Animation...near complete

I had a lot of issues with the animation as I was going through this module and found myself getting very overwhelmed by the whole task. Looking back at it now I feel like I could have done a lot better on some shots. I made the mistake of not create playblasts of some shots so the animation ended up being quick 'jolty' without myself realising until it was rendered out, at that point it was too late to change anything. I think I'll go back to it at some point and change the shots I'm not happy with, but for hand in it'll have to do. I didn't think I would get it all rendered out and completed on time so I'm impressed with myself that I got this far.

There are some shots where the lighting could be improved upon, the images below show the ones I'm on about. In one shot the man's face catches the light too easily and it can be quite noticeable. I tried turning off the shadows and making his face not casts shadows but this didn't work. In another shot I think I forgot to put another light in, hence the dark forest in the background. Just little things that could easily be fixed if I had a bit more time. I took each image sequence into After Effects to export out and also tried to do any subtle colour correction here. I also created the title and credits in After Effects too.

Sound

I wasn't able to look for a soundtrack for my animation as I didn't think it would be complete on time. I didn't want anyone putting the time in for an unfinished piece of work. What I might do however is to see if someone wants to compose a soundtrack for me after the deadline. It will probably be easier this way as everything will be timed out and no changes will need to be made to the animation.

What I have done is sourced sounds from the BBC Sound Library just so that it helps my animation along. I realise that there are a few sound effects that I'm missing but I wasn't able to find these at a short notice. The soundtrack that I have included will probably just be for temporary purposes, I found it from Soundtrack Pro and just thought it would be better to have a simple sound over the whole animation as without it, I found it quite bland.

I've had to match up the dialogue to the rendered out shots in Final Cut Pro, it's as close as I can get it, but think in some areas it's a bit missed timed. I think next time I'll make sure that both my animation clip and dialogue starts at the same time in order to make it sync up perfectly.

Animation Showreel 2013

I created a new showreel a few weeks back to include some more recent work. I've improved my animation skills a lot since my last showreel, so I thought it would be best to update it. I included my entry to 11 Second Club and also a weighted animation, along with scenes from the VFX module. I think it shows a range of animation skills but also shows my improvement over the course of 4 months. I showed this at the last All Animated meeting and got some nice feedback from it and it was nice to hear that other people thought I had improved a lot too. Keeping your showreel up to date is always a crucial thing, skills can easily be improved and new work produced, you just have to make sure that what you put in your showreel is the work you are most proud and confident about. If there is ever any doubt in your mind about a piece of work, don't put it in. When it comes to show your showreel to other people you need to be able to explain your work and your love of what you do needs to come through this.


Animation Showreel 2013 from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Assets Collaboration

Because my focus for this module was to be animation, I sourced the help of a friend to create my tree assets and the texture for my cabin. I met Arron Walker through twitter and he was a recent graduate from Nottingham Trent Uni. It was a win win situation for both of us, it freed up my own time but allowed him to create more assets for his own portfolio whilst getting experience working with someone else. His previous work is more realistic so it was a good challenge for him to work on my project as I wanted something a bit more stylised to fit in with the design of the characters.

I gave Arron some rough concept art and moodboards to go off of and from here we decided upon pine trees as these were the easiest to create and allowed them to look similar to one another. He did still create a couple of variations, one of them being a tree designed more for the background, he created a feathered texture so this would suit trees further in the distance as to up close. Originally he was just meant to create the texture for my cabin, however once he got my basic model he decided to change it a bit and add in some extra geometry details. He created window panes, planks and made the steps for the cabin more 'worn down'. I really appreciate all he's done for me as it has allowed me to properly concentrate on the animation without having to worry. I trusted his judgement so didn't feel the need to check up on him all the time. The outcomes are great and fit in with each scene really well, I couldn't ask for better especially in the time given for him to complete these assets.

The last image shows how both assets look together within the scene, fully lit and rendered out.

