WEEK STARTING - 11th of March, 2019
WEEK ENDING - 17th of March, 2019
MONDAY - Mystery Box workshop
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/03/mystery-box-maya-session-4.html
TUESDAY - Media Roles introduction
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/03/media-roles-introduction.html
"Overall, I'm a little bit more enthusiastic about this research task than the other two, mostly because I hated doing the essays. This allows for a bit more creativity, even if it is just in a powerpoint form. But I'm not so sure about the group angle. I've known for a while I need to improve on working in a group, and I feel like I've achieved that for the most part in other animation tasks. But this group in particular has me a bit concerned. There doesn't seem to be anyone desperate to jump straight into the project, and it feels like we still need time to get to know each other. But only time will tell."
[NOTE: Weekly summaries aren't needed for this project.]
THURSDAY - Mystery Box workshop
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/03/mystery-box-maya-session-5.html
"By the end of this session, I got my main blocking all done! Max now has all his basic movements down, and with a couple more tweaks, he should be ready for splining! Those tweaks, along with things I fixed today, were done with the animation timeline editor. It's a really useful tool, and I'm glad we managed to learn how to use it to our advantage!"
SUMMARY
The Mystery Box project this week didn't have anything major happen; I started again from scratch, but that's about it. I think that Jon's tip to do this was the best course of action; if the way I was doing it would only end up causing me more issues than anything else. I managed to translate the same blocking from my previous version over to the new file, but making the necessary changes I needed to make sure I didn't end up recreating the mistakes that got me here. But this week has proved one thing to me, and it's 3D animation is more tricky than my first experiences lead me to believe it is.
Showing posts with label Mystery Box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mystery Box. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - SESSION #5
This post is looking at another Mystery Box CG session.
Before we got on with our work, we were shown how the animation timeline works more thoroughly. The timeline in animation mode, when selecting a certain element that's able to be animated, will show a series of strings and lines that represent different aspects of how that part is moving. For example, a line going up when looking at the "TranslateY" attribute signifies the object is moving upwards.
There's processes to change the line type of your animation too, being able to switch from stepped to splined, among other combinations. These are going to be necessary later on, since Max needs to move smoothly and without just teleporting to places.
By the end of this session, I got my main blocking all done! Max now has all his basic movements down, and with a couple more tweaks, he should be ready for splining! Those tweaks, along with things I fixed today, were done with the animation timeline editor. It's a really useful tool, and I'm glad we managed to learn how to use it to our advantage!
Before we got on with our work, we were shown how the animation timeline works more thoroughly. The timeline in animation mode, when selecting a certain element that's able to be animated, will show a series of strings and lines that represent different aspects of how that part is moving. For example, a line going up when looking at the "TranslateY" attribute signifies the object is moving upwards.
There's processes to change the line type of your animation too, being able to switch from stepped to splined, among other combinations. These are going to be necessary later on, since Max needs to move smoothly and without just teleporting to places.
By the end of this session, I got my main blocking all done! Max now has all his basic movements down, and with a couple more tweaks, he should be ready for splining! Those tweaks, along with things I fixed today, were done with the animation timeline editor. It's a really useful tool, and I'm glad we managed to learn how to use it to our advantage!
Monday, March 11, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #4
Further development on Mystery Box animation in this session.
There wasn't anything huge in terms of the session itself, but I got some good feedback from Jon. He had a look at my blocked-out animation, and while it was alright, he pointed out how difficult it's going to be to work on later down the line. He said that making a walk cycle between two blocked-out poses would be difficult, especially matching the end of the walk to the final pose it needs to get to.
The easiest option? Start from scratch. I was fine to do this; while it was a little bit irritating, I'd rather have an animation that's both easier to work on and looks good over one that's tricky to work on and would look so-so.
So that's what today was, just working on the animation again from the start. It's good that I learnt certain workarounds and shortcuts for setup. The camera is all set up the same, the box is still there, I just need to clean up the animation of the previous version in this new version!
Apart from that, I didn't have much going on in this session.
There wasn't anything huge in terms of the session itself, but I got some good feedback from Jon. He had a look at my blocked-out animation, and while it was alright, he pointed out how difficult it's going to be to work on later down the line. He said that making a walk cycle between two blocked-out poses would be difficult, especially matching the end of the walk to the final pose it needs to get to.
