Posters

So I've been working on a few posters for the set, these will be used to show that our director has had a career before this and it will help support the idea that he has a reputation that he wants to defend.
The posters I have done so far are parodies of the film "Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind", I also had a go at some of the most famous musicals out there, such as;
"Mamma Mia" & "The phantom of the opera".

Not sure how many I will be making, but it's better to have a few to choose from. But then again, I haven't got to much time to spend on this either.

Anyway, here are the posters I made today:

Green-screen studio with a professional voice-actor

So today we where in the green-screen studio to do the final reference shots for the mime-task. Siobhan had arranged it so that the voice actor came in to do a rough run-through on the off-sceen voice. It was fantastic! Working with a professional voice-actor was such a great experience and it made our performance so much better as well!

It was almost like a real audition sice it was a person you just met yelling out things for you to do on stage. Really a enjoyed today's session.

James (the voice-actor) seemed to be quite happy with the planning we had done for today's shoot and he didn't have anything to add or thought we could get rid of. He told us the idea was simple and funny so we where really happy about that. We told him to use the written dialogue as a reference so he was more than welcome to do some improv if he felt like it. He added a few things after the mimes where done performing which made some nice transitions between the acts.
Looking forward to working with him again!

When I got home I edited the reference material we shot and added some simple sound effects.
So here is "Who's mime is it Anyway" 's reference video:

"The artist"- Research and a treat

So the group decided to go see the five time Academy Award-winner "The artist" today.
This was both for research, but also to take a break from work. The reason this is research is
that the film is a silent-film, so they used all the old tricks from silent-films back in the 20's and 30's to make the audience understand what was happening. This included black slides with text to explain either sounds or dialogue, but also the music added really made this film shine in my opinion. It really made me understand how important sound is to a film, even though the characters didn't speak the music they chose for the scenes explained the mood. For instance a up-beat jazz for the entertaining and funny bits and a more dramatic classic track for the big emotional scenes.

I must admit I thought it was a bit strange in the beginning, but I dapated quite quickly and it proves that dialogue in the shape of sound and voices aren't necessary to tell a story. Of course the acting needs to be everything but subtle at times to get the point through, but for emotional scenes like the ones we see between the main characters, George Valentin and Peppy Miller the sound is almost unnoticeable and they just stare into each-others eyes and you know what these two are thinking. (as Ed Hooks would say; if two people stare at each-other for more than then seconds their either going to make love or fight.)

The film's plot is:

"Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break."

(Quote: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/)


The story is sort of the classic "boy meets girl", but in this case it is the woman who is the one that wants to take care and protect the man, which I guess is a bit unusual for that type of story.
- But this is just "the big picture".
George is indeed a very independent man, he is too proud to admit that if he wants to continue being a film-star he needs to swallow his pride and adapt to the new "talking films".
He strongly believes that this is just a trend and that it will fade away as quickly as it came and that everybody else is wrong.
The aspiring young dancer Peppy on the other hand is open for change and goes along with it.
A decision that quickly pays off.

The story itself is good, a classic with a twist, but I read it a bit too quickly. Meaning I saw what would cause the conflict between the main characters before it happened, and I also saw the big build up moment at the ending long before it actually "appeared on screen". (won't spoil what it is in case you want to go see it). But I guess the story has to be a bit easier to read when it is a silent-film, just to get the story through to the audience.

My favourite character in this film is George, he is both a bit arrogant and emotional at the same time - And so charismatic. If women don't fall head over heels for this guy then something is really wrong.

The character has his golden-period in the beginning where he is a star and at the beginnging in the film he is at the screening of his latest film, he walks out and gets his applause, people a cheering and clapping and he soaks it all in. He gets his dog out on the stage, (which also acted in his latest film) and shows off with tricks in front of the crowd. While this is happening he totally ignores his female co-star and she has to wait to the very end before he goes over and drags her on stage - She is quite unhappy. So here George is the star and he knows it.

So he has this attitude towards women that is less than fortunate, but people still adore him. He ignores his wife, and their relationship seems to be built on looks and money.

