Refining my idea based on "Acting for Animators"

I've been digging into Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators, and it has really helped to get me thinking more in depth about the ideas in my final year project. For instance, Hooks emphasises the idea of 'theatrical reality' - essentially a reality with conflict that gives it more interest - by writing, "your character should play an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle" (pg. 18). This made me wonder how I could strengthen the scenes in my animation to reinforce this idea of the student pursuing her objective of finishing her animation while overcoming obstacles.

I also began to think about how my character could be more effective, and decided that I would never see her as anything more than the rig I downloaded unless I gave her at least a couple of basic facts. So she is now Phoebe, an independent, 20-year-old student. These seem like obvious statements, but they really do help me to see her as a character rather than a character rig.

Off the back of things I was reading and thinking about, I made a big chart detailing the mood and motivation of each shot. Since both Hooks and my supervisor are big on 'scenes start in the middle', I put in a 'before and after' column so I would know how Phoebe comes into and goes out of the shot in terms of movement and mood. (The purple is for Phoebe's housemate, Melissa.)

I referred to this table between filming each shot of my video reference, and I will do so for each shot as I animate it, too.

In February I will be attending the Animex animation and games festival held at my uni, and as part of that I've also opted to take part in Hooks' Acting for Animators Masterclass that he runs every year. Though the animation of my project will be complete by that point, the class will definitely help to develop my animation skills for the career ahead of me.

Caitlin :)

Reference footage

This week I shot a lot of reference footage to use when I begin animating soon (my schedule is having to be rearranged a bit, as predicted). I did a couple of versions of a lot of the shots, giving me lots to choose from to base my character acting on.

This is a highly edited version, made to (almost) fit the timings of the previs I made, to show the basic idea of how the character will be acting.

I still don't know if I'm trying to cram too many ideas in, as this seems kind of fast… I'll see what my supervisor says when I present my progress review next week. The good news is I made myself laugh with the footage I filmed, so hopefully other people will laugh too! After all, what's the point of being an animator if you're not going to make an idiot of yourself on camera at some point? (My inhibitions are slowly being destroyed as my course goes on.)

In other news, I created myself a professional Twitter account for networking and such (so far I'm just tweeting and pretending that people will see it): www.twitter.com/Caitlin_Vickers

Now to make a presentation!

Caitlin :)

Asset modelling begins!

While I still have a little pre-production to do (namely reference footage), I have now begun to move into the production stage of my work. Exciting!

My environment is simple, being just a bedroom. While I want the assets in the environment also to be simple, so that I can put most of my time into the animation, I also want them to make a believable and clean background. My initial frame of reference for this was 'Violet Hill' - a student piece by Sam Haley:

Since blocky asset models like this don't take much time to create, I decided to put more detail in than this just to add some more texture to the scene.

These are the things I have made in Maya so far:

These models will not be textured, but they will be coloured and have appropriate Maya materials applied to make them look more like what they are meant to be.

Initially I thought my room layout didn't look too bad, but once I saw the more detailed models side-by-side with the original cuboids I realised just how much more they added.

It is much more obvious now what is what! I still have quite a few things to make, but seeing as the five things above probably took two or three hours between them I'm not worried about time. It will be worth it when I have a good-looking animation. :D

I am also currently putting together a progress presentation to give to my supervisor in a couple of weeks. Since the main aim is to show what research we've been doing, I should probably use this time to get as much of it done as possible!

Caitlin :)

Previs

I spent the past couple of days blocking out my previs in Maya, just roughly animating the character in the space. I found it really helpful to get a feel for how long certain scenes might take, how much effort they require, how they look in the 3D space and how long they actually need to be on screen.

(See my previous blog post for a screenshot of my blocked-out bedroom environment and a link to the rig I used.)

Limited animation, as you can see! There are places where storyboard panels sufficed, like for the shots of the computer monitor, and where I couldn't figure something out soon enough, like a reflective mirror (I don't think it can be done without rendering) and a second character who is the right height... but it mostly does the job. It is obviously lacking humour as the humour depends on the way I animate it, and this isn't really animated. You also can't see the passage of time in this; I didn't think to put some lighting in until after I finished. But it will be there!

I feel a lot better about what this involves now, having been through each shot and really thought about how they work. While it is still a bit long, at least half of it is not challenging (images on the monitor, the student clicking and staring at the screen), so I feel the workload is achievable.

Caitlin :)

Post-animatic - organisation, previs and a rig

My last post was about the animatic I created to demonstrate the length and timings of my "life of a student animator" idea. It ended up running nearly two minutes, which is naturally concerning when I'm doing a twenty-week project! I decided to create a shot list - something that would not only tell me how many shots I have, what is in them and how long they each are, but would also include estimations for how difficult I deem each shot to be in terms of how time-consuming the animation will be.

The shots are in order down the left (with some greyed out that I will probably not use), and there is a key at the right showing what each colour means. I have then totalled up how many of each shot difficulty there are, how many seconds they add up to, and the percentage of the whole piece they take up!

(Click image to enlarge. You can also go here for the live version, which will be updated as I go along.)

With the shots I cut out my piece is still ninety seconds, but I couldn't really refine my idea any further just by looking at the sheet. My supervisor suggested I move onto the 3D previs (previsualisation - the next stage up from a 2D animatic) to get a feel for how the shots work in 3D space. The previs involves almost no animation, having the characters just sliding around the scene purely to get a feel for the placement and timing.

In Maya I built a very blocky environment that the character could move around in the previs. While I want my finished environment to still be very simple, it will have more detail than this as it doesn't take very long and I already have the skeleton now. I will also add basic colours.

It is just a simple, yet nice, student bedroom, designed from a mix of two rooms that I have lived in as a student. I put the window where it is so that when the camera is watching the student working at her computer, we will be able to see the time of day through the window behind her.

The rig I have chosen to use for my piece is called 'Bonnie'. She was made by Josh Sobel, and you download her free for Maya here. She has detailed controls and nice textures, so that added to the fact she is free makes her perfect!

Here she is in her new, grey bedroom.

So… onto the previs! I will update again once it's done.

Caitlin :)