Break Down

We had to approach the project with weekly goals, uploading our progress each week. Let me break it down for you:

Week 1

By the end of the first week, we had to make sure we had our video reference footage recorded and our dope sheets prepared. I found it quite difficult to imagine poses for the clip, so I wrote the clip out, then broke it down into key words/phrases and brainstormed a few possibilities for each. Then it was just a case of seeing which flowed into each the best. See the clip below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The dope sheets always give me neck strain? It took me about 20 tedious minutes to work through the 11 second audio, and I think impatience at this stage is what threw out my lip syncing in the final week. Remember boys and girls, this should be done properly, it saves you a lot of time later on. I was just in a rush.

We also had to put together a quick character sheet.

Week 2

In the second week we moved straight into blocking out our animations, using key poses. Definitely the laziest effort this week, since all the lecturers were at this year’s Bradford Animation Festival. I took at good look at the video reference footage I had recorded, and used it to animate the character into his most important poses. Quicktime is great to use for reference, as it allowed you to scroll through frames individually. At this stage the there is only natural tweening between poses. See video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We were encouraged to use the G_male Rig.

Week 3

During the third week, all of the body movement was completed. All facial features are left untouched. I made sure to start with tidying up the largest movements, since I didn’t want to return to them afterwards, once all the fingers and smallest movements are keyframed. It really puts you off going back in, if there are keys on almost every frame. I also started to work on the eye movements and eyebrows, which would be continued in the final week.

Final Week

I was a bit worried about this final week, because I’ve not really done lip syncing before. Also, my dope sheet was a bit out of sync. It also didn’t help that I was using the video ref at the same time, so they conflicted a bit. I decided to just work with my dope sheet, then iron out afterwards. I found the timing seemed better after offsetting the sound clip by -2 frames. After a while I got a bit anal with getting the lip syncing right, to the point were I couldn’t look at it anymore. Get someone else to check it for you, it just won’t look right if you stare at it for too long. Final version is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Final Thoughts

I have no idea what to make of my lip-syncing, even now. I was concerned that I had made the animation a bit busy in the end (I was initially worried about under-animating), I think the conclusion was that I had a little over-animated.

A good friend of Andy’s, who had previously worked for Disney, came to be the main judge during our feedback assessment. He didn’t mess around, which was great. He gave everyone critical feedback. His thoughts with mine were more so to do with my choice of actions for the character, rather than the animation itself. His final point was that he felt the character turned too far away from camera towards the end. Basically all things I didn’t even notice or expect.

Well, now I’m off to sail a pirate ship.

R

We were asked to concentrate on certain qualities for this, to give the character its own thought process. It took me ages to decide on two emotions and a cause. I didn’t want to add in props, because they would require animating too. I already knew people were going to approach theirs with seeing/overhearing something off-screen, so I wanted to have him affected by something a bit different.

That’s basically when I thought, ‘what might the character be able to see near himself, but I cannot?’. Then I thought about how ridiculous people look when trying to deflect a fly or a wasp.

I instantly knew there was potential for the animation to look misleading though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sure enough, the result can be quite misleading. It does indeed look like he is wafting a fart, at least at the beginning. I decided I wasn’t too worried about this, after laughing at my screen during a playblast.

Critical feedback – I didn’t really receive any when we presented them all on the Monday morning. Aside from the heckles and sniggering, the actual feedback on the animation was quite positive. I’d say problems it has include some of the slow-down during wafts. Although contrasting speeds are good, it looks a bit unnatural in mine towards the end.

Video Reference – it helps.

After last weeks exercise, I had decided working with video reference was a good idea. I tried to over-act a little with it, although I only performed a single take. Some of the tips which I learnt in the our Acting Workshop today could of been pretty useful here. Oh, and ignore the fancy dress costume.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Next Week

Our next exercise is the main one for this unit. It involves animating to a short sound clip for this month’s 11 Second Club competition. Although we are allowed to use last month’s sound clip if we wish, it cannot be entered into the competition. More on that next week.

Lifting Animation

The aim was to animate a character lifting an object, keeping in mind the principles we have learnt up to now. These include:

• Weight
• Timing (this is what I probably struggle with most)
• Anticipation
• Balance
• Line of Action
• Silhouette
• Believability

There were a few recommended ways to approach this, such as getting into the character yourself and having someone record it. This makes sense and I probably should have made the effort to do that, although I did make sure to test out actions as I came to animating them.

The first mistake I noticed is the change in the box’s weight. In my build-up, the box appears heavier than in the actual lifting stage. I was trying to imagine it as a box of t shirts from work (a standard sized full box is usually about 23kg), which I think the initial weight was closer to. I certainly don’t lift the boxes quite as casually as my animation demonstrates.