But when things get worse for his career, he ignores it and believes it will all go away. But he clearly gets more and more affected by the fact and this is where his emotional side really shows. And this is where I really found the character interesting. He completely changes, and becomes this broken man who pushes everybody he loves away from him.


Other interesting things I found was the use of facial expressions. There is a lot of "acting with the face", which really works for this kind of film. Every smile is a bit bigger, eyebrows are lifted a bit higher and subtle expressions are exaggerated. But this just helps sell the performance.

It was also a fantastic source for reference to the mime-task since mimes "act with their face".
The lecture we had today was about psychological gestures also made me look extra hard on the body-language in the film and there where some good examples of "self soothing" (stroking their arms, touching neck and so on) in the film. Useful stuff for our mimes performances!

The film was all in all very good! I think it deserved those awards, it is fantastic that a silent-film can win five Oscars in 2012.

I suggest you have a look at this link if you haven't seen the film yet:

The Artist | The Weinstein Company

It's the official page for the film ad includes a entertaining teaser that hopefully makes you want to go see the film. (That is if I haven't spoiled too much for you already, in that case I'm sorry.. Hehe.)

Rough stage direction sheet for Alfonso

Here is a rough outline of what I think Alfonso will be doing in his performance on stage.
I kept it rough and short just to have room for improv in tomorrows Green-Screen session with the voice-actor. Will probably have to do some changes to it so a more detailed version might be useful later, but at this point I won't decide to much of the action.
Here is the stage direction-sheet I made:

Posing in Maya, some sketches & the Oscars

So far I haven't had time to do much work in Maya, but as I mentioned in a earlier post I try to do make time for it between all the other work. So far I have done some tests such as the bouncing ball and a less successful 180 turn with a character. The reason the turn was unsuccessful was that I had not quite figured out the quick-selection tools so when I keyed my poses some of the rig's controllers weren't included. But I learned something from it so even though I threw it all away in the end.

I also got an early-version of Alfonso to practice with
(modified Morpheus free rig)
so I have been posing him when I have had time.

I also managed to locate the render-button in Maya! Hehe..
So, here is a pose that shows Alfonso's personality and mood:



I have also done a few sketches today:





I must also mention that I watched the Oscars and that "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" won best animated short-film!
(I posted this video on the blog a couple of weeks ago)
It is such a beautiful piece of animation and so well executed. They really did a great job on that film and they truly deserved that award.

"Rango" took the award for best animated feature and I'm glad that it did, among a motion captured "Tintin", the sequel to Kung Fu Panda and the spin of "Puss in Boots" it was truly a fresh breath to the category.

- Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both "Kung Fu Panda 2" and "Puss in Boots", but "Rango" was my personal favourite of this years nominees.
Not only because of the film itself, but also because it impressed me in the way it was made.

Director Gore Verbinski had previously done live action films, such as the "Pirates of the Caribbean"-trilogy and "The Ring" so he didn't have much experience with character animatied features. He actually shot the character-scenes in "Rango" with all the actors inside a room in a studio and then gave the footage to the animators to use as reference when they where to start animating the shots.
A solution that is, let's say;
Less common in the animation industry today.
(usually the actors voices are recorded and then the animators animate to the soundclips. Much like we do on the MA-course).

So well done to all the people involved in those two films!

I was also happy too see that there where a couple of independent features among the nominees.
"A Cat in Paris" and "Chico & Rita."
Both are traditional hand-drawn animations and both where foreign-language films. (which apparently is a first for the Oscars).

- So a big step in the right direction if you ask me!

Great way to "freshen up" on the animation principles

A fun explanation of the animation principles by Animschool.com:



This are several clips from lectures used at animschool, but they released this video for public viewing. The interesting thing is that several professional animators worked on the animation pieces in this video. I found the video both useful and entertaining. A good way to keep the principles fresh in mind!

I also found this webinar where animator Jeff Gabor takes us through his work-flow in the shot that he animated for the video above.



Great stuff!