The easiest option? Start from scratch. I was fine to do this; while it was a little bit irritating, I'd rather have an animation that's both easier to work on and looks good over one that's tricky to work on and would look so-so.
So that's what today was, just working on the animation again from the start. It's good that I learnt certain workarounds and shortcuts for setup. The camera is all set up the same, the box is still there, I just need to clean up the animation of the previous version in this new version!
Apart from that, I didn't have much going on in this session.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
WEEK 11 SUMMARY
WEEK BEGINNING - 4th of March, 2019
WEEK ENDING - 10th of March, 2019
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/03/mystery-box-maya-session-2.html
THURSDAY - Mystery Box Workshop
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/03/mystery-box-maya-session-3.html
"After getting some feedback from Jon, I was advised to redo my walk cycle, just because it was looking a little bit weird with things clipping and, when splining comes in, sliding. So I did just that! At the end of this session, I managed to get all my major blocking done. So my next step is... steps, essentially. Make Max actually walk over to the box, and fix up the walk cycle that I've got going on at the moment. Feeling like good progress made this session!"
SUMMARY
This week has been all about the Mystery Box again. Mostly, the trial and error of it. I've been working on it and getting as much feedback as I can on what I'm doing, then applying it as best I can! I've learnt that there's a lot of retrying and restarting on elements in 3D animation, especially from seeing friends restarting entire sequences because of it. I feel like I'm going to have to do that at some point, but right now I'm just chipping away at this one file. Learning how to animate in stepped was really helpful, it's coming in handy with blocking out the animation and seeing how it'll look without having to really perfect it yet! But overall, I'm looking forward to doing more of the Mystery Box animation, I'm hoping it'll end up looking really cool when it's finished!
Thursday, March 7, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #3
In this session, I carried on with my Mystery Box animation.
Before we started on our own animations, we did a small exercise involving Max. We were given a file of Max sitting at a desk with a computer. He was set in a default sitting position, and our task was to show two different expressions with Max, using his body language and facial features. He had to be looking at something on the computer, and then react horrified to what he saw.
After we had our poses, we splined the two to create a short smooth animation.
After this exercise, it was essentially business as usual. After getting some feedback from Jon, I was advised to redo my walk cycle, just because it was looking a little bit weird with things clipping and, when splining comes in, sliding. So I did just that! At the end of this session, I managed to get all my major blocking done. Ignoring the walk cycle that's going to be fixed up, Max now:
So my next step is... steps, essentially. Make Max actually walk over to the box, and fix up the walk cycle that I've got going on at the moment. Feeling like good progress made this session!
Before we started on our own animations, we did a small exercise involving Max. We were given a file of Max sitting at a desk with a computer. He was set in a default sitting position, and our task was to show two different expressions with Max, using his body language and facial features. He had to be looking at something on the computer, and then react horrified to what he saw.
After we had our poses, we splined the two to create a short smooth animation.
After this exercise, it was essentially business as usual. After getting some feedback from Jon, I was advised to redo my walk cycle, just because it was looking a little bit weird with things clipping and, when splining comes in, sliding. So I did just that! At the end of this session, I managed to get all my major blocking done. Ignoring the walk cycle that's going to be fixed up, Max now:
- Sees the box
- Turns to look at it
- Checks his watch
- Looks back
- Ends up next to the box
- Crouches down
- Looks inside
- Stands back up in shock
- Points to the box
- Hands in the air
- Starts leaving
So my next step is... steps, essentially. Make Max actually walk over to the box, and fix up the walk cycle that I've got going on at the moment. Feeling like good progress made this session!
Monday, March 4, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #2
This post is on our continuation of our CG Mystery Box animation!
For this session, I managed to get an actual proper start on my animation, where we were given a little more free reign of what we did in the session. But beforehand, we were given probably the most important piece of advice we could get for this project; how to animate in stepped.
Stepped animation is different from the final product due to it's rigidness and stiffness. Stepped doesn't spline or guess the movement between two keyframes, it just IS those keyframes. The movements snap from one pose to the next.
Working in stepped is similar to how I animate in 2D, working out the key poses first, seeing how it looks, then going back and filling in the gaps.
