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…

That’s right, I’m in Florence visiting Marie at the moment. It’s amazing what limited access to the internet will do for your productivity! Take a look:

I’ve been concentrating almost solely on the guy as he was the least complete up until now. I’m liking the reveal and the drop down with the car bonnet. I’m still not sure how well it’s reading when he comes out from behind it though. My idea for the scene was always that the mechanic/situation was so ridiculous that it distracted him from worrying about the werewolf (particularly because the mechanic is so unfazed by the event), but it’s difficult to convey that!

I’ve still got quite a lot of work to do before Sunday. The entire last shot and the mechanic in the first two and possibly an attempt at blocking out the faces… Oh dear.

Take a look:

I’ve not looked at the guy at all yet, only the girl and the mechanic. I started with the girl as she’s only in the first 2 seconds and I’m already pretty happy with her movement. Unfortunately she doesn’t get quite as much time on-screen as I’d like, but that can’t be helped right now.

I haven’t really done anything with the mechanic in shot 1 or 2 yet. I need to come to a decision about a few key acting choices before I get too heavily into those scenes. Chris had some great suggestions that I want to run past Mario in the Q&A today. The main stuff I looked at was the pointing and I think I’ve got some pretty good physicality there.

Need to do a bit more work before my Q&A later today, but looking forward to it! Any comments, questions or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

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…

I don’t think my video reference is particularly amazing. At least, if nothing else, it does at least help to convey what the heck is going (something that a few people have struggled with in the storyboard/animatic phase), but it’s lacking a bit of character at the moment. I may shoot some more or I may just try and stay wary of the fact that the acting choices need more “oompf”.

I did do a few pose sketches to see if I could come up with some appealing shapes, lines of action and add a little more ‘character’ to each of the characters:

One of the main things I wanted to address from last week was the slight confusion most people seemed to suffer from when the camera cuts up close to the mechanic, so I addressed that in an updated storyboard.

And here’s the scene layout I did as a result of that:

It’s still far from perfect, but it’s getting there. I should point out that the awful camera move did not see any finesse at all, it is completely linear. Even so, I second-guessed what Mario would say about it in my critique and I’ve already taken it out of the next iteration!

This is what Mario had to say:

Layout

Get rid of the moving camera shot. Re-frame the action by pulling the camera back a bit such that we can see everything without having to move.

Don’t worry about the establishing shots for now. Take the first shot, pull the camera back a bit and slowly truck in so that we have an establishing shot without greatly extending the animation.

Consider adding a cut that re-frames the action on the guy and the mechanic after the girl has finished her line. That will make it clear to the audience that we’re only concerned with the two characters on-screen from now on and it will reduce the amount of animation to do.

In the last shot, don’t change the camera angle; go back to the existing shot that the audience has already seen and is comfortable with.

Overall

Pull the cameras back a bit, they all feel a little close.

B

It’s been a tough week, from both a workload and motivational point of view. Video reference tends to stress me out and takes a very long time to get right (it doesn’t help that my parents are renovating their house, so I had no space to actually film anything!). Once you think you might have something you like, you need to spend bloody ages editing it and chopping it all together. On top of that we had to do additional sketches and the layout with some rough blocking poses.

Ugh. Tired.

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!

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!

The second clip shows the new version (left hand) against the version I handed in on Sunday (right hand) – I know it’s hard to see a difference (especially when Flickr won’t let you can’t frame-by-frame it), but trust me, they’re pretty different!

I showed this to Mario in our class Q&A yesterday afternoon and it seems like I am going in the right direction with the cartooniness of the face. Mario seemed happy with what I’ve done and told me to push it even further (which I have actually done already – I playblasted this late last night), so that’s good!

We’re meant to be finishing this shot by Sunday and as I said previously I’m actually away this weekend, so I don’t have much time left. The things I still need to do are:

• Animate the tongue
• Check the jaw/lip bounces on the “can’t a girl” phrase
• Clean up the facial anim curves and add some subtle lip overlap
• Adjust the hips and line of action for the end pose
• Clean up the head movement at the end
• Ensure the head movement propagates down the body
• Any final tweaks

Not much to do then! 8)

Let me know if you have anything to add to the list!