Summary

Reflection time, I'm going to use this post to reflect on the flaws and the areas I seriously need to improve upon. The major project is coming up now and I don't want to be making anymore big mistakes.


The 11 seconds club I don't feel has been a successful piece at all, the quality has turned out really bad due to problems importing and exsporting files, the animation has flaws exspecially in the pauses the character stops dead which is a big nono for animation. I needs alot more work in the timing to, I think im progressing alot but I need to concentrate more when working, renember, animation is concentration and this is something im lacking in alot.
I want to work more on this animated piece so I'm going to ask if i can re render the fil for the exspotees exabition, alot of people form the industry are coming and I want to make the best impression I can with my work.

 The first issue I need to address is my rendering, this is an important foundation of the Harshali showed me the basics I could use in Maya and I was able to pick up alot from working with her in a short space of time. I will be spending the next few weeks of the project learning more of the basics of Maya. I learnt its really essential for me to have an idea and stick to it, plan the poses and the timing before I touch the computer. I know alot of other animators can move straight onto the poseing, but as an individual I feel as though I'd benefit alot more from planning and being clear about my idea.

I have to stay focused on my idea at all times and try not to overthink things causing more problems than nessesary.

WIP 11 sec club character profiles

Disaster today at this weeks feedback session. My scene I've build for the Time Machine idea doesn't quite get the idea across to the audience as clear as it should, I thought perhaps the giant clock spinning in reverse may give it away, but after I'd shown the idea to Penny for the first time she had no idea what was going on. I think the biggest problem might have been that the animation was too fast, so the audience doesn't quite get the chance to absorb whats going on in the scene. I was hoping the door opening would give the idea that the two characters were in a machine, and the large clock

So I've been researching a few ideas under the theme. And came up with with two character profiles to refine the idea:

The Inventor

Name: Mrs Crawley

Age: 25

Power centre: lower abdomen

A over ambitious apprentice scientist who’s always bursting with bright colourful ideas. She loves to tinker with gadgets, build new things and be creative as she can be. Problem is her ideas are usually associated with her unusal obsession for cute animals and stuffed toys.

Personality (strienghs/weaknesses)

Mrs Crawley is a very creative, over-sensitive person. Her mood can sometimes switch from overexcited and hyper to really upset and depressed, but never angry. Most of the time she’l be jumping aaround in excitement over a new invention or talking to herself. She genuinely takes everything to heart.

Ambitions

Mrs Crawley wants to graduate from being an intern, and have the opportunity to work with her supiroior Mary, building huge sophsipicated machinery.

Rythem

 rapid, continuous but can switch to super slow, and mellow

Animal

Dog

The Professor

Name: Mary Finningan

Age: 68

Powe senter: upper chest

Experienced and over qualified Professor, Mrs Finningan has been has seen it all. She is the head of the the high tech gadgets and new robots department for the company. Even though it is her job to teach the interns, she cares little for other people and has become quite self obsessed over the years, although she does enjoy the occasional gloat.

Personality

Posh snobby and very professional. She is also well groomed, she takes pride in her appearance making sure her hair is tied up in place and all suited up.

Ambitions

To be recognised by the world for her talents and awarded by other members of staff. She aims to remind everybody who the professionals are.

Rhythm

Slow, but very intimidating and big.

Animal

Siamese Cat

Mime Critical analysis

As most animations start we began with developing ideas for the brief. As a group we were looking for a different approach to the mime piece, we knew it had to be some sort of audition, so started thinking of the different kinds of auditions there are. One section of the brief had already been decided, the mimes had to perform in order to pass the audition, but the mimes also had to have personalities, quirks, traits, which show as part of the animation. I think this was the most challenging part of the brief, and I feel as though I it helped me develop the most in coming up with ideas quickly and effectively.

So as a group we had a think about the sort of auditions the mimes the mimes could be performing for. We need a reason for the mimes to be performing, something we could include personality with which would work together. Originally I was thinking of just a mime audition for mime of the year or mime factor, like a live reality show audition, but I’m really happy we when in almost the opposite direction. I think it was Harshali who first suggested the love interest, which for me give a different outlook on the situation of the mimes. We stuck to this idea and developed it further rather than developing more ideas as I think it was quite a solid idea and we could build up the scene and the characters from this situation. The idea became three guys competing for the love interest of a girl; a more traditional approach which I think we found was different to the other group’s ideas.

