mi5017ikepearson

[mi5017ikepearson]

ANIMATING

1 – Choosing audio clip.

2 – Planning your shot.

3-6 – Blocking your shot.

7-10 – Spline and polish the shot.

it isn’t enough to be subtle. [exaggeration blog post link]

alot of it comes from the hips

and employing elements of squash and stretch

even subtle changes like moving the head can completely change the feel of a character

you’d think that basing our second character on the first would allow us ease of animation, and cutting down time - but rather unsurprisingly you’d be wrong there

having to change each attribute on each keyframe, is arguably more time consuming than just having the model blank rather than re-posing it all over again.

and from there i wanted to unsync their walk cycles, as having them walk in unison would be creepy..

at first i tried slowing down the Ape’s walk cycle, but instead opted for having them both start on different frames of their walk cycle

[mi5017ikepearson]

COMPOSITION + STORYBOARD & ANIMATIC COMBO

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referring back to my reading of Paul Wells: “The Fundamentals of Animation” storyboarding is more than creating a timeline for your story - it allows us to visualise the script, in a manner.

SETTING THE SCENE - “THE APE & THE FOX”

Layout & Staging is as essential to the production of a believable performance as the character’s actions - so first and forefront, I’d like to bring up the notion of where I’m attempting to set this scene, before moving on further..

Camera position, angle, etc. Does the camera have to move? Do you need to cut? If so why?

possible interpretations, for the purpose of design

The Fox walks the ape to the bounty, who when grabbing it, falls into a pitfall - it’s here the fox takes the crown for himself

1. The Fox walks the ape to the bounty, but out of respect for him after their walk the fox calls out that it’s trapped

2. The Ape is smart enough to doubt the bounty, in front of him - and finds out it’s trapped

this leads to the ape sentencing the fox with treason

after their journey together to collect the bounty, this leads to the ape forgiving the fox

a good filmmaker; (animated or not) knows that anyone can tell a story.

but its the way you tell it that leaves an impression

Nelson Diplexcito, a film-maker and lecturer at Loughborough University defines an effective composition as…

“one that can be seen to communicate visual sense, and direct the viewers attention towards the aspects that the maker wants (them) to see”

this is achieved through the use of space in the frame, placing the key attributes in certain ways to help communicate the meaning behind your work, to the viewer

for this module, the animation we’ve been asked to produce is not character led: which makes it even more significant that we need to create an effective storyboard.

from my readings I’ve concluded a few findings on the subject

1. storyboards should contain notations for direction (such as camera moves and any sound effects),

2. each of the panels should be numbered, in chronological order of appearance, and in the correct ratio of 16:9

3. they should follow the basic rules of composition: but not all the time!  a good designer knows when to break convention, and how to use space within the frame effectively to achieve certain effects.

Example of Storyboards

A storyboard is a planning document, created before the final product is developed and used to illustrate a story or show the changes of scene. In many cases this will be based on a timeline but could also be decided by the user's choices of selection or navigation. It can just be a simple sketch, to show initial planning.

let’s break this scene down in terms of it’s movement - as this is what the course is assessing

Animatic

An animatic is a pre-production tool used to convey timing and show how a story sequence will play out with music, sound effects, or dialogue. Just like Storyboards, animatics are great for timescales, knowing the length of animation needed. Blocking can be a form of a Animatic, as you are getting the key poses for timing within the project.

[mi5017ikepearson]

“BRINGING IT ALL TO LIFE” - PERFORMANCE

animating is more than just moving the character around.

as an animator, the general consensus comes from the outline of your job - which is restricted to being told to “animate”.

the misconception about that is that it is solely the  ‘create movement’. But there is so much more that goes into animation besides making the character obey the laws of physics and move in a believable way. 

and the major factor in achieving this, is..

TIMING

Being an animator adds whole new levels of complexity to the entertainment industry than something akin to traditional acting - because not only do you need to create a performance for this character but you also have to think about every little action they take.

If your character is scratching their ear; how is the arm going to travel up? Does the shoulder move first? how fast should the action be?

With traditional acting the actor doesn't need to think about how their arm should move in order to scratch their head

it's just natural.

they only need to ensure their performance is believable. You must make the audience feel like your character is alive.

Timing is a very important principle for not only creating believable movements but also for creating more appealing acting in your animations.

and who better to use to explain this than our ol’ pal..