With that helpful advice, I started to animate my sequence. I got my camera all set up, so that it would match the same framing setup as my animatic. Then I started to work on the first part of my animation, which is the walk past the box. I switched to a side view so that I could have a locked camera to Max's side, and I could work on it essentially the same way I would a 2D walk cycle.
Not much to say for this session apart from that, just gotta keep working on the animation.
For this session, I managed to get an actual proper start on my animation, where we were given a little more free reign of what we did in the session. But beforehand, we were given probably the most important piece of advice we could get for this project; how to animate in stepped.
Stepped animation is different from the final product due to it's rigidness and stiffness. Stepped doesn't spline or guess the movement between two keyframes, it just IS those keyframes. The movements snap from one pose to the next.
Working in stepped is similar to how I animate in 2D, working out the key poses first, seeing how it looks, then going back and filling in the gaps.
With that helpful advice, I started to animate my sequence. I got my camera all set up, so that it would match the same framing setup as my animatic. Then I started to work on the first part of my animation, which is the walk past the box. I switched to a side view so that I could have a locked camera to Max's side, and I could work on it essentially the same way I would a 2D walk cycle.
Not much to say for this session apart from that, just gotta keep working on the animation.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
WEEK 10 SUMMARY
WEEK BEGINNING - 25th of February, 2019
WEEK ENDING - 3rd of March, 2019
THURSDAY - Mystery Box Workshop
Original post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/mystery-box-maya-session-1.html
"Overall, I enjoyed this first session of Mystery Box animation! It was a lot easier and much more interesting to figure out how character rigs work than I initially thought! I don't know exactly what I was expecting, since the only time I've seen CG character animation behind the scenes was from old Toy Story featurettes, but given they're from 1995 and it's been nearly 25 years since then, the techniques are probably easier than back then. Looking forward to more!"
SUMMARY
This week was the week of our hand-in, so there wasn't much scheduled in. However, what we did for the Mystery Box was really interesting! It was my first time using an animated rig, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be! Like I said in my original post, moving the character around is a lot easier and user-friendly than I expected, and I'm sure it's going to make animating the rig much more pleasant than I initially expected it to be! I just have to make sure I use what I learnt in last week's performance workshop to really push the rig further than normal, so I can get a more appealing and exaggerated performance.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - MAYA SESSION #1
Today we started actually animating our Mystery Box project.
Before the animation started, we had to choose which discipline we wanted to use for it; CGI or Stop Motion. I chose CGI, mostly because it was the only one of the main 3 disciplines where I didn't know how to animate characters, and wanted to get as broad experience with character animation as possible.
Speaking of which, the character rig we're using is from the website 11 Second Club, a site where animators are challenged every month to create animations around a certain idea. Aside from that, they also provide character rigs, one of which being called Max. Max is a simple human rig, resembling the wooden figures used to work on posing.
Max has lots of controls for every joint in his body, from big joints like the hips and shoulders all the way down to individual finger controls. These can all be edited using Maya's rotate tool (or in some cases, like the shoulders, can also use the normal directional controls). Modification of one part can also influence other body parts to move too; for example, rotating the hips also rotates everything above the hips, instead of just the one joint.
Using Max, we used this session to mostly play around with the rig and get to grips with it. We had a light brief of making Max perform poses. Our first prompt was "waiting for the bus", followed by the emotions happy and sad, and we also got the chance to put our own pose in as well.
I found this pretty easy, and actually fun to do! It was a lot easier to make the character pull poses than I thought it'd be, and having accessible ways to make the character move around with the different handles was definitely a factor into making it a much more pleasant experience than it could've been.
To finish off the session, we very briefly started looking into how to make a walk cycle. We were recommended to use a different camera angle for it, specifically one that's fixed. Maya has two preset angles perfect for this; left and right cameras. They let you see from the chosen angles, without the ability to scrub across the Z axis, leaving you with essentially a 2D plain.
<video>
Overall, I enjoyed this first session of Mystery Box animation! It was a lot easier and much more interesting to figure out how character rigs work than I initially thought! I don't know exactly what I was expecting, since the only time I've seen CG character animation behind the scenes was from old Toy Story featurettes, but given they're from 1995 and it's been nearly 25 years since then, the techniques are probably easier than back then. Looking forward to more!
