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.

Let’s hope so.

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.

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…

This has the updated camera, based on my feedback from last week. Obviously, there’s still no facial animation but the basic blocking is done with a few in-betweens.

Mario went quite in-depth with his critique, which was great as it gives me some goals to achieve and something I can actively work towards sorting out, rather than just “carrying on”.

Here’s what he said in more detail:

Characterisation

Consider changing the pose/style of the mechanic’s animation when his voice changes for the line “I thought you wanted to?”, as though he was ‘playing a part’ before and now he’s broken out of the character he thought he was meant to be.

The guy doesn’t seem to feel terribly worried any more after he says “What?!”

Body Mechanics

Add in some additional breakdowns for the girl to show the change of weight during her movement; between FRM24/25 both her feet move at the same time.

Put in some anticipation before the mechanic stands up; this should help to ensure that the movement reads properly across the camera cut.

Add more asymmetry to the guy after he says “WEREWOLF?!”. At the moment his face, head and shoulders are all completely parallel to the bonnet of the car.

Minor Fixes

Watch the knee at FRM20, it’s close to looking broken.

Check the silhouettes on FRM48, where the foreshortening of the arms is creating a high “traffic area” in the hands and the mechanic’s arm in the first shot. Be careful that the mechanic’s arm and head don’t create a tangent around FRM238.

Overall

I feel like Mario is starting to get the concept now, starting to understand what it is I’m trying to attain with this shot, so that feels good. I do need to be clearer about my goals and what the characters are meant to be feeling in each shot and I should have been from the start.

For the record, I LOVE the idea of changing up the mechanic’s personality quick dramatically after the guy asks “Why are you talking that way?!”, I think it’s a brilliant idea and I’m hoping I can do it justice!

As for the guy not being terribly scared after he says “What?!”, that was actually the plan from the start (one of those things I didn’t make clear). I wanted the absurdity of the conversation to distract him from the fact that he’s just heard a werewolf that he should be pretty concerned about. I will mention this at the Q&A this week.

The other part of our hand-in this week was another facial expression:

Mario had no suggestions for improvements, but once again suggested that I’d been “cheating” by using deformers or lattices to create certain shapes: not true! Again, something to mention at the Q&A ;)

B+

As I said, I think I’m on the way up, out of my mid-term lull. I’ll certainly be attacking my blocking over the coming days to see if I can really exaggerate the characters and acting choices a lot more. I may even start tackling some of the facial animation.

Regardless, I need to get a move on with this stuff as I’m flying off to Florence for a couple of weeks to see Marie on Thursday. I will (of course) have access to a computer and (limited access) to the internet, but the more efficient I can be, the more time I can spend doing nice stuff.

Now, about those earlier nights I was talking about…

In my critique, Mario had a few misgivings about the shot; mainly that it’s quite ambitious, there are three characters and it’s reasonably complex in terms of cuts and camera angles. Overall though, he was happy with the work I’ve produced this week, he especially like the characters/costumes I’d come up with:

A

A very busy week, but it was definitely worth it! Time to move onto blocking and video reference!

Wow, what a busy week! Those of us in AM Class 5 are moving on from our single character dialogue shot to, that’s right you guessed it, our multi-character dialogue shot! It’s going to be pretty manic as we only have 8 weeks to get it done – are we really 4 weeks in already? I guess that means it’s been a whole month since I left SCEE Cambridge. Weird.

Anyway, before we get to the multi-character stuff, here’s the facial expression exercise I did this week:

It took me quite a few tweaks to feel really happy with this one. The original photo doesn’t have a particularly strong Line of Action down the face – if you compare the previous versions, it should be fairly clear that I decided to accentuate it. You might argue that I’ve actually inverted it but doing it this way means I can squash down the screen-left side of the face and stretch the screen-right side. Either way, Mario was really happy with it and didn’t have any changes to suggest.

I feel like I’ve got a really good grasp of the facial rig now. Mario’s been impressed with what I’ve been able to do with my facial exercises and keeps asking whether I’ve done any “funny business” to the model to get the achieved look, so I should take this opportunity to say: I’ve not used any additional deformers, sculpting techniques in Maya or post-processing in Photoshop! Everything you see here can be achieved using the default face rig and controls! Winnarz don’t use performance-enhancing… things! ;)

Critique Part 2 coming soon!

And that’s it! No more time to spend on this animation right now (until Class 6 at least!) – it’s on to bigger and better things! Regardless, Mario still had to critique it, so here is what he had to say:

Mouth

“This is REALLY good stuff!” but there’s still room for adding a little more intensity to the “can’t a girl” section and perhaps either on “after” or “all”.

Brows & Eyes

Again, really good stuff. Full of nice beats and feels really solid. The brow changes feel like they’re coming from her, not me as an animator.

