Animation Brad

In planning a shot, I like to think about the composition
and pick the best and most interesting camera views.
The choice of camera view impacts
how the audience feels about the story.

The new shot, to me, read as one guy threatening another.
The content could be a bit harsh,
which could lead to some harsh camera angles. or not.
Here are the ones I found the most interesting…

#1 is the standard two shot, and where I shot my reference from.
#2 is interesting and shows off the knife guy but is still boring.
#3 cool, their heads are right on the thirds which is nice.
#4 I really like this view. tan really looks trapped.
All of the dialog is from pink and seeing him might be important.
#5 This is good, but now we are looking down on both of them.
#6 interesting. Hard to see pink talking though.
#7 notice now the upper third is on the knife, and the space between.
# eh. different –but not working for me.

Now if I didn’t poke around a bit, I would have ended up with choice 1.
Which would have been merely ‘fine’.

This is as final as it’s going to get for the competition.
This is playblast lighting, so there is no shadows from the unicycle.

I’m pretty happy with it so far.
I’d like to add another shake on the arm during ‘liberating’…

Smoothing for the unicycle guy…
Checking arcs, finger fixes and overlap, etc.

Pupils are still a mess,
but this feels like it is
getting somewhere now.

Here is the next pass.
I got carried away animating the tutu.
Some of this is still in stepped, most in linear.
I really need to do a hand pass and a pupil pass next.
He talks so fast, the mouth shapes are popping some.
Then comes the smoothing…

So… here I’ve blocked in the unicycle guy.
Lots of work still to do with the arms,
and his body after he turns.

The trick was to keep him mostly still
but keep him moving enough to look like
he’s still alive (and on a unicycle).

Tomorrow it’s lip syc time and
I still need to do some modeling.
Hair pieces would be good.

So this afternoon, under the cover of the rain,
I built and rigged a unicycle. It’s made to fit Moom,
the character model I’ve been using.
When you move it, the pedals turn and the body
moves forward. There’s also a control for the lean.
whooo!

So, I’ve finally gotten some things in order
and am working on another animation.

This is for the February 2009 dialog for the 11 Second Club.

For this animation, I really blocked in the movements I was more interested in, and left the other actions still. The next pass should block in a bit more movement for those parts. I’m hiding the visual gag at the end because I haven’t built everything yet. His animation is attached to that which is yet to be built.

I was planning on having the first character way in the back.
He’ll need to be blocked in this week.

I’ll be saving the lip sync of the dialog until Friday
so I can use it as a demo for the class I’m teaching.

No excuses.

As we push 2008 behind us,

I’d like to remember

the things done right.

Here’s to a better tomorrow,

to pushing onward,

to being a better person in every way,

to doing what is right, doing good,

and doing it well.

Happy New Year.

Here’s the animation final cuckoo clock animation smoothed out and completed for the 11second club’s September’s competition. There may be other small things to fix, but I’m pretty happy with it at this point. I’m glad I was able to get some clothes on them too. My favorite is still the movement on the little bird. This was the clearest thing in my mind and also the easiest to animate. There is a definite connection. The clearer you can have a shot worked out and planned exactly in your mind, the easier it should be to animate. There are going to be some good entries this month.

This is the phase where things get bumpy, but the performance is well defined. I’ve worked out the timing the way that I’d like it to be and am moving on to polish some things out. I really get excited about some of the little details like his grimace when he lifts the hand and his smile as he watches the bird. She has got some cool things going for her also. There are still some things to fix. Mostly, I’d like to polish the face features, the brows need some work, but especially the pupils. They move around like no one’s business. I also need to do a hand and finger pass on  both characters where I go in and add little adjustments to each finger.

This weekend I’ve been slowly plodding through the blocking of this shot.  For some reason, this has taken more time than others. I’m not real happy with all of this yet either, his head movements are really choppy. I have been working out some other issues with the shot, including building and animating the clock and the bird. ( yes, the gears turn and his wings move, and there is blood, but I don’t like it yet. ) Obviously, I haven’t touched his face controls, or worked out her poses yet.  Lots more to do…

Last night I was building and rigging a cuckoo clock. The spring bends and stretches, and the wings go up and down. Yeah I went a bit overboard, but it looks cool, and it’s an important part of this scene. Heres an image of the clock and the widdle birdie. Plus, I started blocking out where I want the camera for this shot. I like where this one is headed. Now on to blocking out poses.