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PERFORMANCE

“performance isn't just movement”

It's important every action you create for your character has a reason. Acting is essentially a series of reactions, the character reacting to other characters or the environment or any other number of things. Make sure your character's reactions are indicative of their personality.

As an animator you should be considering your character's personality and who they are when coming up with the performances. Make sure you're using these techniques in your animations to ensure you have believable acting in your animations and you're utilizing the different principles to ensure it's appealing.

as a semi-serious Voice Actor; I think it’s especially important to be able to put a believable performance behind a character to captivate your audience and make that think, feel and 

The two most important elements you should be thinking about when animating performances is that the acting should be believable and appealing. These two principles are key to a successful acting shot. If you watch a movie with a bad actor it takes you out of the story and the world, what's happening in the movie is not believable. Whatever type of character this actor is trying to portray is not convincing, bad acting can potentially ruin a movie. In the same way bad acting means bad animation, this can mean a bad movie, short film or game.

EMOTION

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PERSONALITY

despite not having anything unique about any of the characters their personalities come through

this is what voices do for characters 

is Voice Acting Acting? there’s no such thing as overacting when portraying animated characters 

story.

In Character Performance, students explore how to make a character seem alive and how to craft a believable dialogue performance. Now that the students are familiar with body mechanics and pantomime body acting, they are ready to tackle the challenge of full dialogue acting. Students learn clarity of acting choices, and how to make a believable performance.

[mi5017ikepearson]

THE HUMAN FORM

As an animator - you have to choose your rig pretty carefully..

imagine how your body works - not in the way to that of an anatomical model, but to one of those wooden drawing mannequins 

i used to just think these models were exclusively for getting anatomically accurate drawings - but with the new context from my personal research for this course; I’ve come to appreciate that these models explain the way the human body moves remarkably

using ball-points joints with clips to restrict realistic movement in your elbows, knees, feet, etc? 

genius.

going back to posing, from one of my earlier blog posts: i think it’s important to figure out strong poses that make your animation more visually interesting to watch, and these models allow you to exaggerate the human form in a way that is as such, yet anatomically possible 

[mi5017ikepearson]

being out of my usual routine for about a week, and a half, battling a very nasty flu - I managed to catch up on the work, I had missed out on - and to reward myself for my efforts, and unwind a bit, I decided to do what i love to do when I’m overwhelmed and play some ‘Super Smash Bros.’ with some of my pals..

but as an overactive mind always does: playing the game lead me to get straight back to work, after coming up with an idea for another of my many personal research blog posts..

IMPACT - “REALLY FEELING THE POWER BEHIND AN ACTION”

when fighting in fighting games we want to feel a sense of contact - it helps you feel immersed, and like you, yourself are committing the action of your avatar.

I think, that in the context of this module - we’ve discussed how to convey your actions convincingly, but it’s not enough to just look possible.. you need to focus specifically on the aspect of how to enhance the motion

the actions of your character, are (in a performance sense) what makes them unique to the infinite amount of other characters in the world - and achieving this in my own piece, requires looking at some examples to see how others have used a multitude of techniques to do so.. 

SUPER MARIO GALAXY - “THE SPIN ATTACK”

hands are enlarged 

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ANTICIPATION 

I just wanted to do a quick example here, to showcase the wind-up before an action.

LEGEND OF ZELDA WIND WAKER - COMBAT

here’s a clip of some combat from ‘Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’, and some notes i made about some of the merits that make the actions feel impactful 

massively exaggerated enemy response to being hit - body moves a huge amount

knock back sends the enemy a long way backwards (and upwards in some cases)

poses change immediately from key impact points - hit react and knock back

particles flying from enemy when hit to reinforce the impact

no freeze frames but instead they significantly slow down when each strike connects

enemy hit react follows the direction of the strike and is significant 

hit flashes appear large then scale a tad and fade

sound design - each successful slash feels so rewarding to connect

BUT IKE!™ - “WHAT ABOUT FOR THE APE AND THE FOX?”

I’d like to incorporate some slapstick, into the storyboard to match the upbeat music I’ve chosen to use.

One of the idea’s I’m having, currently; is having The Ape physically hit The Fox, before succumbing to their own downfall    (quite literally) to further play into the idea of the fables’ moral, by giving The Ape what he truly deserves, instead of the throne~

[mi5017ikepearson]

FACES

although, myself opting to use a standard rig with no face to speak of - I wanted to do another blogpost on facial animation to showcase it’s importance in the regard of animation performance

to start with - let’s talk about some books!     (cheer now.)

“Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right” Jason Osipa

described as ‘The de facto official source on facial animation’ - my reading of Osipa’s piece showcased some understanding on how to do character facial modelling and animation at the levels in today's films and games.

While thoroughly covering the basics such as squash and stretch, lip syncs, and much more, the book gets pretty advanced pretty quickly - with all kinds of professional design techniques, as well as changes in software, listed. ( including potentially allowing me to use some of my own Python programming knowledge to automate tasks in the future! )

although a lot of what was described here was seemingly quite advanced - I was able to grasp concepts that would otherwise be locked behind my skillcap and found myself especially grateful to have the author's insights from his own extensive experience in the field featured - as it helped humanise the work, and convince me to continue attempting to learn.

FACIAL ANIMATION: “GIVING FEELINGS A FORM”

"We all wear masks - But which one is real? The one that hides your face, or the one that is your face?" - Dr. Norman Osborn

as humans we’re prone to, if not down right reliant on our faces to not only express our own feelings - but to get a read on other people’s feelings too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_perception

our brain is incredibly complex - and among the many systems we’ve biologically mutated to have over the course of the last few 300,000 or so years; one of the arguably most important systems is specialising in understanding faces. across all cultures, despite language barriers, or any other factor that stunts our communication we all can recognise basic feelings people have, when looking at other faces

it all comes down to 

EMOTION

yes, much like a psychopath and or alien; I’m now studying emotion and how humans express it..

Emotions are psychological states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure.

and in relation to our course.. Characters must be able to express a wide range of emotions. 

Therefore, designing a character entails knowing what that character will look like in a number of different emotional situations.

emotions are made up of primary basic feelings; as combinations, and varying levels of one another.. There are four kinds of basic emotions:

happiness, 

sadness, 

fear, 

and anger

APE EMOTIONS [ edit into one picture, with basic annotation: further will follow on blog ]

FOX EMOTIONS [ do the same thing, you berk! ]

https://www.diyphotography.net/faces-foxes-every-fox-different-personality/

for our Ape, and our Fox - I figured it be important to see the way they naturally showcase their emotions, before attempting to merge this with out own understanding, as despite being animals, it’s still readable how they’re feeling - relative to your own understanding of human emotion.

[mi5017ikepearson]

ANIMATING THE INANIMATE - ”OCTOBOXER WOULD LIKE TO BATTLE!”

Inanimate objects are, by definition ‘without motion’, and as someone who has followed the rules set in place, their whole life - I’ve always been pretty ok with leaving convention the way it is

but I’ve never been against the idea - far from it! I just think that having these rules in place is what makes it so rewarding to assign personalities to things that have none, through visual expressionism.

It's common place, in media, to allow inanimate objects the power of motion.

Sometimes this is done for plot reasons.  Sometimes this is done to add an element of surprise or the supernatural to a work. Whatever the reason, this trope is for when typically inanimate objects are self animated in a work.

Often objects that have this trope applied to them are anthropomorphised to a degree. Normally they are just given faces, but they may also be able to interact with their environment and hold things in ways that you wouldn't think they would be able to.

“AN EXPERIEMENTAL STUDY OF APPARENT BEHAVIOUR”,    FRITZ HEIDER & MARIANNE SIMMEL - (1944)

In 1944, two psychologists (Heider and Simmel) wanted to explore how behaviour could be conveyed - and reported that observers could perceive simple animated geometric shapes as characters with emotions, intentions, and other social attributes.

They would show this film to an audience, and ask them what was going on - 

and as human beings we project onto illusions such as animation,  as we want to believe that there is life, and therefore intention there.

However, Simplicity Doesn't excuse Laziness

for every design masterpiece, where each aspect of form are taken into consideration and beautifully constructed into a believably moveable figure comes...

one of these.

PAPER MARIO: ORIGAMI KING - HOLE PUNCH BOSS

for as much credit as Nintendo is usually deserved due to their creativity when it comes to innovative designs around not only characters but gameplay also - taking real-life inanimate objects and giving them life through movement is a trope that when done correctly is beautiful

but when you literally make something move in the way that it’s designed to move, with no human interaction and very little personality - it’s deservingly open to criticism.

on the other end of the spectrum comes something like:

LUXO JR. - (1986)

Pixar’s first stage of CG animation also to win an academy award. This became known to be part of the branding of Pixar.

