WEEK 6 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - January 21st, 2019

WEEK ENDING - January 27th, 2019

MONDAY - Maya introduction

Original blog post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/01/cgi-introduction.html

- "Overall, I'm really happy with both the animation and the introduction to Maya in general! Being completely honest, I was not expecting myself to find Maya as (for lack of a better term) easy and user friendly as it was; I actually understood it, unlike After Effects. Everything is laid out how I would've expected it, and things do what you want! It shares traits to other programs I've dabbled with, but in a way that makes the translation from 2D to CGI usage easy to understand! While I'm happy with the animation that came out of this session, I think I want to go back and add in more details; model in a barn, a background, and more cows to make a more interesting animation!"

TUESDAY - Narratology: Animation is a Uniquely Visual Medium

Original blog post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/01/narrative-animation-is-uniquely-visual.html

- "And that was the final lecture on Narratology! At this point, we should have a film in mind, or at least have whittled it down to 2 choices. I'm sticking with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for my film; it fits into my chosen question format too well. From here, I need to settle on a plan of action for the essay, and do deeper research."

THURSDAY - Stop Motion introduction

<to be added>

SUMMARY

This first week for a couple of things, and I loved one a LOT more than the other.

The CGI / Maya introduction was the one I really liked! CGI was my introduction to animation, and watching films like Toy Story and Shrek really inspired me to go into animation. I learnt later on that CGI was allegedly very difficult, even the simplest things. But now I've done the simplest things and discovered that they weren't too difficult, it puts my mind at ease a LOT. Despite only having one session on CGI, I feel like I've absolutely fallen for it; definitely a medium I'm looking forward to doing more of!

Stop Motion... isn't as enjoyable as I imagined, or as I remember from past experience. The process is a lot more fiddly and complex than I recall, and you really need a good sense of patience when you do it; and I'm willing to admit one of my faults is lack of patience. Maybe this session with the bouncing ball was a one-off? Things kept falling apart, and injuries were almost sustained (luckily, no-one was actually hurt). When we move onto armatures, hopefully it'll be less... personally frustrating.

We've ended our traditional lectures with Lynsey now, and this last one was somewhat helpful. It covered a few points that I could apply to my Who Framed Roger Rabbit themed essay, but nothing overly helpful like last week. The presentation was more so on how animation tells a story visually, but not handy in my essay exploring how animation is used in conjunction with the plot itself. If anything, this session was most helpful in solidifying that, now everything's concluded with lectures, I should really sit down and put my points down in concrete.

Sketchbook project this week has been a bit down, a combination of being busy with the work this week and, being completely honest, a lack of motivation. I feel like I burnt myself out on it the past two weeks getting things done, that I've subconsciously gotten tired of the sketchbook. I still pick it up every so often for a little scribble on the page, but not much else. I'm sure the motivation will come back.

NARRATIVE - "ANIMATION IS A UNIQUELY VISUAL MEDIUM"

This session was our final dedicated lecture looking at our Narratology project, and looked at how animation works with it's visuals, and how the medium can bring forward stories that can't be presented any other way.

"People keep saying 'the animation genre'. It's not a genre!" ~ Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles, Ratatouille and The Iron Giant.

Like the above quote suggests, animation in itself isn't a genre like a sci-fi or a horror. Animation is a medium.

A medium is the means or method of conveying information. In the arts, there are many different mediums: painting, photography, fashion, film-making... and animation. Animation is mostly considered a genre by the general audience as films made for young children and nothing more. However, animation has been used to get across more than just those types of films. We've seen hard hitting social commentary, risque shorts, and even entire movies & TV series with an adult only orientation.

(South Park has been running since 1997, using animation to show a variety of vulgar, controversial actions and commentaries - credit: Comedy Central)

Animation encompasses a wide range of styles and stories, the latter of which may not even be able to be told without animation. The medium can be intrinsic (vital) to the narrative.

This is where a comparison of Content and Substance comes in. The two can be respectively paired with Story and Discourse, and represent two factors of the story:

• Story / Content - what's told
• Discourse / Substance - how it's told

The substance of an animated film can be just about anything. Through this, we can use animation to tell unique stories that other mediums can't.

"Implicit in the study of the animated form is how 'meaning' is generated by the unique vocabulary available to the animator, which is not the province of the live-action film-maker" ~ Paul Wells

An example of a somewhat exclusive technique to animation is metamorphasis. Cartoons from the mid-1920s to later 1930s used the Rubberhose style, which involved metamorphasis for more comedic effect.

(Snow-White by the Fleischer Brothers and starring Betty Boop incorporates metamorphasis during certain sequences, including the Queen's head turning into a frying pan with two eggs. The short also uses rotoscoping during the Saint James Infirmary Blues sequence ~ credit: Fleischer Brothers)

Another technique animation uses is fabrication. In this context, fabrication means to take existing materials - be it natural or artificial - and reinterpret them within an animated film.