Transmedia Aspect

As part of this module we have to come up with an idea of how our product could be expanded upon to create extended stories, characters or environments. Transmedia surrounds our society so by understanding and thinking about how my animation could be taken into a new medium will only be a benefit myself. By extending stories and characters through different mediums it can open up the world to a whole new audience than what it was originally intended for.

For my animation, I would propose that the story would be extended to the fox's point of view. The last shot you see of the fox is her running off to the woods. She would run back off to see her children and tell them her encounter with a human and how they need to be sly and cunning in order to escape danger. This extension of the story could be to tell children how animals need to be protected and shouldn't be hunted for their fur. The story could be told as an illustrated book to target it to a younger audience, however it could also be part of an anti fur campaign.

I took a pre-existing story and adapted it slightly by expanding on the characters and the environment they inhabited. Recently there has been a lot of animations that have been adapted from short stories and turned into feature films. This shows the versatility of stories and how easily they can be extended. Even though these animated films are still aimed at the same age group, it could still open it up to new people and people who have never heard of the stories before. Animated features are in high demand and by taking a story into this medium it can give the story a new form of popularity. This then can be translated into merchandise and games from that film. This list is extensive, is just needs the marketing and publicity to push it.

Chris Oatley: When Jobs In The Animation Industry Disappear

This post from Chris Oatley was posted a while back, showing his views on the state of the animation industry and how to cope with the lack of jobs being on offer at the minute. There have been a lot of layoffs within the animation industry lately, and as someone who is going to be graduating in a year it's quite worrying. The people who have been laid off have been in the industry a long time so going up against someone who is far more experienced than I am is quite scary. I need to remember to keep my morale up and don't give up.

Chris Oatley brings up a point: If your dream dies, what will you do?
I can't let dips in the industry discourage myself, I have to keep striving for what I love and my passion. I've come to realise that I don't get the same enjoyment or satisfaction out of anything but animation. Animation is my drive and I'm not going to stop pursing my dream, I may be scared or nervous about not finding that job but hopefully if I keep going for it, I'll get there one day.

No, I don’t think you can guarantee success with a great attitude, hard work and persistence, but you can guarantee failure without them.

I feel like I should be able to achieve my dream, I have the motivation, persistence and I always try and work as hard as I can. It will just be a matter of time and building up experience. All I can do is just keep working and improving. Practice, practice, practice.

You have absolutely NO control over fluctuations in the economy or the waves of change in the industry.

What you DO have control over is the quality of your work, your focus, determination, passion and imagination.

If the animation industry is in a downturn, don’t go down with it.

Stay strong.

No matter what, there will always be layoffs, in any industry you go in to, you just have to remember to keep going. If there are no jobs going, make some. Create my own projects to do in my spare time, by doing something it keeps myself proactive and shows that I'm not just sitting around letting my skills go to waste. This is something I will have to consider once I graduate next year, I'll most likely be moving back home until I can find a job so in the mean time I will have to keep doing small projects to keep my skills fresh. This would also be a good time to collaborate some more with other people and produce something we really like and enjoy.

Render Tests

I didn't think I would get to the stage where all my shots were ready to be rendered, however this is the case. The animation is some areas aren't as polished as I would have liked but the main 'storytelling' shots are the best I could of got it in the time given. To show my understanding of the whole process I needed to have at least some shots fully rendered out. I'm aiming to get it all rendered but with only 2 days left I'll have to see how far I get.

The image below is a test render I did for one of the shots (the cabin texture my friend created for me still needs to be added in, hence the black object). I changed the colour of the camera environment - this can affect the objects within the scene by adding a subtle colour tint onto them. Even though I'll be rendering each image out with an alpha, I thought I would put this on each camera as it gave me a good idea when I did test renders. I will be rendering out with mental ray as with the Morpheus rig, the skin textures are only visible using mental ray. This also allows me to have a higher polished shot, set on production quality. I have also turned on final gathering, keeping it at it's default setting in order to add in softer shadows and an all round good illumination to the scene. With the lighting, there is just one directional light in each scene with shadow rays turned on. Initially I had kept it on it's default settings, however I found the shadows to be too harsh so I increased the light angle and shadow rays to make them softer.

