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Advanced Animation Performance KNB225

Assignment 1A Video essay

Voice over script

 The project I am going to analysis is one scene happens in the Pinocchio, made by Disney studio in 1940. The scene is describing the Jiminy cricket, who as a mentor to Pinocchio is warming himself up near a firepit. This essay will analyze his action from the story concept, the character’s motivation and the animation principles the scene has applied.

 Pinocchio is a story that a wooden puppet who brought to life by a fairy uses his adventure experiences to prove that he is qualifying to become a real boy. Jimmy the cricket is the mentor of Pinocchio, who guards, protect, and provides useful life advice to Pinocchio during their adventures.

 The content of the scene is Jimmy the cricket is so cold and desperate to find a place to warm himself up. He finds a firepit that has no one to overwatch. he snicks into the room, walks to the fire pit and gains warmth from it. The action will be analyzed is he has hot coal slightly away from the fire pit, and he is turning his back to the hot coal, and using hands rubbing the hip to produce more warmth.

 About the character, Jimmy the cricket is one of the main characters starring in Pinocchio. During the scene, he is a little poor cricket desperate for warmth. Jimmy as a wild little cricket at the beginning, he is careful and positive. He always observes his surrounding for safety, and glad about little things he may have.

 As a 1940 Disney cartoon film, Pinocchio is a classic film that perfect present the 12 animation principles that introduced by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. During the scene, Jimmy the cricket turns his hip near to the hot coal and uses his hands rub hips to gain warmth, and finally kneels and bending over with his eye turning around looking for the environment.

 His body squashes and stretches during he are looking around the environment. Both the squash and stretch are nice and clear during the whole motion.

 The first panel shows the character squats down with two hands hold the hip, as the prepare action of the character to stretch his back and moving his hip forward with a hand rubbing forwards.

 For staging, it is a full shot with the character in the center of the space, the silhouette of the character is both clear and attractive. The hot coal which the character indirectly interact with stimulates the radiation of the real-life burning coal with the surrounding halo slightly tilts during the main character performance and the motion is controlled to the minimum for audiences keep focusing on the character.

 When the character rubbing his hips, the first rubbing cycle, which is counted from the first panel to the panel character squats again is mainly using straight ahead method to produce, as the evidence, the secondary action happens at the end of the character’s coat is very realistic with no extra bounce, while the second rubbing cycle is applying with pose to pose, the secondary action of the the coat is more dramatic and bounced one extra time.

 During the rubbing, the moving of the hands leads the body moves forward and backward, to keep steady, the feet move after the motion of the body, each body parts follow through nicely. At the time, the head is tilting, and the body is squatting and stretching. Two actions are overlapping with no corruption.

 At the beginning of the first rubbing cycle, the start is slow and clear compares to the start of the second rubbing cycle, which has more dramatic and extreme transform than the first. The end of the second rubbing is also clearer and nice flowed than the first cycle ends. Which leads the overall motion is acting nature and clear.

 While the body is squashing and stretching, the motion has arched from the key poses to the key poses. The hat he wears is also moving with the same active line.

 The clothing the character is wearing such as the hat, scarf and coat emphasized the action the actor is performing. Each object has contraction with the main character has the high quality of the secondary action. The perspective of the scene is correct and consistent with the overall artistic style. The character and the environment in the scene are smooth and slightly rounded to presume the cartoonish appeal.

 And here would be the final of my analysis, thank you for watching.

Reference list:

Carter, C. (2016). Animated Mise-en-scene and aesthetic harmony: An expansion of the traditional principles of animation to 3D computer animation. Queensland University of Technology.

 Coron, T. (2018, June 27). Understand Disney's 12 principles of animation. Retrieved from https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/understand-the-12-principles-of-animation

 Hayes, D., & Webster, C. (2013). Acting and performance for animation. Burlington, Mass.: Focal Press.