(Bottle by Kirsten Lepore uses fabrication with the items the sand and snow people send to each other - credit: Kirsten Lepore)

(Wladyslaw Starewicz's The Cameraman's Revenge took dead insects from a previous project of theirs, and repurposed them to be animated puppets; audiences were amazed, and considered Starewicz to be more like a magician than a film-maker - credit: Wladyslaw Starewicz)

Animation, as briefly mentioned before, can be used to show more daring subjects & imagery with the facade of a cartoon. Many people associate cartoons and animation with their childhood; moreso, innocence. So seeing horrific actions played out through a cartoon would make it seem a lot better than it actually is.

(Tex Avery's The Cat That Hated People continually shows abuse towards the titular cat; horrific if shown in live action, but played for laughs in animation - credit: Metro Goldwyn Mayer)

The Cat That Hated People also follows the carnivalesque rule animation can incorporate. It essentially means that normal rules are disabled, reversed or altered. It's usually applied to emphasise humour, satire or grotesquery.

One very important element to animation is it's visual storytelling.

"If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what's going on." ~ Alfred Hitchcock, director of Psycho, amongst others

The film-making rule of "show, don't tell" is also applicable to animation. You should plant hints and clues to things, or just straight up show them instead of having things be disclosed through just dialogue.

Roland Barthes stated there were 5 Narrative Codes, two of which we discussed; first there's the Hermenautic Code. This code is when you build mystery & suspense, posing questions that only the narrative can answer. For example:

• "What happens after death?" is NOT a Hermeneutic question
• "After her death, Jane found her day-to-day activities become much more interesting" IS a Hermeneutic question; only the narrative following and/or preceding it can answer this for us.

Linked to this is also Casual Connection and Ellipsis.

Casual Connection is when two random words or images are put side by side. By default, our brain will try and guess what the correlation is through some kind of mini narrative. For  example, showing the words BANANA and VOMIT next to each other. When asked in the lecture what the link would be, the unanimous answer was "it's a bad banana". 

Ellipsis is related in that it's the deliberate omission of what the correlation is, leaving the audience to figure it out themselves with context clues and/or later surrounding actions.

"Explanation kills drama" ~ John Yorke

A smaller, somewhat similar code is the Cultural Code. It involves the audience filling in the gaps that the ellipses creates with their own experiences. 

We also looked at the Kuleshov Effect. The effect is simple; you take three shots; one of a person looking at something, one of what they're looking at, and finally one of their reaction. When you replace the middle clip with something else, the final reaction shot can take on a whole new meaning.

(Alfred Hitchcock explaining the Kuleshov Effect - credit: CBC)

Older texts that use these techniques may be more difficult to read into, given that you may need proper historical context.

Finally, we looked at Narrative Statements.

In a narrative, there are two types of statements it can bring up:

• Process Statement - something that is done or happens
• Stasis Statement - something that simply is or just exists

We finished off by watching an animation that takes the "show, don't tell" rule to it's extreme, by telling a 22 minute story with nearly no dialogue.

(The Old Lady And The Pigeons only has dialogue in it's opening and closing minutes; the main storyline features no dialogue whatsoever - credit: Sylvain Chomet)

And that was the final lecture on Narratology! At this point, we should have a film in mind, or at least have whittled it down to 2 choices. I'm sticking with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for my film; it fits into my chosen question format too well. From here, I need to settle on a plan of action for the essay, and do deeper research.

STOP MOTION - INTRODUCTION

Today we started our 3 week Stop Motion unit!

We started out by looking at this project's outline, which includes:

1. Ball Bounce
2. Character lifting a Box
3. Walk Cycle / Change of Emotion

For this first week, we started with the ball bounce. We were advised to consider several factors, including where squash and stretch could be applied and the timing / spacing. The only real requirement for the task was that the ball had to be on the spot, and make one full bounce.

But before we started, we looked at other stop motion animations, and the people who animated them; an example of which is Kevin Parry.

(Parry's showreel, showcasing shots from Kubo and the Two Strings - credit: Kevin Parry, Laika)

Parry works for Laika Animation, who made Coraline, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings. In his showreel, we see the various rigs and setups he used to animate characters, from smaller setups for the human characters, to more complex, greenscreen-required rigs for larger creatures.

We then moved onto the task. I was paired up with Rachael, someone who I already knew I worked well with. We had a simple rig to work with; a wooden block supporting a single wire, which had a Plasticine ball on the end of it. We created several iterations of the ball bounce animation, each time swapping roles between animating and capturing pictures, and making changes that made the animation look a little better each time.

(One of our first iterations; the timing wasn't working as well as we wanted, and we had issues with the camera and rig we were using.)

Our biggest change came with visualising our timings. In DragonFrame, the stop motion program we were using, it lets you draw references on the screen for different things using a pen tool. With this, we made a small reference of what our timings would look like, creating a long line upwards for the vertical high and low of the ball, and then small horizontal lines for where the top of the ball would be on each frame. We considered easing in and out when working out the timings, making it so the ball would speed up and slow down where necessary.