I really like how the test renders are turning out, the tree assets that my friend has created are great. They really fit well in the scene and the way he has textured them makes them seem soft and works well with the shadows and the style of the environment.

Clothing for Characters

I had some spare time in between animating so I thought I would produce some quick textures for my characters. They're not great in all honesty, but it's what I could do in the short amount of time I had. Ideally I would have liked to have spent longer on the clothes but what I have done is better than the default and the orange jumpsuit test texture. I think I'll go back to this after I've handed in the module and adapt them somewhat, adding in extra details and personalising them some more. I went off my storyboards I created back at the start of the module and created something similar along the lines of 1900's style.

What I found is that it's really easy to add on geometry to Morpheus and for it to also add on the skin weights to the geo. For the woman, I created a basic skirt and all I had to do was select the geometry and the middle control of her, then click a button. Morpheus comes with a lot of scripts and these are what made it so easy to add on the geo. I tested it and it also allowed movement with the rig underneath, this in itself makes morpheus really adaptable and myself as an animator wont need to go through the whole painting weights issue for the clothing.

Dialogue for animation

I wanted to include dialogue in my animation as this helped tell the story, but also allowed me to practice more lip syncing. It would have been nice to get more professional people to do the voiceover, but with time restrictions I just got myself and my friend to do it as I knew what I wanted to achieve and it was much easier and quicker this way. Because I was going to voice both the woman and the fox, I tried to change the pitch and tempo of the recording for the fox. I wanted it to be a bit softer and less harsh than what I created for the woman.

Using both my script and storyboard, I sent this along to my friend to record his part, it ended up taking a few tries as he did several different version and also tweaked things in accordance to my preference. When it came to blocking out the lip sync, all you have to do is just import the sound file into Maya and offset the time if needed. The way I've been doing lip syncing so far, is keying out the opens and closes of the dialogue, where the sound begins and ends. From here I then add in the narrows and wides of the sounds. I use the waveform in the timeline to give myself a basis of where the dialogue begins and ends and I can roughly use the peaks of the waveform to indicate the louder points / harsher sounding words.

The rig I'm using for the man is much more complex than the fox rig and has the ability to change the mouth shape, whereas with the fox the only control is the open and close of the jaw. Because it's not as flexible I will have to make sure the lip sync is spot on as it would be pretty obvious if the mouth didn't match up to the sounds. I will also have to make sure that the performance of the fox matches up with the dialogue and also enhance it.

Issues with animation

I'm progressing with my animation, however I know that it won't all be completed on time for submission next week. I'm going to try and get the most important shots done, polished off and hopefully rendered out. These will be the shots that will shows the most diversity and storytelling. I've struggled a lot with some of the scenes I set out to do, the one that really caused myself problems was the walk through the forest where the man is meant to be sad and defeated. I took reference of myself walking, however I just couldn't seem to get the motion and weight right. I'll work on it some more and hopefully be able to fix it or get it to a standard that I'm okay with.

I think what would have been beneficial for myself, would have been to get accustomed to the rigs before hand. I found that I was learning a lot about the rig as I went and it would have been better to use a rig that I was more used to. The Malcolm rig would have ideal to use as I have used it for previous work and find it really flexible and have a lot more control over it than Morpheus. The reason for using Morpheus was that it was easier to customise and change the appearance in order to make it my own character.

Initially I had planned for my animation to be around a minute, but after putting together the blocked out shots, it ended up being about 1:40. I'm not sure why it extended by so much, the lip sync may have been longer than anticipated and some shots may have been slowed down once I went about animating it properly. I did cut out a few shots that I found were unnecessary and didn't add to the story, however I forgot about other shots, which ended up bringing the total to around 21 shots. I think I've been a bit overwhelmed with this project and may have bit off more than I can choose. I'm going to try and get as much animation as I can do as possible, polishing and rendering out the most important shots. I will need to leave some time before the deadline to gather some sound effects to add in as this will just help move the whole animation along better.

Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled

The video below shows the progression of an animated shot by Jamaal Bradley who worked on Tangled. It's great to see the whole process and for this project I created pre-viz (layout) in order for me to get the positions of the characters and timing roughed out before I dived into animation. With Jamaal, he also did 2D drawings, other animators I've seen have done thumbnails before animating, so it was interesting to see that extra detail he went into before going into blocking. I can see the benefits of this as it can flush out your ideas more and give you more of a basis to work off, and from here you have a better idea of what you want to act out in the reference videos. It's also good to see how even though he is a male, he does his best to put himself in a female role in order to get the references. I've mentioned in a previous post about the possibility of getting an actor in at another point to take reference from them, as good of as an idea this is, it worries me that I know what I want to get out of it, and whether or not the actor will be able to portray my ideas. A lot of animators take reference from themselves, I need to get better at it and put more emphasis in my actions.

Going through the whole progression you can see the different stages, and how many passes there are for blocking and splining. For myself, I think I need to work on defining the key poses more as when I've attempted it, and then went back to add in breakdowns/in betweens it's come out a bit messy and I've found it easier to just work my way through the whole scene. Most animators will do it Pose to Pose rather than Straight Ahead Action. The advantages of pose to pose is that it is planned out more and this is how key framing works when using the computer. I do work with poses, however I tend to put the breakdowns with the key poses and work with it all at the same time. I'm not sure if this ends up being more time consuming or makes it harder for myself, but I think I need to try defining key frames more and working with breakdowns as this is how it's done in the industry. Everyone works in their own way but when it comes to industry, there will be dailies where you show the progression of your shot, and I need to have the blocking of the key poses done to show. I can't try and have every detail blocked out as there won't be time, that's why it's broken down like it is. It's something I really need to explore and experiment with further.

Another interesting thing is that with the lip sync, it wasn't put in until the spline process. As I've mentioned, everyone has their own way of working, and for myself I've found it useful to block out the lip sync with the blocking of the poses. I picked up this method through Keith Lango, who produces a lot of great animation tutorials. To me it made sense with what he said about blocking, put everything in in order to get a critique because then you know you're showing everything you've got. The director then can see everything, he/she won't have to second guess about something because you haven't put it in yet. For myself as well, I find it easier to put in the lip sync along with the emotion of the face and the reaction of the rest of the body, it just all seems to flow with each other. Your body is always doing something.

It's really useful to see the whole progression of a shot and the specific in-betweens  not just the basic blocking and straight to spline. I'm constantly learning as I go and this is just something to aspire to and to learn from.


Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled from Jamaal Bradley on Vimeo.

Reference Videos

Throughout this module I've been taking a lot of reference videos of myself as this is something that really helps me block out my poses. It helps me see the movement and how it travels across the body. As I've mentioned before I struggle with trying to put everything into my animations, so by breaking it down into a video I can see the different parts of the body in motion and I can translate this in my animation. With reference videos I know I need to put in more exaggeration and need to think like an actor and not be afraid of letting go. I never enjoyed drama when I was at school and have only recently got in to doing reference videos. A lot of the time it's for me to understand the mechanics of the body, but now I'm moving on to more performance as well. Something to take into consideration, is to possibly bring in an actor next year to really push the performance (more than I would be able to anyway) and see the different results I'm able to achieve.

I've heard a lot of the times that once you're blocking is complete, you should really move away from your reference videos, as this is the time where you can push the poses further and they are just really for the blocking stages. From here it's up to the animators to take it further and put their own spin on things. This reference video, is one that I tried to push a bit further than I normally have in the past. From this I got some good blocking which you can see below. The cameras probably need some adjusting, but animation wise I'm quite happy with it. As it's still in blocking, I haven't gone in and added all the overlap and secondary animation yet, but the end pose - the scream, I used my reference video as a basis and tried to push it that little bit further, especially in the facial expression.

