Brief update!

Just a short post to tell you what I'm up to. Got feedback on the presenter today, and as to my question about moving into linear-mode I got the okay after I sorted out some of the drifts in the beginning. Otherwise there weren't any changes or suggestions mentioned, so I sorted the "drifting" when I came home.

I'm now working on getting it to work in linear. I wish I had a bit more time, since it feels a bit rushed, but I'm jumping back to stepped when I hit a problem, so that helps. But I need to make it work in linear now, it's already 11:30PM on Tuesday so it's not a lot of time left. (btw. Blogspot's date/time is completely upside down so I know that it won't match the post-date/time) I'm working constantly so hopefully I'll be able to finish it in time!

Tried to upload two wip-clips, but youtube seems to be unable to read my preview-file. Well, it was the ones I showed in the "Show & tell" today anyway so I will rather try it again later with an updated file.

Lesson learnt

I took a break from animating at one point today and saw some more Keith Lango tutorials, and as I got about midway in the one on detail I realized how much detail I actually had included in my blocking. I had a lot of trouble with this on the song and dance, especially on the face. I realized that the selection-sets I've made for the rig on the face was both mouth and eyes, which means that if I wanted to change an expression, or rather clean up the mess that it had become after moving into spline, I had to go through every key. Because if I moved it the lipsync moved. I found a solution in de-selecting the mouth and then changing the eyes/eyebrows-/lids, but it took so much of my time to fix it.
So back to the point, as I sat and watched the tutorial I just had to see how much was actually keyed, and oh dear; It was almost a key on every other frame..

The solution for this was to delete all the keys that didn't do anything, so Instead of a 60-70++ keys for the facial-expression I ended up with five. I thought I'd leave these in so that it's easier to read what's happening.

I also removed some subtle head tilts, blinks, and so on. These will be added when I have a solid structure, or at least as solid as I manage to make it with my knowledge.

Lesson learnt indeed, thanks Keith!

To update you on the work in progress I have been adding breakdowns all day, back and forth between linear and stepped and it's all moving forwards at least. I do feel the pressure, but I won't move into linear too soon, so I have made two previews to bring along to tomorrows Show and tell, one stepped and one linear - So I can ask Penny for some advice on my next move.

Well, the old eyes are tired and so is the head so that's it for today!

Andreas Deja's blog post nr.101

Just want to recommend you to have a look at Andreas Deja 's blog.
Since it's his post nr. 101 it's dedicated to "101 dalmatians" and the sketches he has posted are sketches that the animators did as research before they started to work on the film. They drew them from both live-action footage and from observing dalmatians that where brought in to the Disney studio.

- So many great sketches, full of energy and life. In my opinion these sketches are pieces of art on their own, so beautiful to look at.

If you want to check it out you can follow the link below;

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2012/01/dalmatians.html

(Sorry if you have to copy and paste the adress, blogspot really dislikes direct-links..)

A bit of everything

As the title states, today has been a day where I have worked on "everything".
I have tried my best to work out the "drifty-ness" in the lip sync animation and also worked out a camera-pan + some additional staging. I hope it's less drifty now, I found quite a lot of "hiccups" along with long eases and uneven curves when I went through curves in the graph editor all over again. It took a few hours, but hopefully it made a difference.

I took also fair use of semiology for this one; (visual aids such as; objects, lighting, effects etc. to make the scene recognizable to the audience), so I set up a a fairly dark lighting for the scene and a sign saying "keep out" to set the mood and make it more readable to the viewer.
- I think I will render this overnight, can't afford to spend more time on that one, it's also worth less marks than the other tasks.

Afterwards I worked a bit more on the camera in the song and dance, but I'm not happy with how it looks at the moment so I'm unsure if I will be using more than one angle. I have rendered a back-up now so if I see I have time I will definitively work more on it, but at least I have rendered one version of it so I have one to hand in.

Lastly I started to work in my breakdowns on "The presenter"-animation. I really enjoy working on this one, but as the hand-in approaches I can see that it's going to be a busy week!
My goal was to finish up the two other tasks during the weekend so I can direct my full attention on the presenter, so by rendering the lip sync over night that should mean I at least made that goal.

Also watched through the Keith Lango tutorial on splines and one of the detail videos (thanks to Penny for giving us those!)
I really enjoy the way he explains the subjects, it's so much easier to understand when he's using examples from life instead of actual animations.
My favourite which I will keep in mind from now on was when he talked about the importance of structure. His example was a office building that had too narrow doors for people to get through. To fix this problem, it won't help to add detail. The building does not need a new splash of paint, or new floors, etc. If the structure is wrong, adding details will just add more noise - it won't hide the fact the structure is faulty!

I've never thought about my animations in that way.. And I know I've tried to hide a lot of wrong-doings with detail..