(A later iteration that worked much better; we were much happier with the timing and overall look of the animation)

Once we had an animation we were satisfied with, we tried experimenting with start points and timing a bit more. In my opinion, these didn't turn out as well as the finished animation, but it was interesting to see what more variation resulted in.

(Two of our later variations. Timing was changed to be slower, but ultimately didn't look as good as our 3rd original iteration.)

We had issues along the way when making these animations. The main one was the rig we were using. It wasn't ideal for the task we were doing for several reasons; the ball kept falling off, as well as being really difficult to mould when we wanted to add some squash and stretch in. The wire was not stable at all, it would wobble about after trying to put it into a new position, often just returning back to the pose it was in the previous frame. It kept coming out the wooden block, and it was strangely sharp. It wasn't necessarily dangerous, but it certainly could've been safer.

In the end, I'd say this session went... alright. I'm not the biggest fan of animating in stop motion, since it's a little bit too fiddly and requires a lot more patience to pull off effectively than I have. Admittedly, those feelings could be just from this one session; animating this particular task was frustrating, purely because the materials wouldn't work the way we wanted them to. But perhaps the next stop motion task can sway me a little bit.

CGI - INTRODUCTION

This session was our introduction to the program Maya.

Maya, also known as Autodesk Maya, is a program used to make CGI models, games and animations. 

(An example of the Maya UI - credit: The Gnomon Workshop)

For this session, we learnt some of the basics of Maya's workspace, how to model simple shapes and elements, and how to animate them.

In Maya, you create things out of primitive shapes; cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc. Through various means of manipulating faces, edges and vertices, you can change how they look and how they go together. We started out by using the sphere shape to start to create a classic-looking flying saucer.

First, we took a sphere and scaled it up on all factors, essentially just making it a bigger sphere. From there, we brought one of the dimensions down, turning it from a sphere into more of a frisbee-like, flatter shape. We had the saucer bit of our flying saucer! 

Next was the main dome of the saucer. That was easy enough; just make a new sphere, scale it up a little bit, and then change it's position so that it's in the right place on the saucer. We then used that sphere as an anchor point for smaller domes surrounding it. Using a duplication shortcut combined with the new anchor point, Maya was able to create a circle of domes surrounding the anchor point.

At that point, there was a complete UFO! Then came the animation.

I'd never crossed paths with CGI animation, so I was genuinely surprised to find out that animating in that medium worked exactly how I thought it would. You set up individual keyframes, adjusting the object's position, scale, rotation, etc. And then Maya fills in the movements between! It's similar to how Premiere Pro and After Effects deal with moving elements, but I never expected it of a professional CGI program. This is called interpolation, where the frames between keyframes are approximated by the program.

While learning how to do basic animation, we found out how to create nested animations within them. For this, we decided we wanted the UFO to continually spin as the main movements went on. For this, we went into the object's own timeline, and found it's Y axis control. In it's line graph, we changed the value so that it would continue going upwards. Through that, it allowed the UFO to just keep spinning!

After we finished up with the UFO, we were let loose with trying to model a cow all on our own. We were allowed to have fun with it, so I made a cow using some ridiculous proportions and shapes. And also a top hat.

(I dubbed him "Mr. Bull")

So we had a UFO, and we had a cow. The last thing we modelled was a tractor beam. While making it, we learned how to apply colours to our models (which we then added to the cow and UFO). Flat colours are called lamberts, and shiny textures are called phongs. A bright blue lambert was applied to the tractor beam, and then it's opacity was brought down by about 50% to give it some transparency. 

The tractor beam was then parented to the UFO; this means that the two travel together, but can still be manipulated individually. 

Now we had all the elements to make our animation; a UFO abducting a cow. This meant manipulating all 3 objects created, but at different times. I started by blocking out the UFO's movements. The animation starts and ends with it, so it'd be a good indication of how long things needed to last for. The UFO stays still for about 60% of the time it's on screen, sharing 20% on each end for it's moving in and out of shot.

Next was the tractor beam. It had it's scale manipulated to get bigger, remain big for a couple of seconds, then recede back. I had it's anchor point set to it's top point, so when it got bigger, it was growing out from that point.

The cow was next to be animated, which would then be animated in the timespan that the tractor beam was onscreen. It needed to get dragged up by the beam, and disappear into the ship. I did that, and added a slight change in rotation to give off a more floaty look.

I added one final touch of my own... I noticed that there was a text tool, so I wanted to add a little "moo" coming from the cow. So I did that.

And the animation was done!


Overall, I'm really happy with both the animation and the introduction to Maya in general! Being completely honest, I was not expecting myself to find Maya as (for lack of a better term) easy and user friendly as it was; I actually understood it, unlike After Effects. Everything is laid out how I would've expected it, and things do what you want! It shares traits to other programs I've dabbled with, but in a way that makes the translation from 2D to CGI usage easy to understand! While I'm happy with the animation that came out of this session, I think I want to go back and add in more details; model in a barn, a background, and more cows to make a more interesting animation!