We had the first pitch, which I think the response was quite positive. I think the idea had quite a clear narrative and we were already able to formulate ideas for the personalities of the character. The challenge was incorporating a mime act into the narrative without being too obscure. Some of the other groups had two to three ideas for the mime act and I think if I’d spoken out a more we could have developed two ideas, however I also think that we would eventually have decided on the same idea.

Next stage, I began suggesting characters we could design, and decided on three characters with contrasting designs.  We decided a really big mime, then a really small mime and the final mime which was just right.

Originally, I had the idea of creating a really young mime (about 10/12 years old) he’d be the youngest of the three to contrast with the other two characters, as a group, we wanted to play with this  too young for the girl and really short, contrasting with the much larger, older mime.  After researching the characters personality I came across a big problem with this character if we looked at this character from an acting perspective, we would ask the question why would he want to impress her? So with a few tweaks I redesigned him a little older, t suited the narrative a lot more effectively

In my animation I was trying to accomplish a fast beat and quick movements, like the traditional MGM cartoons of the 1960’s (in colour). I looked at Hanna Barbara, and the animation used for its stylised 1960’s animation (The Jetsons, The Flinstones, original retro cartoons) a process called “Limited animation” came from the same watching the Fred Quimby series of Tom and Jerry, we decided early on this was the style we wanted to aim for in our animation.

   

I really liked this idea, I thought we could possibly try if we had more time tried different approaches and been more creative with the brief.  The idea had a strong narrative (as I’ve said a few times) and with it, we could have perhaps added a little diversity. I noticed everybody used a male mime for the audition, I think I could of used perhaps, a female mime if we were trying to make our idea different. However I do think the idea works really well with the male characters and developing the personalities has created a nice a contrast rather than having just three individual characters.

The Team

I really enjoyed working as a team for this project, it was such an experience for me, I felt much more motivated in a group than working alone as I had the chance to bounce ideas and thoughts with other team members.

Harshali has industry experience and with working with her on a project even though it was university assignment, I felt like I actually gained experience working in the animation field. I was able to ask her about the program and learn so much in such a short time. We had the production assets (the scene, render set up) thanks to her abilities and I really hope I contributed to the team by visualising the assets and designs for the set.

I am grateful I’ve the chance to work as a group in a project and think I’m quite lucky to be paired up two individuals who already had experience in Maya.  

Strong points:

In my opinion I think the strongest point is how we have developed the characters. We have the trio, the three musketeers and the three comrades together as friends. We used the same rig and communicated with the character designs regularly which the result was three contrasting characters with a narrative happening in the scene. The narrative being the three mimes trying to compete to impress the girl and last mime being successful). The mimes also had personalities to contrast one another, Andrew the older, sweet, mime, Jake who contrasts as the younger, arrogant mime and Bob, tall, dark and handsome, the ideal mime. The highlight of this project for me was when the tutor Siobhan had a first look at our characters and said “oo, there like a family” (I’m sad I know) but for me it felt like the characters really came together.

The introduction scene and the scene with mine and Harshali’s mimes together for me work really well, I’m so glad we decided to these scenes even if we cannot use them in the end. I’ve learnt a lot about how difficult this can be, some of the issue that can go wrong: Key frames moving about the timeline, the time and process to re adjust the characters to interact for the sake of 2 seconds.  

As for my animated piece, I think some of the strong elements are the poses the character performs. I was looking to make the character do the same poses as a catwalk or runway model, along the lines of Baywatch (as the scene was a beach) so placing pauses in between poses to make the character appear to be striking a pose helped me a lot with the timing of the animation. I also tried a few of the poses in front of the mirror to see if they would work comfortably.

Watching the animation I think some elements of the fast, snappy timing came from the same watching the Fred Quimby series of Tom and Jerry have worked successfully, although the animation needs much more polishing, I think there is a fast beat to the overall tempo of the animation.

Weakness

There’s a lot of room for polishing in my animation, some of the poses are think are a little to exsaggerurated. There are still issues with the timing but I do think I’ve improved since the beginning of the course. Some the arcs, particular the arm arc when the mime is holding the piece of chocolate above his head, even though the animation is quite fast and he is meant to almost “whip it” out of his hand, the points I’ve key framed the wrist don’t make a natural movement

 My biggest weakness is some of technical errors and hiccups in the animation, areas such as the walk cycle at the beginning and “pops” in areas where the IK handle has been pulled too far. I really have become a lot tighter when in the polishing phase of the animation I make a lot of difference to the piece. I’ve started switching to FK in order to prevent some of the popping and it works really well for arm and leg arcs.

I struggled at the beginning of the project with getting to grips with Maya, but I’m really glad I’ve had the chance and the time in university to switch to Maya and work with such talented people in the field.  I feel I’ve learnt a lot about the in a short period of time.