Before the animation started, we had to choose which discipline we wanted to use for it; CGI or Stop Motion. I chose CGI, mostly because it was the only one of the main 3 disciplines where I didn't know how to animate characters, and wanted to get as broad experience with character animation as possible.
Speaking of which, the character rig we're using is from the website 11 Second Club, a site where animators are challenged every month to create animations around a certain idea. Aside from that, they also provide character rigs, one of which being called Max. Max is a simple human rig, resembling the wooden figures used to work on posing.
(A screenshot from MAX-verse expedition, an animation created as a part of one of the 11 Second Club's monthly competitions - credit: Paul Jun-Ho Chang)
Max has lots of controls for every joint in his body, from big joints like the hips and shoulders all the way down to individual finger controls. These can all be edited using Maya's rotate tool (or in some cases, like the shoulders, can also use the normal directional controls). Modification of one part can also influence other body parts to move too; for example, rotating the hips also rotates everything above the hips, instead of just the one joint.
Using Max, we used this session to mostly play around with the rig and get to grips with it. We had a light brief of making Max perform poses. Our first prompt was "waiting for the bus", followed by the emotions happy and sad, and we also got the chance to put our own pose in as well.
I found this pretty easy, and actually fun to do! It was a lot easier to make the character pull poses than I thought it'd be, and having accessible ways to make the character move around with the different handles was definitely a factor into making it a much more pleasant experience than it could've been.
(Waiting for the Bus)
(Happy)
(Sad)
("You Know I Had To Do It To 'Em" with reference)
To finish off the session, we very briefly started looking into how to make a walk cycle. We were recommended to use a different camera angle for it, specifically one that's fixed. Maya has two preset angles perfect for this; left and right cameras. They let you see from the chosen angles, without the ability to scrub across the Z axis, leaving you with essentially a 2D plain.
<video>
Overall, I enjoyed this first session of Mystery Box animation! It was a lot easier and much more interesting to figure out how character rigs work than I initially thought! I don't know exactly what I was expecting, since the only time I've seen CG character animation behind the scenes was from old Toy Story featurettes, but given they're from 1995 and it's been nearly 25 years since then, the techniques are probably easier than back then. Looking forward to more!
Sunday, February 17, 2019
WEEK 9 SUMMARY
WEEK BEGINNING - February 11th, 2019
WEEK ENDING - February 17th, 2019
MONDAY - Mystery Box Briefing
"I'm really interested to see how this project will go, considering it's the first real CGI animation I'm going to be doing! I have to storyboard some idea for what I could do for this animation, and at the minute I'm not entirely sure what that could involve. I'm sure I'll have something by the time the next session rolls around! There's a performance workshop on Wednesday, where I can start working on more realised ideas!"
WEDNESDAY - Performance Workshop
"Did I enjoy this session though? Kinda. I think it was the repetition that got me; I realise it's important and understand this is entirely a me-thing, but doing the same short performance over and over with changes so minor each time just didn't seem too interesting to me. I much prefer going with more wild ideas and trying something entirely new each time."
THURSDAY - Performance Analysis
SUMMARY
This week was all about introducing the Mystery Box unit, and stuff surrounding it. And while my excitement for it dwindled a little bit from session to session this week, I'm still overall enthusiastic! The choice for what medium we do this task in is exciting, since it's our first real experience with choosing what we could expertise in! I've not really been a fan of producing stop motion, so I think CG is the way for me to go. Like I said, my enthusiasm dwindled a little bit, but that was mostly due to not actually animating this week. I understand that the performance element is important, and it's entirely a "me" thing that I let not animating get to me.
Thursday, February 14, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
This is, essentially, a part 2 to this post. This session, we were analysing our performances from yesterday.
But first, some theory. Mostly, it was the theory of performance itself. Within the Larbon Movement analysis, there are 4 main things to take into account: Body, Effort, Space and Shape. We delved a little deeper into Effort specifically, and learned it was made up of time, weight and direction.
We did a mini-analysis of a Charlie Chaplin short, looking at how Chaplin's performance is exaggerated and carnivalesque.
Exaggerated poses like this break the Kinosphere; the personal bubble. By going into extreme reaches from it's X, Y and Z axis, you can achieve more far-reaching poses, where you dial your movements up to more than natural. Contrast that with smaller, closer poses, which are called near-reach poses. Anything between those two are just mid-reach poses.