September brings another line of dialog to the 11 Second Club. I’ve roughed out a bunch of ideas, but this one clicked the best. One of my goals was to not use any of my instant first thoughts: fedora hat, pencil and paper, tray of cookies. I want to keep this with very simple and subtle movements. I had planned this initially from the side, but I may try this from the dead guys point of view. This is why I started off with the lifting the cover reveal at the beginning. I am going to try to work out as many of the movements here in Flash as I can, and then start posing in Maya. I’m hoping all of this reads ok. Death by cuckoo clock.

So this evening I spent some time refreshing my modeling skills. I started to build the head and the eye of a new character I’ve been wanting to model. I’m deciding weather or not to give him brows or not. I did spend a lot of time working out the shape of the eye. I wanted to model this with the eye half close, hoping that would bake the eye blinks easier. Interestingly enough it looks a lot like birdy with a big eye and a mouth stuck almost right underneath. Hmm that seems to be a design standard, or habit I didn’t realize I had.

Those keeping up know that this summer I was busy doing a number of shots for a little mini-short animation. The story was built around a rig I had started to build around thanksgiving of last year. (oy- it’s been almost a year?!) The rig was giving me some troubles but eventually, I started to crack into the animation. When my sabbatical ended, I was totally burned out on the project, and haven’t touched it much since, with other animations and projects becoming a priority. With the hope of possible finishing things, I have compiled all sixteen shots together to have a glance at what was accomplished, and what has yet to be completed.

Here goes:

Somehow, off the rush of Siggraph, inbetween classes and driving I was able to pull of an animation for the 11 Second Club. It turns out that the schedule was perfect to use this as a class project, so I was able to demo lip sync and process and still work out my own animation performance for the dialog. This month’s challenge was something special, the dialog was in Spanish. The big concern and challenge was understanding the subtext and even deeper meanings behind the words, while still putting emphasis on the audio cues. I used the Moom rig to get familiar with the controls, as I’m having students use that rig in classes this quarter. The hair was inspired by a student in one of my classes. If only I where half as cool….

Translation:
“Cada cosa, cada cosa que se dijo y se mostró en la sala de ese tribunal, todas! demuestran que es culpable. ¿Qué se cree, que soy idiota?”
English: “Everything, every single thing that took place in the courtroom, but I mean everything says he is guilty. what do you think I am an idiot or something?”

I’m proud to announce that our team, The Fjantastic Fjorgers, won second place in the all-night 32 hour animation competition! The contest involved sixteen three-person teams of CG animators from around the world who forgo sleep and resist several staged distractions for 32 non-stop hours to produce the best character-driven animation.

This was our take on the saddest story ever:
Fjantastic Fjorgers Fjinal Fjilm

You can see all of the films here:
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/fjorg/

Anyone attending Siggraph 2008
should definitely come and check out the animation event Fjorg!!

This is a viking themed, iron-man animator competition where 16 teams will be battling out an animation in 32 hours over the next two days. Our plastic swords have been sharpened, the bone horns of our helmets have been shined and we are ready to animate!!!

Last week I was invited to do an article for Pixar Planet. I went to experience Wall-E and the live character show at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Obviously, I had a great time, I love the theatre, the film and ice cream. You can find my complete article here.

There was a few things I noticed in context
that I personally found amusing:

The El Capitan, like most theaters has moviegoers overload concessions, a large popcorn and a drink were in just about everyones hand. Considering one of the messages in the film, I chose to pass
on the “lunch in a cup”.

What really irked me was what followed. I grabbed my plastic water bottle and went to leave the theater. A worker came down
with a trash bag and glanced at me expectantly.

“I was going to put this in the recycling,” I said,
politely wondering where to place my number 2 plastic.

“Oh we don’t recycle, ” he responded, with a half-smile
like he knew what I was thinking.

This is the theatre that CORPORATE DISNEY owns.

Did they WATCH the film at all ??

Do they realize that THEY, among others,
are a reflection of Buy N Large?

The theatre has a capacity of 1000 seats and five screenings a day. If 75% of moviegoers have a plastic bottle and a plastic popcorn bucket, that is 30,000+ some plastic bottles per week going to a landfill,
coming from the El Capitan Theatre alone.

This weekend 250,000,000 dollars were spent at the movies. Divide by the national average of $6.00 a ticket. That is 42,000,000 some odd people that went to the movies. How many of them had plastic bottles?? How many of those people went and recycled their bottles? Did you?