Empathy vs. Sympathy

So I have started to research my subject for the presentations next week. I'm trying to find time between the other tasks to do as much prep-work on this as possible. know I'm gong to be busy as soon as the animation-process starts, especially since I'm also trying to learn Maya at the same time. (I know, what was I thinking.. Hehe. I think it will end up being worth it in the end though!)

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So, for my presentation I got "Creating empathy not sympathy", so today I have tried to find the best way to explain this, because it seems that sympathy and empathy are two of the most common misunderstood terms in the English language and they are often used as synonyms. (Which is wrong).

The simplest way of explaining Empathy vs. Sympathy is that sympathy means feeling FOR someone
and empathy is feeling WITH someone.

Both sympathy and empathy are acts of feelings, but you only actually feel something when you empathize with someone. You can feel sorry for someone (sympathy), but that does not necessarily mean you that you understand what the person is going through emotionally.

So there is a big difference between the two.

Ed Hooks describes empathy and sympathy in his book " Acting for Animators":

Sympathy: You feel sorry for someone.
Empathy: You share the feeling of sorrow, You identify with it.

For example; a husband and wife are standing in the kitchen making dinner. The husband suddenly cuts his finger while chopping onions. The wife walks over to make sure he's okay.
- She identifies with his emotional reaction to the injury.

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He also refers to one of Charlie Chaplin's films, "The Gold Rush" when explaining the subject:

When Chaplin's character the LittleTramp got his foot stuck in a bucket he tried to shake it off - but he would look around too see if anybody was looking at him, he was afraid someone might notice him - which would be embarrassing.
As an audience we emphasize with him, we identify with the feeling of embarrassment because we have all got our foot stuck in a figurative bucket at some point in our life.

- I would love to show the clip to illustrate this, but I couldn't find it anywhere on-line. But the point Ed Hooks explains is quite clear.

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A clip I would like to show though, is RSA animate 's take on the subject and on "The Empathic Civilisation":



This was a very useful video for my research on the subject, and the way it is presented is just fantastic. It's just a man with two markers and a whiteboard - drawing to help us understand what the narrator tells us.

I would like to point out the most useful information I got out of this video.
Again, I need to refer to Ed Hooks once more because; During his Masterclass he pointed out that humans act to survive - From the moment we are born to the moment we take our last breath we "fight" to stay alive. It's primal, it's the most basic of instincts.

In the video they refer to this as "The first drive" - The drive to belong
(an empathetic drive)

I also found the evolution of empathy in humans very interesting.
The short version is:

A Baby:
If a baby in a nursery starts crying, the other babies will start crying.
This is called emphatic distress – built into our biology.

Ca. 2,5 years old:
Children start to recognize themselves in the mirror - mature empathy.

(And when they can identify with themselves, they know that if they are observing someone else having a feeling – they know they are feeling something and that this is because someone else has it. Example: A father steps on a toy-car - the child can emphasize with the feeling of pain.

Around 8 years old:
A child learns about birth and death. They learn where they came from, they have one and only life and that it is fragile.

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A lot of information to process, but it's very interesting.
I will probably use some of this in my presentation, but since the subject isn't actually to explain empathy, but more showing examples of it's presence in live action and animation
I won't be able to use all his interesting information that I found.
I therefore decided to write a post explaining empathy and sympathy.

- And hopefully you found if not whole, but at least parts of this fairly long post useful.

First draft for the directors dialogue

So here is my first attempt at the directors dialogue. I'm guessing this will change when we get the professional voice-actor in, but it is at least an outline of what I imagine it might sound like.



If your having trouble reading the text in the image I'll write it down here too:


"MIME AUDITION" - ON STAGE: ALFONSO

THE DIRECTOR
Okay, nr.7 Could you do a box
please? 
Hey Einstein, That's a rope. I
wanted to see a box.
Do you even understand what I'm
saying?
Do a BOX!
What's wrong with this guy?
Okay, now show me a box.
Cuuut!
I said CUT!
Stop!