Next, we moved on to the 5 main poses of physical acting. There are:
Using the "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?" progression reel from last time, me and some of the others were asked to come up and show how the opening few shots use all 5 of these pose types.
After the presentation wrapped up, we went back and looked at our own performances from yesterday, and saw how the poses could be pushed further, especially after learning about the 5 Poses and Kinosphere. I looked at the poses from the last session, and tried to draw basic interpretations of them but with the added notes and enhanced performance elements.
I feel like this session was really beneficial to my Mystery Box animation! It's going to help out with making the performance more engaging, as well as following more of the animation principles than I would beforehand.
But first, some theory. Mostly, it was the theory of performance itself. Within the Larbon Movement analysis, there are 4 main things to take into account: Body, Effort, Space and Shape. We delved a little deeper into Effort specifically, and learned it was made up of time, weight and direction.
We did a mini-analysis of a Charlie Chaplin short, looking at how Chaplin's performance is exaggerated and carnivalesque.
(A clip from one of Charlie Chaplin's films - credit: Charlie Chaplin)
The two main things picked up from this clip was how he moves very directly and that his poses are very clean cut. For the latter, this means that you could abstract his form as far as you want, and still get the idea of what exact pose he's making. There's no subtlety, there's no small movements, it's all LOUD. The reason for this, ironically, is because of there's no sound from Chaplin at all. He had to communicate entirely through his body, letting audiences know what he's feeling by moving and posing very clearly and cleanly.Exaggerated poses like this break the Kinosphere; the personal bubble. By going into extreme reaches from it's X, Y and Z axis, you can achieve more far-reaching poses, where you dial your movements up to more than natural. Contrast that with smaller, closer poses, which are called near-reach poses. Anything between those two are just mid-reach poses.
Next, we moved on to the 5 main poses of physical acting. There are:
- THE PIN - Straight up, thin poses.
- THE WALL - Wide and tall, making yourself seem bigger
- THE BALL - Somewhat sphere-like, making yourself seem smaller
- THE SCREW - Your pose has some kind of twist in it (usually from the hips)
- THE PYRAMID - Poses where your base are larger than the top
Using the "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?" progression reel from last time, me and some of the others were asked to come up and show how the opening few shots use all 5 of these pose types.
After the presentation wrapped up, we went back and looked at our own performances from yesterday, and saw how the poses could be pushed further, especially after learning about the 5 Poses and Kinosphere. I looked at the poses from the last session, and tried to draw basic interpretations of them but with the added notes and enhanced performance elements.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP
This post will be going over the performance workshop we did for our Mystery Box project.
We started off with a warmup game, called "Chase the Chicken". We had to imagine we were following a sequence of events:
We'd block out our own sequences, each time being more focused on one particular area of it. One stage that would prove important later on was exaggerating our movements, so we can show what the character is feeling through their body language, as clearly as possible.
Once Chase the Chicken was done, we moved on to work on our own Mystery Box animations, and blocking out what movements we wanted for it. We all came up with some individual ideas, which we would workshop across the rest of the session. I had a few ideas, mostly having indifferent or positive reactions to what was in the box. But ultimately, I found the one negative reaction the most interesting. The events would go as follows:
When I brought the performance of my idea to the rest of the class, we worked on making it better. The first step was to understand the character's thought process more, so I said out loud what they're saying instead of remaining silent. The expressions and body movements were pushed further, to be more exaggerated. Timing was also considered, seeing how the sequence in the end will have to fit into a time threshold.
After that, we split off into groups and all tried to interpret each other's prompts. Daisy, Jenny and August all tried my blocking out, and I chose August's as what I'd use in the end! After I chose him, we took photos of what the key blocking points were. These are essentially base lines for the actual storyboard to start from!
So the next step from here is performance analysis, which is tomorrow. Did I enjoy this session though? Kinda. I think it was the repetition that got me; I realise it's important and understand this is entirely a me-thing, but doing the same short performance over and over with changes so minor each time just didn't seem too interesting to me. I much prefer going with more wild ideas and trying something entirely new each time.