Saturday

Today I've worked on the things I mentioned last night; fingers, knees, facial-expressions and lip sync. I found some hiccups here an there in the animation that I apparently had overseen yesterday, such as a twisting wrists and shoulder-pops. Guess the old eyes needed a rest since I didn't notice that yesterday.

I have also done some work on the actual scene to make it fit the character and trying to work on an additional camera-angle.. I'm not sure if I'm going to use more than one, but Siobhan mentioned that I cold use another angle to show the wink better. So far I haven't found a camera angle to cut to that I like and I must admit that I'm quite novice when it comes to camera-use. I will try and make time to solve this properly (It's probably better to leave it out if I can't figure out how to make it fit.)

I'm also feeling the time-pressure, so I'm going to put on a overnight render tomorrow or Monday just to be on the safe-side. I could use the render-farm if I need to do a new render, but better safe than sorry.
I also know taht I need all the time I can get to finish the presenter in time for hand-in.

Here is a preview of the piece:



I need to do some adjustments on the hand-movement in the beginning, and there are still some floaty expressions that I need to look at. (Will fix this tomorrow I think)

I've struggled a lot with the big hand-moves on this task, just the slightest adjustment to a curve rotates and repositions the entire hand completely. It's the FK on the arms that causes this, and also the fact that when I blocked this I didn't know the "Keith Lango method" for building breakdowns, but know I know I need to watch these things when I build the poses. So, again; even though the result might not be as good as I hoped, I've learned a lot from it and I will hopefully just become better and animate in a more clever way in the future!

To end this post I'll include some sketches, two from a trip to the mall and three from the gym.
Those from the gym are hard to explain because I don't know what the girl was up to, so I'm just guessing it's some sort of yoga.. Heh.

Here you go:





Oh, one last thing: I came upon this great blog by, Bobby Podesta.

http://bobbypodesta.tumblr.com/


And I found this post so very inspiring, it's about work-routines:

http://bobbypodesta.tumblr.com/post/16170179938/you-get-up-when


Bobby Podesta has quite the report-oar, here is his list from www.Imdb.com:


Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (short) (lead animator)

2006
Mater and the Ghostlight (video short) (supervising animator)

2006
Cars (directing animator)

2004
The Incredibles (animator)

2003
Finding Nemo (animator)

2001
Monsters, Inc. (animator, character developer)

1999
Toy Story 2 (animator, story artist)

1998
A Bug's Life (animator)

- Impressive!

Clean up.

So, I've been cleaning up the rest of the animation today.. Set myself a goal; finish the clean up today (Friday) since I need to move on to the presenter as soon as possible, only a week left till hand-in.
I have put in almost 12 hours work today and I managed to finish the clean up on the body. Tomorrow is dedicated to facial animation, lip sync, eyes, fingers & eventual knee/elbow pops that I might have missed.

It's a lot left, but I'm happy that I managed to achieve my goal for the day, even though when I'm writing this it's actually passed midnight.. Hehe.

Quick update

Just a short post to let you know what I've been working on today.
I moved into spline-mode on the "song & dance"-task yesterday and finished about 100 frames or so before I called it a night.
Picked it up again today and have been working on it consistently all day, so I am now about 300 frames in. I haven't had too much to correct, but the few things I had to work on was a transition where he's leaning to one side and then moves over to the opposite, and there was some weird hip/torso action going on so that took some time to redo. (Went back into linear to straighten this up).
I am also trying to clean up as good as possible, so I clean the curves for each individual part on the rig, so that's why it's moving quite slow. I want to be thorough when I do it, but also try and remove keys that might cause pops and "hiccups".

I have been working after the "Keith Lango method", meaning that I remove keys that aren't necessary for the motion, so if a curve looks the same with three keys as with for instance five, I will remove two of them and still be able too keep the motion looking the same.

-It takes time, but I think it's worth it!

Show and tell, feedback, guest-speaker and a video.

Today was show and tell and I showed previews on both the "song & dance" and the "presenter"-task. Was a bit nervous about showing it since I got some nice comments on the blocking on the "song & dance" last week and I feared that linear might had taken some of the personality or timing away from it. (I tend to struggle a bit on the transition from stepped to linear)
But, I got some really nice comments on the pieces, so I must say I felt pretty good after showing them.

Here's the Song & Dance I showed in today's show and tell:



And here is the piece after I did some changes accordin to the feedback I got:



The feedback on the song and dance was that I could ease off a bit on the gestures in the beginning, since it's a slow song and all the gestures was a bit too much. So, I've taken one of them out and I also finished the end of the animation. Instead of two hand movements in the end for "hitting the music beat" as I planned, I made it into one so his hand hits one beat on the way down and the oter on the way up. (Hope that made sense..)

