The Presenter

I decided to start this one while the first task of the module is still in progress just to get them all up and running and to give me something else to work on.

Christmas break isn't quite going to plan this year so I have more time than I expected of time to fill seen as it looks like I may not be making the journey home. Damn you snow! So to distract me I have chosen my audio clip for the presenter task. It's the from the comedy sketch by Rowan Atkinson called 'Welcome to Hell', which can be heard and viewed here:

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

After giving it some though my idea is to construct an environment of hell and make my presenter look like the more stereotypical devil. I'm thinking a bit of red lighting, and some nice bits of mist too... though I think making the scene look pretty will have to be something I look into if there's time at the end.

First plan is to make a few sketches and shoot my own reference footage after playing the audio over quite a few times and getting a feel for it. I'm also going to begin work on the environment.

In the meantime, here's a really awesome 2D short I watched the other day. As an artist as well as an aspiring animator I thought this was really amazing.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Lip Syncing

So I made a start on one of the tasks for the new module. I also took some time to read through the relevant section on lip syncing and facial animation from a few of the animation books I currently have before I started just to get a general idea of what I was doing and how to tackle it.

The audio I selected is as follows:

"This is the end, the absolute end!'

Not very long, but long enough. The story I chose to betray for the piece was a father scolding his teenage son/daughter. 

I began by blocking in some basic lip sync to establish the right timing for the open and closes of the mouth shapes, as well as the wide and narrows.

I also put together a basic scene of a room with a chair, table and various items to give the impression that the man had been sitting up all night. Attempted some sort of lighting set up as well, but not too happy with that but I think I'll leave that until the actual animation is done and dusted.

I filmed some footage of myself sitting at my desk and performing to the dialogue to use as reference for my animation and then blocked in some head movements and some simple animation on the body and arms after positioning my character to be sitting at the table.

So far so good! Now to work more into the lip sync, tweak the timing and get some more expressions going... looks a bit weird at the moment cos his eyes are unfocused, there's no eye brow movement and his face is just blank, haha!

Animation Practice 2

This is our next module, which is made up of three assignments, building on and developing from what we did in the previous animation one module.

For this our three tasks include:

1. A Lip Sync Exercise
2. Animate and Lip Sync a comedy sketch
3. A Song and Dance performance piece

A selection of audio tracks for each have been provided though you can chose your own if approved.

We can tackle these as we please, but I think I'm going to begin with the basic Lip Sync exercise to start just to get to grips with it as I have only ever done one lip sync prior to this and that was around two years ago now O_O Time to did out Jason Osipia's 'Stop Staring' book again to refresh I think, along with a few others.

End of Module 1

I handed in all my work tasks for the Animation Practice 1 module today which included the final attempts of all my tasks.

I managed to work my lift animation to a satisfactory standard. From my previous post I checked all my arcs on the various body parts by turning on tranjectories so I could see the curves. I did the obvious parts like the pelvis, torso, head, feet and hands and then moved on to the knees and elbows, which strangely enough had the most work. When this was done the animation seemed to flow a lot smoother. However, I did have to make some further adjustments then to the position of the elephant during the walk and as a result fix the positioning of the hands. Lastly I then moved onto the Elephant and animated the segments of the trunk so it would move as a result of the lift and the walk. For fun I also added a pink bow to the head of the character rig to match the elephant ^__^ hehe! I was pretty pleased with the end result, though I do think it could have been pushed further, but I didn't want to end up overworking it and losing the appeal it currently had.

This is the final:

Task 7: Lift (Final) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

I also made a final render with a few more adjustments to me ball with a tail animation. This was another example of an animation that could have been a lot better. If I'd managed to put together a more successful rig at the start I think the ball would have had a lot more weight (as discussed in a previous post). As it is, I did the best I could with what I had. Maybe I'll re-attempt something similar in future using the improved ball rig.

Task 3: Ball with Tail (Final Attempt) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

The Walk: One Last Attempt

As a break from working on the lift, I once again returned to my Janitor walk cycle to make a last attempt at improving it. I managed to fix the feet sliding, altered the timing of some sections and tweaked a few other areas in an effort to make it better.

Task 3: The Walk (Final Attempt) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

However, despite my efforts, there's only so much you can do when building on a 'not-so great' foundation. The intial base was blocked out without really considering the timing in too much detail at the early stage and without sufficient reference footage. I also had too many ideas and strong poses which I tried to cram into the one animation. All of this resulted in a lot more work needed to be done at a later stage.