We started off with a warmup game, called "Chase the Chicken". We had to imagine we were following a sequence of events:
- Chasing a runaway chicken
- Reaction to seeing it get away
- Grow sad about it
- React to clouds parting, sun shining, and seeing more chickens
- Sneaking up on a chicken
- Successfully catching it
We'd block out our own sequences, each time being more focused on one particular area of it. One stage that would prove important later on was exaggerating our movements, so we can show what the character is feeling through their body language, as clearly as possible.
Once Chase the Chicken was done, we moved on to work on our own Mystery Box animations, and blocking out what movements we wanted for it. We all came up with some individual ideas, which we would workshop across the rest of the session. I had a few ideas, mostly having indifferent or positive reactions to what was in the box. But ultimately, I found the one negative reaction the most interesting. The events would go as follows:
- Character walks across, just overshooting the box
- They look back, becoming curious of the box
- They check their watch, have they got time to look in the box?
- They do! The character walks to the box
- Crouches down to look in the box, and...
- SHOCK! Something surprising and dangerous is in the box
- Character backs up, hands in the air
When I brought the performance of my idea to the rest of the class, we worked on making it better. The first step was to understand the character's thought process more, so I said out loud what they're saying instead of remaining silent. The expressions and body movements were pushed further, to be more exaggerated. Timing was also considered, seeing how the sequence in the end will have to fit into a time threshold.
After that, we split off into groups and all tried to interpret each other's prompts. Daisy, Jenny and August all tried my blocking out, and I chose August's as what I'd use in the end! After I chose him, we took photos of what the key blocking points were. These are essentially base lines for the actual storyboard to start from!
So the next step from here is performance analysis, which is tomorrow. Did I enjoy this session though? Kinda. I think it was the repetition that got me; I realise it's important and understand this is entirely a me-thing, but doing the same short performance over and over with changes so minor each time just didn't seem too interesting to me. I much prefer going with more wild ideas and trying something entirely new each time.
Monday, February 11, 2019
MYSTERY BOX - BRIEFING
Today we were properly introduced to our Mystery Box brief.
The project involves us making a short animation with a predefined CG rig or stop motion armature. We're to consider applying the animation principles to when the character walks onscreen, looks inside of a box, and their reaction. The box cannot be moved or touched, and the audience can't see what's inside it; only the character. It should last between 10 and 15 seconds, and be one fixed shot. We should also consider what's actually in the box, and how the character reacts.
Along with the usual deliverables, we're handing in:
Exaggerated physical performance is a vital part of this task. The animation won't have any audio, all the information about the character's emotions & thoughts has to be entirely done through body language. We looked at classic silent performers and how they show a range of performances using only body language.
We were given the choice between CGI and Stop Motion for this project. I chose CGI, for various reasons I discuss in both my Maya and Stop Motion workshop blog posts. We would be working in Maya again, and the animation would be a three step process:
We saw an example of these steps at play with shot progression reels, specifically from Frozen and Kung-Fu Panda 3.
And that was the end of a surprisingly short briefing! I'm really interested to see how this project will go, considering it's the first real CGI animation I'm going to be doing! I have to storyboard some idea for what I could do for this animation, and at the minute I'm not entirely sure what that could involve. I'm sure I'll have something by the time the next session rolls around! There's a performance workshop on Wednesday, where I can start working on more realised ideas!
The project involves us making a short animation with a predefined CG rig or stop motion armature. We're to consider applying the animation principles to when the character walks onscreen, looks inside of a box, and their reaction. The box cannot be moved or touched, and the audience can't see what's inside it; only the character. It should last between 10 and 15 seconds, and be one fixed shot. We should also consider what's actually in the box, and how the character reacts.
Along with the usual deliverables, we're handing in:
- A storyboard, detailing the sequence
- An animatic
- The Mystery Box sequence itself
Exaggerated physical performance is a vital part of this task. The animation won't have any audio, all the information about the character's emotions & thoughts has to be entirely done through body language. We looked at classic silent performers and how they show a range of performances using only body language.
(Charlie Chaplin in "The Lion's Cage", a film that involves Chaplin only using physical movements and signals to communicate - credit: Charlie Chaplin)
- BLOCKING - Key poses, held to allow clarity for review
- ANIMATION - Converting stepped keyframes to spline, and adjust to make a more appealing performance
- POLISH - Refining movements and adding detailed keyframes
We saw an example of these steps at play with shot progression reels, specifically from Frozen and Kung-Fu Panda 3.
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