This is still in linear mode, but I will be moving into spline next, I think I have to if I'm going to have a chance to hit the deadline. Had a quick word with Penny about this today too, and as she said; You can always move back and forth if something isn't quite working out.

Oh, and it's about time I uploaded this one, so here is the block for "the presenter":




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There was also a guest-speaker at Uni today,

James Finlay is his name and his a Character Animator who has worked in the business for about 15 years. He's worked in both games, advertisements and films. It was a really good talk, more a tutorial-like setting. He actually showed us how he goes about to animate a jump, and took us through the process step-by-step in the software. Really interesting to see how he works and the best part was that he did a lot of the same things as I do when it comes to keying, so it made me think that I might be doing something right at least.. Hehe.

I stayed and talked a bit with him after the actual talk, seems like a really nice and "down to earth" kind of guy. I asked him about keying, especially when you move from stepped to linear. He called it he "beauty pass", where you start adding details and interesting moves, because he said he keyed every part of the rig on every frame. But as he said, in that process he could for instance move one arm without keying the entire rig, so that was helpful since I've always been a bit unsure about this. But he also said he knew animators that animated on ones and NEVER gave the computer the chance to do anything.




I got his card as well, so I might send him an e-mail in the future if I have any work I want him to look at.
(I also got his permission to post this on the blog..)

Oh, before I forget:

Came over this clip on youtube, it's a look behind the scenes at PIXAR studios. I can understand why you hear about animators that say that they love working at PIXAR when you look at the set-up they have over there. Really a fantastic work-environment.

The animators talking about Toy Story 3 in this clip do talk to an audience that knows little to nothing about how animation works, but interesting to see non the less. Especially the part where they show the software they use to animate, it's actually been developed at PIXAR.

Here is the video:

Moved into linear, preparations for polish and some sketches.

Today I moved into linear on the "song & dance"-task. Found out that it was about time to do that since we got about a week and a half left on this module and that I still have a lot to do on the "presenter"-task.

It's working a lot better than I expected though, I usually get a lot of gimbals (elbow and knee pops) and other strange movements when I move into linear, but it seems like the way I have approached this task solved a lot of the problems I tend to get. It's not perfect of course, but since I built in my breakdowns with a bit of help from he computer there is a lot less problems so far. (As I mentioned earlier I have tried to work the way Keith Lango shows in his tutorial on overlap)

Will post a preview of the animation later.

I have also started to prepare for the polish, it's a lot of work left before I'm at that point, but Penny posted a lot of good articles on the subject in the MA-group on Facebook today so I decided I could read up on it.
I had read all except one before, but they are all so useful that I found out I could read them all again.

I really found this sentences important to take note of:

"When I'm polishing a shot, that means that all of my timing and movements are working and approved and I'm just adding the very finishing touches to the shot before I'm finito. So when I start my polishing pass, I am certainly not going to be making any big changes to action or timing."

Quote taken from: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2009/04/what-is-your-workflow-to-polish-shot.html

I know I've done a lot of major changes in polish before, so this is worth keeping in mind!

I also took a break from animation, but since I feel a certain pressure on time I decided to limit my sketching to what I saw from my window. There was a football-match going on, so I really got to do some "speed-sketching"!

Blocking & some morel reference

Yesterday was used for planning and setting up the scene so I could start blocking. I've been working on the presenter all day and have managed to finish a rough block. I needed some additional reference for this one, so I made a reference-sheet with facial expressions and some poses that I found was hard to get right..

So this was the solution:



And here is a rough block, only the storytelling poses so far:



That's it for today, will continue working on it tomorrow.

Planning for "The presenter"

I just finished up the planning for "the presenter" task.

I went for the same planning-structure as the previous tasks so here are the character profile (including power-centre) for the main character and a pose-sheet/storyboard:





As usual I've combined the key-poses, storyboard and the dialouge on one big page.
It's worked out pretty good as a source of reference so far and I find it easy to understand and it's proven to be very useful, especially in the previous task; the "song & dance".

One new thing I did was to use a combination of traditional hand-drawn scene with a digitally drawn character, this was very efficient since I had the background set up rather quickly (draw faster with a pencil) and it's the same during the whole shot.
Then when the character was done digitally so it would be easy to undo mistakes or change/move things around.

I really liked the look of it as well, but the best part is that it took less time than usual to do the pose-sheet this way and that's what really counts when your working under pressure.

- Valuable lesson learned.

Animation work, research and planning.

Used half of the working day on the song & dance today, it's making progress but it feels a bit unusual to work this way (Back and forth betweens linear and stepped), since I'm used to blocking stepped and then going linear and working with the curves.
I struggled mostly with getting the stepped timing work in linear mode, because it tended to loose the attitude and just float through the poses. So a lot of time has been used to emphasise the key poses and making them stand out, and also providing enough time so it's possible to read them clearly.
(According to feedback my animations tend to be a bit "floaty/drifty" so I'm really trying to prevent this from happening on this one)

- I can definitively see this way of jumping back and forth as a better solution, guess it just takes some time getting used to it.

