Applied Animation: 20th - 26th March 2017

I chose to do the ident brief because I wanted to focus on something that wasn't just character animation. I usually animate characters so I want to do logos or objects in order to break out of my comfort zone a bit.

I am in a team with Alex and Chloe, since they both also liked the ident brief. We started off by working out which of the 4 channels we wanted to do.

We looked into each of the channels and tried to determine what the focus of the channels were and if any ideas sprung out at us. We decided upon the National Geographic channel because it had a very wide scope of options to explore.

We looked at the types of programs on the channel and also looked at many examples of the idents they currently use. We chose to go more in the direction of involving the yellow square into the actual scene of the ident rather than it just being an overlay like on some.

We quickly thought that we wanted to have all 9 idents link to tell some sort of story. Through the process of coming up with ideas this became the idea of a much looser story as we needed to make sure each ident worked on it's own and telling a more complex narrative across these 9 scenes would be very hard to implement.

We narrowed down the ideas to ones that we were each most interested in and which worked well together. Originally more of the ideas involved mostly environments and scenery but then more ideas with characters came into the mix.

We are thinking of splitting the work with the types of thing that each of us are more interested in or want to practice in. So most of the character stuff will be done by Alex, Chloe wants to focus more on environments and layout and I want to practice working on the more graphic and object animation rather than character work. I also want to implement dynamic camera animation into the idents.

For next week we are each going to have sketches of all 9 idents so we can bring together each persons interpretation of the idea to play with.

Process and Production: 13th - 16th March 2017

As I was running out of time to finish my animation, this was an incredibly intense week. I had all the shots of the woman yet to do. I first went through with the audio for each remaining shot and set up the documents with timing labels and sketches of the keyposes. I did this so that if I were to run out of time I would still have something to show of the motion. These shots are the most important to keep the story going so I focused on them. I created the linework for these shots but I only worked on making the motion smooth enough to understand, if I then had time I could go back and smooth these out. 

The hardest shot left to do was the shot of the woman coming out of the toilets. This required a lot more time and is something that I wasn't very well prepared for. I originally envisioned this shot as being a full body shot, but due to the time restraints, I instead made it a mid shot to save on leg animation. This was even trickier because of the fact that she was moving angles while walking. I decided to create the multiple angles of her body inside a symbol and then I could animate that from the outside just bobbing up and down. This way, when I was drawing her, I didn't have to worry about how she was walking, just about how the proportions worked through the angles. It is a shame that I didn't have time to animate this shot as I wanted to since I feel that the motion of this walk is quite dull and static because it is using more tweens. In hindsight, I shouldn't have left this shot so late since it was one of the most complex, and it has suffered because of this. 

I was happy with my use of 3D in this shot for the door opening. This was done in Adobe Animate with the 3D rotation tool which is something that I knew was there but had never actually used it. I was originally attempting to open the door using After Effects but was struggling to get the perspective of the door correct with the door frame. This was much easier and more manageable using the 3D tool in Animate.

So while I didn't have the time to smooth out each of these shots with inbetweens, I am glad that I managed to get them all done to a level that still conveys the ideas and motion. The issue is that these contrast with the smooth shots of the man in quite an unappealing way. 

Process and Production: 6th - 12th March 2017

On Monday I completed shot 9 with the jaw slamming on the table. I am really happy with how this one turned out. The shake and bounce of items on the table really help to sell the impact. I did do one to many inbetweens than I thought worked for the drop of the jaw so I actually ended up deleting a frame. This made the jaw slam to the table in just a single frame space. This really makes it much more impact than before. 

We then had the final crit on the Tuesday. As I had not finished my animation, I filled the gaps with the animatic in order to tell the story. Feedback was very positive and people seemed to really enjoy the story. It was said that my animation was very smooth and moved naturally due to my use of reference footage and inbetweens. Other positive feedback came regarding the lip syncing, which people seemed to like. A few things that I was told could be improved was about shot 9. It was suggested that I make the shape of the jaw on the table a bit softer, so that the skin and fat spreads out when pressed against the table. This will make him feel more solid and sell the impact more. I agree with this and think I will do it because it will be quite a simple change to make. 

Another suggestion was on the final shot. Instead of having the man simply fall flat on his back, he should have his legs flung over his head, so he becomes really broken and injured. Since I haven't actually started this shot yet, I can still easily implement this. All this was good useful feedback that I will try to implement into my animation. 