"MIME AUDITION" - ON STAGE: ROSSINI

THE DIRECTOR
You wouldn't happen to have a box
in that suitcase would you?
Ah, yes. That's clearly a box.
Now, what else can you do?
Yeah, I get it. It's a box. Move
on, sir.
A for fu..
Seriously, Is that all you can do?
Try thinking outside the box would
ya'?
Come on! Enough with the stupid
box, already.
Oh, yeah.. You walk away. Hurt your
feelings did I?

"MIME AUDITION" - ON STAGE: TONY
Okay, third time lucky.
Do a rope.
*mumbling* Alright..
Now, it pulls you!
Aha.. A box. I'd like you to do a
box.
Now, make it bigger.
Biggeeer...
Come on, BIGGER!
Haha..
Oh. Hey, where are you going?
....
Is he having a laugh?
Hey, come back!
What number was he?
Did anybody see what number he was?
Hey Romeo, I was just messing with
you.
Please, come back!

Character profile: The Director

Today I worked out the profile for our director-character. Even though he is just "a voice" in the actual piece, he is still very important. The director is in a way our main character, he is "the star" in the film. If we use Ed Hooks' formula for telling a story:

Action -> Obstacle -> Objective

The action is to watch the mimes do their auditions and the objective is to find the right mime for he role. The mimes in our film are actually the obstacle (along with the directors personality)
It is what prevents him from reaching his objective.

When I sat down to write the profile I needed a name for our director to make it easier for me to write the story. I decided to name him "Gary Resvick". The name is an anagram of
"Ricky Gervais" (which was our main source of reference for this character),
I thought that this would be a fun addition to the story.

Anyway, here is the character profile for Gary:






And here is the character's development in the scene:

Final designs for the scene

So we decided to divide the design work to get it done as quick as possible. We all had a few suggestions to the designs, but Em is now in charge of the character-designs and I took on the scene/set-design.
So today I started working on the changes to the scene.
Em mentioned that it needed to look a bit more seedy.
(must admit I had no idea what that meant, being Norwegian and all.. Hehe.)

But I found a solution and it sounded like the rest of the group was satisfied with the result.

I made a 3/4 perspective-, a front/cam- and a top-view so that it will be easier to model the scene.

Here is an image showing all the views together along with an asset-list:



and here are the images with desaturated coulors and in full size:





I enjoyed making the posters for the scene, it was fun coming up with the titles.

(The reason I put posters with dates on them in there was to show that our director-character has had a bit of success before this audition as well).

Green Screen Studio

So today we had a rehearsal/reference shoot for our mime-task. Siobhan arranged so we could go in earlier than scheduled so we could get it done and then continue to work on the other things we need for the planning.
Raf and Rachel showed up today as well, not completely sure why (I mean, the session was at 10 and they could technically stay in bed..Hehe)
But it was quite nice to have an audience so we got some feedback on the the more funny parts of the story.

We shot about two-three takes each on the characters, so we got a lot of reference. (We all had a couple of takes on each)
What we quickly realized was that certain bits needed to be cut out since we where passing the one minute mark in some of the shots.
So we took out some of the unnecessary actions and ended up acting it out in about 30 seconds for each shot, which is perfect since we are aiming for about a minute and a half in total.

Afterwards we went to a mac-lab and got our footage. We decided that we would all have a go at editing a version of the "film" and then compare these afterwards to see which actions we have included. That way we can see if there is some consistency in the different versions. (The idea is that the reference material that is used most is probably the best)
- We'll build on that to create our final reference.

So here is my version of the mime-audition:



It's a bit confusing cut this way, since there are three different people acting as one. But these are the shots I thought worked best. And it works nice when you are scrubbing through the frames to find the key-poses.

A rough outline of the characters design

This is roughly how I picture Alfonso:



He is based on the live action actors I mentioned, but this is the main reference image for his appearance:



(it's the image that seemed to fit best when I searched for "Argentinian man".
The image is taken from: http://bit.ly/zNzVp3 )

A short description of the actual scene

This is how I think the scene could play out for my character. This is mainly reference for tomorrows rehearsal in the green-screen room and there is probably going to be some changes. But we decided within the group that it's good to have something planned out before we go in and starts to act it out.

