Child Motion Studies and Character Exploration.

I created one of these for the adult character a while back. And I also did one with both the Adult & Child version. However, it helped me flesh out the character more when I created one for the adult, and I love doing them, and so here's one for the child version.

These explorations of context are the fuel behind the module as far as I'm concerned. It's great exploring the history of the character, and getting a real sense of who they are. If I ever go in to animating without exploring the character, I have no interest in the work, and it becomes tedious. However, if I have a character I can picture in my head, then it's great bringing THAT character to life. I think that's maybe why I felt a bit lacking at the end of 4th year. Because of the amount of time I spent preparing characters, I had this huge urge to see them alive. I did plan to model and animate my characters after 4th year as I recall, but then I was lucky enough to get into Dare to be Digital.



Personality Board for Child.

Apologies - I don't have a better painting of the child yet. 

Images. 
Left: Link (Windwaker Style)
Top: Young Goku
Bottom: Young Hercules
Right: Dash

I'm sure you didn't already know that...

Deconstruction and Justification of Inclusion:

Link (Wind waker)

Link's animations in Wind Waker really complement both the visual style, and the stylised character model. The animation lends Link a very innocent, but determined personality. I really dig the animation in the hair too. It's so simple and charming. This simple animation is perfect for the stylised feel of the character. I'd love to capture this in my character. Link's head bobs slightly while he runs, but it also moves from left to right, which adds this sort of bobble-head impression, which adds to the appeal of his over-exaggerated proportions. 

Young Hercules

In Hercules, the young Hercules is very stylised in his design, and the proportions are great. The proportions help emphasis his clumsiness and at the same time, his strength. It also feels like he's always struggling to balance himself, which again emphasizes his clumsiness. 

Young Goku

Again, with young Goku, innocence is a big part of the character. I guess it's more the personality of young Goku than the animation which helped me out. The resourcefulness and independent nature of him. I wanted that to be a big part of my character, with him growing up in solitude. 

Dash 

In The Incredibles, Dash takes on all the characteristics of a track and field athlete. We see him stretch, jog on the spot, and generally keep his heart rate up for the entirety of the film. His love of running really doesn't let up, to such an extent that whenever he isn't running he's either complaining, sulking, or just being a general pain in the butt. Sure, this is great characterization, but, Rory, perhaps I hear you shriek, that's got nothing to do with this module. 

OK, maybe not; but maybe it does. This idea of a belief influencing the character is something which could be interesting. I know there's another character somewhere in my head who also does something similar. I think an action point should be to take a skill of my character, which in this case would be building and fishing, although of course there's room for expansion, and do pose tests which emphasize these skills. 

Honourable mentions:

Light, bouncy walk cycle. 

His rucksack should affect his run cycle.

So yeah, I've got a good amount to work on for the next few weeks or so. 

Bye for now, 

Animation Feedback and Next Steps.

I just had a great chat with Lynn about my remaining work load for this module. It really hit home how little reading I'd done into the specific animation properties which would benefit my characters I'm currently working on (the adult and the child). I've been to general. Sure it's been great doing motion studies and tons of scenario sketches to flesh out my characters, and the generic cyclic tests, but I've become guilty of not doing what I've always preached as a hugely important thing:

Looking to a massive range of existing sources for influence. 

So that was a wake up call I was glad to get. I guess I'm just adjusting to the whole interpolation of the two modules. I mean, I've done this module before, albeit to a lesser criteria or whatever, but yeah, it's thrown me off a bit in terms of delegation. 

Feels aside, I now have a bit of direction. I'm going to take my characters, and create a sort of "personality board" which represents the sort of character they are. Pretty much a mood board. And then deconstruct and analyse the way these characters have been animated, and from that see if I can perhaps direct my own animation from these studies. 

I did this sort of thing last time round on this module. I think I actually started off the module by creating a mood board of characters. Although I don't believe I looked into motion at all. So my animation sucked even more than it does now. Although the design was relatively strong. So hopefully from this new approach I'll have the best of both.

Influence/Personality Board for Adult

Images.
Top Left: Ozymandias (and Bubastis) (Watchmen)
Top Right: Li Shang (Mulan)
Bottom Left: Howl (Howl's Moving Castle)
Bottom Right: Altair (Assassin's Creed)

Deconstruction and Justification of Inclusion:

Ozymandias.

Although he's yet to be animated in a film or games, Ozymandias was an inspiration to the character by means of demeanor. In Watchmen O is always in control. He's always a step ahead of everyone else.

