Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Animation: Blocking and rough animation

Blocking
blocking is a very important ingredient to a good animation. It involves focusing on the timing and poses to really sell the movements of a character. I have learnt that Blocking is very crucial to a successful animation. Bad blocking leads to allot of troubles later down the animation pipeline. You have to be satisfied with your blocking before going any further with it. Since I am animating to dialogue this is crucial to get the character timed to the beats of the story. I feel that If I compared this to my storyboard it is quite accurate While also gaining new ideas since then.
I also learned that blocking is easier when using more keys this allows more control of the animation when changed from stepped to spline tangents.
Blocking in the industry seems to require lots of keys yo a point where every movement and pose has a flow. here is  an example



















Example of Industry standard Blocking


In this clip we see a progression breakdown done on Walt Disney Animation's Frozen (2013) When it shows the blocking at 0:27 It is obvious to tell that they used allot of key poses and emotional beats. So far my blocking hasn't got to this but it is an interesting fact that opens up the possibilities of quality blocking. Here even the facial expressions and mouth movements are all blocked out.







copyright of Walt Disney Animation 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z_k2z5m6H0




Sunday, 19 March 2017

Short Animatic with live action reference

Short Animatic with live action reference

Finally here is a link to my performance of Basil Fawlty I did to understand how my character was going to move and to really become the character. I feel however the ending of the clip is too exaggerated and I will have some pictures of me in the future doing the new end poses.



My experiences in acting    Not professionally

overall it was a good experience to really get to know the character. In secondary school I did drama and I have also experience from performing in shows both in school and out. I feel I understand the importance of good acting and doing good impressions of people. 
I feel in animation you really need to know the characters to a point where they feel as real as anyone else. 

You must not just think of any character as just a stereotypical accent, I actually find it insulting. Understanding what drives a character is what makes them special, taking into account  there goals and fears and inner emotions Also . Study the mannerisms and the way a character moves. Laban is a term used in dance and acting to analyse the movement and tone with in a performance. I learnt this also from the book Acting for Animators (Hooks E 2011)

Get to know your character

For Basil Fawlty I felt when you look closer into his character there is allot of deeper psychological problems. I don't think of him as an idiot I understand his conflict and situation. this is from the fact  having to deal with awkward guests and the fact he has been running the hotel for 15 years. I feel he is more likely lost his marbles from the many years of trying to keep everyone satisfied. Which is a relateble situation for people, it is hard to keep people happy and it can seem very stressful. 
I also study his psychological gestures he tries act tough and in charge but his wife already wins that role. just some examples

Overall being a good actor is ideal as an animator. I will leave this study with a quote by animation Director Brad Bird in the book read from an extract of (Acting for Animators) Ed Hooks 2011

"If the public watch the faces of the best animators when caught up in the act of drawing an emotional scene, they would see artists as fully invested in the moment as the best live actors. The difference is that an anmator stays in that moment, often working for weeks to express an emotion his or her character takes only seconds to perm onscreen"  (Brad Bird 2011).

Thursday, 16 March 2017

advice from animators on the 11 second club

great articles on the 11 second club websites for starting to animate and over coming the problems. This particular advice is about giving yourself permission to spend more time on each pose in blocking to create a smoother and well thought out animation.

http://www.11secondclub.com/helpful_hints/givingYourselfPermission

Thursday, 9 March 2017

Reviewing 11 Second Club Entries.

Reviewing 11 Second Club Entries.

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/june16/winner

First of all I am going to review the winner from June competition


I find that the animation is very fluid and portrays the dialogue through most of the animation however the female voice coming from the man at the start is a little distracting.  The scene transition when it switches to the other character is a very fluid and unusual it creates a nice touch to the style of animation which seems to be more abstract like a cartoon. The body language of the two characters has both greatly exaggerated and subtle mannerisms. The way the character flicks his nails at  53 is a nice subtle gesture that is synced up well to the sound clip it also shows an anticipation before the next key pose. "we need you to do"  at 70 has some nice subtle gestures with hands and fingers. On the word "accent" it is nicely exaggerated and the body language is readable. The overall clip is well animated however the story could have been staged a little better. This is noticeable in the backgrounds. Adding a more readable environment would add to the animation.

Next I am going to review two different videos from the same competion from November

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/november14/winner

The first that won has good animation however the story seems not very interesting. They went for the principle confronting a student in his office which works well as a concept but the execution comes across not very interesting to watch.