The character development in the scene

Based on the information I wrote in the character profile I was able to write down how my character would behave and react within the scene:

Full character profile for "the amazing Alfonso"

Live action actors - References

I have been looking for actor-references for the mime-character I am creating, but narrowing it down to one has been really hard. The previous post had some of the attitude I wanted on stage, but I found that I needed more to base my character on.

So after a lot of research I found that by merging three actors I might have the key-elements I want to base my character on.

For the characters energy and his mood (joyful and always smiling, happy and so on)
I have been looking at Jim Carrey. It's interesting to see him act like this without actually playing a character in a film. (I wouldn't use any of the parts he's played as reference, since these are often a bit too extreme - so I found this clip very useful since it's just him being himself).



Robin Williams is very interesting, because his power-centre is basically the exact same as on my mime-character, Alfonso. If you observe him when he walks across the stage you can clearly see that his chest is leading when he walks, but not in a threatening or arrogant way. His powercenter is just placed that high. It's also a good reference since my character is about the same age, which shows that an older gentleman can still be very energetic on stage.



For the whole look of the character I picture him a bit like Antonio Banderas, a very kind looking man which also seem to have experienced a lot in his life.

My character

Been doing research on the new character today. I am still working on the profile, but to give you an introduction the idea is:

He is a guy called Alfonso and he's Argentinian. He does not speak a word of English, but he's a quite famous street performer back in Argentina. He is always happy, enthusiastic and loves his job as a mime.
In the scene he will cause trouble because he does not understand the director's directions, but he still keeps doing his act since he understands it is in fact an audition.

The full profile will come later, but just to give you some examples of the kind of personality I want to give him I'll show you two clips. (These are Norwegian, but it doesn't involve any dialogue, at least none of any importance.)

This shows some of the facial expressions and sort of enthusiasm I want to try and achieve with my mime-character. The clip is a sketch from a Norwegian comedy-show where they just made up an act to a Dutch song, the cast in this show had no idea what the song was about since none spoke Dutch, so they came up with a sketch to match with the song:



This is another sketch by a another Norwegian comedian, I think this is a great sketch because it has no dialogue and it's really simple and funny.



This is one of several sketches this comedian has of his his character called "the Scot". The character is a Scottish man living in Norway and he constantly gets into trouble because he can't quite understand the language.
- I personally love the ending of this clip, the other guy is obviously furious because he plays with the dog, but he just does a little dance and a song and is still as happy as can be.

Scene concepts

Earlier today we had a meeting and decided that the scene should be a stage regardless of which idea we chose to go for. So I went away from the concept I worked on earlier which was more like an audition held in a office. The early concept for that idea looked like this:



We discussed that we might like it to be a stage with a brick-wall in the background and maybe a spotlight in the middle where the performance will take place. I started researching the classic theatre scenes to look at different styles, but I also had this idea of the classic American stand-up/comedy-club stage. The typical round stage, the red curtains, a brick-wall with a logo/name of club and a microphone in the middle of the stage. So I put together some images I found and made a reference-sheet for me to look at. So I tried to merge the classical theatre together with the comedy-club to try and make it a bit different.

Here is my reference-sheet:



I then made my concepts for the scene:

The stage:



w/sign in background:



And a dirty and worn down stage:



Em is doing some as well so we'll have a look at the concepts together as a group later on.
We might end up picking bits and pieces from the versions and include them in the final one, but at least we have some options to chose from now.

Research on auditioning

After some research I have found some key-elements we cam include into the character-designs in the mime-animation to make it easier for the audience to understand that it is a mime doing an audition. The classic "mime-look" is quite easy to read;


(Image taken from: http://ciappara.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/mime-types/ )


Features like; facepaint, a hat of some kind and stripy clothes and white gloves are well known to us and adding this to the design clearly shows that it is in fact a mime.
But how do you show that it is a mime auditioning for a part and not just a mime performing his act?

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post I have found some key-elements that might help solve this problem.
Within the group we discussed that we could have a sign stating "audition today" or something similar in the beginning of the animation to easier get the point trough to the audience.