O is also an example of the perfect fighter, and this confidence and prowess comes across in his battle scenes in Watchmen. However, his calm confidence shines constantly, not just when fighting, and that quality is something I think is a strong testament to his intelligence. 

Li Shang. 

In Mulan, Li Shang is also a very experienced fighter, and the strong poses which support his animation give him a strong, confident demeanor also.

In my animation, I'd love to have this sort of feeling to the adult character, but with a bit more exaggeration given to the follow-through of the motions.



Howl.

I really admire the animation of Howl in Howl's Moving Castle. Throughout the film Howl's animation helps support his confident personality by giving him a very organic, elegant sense of motion, like wind or water moves.

Because my character is a deity, I think this idea of fluidity in his animation will help seal him in with the rivers and the mountains of his world through harmony.




Altair. 

Altier is an obvious one. I hope it doesn't seem to obvious or lazy to include him in here, but I feel he's very relevant, and especially since I'm creating cyclic animations for games.

Altair's animations are some of the most appreciated in contemporary games. Obviously, considering the circumstances, I won't be aiming to complete animations as remarkable as the ones in Assassin's creed. But I do hope to at least have a strong confident personality evident within my submissions.

I think it's also important to note the attention given to specific areas of his body. For example, in areas where he wants to stay low, he keeps his head down and focused. And when he runs his body dips and streamlines, etc. I'll go more into this and the rest of these in my report.




Next up I'll do the child version, what inspired his personality, and how and why it differs from his adult self.



PS.This is what happens when I remember GIFs are a thing.

Motion Studies.

Below are some motion studies for the adult version of my character (who you can see again here). 

The adult version of the character was designed with an agile, confident figure in mind. And as such I've attempted to capture and emphasize that nature in these studies. 

I'm pleased with the way the bottom action sequence turned out. I tried to make the poses as dynamic as possible. I wanted the contours of the character to follow the line of motion as tightly as possible, and I feel that that really highlights the fluidity of the characters' actions. 

In the other sketches I've attempted to cover as many animation principles as possible (anticipation, solid drawing/weight, arc, follow through).

 I think the next thing I'm going to do is some animation tests for this personality with a suitable rig. And also some motion studies for the child version of the character. 

Creating Cyclic Animations for Video Games.

So I wasn't able to complete my 11 second club submission. Very depressing.

My terrible time management skills are mainly to blame for this. I really need to establish some sort of timetable for working on each module, because I'm finding that by meandering between modules on a whim I'm often left spending too much time on certain areas.

But anyway, back to animation.

As I think I mentioned before this coursework is focused on creating cyclic animations for video games, and as such the animations should pertain to ones you would expect to see in games, and should be realised through an appropriate video game character rig.

Now, the other week I had my first mo-cap session. Mo-cap is something that has interested me since the VFX trip to London I went on back in 2012. Then recently, I attended a talk by Jonathan Cooper, the lead animator on Assassin's Creed 3.

The talk was titled "Animating the 3rd Assassin" and in it he detailed his mo-cap & animation process for the Assassin. The quality of animation that can be achieved blew my mind. Johnathon explained the process, which involves skilled actors and state of the art suites, and how he directs the mo-cap process, applies it to a mesh, and then tweaks and refines the data it to create one awesomely animated character.

Towards the end of the motion capture session I was allowed to direct a dying animation - which I really enjoyed. And the almost-immediate feedback you receive with mo-cap really lets you iterate like crazy.

I'd like to book out the motion capture suite sometime soon, but before I do that, and this was heavily pointed out, I need to meticulously plan everything. Just as a producer for a game of film considers time and budget, it's great to get into this mode of thinking and practicing professionally.

In class we were shown Johnathon's showreel, which included a walk, a sneak, a run, and a breathtakingly impressive quasi-free-running sequence.

This array of animation really makes sense for the Assassin.

That's what I feel made the showreel really pop. The animations are so strongly rooted in the context and personality of the character.

So, to begin an interesting workflow, and also allow me to use my time as cleverly as possible, I'm going to be tying in this animation module with my Low Poly Modelling class.

I've never actually done this before, although it's often suggested. So I guess I'm quite excited about, because it means I'll be more focused on mutual assets, which I reckon can only be a good thing. Quality over quantity and all that.

So yeah, the reasoning for tying these modules.