I have worked a lot on re-timing the actions and also overlapping today, so that the movements between the poses feel a bit more natural and also avoiding the "pose-to-pose-look".

Here is a preview of how it looks at the moment:



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The other half of the day I have used on planning and research for the presenter-task.
I have done some research and found these two clips useful:

Marc Maron doing his podcast with a guest-comedian:



This one is mainly reference for microphone use, it's good to have some reference on where they keep their focus during the recording. Interestingly enough their actually not speaking t each other, they rarely make eye-contact. And you can see that Marc, the host (guy in the left corner) is actually turning his head, closing his eyes and listening to what the guest is saying instead of looking directly at him. It looks strange, but I guess he needs to do this to control the sound-levels.

Marc Maron one minute rant from wtf.com:



This one is really interesting because it gives me a sneak-peak into how a podcaster might have his studio set up.

I have also started to sketch up my idea, the attitude I'm looking to achieve and the scene and staging of the animation.

Here is some sketches for my planning;

I used this sketch I did earlier (also posted earlier):



as my starting point and built on top of that by looking at my reference-video and the videos I found of Marc Maron.


Scene/staging:



Character-attitude:



These are the base or foundation that I will be building my character-profile + storyboard/pose-sheet on so will start working on those tomorrow.

Found an interesting interview with Jorge Vigara, Senior character animator at Sony pictures.

It's from "Animationinsider.com" (I follow them on twitter so that's where I found it).

It is a really interesting interview about what Jorge has done and what he thinks is the best part of being an animator.
But he also talks about how he got into animation and how he got his first job as an animator.

The interview is written with fairly poor English grammar, but you get the point.
- I found it useful to read non the less.

You can find the full interview here:

http://www.animationinsider.com/2012/01/jorge-vigara/

Jorge is probably known best for his work on "Despicable me", but he also worked on the short "Alma":



This is a great short-film by Rodrigo Blaasand, now working for Dreamworks.
It's about a curious little girl that discovers a store in a alleyway that sell dolls, but the doll she sees on display in the window looks just like her. So she gets curious and has to go inside...

I really like the animation-style in this short, it's pretty life like and realistic and really shows that she is a young person. There are small, but fast head-movements which really gives the feeling of a curious character. And these quick and "hard" movements mixed together with soft cushioning on hands really makes it look beautiful.

The visual style of the film itself and the assets/character has a cartoon-like style.
The "cartoony-look" makes her a appealing main character, big eyes, two fairly big front teeth, sort of a mix of things you can spot as noticeable in young children.
I also like the fact that she has long hands in comparison to her shorter feet, it makes it easy to see that she is a child.

Lovely piece of animation!

Feedback and a lovely piece of animation

Got feedback on the lip sync- and "song & dance"-tasks today. All in all the feedback was good on the song, the personality was visible in the character so I'm really happy with that.
The lipsync was still a bit drifty, so I need to have another look at that later.
I've worked on the song all day and trying to get the timing of everything right and also work in some overlaps, so basically going back and forth between linear and stepped to try and sort this out while trying to keep control of the keys. It's a struggle at times, but I'm having a lot of fun with this one as well!

I also came upon this really lovely trailer for an upcoming film I wanted to show you.
It's written and directed by Minkyu Lee and it's titled; "Adam and dog".

Here it is:

Adam and dog Trailer from Minkyu on Vimeo.

What I get out of the trailer is that it is a very timeless piece, meaning it doesn't give away any clues of where or when the story is set to be. It's set in the wild, a jungle apparently (because of the vegetation and the animals, lemur and the bird that are found in those places.)
Time-wise it could be thousands of years ago, or then again it could be 2012.
But the fact that the main character is nude and that he is called Adam (as in Adam and Eve) which could be clue.

What I can see is that that clearly shows the relationship between man and dog living in the wild together.
And I just thought visually it looked so good.
Everything about the style was so beautiful. Especially the use of colour and light and shadows.

I also really liked the animation style. They have really gone realistic for this piece, I mean the shot with the bird eating and when the dog are walking through the vegetation are almost life-like. Really well made!

There's not a lot of information out there about the piece yet, but the credits and so on are found at:

http://adamanddog.tumblr.com/post/15623870972/crew

And the fact that one of my favourite animators, James Baxter worked on it is reason enough for me to look forward to this one!

More work, reference & previews

Today we got to hear the two remaining presentations in class and also a lecture/video on offsetting/overlap. It was a Keith Lango video tutorial which as usual is incredibly useful and interesting.