But, when the pieces are shown on their own, for instance as part of our showreel
(without the beginning and the sign showing) - how do we then make it clear that it is a mime auditioning for a part?

Well, after looking through a lot of images from different auditions I found that the people auditioning often have a number, a sticker or sign of some kind showing their ID for that audition. This is done so the people watching does not have to take notes of their name, but can re-watch the tape afterwards and find the actor through their number later on.
So by adding this to our mime-design I think it will be easier to understand that it is an audition. (Even without the off-screen sound.)

I'm including an image I made that shows examples of auditions and the
performers "wearing" numbers:

The animatics

Today has been used on finishing the animatics for our two ideas. I made rough drawings in photoshop which I then edited and tried to time roughly in premiere. It's been hard to stage/pose this since there is no props or other visual aids to help tell the story. But when we get the offscreen sounds of the director's voice it will all be a bit more clear. I added a short description to each of them here to help you understand what's happening.

(I need to work more on making it as clear as possible without the off-screen sound when we decide on one idea, because it is a mime-act so sound is not supposed to be necessary).

- Anyway, here is the animatics as they look at the moment:

"The Western" idea:



(Character is nervous, sneaks inside a bar and orders a drink. He spots a pretty girl, but when she looks at him he pretends he wasn't looking. He decides to give it a shot and tries to buy her a drink, but she's with another man who spots him trying to hit on his girl. Our hero drops his "bottle" in the floor. The man approaches our "hero" and they draw "guns". Our hero is terrified and tries to cover his eyes while aiming his "gun" at the approaching man.)

"The Superhero" idea:



(Our hero is cocky/arrogant and leaps heroic into the scene. A baby is in danger and he quickly grabs it with one hand, throws it up in the air and catches it with the other. He tries to entertain the terrified baby and calm it down. Suddenly, danger! A meteor is headed towards them. He glances up at it, not too bothered since he is fearless and "awesome". He continues to entertain the baby with funny faces while the meteor is getting dangerously close. At the last minute he puts one arm out and the impact makes him slightly move his upper body to one side, like someone gently pushed him. He looks down at the meteor and then turns his attention back to the baby.)

They are both drawn quite rough, but I must admit that I have used quite a lot of time on them anyway, it ended up with over 30 seperate drawings for each animatic. So it would have been a bit easier if we already had decided on a idea and only had to make an animatic for that.. But since we are struggling to decide we found it best to make them both and let the audience help us decide when we show it in class on Wednesday.

My mime-characters

So, I've worked on the questions we "asked ourselves" about the mime's reaction to the scenario and this is the way I picture it:

As promised I'm posting the notes from our group meeting yesterday:

These where the ideas we put down for the Western- and Superhero-scenarios to further develop each idea and we also added character-personalities for the mimes in each scenario.

Lastly we asked questions for everything that happens in the scene to find out how our personalities would react, but also if they would actually work in the scenario.

For instance, a really shy character would probably not be a good fit in a audition for a superhero, since it's less likely that he would go to such an audition in the first place.. (hope that made sense..)

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The Western:

The mimes: One scared/nervous, one clumsy and one cocky/"full of himself".

1. He's the "new guy" in town who enters a saloon and heads to the bar to order a drink.
(In what manner does he enter the swinging doors?)
(In what manner does he order a drink?)

2. He spots a pretty girl, but she's with another man.
(How does he notice her?)
(How does he get her attention?)

3. The other man catches him "eye-balling" his girl and approaches. You draw your gun.
(What is his reaction to the man approaching?)
(How does he draw his gun?)


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The Superhero

The mimes: One theatrical, one nervous/clumsy and one cocky/arrogant.

1. The superhero enters the scene to save a baby.
(In what manner does he enter the scene?)

2. The superhero saves the baby.
(Where is the baby?)
(How does he save the baby?)

3. The superhero senses danger. (meteor)
(In what manner does he sense danger?)

4. Superhero gets ready to stop the meteor coming to earth (and saving the world).
(How does he react to the news of a meteor coming?)
(What does he do with the baby?)
(How does he prepare himself to stop it?)