If I was to re-attempt it I think the techniques I have recently developed and learned would enable me to establish a far better block with the timing established from the outset giving me a much better base in order to build. I'd also take the opportunity to use the green room and act out the sequence I wanted to portray in order to have good quality footage to refer to as needed.

As I hadn't yet started applying the method and techniques I now use when I began the walk then there wasn't really much I could do to really fix it at this stage without re-starting the whole thing from scratch which due to limited time wasn't in my best interest. Though, I would like to go back to animating a character walk at a later stage as a fun practice exercise!

If anything I can at least say I have learned since beginning this animation even though I am disappointed I can't seem to fix it any further :(

The Lift In Progress

After chosing to proceed with the lift I began to develop my initial block further by creating a simple elephant rig so the animation would instantly make more visual sense as currently all it showed was a pink blob following the character while he pulls on nothing (see lift block video in the previous post).

I decided to keep the elepant rig simple in appearance to match the style of the character rig, while giving it some detail and a few links for the trunk. I also set up controllers to make animating it easier. I then began working on the inbetween poses for the animation as well as working the new elephant rig into the start of the sequence adjusting the trunk links and position to make it work as if the character is pulling on the trunk to drag the toy. I also added some additional animation to the trunk to show follow through movement from the toy being lifted. However, I did decide to leave doing that at this stage as I'd probably need to move the toy body around when I started working on the body shifting during the walk, which was my next task.

This is how it looks at present:

Task 7: The Lift (Work In Progress) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Next I'm going to:

1. check my motion arcs on the various parts of the body
2. do some more work on the walk
3. animate the rest of the elephant 
4. make any needed adjustments after completing the above stages.

And to end, another short film I enjoyed :)

Les Dangereux from Daniel Klug on Vimeo.

A Leap Forward

As we only had to submit either the climb or the lift, I initially began by starting both and seeing which would be the pest one to polish. Though even at this stage I was leaning more toward the elephant one, due to its appeal.

I began both these animations using a custom rig created by my classmate Andreas. I had wanted to create my own but due to time and the fact that I'd never attempted creating my own rig before I decided it probably wasn't the best idea. 

My first blocked out attempts for both animations resulted in a lot of sliding. I found out this was due to me using the main controller for the rig to move the character throughout the animation. As removing all animation from this controller would affect the whole sequence for both animations I decided to begin them both again. I also learnt some valuable tips from Andreas during class about using the reference footage to achieve better timing.

By the end of the day I had both animations re-blocked out at a base level. 

Task 6: Climb (Initial Block) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Task 7: Lift (Initial Block) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Even at this level they were both better than the previous versions I had done. There was no sliding for a start, woo! I opted to proceed with the lift animation, couldn't resist the pink elephant ^_^ though I would also like to finish off the other one if I have chance...

Compared to my previous animations I feel that something clicked at this point. I think its down to finally understanding how to block out an animation properly using effective pose to pose, better understanding of timing, more organised keyframing and I also think I'm begin to develop a work process to tackling an animation. I'm not sure but it just feels like I understand a lot of things better and like all the things I've been reading (such as articles by Keith Lango and bits from various books I have) make a lot more sense to me and I'm applying what I've read to my work process. Guess the improvement shows that I am learning and developing which is definately a good sign!

Tasks 6 & 7: Climb and Lift

These are the last two tasks of this module.

Task 6: The Climb

Animate a character climbing on top of something and then coming down the other side. Important to give the character a n identity and purpose to help develop a convincing performance.

Task 7: The Lift

Animate a character lifting an object of your choosing. The object can be any size and weight. As mentioned above, giving the character an identity was once again important to give a story context to the piece.

Before we began animating for these tasks we had a filming session where we got to use the green studio to film video footage using the various props. I also made some additional footage in labs for my lift animation as the 'object' I wanted to use for my reference was not available... this is not surprising when you see what the object is, haha!

These are the reference videos I decided to use for the two tasks (uploaded by my tutor):

Also, I watched a pretty good short on YouTube the other day, called 'Eleven'. It's about a space marine who gets outnumbered. It's got a good story and I think it's really well done. Definitely worth a watch :)

Eleven from Anzovin Studio on Vimeo.

Work Revisions

Over this weekend I spent some time going over my previous tasks and adjusting/improving anything that needed touching up after comments made in the feedback sessions. 