After the lecture I went home and continued working on breakdowns on the "song & dance"-task. I got to use the notes I took in class today as well, so I've tried to build some offsets into the new breakdowns. As well as moving parts into linear to build my breakdowns on top of what the computer "gave" me. This was really useful and will hopefully help the transition from pose to pose to look better. As I've mentioned before, I really feel I'm learning new ways to animate through this task. Really a joy to work on it at the moment!

Youtube seems to have solved the problem I had last night, so as promised here are the reference for "The Presenter"-task, along with previews for the "Song & dance"- and the lip sync-task tat I will be showing in tomorrows Show and Tell.

Reference for "The Presenter":



As usual I couldn't quite decide on one shot, so this is an assembly of clips edited together. I will pick my favourites for the upcoming storyboard and planning. I also want to apologize for the rather unlucky audio in the clip, had some issues with the editing. But I guess the important part is the movement for the reference and not the audio.

Here is the preview for the lip sync:



And lastly the preview for the "Song and Dance":
(Still working in stepped mode)

more work on the animation, sketches and editing reference

Today I have done a bit of everything really. Got some great feedback on the animation yesterday, and it was mainly on the fact that the character could be pushed a bit further on facial expressions and gestures to really show his personality. So I've gotten rid of some poses to make room for more acting against the audience, which pays a huge part in this task. So, that meant that I had to get rid of some poses I liked, but it really seems to have made the difference. I guess you have to "kill some of your babies" sometimes. (Sounds terrible, but I'm referring to the poses..)

As usual I took a trip to the gym today, but brought my sketchbook with me this time and got time to sketch down some quick "action-poses":



I've also been into town and while I was there I started to pay attention to how much multitasking there is going on in town, here are some sketches of situations I observed:



I've also been editing the reference-video for the presenter task. Unfortunately I had about 40minutes that I shot during the holidays, but those files has apparently disappeared, so I re-shot my reference during the weekend.

I will post a preview of the animation and the reference video as soon as possible, but at the moment youtube seems to be having some problems uploading my videos..

-I'll keep you posted.

Breaking it down

Still working on the breakdowns on the song & dance-task.
Today I've mainly focused on the areas that needed more poses. So I sat down and watched throug ha preview of the whole animation, over and over again. Then I start taking notes where I need to put in additional poses. I also draw down some really rough sketches of how a pose might look to make it easier for me when I pose.



I've also experimented with breaking joints in this task, which is really interesting!
Here is a clip of it in stepped mode:



I feel it really adds some real force to the arm swing. This might be a bit exaggerated and I might tone it down a bit, but as an example it really shows how you can trick our eyes into buying this as a forceful swing, while in real life this would never happen. But why not stretch beyond what's realistic if it helps us to bring more appeal to motion?

It also seems to be working in linear mode:



So, that was a fun experience, really "learning by doing" while working on this task!

Anyway, here is a wip_clip of the piece as it looks so far. (Still in stepped mode):

Studying body language

This task (song & dance) has really opened my eyes to the importance of body language. I am trying to achieve a emotional performance in this piece and to show this I need to use body language along with facial expressions to really "sell" the performance to the audience. I want to show the character as a person who loves the attention he gets on stage, that he knows how popular he is and that he is confident in what he's doing. I came over this video on a animation blog called "tea time animation club". They posted a video a couple of years ago on the subject and I thought I'd share it with you.

The clip is three "storm troopers" having a drink while discussing the anniversary of the death star. (from the star wars films). It's a comedy-clip made by college humor, but it's not just a humorous clip to watch, it's really good for studying body language since they are having a discussion with helmets on.

The clip is denied for embedding, so you'll have to use this link and watch some advertisement before the clip starts. Sorry about that.

Here is the clip:

Stormtroopers '9/11 - Video - IGN

I especially found the situation from 1:45min to 2:00 in the clip interesting. You can tell by just his body language that he is making a point and trying to get through to the other two. He is in denial and refuses to hear what the others are saying, he just goes on and on to make his point while the others just have to wait until he has made his point. And the two others are clearly embarrassed by his act and they show it, but he just goes on and starts to confront the other people in the room as well.

I watched it with the sound of and you can still see pretty clearly what's going on. The character making his argument uses "open" poses, hands out, turns back and forth and talks to the other characters, he points at the table to make his point etc.

The two others are in more closed poses, slightly turning away, avoiding eye contact and one even covers his face with his hand at one point. Clearly not comfortable with the situation.

This was a really interesting source of reference.

The original blogpost was found at:

http://aauanimationclub.blogspot.com/2009/10/inspiration-post-body-language.html

"Song & dance" blocking

Continued on the block for "song & dance" task today. Started working on the most omportant breakdowns, and tryingto keep in mind what Richard Williams wrote on the subject in "The animator's survival kit". He explains how much you can actually do with your breakdowns, just to make the animation more fun, exciting, interesting and so on. So instead of the going about it as usual
(meaning I emphasise one of the keyposes, making the breakdown slightly similar to either "A" or "B" and try to make the transition between them look good.)

