I re-watched Toy Story, the first feature-length animated film made by the pioneers behind Pixar Studios, which provided valuable influence. What was helpful to see is that it's still possible to create realistic animation whilst exaggerating key poses, and Pixar have managed to do it in a comical way without being pantomime-like.
I also used the archives from http://www.11secondclub.com/ to look at more hand gestures and techniques in animating. For example, I looked at this humorous piece which again, exaggerates key poses without looking entirely unrealistic:
As I was animating a human rig, I wanted it to appear as human-like as possible, within the boundaries of my skill. As well as filming myself act out the dialogue (see previous post), I watched some extensive videos on body language, looking at common gestures and the subtlety of human movement.
After the research stage, I thought it would be appropriate to create a gantt chart for the upcoming 5 weeks - there was a huge amount to do and I had to factor in a trip to Barcelona to go to the 'OFFF' visual arts & animation festival. The event itself was invaluable in terms of inspiration, however it meant that I found it very difficult to stick to my schedule!
Before I began blocking, however, I wanted to study my acting reference a little more. When I drew flow lines and wrote down precise movement analysis for my walk cycle reference during my last project, it proved to be extremely useful and definitely benefitted my final animation in terms of realism. Here's hoping I can do the same again!
When I began blocking the key poses, the things I was looking out for were flow lines, silhouettes and lines of action. These are things I pay very close attention to in life drawing classes, so my time spent drawing and anaylsing the human body has certainly paid off. Mainly, it meant that I could craft some really emphatic poses, which would hopefully tie my animation together in making it look like a proper performance.
Examples in posing.
I like the bottom right image especially - the angles in his torso create a strong line of action which is followed by the neck and head, and the arms & hands show good juxtaposition which provides visual interest.
Taking reference from an image I took of my own hands - very difficult to pose and animate correctly!
Eventually, I was able to get past the blocking stage of animation, resulting in this playblast:
I then spent a long, painstaking time working on inbetweens, which I have to admit was my least favourite part of the entire project! I did this until I had keyed most of the frames, not all, and then turned to the graph editor to change the tangents from stepped to plateau - I found this to be more useful than spline as it created lots of flat tangents too, which I was in need of. I did this for each body part separately so as not to be overwhelmed by numerous joints rotating out of control. I did so in this order:
Torso
Neck
Head
Shoulders
Elbows
Wrists
Hands & Fingers
Thighs
Face - Jaw
- Lips
- Teeth
- Eyebrows
- Nose & Cheeks
- Eyes & Lids
For each body part, I changed the tangents, adjusted the curves in the graph editor to create smooth lines, anticipations, ease ins and outs, offsets, and define weight in general.
Graph Editor: Anticipation
Adjusting keys for the mouth one frame faster, for more effective lip sync
(as humans see before they hear)
Evidence of saccadic eye movement.
(The eye scanning/moving from A-B-C)
Realistic eye animation. The pupil tends to follow and stay 1/3 behind the upper eye-lid.
(Also used techniques such as half blinks to show thought - closing lids in 2 frames, then opening in 3, as opposed to a usual blink of closing in 2 frames, staying closed for 2, and opening in 4)
Graph clean up for just one finger!
Using 'physical sun & sky' as a light source, which streamed through a glass texture.
Despite what seemed to be effective planning, I began to run out of time towards the end of term. This was due to a number of unavoidable circumstances, such as ill health and a week in Spain, however I did the best I could in the time that I had. My original intention was to animate my female character, but I was only able to give her a tiny bit of movement in the end. This meant that I had to change my shot sequence & edit, however I actually prefer the end result of just two different shots to establish what was my main character's imagination, and what was actually happening in the room.
Using playblasts I tried 2 different editing techniques, both with different shots, different framing, and different lenses/apertures as opposed to using Maya's regular 30mm. Unfortunately, due to time constraints I am not able to upload my tests! I've decided to choose the final edit as I feel it's the most effective comically - fortunately a few friends and family members of mine agree!
I came across numerous problems during the project - such as rendering and lighting. Although I was able to focus a large amount of time making my character as humanistic and life like as possible, I still wanted him to look good in the scene, so I feel I may have wasted time with choosing correct lighting. As I was using 'physical sun & sky', my render time was almost 2 minutes per frame, so I had to give this up very quickly!
Finally, I would like to change the sequence settings before uploading it online, as the online conversion has made the audio slightly out of sync, and frustratingly, made the arm gestures quite jerky as opposed to its smooth appearance on my laptop.
I think I've accomplished a huge amount this term, but I don't want the the learning to end now that the holidays are here! I plan on refining this final piece, and going on to learn new animation techniques and to take my modelling further.
