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.