I picked my reference audio on 11 second club and filmed myself as the reference footage. I found it is really hard to follow the rhythm of the original audio clip. I even wanted to use my own audio. However I spent some time with PR editing and got a decent result.
Also the lips part is hard to animate. Every pronounce requires me to think about what I’m going to animate based on that sound. But sometimes it makes me feel weird if the mouth moves as the same as the pronunciation rules. I think it’s just a lack of practice and that’s what I need to improve.
Here is the link for this week animation exercise:
I used to think that the nose didn’t need to be animated unless it was needed like character smells something. But after search I found out that it is actually driven by the movement of jaw or mouth. This means that the focus on the nose will make my animation more realistic.
Lip Syncing & Facial Animation have two goals:
Jaw Bounce: The underlying structure
Emotional speech: Underlying emotional structure
Morphing in between 3D visemes:
visemes 3D
Lip Syncing in 3D process:
Jaw bounce
Open & close/ wide & short
Curl in & out
Tongue
Details (readability, emotions, mouth shapes)
Cheek puffing/ shrinking
Nose (movement driven by the jaw/mouth)
Jaw tilt (angle of the mouth driven by speech/ emotions)
I found my reference audio on 11 Second Club. And here is the clip.
Then I typed audio into text so that I could lip-sync it. Here is the text:
‘Then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It was painted on wall there it said be curious not judgmental. I like that.’
Next step I filmed my own footage reference and then bring it with the audio into Premiere Pro. I cut out the part I want and match with the audio. To be honest, it is a hard process because my lip didn’t match with the rhythm of the reference audio.
Then I bring the footage into After Effect to add a timecode. Also export a PNG sequence in order for maya reference. And here is the finally export footage reference:
Here is the ‘Jaw Bounce’ animation which only has jaw rotated.
Here is the ‘Viseme’ animation which contains lips movement. Also, I adjusted a few keys on jaw to match the lip syncing.
I import my footage reference as image sequence into maya and began improving mouth enhancements on tongue and lips. Also upper hemisphere movements on brows and eyeballs.
Here is the animation outcome at this stage. In the next step, I’ll do body movement with performance.
Appeal in animation characters is a similar parallel with actors having charisma
A character who is appealing can still be unsympathetic, a villain or monster.
Appeal is critical in the audience association with the character creating interest and concern.
Appeal lies not oonlt in the design of the character but the action and deed of the character within the storyline.
Design, Performance and Role
What visual componets or aspects of a character might achieve this?
What performance traits might endear us?
Why do we forgive and ultimately care for a character?
How do we establish trust and empathy with a character?
Uncanny valley
uncanny yalley (aesthetics, psychology) A range of appearances, mannerisms, and/or behaviors of humanoid figure that are subtly differentfrom human and thereby cause feelings of discomfort, such as fear or revulsion.
The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem “almost” human. Movement amplifies the emotional response.The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers.
This week is the best week forever! I played with Arnold Renderer and get a decent result which is the picture above. I like it so much, but unfortunately my computer cannot render the whole animation by this quality due to my very early GPU. However, I have fun with my animation.
I did advanced body mechanical animation this week and I found although the complexity had increased, the process was much easier for me than my first body mechanical animation. I begin go deep into thinking how to perform a good stage to the audience. I believe frames deliver messages and stories to the audience. I like the feeling of designing and creating these stuffs and present them to the audience.
Here is the link for this week animation exercise:
The reference footage I chose was a dancing clip. I edited it in After effect to give it a time code. Also, I found out the frame per second is 25. And I brought this footage into Maya as the beginning of animating.
Insight: Ballet Glossary – Grand allegro
In the blocking stage, I reminded myself that I’m animating dancing. So, I paid specifically attention to the feet movements in order to get the timing correct. Besides, the dancer in this clip has a lot of jumping movement. The height and center of gravity were also two things I paid attention.