I finally got round to re-doing the bouncy ball animation from Task 1, correcting the bounce distance of the ball and playing with the curve editor to make the bounce more realistic. I think my attempt was successful. 

Task 1: Bouncy Ball (Improved Version) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

I also worked on the Pendulum from Task 2 to correct the instances during the animation where the pendulum comes to a stop. It's definately a lot better than my first attempt.

Task 2: Pendulum (Improved Version) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

I then moved back onto the ball with a tail animation for what's probably re-work 3 now. I found a great was to rig the ball to get a really great squash and stretch, using bones, setting up the envelopes and adding helper objects to adjust it. However, due to the fact I already had animation on the ball, it ended up just going totally distorted so the option was re-do the ENTIRE thing with the new rig or revert to Plan B and hopefully improve the present animation.

I opted for Plan B. As much as I think the new improved rig would result in better animation I didn't think the time would be best spent re-doing the whole animation with it. So Plan B was to remove the current FFD modifier which had the 2x2x2 control point option and add an FFD modifier with more control points for more control over animating the squash and stretch. I then went over the entire animation again re-keying the squash and stretch of the ball. I found this to be a definite improvement on the previous option. 

Previously I'd also found that when I squashed the ball the tail didn't move with it. So the ball would flatter but the tail stayed where the centre of the ball would have been before compression. To combat this I also animated the tails position to move with the ball throughout the sequence.

Below is the result:

Task 3: Ball with a Tail (Improved Version) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Overall, by doing this I think the whole thing definitely looked a lot better!

Lastly I then once again revisited the walk for attempt 3. I'd already made a few adjustments to the first version I posted by adding more slouch to the walk and removing some of the sequence because there were too many strong poses and too many things happening. On attempt 3, I made further adjustments to the walk itself and also prolonged poses so the janitor paused in between movements for 'thinking time' and also altered the timing of various sections for better effect. The result was an improvement but I'm still not happy with it.... There may indeed be an attempt 4 if there's time before the hand- in after Tasks 6 and 7.

Here's Version 3 anyway:

Task 4: Personality Walk (Improved Version) from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

And now onto the last 2 tasks!

Task 5: Posing

For this task we were given 8 statements which we had to create a strong pose to symbolise.

The statements were:

1. pleased at the result
2. waiting for news
3. i'm very angry with you
4. now how am i going to do this?
5. dancing to impress
6. i'm free!
7. err...excuse me
8. what's in there?

We had to create sketches of poses for each of the statments and then select 6 of them to pose our rig of choice in. I decided to use the 'Max' rig for this Task, as I'd like to move away from biped and experiement with new rigs. Ultimately I'd prefer to make my own but hopefully I'll have time to experiement with that over christmas.

Below are my finals. I re-did two after comments from our feedback session to strengthen the pose.

pleased of the result

I'm very angry with you!
(Apparently all this one was missing was a pile of poo! haha) 

dance to impress (attempt 1)

dance to impress (final)

how am I going to do this?

I'm free! (attempt 1)

I'm free! (final)

waiting for news
(probably my best pose of the lot!)

Not sure if I should have added more in terms of backgrounds... Decided against it in the end as the focus os the task was on the readibility of the pose.

Character Walk Feedback

Below is the video for the first attempt of Task 4, The Character Walk:

Task 4: Personality Walk from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

My character is a janitor named Jim who is depressed with his job. He is fed up of it! This one worked out at 17 seconds which is too long (meant to be 10), it's also still not quite right which was confirmed with the feedback I received yesterday. I need to cut out some of his actions when he stops, refine the walk and also work on the timing more. On the plus side my idea was liked and the poses were said to be good so at least I'm going in the right direction, was a bit apprehensive about it because I wasn't happy with the current sequence. I was also told I was trying to cram too many ideas for the character into the sequence... I seem to have a habit of doing that. I tend to get carried away with ideas..which I'm not going to complain about!

I've now started in on cutting out various sections of the sequence when he's stationary and fixing the timing. When that's all worked out hopefully the time will be done to at least 12 and then I'll refine the actual walk. If I have chance I may also try and fix the mop so the brush move... but that's not really a priority.

I've also uploaded my re-work of Task 3, Ball with a Tail:

Task 3: Ball with a Tail from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

This is the improved second attempt with better camera, reduced time and improved bounce. It's still lacking in weight a bit but I don't have time at the moment to do another re-work on it. If I get a chance I may re-do all the squash and stretch by adding a different FFD modifier to the ball and seeing if that makes a difference. I still also need to fix up my pendulum and bouncy ball animations. I think I need to reserve a day for re-works over the next week.