I’ve been recycling since I can remember, we had recycling education program in my elementary school in the 80’s. This isn’t news. Our school campus where I teach animation finally started a recycling program, as it is the corporate trendy thing to do these days. Better late than never. I guess it’s ok that it’s ‘hip’ as long as it stays and encourages others to do the right thing. It’s definitely time for movie theaters to remove the blinders and realize the amount of trash that they are creating. Watch your own film.

Here is a shot where birdy moves in a quick movement. For this test I’m only looking at frames 688-698. Nothing is polished and clearly there is a lot of work on all of the examples.


Now, this movement is a bit jerky. The head movement doesn’t work for a bunch of reasons. The main point here is that the head makes a squared off path, from 692-693 there is no real curve or arc to the bottom of the move. Some of the reason this doesn’t feel right is that 691 and 692 the bird is frozen. On paper, this would be fine, we call it ‘on twos’ and it cuts down the number of drawings needed. This doesn’t solve the arc problem, but the number of drawings and poses should be fine, and the movement should be ok, and still represent the action. So it should be ok to freeze the model for a frame here and the eye wont notice.

Smoother animation on paper is done on ones, one new pose for every frame, so there is enough drawings to represent the movement. In cgi animation, ‘all’ animation is done on ones. The answer is to move the bird at 692 so that the movement is smoother. Now because of the fast action, the computer didn’t know where to place this inbetween, so I had to do the adjustments to get the arc working better. (body only-don’t look at the feet or wings) The arc feels smoother things are looking better problem solved. when rendered the computer might add a bit of blur to the head on 693 so the movement might feel even smoother. With an inbetween posed on each frame:

The question is can you still have the animation work ‘on twos’, have the bird not move from frame 691-692 and still make the action feel like a nice round arc? Yep.Take a look here:


Look at 691-693. The bird doesn’t move from 691-692. This shot uses extra body parts to define where inbetweens might go to smooth out arcs. This is common in fast zippy actions in traditional animation, and usually incorporates extreme squashes and stretches on the form and shape of the character.
So which is right? or better? or easier?
Well, they both solve the problem ok, as long as the movement ‘feels right’ is what is most important. Easier isn’t ever an option in animation, in both cases I had to manually place something somewhere to get that arc.

All of the books I’ve read on animation mention smears and blurs and adding multiple parts to create fast actions, but none of them really say when or where to use it correctly. It’s rare to find it in computer animation, I’m guessing because the default is to have a new image for each frame. I’ve seen multiples used on traditional animation on ones though, so I’m not sure why the techniques isn’t used more. I’m hoping it doesn’t go the way of the dodo with traditional drawn animation.
I’m also hoping that there will be more answers from the master of the technique himself, Eric Goldberg, in his new book, Character Animation Crash Course.

On to one of the more challenging physical shots. Here is a more ‘refined rough’ of where I’d like the bird to fit in. It looks like I planned the two characters separately. That is not the case at all. This shot was planned with both characters in mind as if I were drawing both characters at the same time for each frame. The dog character of the shot was animated first so that I could work on something while I was getting advice on modifying the bird rig. In a way, it has been easier for me to know where the dog might be before the bird gets placed, but the shot was conceived with both in mind from the beginning. Both are still mailable, meaning the timing of the dog animation might need to change depending on the timing of the bird and bird wings. It’s my intention to pose the bird on the same frames that I posed the dog, so even from character to character everything is all keyed on the same frames.

Recently, I was accepted into the Fjorg! Iron Animator Marathon Competition at Siggraph 2008 in LA.

I’m on a team with Valerie Morrison and Sean Coleman.

FJORG is a competition where 16 teams each work to create an animated sequence of at least 15 seconds in length to a maximum length of 45 seconds based on a theme to be provided at the main event, during 32 straight hours, using only those assets supplied at the event and their own talent and skills. 32 hours of animation goodness.

AnimationMentor has twenty students/alumni participating in seven teams of the 16 selected for the event. It’s going to be great competing head to head with other AM folks and other students from around the country.

One thing that is important to do as an artist/animator, and for people in general is to take inventory. For animation, that means combining shots together and creating a new reel. This helps you keep current, shows how much you’ve grown, and what you’ve accomplished. It also sets in your mind what is yet to be completed or accomplished. The last year for me, got a little sidetracked with other little projects and learning the rigging needed to create the bird for the short animation project. Unfortunately, that stuff isn’t ‘reel worthy’ yet. One or two shots will be cool enough to put on a reel eventually.