On the poses I put in "Sleep in peace" and "bold world" I went away from the storyboard and experimented and it made it more interesting than planned, so that was really fun and interesting way to make breakdowns. I also "played around" on the "you know what I mean" to try and get as much personality as possible. He almost got a bit feminine at one point, but I think I'll keep it because it helps to show his personality as a guy who loves "being in the spotlight".

Here's the block with some breakdowns and a rough lip sync:

Quick update

Just a quick update on how my work is progressing.

I asked Penny for some feedback on the lip sync today.
Not any major changes needed apparently, but I need to emphasise the "B" in "Being followed" more. That shouldn't be much work.
The acting was improved in the new version, so I'm quite happy about that.
I will probably pick that up during the weekend.

Today I've worked on the "song and dance" task - I have finished the key-poses, timed it out, matched the facial expressions with the poses and started to work on the breakdowns.

- The reason I had to match the face after timing it out is that I've chosen to key these in two separate groups. This is mainly done because I don't "trust" the Max-rig..
It has caused problems for me in the past to try and key the facial controls together with the body, so this will hopefully cause less problems later one.

- Fingers crossed!

Haven't gotten around to uploading any wip-clips for this task yet, but I will do that soon.

I'll keep you posted.

Reference shoot, lipsync work and silhouettes

Today's session at university was in the green-screen studio. We got three full hours to do reference for our animations. It was as usual a bit awkward in the beginning, but that passed pretty quickly. I got some more reference for my tasks even though I already have done mine at home. But it's always good to get somebody else to act it out as well, the more reference I got too look at - the better.

When I got home I picked up the lip sync yet again, I sorted out some details on the actual lip sync that Penny mentioned yesterday, so hopefully the B's & M's are easier to read now.

I have also worked on the actual staging. I had this layed out from the beginning, but since this animation has changed quite a bit, I found it useful to re-stage it.
There was also a few questions in the show and tell yesterday about the backstory for the animation - "who he is talking to" , "does he actually see the people following him" etc.
So I staged it as he is standing up against a surface, looking around the corner. This change will hopefully make it easier for the audience to understand what's going on in the shot.
The two boxes you see represent two characters that I will be putting in later on, but these will not be animated, just posed.

(the full story of the shot can be found in the post on December 2nd 2011 in the blog)



Here's how it looks at the moment:



I had to do a lot of changes in the animation to make this work, but even though I gave myself even more to work on in this task I think it's working better than before. I think the acting is a bit more believable this way too.

- Lastly I've been working on a few silhouette-sketches. I used a highlighter too make these, it's a bit challenging to get the pose readable with just colour, but it's really an interesting way to draw poses. And it is good practice for posing in general, too make sure your poses are easy to read just from the silhouette.
To be totally honest not all of them worked out, but here are an assembly of the ones that I think are the easiest to read:

Lip sync animation

I got feedback on the lip sync task in today's "show and tell".
It was mostly suggestions to improving the mood and feel in the piece.
The character was too relaxed in the animation, especially when you compare it to the voice in the clip. To be honest I feel I kind of "lost my way" in this task, so I was happy to get some suggestions to hopefully be able to improve it.

So, with the feedback fresh in mind and a few notes I focused mainly on the lip sync today.
I think it's moving more towards the way I wanted it to go originally now..
Watched the reference again a couple of times and clearly saw how much quicker the movements where in that, compared to my animation so I've tried to keep that in mind when I started to work on it.

This is a wip-clip, sorry about the "crazy" eye-movements, haven't done any work on those yet so now that there is a lot of change in the body and head the eyes are all over the place.

Here you go;

The Presentaton

I have tried to find a way to post my presentation in full on the blog, but since I had a lot of video-clips in the powerpoint-file I couldn't find a good way to get it on to the blog. But since I heard some students mentioning that they missed them and wanted to see the presentations I am posting the slides that did not include a clip.
- So, here you go:





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Some research, sketches and preparations for show and tell

As posted earlier I got my results for AP1 back, and one thing I noticed was that I have had a tendency to overdo the follow-though on arms in my animations. So I have tried to read up on this, how to give more flexibility to the arms.

This is what I found in "The animator's survival kit" on the subject:



(The drawing is basically the same as in the book, but I won't scan any of the pages and put them on here..)

- I am going to keep this in mind from now on and it will hopefully be really useful to help improve my next animations.


I have also done a bit of observational studies on people. The setting is at an airport since I just were at two of them - and the subject is waiting.
What I found was that now a days people are almost never just waiting.. With all the tablets, smart-phones and so on, people don't seem to mind waiting.
With exception of young children and elderly of course, since they usually don't use these kind of things to help pass the time.