Fixed camera Clever use of the frame as action is happening off screen

Simple ball animation

Use of sound to convey emotion, and the lamp hitting the surface

The sound helps to convey realism here

The Sorcerer’s apprentice - Fantasia Broom Scene (1940)

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Enchanted Furniture - beauty and the beast

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MONSTER HOUSE

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The Brave Little Toaster

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INANIMATE TO ANIMATE - “SEEING LIFE WHERE THERE IS NONE”

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sometimes its as simple as allowing yourself to believe

adding eyes, helps

and heck sometimes personality is just a twist from being changed.

A NINTENDO GAME..MUG?

essentially it’s as easy as colouring the screen, of the gameboy mug, a green - so I can green screen the startup screen to it however, instead of using the typical #00b140 (a medium dark shade of green-cyan) i went a few tones lighter with a more chartreuse colour, due to my editing program producing a better green screen with this sort of colour; not being much flexible about that sort of thing

[mi5017ikepearson]

CONVEYING PERSONALITY THROUGH MOVEMENT

As animators, it’s our job to have an understanding of the internal discourse of the characters we are attempting to bring to life, through our work. Once we know what our characters are feeling, we can begin to construct ideas of how to communicate this through their poses and gestures. 

but it’s all well and good to be able to capture personality in a still.. but this is an animation performance module, after all - when a character begins to move, walk or run, there is even more for work for us to do. We are not interested in replicating the real world, but distorting and manipulating a depiction of life in order to craft an emotive and believable performance - each frame in that cycle has got to be able to convey the personality of a character.

that can be an especially difficult feat to achieve..

as navigating this territory between movement that appears to be driven from a character’s emotional state and movement that is externally, mechanically orchestrated is like navigating myself through a ‘Walmart’ you sure as heck can try, but it’s going to be a process and a half..

I know at this point the Mario Bros. have made more appearances across my blogs than anything else - but I feel these characters specifically are a necessary inclusion:

the Super Mario series is one of the most recognised brands across the globe, and with that simplicity and universal appeal comes the ability to convert that into understanding of fundamental ideas.

in this case - I want to use the final cutscene from ‘New Super Mario Bros. Wii’ to showcase a few subtle examples, spread through the scene about how through the Animation Nintendo was able to still perfectly convey the character’s personality, without the use of any dialogue.

ANALYSIS OF “NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII” FINAL CUTSCENE

we begin with a triumphant leitmotif playing, the camera pans downward from the sky, to show Mario and The Princess exiting Bowser’s castle - as Luigi and the Toads descend in hot air balloons.

throughout the game - if you’re playing in multiplayer you are following the titular Mario Bros. and the two toad companions, seen in the credits. through this interaction, even with 0 context of the series outside of this scene; an audience is already given visual queues into these character’s personalities.

Mario,      - The confident hero, set on saving the princess from her captor Princess Peach,      - the embodiment of the ‘damsel-in-distress’ trope Luigi,      - the clumsy, less confident little brother - used as the butt of every joke the two Toads,      - helpful servants of the throne, doing right under loyalty for their ruler and i guess even a little of Bowser and the Koopalings...      - the big bad antagonists in the game, getting what they deserve after their defeat by the ‘good guys’.

Luigi leans over the side of the basket, jumping excitedly and waving to his brother. as he lands - he subtly stumbles from the basket, and with his arms awkwardly positioned at his side, scurries to politely opens the door, bows, and motions for his brother and the princess to enter.

Within the context of the game: Luigi has accompanied his brother throughout the entire adventure and fought alongside him, to get to where they are now - and yet is not treated with the same respect. throughout his life, Luigi has lived in Mario's shadow - and it’s nowhere near more apparent than it is in this scene.

Mario classily holds his arm out and escorts the princess, with confidence in his strides. and with one hand on her chest, the princess follows along, the two climb into the hot air balloon - longingly staring each other.

