After a week break from assignments and everything, I’ve decided to get started on a new short project. It’s this month’s animation contest on the 11secondclub. I believe it’s a quite a strong dialogue; the energies of each speaker can clearly be felt and the situation is open to interpretation.

Here’s how I imagine the scene: A man (the second voice) has been acting aggonisingly egotistic, and so his friend/colleague (the first voice) confronts him about it. He starts off timmedly but soon erupts, whilst the man remains disinterested or distracted throughout.

As with all diagloue pieces, it’s a good idea to profile each character. Since this is a creative competition, we’re free from the restraints of directors, actors and whatnot. We make all the decisions. However it’s still best to match your characters to the voice of the clip. I’ve listened to this one many times now, and have built up profiles in my head. For the purpose of this project, I will give pseudonyms to the voices.

This is a quick sketch of my idea for the layout. As mentioned, it’s influenced by some of the poses I wish to incorporate. In the foreground is a big table, with Butch sitting on the side. In the background is  Jeff standing against the wall. He will walk up to the foreground.

I’m actually working against time here. I will be away on Friday and Saturday, and afterwards will only have 12 days to make the set and rig modifications (probably going to use Malcolm) and then animate everything.

Wish me luck!

Apr 23rd 00:40

I’ve had a bit of an animator’s block on shot 11 of Jane & James. To rectify this, I’ve decided to break the process down into chunks. And for the benefit of my dissertation and perhaps other animators, I’m blogging the progress. This post will be updated as the shot develops.

As mentioned, I will break the shot down to clarify it in my own mind, and also to inform any readers.

 Backstory:

Jane has just caused James to hurt himself. Feeling guilty, she decides to help her brother and offer him the box that he’s been chasing her for.

 The plot in this shot:

1. James becomes annoyed at the sudden goodwill of his sister.
2. He rises off the floor and snatches the box off of her, despite the fact she offered it to him freely.

 Workflow

This is probably one of the most common words a 3D animator uses when talking about their craft in a blog or video. Everyone has their own way. I think for students, our workflows change all the time because we’re trying to find the fastest and most effective solution for ourselves whilst being pelted by what we’re taught by a multitude of different tutors.

Speaking for myself, I currently hold most of the ideas in my head and then go straight to layout and then animating. Usually to work out timing, during animation I will record reference as needed. If I just want to see how a body part moves in relation to another, I’ll stand in front of a mirror.

Since I got animator’s block on this shot, I’ve decided to do some sketches. Actually the reason for doing sketches is because I realised that I’ve been veering away from my animation target. The style was supposed to be very Tom & Jerry, but so far I’ve not been very ambitious with the poses. Especially anticipation poses.

Before I started this, I thought it was important to lock down the layout. Layout (or staging) is actually probably the most important principle becuase it is the first thing you have to consider before anything else. It then continues to influence your shot until the end.

 Layout:

Here are screenshots of four shots preceeding shot 11:

Based on them, my storyboard and my knowledge of the proceeding shots, I’ve chosen to go with a straight-on view. The actions and expressions of both characters are most easily readable from this angle. I could still achieve the same thing by angling the camera slightly, but I’m purposefully making it monotonous to fit the style i’m going for with the film – which is kind of old-hat cartoons, when cinematography was still being invented.

Right. I’ve written this at 00:40 on 23rd April. The next step is thumbnails. I’ll update this post when I have them.

—–

Apr 23 15:14

So I’ve been working on the thumbnails this afternoon and here’s what I came up with.

As you can see, James starts off a little baffled and then begins getting angry – starting with a closed-mouth expression. He then snaps and huddles together momentarily before bursting out like an explosion. The first transition idea was a bit predictable. The second is much more interesting and then the 3rd takes it a bit further.

I’ll now begin animation. The way I work is I block maybe 24 frames at a time in spline and continue doing that for the rest of the shot. In the past, I’ve attempted to block whole shots in stepped. This method has never worked out for me due to the sheer difference between stepped and spline; it’s very deceiving.

Please click Read More to see the rest of the post (which contains more updates).

Apr 23rd 20:11

Here’s the first part of the shot so far. The shaking is “shaking with anger”. Not sure if it’s working yet, so I will need to get feedback.

Apr 23rd 23:29

I had to move the camera to accomodate the fact that they stand up.

Overall I’m quite happy with how it’s going.

• The timing is off on some of the actions, e.g. when James puts his hands on the box.
• There might be a bit too much squash&stretch, but I am trying to push into more of a cartoony style… so we’ll see.
• Jane still needs to be animated more.

I’m adding a few more seconds to this shot. Jane will approach James looking apologetic, and he will aggressively push her away. This will make him a bit more villainous, as currently it seems like Jane is doing all the harm.

Apr 24th 02:28

This is the final animation I’ll be using Of course I’m not 100% happy with it, but due to time restraints, I have to move on. By the way, the extra few seconds I talked about just above will probably be done in a seperate shot from a different camera angle.