 Jackson, K., & West, M. (2014). Walt Disney, from Reader to Storyteller : Essays on the Literary Inspirations. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

 Sharpsteen, B., & Luske, H. (Directors). (1940). Pinocchio [Video file]. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Productions.

 Hahn, D. (2008). The alchemy of animation : making an animated film in the modern age . New York, N.Y.: Disney Editions.

 Thomas, F., Johnston, O., & Thomas, F. (n.d.). The illusion of life : Disney animation (1st Hyperion ed.). New York: Hyperion.

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KNB227 CGI Technologies Assignment: Part C - Personal Contribution

Index:

Personal contribution:

In Assessment, our group is contributing the kitchen inside the house. Here is the part I take responsibility with:

Modeling part: ceiling light, cookbooks, the cooking knife, glass cup, toaster, mugs

Texture: straw broom, blender, cookbooks, the cooking knife, fire alarm, glass cup, toaster, mugs

 Model:

Ceiling light

Its model is simple so did not have much difficulty in the modeling stage. However, the UV mapping is difficult for me to contribute due to my poor skill with the dismembering model. The ceiling light model, fire alarm, and straw broom spend most of my time for troubleshooting. After the ceiling light, the rest is rather easy-going with experience.

Cookbooks

At the early stage of the cookbooks, I was thinking to produce the thickness by modeling out the book page edges, which is pointed out it is a waste to the memory resources. The final version is almost simple plane between book covers. I regret I produced four different version for the cookbooks before I UV unwrap which I have to spend the great amount of unnecessary time on it. I could save more time if I UV unwrap the first version first.

Cooking knife

I believe I need to spend more time to increase my skill in dividing knife blade part. Even though I am not satisfied with the final version, I hardly to find a tutorial about the blade to improve my version. I would put more time to find a proper result in the future.

Glass cup

The glass cup might be the easiest model I take responsibility with. It does not have any problem with the modeling stage. In UV unwrap stage it is some sort difficult to decide the cutting line. The final render version seems weird, I believe I need to pay more attention to it.

Toaster

I am not confident about the oval shape modeling, but the result is passable. The toaster is the most complex model I produce. I was confused at that time about the texture dividing so I create two independent part for the metal and plastic part. I think I could make a better version now. I treasured the model practice I experienced.

Mugs

For the mug, the handle part has some difficult for me to produce. I most rely on the tutorial I found from YouTube which is very reliable. The result is lovely.

Texture

Cookbooks

I draw a cover for the cookbooks texture for a better result. It also is the first time I use photoshop plugin in the substance painter. I enjoyed the process, and it also reveals the advances using photoshop for pattern producing. I will apply the experience in my future texturing.

Cooking knife

The texturing for the cooking knife does not spend me much time, the result is in poor quality due to the poor texture line warp, which will have improved with a better model. I will put more time into it.

Glass cup

As there is no much necessary to produce a transparency texture inside substance painter, I just create a material network for the cup. I love the presenting.

Toaster

I bake the toaster texture in a quite early stage, so the result is just passable. I would like to produce the immersive button for the poster, but I was failed as I forgot to produce the specific texture set for it. Which I will remember for my next time model producing.

Mugs

Like the glass cup, to increase the presenting quality I chuck a color map drawn with the fingerprint on it. I love the result. For the material, there is no such tutorial for porcelain material, I produced a similar version and I am satisfied with the result.

Straw Broom

I do not take responsibility for the UV unwrapping but there is no one when I going to texture. It is also hard to produce the straw part. As it was a trapezoid shape UV map. The first UV map version has a strange result with the straw part as the straw will bend in between somehow. I must produce a second version and make a new version for it.

Blender

I only take the responsibility for the texturing for this model. It has a lovely UV map but when I going to produce it, the model has been combined as one and there is a glass container part which needs to be transparency. I was afraid I have no ability to make a transparency texture in substance painter. I import the FBX file back to Maya and add a new texture set for the glass container. However, after that, during the texturing, there show weird empty spots around the button of the blender, which might come from the inefficient of UV unwrap. Although I would like to solve them when I notice the problem It has already been the last minute before the submission. Hope the result is not too bad.