Blocking
Then I convert stepped animation to splines. Cleaning up the bumping in graph editor. And there are too many elbow and knee popping in the animation. I guess it might because dancing need plenty knee and elbow rotate. So, I fixed all these by adjusting the position of the knee direction indicator and center of gravity. And I rekeyed some poses in order to perfect the performance and the fluidity of movement.
Final with out motion blur
Following is the final animation with motion blur.
This week I polished the stepped animation that I animated last week. The clean up process sometimes seems boring and takes a lot of time. But the result is good. I fixed all the bumps, stablised the feet position, adjusted the timing and added a ending pose to the character.
I feel that it will be much easier for polishing if the stepped animation is well keyed. But the vectors in graph editor always need to be adjust in order to performing a good animation. Also the lighting is quite interesting. I may try Three Point Lighting in my next animation exercise.
Here is the link for this week animation exercise:
Here is my final animation after clean up and AE modification. And I’m going to break down all the steps I did.
So, the following animation is the one I convert flat and stepped back to normal. It’s obvious that there are odd bumps; feet are slipping. These are the things I need to fix later on. But it seems I have a good ending pose because it’s a flat ending. I prefer to have a short animation that starts with the character normal pose and ends with its normal pose after the movement. I feel like this is the completion of an animation for me.
Following is the animation after I fixed all the problems in graph editor. Basically, I flatted the vectors at peaks, smoothed the bumps, stabilised the foot position. And I adjusted the timing after the character kicking the ball. I slightly increased the timing for the character to settle down in his normal pose. The adjustments were done in the dope sheet. What’s more, I re-added an ending action which is the character adjusts his position by moving his left foot one step forward. In that way, the center of gravity will looks much more reasonable than the normal one.
Then I added a background for the animation and adjust the lights before I bring the animation into After Effect.
For After Effect, I speeded up the playblast for 10% so that the movement will seems more smooth. And I added pixel motion blur to it. Although the change is subtle, it will give me a result that looks more realistic.
A good story need to be read, engage and surprise.
Structure and treatment of the production needs to be the backbone of storytelling. They are the means conveying the story to the audience.
The design, movement, staging and performance of the characters should drive the narrative.
It is important to relate a universally experience to the character or story development so that the audience will immediately associate with those characters and their dilemma.
Character Dimensions
A character can has various traits and various personalities. Because animation promotes a broader definition of a ‘character’ than other media formats.
Character development
Weakness: Character Development Workshop
Audiences’ need is to see the character’s growth at the end of the story. Audience will be satisfied even the hero doesn’t accomplish the goal they set for themselves.
Character Weakness
Psychological – A weakness that only affect the hero
Moral – A weakness that immorally hurts the characters surrounding the hero
Hero always has both moral weakness and psychological weakness.
The weaknesses hero encountered need others to exist to be weaknesses such as prejudice, impatience, greed, pride, and dishonesty. Because it’s easy to create both moral and psychological need for the character.
Make sure at least one other character is harmed by the protagonist weakness so that the audience will notice that weakness.
It is necessary to enable the audience to pick up the lessons that embedded within the story on the audience own. It is not advisable to make the audience feel strongly preachy.
Develop weakness to the character
Is it internal (Psychological) or external (Moral)?
What the character will do driven by this weakness?
Do the decision that driven by the weakness hurt others?
Show the immoral consequences of having such a weakness.
Consider the way that the opponent hurt the weakness and how the protagonist overcome it.
Don’t let the character realize his or her weakness at the beginning. Give him or her a self-discovery process. Never point the weakness out otherwise it will seems like a lecture to the audience.
Story development
Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story
The most greatest story commandment : Make me care.
Unifying Theory of 2+2 – make the audience put things together
The best stories infused wonder.
The HIDDEN Story Dynamic — (FAST Story Development, Part 1)
Turn Ideas Into Stories
Start at the end
Identify your goal
Imagine the result
Design for that outcome
What makes a story great
It engages the audience by taking them on a compelling journey.
The 3-Act structure (The conventional formula)
The 3-Act structure
But the problem with formula is the audience gets bored with the same story format and will recognize it.