Here's a sketch I did from the airport-lounge:





And two poses I saw in town:



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Today I have worked more on the blocking for the "sing & Dance"-animation, it's going along pretty slowly at the moment. But I want to be sure that I get my storytelling poses right, so I use a lot of time on every pose. I actually used nearly two hours on two poses and ended up deleting them afterwards. Those moments are quite annoying to be honest, but the one positive thing about it is that now I at least know that those poses doesn't work in the piece.

So I will be using the max-file to show my wip on that tomorrow since I haven't got all my storytelling poses yet, and therefore haven't timed anything out yet.


I also picked up the lip sync-task again today. I've been working accordin to the feedback I got, so I'm trying to make it less "drifty". I'm struggling a bit with this task, but hopefully I will get some additional feedback tomorrow.

Here's a preview of the piece:

A talk by Jason Schleifer

Posted this on the MA-group a while back, but haven't gotten around to writing anything about it on here yet.

So, here's a video of a talk that Jason Schleifer did for TEDx. Jason is a very talented animator at Dreamworks and has worked a lot of films, for instance; Madagascar 1 & 2, Over the Hedge and lastly he was head of character animation on Megamind.



He tells the story about how a spider "taught" him animation. It sounds a bit odd, but his talk is really entertaining and interesting way of telling us how he got interested in animation.

But the parts I found most interesting were on how we makes and shape characters personalities to create the best performance possible on screen.

"We want to create an experience, an emotional performance. Not just movement, it's about character." - Jason Schleifer

I especially found the example about the two superhero-characters "Titan" & "Metro-man" interesting. The character-profiling of the two are really a great example of why it's so important to know the character's back-story before you do anything else. This makes it all more believable, not just the way they move but also how they act, react and interact.

The two characters has the exact same powers, but the "how" is what's important here.

So HOW did they get them and HOW do they behave in a situation where they have to use their powers?

Metro-man (the good guy): grew up with his powers, so he knows exactly what to do with them, he's familiar with them and has adapted to them.

Titan (the bad guy): Just got his powers, so he has not fully understood how to use them and for what purpose he should.

Really a great talk and a lot of useful information on characters and their stories, personalties and how it causes them to act as they do.

- It was really helpful and it will hopefully help to improve my work in the future.

Blocking, video-reference shoot, AP1-results and some research.

Started off the day with picking up the block for "song & dance" where I left of last night, it's really a struggle this one.. At least compared to the previous tasks. The issues so far is pushing the poses. I want as much emotion and energy in the story-telling poses as possible (keeping the personality and mood in mind) so at the same time I want to show that the character is controlled and calm while he performs. And as Keith Lango among others tell us; walking away from the screen and coming back after a couple of minutes helps you spot what's wrong in the pose.
This helped me a lot on the most exaggerated poses, and where the character for instance steps back, the weigh shifts, etc.

I also re-watched Keith Lango's tutorials on "creating good poses" & "more on creating good poses".

All found on one page in this great blog:

http://animationhelper.blogspot.com/2010/02/creating-good-poses-keith-lango.html

And while I'm at it I would also recommend this post from the same blog:

http://animationhelper.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-09-23T20:45:00-07:00&max-results=1

It's mainly the same as we have gone through in the lectures with Penny, but I had a quick read-through anyway, it can't hurt.


I also began working on my video-reference for the presenter task today, haven't had time to look through it all yet, but i did about 40 minutes of it so I hope I have some good reference in there. (I found it useful to this now before I leave for the UK, since I got a it more space and "props" to work with here). Will take a more thorough look at it later on.

I was also made aware of an article by Kevan Shorey (one of the animators I follow on Twitter that currently is working for Dreamworks).
He wrote a interesting article on twinning.

The article can be found here:

http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/12/what-is-twinning-when-should-you-use.html

Twinning/symmetry is either:

"1. A symmetrical shape made by a character when posed, or,

2. The timing of the motion used to get into a pose. It can also be both of these at the same time." - Kevan Shorey

Examples could be for instance gestures where both hands are doing exactly the same.
As this article tells us it is possible to avoid this by delaying one arm when it moves into the pose, or pushing one of the shoulders slightly higher on one side to break the symmetry in the pose.

I like the fact that he made up a character and a situation to explain twinning, made it both more enjoyable and easier to understand.

There are also exceptions to this "problem" though. As Richard Williams wrote in "The Animator's Survival Kit":

-"Just watch any politician, preacher or leader of whatever, or expert on television. When they're laying down the law their arms and hands will twin symmetrically."

So it has it's purpose in animation as well, you just have to be sure when to use it and not.


Oh, and by the way; I apologize that you have to copy the url's to view the pages,
but I can' get the links to work properly on the blog.. Sorry about that.