Fire alarm

For the fire alarm, the first version I get has no clean history, no UV unwrap, and the warp line is not connected properly. I spent hours to clean the model, and the second version I get is neither prettier or UV unwarped. I used the old version I refined. The texture is rather easy as I am familiar with the texture pipeline and skills at that time, and the result is great. Hope I have more time to make an emissive material for the fire alarm.

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Assignment 2B - Motion Capture Studies

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KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production

character design (image)

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KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production 

Schedule & Budget’ s chart

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KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production

Assignment 2: Production Design

Index

Project Jam is designed as a 3 minutes musical fantasy Experimental Animation which is expected to present at student animation festivals. The target audience will be youth around 17-25 years of age and using 2.5D (Digital 2D character animation with 3D render background) technologies for best presentation.

Synopsis

A jolly girl lives with her family in a bakery. Apple jam is her everyday breakfast. She ate every single breakfast with her family. One night before her 10thbirthday, the girl dreamed that her father ate her mother. The next day mother vanished. An apple tart appears at the breakfast table with her mother’s hair decoration upon it.

Poem / Limerick / Story

The original poem from Edward Lear’sNonsense Omnibus

J was some Apple Jam, Of which Papa ate part; But all the rest he took away And stuffed into a tart.

Script

A girl is doing the morning run and going down from the street heading to a bakery. A tall white woman opened the door, watch the girl coming down from the street top, welcomes the girl into the shop and get into the living zone. Which shows that the girl lives here. The girl enters the dining room and the first into her sight is a table with three sets of tableware, a tall man has already sat around the table. The girl approaches the table and looks down, a jar of apple jam is waiting for her to eat. She looks very satisfied with the result and has the jam with pleasure. When the eating is over, the girl goes upstairs into her room and get into sleep. At night, A huge sound strikes the girl and she wakes up. She walks downstairs to see what is happening. At the dining room, the lamp is shaking with the sound of liquid squirting. Her papa was sitting in the chair while her mother lying on the table with jam-like blood dripping. With the shaking of the lamp, seems papa was eating her mother. The girl is shocked by the view and fainted with no sound. Everything turns black and suddenly, the girl wakes up. She is watching around the room and only thinks that might is a terrible nightmare. She looks at the calendar and finds today is her birthday. She is jumping down from the stairs and running to the dining room. The background music stops with only her papa sitting on the chair likes the scene in the dream. There is no trace of her mother. She walks to her chair and sits down. There is a jam tart setting on her plate. The girl raises her spoon and scoops some tart, which has an apple-shaped plastic decoration. The girl panic pushed the dinner table and run toward to the camera. Everything turning black. END

Concept Art / Design

Developing roughs and thumbnails:

https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/178237686161/knb226-visual-storytelling-animation

Design process:

Story development:

For the story design, it is a horror fantasy cartoon. I Transfer the original poem into a cannibalism story. Says there is a Jam city, where Jam people live in it. The children born in this city won’t have the gender at first. At their 10th birthday, they gender will be decided according to the tart they eat at morning. Usually, the tart is baked using both parents’ one of their small body parts, the gender will be decided by the body percentage the parent devoted. Mother more than father then it will be female, and vice versa. The child with no tart will be melted due to his/her body cannot afford his/her shape anymore.

In the story, The papa is the baker in the Jam city, his role is to precise bake the birthday tart for the families who have clear gender desire for their children. He is mean cold and arrogant. He is too proud to himself and thinks the daughter of her does not worth his devotion. At the night before his daughter’s birthday, he had a quarrel with his wife about the devotion and killed/ate her under the anger. The next day, he supplied the tart contained with his wife’s remain to his daughter.