Take 2 films you enjoy and break down the character development and story development throughout the film:
Analyse how the main characters evolve
Analyse how the characters drive the story
If there are similarities between your films point this out and why you think they are following a similar structure if so.
1. The Albatross
The Albatross
This short animated film has a dynamic and round protagonist, an old man who likes to drink, smoke and fish. The old man’s weakness is alcoholism. He grabbed two bottles of wine and went fishing at the beginning of film. Coloring of the film is kind of tinting in grey but not quite the same. In addition, in many extreme wide shots, the proportion of the main character and the fishing boat is small, while the main part of the scene is gray sky and sea. No doubt that we can feel the old man’s inner loneliness from the atmosphere and color. Later, the old man was not conscious because of the alcohol, and the hook pierced his thumb while he trying to put on the bait. When he fell asleep and his fishing rod fell into the water, he began to realize that drinking too much was not good, so he throwed the remaining bottle of wine into the sea. And the little bird appear in his sight the first time. However, he didn’t realize what the little bird represented. Then the crystal man, represented the shadow and his negative feelings immediately attracted the attention of him and the audience. It took 3 minutes, half of the whole film telling the story of how the old man struggling with the crystal man. According to The 3-Act structure, it’s the latter half of the first act, the second act, and the first half of the third act. In the end, he positively defeated the negative part and smiled at the bird, which also give the audience the feeling that maybe he will not drink too much in the future.
The whole story development follows the pattern of hero’s Journey. The old man goes from order into chaos. He drunk too much than he faced the challenge which is the crystal man. Then he overcame it and he awarded the risk of it. He developed though this journey. He realize his weakness in the end with a self-discovery process. It doesn’t like a lecture to the audience. And the audience see the character’s growth.
Reaping for Dummies
2. Reaping for Dummies
This protagonist not like the last one, he is kind of static and flat type. This is not saying that the film is not good, however the aim of this short film is not to show his growth. The interesting thing is that this story also follows the hero’s Journey. The story tells how the protagonist escapes death by various traps he made. The protagonist has a positive and optimistic attitude towards death, which the animator successfully conveys through facial expressions.
Similarities
Both film follows the Hero’s Journey. The first sip the protagonist take in The Albatross represent herald, the call to adventure. While in Reaping for Dummies the Death came to town represent herald. All these two story starts from normal days then something happened and all goes into chaos. Then the protagonist overcame the trouble. So, the story follows the same pattern. The only difference is the protagonist in The Albatross is round and still developing while the second one is well-developed.
For these week animation exercise, I want to share something that impressed me a lot. The playblast video which in AVI format takes me over 400mb to store but after I use Media Encoder convert it into mp4, it only takes less than 1mb. At the meantime, there was no difference in the quality of the video. It will save me plenty of time uploading the videos. I will definitely use this skill in my further videos.
For the reference video, I have no idea why it’s so hard to find a satisfying reference. I found that other people’s videos on the Internet really cannot match my requirement. Some of them are half-length, some of the main characters are out of frame. The camera in the video I chose is also moving, but I didn’t realize that at first. But for me it just a reference, I can measure the distance by my own as well. I think the way I did may also be a solution, because satisfactory reference may not always be found.
Generally speaking, I am quite satisfied with the results in the blocking stage, and I hope all things are good when going into polishing.
Here is the link for this week animation exercise:
Using appropriate equipment and shooting angles, enough lighting, stable camera
Clothing, not to dark, not wear a coat if you need to show body movement
Using ‘appropriate’ objects & contact points (weight & forces), need to show the force, the things you catch need to have weight.
Skill level, actors (friends), and directing
Eye focus, and (stand in) props
Skill
Quality: The aspect ratio & pixel quality of the footage
Frame rates
Make it useable: 60fps to 30fps not 30fps to 24fps
Motion blur: higher frame rates reduce motion blur. Less motion blur, the more detail you can see.
Real vs stylised goals: You can either perform stylised timing or edit (adjust time) to create stylised timing. However editing/adjusting is more limited.
Add a timecode: You can add a time code in After Effects to help with basic timing.