We also got our results from Animation Practice 1 today and I passed!
Really happy about that!

- Well, I think that's it for tonight.

How to combine family dinner with work

Started the day by continuing on my blocking while my parents where at work, but when they came home we went to cook dinner at my grandmothers house.
But to stop me from worrying about my work at home I brought along some paper, a pen & pencil and uploaded my presenter sound-clip on my iphone. So when everybody was done eating and I sat down and listened to the clip while I drew some sketches while we had coffee.
I have to quote my mother here, she sat next to my grandmother in the sofa and leaned over to her and said: "Nobody's safe when he sits down with his sketchbook.."

She was right:



(my grandmother in a "cartoon-edition" & a slightly exaggerated situation in the kitchen.)

I also listened to the presenter-clip and started to sketch down a situation that I pictured in my head.
(I have chosen a clip from comedian Marc Maron's podcast, one of my favourite podcasts. I talked to Penny and I got the okay to use the clip so I really look forward to start working on it!)

Haven't got the clip for you t listen to, but here is the idea as I picture it in my head and the dialogue from the clip:

Upload-check and a scene-overview.

I continued working on the block after the post I published earlier today, so this post is mainly to show a overview of the character in the scene, it's really simple but as usual I focus my time on animation and not modelling.
- I also wanted to make sure that I'm able to upload images..

Here you go:

A quick update

Yesterday was lecture day and today was show and tell, but since I'm still in Norway I missed those classes.

The reason for this where that it was about 150£ cheaper for me to book my flight back to Middlesbrough for this Sunday, so I thought it was worth it to stay a week longer to save those pounds.
I talked to the tutors about it before Christmas and they understood me, so that was really kind of them.

The only downside is that I'm struggling a bit more with work here.. There is a lot more going on around me here than in my quiet little "cave" back in Portman Street. Hehe.

-But I'm adjusting.

On the upside I got my "white Christmas" and I still enjoy the snow. Except for the all the times you have to go out shovelling it from the driveway..


Oh, before I forget. I started writing this post to give you an update on the work in progress.
I originally wrote this post last night, but I had problems with uploading photos.. Unfortunately it seems like blogspot is having the same issues today as well.. I've tried three different browsers now and nothing seems to work so I'll have to leave the pictures out this time.

I have started to block my animation for the "song & dance"-task. I went for the Max-rig so fingers crossed.. I have blocked 9 poses so far, and so far I have mixed bits and pieces from both the pose-sheet and the reference video.
I got some feedback on it from my friend Daniel last night, and according to his opinion of the character's personality and state of mind it seems like the mood and feelings of the character are showing.

- I want it to be clear that he is confident, calm and relaxed. He has performed this song endless of times and he's just soaking all the attention in and waiting for the applause that he knows is coming after he's done.

So, back to work then!

Animation planning for "Song & dance"-task.

I have been working on planning for the "song & dance"-task since my last post.
I started the process with some additional research, just to get the mood and feel of the main character and the way I want to present the performance. I found some images of various artists on stage and put them together sort of like a mood-board, but mainly for the character itself.

Here's the image:



I then started working on the character-profile for my character. His name is "Johnny Singswell", the name is a bit ridicioulus I know. But I think it's fun to be a bit silly with the names and since I am the one creating the character, I like to have some fun while doing it.
I included his inner power centre along with the lyrics from the sound clip I chose; "Feelin' good".
Here is Johnny's character-profile:




I also watched through the reference-video, over and over.. I do this so I can pick out the key poses and take notes of details I want to include in the piece. I usually sketch these down by hand as character-poses to use as a guide when I start blocking.

Here is some rough sketches of some of the poses in the reference-video:




But, I'm never satisfied with the look of these sketches so I like to do them over again in photoshop. It's just more pleasant to look at the sketches when they have better quality and is drawn digitally on a plain white surface. I used a lot of time to make this, but I think it's worth it since I use it both as a pose-sheet and a storyboard for the animation. The notes I took in the rough sketches are included, and also a rough outline of timing for some of the more important poses in the piece.

Here is the storyboard/pose-sheet for the task:



I have also started to model the scene, it's really basic so haven't used too much time on it.
I have also imported the rig and changed some of the textures to make him fit the profile better. I think I am going to give the Max rig a go this time. It's just more appealing to look at than the dee-rig I have been using up till now. And also for this task my character is supposed to be a very charming guy, so I think this is the best solution for this one.
I am familiar with the rig so I know it has some issues with gimbals that might make the elbows pop and snap, so I need to keep extra attention to this when I start putting in my breakdowns and inbetweens.

I guess that's one of the the downsides of animating in 3ds MAX
- There isn't a lot of good free-rigs to choose from.

Anyway, back to work!