Something else which wasn’t particularly successful, was my silhouette. Due to the large size of the box, a lot of the character was obscured from most angles during the lift. Towards the end, the box is shifted in one direction in order for my character to quickly get his hand underneath to support it. Since you can’t see the movements he makes with the other arm, it doesn’t really work.

You can see the animation below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this exercise, I started by putting in the key frames first, then adjusting the timing, then the in-betweens. I wasn’t sure if this was a good approach, so I didn’t push it too hard. Turns out this is a recommended approach to use, so I will continue to do so.

Our exercise for next week is to animate a ‘shift of mood’. This is without facial expressions; purely posture and body language. I need to decide on two emotions to convey. I’m thinking upset to angry. Or maybe excitement to embarrassment. Possibilities are endless.

Walk Cycle

Despite slowly building disdain for 3D (creating it, not watching it), I decided to animate my walk with it. I find 3D much more flexible and less frustrating on a small deadline, particularly since the model is provided for us. Although I enjoy drawing, it is very annoying and time-consuming to put all your frames together, inevitably find that you did a shit job, then have to redraw frames. With 3D, it allows for easy tweaking.

I really should of kept the animation principles in mind, since that was the purpose of the exercise. I realised upon re-watching the animation, that I had only really thought about the key poses within the walk cycle, not the little things inbetween. The result is a bit lifeless and robotic. Something else really bugged me, which I came to realise was the hips. They don’t rotate.

You can see the cycle below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our next animation exercise is to make our character lift up an object, so expect overzealous straining postures and people falling over backwards.

Sketchbook Update

Here are a few bits added to my sketchbook project, mostly based on reference photos, found using various related search terms on Flickr. If you search around there is plenty of great material to sketch from. It was also suggested that we used movies for reference. We gave a few films ago in our last group session, pausing during key shots and putting down some quick sketches.

Click here to see the completed sketchbook

Below are a couple of very quick movie references. One quick sketch from Spaced, others from Some Like It Hot. I was late to the session so I didn’t get to catch many poses.

I have never seen Some Like It Hot all the way through, but it is used in a video for one of my favourite songs. So therefore I love it. More film sketches likely to follow over the next month.

]]> http://www.royzy.co.uk/2009/10/forgot-to-animate-the-hips.html/feed 0 http://www.royzy.co.uk/2009/10/what-is-character.html http://www.royzy.co.uk/2009/10/what-is-character.html#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:22:01 +0000 Roy Nottage http://www.royzy.co.uk/?p=1373 Character has a lot of meanings depending on the context, but in this case we are talking about character in animation principles. It’s about what builds strong character and creates something believable. Character is all those little things we take for granted every day, it is built on the way we move, the way we interact. [...]]]> Character has a lot of meanings depending on the context, but in this case we are talking about character in animation principles. It’s about what builds strong character and creates something believable.

Character is all those little things we take for granted every day, it is built on the way we move, the way we interact. It can range from talking with hand gestures, to how you hold a pen. Emotions have an great effect on a person’s character. In fact, it is usually these influenced changes in character which may lead to someone asking you this question. Are you ok?

We all have very different characteristics to one another, whether they be subtle or exaggerated. Myself, for example, have an apparently distinctive walking stride. I also tend to relax in very uncomfortable looking arm positions. These sort of things you may not even notice yourself, but it is what other people will identify you by.

In narrative of almost any sort, not just animation, providing well-rounded and complex characterization is what gives the audience a sense of realism. The traits which your character show are what makes them believable. If they are weak and underdeveloped, the results will be flat and uninspiring.

Giving character is a huge task for any animator and requires a great deal of development and understanding of the character. Remember, it isn’t about the way they look: at the end of the day, you should be able to transfer that character’s mind into any human (or inhuman) shell and still be able to recognise them by their actions.

Since this was to be a walk cycle, I had to analyze my reference footage carefully to pick out the essential aspects and subtleties (that word doesn’t look like it is spelt right? It is though, I googled it) of my walking style, then possibly exaggerate them. I decided to break the video down to some key movements and overlapped them to get an idea of how my body ‘flows’, as you can see in the image above.

Something I noticed about my walk is that I literally dump my raised armed down at the passing stage. You can get a feel of the drop impact from how my wrist movement flies back. Also, my feet never come far off the ground. I almost drag the toes along the floor. It is a pretty lazy walk, with the drive really behind the legs and all other limbs are just pulled along.

The chap I used for animating is called Boy, he is not a physical likeness of myself by any means, but I think he ended up moving a lot like me. He had a pretty gay purple shirt on when I got him, but I changed that in favour of something that suited me a little more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m fairly happy with the walk, I’m not too sure what else I would of done to it, without getting some feedback first. The head movement is a tad jerky again, but not as bad as my previous cycle. The leg movement is pretty smooth, though I’m fairly confident with the legs and feet. The upper body is what I feel I need to concentrate on most. It is quite amazing how much a bit of practice can help you improve.