5. He gets rid of the meteor and saves the day (and the world).
(How does his body handle the impact of stopping the meteor?)
(How does he get rid of the meteor?)
(How is his reaction once its all over?)

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- After this was done we played around/acted out different ideas on each scenario to make it easier for ourselves to picture how the storyboard would look for each of the characters.

(The reason we played/acted out the personalities of the actors/mimes beforehand was so that we had some ideas to include when we got home to work on the storyboard by ourselves).

We also wrote down the character-descriptions on pieces of paper and put them in a hat so that we had an equal shot on each of the personalities. We then swapped because Em got to similar personalities for both scenarios. I ended up with scared/nervous mime for the western- and cocky/arrogant for the Superhero-Scenario.

Next task at hand will be t work out the storyboard, and more importantly: Choose one of the ideas above. We might end up pitching both in class on Wednesday, just to see which one is better since we are having some troubles deciding on one within the group.

(Also: thanks to Scott for handing me the notes so I also could write them on my blog)
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- Oh, yes before I forget:

Scott has also modified the textures on the "Morpheus rig" into a mime-look:



(Image taken from: Scott John Ramsay's blog)

This is a free rig from Josh Burton - one of the animators I frequently follow both on vimeo and twitter at the moment. He's work is amazing because he's both a rigger and he animates. So all he's rigs are very animator-friendly, since he builds them to an animators preferences.

(the rig can be found at: http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp)

(You can also read his blog/journal at: http://journal.joshburton.com/)

By the way:
He recently also worked on a fantastic short called;
"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" and you can have a look at that here:

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Such a great film. It's beautiful to look at, the animation is solid and the whole mood of the film is just fantastic. The story is also so well written. Overall it's one of the best short-films I've seen in years.

The first group-meeting

Today we had the first group-meeting for the mime-task. We all met up at Uni and started to work on the ideas. We decided on the "annoying director" idea, but we changed so the concept is more of a general audition for a film. We went through different classic film-genres like; Sci-fi, Horror, Mystery/Thriller, Rom/Com, Western and "Superhero". After pitching ideas in all the genres we found the western and superhero concept most interesting. So we then went on to further develop these two. So far we haven't quite decided which one to go for, since we have found fun and interesting parts to include in both genres. The one thing we do know though is that it will be an audition and that there are three mimes with three different personalities trying to get the same part in a film.

The personalities are quite different so this will hopefully create a nice sense of contrast in the film.

I will upload the details in a later post since I haven't got the notes at hand at the moment.

Developing ideas

Scott and I went to a café after the gym this morning and sat down to try and develop the idea for the mime further. We both like the concept of "mimeland", but we had some concerns about the audition part of the idea. So we sat down and started to throw out suggestions and after a few silly ideas and some laughs there was a moment where it felt like it all came together. The idea is to make it into an audition for a film, and the off-screen voice is a overambitious and slightly ridiculous director that yells out scenarios that the mime's has to act out. And as the mime finishes his act, the next one gets an even worse scenario to act out. Not sure if it should end with a mime break out of character and show his frustration or if he is going to impress the director so much that he gets the part.
Anyway, this is still work in progress and it might not be the idea we go for, it's just the idea we worked on today.

Em could unfortunately not make it in to town today, but we have kept her up to speed on what we did and we are all meeting at Uni tomorrow and will continue developing the ideas. I guess the goal for tomorrow should be to decide on a final concept so that we can get the story down on paper and start working on the storyboard and plan it further.

Otherwise I have also animated a bit today, or to be honest animating is stretching it a bit. I have just done really basic stuff like bouncing balls and some posing. But it's all been done in Maya and it's slowly starting to make a bit more sense.. I've also borrowed the "How to cheat in Maya 2010" from Scott so been reading up on some stuff in that too. Hopefully I'll be able to learn enough so that I won't struggle too much when we start animating the tasks.

