One Down, Two to Go!

Got one of the task done now... sadly it's the shortest one. My lip sync piece:

Had to tweak a few things with the timing of some of his movements and I added in the blink I felt was needed at the end. Going to leave it as it stands now. Really wish I knew more about lighting and rendering to get a better overall look to the piece, but I guess I can always look into that at a later stage to make it look 'pretty'.

Since the last post I also lip synced the dance and added in a few extra poses and gave my guy a little umbrella :) 

I'm liking how its progressing so far... but then its still in the blocked stage where everything is neatly keyed and organised. The only this that is bothering me is the funky head movement that occurs between two keyed poses in one section >.< no idea why that decided to happen... hopefully it can be easily corrected!

I also did a bit more working into the presenter piece, prior to Thursday, which can be seen here:

I showed this in class yesterday and got some more feedback on it so I've made some alterations since. Reduced the amount of blinks, tweaked some poses and then moved onto my main issue. I really wasn't feeling the pose for 'infernal' in the above clip so I spent pretty much ALL of yesterday from the afternoon on re-working the start...around 200-300 frames. I also filmed some additional reference for it.

When I finally got it all working in with the rest of the animation I noticed his arm decided to go a bit crazy in one section and get some weird rotations happening, for no reason whatsoever! Tried fixing it with no luck so I ended up having to delete all the animation for the entire arm on all the frames I'd re-worked and doing it again. Needless to say, I wasn't happy! Why Max insists on creating these dodgy rotation actions on limbs for no reason I don't know... I hope the head in the dance piece doesn't provide me with the same problem.

So this is what I've put in instead:

Watched it this morning and I'm still not sure about it but I don't think I can face any more hours trying to re-work it again after yesterday! I know it needs some tweaks to the general timing and some more finger movements and maybe some more hand actions prior to the 'infernal' move... but the main 'infernal' action itself? hmmm...

Will get some more feedback on it and maybe do some work on a different section of the piece for a few hours. I may attempt tackling the walk section and then move back onto the dance piece tomorrow.

Pass 2 of the Song and Dance

Made a second pass of my song and dance piece yesterday which I finished off earlier: 

I added in some additional poses between the ones in the previous video to clarify some of the actions better. The timing of the steps is now clearer as some are more like skips, and the legs no longer just slide through each other. I moved some keys slightly too, to work better with the audio after referring to the frame chart I made. I also touched up the little jumps a bit, but they'll need more work at a later stage as I need to offset keys but don't want to get into that just yet.

Going to get some feedback on it tomorrow now, then continue hacking away at it. My next plan is to block in the lip sync and some facial expressions and eye movements to get that out of the way.

I also need to move back to my presenter piece soon too to get that sorted out. Notcied some issues with the lip sync the other day when I decided to render it out properley which weren't apparent in the viewport render... I think I know what the problem is though... I think I may have over emphasised some letters which don't need defining...so hopefully if I drop a few keys here and there it'll fix it... fingers crossed anyway!

Short film time:



I watched this one quite recently, thought it was fun! It shows how one action can cause a whole sequence of other events to take place.

Song and Dance

Began work on the final task of this module on Thursday which is the song and dance performance piece. My plan originally had been to do the song 'Shout' after first listening to the audio tracks recommended by Penny but after Tuesday's lecture (which I'll talk more about later) I decided to go through them all again just to make sure before I started, as there were a few which had been added since I last looked.

So I played them all again...and then things changed. Upon listening to 'Singing in the Rain' I had a bolt of inspiration and an idea for a character and the performance came instantly to mind, so I decided a change of plan was probably the best course of action, even though I do still prefer the 'Shout' song. 

I made a few sketches of some ideas I had for the character/posing for my piece, which you can see below:

(drawings to follow)

Following this, after spending some time repeatedly listening to the track I filmed some (rather embarrassing) reference footage on Thursday and then went through it all and put together the best bits which I wanted use for my animation ready to begin the blocking. 

I also made a chart based on the BPM of the audio file and the corresponding frames the beats fall on to help with the timing of actions, so they fall on the correct frames. Last weeks lecture was on 'Animating to Music' and we watched a tutorial by Keith Lango, which was really interesting and also very helpful for this task.

I finished my my first pass of blocking yesterday before I went to work and I think it's off to a promising start! I think I've captured what I wanted, I just hope some bits aren't a bit ambitious for me.(there's a few jumps, skips and spins which aren't apparent yet. Gonna give it a shot anyway!

Here's the base block with audio: 

I'm going to develop the block a bit further now, add a few break down poses so some areas make more sense and then block the lip sync. I may also need to make a few adjustments to the timing of the actions towards the end. Will check it again after I've added a few other poses in...in case the skips make a difference.

Results and WIP Work

Today I got my results for the first module AP1. I got an A, woop! I'm really pleased and surprised actually as I don't have as much animation experience as some other members of the class so I have a lot more to learn and I'm still getting to grips with the whole workflow process which I only really started to grasp on the final task of the last module. Still it looks like my work has paid off! Now all I have to do is maintain it and keep learning! ^__^ I'll then be able to take all my character concepts from their initial designs right the way through to the final stage and give them life and personality woo! I think it'll be worth limiting my drawing time for.

From my last post I did some more work on my devil animation. I did all the lip syncing, facial expressions and the eye movement and added in some additional moves to the block as a whole from last weeks feedback.

