Here is my storyboard for my animation. I feel that I succeeded at exaggerating John Cleese's body language while also keeping it simple and readable to an audience. Since he emphasizes a lot of his words in the dialogue his mannerisms add emphasis to his situation and what he is thinking.
The reason for emphasis comes from the way the dialogue sounds. It is a dry British sense of humor which will be fascinating to incorporate.
I even have learnt how to act out the animation. Really getting into the mind of the character and therefore will allow a more natural and fluid performance.
The one thing I may add is more direction on how his face moves and how that will translate to my model.
To add a story premise the end of the animation will show a mouse with a little suitcase. adding even crueler irony to his statement. "I'm trying to run a hotel here".
Overall I feel it communicates well but may need some tweaking.
"The kind of ass I've had to put up with from you people! You ponce in here expecting to be hand-waited on hand and foot! I'm trying to run a hotel here!"
The dialogue may be changed or expanded to make it make sense in context
The challenge with this speech is it is 22 words in 12 seconds There is quite allot of dialogue. The first challenge will be planning out the primary action influenced by John Cleese manerisms. He is shouting allot so the mouth will have to stretch down more on the stronger words.If I model him with arms it will allow more expression since Cleese uses his hands shoulders and arms allot to express emotions such as anger, embarrassment or anxiety.
A storyboard will be developed influenced by mannerisms and reactions of John Cleese. animation methods from cartoons like looney toons will allow me to abstract his actions adding more exaggeration to this already hilarious performance.
Video Analysis
At the start at 0:22 he is quiet for a second. This is a form of anticipation almost like a pressure cooker about to blow up. his head hunches down anticipating the first buzz word. He also bobs his head slightly to his left. when he says "ass" 0:23 He turns round homing towards the guests on his right there also a slight shake of his head before he turns. This is a more subtle gesture of anticipation. The reaction of some the guests shows shock which adds to the comedy value. also adding to the staging of the gag and the exaggeration. Next as he says "I've had to put up with from you people" 0:25 he raises his shoulders arms by his side. There is a secondary action of his fingers tapping impatiently while staged with the fists showing. This is a psychological gesture representing basil's impatience and bottled up rage being released after so long. His face is red with rage and his eyebrows are tense and uncomfortable. His eyes are fierce in there expression. His overall posture is straight and therefore shows power. Next at 0:27 he takes a deep breath in anticipation while moving his arm towards his stomach and rising his shoulders. Next he booms out "You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot" while he slowly brushes his arm forward in a dramatic fashion. at 0:31 he again taps his fingers before bring his whole body forward as he says "Well I'm trying to run a hotel here"
So knowing this I know that the animation will only need to move into couple of different gestures and poses. Too many different movements would make the animation less readable and therefore less engaging.
The use of the mild cuss word shows that this maybe would be a PG animation and therefore the animation should cater to that style of audience of older kids teens and adults. However it is still pretty tame and some films still get away with being a U. For example Aardman's (Pirates with in an Adventure with Scientists)
The Plan
Since the crowd react to his outburst of "ass" The effect could be used with a sudden camera shake to add the impact created in the video.
At the beginning of the animation he could be staged on a profile view First some anticipation and then when he says "ass" his head would jolt forward so he is looking right into the camera.
Here the topology is well done and will allow ease of manipulation when skinning and animating. To achieve this effect. I first made a simple 2D shape of an eye and then a similar shape for the mouth. I then placed them in an accurate location for the face. I then mirrored the 2 shapes and extruded them. Lastly I fused the shapes together creating the correct human face topology.
The topology may be correct but it is too complicated in the amount of polygons. this will slow down the modeling process.
The side is less accurate and will be developed in time
Here the topology is well done and will allow ease of manipulation when skinning and animating. The topology here is simplified allowing a more efficient work flow.
Here the proportion of the head has been manipulated to make the face more accurate. Before it was too long which would make the face manipulation a little more challenging.
The model is starting here to resemble Basil. The Topology is even more simpler to allow easy manipulation speeding up the process.
The challenge I want to overcome is how to make the eyelids this will require research and theory.
For this project I chose to do a caricature of Basil Fawlty from The 70s sitcom Fawlty Towers John Cleese plays Basil a hotheaded nervous hotel owner.
Here is an image of the Caricature that will be used.
figure 1
The front view is very detailed in shading and will allow accuracy of the facial features. However I will need realistic reference of side of the head. This is to allow to model features like the bone of the jaw and the placing of the ears and hair.
figure 2
Close up of Fawlty allows deeper accuracy in the proportions and anatomy of the head and shoulders.
This will also be useful during the texturing done in Photoshop. details like wrinkles could be implemented to add more believability to the models skin.
figure 3
These images are from the side which will allow an accurate representation of the reading of my caricature model.
