The Advanced Acting term (Class 5) finished a few weeks ago and since then I’ve been taking a complete break from everything AM-related. I’ve reached a point now where spending every available hour on AM has become a bit of a slog, rather than something fun and challenging. I’m getting kind of tired being stressed, working 7 days a week and paying for the privilege. As such, I’m taking another Leave of Absence (3 month break) and I’ll be trying to decide if I want to come back to do the final term.
I’ll be uploading and backdating my work from the last few weeks as soon as I remember where I put the the files ;)
Of course, the other reason I want to take a break is because I’ll be starting at Rockstar North next week! It seems foolish to spend the first 3 months of a new job, in a new city, being locked away in a new apartment when I should be out socialising, learning my way around, making friends and throwing my all into the new job!
I’ll do another post about the move up to Edinburgh, but for up-to-minute news you can just follow my Twitter feed or search for the hashtag #operationEdinburgh ;)
Hi kids! Hope you’ve had a good week! I’m still in Italy and it’s still just as likely to be thunderous and rainy as it is to be incredibly hot and sunny. I am in a state of perma-stickiness.
I’ve splined out all the characters for the assignment this week. They still need a lot of polishing up, but in general I’m happy with how the shot is turning out. I did quite a lot of revisions this week.
As you might notice, I’ve changed the mechanic quite a lot, so now it should (hopefully) be pretty obvious that he is a mechanic and is working on the car and isn’t travelling with the couple.
I decided to stick to my guns with regards to the office guy and his tie. My justification for it is that because he doesn’t go on holiday a lot, his tie represents his normal environment and is a source of comfort when he is scared. I considered doing the “biting his nails” thing, but felt that it was a little cliché – I’ve seen it too many times. This felt a little different. I’ll animate the tie once his body mechanics are completely locked down. Don’t worry though, it will definitely work – trust me! ;)
This is what we’re looking at:
Girl
There’s some small polishing to be done here and there but she’s working well overall. Based on descriptions I’ve provided previously, should she be more excited than she is?
Mechanic
The new animation for the mechanic is working really nicely, it’s nice and clear and looking good.
The thumbing could be a little faster, like it’s a throwaway comment, suggesting how he isn’t bothered by the situation.
Body mechanics issues to address: His hand shakes a little FRM110-120, watch the rear elbow shape when he’s crouched down, there is a rogue key at FRM149 where his entire body shifts position before the camera cut.
Guy
Now that we have the justification, the acting choice regarding the holding of the tie can “make sense”. Even if we don’t have a whole film with which to get a greater sense of the context of the character, it’s still important to answer these questions.
One thing that isn’t clear is if he’s letting go of the tie after the first shot. Also, it might be nice if he fiddles with it a little more, to add some ‘frequency’. He needs some additional refinement in the final shot, even if it’s just some breakdown poses.
A-
So a pretty good week then! What makes it even sweeter is that I didn’t do anything other than auto-tangent the mechanic and guy on Sunday morning. That’s right; I decided to throw off the shackles of AM slavery and just hand in what I had. Animation is never finished and typically I just keep working and working until the deadline is dangerously close. It felt good not to do that for a change.
Next week I will start trying to block in some proper facial animation as well as start cleaning up the animation. I’m hoping that adding in the facial is going to provide a sea-change in the overall appeal of the shot, like it did in my last one.
It may be clear from yesterday’s post that I had a bit of a rough time of it this week. There is nothing more frustrating than creative mental block, especially when you’re working to deadlines.
That said, I feel a little better having had my critique:
Girl
At the moment, she seems overly cautious. There are ways to make her seem more excited about the possiblity of seeing a werewolf; the head movements could possibly be more erratic, for example.
Mechanic
He doesn’t necessarily have to be doing anything different in terms of his acting, but there could be more visual clues that he is a mechanic, for example by having a car jack next to him or altering his outfit slightly.
Guy
He could be more scared. At the moment he feels quite confident by the end of the second shot. Just spend 20 to 30 minutes roughing in some very quick nervous poses for the “What?!” section and bring it to Q&A on Wednesday.
Overall
Animation-wise, the shot is looking great. There are already some nice poses, good spacing, arcs and overlapping action. What the shot needs now is having the acting choices nailed down and clear for the audience so that we can move onto the polishing and facial animation.
B+
As I said in my notes yesterday, I’m pretty happy with the girl’s animation and I may not have explained her emotions too well in my comments yesterday. I think the fact that she’s cautiously excited is quite nice, it was certainly what I was going for, so I won’t be making too many changes there.
I’m still tempted to make a few changes to the mechanic in Shot 1, so that he’s working on the car a little more pro-actively. If I have time I may look at changing the outfit (dungarees?) and perhaps adding some tools/equipment.
The guy is the tough one! As Mario suggested, I will very quickly try to block in some new poses for him in Shot 2 (and 3) and see what I come up with (although I doubt I can do it in the suggested 20 to 30 minutes!). Thinking about it, I should probably look back to work I’ve already done for inspiration.
In other news, Florence is very nice, even if it has rained nearly every day since I’ve been here. Having limited access to the internet (Marie has one of those mobile internet dongle things) is really annoying but it’s probably good for my productivity.
Prepare yourselves for a lot of text! It’s been a tough week! Lots to do and LOTS of notes for Mario (most of which are replicated below)! That said, the only note I have for my facial expression assignment is that I had so much to do this week, I didn’t spend as long as it as I normally do:
As I discussed with Mario at the Q&A this week, I tried to “super-block” my entire animation, rather than splining just one or two shots as I like to try and keep everything up to a similar level. The main issues for me this week were addressing some of the acting choices and issues surrounding characterisation, rather than the super-blocking itself:
So, is it reading OK? Some people that have watched it suggested that perhaps the guy should remain scared until Shot 4 when he gets confused by the mechanic’s weird conversation. I can’t decide. If I change it, it would mean some significant alterations to the animation, which scares me quite a lot. Here are my thoughts on the shot in general:
Girl: Generally happy with how her character is conveyed, although obviously let me know if you think differently or if there are any body mechanics issues to address.
Guy: This one has been the real tough cookie! As I said above, a couple of people I’ve shown this too haven’t really liked his acting choices and find it difficult to work out what he’s feeling at any one time. What do you think?
Mechanic: Overall, I’m pretty happy with this guy. If I have time, I think I might to change the opening shot so that he’s actually working on the wheel/tyre, rather than just scratching his head; perhaps it would be a little more interesting? Is it worth changing it at this stage, given how much work there is left to do?
How do you like the new end pose for the mechanic? I liked the idea of significantly changing his pose when he says “I thought you wanted to?” and I tried some quite dramatic changes, but none of them felt very good in terms of fitting with the dialogue. I quite like the way in the current version, he retains his ‘stupidity’ but the pose is reasonably different from his standard stance.
As I said, it’s been a really tough week and I’ve been having LOTS of problems trying to come up with interesting ideas, acting choices and poses – it’s been a source of great frustration and stress!
I’ll hopefully be back tomorrow with Mario’s critique notes…
As I discussed with Mario, I tried to “super-block” my entire animation, rather than splining just one or two shots as I like to try and keep everything up to a similar level.