At the beginning of the concept mindmap, I chose this version as this is special enough to bring impact to my audiences. The first draft is more like a psychopath with his victim. I transfer the relationship of the characters from one night stand to husband and wife then father, grandmother, and daughter to the final version of the father, mother, and daughter. The character besides papa is decided as female. Most of the reason is female is more connected with the victim and the imagination of the Apple Jam, which is rich, sweet and soft.

Art style consideration:

As the final format, 2.5D combined animation is the final decision. First of all is the foreseeable budget reduction. Instead of the traditional 2D background, the 3D rendered background provides more flexibility to the changing and detail enhancing. For the character animation, the first is considering stop-motion animation. I am a fan for this traditional art style and it will fit perfectly to the animatic require for the heroine’s slime-like performance, but the plan is abandoned as it will greatly increase the budget and I cannot find the possible material or skeleton choice reference from the existing artworks. I finally chose 2D animation to provide maximum mobility to my characters.

For the specific reference, 《we happy few》, a PC platform 3D video game is the main inspiration to the background and interior design. It has a unique fantasy yet realistic style with world design. It is both bizarre and cartoonish, which is perfect with the production. For the character design, I am using 《Steven universe》style as my main reference. In《Steven universe》, It has a clear simple cartoonish style. In my consideration, the more simplicity character has, more clear mobility could provide during the production. This art style has the most economic benefit considering the total budget.

Character design:

character design (image):

https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/179566677426/knb226-visual-storytelling-animation

    Moodboard：

  Storyboard

Storyboard:

Beat board

Shot list:

Schedule & Budget

Schedule & Budget’ s chart:

https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/179563873016/knb226-visual-storytelling-animation

Contact detail

Mingyue Cao (Felice) n9551174@qut.edu.au

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KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production

Roughs and developing thumbnails

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KNB226 Visual Storytelling: Animation Pre-Production

Assignment 1: Concept Art

The original poem from Edward Lear’sNonsense Omnibus

J was some Apple Jam, Of which Papa ate part; But all the rest he took away And stuffed into a tart.

Jam story:

A jolly girl lives with her family in a bakery. Apple jam is her everyday breakfast. She ate every single breakfast with her family. One night before her 10th birthday, the girl dreamed that her father ate her mother. The next day mother vanished. An apple tart appears at the breakfast table.

 The current Script:

A girl is doing the morning run and going down from the street heading to a bakery. A tall white woman opened the door, watch the girl coming down from the street top, welcomes the girl into the shop and get into the living zone. Which shows that the girl lives here. The girl enters the dining room and the first into her sight is a table with three sets of tableware, a tall man has already sat around the table.  The girl approaches the table and looks down, a jar of apple jam is waiting for her to eat. She looks very satisfied with the result and has the jam with pleasure. When the eating is over, the girl goes upstairs into her room and get into sleep. At night, A huge sound strikes the girl and she wakes up. She walks downstairs to see what is happening. At the dining room, the lamp is shaking with the sound of liquid squirting. Her papa was sitting in the chair while her mother lying on the table with jam-like blood dripping. With the shaking of the lamp, seems papa was eating her mother. The girl is shocked by the view and fainted with no sound. Everything turns black and suddenly, the girl wakes up. She is watching around the room and only thinks that might is a terrible nightmare. She looks at the calendar and finds today is her birthday. She is jumping down from the stairs and running to the dining room. The background music stops with only her papa sitting on the chair likes the scene in the dream. There is no trace of her mother. She walks to her chair and sits down. There is a jam tart setting on her plate. The girl raises her spoon and scoops some tart, with a shot of her mouth, everything turning black. END

Developing roughs and thumbnails:

Roughs and developing ideas

https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/178237686161/knb226-visual-storytelling-animation

Characters-concept：

Environment design and interior design

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Stage 1: Shot analysis, reference gathering, acting investigation, thumbnails of key poses.

Shot analysis:

After reading the script, the shot is listing as below:

S1: Mid shot_ lucy (V.O.) Never to be seen again?