The summer is a good time to recompile, reboot, reorganize and replan. With Siggraph and Comic-con coming up, its important to organize and burn some dvds. You can see my slight obsession with design consistency, from this website to business cards, resume, dvd covers and stickers and even neckties. Each of these are hand cut and folded. Soon it seems that websites or digital uploading will be the way to get ones work seen–thank goodness!! Many studios are still looking at dvds. So to market oneself, one has to become a small factory.

After fixing some hitches and glitches,
adding lights and some sound effects,
here is the latest version of the Monkey Flip.

We are calling this ‘final’ unless
there is something major that I’ve missed.
Yes, the monkey sounds are of me.

This is stepped blocking of the flailing scene. This shot is right after the dive backwards shot. This was tricky because everything has it’s own timing and it’s own loops. I think it works ok, but it’s getting late, and my brain is fuzzy. The Idea here is that there will be sky, and some fast moving clouds zipping by. Then the cage will fade into place. (right now it’s visibility is keyed) He needs to move the cage door in this shot at the end so it hooks up correctly with the Cage Closed scene. It might be nice to have a reaction shot of him here, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. This shot will be difficult to smooth with alot of arcs to get the leg movements right.

So it’s been a week since I posted. I like to work in big long chunks. Unfortunately life likes to chip away at big chunks of time. I’ve been a little burned about my project, and there is still a ton of things to get finished, including a big wad of animation. Then lots of smoothing has to happen. I did go back and fix sections of my bird model. Most of the chin icicles have been found and removed. I’m still working on some working eyelid blend shapes.

Then as a bigger and better distraction, I dug up this gem.

This Monkey Flip animation I started back in March of 07, and never felt like finishing it. The tail was giving me all sorts of headaches, and there were some big spacing problems. So the last few days, I’ve been polishing and revising. This is the latest test. I’ve been sweating over it so much, it’s hard for me to see any glitches anymore. I have a spot light set up and am looking to put any fishing touches on it and render this out this weekend.

I’ll be back on animation of the bird short in chunks tomorrow most likely. Most of the animation still needs to be blocked before July 15th. I’d also like to do some smoothing by then. At that point I will reassess a new schedule and work on stuff between classes, as the next teaching quarter begins mid July in just a few weeks!!

This is the opening shot. Both characters are in linear, so there is still some smoothing that needs to happen.

I have to go back and pose put the wings. and the eyelids. I’m still having a blendshape issue with the eyelids.

Oddly enough, watching it through now, it feels a bit rushed. For me, I think the opening sequence needs to feel slow and calm, and this feels a bit too fast. I am thinking I can add a pause after he touches the cage before he brings his arm up. (fr 73) I might also add some more alone time for birdy in the beginning. Any thoughts about the timing?? heh –watch the wrist stick at 67 (doh).

More time equals more frames equals more production time. I’m going to sit on this and see how I feel about it later when everything is seen together.

Whoo!! From this view, the cage door has to open more than it will be in later shots. Chalk it up to the first of a few continuity problems. I had more movement on the bird, but it was distracting. The intention is that the lighting and a nice metal screeeeee will help direct the eye to the door opening. I guess I need some more set dressing for the living room; maybe some pillows, some books on the table, a deer head on the wall. *sigh* I have the same problem with my own apartment.

Another amazing cage door sequence ! The back end of the bird and the cage in the back will be out of focus and blurry when rendered. The claw wobbles a bit, but we’ll come back to that. whoo! exciting!!!

As summer gets into full gear, this animation project should be wrapping up. Well, it’s not yet. I still am clinging to the idea that I can get through most of the animation smoothing by July 14. Throughout the upcoming school quarter at AI, I will be doing final animation polishing, lighting, and rendering frames.

However, to speed up the process, I am looking for some help texturing.

The sky needs to be textured in 7 shots. It’s possible to texture
a dome and then import it and adjust it into the shots.
Or I could composite the shots, after rendering.

The ground needs a texture in 2 or 3 shots.
The jet plane needs a texture, maybe the telephone pole
and the bird model should be textured.

The electric effects for the electrocuted scene
need to be created in AfterEffects.

I would like to have some white 3D clouds
when the bird is falling in this shot and the shot after.
This can be done in Maya with a smoke emitter, but I’ve never done it.

Lastly, Foley sound effects need to be created
and I’m still on the hunt for a musician for a short score.

If anyone is interested in helping with any of the above things to help complete and polish this project, drop me an e-mail
or leave me a comment below.