Also at the end when he reveals a firework, it doesn't have enough context. Therefore doesn't gain my attention. The scene overall needs to be staged better and needs more focus on why the kid is brought into the office. Jason suggested the little boy could have a black eye then when the principle pulls out an object

 it could be something more to do with the boys actions that is more plausible, e.g he stole something off someone and got in a fight. overall this type of concept would make the story make more sense to the viewer. Another way would be to make the pack of fireworks more recognizable. shape them like a rocket for example.
One last problem is the calm relaxed tone of the voice doesn't fit with telling off a student. especially at the end of the animation when the headmaster shows an angry confined gesture.


http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/november14/entry/o6al20




The second entry however creates a much better idea for the dialogue and makes more sense. However even though the story concept is better it is still quite awkward considering when the other character is revealed the conflict for the squirrel isn't very plausible considering he tried to get the acorn from a mouse. The problem is this ruins the story concept. Also the expressions of the secondary character of the squirrel are not very dramatic for what has happened. He should react more and show more emotion adding more exaggeration.


The acting of the animation on the tortoise however does fit more with the relaxed narration of the track. The story is more engaging but falls flat on believabilty. through the concept. maybe changing the characters to another two animals may have fit more, However the tortoise does fit a chilled relaxed voice and fits with his overall character.










Wednesday, 8 March 2017

Improved Tongue and Teeth controls

Here I made the tongue using a rig with flexible controls. I used 6 joints to make sure the tongue would look more convincing. The technique of rigging I used was the same technique I used on a tail rig. Each controller it's own group which means when I select them to together they can move together like this 





 I also added a system of controls for the teeth so that they would follow the jaw. I tried to create a control for the teeth earlier, but the way I was parenting it was the wrong way. I decided to create rigs for both the teeth and gums and then parented them to the rig. I also took the controllers and parented them to the rest of the controls. This allows more freedom of the teeth allowing place and key them for the more awkward mouth positions like U, A and other positions where the mouth comes down or presses inwards.  The teeth have also been improved visually not just for appeal but also to make them easier to move into certain positions and adding more emphasis to each mouth position. Allowing more readable mouth shapes. The gums were added for a more believable appearance not to mention attention to detail.

Overall I did all of this procedure as it will make the lip sync more efficient.

Monday, 6 March 2017

Blend Shapes

Blend Shapes

Image result for mouth shapes
Here is the refference I used of the different mouth shapes. Understanding the way the mouth moves is important for lips sync I also learnt from a video posted on the 11 second club. When lip syncing characters you need to show the shapes after or before a spoken word or phrase. This is for accuracy when playing the animation back, other wise it can look more like a bad dubbing and not look as convincing.

http://www.11secondclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=10078

image from https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/325385141801081584/

The process 

Here I modeled the different mouth shapes for each set of letters in speech. However when first making the blend shapes I realized the face was too simple in topology. There were a lack of polygons around the mouth, which made it more difficult to make convincing shapes, especially when it came to lips when they puckered. So to resolve the problem I went back and added more topology on a new main head and then deleted the old one. I made sure to delete history on the new head and freeze transformations before re-skinning it and copying over the skin weights from the old head. This now means my face has more flexibility with extra edge loops around the mouth and brows, this adds more freedom of manipulation while looking smoother and more convincing.

 Here is the shelf of many different blend shapes that have all been named to save confusion when making controls. The see will be deleted when I am happy with the blend shapes.
 The blend shapes process overall went very well. I used two different groups to separate group layers . One for the eyelid shapes and the rest for the other facial features. This allowed me to move the eyebrows without manipulating the eyelids. For this I used a paint blend shapes setting to paint out what I didn't want to be manipulated on my two layers. To do this I selected the skin weights for the first layer which consists of most of my shapes not including the eyes. I then started to paint what I wanted to be manipulated and what I didn't. Here on this example the eyes are painted out in blue so they won't manipulate with the the eye brows.
However this lead to a smaller issue, each blend shape was manipulating a bit of the eyebrows which looked unnatural, to solve this I painted each blend shape on the first layer including the mouth shapes painting out the eyelids in blue so they wouldn't be manipulating anything but there chosen area. This eventually created some very successful deformations.

While doing this I was also making my control interface for my whole face. This involved using curves to make the switches and and set driven key to effect the different settings.

Examples



 The blend shapes allow full control over the face allowing to create all kinds of emotions and interesting expressions. This will be key for the animation process.