I then went back to animating by doing the sketched keyposes for shot 11, which were quite easy as he will only be glancing a few directions very slightly. I did the linework for these poses before moving on and going back to shot 4. I still needed to finish the keyposes for the second half of this shot where he was fumbling about trying to catch the ring. I was simply struggling with this shot so much and it was taking so much longer than any other shot I had worked on with little progress, that I decided to change my idea slightly. Instead of him reacting and trying to catch the ring, I decided to extend the slow motion part into this shot and have his face frozen in shock as he follows the ring in the air shouting 'NOOO!!'. I thought that this could actually add some more comedy to the scene with this cliched 'NOO!' moment. After recording this extra line I had to edit the second half by drawing an awful lot of precise inbetweens in order to sell the slow motion effect. 

It is unfortunate that I have had to sacrifice the original idea due to this issue but I believe that this version actually works better. I'm very happy with the actual animation within it and it also lets the slow motion section hang for longer, which feels more natural. 

Now that I've finished all of the shots of the man, I am going back through to do all the linework of the womans shots. With only half a week left, I am just focusing on getting the idea of motion across as well as possible and only doing inbetweens if necessary and I have time. Thankfully, most of her shots aren't too complex. The worst is going to be her full body shot of her coming out of the toilets.

Process and Production: 27th February - 5th March 2017

I continued with more and more animating. Shot 7 is another that took longer than I anticipated. The movements in it weren't too complex but I just kept adding inbetweens because I wasn't happy with the timing of each move. 

The lip syncing at the end of this shot was much more challenging than the previous shot. I was tweaking the timings of each letter to try and get it to look right. I found myself saying 'cha.. champagne' over and over to myself to try and deduce what shapes the mouth made. In the end I am actually really happy with how this shot has ended up. I think the movements are well flowing and expressive. I think that I could use more overlapping action with the hair. I think the first shot I did involved a lot but then I have been forgetting to add much in since. I do like the way it works in this shot but I am going to have to keep in mind to exaggerate it more in later shots. 

This week I also did my pixilation animation. See pixilation blog post.

I then started work on the last two main shots of the man. Shot 9 and 11. Since I feel that I am running short on time, I am going to prioritise getting the linework of each shot completed so that I will at least have a basic version of every shot if I do happen to run out of time. I rendered the audio reference for the remaining shots and set them up in Animate documents to start. Shot 9 is quite a simple one. Once his jaw drops to the table there is no more movement throughout that shot. Also, I don't really want to create many inbetweens for this shot since I want his movement to be quite shocking and sudden. I want it to really forcefully slam onto the table. I can then add some reinforcing action by means of cutlery bouncing and the camera shaking.

Shot 11 will be relatively simple as well with him only having very quick frantic head turns until he flies off the back of the chair. I still filmed a reference video to be able to capture the panic on his face but I don't intend many inbetweens and I'm imagining  doing the fall using smears to communicate the speed. 

Process and Production: Pixilation

Pixilation is the technique of stop motion animating live actors. It creates a very strange looking animation which drifts into the uncanny valley, since the people are moving so unnaturally. Some well known uses of this are Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' music video. This combined live action pixilation with stop motion in a very impressive way. In this instance, pixilation was used as a way to include Gabriel in with the animated elements. 

When thinking of an idea for the pixilation study task, I knew I wanted to have something that took advantage of the use of pixilation, by doing things that couldn’t be done normally. The first thing that came to mind was to have two people fighting so that I could have one fly down the corridor after being punched. I planned to make it somewhat comical and exaggerated.

I am somewhat happy with this animation, though I think that not all of the actions turned out looking as good as I’d previously hoped. I think that some of the movements don’t look as expressive as I wanted. Also with the ‘flying’ punch at the end, we opted to just have Chloe sliding along the floor instead because it was easier for her to do. My original idea was to take pictures as just jumped down the corridor to have the illusion of flight. I also think that the movements were too drastic and don't make it feel as smooth as it could.

Process and Production: Research 3: Hybrid Animation

Hybrid animation is a term given to animation mixed with live action footage. This technique is one of my personal favourites. This is due to the contrast in the visuals that I just find incredibly interesting. It is a 4th wall breaking experience since we obviously know that the animated segments are drawn but then the live action side of it interacts as if it were real inside their world. 

The first version of this technique being used was in the 1900 film, 'The Enchanted Drawing' in which James Stuart Blackton draws a cartoon character who then comes to life on the paper. This technique evolved and was used in many different ways like putting a live action person into an animated world in 'Alice Comedies' and then putting animated characters into a live action world in 'Out of the Inkwell' and many others.

Properly compositing animated character in with live action footage is probably most well known from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'. This film was incredibly innovative and ambitious, but what I think is even more interesting and what adds to this experience even more, is how the story actually acknowledges the presence of these cartoons and makes that contrast part of the story and humour. 

This same principle is now used in the majority of live action blockbusters with the use of CGI, but the difference here is that most of the time this is made to look part of the world. We aren't supposed to notice the difference. I think this is a great technique and one that I personally find really interesting and opens many possibilities.