Conclusion

I want to credit Harshali and congratulate her on her models featured in Dorothy of oz. I’ve feel like gained a lot of experience from her. I’ve feel as though improved so much even though I have a long way to go with my animation skills and is an experience I can take away with me and use in the industry.  

WIP mime reference secondary animation

Today I've been adding touches to the animation, I had to animate the quiff as it is quite a big part of the character design, and an essential element of secondary animation.

 I used my reference I collected from the green screen studio, (fortunately for me my hairs been growing really fast lately) and blocked out the shapes of the hair at point where Jake flips his hair back. I've adjusted the timing a little adding a full second to the flip in comparison to the reference and used a bit of exaggeration to emphasise the flip a little more. I wanted to have that old cartoony feel to it, referencing alot of the Tom and Jerry shorts of the MGM studios,  including "Salt Water Tabby". This is the style of animation the group is aiming for,       

I been referring back to my reference whilst adjusting the timing, I still think the timing doesn't feel quite right for the character and i think I've worked out why.
Quick recap, going back to the beginning when we designed the characters during the planning stage, we decided on three characters with contrasting designs. We wanted a really big mime, then a really small mime and the final character which was just right, I have the smallest mime. What I didn't realise was the difference in timing between actions by small and tall people, I'm quite tall (6ft) and Id been using myself as reference for the mimes actions such as the jump and moving across the wall. But the character is much smaller in size (I think he would be around 5ft 5?), he arms and legs are a bit shorter, so I thought I needed smaller person to do the action for me.
 Lucky for me I had Rachael who was just the right size for job, we did a reference shot of the mime actions in the glass windows of the labs.





I watched the playback of the two together and I could see a slight difference in the of the moves, for example when she's moving along the wall, her actions are little more snappy and faster. Her jumping is alot faster and has a "spring" to it, something I could add to the mime performance to make the actions more believable and less floaty.  Rachael's poses were also a little different to mine because of the physical build

WIP Clean up playblast mime

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODhfP9Nt7xI

Clean Up list

00:03: adjust the motion of the right hand – too slow/ add an arc

00:04: Jake pops into walk cycle, need a few key frames and slow down the walk slightly

00:16: right hand flips out needs closer

00:15: flips a little to fast

00:19-00:20 : left hand moves down too fast

00:20 – 00:27: shoulders are too rigid, they need more dimension in the movement, some micro anticipation

00:28:Jake's left hand/arm moves too far back, it needs bringing forward

00:02: push isn’t clear, it needs less time more impact and it looks to floaty for the character

00:40: arm vector moves around too much, it needs holding in one place.

00:39-00:41: body pops out when looking to the right, i needs a pause in between the looking over shoulder.

00:50-00:53: poses are a little obscure, need retouching to be more believable, although it does work with the timing. Right hand pose is unnatural, needs to be put into right pose.

WIP 11 seconds club

I've been working on the block sequience of the 11 seconds club dialog, I had a mix up with ideas and tried a few different poses for different actions the characters Mrs Crawley and the profession could perform.

 Outline:The Mrs Crawley is trying to invent the time machine and it seems to be working this time, so she begins really excited on high tension. She goes from happy to sad when she relises shes failed again, but this time the Professor gives up and leaves the time machine.

I wanted to make mrs Crawley looks alot smaller than the professor, so I kept her the body posture quite close together and i''ve planned to keep her timing a little snappy and  in high tension to reflect personality. I think her character will be easy to empathise as we all been in this kind of situation where you try your hardest but still don't succeed. The professor's personality is much more confident, she is a powerful character so her gestures are alot more relaxed, stood upstraight and open.

I used the reference of Rachael & Rachael's performance to plan out the staging of the animation, I think I went a little overbaord with the idea so I have to make sure the concept (the time machine) is clear to the audience but doesnt overpower the animation. To do this i picked out ideas from old classics such as "Back to the future" and "H.G wells The Time machine",  we also have the Tardis, Stargate and more recently the hot tub time machine (thanks to Rachaels post). after generating ideas I made a few sketches and i came up with these final designs for the staging of the characters and the enviroment:

The light grey shaded shapes are the two characters
Darker shades are clocks
Square blocks in the background are machinery, buttons,

Final idea:

Two characters are stood side by side with a large clock in the middle Other blocks of machinery can be seen side by side.