Mario’s subtle wave at Luigi, implies that this was not a cruel act - as if to deliberately leave him out, instead it’s more likely that Mario’s infatuation with the princess, enough so to travel through the 8 worlds (and secret 9th world) of the game overrides his brotherly love.

it’s here Luigi turns away, and is left behind as the door shuts, as when he leans to enter; instead falling clumsily on his face, as his older brother and the princess float away - unaware of him not being there. Luigi looks on, in anguish - as the two toads offer to take him with them

BUT HOW DO WE DO THIS FOR OUR FABLE?

continuing on from our research into the stereotypes surrounding our titular animals - it’s only right we get to thinking about how to convey this sort of treatment for our characters, within the context of our current module.

building up personality, without actually designing a character can be difficult - yet not impossible

we’re going to take what we just learned and apply it in the hope that what worked for other characters, will do the same for ours.

two characters, two titles..

THE FOX

with characters who are cunning, yet not intimidating, with their harm coming through their actions rather than their physicality - I decided it was in my best interest to look into the exaggerated world of the pantomime:

with exaggeration comes less subtly - and therefore, clearer visual understanding between the audience and the performer.

to communicate that our character is cunning, without the enhancement of character design - it’s important to communicate that through their performance.

to communicate the sarcastic, sly nature of the fox - in bipedal form, I looked into the art of thievery...

( not in that way! )

in no other film, that comes to my simple-ape-mind is there a more pantomimic showcase of comedic thievery, than Ralphie’s imagination scene from the classic 1983 film: ‘A Christmas Story’

although for different purpose - with the exaggeration coming from an attempt at portraying the imagination behind a child, the way the robbers move around, walking on tip-toes, with their knees highly raised is just the sort of exaggerated body language we’re looking for to convey our fox..

THE APE : “THE MONKEY KING”

When reading the Fable, on my initial viewing; the character of the Ape had an uncanny resemblance in my head to the character of ‘Son Goku; The Monkey King’

and no, not that eery looking film..

I’m referring to one of the most important and beloved literary figures in Chinese mythology;

Sun Wukong - (孫悟空) The Monkey King, himself, is a trickster god who plays a central role in Wu Cheng’en’s adventure novel “Journey to the West”.

he is characterised by his short temper, impatience and proclivity towards anger

Wukong is blessed with unmatched superhuman strength and the ability to transform into 72 different animals and objects. Each of his hairs have transformative powers, and he can magically manipulate wind, water and fire as well.

if you’re interested, here is a link to read about THE STORY OF THE MONKEY KING

but for now - let’s get back to the characterisation of our very own Ape King:

from the story, we instantly get the kind of person our Ape King is; with his arrogance and self absorbance being his downfall at the hands of the fox       we all have someone akin to them, in our lives        (sometimes whether we like it or not..)

as with our fox - portrayal needs to come through the posing - and a confident stance is the place to start

our character is very sure of himself, and his ability to please an audience is what gave him the domain over the other beasts of the jungle - connoting the idea that he is an extrovert in every sense of the word.

to add to the comedicness of my interpretation, I’d like to also bring up the notion of using sparratic movement to not only showcase this strong posing, we’ve talked about - but to add to the confidence the character oozes.

SUBSECTION: READING INTO “STYLE”

Authoring and animating painterly characters Katie Bassett, Ilya Baran, Johannes Schmid, Markus Gross, Robert W. Sumner

Artists explore the visual style of animated characters through 2D concept art, since it affords them a nearly unlimited degree of creative freedom. Realising the desired visual style, however, within the 3D character animation pipeline is often impossible, since artists must work within the technical limitations of the pipeline toolset. 

In order to expand the range of possible visual styles for digital characters, this book’s research aims to incorporate the expressiveness afforded by 2D concept painting into the computer animation pipeline as a core component of character authoring and animation. 

While prior 3D painting methods focus on static geometry or simple animations, this work develop tools for the more difficult task of character animation - with a system that shows how 3D stroke-based paintings can be deformed using standard rigging tools. 

and towards the end it demonstrate several characters authored with their system that exhibit painted effects difficult to achieve with traditional animation tools.

[mi5017ikepearson]

POSING - “CHARACTERS IN MOTION.. WITHOUT THE MOTION?”

to pose a character is to assume a particular position in order to be photographed, painted, or drawn.

the positioning of a character is important - as with it we can garner an understanding of what that character is all about, without actually having to see them in motion.

FLOWING MOTION - “AN ANALYSIS OF THE BLUE BLUR”

Sonic The Hedgehog

as someone who has always had interest in both playing video games, creating music, and illustration - I’ve always found the Sonic the Hedgehog series to be especially impressive in the aspect of artwork.

