, then make him look even sadder.

This is my edit done in about an hour. The main things I focused on here was moving his down position even further down, arching his body more and also moving his hips back. This has helped to create more of a sense of his feelings at this point in time. There are some more technical issues with this in terms of the feet and the fingers. These aspects are not high on my issues right now. I am not sure if I will come back after Christmas with a different outlook on my project so I don't want to stress over smaller things when I have gotten what I need from this already.

This, below, is a nice view of his hips. (I will fix the left arm for the final animation). Looking at this now, I could perhaps have more joy moving his head up and down a bit more, to really push his emotions.

One thing I have struggled with in terms of finishing my animation (adding in the wall slide) is that I struggled with bringing the walk cycle into a scene and making everything click. Trying to make the character react to walking into the wall was particularly difficult for me for some reason. I know how I want him to react but getting the rig to do it has proven difficult. Below I attempted the wall slide anyway; I just forgot about getting the character to turn around so his back is up against the wall. So below you can see this attempt. I think if I worked on this properly for a week then I could perhaps get the desired performance but my passion works better for me if I was doing a full short animation I think. I just don't feel the desire to fully complete this animation with the deadline for submissions in



I enjoyed doing the walk cycle but getting to the wall slide, I lost confidence.  

Mentor Meeting 04

Mentor Meeting 04

Today I have spoken to my supervisor, Brian Robinson, and some things have changed. not physically, more that things I doubted in my head have been reassured.

I told him about my doubts with exploring toon but we established that my main inspirations are in toon animation (Looney Tunes etc.). So essentially, I should follow a path that I am inspired by, and if anything, I was lacking inner inspiration the most, not feeling like animation was my thing. Toon animation though is a big inspiration for me, so I am going to run with this theme.

I asked about how that might change my dissertation theme of character performance and he said that it wouldn't since characters in toon animations have performances, so that theme will still be explored further for my dissertation.

One last thing he mentioned was changing the camera angle.

Below is the old version of this animation from the other day.

This was the rough change in camera angle that Brian put in place. Immediately the shot is more dynamic and it also has humour. This is something I will be working more closely with on my future animations.

Before the meeting I was working on a new animation.

I started off with some thumbnail sketches. I really am not into doing proper storyboards so I do quick thumbnail sketches to help give me an idea of the poses and action I am going for. The idea is that the hare is in love but can't speak so he is depressed. So he is walking at first then rests his head upon a wall and turns around and slides down the wall. The idea was to have no exaggeration in the slow walk then have a lot as he slides down the wall.

This is what I have done today towards this animation.

I also showed this to Brian and his comments were that it didn't fit in with toon animation. Tomorrow I am going to really exaggerate this to over exaggerate his mood to the max.

Summary:

Today I had some doubts about doing toon animation but after the meeting I am more sure about it. I am going to finish my second animation tomorrow and analyse it and discuss the future of my project also in the next few days in preparation for my pre-production submission. 

Hare Animation Update 03

Hare Animation Update 03

Today I have 'completed' the hare animation inspired by toon.

Below is the final result. The idea is that the hare has jumped into the scene but has messed up his landing.

I am pleased with how this has turned out overall; I had a tough time today sorting out the head. Below is an earlier version of the animation before the head was fixed.

It happens too sudden and I generally had a lot of problems fixing it. It has a controller for the neck and one for the whole head area for some reason and this created confusion in the keyframes. I managed to fix it through just deleting keyframes and adding a lot more to keep the head where it is meant to be towards the end.

Frames

Below are my five frames that exaggerate the most. This first one is him stretching as he comes down for landing.

Here he is still stretching on his way down.

I stretched his arms out as he slid across the floor, I did this to make it look like his arms were reaching the stopping point before the rest of his body. I genuinely can't explain why this looks good but, to me, it just does.

I also exaggerated his legs as he was stopping to show that his feet kept moving towards the left for a little while after his body had stopped. I got some feedback from class mates saying his feet coming down and hitting the floor was happening too fast so I slowed them down as they get to around this frame below, then I kept the original speed for when they fall and smack the ground.