Task 3 and Task 4

Really need to start posting here more often :-S

Since my last post we've also been given Tasks 4 and 5. As Task 4 is my current work in progress for this weeks feedback session I'll cover that in this post.

Task 4: Character Personality Walk

Using the rig of your choice animate your character in a personality walk. The character must be walking while carrying, pushing or pulling an object and a stop and start must be included within the animation. Adding additional animation is encouraged to keep in personality with your character.

I've got my idea sorted for this, some bits need fine tuning. I also think I may need to tone down my initial idea or the animation will probably go over 10 seconds and I'll also probably be giving myself a bit too much of an ambitious task for this exercise.  Probably better to simplify it and do it well.

I've managed to block out my initial base walk as a cycle (i've only ever done cycles in the past), now just need to transfer that so my guy actually covers ground. I've also established a rough scene. I've decided to use the biped in 3Ds Max for this exercise.Going to get some reference footage tomorrow now and roughly block out the whole animation.I'll probably draw out some of my key poses, film myself acting it and then go from there.

-----------------------------

Last Weeks feedback session was on Task 3 - Ball with a tail. I based mine on a spotty puppy.

'Spot' the ball with a tail

Had a few problems with it that needed correcting so, touched it up the day after the feedback and re-rendered. It could possibly need more work before hand in. Will post the video to vimeo and link.

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In other news I've watched quite a few good shorts recently. An interesting one I discovered the other night called 'Lightheaded'. I thought the concept behind it was pretty cool.

Another good one I saw a while back which I recently re-watched, is called 'Alma' directed by Rodrigo Blaas of Pixar. It's recently been announced that this is going to be made into a film :-) which I think will be really cool because the short it AWESOME!

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Ball and Pendulum Videos

These are videos of my initial attempts of Tasks 1 and 2.

Task 1: Bouncy Ball from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Task 1: Happy Ball from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

Task 2: Pendulum from Lauren Orrells on Vimeo.

I need to make corrections to the Bouncy Ball and the Pendulum after getting feedback in last weeks weekly session, and then re-render out the improved versions. May also make some improvements to the scenes in general. Will see how the time pans out.

Pendulum

Watched some videos of Keith Lango's Animation Channel on YouTube over the weekend, thanks to a recommendation by someone in the class. Really helped in explaining stuff about overlapping action and breakdown positions for the Pendulum movement. I also made my own video footage.

I've also been reading 'The Animators Survival Kit' by Richard Williams, great book!

Pendulum Set-up & Trajectory Paths

Still not quite happy with my Pendulum movement mind... think it may be something to do with the timing and maybe the movement of the bottom link... but not really sure.  Will be good to get some feedback in this weeks sessions, same for Task 1. I've moved onto the next task for now.

They are as follows:

Task 1: Bouncy Balls

Animate two balls of different weights bouncing and colliding with an object.

Task 2: Pendulum

Animate a three link pendulum attached to a box. Experiment with different ways of moving the box and animate the resulting action onto the pendulum.

Task 3: Ball with Tail

Animate a ball with a tail jumping onto a box. The ball must have personality!

An interesting short I stumbled upon today when looking at Keith Lango's Blog. It's cute and it's about baking. What's not to like? :D

JOBS : THE BAKER / LES METIERS : LE BOULANGER from lam le thanh on Vimeo.

An Inspiration...

Check this out if you haven't seen it already:

http://www.animationmentor.com/community/showcase.html#videos

The work shown here is AWESOME! Definately something to aspire to throughout the year!

The Beginning

First post. This blog is going to contain information on my journey through my MA Character Animation course, should be good fun!

I've been working on my 'bouncing ball animations' over the last few days. I have a bouncy ball and also the 'happy' yellow stress ball. Both, luckily for me, are a good size to bounce across my desk continously to watch how they move and what happens when they hit something. My first attempts were poor but recent results have been more promising. Will post my the renders soon.

I've also put together the rig for my pendulum but the motion isn't quite right. I think I put one together and observe as I couldn't find any decent video reference on the internet, especially not for a multi-link pendulum. The best I found was on an 'Animation Mentor' students blog, where the guy has made his own and filmed himself moving it.

http://ejoanmiquel.blogspot.com/2009/11/pendulum-reference.html

Making one if probably the best idea rather than just assuming how it would move or reading about it 'in theory'.