I am capturing a younger John Cleese, so some photo reference from Fawlty towers was ideal. This will also be useful when modeling and texturing the clothes
Reference images
figure 1: Credits to ryanneal. Available online from:
http://ryanneal.deviantart.com/art/Basil-Fawlty-Caricature-362279679
figure 2: Credits to the BBC Available online from:
http://www.40towers.co.uk/news_item.php?id=14
figure 3: Credits to the BBC Available online from:
https://ianfarrington.wordpress.com/category/fawlty-towers/
Here is the final Animation with sound effects and music overall I feel that the principles of animation have been considered but it could be improved and refined. The timing and pacing mostly fits the emotion. During the animation he starts curious thinking about the present during his thoughts secondary action is used in the eyes ears and tail, an example of this would be at 0:04 when his pupils look to his upper left this represents the thought process. In his first thought when he first sees the present it starts slow and subtle. The animation also shows displays of squash and stretch in the poses first it starts with a squashed when he is thinking and then goes into a slightly exaggerated stretch when he turns round at 0:04
The use of solid drawing followed with staging is strong and gives the character more personality at 0:05 his hand is on his chin which is a psychological gesture that represents thinking, next as he leans over to to look at the present slow in and slow out as well as arcs and follow through are are used to show the speed and weight of the character.
I feel at 0:07 the hold could last for longer this allows the audience to see what he is thinking, the secondary action of the ear shaking adds more animal instinct to display anthropomorphism. another example of anthropomorphism is in the solid drawing pose at 0:07 his arms are out in front of him while his hooves are out like paws.The way he leans over shows exaggeration in both the movement and his pose. The use of thought in each action represents the anticipation every time he displays thought there is an action afterwards the longer the anticipation the more exaggerated the action.
At 0:09 he crosses his arms and rubs his snout that combined with the secondary action of the eye position shows access to thought, this scene is also anticipation for him running to the present. The music I used Happy Go Lively by Laurie Johnson gives the animation more appeal and to some extent the music is timed to some of the movement this can be noticed most at 0:11-0:12. I feel that the Jazzy public domain 50's music I chose fits the overall theme of the feeling of curiosity and excitement. Also at 0:11 there is a great use of arcs and overlapping action and slow in and out. Next after running to the present he shows anticipation almost hugging the present, eyes becoming alert showing he is about to pounce then he quickly throws his arms up camera changes showing him from the back ripping the present open.
Opening the present is the main action in the animation (0:16) so it had a big build up of anticipation leading into an exaggerated fast paced action. To add more appeal sound effects of paper ripping were added, not just for exaggeration but also to communicate more to the audience of what he is doing. For every action there is a reaction so after he has finished opening the present I needed to use something that would be more universally classed as disappointment for a gift. So for the appeal and to add some extra comedy I made a pair of white under wear with red lining to make them more recognizable to the audience. The reaction of the gift is slow and contrasts with the fast rigorous action seen before he slowly raises his ears letting his eyebrows down followed by his ears in disappointment at 0:25 This would be a use of follow through since his brow leads his ears as he collapses down. The eyebrows are a very expressive secondary action that make it easier to see what the deer is thinking and how he is feeling. Lastly to add more appeal to the ending corny fail music as used to hammer in the defeat of the character. This ends with a fade out created using adobe premiere.
The staging of the animation also helps convey the message of the emotions and what the character is thinking. The first camera angle focuses on the present zooming and panning out to reveal our character this is a clear introduction to the characters goal the present is positioned at the edge of the screen. The next camera shot is when we show the character close up on a front view, this allows to communicate his emotion to the audience more clearly. Next frame shows the character from the present's perspective this staging also allows to show he is moving closer to the gift. After that the character is shown from a profile view to anticipate the main action that comes next. The next two shots exaggerate the comedy, first a back view to show wrapping paper flying everywhere and the characters determination. The second shows a close up looking up at the character from the front, this compliments his feelings of disappointment.
The character himself has a nice use of appeal in his design, he was inspired off of British stop motion characters like Aardman and American animation from the 40's like Warner Bros Looney Tunes.
Overall I feel I am happy with the results more could have been done with more skill and understanding of 3D animation. The character displays emotions and personality and I am happy I managed to show this and feel it is the strongest part of my animation. The mechanics of the animation could do with work in some areas however they still convey the message of the animation and are not too distracting from the audiences perspective.
Here is some testing of lighting and texture.
the first is too dark which means it would be more difficult to address what the character is doing. While the second is too bright the testing is to make sure we get a happy medium.
The lighting stage included using area lights to brighten the whole room.
Final Lighting
I decided to use toon outlines to fit with the simple shading of the software render setting.
I also added pictures for the frames using my own work
Here I replaced the small present with a proper bad present in this case I made a pair of under wear still in some paper to create a more obvious gag.
All the custom textures I used are my own work and can be found here