This is the exaggeration when the feet are falling to the ground. This sort of exaggeration was done using the graph editor.

Summary:

The intention of this animation was to explore toon as a possible style that I work towards for this project, I plan to do one more toon animation tomorrow and Friday as part of this exploration. 

I got bogged down early on while trying to figure out how to properly animate with a toon rig and my methods are probably not the best but I have achieved a toon animation I am pleased with.

I don't think I prefer toon over non-toon, I prefer animating realistically but with exaggerated performances. I will have my mentor meeting tomorrow where I will show this animation and discuss my feelings towards it. I'll see what happens then.

Hare Animation Update 02

Hare Animation Update 02

So my update on this hare animation is that it is almost complete but there is one issue that still needs resolving, because of timing today I am going to quickly blog this with a more in depth analysis tomorrow once I have resolved my current issue. Below is a GIF of what I have so far.

The ending doesn't quite feel right yet. More specifically, the head doesn't move in a believable manner. This GIF below is just of the end to help highlight my problem.

This is a problem that I can identify but it is not something I can figure out how to overcome today, I have been staring at it for too long now today. I believe that when I come back to it tomorrow it will almost be obviously clear how to fix it.

I won't go into any other analysis of this since I will do it once it is complete tomorrow.

Summary:

Sometimes it is good to step away from an animation and come back to it with fresh eyes. Maybe it's a bad thing that I have that sort of time luxury so close to the deadline...7 days.

Hare Animation Update

Hare Animation Update

I have been working some more into the Hare animation from last week. I intend to finish it today/tomorrow but I have encountered a problem which I fixed which I feel should be blogged as a way of showing my interaction with the graph editor.

Below is the version of the animation before I fixed it.

* note: the timing hasn't been set for this action yet.

The problem is the way his legs come down at the end.

You can see in the image below, between frame 26 and 36 there are no keyframes but the interpolation has gone wrong for the legs.

Now to me, at first glance I can't see anything that would flag up as a problem. (we are looking between the last two keyframes in the graph editor). But I knew that the problem had to be there. My instinct told me that obviously I want the legs to be further up on the y axis...

...so I isolated it (the curves only look different because I had the graph editor zoomed in more on the image above). The image below shows the isolated y-axis, again, I don't initially see what the problem could be but the process of elimination, it has to be this curve. I broke the tangent on the furthest keyframe to the right and selected the left handle of that keyframe...

...that led me to the result below. It is one of these things that I don't understand the reasoning behind it but I know how to do it. This move essentially raised the legs up on the y-axis and fixed my problem.

This below is the final fix. The rig no longer appears broken.

This is the final fix (again, with incorrect timing).

Summary:

My use of the graph editor is getting more efficient and also I find myself using it more often than at the beginning of the project.

This animation will be 'completed' for the end of today or at the latest tomorrow afternoon. Then I will start one more animation of which I will blog for Friday at the latest. Then Monday and Tuesday will be dedicated to me creating my final word document for the pre-production submission on Tuesday evening.

Toon Animation

Toon Animation

The rig was created by Arman Musovic:

http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/hare-rig-free-maya-rig-cartoon-character-rig/

Today I have started another animation with the intention of exploring toon animation as a style while still creating character performances.

Below are my thumbnails sketches of what I wanted to achieve. I just drew some of the key poses I was after to give me a rough guide.

 This is what I created so far below. I was really trying to push the poses coming down into the scene. I could still push things further when he is sliding along the floor. His ears also need to be worked into at the end. They should flop over but that is something I missed on Friday. His bum also could do with a lot more exaggeration as he slides. I don't think this looks too bad as a short action but I found myself doing what I have done in most of my animations where I start out with really exaggerated poses but end up toning them down to make them fit better together.

Lastly, I struggled with keeping the rig under my control, because I was stretching his legs way beyond his central control, it just would behave sometimes the way I was hoping. The control of the toon rigs will come with experience I'm sure though.