The mime - Early concepts

Here are some rough scene concepts for the mime-animation I have made:

A park:



Kid's birthday party:


Half-time entertainment during basket-match:



A dark basement in a club:



"Crossing a bridge" - (Fairytale):



These are all rough ideas, but the problem I have is including the audition-part of it. It could be auditioning to get the job as a entertainer in most of the cases, but in the fairytale the troll is an obstacle and the audition would have to be changed to an attempt to get across the bridge. (these are issues we need to discuss in the group and talk to Siobhan about).

I showed these to Scott today and we both like the fairytale/mimeland idea best.

But when I got home today I laid down on the bed and tried to think of other ideas, so after an hour or so I came up with some new concepts to pitch to the group.
Here are some sketches of the parts/jobs/roles that the mimes can be auditioning for:






-That's it for tonight.

Acting for Animation

Since the last post there has been a lot going on, it was Animex-week! Won't go more in detail about it than telling you that it was fantastic, as usual. I attended almost all the talks and I got to speak to some really interesting people both in the lounge and after the talks. I also attended The "Acting for animators Master-class" with Mr. Ed Hooks, it was such a great experience and I learned a lot from it! (Also showed him my presenter-animation for feedback like last year, always helps to get his point of view on it).

So, back to the important part of this post: The new module!
It's called; "acting for animation"
and there are three tasks in this module, these are:

Mime Audition - ( Group task where we in teams of three shall produce a short film consisting of three individual animation pieces featuring three mime characters. The pieces will be assembled to make the final short. I have teamed up with Em and Scott.)

Two character dialogue - (11 Second club) This will be a challenge, I haven't animated two characters in the same shot since last years creative animation module and that was just simple characters without any particular acting and no lip sync what so ever.

Presentation - We will do another presentation; This time it's on the acting-principles. We all picked subjects from a hat (literally) and I got "Achieving empathy not sympathy".
I think my notes from Ed Hooks workshop will be useful here.

The "scariest" part of this module is that I am going to use Maya for the first time. I have been using 3DsMax for nearly 4 years now and I'm very comfortable with it and I feel I know my way around the software. The reason for the change is that I want to become a better character animator and I need to add more personality to my characters, but 3dsMax only have two functional free rigs it just gets tiresome to look at the same rig all the time - they are also less appealing to look at than other rigs.
Maya is also a bit more angled towards film-animation than Max, so that's also a reason to try and change.

The group for the mime is set-up so that we have one Maya-animator (Scott) who can help me and Em to learn the software faster. It will also make it easier to assemble the individual animations in the end if everything is done in the same software, because at the moment we are using three different software's.

- I have been playing around in Maya for the last couple of days in addition to looking through some tutorials. So with a lot of work and even more help I'll hopefully be able to figure out the basics and most important parts over the next couple of weeks.
(Also; Em and I have already decided to work together on the MA-project so we want to use Maya for this as well).

All the clips are found in the AP 2 page at the top

Final thoghts

So, Animation Practice 2 is done and I figured I'd write down some thoughts on how it's been.

Honestly I have enjoyed it a lot, these have been really fun tasks to work on and that has been important since we spend so much time working on it.

I won't dig too deep into details, but I just want to say that these tasks seem to be making us all into better animators. I mentioned it before, but I have learned so much over the past weeks working on these. Especially the song and dance. And that made it even easier to avoid problems in the presenter.
I have also learned that my characters don't need to move ALL the time, so hopefully a lot of the "drift/floatiness" has disappeared from my animations as well. I actually see a difference myself.

I also used this knowledge to revisit the lip sync and went over the curves again and personally I think it looks a bit better in the version I handed in than it did in the last show & tell I brought it to.

The song and dance where supposed to have a cam-cut to emphasise the characters wink to the audience, but I tried it out today and the cut where just to rough and made the whole piece seem a bit distracting. So I left it out.

Lastly I want to add some sketches I did while rendering the tasks;








All the tasks are found in the AP2 page at the top, (remember to watch it in HD)

-And enjoy!

(Btw: The time/date on the blog is as mentioned earlier completely wrong, so just in case; it's Friday and it's 11:45 PM)