S2: Two shot_grandma (V.O.) Never to be seen again!

       lucy（V.O.）Sooo, everyone inside disappeared into the Vortex as well?!

S3：Close shot_grandma (V.O.)  Oh my, yes... NO ONE escapes a Poltergeist Vortex!

Reference: 

the basic visual reference is coming from the original storyboard. As the lip sync, the original video reference is not clear is enough and I shot my own to use as the reference.

lip sync reference:

Acting investigation:

the shots are required is lucy sits on the bed and talk with her grandma, they are no much specific action while they talk. hand motion becomes important. The key point is two character’s head motion and their shoulders. Head and shoulder need to keep tilting while they are talking.

Thumbnails of key poses:

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KNB137 Digital worlds Assessment2

Planning and Layout:

 https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/173626258866/knb137-project-three-milestone-planning-and

Lighting and asset production:

The lightning is rather easy than I expected. Appreciated the knowledge I learned from assessment1-truck. for the final result, I also add a subtle fog to match the result.

Final:

In the end, I just finish the basic UV unwrap and the most of the modelling process, I should make a more clear process calendar to improve my speed.

Due to the time limit, I have only assigned basic material for some of them, even though I have built several textures in the past assessments, I hardly imagine the final texture bake will be.

In the unreal, When I replaced the item in the milestone2( lighting). There is a bug that when I pack everything into a build, I can open the file, but cannot use default view to get into the room, it just like there is an air wall or somehow, I tried my best to google the result, but there is no solution. However, in the original UE4 file’s game mode, there is no such problem, I am still confused about the reason of this bug.

Only wish I could have more time to finish it.

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Action layout design for Mery（Second action)

and video reference

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Action layout design for Ray（First action)

and video reference

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Finalized storyboard

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KNB216 Visual Storytelling Assessment2

Finalized storyboard:

https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/174452106426/finalized-storyboard

Animatic:

Reflection/Self Critique on the whole process and final outcome

Even though I have a similar experience to create a storyboard by script, this time is rather hard than the last time. The music choices and the 30-sec time limit is quite challenging.

The music has to find by myself, it is rather difficult as the music affects the final result so much that I hardly to control without music editing skill. I did my best to find the proper sound effect to enlight my audio, and add more believes to my video. As I didn’t find someone who would read the actor’s lines. it somehow looks like a music video rather than a commercial demo. I hope I could improve it in the future.

The storyboard I made for assessment 1 has way too many shots to combine into 30 secs. The demo version is 20 shot, and the result is terrible, you cannot really see what is actually happening during the video. The final version I cut 5 transitions shot to save more time to present the result. During the producing process, when I colourized each character, I find a bunch of composition bugs I didn’t pay attention to. I adjust as many as my time allows.

Animatic colourized storyboard gives me a new way to see the black and white static storyboard I ever made. The extra information from colour and the light forces me to think my story from a different angle. The usual black-and-white storyboard will not pay too much attention to the background. However, when I use colourizing, the background is much more important than ever. It needs much more time to adjust actor’s position and the actual environment. The colour and light have so many possibilities to lead the audience to understand the story better than guessing from the simple line art. I believe I would spend more time to explore the colourized storyboard instead the black and white.

Hope you would like it.

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KNB215 Animation performance

Assessment 2 - Character Study from Action to Acting

case study

walking:

Final

Planning

Layout

RAY_first action:

storyboard&video reference (static): https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/174466690211/action-layout-design-for-rayfirst-action-and

Mery_second action:

storyboard&video reference (static):https://n9551174.tumblr.com/post/174467102401/action-layout-design-for-merysecond-action-and

Blocking

Breakdowns and Inbetweens

Unfortunately, the original inbetween file for Mery is lost, I couldn’t find the replacement.

Polish

first action:

second action:

Reflection/Self Critique on the whole process and the final outcome

The planning process is the easiest part of the second assessment. The planning also gives a clear direction for the rest of the work. During the layout, it is quite surprising that the huge differences between storyboard and video references. The live action is more vivid and unpredicts compare to the imagination. It may be the first time I truly realized the importance to find real-life performance as the action reference.