Summary:

This animation has not been entirely unsuccessful, at one point it looked like it was getting away from me but I managed to keep things together. I did find myself going backwards in terms of keyframing though, I ended up putting a lot of keyframes down to control the rig. This is something I managed to avoid with the walk cycle the other week.

Not sure if toon specifically is for me...I'll keep searching.

What now?

What Now?

So today I have tried my hand with a toon rig, I did a very basic action of the rig falling into the scene and falling over. The rig allows a lot of stretch so I played around with that. I have realised more that I don't get any more enjoyment from animating with stretch in a toon rig than I do animating normal rigs. I will blog the one short animation that I have done today or Monday morning, so it will follow this post most likely.

I think I enjoy animating exaggerated performances where the poses are exaggerated, not the rigs themselves. It's not that I don't enjoy the toon rigs but they didn't do anything special for me. It seems I am still searching for that 'something' to really ignite my project. I will still be looking into creating believable character performances and I will still apply it to animations as well as undertaking case studies on existing works to analyse character performances. It seems that every time my project changes a little, I question what I'm doing in general. I still don't feel like an animator.

For the next 10 or so days leading up to the pre-production submission, I will continue to do little animations with the toon rig to fully flesh out that concept for my project. I feel that my project will stay on track with the character performance study for sure. It is a topic that really engages me. I will probably go for an exaggerated style of animation that perhaps only involves exaggeration in the performance. I also need to make my characters appear alive, make them think on their own to convince the audience that the characters have not been animated.

Slight Change in Project

Slight Change in Project

My project has slightly altered since yesterday after the mentor meetings. My project is now going to revolve more around [car]toon animation (looney tunes, Hannah-Barbera). I will still research into character performance and how to create a believable character performance and how to bring a character to life but I will just be focusing more on the style of toon. Yesterday when talking with Brian, I told him about a meeting I had early in semester one with Lynn where she commented that based on what she could remember of my animations, I had good exaggerated poses but my characters didn't quite look alive. This was the basis of my project. Brian then asked if we could analyse one of my animations that Lynn would have been talking about. So we did that and he starting talking about toon animation and how I might want to look into that style instead. 

So I will still look into how to create a believable character performance but I will be doing this in toon style. I also asked Brian how believable character performance could actually relate to toon animation and he said that it wasn't necessarily about breathing and blinking but more about a performance where the character can be seen thinking, it's about those moments in between actions sometimes when a character is thinking that make them convincing.

Summary:

My project has changed slightly; I will now work more on a toon style of animation while still looking into creating believable character performances.

Toshiro Mifune - Scene Analysis

Toshiro Mifune 

Scene Analysis

This is the second clip I am editing. It is a clip of Toshiro Mifune trying to give a woman medicine.

The film itself is from Red Beard, (1965)

The original clip that I have edited can be seen here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpvR2GuHpi8

This embedded video below is my edit of one of the scenes from the main video from YouTube.
The things I have chosen to focus on is mainly eye contact and body language. The thing that made me select this particular scene was the overall engaging performance from all of the characters.

The premise of the scene is that the female is sick and the male on the right is trying to give her some medicine; the male on the left is perhaps the husband of the female or at least a relative. They are wary of what is being offered.

Below the left male is staring at the woman, it shows that his concern is with her. As the right male pours some medicine onto a spoon, he obviously looks where he is pouring, nothing special happening here. While he is pouring though the female stares directly at the spoon showing her curiosity towards the contents being poured. This is human nature to look at the spoon at this moment, she is curious and wants to see what the male is doing.

When the right male moves the spoon over towards the woman it takes an 'S' shaped curves towards her, I can't explain this properly but I can assume that the right male did it this way to help emphasise the small spoon, much in the same way a comedic actor over acts to draw attention before a gag. The right male exaggerates his movements of the spoon so the audience have time to register his action.

It has been quite difficult to gauge where the left male is looking sometimes but here is appears he is looking at the right male as the right male offers the medicine to the female. the left male's brows are not quite down but they are not particularly up either. This to me suggests he is not being overly aggressive towards the right male but is acting assertive. He stares at the right male trying to mask his emotion which shows some distrust towards him.