Animation is a far more difficult task than most people imagine. In fact I like to declare it as “incomprehensibly hard” – ironically I can barely pronounce that because of my Scouse accent. The learning curve is far higher than most other VFX roles (and I speak with a little bit of experience, having dabbled with a few of the dark arts). With the number of hours spent learning to become a good animator, you could learn to become a doctor and earn far more money.

For those of you wondering, animation isn’t a particuarly well paying job. Read a forum post  here (find the post by “keithlango” who is an experienced man in the industry).

Before you read on, you must understand that I am quite a materialistic person. I’ll admit it. I like money and what comes with it (I’m talking hookers and drugs of course). However, little known to me until recently, is that I really truely am an artist at heart. This came about because I needed to sit down, analyse things and figure out if animation is really what I want to do for all my life. Because animation isn’t just a skill, it’s a lifestyle choice.

So, knowing that I can get money more easily by pursuing other careers, I ask myself why continue with this one? The answer is that my brain just doesn’t tick in the right way. I’ve never been able to soak up knowledge/information from books very well. I first noticed this when I was 14. I actually went to my Science teacher and told him that I was simply incapable of “learning”.

On the other hand, I pick up practical skills very quickly – providing I dedicate enough time each week. Otherwise it’s the same story; my skill rises very slowly or not at all. So why animation then? Why not continue my old career of graphic design, or maybe do modelling, texturing or others? Quite simple, there’s too much competition. I’ve been part of online graphic and game design teams since I was 12. During that time I met many, many kids around the same age that could pick up the skills very quickly. Obviously, it takes significantly more time to get to a professional standard, but the sheer number of people learning made it seem like a lap race inside a completely stuffed swimming pool.

Just reading what I’ve written so far, it sounds like I’m doing animation because I can’t do anything else. That’s true to the extent that it’s partly why I started studying it in the first place. Nowadays though, I find it to be a very rewarding challenge. And I love a good challenge more than anything. I like the feeling when you get a movement just right, and the feeling when it’s rendered and up there for people to see. I also like the people involved and the people you meet. I love that one day I’ll be contributing to something that thousands or millions of people will see for generations to come. Or at least that’s the hope.

Hope. And dreams. They’re what I’ll be writing about next.

Talking to a friend recently about how ridiculous learning animation really is, we figured out a few things. It’s an intense proccess where you’re staring at a screen or piece of paper for hours. Often this intense “workout” is very draining, which leads to an inhibition of creative thinking. Herein is the problem that new animators have to hurdle over. To get over, you essentially just have to spend a ludicrous amount of time doing more and more work.

Over time, you gain more and more experience animating. Timing, weighting, and other finnicky real-life laws will become second nature. Eventually this will mean you’re spending less time intensely focused on the screen and more time thinking creatively. This is important because creativity feeds directly into how good your ideas and poses are for a shot, and as a result, how good your animation is.

Another way to get around the draining of creativity is to do much more planning beforehand. That way, your time on the computer can just be about getting the keys in the right place, and the rest of your time spent in your sketchbook working out your poses and such.

In fact, maybe I should actually take my own advice.

For now though, here’s the promotional image I’ve made for ExpoTees (a sort of mini-convention for employers to see student work here).

Janes & James is a tale of brother and sister rivalry. Influences are taken from a many different people and shows, however this will not be an arthouse film trying to break new grounds. Instead, it simply seeks to caricature the stereotypes of sibling rivalry and of opposing genders.

On the one hand, you have James – a very spontaneous and active boy, even somewhat ill tempered. On the other, you have Jane – a sweet girl who uses brains to overcome her brother. She’s thoughtful, emotional and witty. They are twins of about 11 years old, however their personalities are completely different.

The difference will be entirely illustrated through actions, and in fact there will be no dialogue. This of course means I’ve had to come up with a story that involves the right actions without taking too much time. Here now I will attempt to describe the story without giving it away entirely.

The whole thing revolves around a box that Jane brings home one day. They live in a New York flat circa 1970, so the painting and furniture is somewhat outlandish by today’s standards. She teases her brother about the box she’s found, but he doesn’t take any notice – until she finally opens it. Out comes an extraordinary golden light that immediately attract’s James’ attention. He goes to grab the box, but Jane keeps it away from him. And so begins a chase around the flat. Throughout, Jane exhibits an unusual cunningness. So although James constantly gets hurt, you do empathise with Jane for her cleverness. Eventually her brother does get the box, but it doesn’t turn out to be what he expects

This was made for a presentation we had to do in front of a 100 or more people. Originally I used Inception music, but for the internet I replaced it with a more subtle (yet very beautiful) track and light purple background instead of the original black.

We got pretty good apraise for what was presented so far, and we found out that all the other teams were at a similar production stage as us – which was a bit of a relief, although it doesn’t dismiss the fact that we still have a lot of work ahead.

Anyway, this video just briefly shows what we’ve done so far. Not all of it is there actually, and also it doesn’t really do justice to all the man hours that have been put in to the project by us five guys. Nevertheless -

The design is all very purposeful

The set for my short film. All the proportions are correct, it’s just the details to do now

Tween Machine is a little script that helps you create breakdowns. The video shows you how to install and use it.