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!