This is where its at, at present:

I had some trouble when it came to the eye/eyebrow animation (same with the other lip sync piece). I think I found this difficult because blinking, eye darts and eyebrow movement are all actions we do without thinking about it. Eyebrows move as a result of facial expression, blinks occur naturally and for numrous other reasons. The same with eye darts. It can have a lot to do with what's going on in the character's mind. I think this is something I'll have to look into more and I may need to make some alterations to this part of the animation later.

Some articles I looked at were on the animation tips and tricks blog:

• animating eyes and eyebrows
• blinks have meaning

I think I may need to read over these again and also read the relevant sections in books I have, as well as studying people in general and other animations. I'm sure with more practice and learning it'll get easier. 

The next stage is going to be adding in some breakdown poses, altering the timing of some actions and having him shift his weight more in places. This is another area which I find a bit daunting really. This is the most intensive animation I've ever done so it's still a big learning experience and a very enjoyable one.

And to end this post I think another animation short is called for:  

Works In Progress

From my last post this is the block out of my 'Welcome to Hell' presenter piece, as it looked at that time:

After attending Thursday's feedback session, I spent the rest of that day working on and developing my presenter piece from various comments and suggestions made in the class. I chose a section to work on from my block (as the final has to be between 20-30 seconds) and then developed and improved the my block for the body and  added in some additional actions to improve it. I also began work on the lip sync and facial expressions which is still in progress. So far this is only part of the section I've chosen, it will be a few seconds longer. By the end of the weekend I hope to have my chosen section to a good 'developed' standard with the lip sync more or less done.

Here's how it's looking at present:

I'm liking where its going, though it is still a work in progress.

Yesterday I spent finishing off the first Lip Sync task. I redid all the eye/eyebrow animation and re-worked over my lip sync again making alterations and toughing sections up to make it work better. I also touched up the animation on the arm after looking at the trajectories.

From Thursday's lesson I learnt about IK constraints and IK-FK blending as a result of feedback about the arm on the table sliding around due to the Max's body movement, so I was able to constrain the right arm to the table to stop it from moving. I think this will be a handy bit of knowledge for future animations :-)

This is how it looks now:

This may or may not be the final, will await feedback.

It may possibly need a bit more refinement, one thing I am wondering is whether to add a blink at the end... It may not be necessary as he is intent and serious in what he is saying. From my reference footage of myself acting this out, I don't blink except for on the head movement on the emphasis of absolute... but as the motion as stopped by the end of the piece I feel a blink could work. I've acted it out since and have blinked at the end. I'll see what the feedback is... maybe I'll even add one in to test and see how it looks.

More Work in Hell

So after blocking out my animation to the footage I'd taken I decided to import the sound into Max just to make sure that the blocked out actions were working in time before I began developing it further.

The first problem I encountered while doing this was the sound refused to play when play was pushed but yet made sound when dragging the slider.... not sure why this is?

So after trying and failing to get that to work I decided another way to test it would be to put my rendered out block into after effects along with the sound file and check it that way. So I did that and.... they didn't sync... O_O DOOM! I tried moving bits and all sorts but no success.

I realised then that something must be wrong with the my reference footage file. So i checked that to see if it matched the sound file and nope.

After checking out the vrious options in After Effects (as I'm still relatively new to using the software) I realised that when I'd saved my original video capture out to use as footage, A.E. had rendered it out as 30fps not 25fps, which meant the footage I'd been using for my block wasn't going to work with the sound :( (I'm so glad I realised this now).

Luckily, all has been corrected now. I re-saved the very original capture out as 25fps, synced with the audio and added a timecode to it. Now all I have to do is fix the my animation block THEN I can start developing it further and block in some expressions and mouth movements. One things for sure I won't be making this mistake again!

On another note here's a short I watched some time ago before beginning the course which I really enjoyed :

I really loved the character designs in this particularly for Death.

It's created by Kandor Graphics and not the person who posted the video on Vimeo.

Creating Hell

Since the christmas period this piece has gone through quite a few changes. Initially I did what I said I was going to do at the end of my last post. I made a hell environment for my scene, shot my reference footage, and turned the Max rig I plan on using into the devil.

I made a few sketches in Photoshop for possible ideas for the 'Devil's' look and did a few pose sketches of some ideas I had:

I wanted my guy to have a speaking podium where upon rests the book of hell which he consults in place of the clip board Rowan has in the actual comedy sketch.

I also made some some thumbnail sketches for my hell scene. The first 4 were my initial ideas and the last two I did more recently going for a more simplified look:

And this is how my original hell scene looked in Max:

I decided to have my devil in clothes as it the guy was dressed up for the performance. I decided against the pitch fork and opted not to give him a cape as that would just make more work for me. I did add in a tail though...but I'm not going to apply any animation to it until I see how much time I have availiable after I've got the more important areas nailed.

My hell scene was based upon the initial designs, but when I got to the stage where I started putting in the gate I decided that all this detail on the scene wasn't necessary and thus why I began looking for alternatives and drew the bottom two sketches.

I also decided to make my character the actual devil and ditched the clothing so he is now all red. Hell itself is currently at a cross between the old and new design ideas, though I'll probably develop it to resemble the more recent thumbnails at a later stage.

This is its looking at present:

I definately prefer how the scenes starting to look now, though I think the lighting and colours will need some work. I guess I'll mess around with that when the animation's done. Got most of the main body actions blocked out now so I'll upload that when it's all finished.