   

Here I'm using the clock almost as a character for the time machine. I think positioning the characters like this shows most clearly to the audience the three most important elements of the animation, Mrs Crawley (right) The Professor (left) and the clock, (middle). The clock takes up the most area so it should be static and become part of the background during the performance of the two characters.

11 second club greenscreen/ Animating to soundtrack

Early start today, as we had the green screen studio booked for 10:00am,  I really liked Harshali's idea with the Cruelella De vill/ Meryl Streep character (think of the of fierce, fabulous poses she could do for her character). But I choose the Scientist idea, a sci fi theme and something a little different to what I would do, I'm thinking doing a theme like this could be quite diverse to the other characters I've animated beforehand, Mrs Crawley is a a enthusiastic young nerdy apprentice scientist with her tutor aold wise professor of science.
 sketched out the storyboard and key poses I had in mind and actions both characters are going to perform, here are a few  I sketched out before today session:

Female Professor poses 

Mrs Crawley poses

These are the original storyboard I drew Monday for the green screen session:

My idea: Mrs Crawley is an apprentice scientist excited about her latest invention - the time machine!


The scene opens with flash, as two metal doors slide open (picture elevator doors) as parts of the time machine fall from the roof and the smoke clears.

Mrs Crawley and a tall old female professor are stood side by side inside the time machine , Mrs Crawley has a remote in her hand controlling the time machine. The Professor has a clipboard for marking Mrs Crawley's invention.

First and last scene

(storyboard reads zig zap down and up)

I 
 we managed to film reference for the 11 second club thanks to R&R (both Rachael's) great acting skills.   with the reference i was able to take pick up much more, including the natural motions, arcs and lil ideas I would miss without the real performance. 

We did a few takes on the idea and after watching a few, I thought the idea needed to be simpler. So I looked over my idea again and made a few changes to simply the idea.

 The scene opens with flash, as two metal doors slide open (picture elevator doors) as parts of the time machine fall from the roof and the smoke clears.

Mrs Crawley and a tall old female professor are stood side by side inside the time machine , Mrs Crawley has a remote in her hand controlling the time machine. The Professor has a clipboard for marking Mrs Crawley's invention.

Mrs Crawley is looking out of the time machine ecstatic that they have gone back to the pre historic age, but the Professor is so "snobbish" and wrapped up in herself, she hasn't realised they've gone back in time.

 The Professor looks down at her clipboard ; "Please don't think were being ungrateful Mrs Crawley,"  finds Mrs Crawley's name and puts a cross next to it "but there comes a time when things are best left to the professionals"

 Mrs Crawley is shocked "But I..."
"now I really must go" the professor  jumps off the time machine and walks off screen. Mrs Crawley tries to stop her from leaving the time machine but is afraid to jump out of the machine.
we hear the professor off screen "good day"

The camera cuts to a long shot of a pre-historic background, with Mrs Crawley alone in the time machine.

I've changed the characters thoughts and some of  Mrs Crawley's actions but not the setting. I think this idea will come across alot clearer to the audience than the original because in the orginal storyboard, Mrs Crawley goes through the transition of a high to low, excited to sad, which I think is too much for such a short animation. So instead, Mrs Crawley's character stays excited character throughout the animation to avoid confusing the audience.

We have booked another green screen studio Friday 10:00am to re-shoot my idea with these changes, hopefully it will be clearer than before.
  

Harshali had managed to find a really good Jazz piece to fit in with the animation sequence, it has a really nice slow tempo which I think matches the beat of my character perfectly. I hadn't thought very much about sound up until now, I knew I needed a few of the cartoon Hanna Barbera sound effects to match up with the actions of my character, I need the shakey head sound effect at the head turn at frame 1200 and a "aaah" male voice at frame 960, as the head is rolling back, also I need a drop sound as he drops the chocolate into his mouth. I want to sync the three walk cycles at the beginning, middle and end with the animation to this audio as Siobhan suggested in the recording session today, I think it will help alot with the timing of the piece


Today we also had a chance to use the recording studio for the first time, I'd never used a sound booth before, it was so much fun and a great opportunity to get familiar the equipment used for pre recording sounds. We did a practice run for the audio to the animation, where we watched the animated clip on the screen and read the dialogue in time with the animation. Harshali and me first acted out the female voice in turns to to get different interpenetration for the female character, here is the second draft of the script we used:

Camera Profile/script

Beach Babe Female character dialog:

Dialog/timing

Introduction

(ahh the sun is nice and warm)

(three guys over there look a little strange)

Beach Babe: “mmhmmhm (humming tune) such a nice day…”

Beach Babe: “Is he looking at me” 0:00:07 (

Beach Babe: “w wait-woaw” - 0:00:09

Harshali’s mime: Andrew

00:0014 – “What is he doing?