On the “can’t” expression, it might be possible to accentuate the asymmetry and squash and stretch of the face by swapping the eyebrows round to help define the line of action through the face.

Body

The new end pose is much more stylish, a lot clearer and easier to read. There are still opportunities to polish up the hip and shoulder movement, but that can wait for Class 6!

Overall

This is a great shot. It’s clear I’ve got a lot of experience already and there are only a few little this to shape and polish up; all the foundations are there and very solid. This shot is pretty much done!

A-

My first A-grade for the term! Woo! As I said earlier, I’ve been super-busy getting my drawings and layouts done for the next hand-in, so I’ll post those up when I get a spare moment!

As ever, please feel free to leave comments, questions or suggestions! Thanks for reading!

This is what I handed in:

I’m fairly happy with the results although I probably spent too long refining the body mechanics rather than concentrating on the facial animation. Apart from the stuff mentioned in this week’s critique, I think the body mechanics are basically done – at least, I’m happy with them enough to concentrate solely on the face from now on.

On to my notes from Mario:

Mouth

The syncing and read of the dialogue is still working really well. The intensity of the mouth shapes is much better during the more extreme moments in the dialogue (e.g. “what’s the”) but continue to push the asymmetry of the face further; perhaps pick points where the body is more still so it can be clearly seen by the audience (e.g. “big idea”, “can’t a girl”).

Check the lips have at least 2 frames on the ‘m’, ‘p’ and ‘b’ visimes during “my public too”.

Brows / Eyes

The brows are working well. Check the eye direction at the end; if she isn’t focussing on specific targets during the shot consider bringing the eye direction back to face front again rather than further off to screen left.

Body

The phrasing at the end of the shot is a bit broken now with the new pose. It should be a relatively easy fix though: either bring the head motion forward in the timeline so that she hits the new pose on “too!” or wait a beat (12-24 frames maybe) for the audience to catch up and then hit the new pose.

The head motion at the end has to propagate down the body.

Take another look at the line of action in the end pose. [This is something I'm going to have to bring up in the Q&A this week - I've got no idea what to do!]

Overall

Asymmetry, asymmetry, asymmetry! The intensity of the mouth is good already – just push the asymmetry, go wild! Try to think of it in terms of her character: she has to try and retain her composure in the courtroom, so if the body is (relatively) calm all the energy, tension and anger is pent up in her mouth/face.

Change the timing of the head at the end.

B+

That mark covers the facial expressions exercises as well by the way.

So overall, another pretty good week with some nice comments and plenty of things to sort out. I must admit, I was a little more slack than I should have been last week and this week hasn’t started off much better so I really need to get my arse in gear and be more efficient. Especially as I’ll be at Alton Towers this weekend! \o/

As per usual, comments, questions or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

For your reference, here’s what I handed in last week:

I will now relay to you, all the things I need to sort out:

Mouth

• The synchronisation of the mouth to the dialogue seems to work well already.
• Push the intensity for some of the expressions – “Edgewise” has a perfect level of intensity but there are a number of places where the face needs to match just how intense the dialogue is, for example “sake” and “after all”.
• “Can’t a girl” – Needs more ‘bounces’, either with the jaw or lips. Perhaps it needs to be faster as well? Maybe reduce the jaw rotations here and concentrate on the lip shapes instead.

Brow

• All the phrases of emotion are reading really well already.

Eyes

• Generally everything is working OK so far.
• What is she looking at on FRM18?
• Add in some minor eye adjustments/movement.
• Perhaps re-time the blink at FRM30 – it happens too soon before “What’s the big idea?”

Body

• Watch that head jerk at the end of the animation – “my public too!”
• Bring the head down in the pose at FRM155 so we keep her eyes towards camera – don’t disconnect her from the audience.
• Are the eyes shut too long at the end of the animation? Changing this could involve a reasonably large modification to the final pose – something to discuss at the Q&A.

Overall

• Push the intensity of the facial expressions. Try going a bit crazy and see how far you can push it. The dialogue is very over the top so try to match that in the facial animation. Bishop has a very elastic, cartoony mouth – perhaps watch some Bug Bunny and other Looney Tunes stuff to see how they do it.
• “Can’t a girl” – Good brow asymmetry, try doing it on the mouth as well. Think about it in terms of Squash & Stretch – one side of the face stretches whilst the other squashes down.
• Remember to keep the whole face working together as one unit.

B+

There we go then! Plenty to sort out, but on the whole it’s working pretty well. There are a few things I want to discuss at the Q&A this week, such as what he meant about the ‘bounces’ because I understood about ‘reducing the jaw rotations and concentrating on the lip shapes’ and also what other possibilities exist with regards to changing the end pose as that might have quite a dramatic impact on the animation.

If you guys have any additional things you think I need to sort out, let me know!