The traditional 2D walk cycle was numbing as ever and took probably 4 or 5 times as long as my 3D walk cycle to complete. Which would be fine if it was 4 or 5 times as good, or even just comparably good, but it is not.

Something I should of kept an eye on is the size of his head, it looks like a tumor  or an alien is rocking back and forth inside of it . Also the leg furthest away is a lot stiffer and possibly shorter at times. In fact the whole body is very stiff, which my walk is definitely not. My walk has casual swing and ultimate style. This guy looks like he is about to collapse and die. Ultimately I’m not convinced it looks much like my walk, or in fact, have any of the aspects I wanted to exaggerate. Sure it is someone walking, but it isn’t me.

Or is it? I’ve been staring at it for days, so I’m not viewing it with fresh eyes. You know why the comment box is down below people. Give me feedback.

Edit – something which Andy pointed out is his forward leaning movement is too exaggerated, which is oh so true.

Roy

The walk cycle is the latest of the 3D exercises we have undertaken. Learning to walk again is actually very interesting, unless you are doing it traditionally frame by frame on paper. At that point for me it is very tedious and frustrating. I am pretty pleased with my 3D walk cycle, hence why I am putting it at the top of this post. Put the nasty stuff at the bottom, we don’t care about that right now. Something not taken into consideration when making this walk is the gender. The character is non-specific, regardless of her the thing’s looks.

There is ultimately 5 stages in ‘the walk’:

1. Contact
2. Down
3. Passing
4. Peak Point
5. Contact

Oh yes, you read right. Contact appeared twice. That is because you need to return to the contact position (though your back foot is now your front) in order for the walk to continue. Makes sense eh? Then you do the stages again to your original position. Then repeat on a loop. See now, we are moving. Below is an image courtesy of Idleworm.

Below you can see my walk cycle. I’m quite pleased with the movement, although her upper body looks a little bit jerky. Not a great deal of subtleties either. This is something I will try and iron out of the walk cycle where I animate my own walk cycle of myself. The walk itself is a very typical walk, with no emotion intended. Looks a bit like a very young walk, in my opinion.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not a Walk Cycle

Below is not a walk cycle and it is not very good at all (but I uploaded it anyway, for you to analyze). A walk cycle loops the same movements again and again on the spot. Imagine picking up a person by their head as they walk and watching their legs spinning in the air like they are still walking. That is a walk cycle. Below the character is actually being moved across the scene (in an admittedly weird stomping stiff backed kinda way). I really should of spent more time on it, but after doing my walk cycle first, I confused myself with the process and got a bit tired of it. If I did it again I would have a much better idea of what to do though and would be quicker at it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So ok, why not just do a walk cycle instead of animating every single step of action? Surely that way you save a lot of time? Well, a walk cycle doesn’t look natural and is very easy to pick up on, because the movement is EXACTLY the same for every step, like a robot. Every step in real life is different, even if only slightly. When to use a walk cycle then? In a video game or if you are being a lazy animator.

Traditional 2D Walk Cycle

Urrrrh. Wasn’t into this traditional malarkey much, I can tell you now. Mainly because I don’t like the fact I have to draw each frame, then put them together in StopMotion Pro to find out I needed to tweak something, just a tiny bit, then have to redraw that part on each frame. Usually I won’t bother, because I would go insane. It is very tedious and time consuming for myself. It isn’t the medium I don’t like, it is just the process. It feels like the process halts the progress, particularly because I am not a fast drawer anyway and I like to pay attention to detail. With this I can’t. I just thought I’d put that out there now. I do like watching traditionally animated films, but not making them.

Below are the first 2 traditional walk cycles I did. The first is pretty nasty! For a start, I only animated half of the walk and thought nobody would notice once it was looped. Well you can clearly see it took about 5 minutes, last thing on a Monday night.

I am ashamed, particularly because I forgot I had to upload it onto my blog for you to see. I’m sorry, my third traditional walk cycle is a lot better (will be in the next post I do).

Then below I attempted sneaking. Not great, doesn’t feel like it has any weight to it. I based the movement on my imagination of someone sneaking, rather than from reference. This was probably a mistake, because the sneak looks kind of creepy. Weight is something I hopefully sorted out in my third traditional walk cycle (one of myself). Bet you can’t wait to see it. Edit: – You can now see my latest [ walk cycle ] post.

Well those are my first attempts at walk cycles. 1 out of 4 I find acceptable. Think I better try harder next time. I’ll quickly write my next walk cycle post. Oh yeah, to finish, look at this first thing we did in Maya at the start of term, not walking, but jumping.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not much weight in that either. What I am glad about though is that I can see a big improvement as I complete each exercise we have done. I think that is why I am a bit surprised at the work above, because I have improved since and can now see where I went very wrong.