Reaction to Doggy action – “eww”

Hitting the glass - “ouch!”

my mime: Jake

00:00:42 “hhh he’s nice”

00:00:57 “uh oh”

00:01:07 “?”

00:01:10“that’s it?”

Alper mime: bob

Bob flexing 00:01:18 “Mmmmm”

giving the gifts 0:01:42 – undecided

Suggestions:

“AWWW so sweet”

“Yes!”

“okay

After two takes we started to come up with more and more ideas, adding more to the dialogue.I think i worked alot better this way as the character felt and sounded alot more natural when the dialogue wasn't scripted, we even came up with the idea of using two characters thanks to Siobhan, the girly talk between best friends was so much fun and I think set the scene for the enviroment of the characters.

Friday I will be shooting one more take for the Time Machine sci fi idea then continuing with the mime animation for mondays recording session with our female voice actor. I want to get the complete sequence down with inbetween at least so the actress can understand what the character is doing and react more naturally.

WIP update mime

After a long weekend I've managed to restore my work form the hardrive, so here is a recent play blast of the scene so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fqrOJwEjoM&feature=youtu.be

I've added arcs in the arms up to frame 1100, the sequence is 500 - 1600 I've also adjusted the poses and in-betweens of the mid section where he flips his head back. Originally he was facing striaght at the camera (or the girl) but when i played back my reference i noticed i was facing the side. I don't think facing the camera would work because of his personality, he doesn't engage the viewer purposely until his performance (presenting the chocolates) so this had to be changed. I slightly exsaggurated the anicipation of the head.

frame 800-900 need to move the hands over to the right where the head is

frame 500 and the rest of the walk cycle the hands are compelety off sync

first half of the animation needs tidying up before further polishing/ second half needs inbetweens, arcs, overlapping action

need to complete Facial exspressions

Inspiration

Had done a little researching today, I thought this would be a good time to mention one of my most inspirational animators, James Baxster. He is a british animator and has worked on a number of Disney productions such as the Little Mermaid, (he animated : Ariel and King Triton) Lion King (Belle) and more recently Kung Fu Panda (he directed the dream sequence). He's worked for two major 3D animation companies Walt Disney Studios and Dreamworks.

I also found some really useful notes on acting for animators from the Flooby Nooby blog
http://floobynooby.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/james-baxter-notes-on-acting-for.html

Heres a short clip of his work from the prince of Egypt of Moses,  such powerful animation:
http://vimeo.com/31234436

11 second club idea

Today we proposed ideas for the 11 second club soundtrack, I had a few ideas but i wanted to come with something i hadn' tried before, so I've gone for a more sci fi, fiction senario

 the idea of over qualified undergraduate scientist applying to be on the board with professionally scientists. An over the shoulder view of the conversation, switching between the two.
  However I don't think the idea came across to well in the session today at uni. My colleagues had some great ideas of their own,  but my idea seem a little over complicated and needed to be much simpler in order to get the idea across with such a short sound clip, we made some really fun suggestions for scenarios for my characters and after gathering up ideas I came up with this one:


Two scientist stood next to each other, one is a tall skinny old lady dressed in a white lab coat with a clipboard, the other a young female intern wearing blue lab gloves and holding two test tubes.
gathered a few source image from H.G Wells The Time Machine and back to the future.

WIP mime breakdowns

Past few days I've been working from step mode to spline to check the animation, I think I have a lot of technical problems with the piece, some of which keep reoccuring. The hand on hips is quite working in spline mode as it does in step mode, due to the linear keys the computer sets up. I have to find a solution to this problem before next weeks session at least due to the amound of time we have left, there's also not alot of spacing inbetween key poses, giving the animation a constant follow through. 

In terms of the camera and setting of the scene, we have been working in as a group to decide on the positioning of the camera. Working as a group on computer animation is something I havn't had much exsperience with, so this is a big learning curve for me. One of the big difficulties we are having at the moment is the Staging, to begin with, we have to decide as a group where the camera has to be, if one of us decides to move the camera then we start to have continuity errors in the animation sequence and it will look like the girl is moving around the shot. Me and Harshali have a few seconds with both our characters in the scene which we will have to concider. 

From the feedback session, one of the main problems with the animation Siobhan pointed out that the camera is far to far away, this was a very good point, unfortunately my group couldn't make it to the feedback session so I made a note of this and passed it on, I have to try to get my animation into spline mode before next weeks session to keep up