Sonic is a character who used to define what it meant to be expressive - before Sega decided that he was too cool to showcase emotion beyond being cocky - and I think that all of this is apparent from the very first game in his series

“8-BIT EXPRESSIVENESS”

despite the console limitations from being on old hardware, Sega ensured to use their processing power to their advantage through Sonic’s portrayal in game.

the character has a variety of unique sprites that help us sense what the character’s next move will be with a general idea of weight, flow, and of course - the name of the game...

MOMENTUM

Animation is an enormous contributor when it comes to how a game feels - as it provides visual feedback for our inputs, and it helps to intuit how things in the game works.

and this is how Sonic’s animation is incredible at conveying the mechanics of his game

platforming in Sonic games is different to that of others at the time, as it’s based on momentum.  for you non-physics obsessed dweebuses out there; this essentially just means it takes time for sonic to build up speed - and Sonic’s animations are great reflections of this:

Sonic’s animation is broken up into phases he starts with a jog cycle that loops for a few cycles, getting incrementally faster.

this subtle change in speed makes it feel like its taking Sonic some effort to run - he’s pumping his arms, and you can see some vertical movement in his step.

as he hits top speed, his arms tuck into his sides, the vertical motion disappears and his run becomes smooth and seemingly effortless to maintain

the animation helps reinforce the idea that this speed is where you want to be, gameplay wise

the effort it takes to get to this point, is emphasised by whenever you turn around or stop you have to skid - visually emphasising the effort it takes to just get sonic to slow down.

with all that analysis from my geek brain - it should be becoming apparent how posing is very important to animation.

with it you can showcase a character being happy without having to even show the emotion their face - posing them in such a way so that they feel enlightened.

it’s all about studying the way the silhouette reads to an audience, and that begins through an understanding of the action line. 

in doing so - you’re showcasing that you know how to convey to an audience the way in which you want them to read how the character “feels.”

What you are trying to do is tell the story the very best way you can. 

And to do that - you’ve got to draw varieties of the same pose. 

Push things. Pull things. 

Something work? Put it into the next pose. 

Something weird? Take it out. 

Draw draw draw draw draw. Draw until you hate whatever story you are telling.

BLOCKING - “AND NO; NOT THE INSTAGRAM FEATURE”

Blocking is an animation technique in which the key poses of a motion are created to establish the timing and placement of the characters and props in a given scene or shot.

Blocking is often the first step in the pose-to-pose style of animating, where the important poses that build up an animation such as the key positions, in-betweens, extremes, and breakdowns necessary establish the flow and timing of a particular shot.

spline keyframes and still keyframes

we set multiple keyframes, removing the automatic tweening, so that we can work on stepped-keyframes between each position, and create a fluid movement between them; giving the illusion of movement

low-frame rate gives off a stopmotion-esque aesthetic; with the character’s movements erratic, in a way.

METHOD

to achieve this blocking technique, I set out to open up my Maya setting and changed the default in tangent to ‘clamped’ and the default out tangent to ‘stepped’ so that the timeline would show the movements without the tweens.

in doing so - the object looks as if it is jumping about the screen, which makes it much easier to pose our character’s motions using the keyframes.

this is how the timeline should look, to allow this process 

the animation curves of a blocked shot are often created using these "stepped" or "square" tangencies, which provides no interpolation between animation poses. 

This allows us as the animator to see the poses of the animation without any strange and/or unintentional automatic interpolation. 

While this is sometimes problematic due to gimbal lock, seeing the poses in this way allows us to adjust the timing of an animation quickly, without the distraction of the software's automatic interpolation.

SBLIME MODE

with our keyframes in place - we can then use the technique of splining to make the animation run smoothly, again.

in essence all this does is return the software's settings to such a way in which the tweening is returned. 

PARENTING THE BALL

we were provided with a simple script to use in Maya - and when inputting some basic Python Code into the Script Editor i gained access to a new UI to use - above, labelled ‘ZV’

and now it can be used in other files!

import zvparentmaster.ui zvparentmaster.ui.show()

the code is very simple, essentially all it is is a written formula, in the Python Coding Language that will import an already existing file called ‘zvparentmaster’ into the program and show it in the ‘custom’ section

this essentially makes it a button in the program, that allows us to run the script of opening this custom UI whenever it is clicked - and the best part is, that now that it’s in our application, it can be used in other files!