Roy

• Timing
• Squash and Stretch
• Anticipation
• Overlap
• Performance

Weight was also mentioned, but Andy feels that weight is something taken into consideration when covering the above principles anyway.

Timing

First principle we looked at was timing, using 12 postcards to animate a sequence as previously seen my first digital animation post. Timing comes with practice, which was comforting to know, since my timing isn’t that sharp in the exercises I have completed so far. Georg mentioned, after seeing the animation below in my tutorial, that ‘the eye’ is very cliché. Like the lens flare of the Photoshop world. Which I thought was quite interesting, because it was the idea which appealed most to me at the time, and I found that other ideas I had considered, some people in the class had done for theirs.

Squash and Stretch

Bounce, bounce. The classic bouncy ball animation. There is a slight pause in the image below as the ball raises back into the air, normally it does look more fluid. Squash is quite simply when an object makes impact or puts pressure on something. Stretch covers the idea that whilst something moves at speed, its shape either appears to , or literally does, change shape. Even if the object does not ‘really’ change shape, we do it so that the eye perceives it as motion blur.

I started to stretch my ball a little early, making it look like it has been slammed down, which wasn’t my intention. I kept the volume of the ball consistent though, which is very important for a realistic feel.

Anticipation

Apparently we don’t just float into the air when we jump, I understand from this principle that anticipation of an action is probably more important than the action itself. For example, the build up to a punch, as a persons raises their fist and pulls it back, ready to throw the punch, requires more animation than the punch itself. The punch itself may only be a frame or 2, since it passes so fast.

I probably had too many frames in the jump, since his descent is a bit slow. Andy said he felt it was a bit mechanical and didn’t feel very dynamic. When looking at other peoples, then my own, my one did look a bit stiff. And I didn’t give him arms, I forgot that minor detail.

Overlap

Overlap is the resulting end of the action, like when you jump forward, the part when your upper body lurches forward slightly as you land. I’m not entirely sure what my character is doing as he lands. What was supposed to be a slightly stumble as he lands, turned into him gently stroking the floor with his hand. I struggled to visualize him landing, since he appears to be jumping sideways. I didn’t want to do it from a side angle, because you lose some of the character (well, one of his arms).

Andy actually mentioned in the follow up lesson to the class that silhouettes are very important, and that it should be clear, for example, what a character is doing even if the character is completely filled in black. Negative space around the character (under the arms, etc) will help make the characters pose more distinctive. So I think that is what I had in mind when I did it, although whether it shows, I’m not sure.

Performance

The most recent principle covered involved using a secondary character. We had to provoke emotion in a viewer by making them sympathize with a character who has been treated unfairly. I went for a small child trying to seek attention from the mother and then being hit and ushed away by her.

I haven’t had feedback yet on this one, but I will say now I think I should of added more frames. It isn’t clear enough that he steps onto tip-toe to poke her, which was probably the bit I was most looking forward to see. I could of held that pose for a few frames even. I put emphasis on the anticipation of the hitting, with only 2 frames for the actual act. I think that bit, and the ushing away worked well. There is a good flick of the wrist I reckon.

Tomorrow we are getting an ‘informal’, yet ‘critical’, review. Yet it isn’t graded. Or something. I will blog about it when I have had it, because I don’t understand yet.

Stay tuned.

Maya seems only to be a good thing to people in my group that had used it before the course. Anyone newly discovering it seems to hate it with a passion. This to be honest, did not surprise me. If you are thrown into the software without having known what to expect, it can be very daunting. Buttons everywhere, labeled with words and symbols which mean nothing to you. I had not used Maya before, but I have some reasonable comfort using 3DsMax as I was introduced to it when I was younger. I’m no pro with Max, but I know my way around the basics and anything demonstrated in the tutorials (which come with the software). I’d say I know 3D ‘theory’ pretty well, across the board, but have little experience putting it into practice. Which is what it is all about in the end.

My aim (across a realistic time span): is to become as proficient as possible using 3D software, though with the concentration on the ground covering package Maya.

I have a strong understanding already of Photoshop and some of the main Adobe packages (Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc) though unfortunately not including Flash, which is one of those programs ‘I said I would’ get around to learning years ago.

I have now got a copy of the heavily emphasized ‘Personal Learning Edition’ of Maya, so I have the ability to work my way around it from home. I noticed you can only save out as a special file type, which not doubt can’t be opened in the full version of Maya. No fooling the boys at Autodesk it seems. You appear to be able to open .mb files and others from the full version, so you can still bring stuff in. Haven’t tried a Playblast yet, though I expect it will be covered in ‘Not For Commercial Use’ just like everything else in this version of the program.

Will be uploading work more thoroughly next week, I got into trouble for not uploading all my stuff to my blog. I’ve been warned.