Visiting Speaker - Tom Evans

We had a visiting speaker come in last week and talk about his work and journey in the digital industry, going from companies to now working as a freelancer. Below are the notes I took in his talk:

Freelance creative in the digital industry 

No experience is bad experience 

Much easier to sell yourself if you can sum yourself up in a sentence
More time to concentrate on your speciality 

Diversify - have a look around at other opportunities and always have a back up plan

Don't expect to get a job instantly - work experience is really valuable, meeting people, work on live projects and get your foot in the door

You get out with what you put in with work experience. Make an effort, ask questions, start conversations, get feedback from people etc, need to make an impression 

Don't expect your first job to be glamorous - prove what you can do, do everything to a high standard 

Practise being fast - need to learn to work fast, the more you push yourself, the more you learn 

Keep learning - don't stop learning just because you've started work. Be a sponge and absorb everything. Keep asking about the stuff you're interested in and you can move towards it 

Think about what you want - make sure you know what you want and what you're going for is right 

Freelance is a lot different to full time work
More creative control and freedom going freelance and has the time to make games in spare time
Got the time to do the stuff you want to do
Downsides: no sick leave, no holidays, has to constantly keep working to get money 

Learn to talk about what you do - need to have good communication skills and be able to talk about your work intelligently. Need to be confident when talking about your work 

Know your audience and learn how to write - do some research before contacting a company
Find out the name of the person you're emailing
Tailor portfolio to the company and position you're applying for
Don't send out bulk emails 

Be proactive - don't sit around waiting for people to come to you
Do anything off your own back, looks good in your portfolio 

As a freelancer, got a lot of the work from the people you already know
Meet interesting people, go to networking events etc
Actively listen to what people have to say

Everything that Tom mentioned has been reoccurring through each speaker that we've had in to talk. It just makes more of an emphasis that experience is key and it's about the people you know. A lot of this I already knew about (first job won't be glamorous, be proactive, know your audience) but it just reinforced it in my own mind. There's a lot of take in and it's quite scary knowing that I haven't got long before I finish my degree, so right now I'm trying to as much as I can to ensure that I'm prepared for that time. I've been emailing places about work experience and any internships available, as well as connecting with other people to see about potential work collaborations which could help me out next year. I know I need to make more connections so I'm planning on going to more networking events and other festivals in the near future.

Animation Process

The main focus for myself in this module is the animation, I wanted to push myself further and work with more than one character on the performance and acting of the shots. As I've been working through the shots I've found it quite a challenge in some respects, as I've never really pushed my poses before and trying to achieve more performance is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I took reference videos of myself but that in itself is something I need to work on. I need to exaggerate more when I do them, I think it's more of a confidence issue and being able to free up and get into the role of my character. In that respect, it's more like acting so I need to be more accustomed to the whole process.

Working my my pre-viz I had worked out the rough timings of each shot and from here I blocked out the main poses in stepped mode, before changing to linear to add in more of the subtle details and then onto spline. Some of the shots that I have been working on have taken me a lot longer than anticipated and has set me back quite a bit on my schedule. At the minute I'm just working through each shot (the majority are all blocked out now) and polishing up the animation. As I've been working through them I've realised I could cut a few of the shots out which will free up some of my time, but also they weren't really needed as they tended to be walking shots. Walking isn't storytelling unless an emotion is portrayed through it, a lot of the time you don't see characters walking to their destination. Instead you see them about to embark and their destination in sight, then in the next shot they arrive. If I had more time I would have liked to keep the shots in, then make the decision when it comes to editing, but at the moment, I have more important shots to complete which attribute more to the storyline.