[mi5017ikepearson]

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HOW MOTION FLOWS

i figured a good way to showcase this is to use our pre-rigged skeletal figure, and make a short animation of him throwing something

THE BREAKDOWN OF MOTION

when looking at this example footage, I found on YouTube - it’s important to understand how the human body bends and curves to throw the ball

luckily the fellows in this particular clip exaggerate themselves in such a way that i can take screenshots, and use them as keyframes to explain it

it’s probably really degrading to hear someone explain how motion flows: since you, yourself, as a human or some kind of sub-human-like species move pretty much consistently - and can understand how and why that’s the case but i’m here to break it down further, and show

MAKING A REFERENCE VIDEO

(film self throwing a ball. from two side by side angles)

[mi5017ikepearson]

HOW AUDIO ENHANCES VIDEO

The film-maker George Lucas famously suggested that sound is 50% of the experience of cinema.  This equation is particularly true of animation as animated images do not directly reference experienced optical reality but are drawn from the imagination and sound is used to connect these imaginary images with our emotional and material experience of the world.

Animation is more than movement in the frame, but is created in the mind of the viewer through the composition of images and the sequencing of images through editing.

as a very amateur voice actor, and equally amateur part-time freelance music producer - I can appreciate the importance of sound in media production. As evidenced through some of my “quality” re-sound productions from prior years.

it’s important to have a sense of humour, as a creative type - and when producing your own content this is especially apparent!

before getting around to storyboarding my approach to the task - I’d like to at the very least work on setting the tone for the kind of animation I would like to make..

it’s here that a self appointed silly individual, such as my self, would look into how to use music to enhance their visual.

I think with the soundtrack, I’ve chosen - it’ll give me the opportunity to create a multitude of interesting shots to enhance the comedy behind my piece.

[mi5017ikepearson]

READING - “TAKING ADVANTAGE OF LIBRARIES”

long before the age of the internet, and we had devices with limitless power and knowledge at the tips of our fingers before we could google anything and everything: libraries used to be more than just places for the homeless to loiter about

…i truly miss it

and to get that feeling back - there’s no better place to start, than with a good book!

unfortunately, due to the current situation - I figured it’d be best to stay away from communal areas such as the library, so instead of checking out hard copies of the books, so I could read comfortably, whenever I caught a spare second to myself..

I went to the library to browse, and downloaded an electronic book to my laptop, to read as I typed up blog posts…

“Character Animation : 2D Skills for Better 3D” Steve Roberts

“Improve your 3D animation by understanding the key traditional 2D skills. Learn the basics for producing original and exciting animation.”

This book is the culmination of almost 10 years of teaching drawn animation techniques to 3D computer animators. 

You may think, ‘why on earth does a 3D computer animator need to learn how to do drawn animation?’ The answer to this question is that the basics of animation are all the same and often you can get an idea of the movement far more quickly using pencil and paper. 

i read this one, multiple times - the first reading within about half an hour, while sitting in the library, and subsequently using an online variant, that i would occassionally skim through while writing my blogs, to give myself better insight into the transfer from my preferred way of working (in 2d) to the much more foreign, and freshly learning 3D.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading cover to cover, as it’s really useful and the techniques and information that is attempted to be taught is clearly conveyed with concepts I’ve become familiar with such as keying and animating straight ahead being explained in the third dimension - which i think will be especially useful in the concept of this module

a personal preference for me being that the hand-drawn diagrams, from the author’s sketchbook made it feel a lot more personal of an experience than it otherwise would have without the visual support; so for that I'm very appreciative.

“How to cheat in Maya 2014 : tools and techniques for character animation” Kenny Roy

All professional animators know a handful of secrets that give them an edge in a production environment. "How to Cheat in Maya" puts these secrets in your hands! Learn time and energy-saving techniques tested in real Hollywood productions in this book, jam-packed with screenshots and scene files designed to get you up to speed quickly. 

From menus to modeling, lipsync to lighting, How to Cheat in Maya covers all of the methods available in said version of Maya...

a lot of the techniques in there still work - however, using the internet I found a few things that straight up no longer have shortcuts, and are just a button press away in the toolbar..

Im sure the latest version of the book would have something more, but from what I’ve read of this one - this is seemingly an essential guide for animators. 

there’s expanded sections on production workflow, and rigging cheats which is pretty useful stuff to keep in the back of the head, for later

[mi5017ikepearson]

MOTIONCAPTURE TECHNOLOGY

https://www.reallusion.com/cartoon-animator/full-body-mocap/default.html