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.