The animation below is a test I've done with sound. It took me awhile to get the slap sorted, I took a reference video, but also looked at other examples. I think the sound adds more of a believability to it, as without it seems flat. I've added in some extra details, such as the movement/fidgeting when the man is sleeping, I found that without this it was lacking and there needed to be something else. I hadn't really thought about putting this in until the other day and for me, it really makes a difference. I think it still could be improved but for now, I think I'm going to move onto another shot. I find that if I spend too long on one shot I end up adding things that don't need to be there, it's best to get a fresh eye on it on another day. I want to keep adding these extra details in within the other shots, but only when necessary. Before this module I've never really gone into this detail, I've just concentrated on the main pose and left the rest of the body. It's something I need to practice more and get my head around as I always find it quite overwhelming as there is just so much to think about and do, what with overlapping and secondary motion, the little nuances to make it that much more believable. It's a process and hopefully it's something I can keep improving on and will get to a stage where I feel comfortable and happy with what I've produced. 

 

Environment

The environment for my animation was something that I didn't feel was as important as other areas, however I still researched into different landscapes and how forest scenes were translated to animated features. I wanted to keep the whole environment simple and designed in a stylised way. The whole animation is set within a forest, until the man comes into a clearing, so for this I wanted to come up with some tree designs and populate my scenes with them. Luckily I got my friend Arron Walker to design and create the trees for me, he will also be texturing my cabin (as seen below).  I thought it would be best to get someone else to create these assets for me as it would leave more time for me to animate, and also played to his strengths more. The image below shows some quick concepts of trees, I was just trying out a different style and experimenting with shapes. I think that these are a bit too stylised but by taking the bottom left design, we decided to create pine trees but keeping them to a simple design.

The only other things needed for the environment is the floor, sky and maybe some foliage in the clearing scene. For the floor I think I will get a texture online and edit it together with another in order to achieve the look that I want. I'm happy with the direction it's going at the moment and hopefully it'll be really good once it all comes together.

Competition Result - 11 Second Club

The voting took place for 11 Second Club and I ended up coming 114th out of 267 entries. I would have been really pleased with myself if I managed to get into the top 100, but for my first attempt I think I did alright. I managed to place in the top half of the entries, which looking at it in that way makes me feel good about what I put out. One of the comments I got from my animation, was that I need to push the poses more. I've never really done this and it's definitely something I can attempt in my next animation. Any pose that you think you've created, it can always be pushed more, that's something I took from an animation analysis by Joe Bowers.

I was really worried to begin with about entering the competition as I felt I wasn't ready and didn't think I could manage lip syncing and performance. I had never really done either before and was scared of being dropped in the deep end. I did come across a few issues with performance and not being able to get the poses that I wanted, and also when it came to polishing I found this a lot harder. I was using a much more complex rig that I was previously used to so this pushed me further, but also got myself used to working with an industry standard rig. It was great being able to have full control over everything and the rig working in the way that I wanted it to.

I think I will be definitely entering future months of 11 Second Club, probably over summer as I will have the most time then. I can see the benefit of doing this as it has improved my skills and pushed me further than I could have anticipated. The higher placing entries are always polished to a high standard and rendered out to a high quality, it will take me a long time to get to this stage, but it's something to aim for.

Exaggerated Performance

This animation is an example of an exaggerated performance. It really fits the style and tone of the piece and you can really see and feel the emotions of the character. In animation, you are always told to push your poses and put more exaggeration into it, obviously it depends on the scene itself and the characters you are using. For the animation below, it works, however if I tried to transfer this into my own animation I think it would be a bit too much. As the animation is really stylised and cartoony it makes sense to have an over the top performance. I really do love the whole shot, the performance flows from one pose to another fluidly and the whole dynamic is really powerful.

I would like to do something like this but I don't think it would be appropriate and wouldn't fit too well, as even though my animation is stylised, it's not cartoony enough to pull off the whole exaggerated performance. That doesn't mean however that I can't still push poses and get the extremes, it just won't be as much as the animation below. I've never really pushed my poses far enough before so it will be a new challenge for myself, as I have to make sure that the poses I create will be believable and fit in with the rest of the performance and the story itself.


Muffin Jack & Jeremy - Acting test from Salesman Pete on Vimeo.