Well, for Ken's module I'm interested in the translation of both the transition of stylised concept art to 3D, and also the way in which a characters' adult character model compares to the child counterpart. I think this leaves a nice scope to take the 3D model of the child and the adult and use cyclic animation to convey their individual personalities. It would also provide a good chance to provide context to the characters animations. I think using the characters' back-stories, which would be devised in LPM through the concept art, will provide interesting situations which can in turn be animated for this module. Hopefully I'll get around to re-wording this as I feel I might be rambling or perhaps unclear.

I guess for rigging I'll need to look into using Mixamo or something similar to get the rig. If not, i'll just use the essence of the characters, and a downloaded rig. Naturally I'd prefer to use the actual models.

That's all for now, folks.

Animation: consuming all my time since this morning.

I've animated the first couple of seconds of my 11 Second Club entry. This scene has taken me a number of hours to animate, and it still only has a block as the second character. Because the scene is very close to the face of the Male character, it was crucial that he didn't look rigid or lifeless. Currently, by industry standards, it still falls short. However, I feel it's heading in the right direction.

Thanks,

Getting back into Animation.

The animation I did over the Summer for Dare to be Digital was farely minimal, and not particularly well executed. The last time I really spent any real time on 3D animation was in third year and I loved it for the most part. Maya, right?

I was disappointed in myself for not completing the optional task of creating a dance animation the other week. I did actually start one, and it was going well, but I got side-tracked on other modules, and never managed to finish anything.

So today I've spent some time creating a walk cycle in Maya using the 11 Rig. My 11 second club plan doesn't include a walk cycle, but I figured I should practice a bit before diving straight into my animation.

The 11 Rig is awesome, and so I've had a great time just focusing on animation principles, without having to worry about my lackluster Maya prowess.

Here's what I've managed to get in the last few hours.

So now I'm going to block out my ESC animation, and should have more to report on that later in the week.

Thanks,

3D Character Animation.

The version of this module that I completed back in the third year of my undergrad was the module that really got me working hard and making great work. And someone once said you only make great work when you're doing work you enjoy. So I guess you could say I'm excited about this module.

Ok, perhaps the work I did in third year wasn't exactly great; but it was a module in which I feel I progressed the most, and without which I might have been less devoted to my work present day. 

The module has come a long way since then which is very exciting. And it I think this new setup of dailies and external competitions will be an even greater vehicle for the students of the class to hone their skills. 

 For the coursework, the Computer Arts students can choose to create an animation(s) for narrative purposes, VFX demonstration, or Games. 

Because I'm doing Games Development we've been asked to focus on creating a polished showreel of animation for games. 

However, before we dive into the coursework I'll explain the external competition I mentioned previously. 

So we're all making submissions for the 11 second club. Awesome. 

The clip for this years participants goes like this: 

Voice One: "Oh, no, everything's fine."
Voice Two: "But the animal is inside out. And it exploded."
Voice One: "Hold please."

Originally, I figured the clip would be more ambiguous than this. It seems strange that a competition which receives so many applications would use such a specific audio clip. Then again, maybe it's a good thing; maybe it helps animators to become more creative in their search for story. 

My Interpretation. 

So initially the audio clip made me picture some guy, who's animal has just exploded, on the phone to some disillusioned customer services worker.

So I went away and did some sketches to get the ball rolling. I know these character development sheets are in no way required seeing as I'll be using an existing character rig, but they're good for moulding and brainstorming your characters personality. And they make good portfolio pieces. 

However, after some more thinking I started to picture something of a buddy-movie theme in the clip. Almost like a sort of Kick-Ass & Hit Girl relationship.

Characters:

Blue Jasmine (Superheroin) (Voice One)
Hal - (Teenager) (Voice Two)
Monster.

Premise:

After winning a competition, local teenager has the chance to see his favourite superhero(in) - Blue Jasmine - in action. However, she is not as excited about this opportunity as he is.

Beats:

1. Camera is focused towards a terrified Hal, hiding behind a rock.
2. Blue Jasmine lands next to him. "Oh, no, everything's fine."
3. While Hal says "But the Animal is inside out." Blue Jasmine does some stretches, completely care-free and ready for the challenge.
4. Explosion sound is heard. Debris flies across the screen and past the characters. We see Hal duck and hide behind the rock. Blue Jasmine appears completely nonchalant to the explosion and catches a piece of the Animal which hurtles towards her.
5. Blue Jasmine hands Hal the object: "Hold please". Then leaps off screen to fight. Hal and the Creature look on in Awe.

Storyboards:

So the plan for the next post for this module will hopefully have the basic animation blocked out.

Cheers