Blocking and breakdown process taught me that more accuracy the keyframe is, more easy to brings out the final action. The first slow jumping action due to its own characteristic, the action is quite subtle, and it is hard to capture the correct motion. It brings a great amount of time to working process for me to debug the wrong pose I built from the beginning.

Polish process is difficult to self-judging. The first action and its model is quite common, just combine the normal walk with two light jump, the model I chose is working-friendly and easy to refine the action. However, the second action is painful from the beginning through the final. Mery model’ s kneel rig is really hard to work with. Instead of simple rotation, it used two control panel (similar to the ultimate walk model I used at the begging of this assessment, but have slight differences). It was hell to use this model producing any jump action, the kneel never works properly even when I adjust any single action, it may lead the kneel rig move to somewhere unbelieves. I did my best to recorrect, but the result is the pity. It taught me the importance to make a simple test to every model I may work with. I still appreciated it.

The overall process experience is valuable. it gives me a chance to look at the detail I was missed from the last time assessment. I do believe this experience will be greatly useful for my future.

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KNB137 Project Three Milestone - Planning and Project Management Documents

Asset List:

3d layout containing blocked-out version the assets:

Skecthfab：https://sketchfab.com/models/7c7299e52eaa4a9f8d29f9fd05149400

Short written outline of the environmental narrative:

Basic story background narrative:

From the concept art, we can acquire that, this environment design is based on fantastical reality background. The story I assume is set in a dystopian setting, a world-scale war resembles ww2 has exploded recently. This room belongs to a  military facility which exists underground and without maintenance for years (might be a safehouse). The room just reused by the character. The character who lives here might be a man/woman with intelligence acquisition knowledge.  The character lives and works in this location to acquiring Intelligence from the hostile forces. As it set in a room without window, it is hard to identify the actual time period. I assume the time will be midnight, which will greatly reduce the possible effect of natural light.

Detail narrative:

The air in this location is filled with dirt, the wall and floor are dirted and corroded, the sheet on the bed is stained. It can reveal that this room lacks maintenance for a long period. The surface of the ceramic tiles is shiny with no much damage, it shows the room has been cleaned recently. The locker’s door and light show there are people using this location. The indoor gutter probably used for water drain, hints the viewer this room located in a place has stagnant water issues. Gas mask and radar monitor show that room is used for military purposes. From the design of the radar and the mask, we can assume the time background might similar with ww2.

Visual communication an visual breakdown:

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KNB137 project two journal

Planning

This plan is finished at week4. Actually, I spend around three times extra to achieve the final result, it is surprising that even I almost doubled my prediction time on the planning sheet, I still used much more time rather than the original planning. but the planning also gave me a chance to calculate the actual working time, which is greatly profited me.

low poly mesh and uv mapping

As there is a tutorial about the truck cab, the truck cab has the least trouble I met during the whole model creating. The rest of them, especially the car base and the basket bar( which hold the planks) is really painful to adjust. Somehow the points of this two mesh frequently broken and needed to connect. Uv map of these two parts is also affected as I have to recreate my mesh or connect the broken vertex over and over. When I import my first finished model into unreal, the system told me there are several meshes have “problem”, I have to recreate some of them. At that point, I have already baked the texture of the whole model, that version is abandoned because of the no compatible uv mappings.

Size adjustment

I don’t meet too many problems here, I put every pivot point in the world centre, cleared the history and frozen the transform. Probably is my device setting problem, It is my first time to meet Maya crushed down due to unknown reason, luckily I have enough backup and don’t have any further problem.

High poly mesh

Texture

The texture is repainted due to the unexpected mesh remake, This version is quite simple but I like the final result. I believe I need more time to have some personal practice for texture painting. Substance Painter is really great but I still need time to figure it out.

Import into unreal