Obviously the female is looking at the medicine that is being presented to her.

In this image below, the female has just hit the medicine away from the spoon. The left male naturally moves back suddenly due to the surprise while he looks at the female. He looks at the female to see her facial reaction. He does this because humans look at others faces to read emotions. He is trying to see the females face to see if she is distressed during this.

This image below has the right male sitting with the empty spoon now and the left male is still looking at the female, still trying to gauge her emotions.

He now looks at the right male with a facial expression that suggests he is taken aback by the situation.

Now as the right male pours more medicine onto the spoon, the left male then looks back at the female. His expression though seems more of unrest; he is looking at the woman because he doesn't know how she will react now as he sees her as being unpredictable.

Again, the female looks at the actions of the right male. There is also something about how the right male brings the medicine up and the spoon across while turning his head; it all just seems to click in the scene. This of course is acting and making sure the objects he is manipulating are visible and obvious to the audience.

Now the right male looks at the spoon he is moving, an obvious move to make sure he does not spill the medicine. The female also looks at the spoon to inspect what is being offered to her. The left male looks at the female still, in my opinion to gauge her reaction and to see what she is thinking.

Now as the right male moves the spoon over, the female looks at him instead of the spoon. In the context of the scene, she looks at him then back at the spoon. This is as if she is now looking to him for assurance, to see if he is being honest in his emotions and is not giving her something harmful.

Now the left male looks at the right male, perhaps to look at his intentions with the medicine. 

Here the left male looks back at the female, to look at her face to see her emotions. This male could either be the husband/relative of the female or he could be a colleague of the right male. He switches his eye focus between the two characters at times almost as if he is neutral in this situation.

Now again, his eyes change focus to the right male.

A nice head turn from the right male. This head turn in the scene makes him the focus of that particular moment, it draws the audience over to that side of the screen.

Now the left male and the female are looking for the right males next move.

They both look at the spoon (action). This also tells the audience to look at the spoon. Another note is where the female's hands are. They have been there for the whole scene; this is her closing her body off to the right male. This shows she is insecure about his presence and doesn't trust him. This fits in with the overall scene of her refusing the medicine twice before accepting it on the third time.

She keeps looking at the spoon and the left male looks back at her. He still seems to be observing this situation by looking back and forth between the other two characters.

The might male motions taking the medicine to show the female what to do when the spoon comes towards her. 

Now the left male looks at the spoon, implying he doesn't know what it is, which would mean that he is connected to the female, and not the right male.

The right male moves his head up then down a little bit to try and gesture her to lift up her head so he can get the spoon cleanly to her mouth.

Now they make eye contact, this feels like the female finally trusts the right male, she has accepted him or is at least willing to trust him in this moment.

at this point the right males jaw is open, this is hard to see but in the video you can see his jaw close into the frame below. This whole time, the left male has been looking at the female. out of concern?

The female and right male keep eye contact while she takes the medicine. This is similar to a child holding their mother's hand and looking at her while they are getting an injection. It helps to reassure them.

Now the left male is coming around to look at the female, this feels like he is curious to see what her reaction is to this medicine.

psychology of human behaviour study?

Summary:

This analysis has focused on human behaviour, I particularly focused on eye contact. The left male's eyes change focus constantly throughout the scene. If I were to animate more than one character, then I would keep this scene analysis in mind for the eye contact more than anything.

There is also a strong performance by the right male, he manages to capture the eye of the audience when he is pouring the medicine. It is the way that he exaggerates the movements but not in a pantomime way. It is subtle but effective, it shows what he is doing clearly.

After I had finished this, I looked up this film and found that the left male is the apprentice of the right male who is a doctor. This makes sense now, I thought his looks towards the woman were perhaps concern for her (some of it was I presume) but I was captivated by the way his eyes changed focus constantly and it is now clear that he was doing that in an observational way to see what his tutor was doing.