WEEK 8 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - February 4th, 2019

WEEK ENDING - February 10th, 2019

MONDAY - Stop Motion Change of Expression

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WEDNESDAY - Maya UV Application

Original blog post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/02/cgi-applying-textures.html

- "And that wraps up the final dedicated Maya session! I really enjoyed working on all of this, and unexpectedly so! I was worried that CGI and CG Modelling would be really intricate, and that unless you had years of experience, you would NOT get it. But it was relatively easy to get the hang of, and I really enjoyed it at times! I think CGI is definitely a path to consider going forward, especially with the Mystery Box project looming."

SUMMARY

This week didn't really have too much on, and of it, nothing was really spectacular or made me really excited. So in general, this week was pretty good. 

Maya was definitely the best part of this week. These sessions are always the most fun to be in, and I think it's a really good sign that you're loving what you're doing when people are laughing really hard at the assigned work. Not in the sense that we're making fun of it, but in that it's such a good time already working on the project with little difficulty, that spirits and laughs are high! The cereal box and bird tasks were fun, and I definitely think CGI is my route to go with the Mystery Box project we have coming up!

Stop Motion was a more interesting experience this time more than any. I was working in a group of 3 this time, and we all had a somewhat similar idea of what we wanted to make. We communicated well, and came out with an animation we were all really happy with! The most interesting thing to me was after the session, when I showed people the animation; they genuinely believed the emotion being performed. I showed people only with the context "there's an emotional change midway through"... and people felt the need to say "aww" when the sadness started. I think that's a good indication that we got the emotion down! Is stop motion for me going forward though? Maybe? It's certainly something to consider, but out of the three main animation forms (2D, CGI and Stop Motion), it's definitely falling in 3rd place.

Narratology essay is at the point where I have my points all ready to go; now I need to find more reliable sources than just my own memory. I'm going to try using a question I build around the template, going much more down the route of "Is animation intrinsic to WFRR" or "If animation was removed, could you get the same experience from WFRR". Something like that could be better in finding a point better to focus on. But if I struggle with that, then I can swap in the template question and use that to refer back to instead.

Sketchbook was back up and running this week, a lot more like previous weeks in terms of what I'm making with it. Motivation has risen again, and I'm glad that it is! I've had some ideas I've thought were really cool, including a comic that can only be viewed using a UV light; getting some more unique materials in there! Generally, getting back into the swing of it!

CGI - APPLYING TEXTURES

This session was our final on the Maya workshops, and looked at how to apply UVs to models.

A UV is an overlay that goes on top of your 3D models. The term UV comes from the fact that those are the axis the textures fall under; X, Y and Z were already taken. They're typically applied on top of unfolded versions of models, making them as flat as possible to easily lay out textures.

(The left shows basic 3D shapes & models, the right shows the rest of the scene with UVs on top - credit: Pixar Animation Studios, The Science Behind Pixar)

Our first UV task was to take the net of a C-3PO's cereal box and try to map the net of a cuboid onto it. 

(C-3PO's, a legitimate cereal from the 70s, based on Star Wars - credit: Kellogg's)

We were introduced to a new workspace layout for this task, designed exactly for UV application; the UV Editor. It creates a splitscreen window; one screen showing your whole model, the other showing the selected model's flat net. From there, you can take faces and put them on top of imported graphics.

(The UV Editor being used on a model of a head)

We learnt how to split edges too. For 3D shapes, every two consecutive faces share at least one edge. This is an issue here because trying to move one face will also cause any faces it's connected to to alter itself too. Because of this, we can split edges apart, and have it so moving one face doesn't affect it's other connected faces.

Once I had 6 individually moving faces, I moved them around to the right place. Once on the right face corresponding to the cereal box, I used a UV Vertex manipulation tool to resize each one from being a perfect square into some form of rectangle.

Once the cereal box was all lined up, it looked good! With our completed nets, we learned how to export our nets as templates, and were given the chance to mess about in Photoshop and create our own cereal brand! I wanted to have some fun with it, so I came up with a cereal called "Memers"; a cereal where the box is just covered in memes and jokes.

After the cereal boxes were done, we moved onto "the bird". The bird was essentially a task to demonstrate how to split, unfold and individually texture parts of an already completed 3D model.

For this, we had to split the model of the bird given to us. Keeping the UV view and model view, the faces needed for one section ALL had to be selected. Then by selecting the "Camera View" button, the UV Editor window laid out the net of what was selected, as best it can. 

When you just do that one step, you're still left with a 3D, somewhat enclosed model. So from here, we had to split the component even further, by the seams. Thinking as if it was a stuffed animal of sorts, we made seam lines where two flat halves would've connected together. There were also adjustments made if necessary; sometimes areas would be red or blue, representing things being too tight or too stretched, respectively. While not necessary to fix, it makes UVs applied look weird so it's best to fix them.

The process was done for the head, beak, body, wings and legs. The most difficult one, by far, was the legs. The pointed claws with tightened points proved a challenge in untightening, and I even reached a stage where one toe tightened where another one stretched. I kept making seam splits until it all worked, somehow.

The final thing we did was add some colour! We used Maya's in built pen tool, found under the Rendering tab.

(My fully coloured bird and a box of Memers)

And that wraps up the final dedicated Maya session! I really enjoyed working on all of this, and unexpectedly so! I was worried that CGI and CG Modelling would be really intricate, and that unless you had years of experience, you would NOT get it. But it was relatively easy to get the hang of, and I really enjoyed it at times! I think CGI is definitely a path to consider going forward, especially with the Mystery Box project looming.

STOP MOTION - CHARACTER WALK AND CHANGE OF EMOTION

In our final dedicated stop motion session, we looked at making a character walk and changing their emotion halfway through their walk.

Firstly, we looked briefly into industry research. We were shown a few good websites for news on the animation industry, including Skwigly and It's Nice That. We were also given some advice on how to use social media to our advantage. Most, if not all students on the course have some kind of art / animation social media account, and were advised to use them to follow animation studios, and the people working within them to get a more insider look.

We also had a look at another Academy "Credited As" video, this time for Georgina Haynes, the Head of Puppetry on Laika's Kubo and the Two Strings.

(Hayes talks about how she got into the industry, and what her role entails - credit: The Academy)

From there, we were sent in our groups to start animating. I was in a group with Jenny and Leon, both of which I know I work well with! We were, like last time, assigned to work in the Animation Production studio, and we used this storyboard:

We used the wire armatures again, and I made sure to be extra cautious with the camera after last time. We had lightly assigned roles throughout this animation; Jenny was mostly in charge of capturing the frames, where Leon and I were mainly animating the puppet. I say the roles were lightly assigned because we didn't outright declare who was doing what, but that was what roles were the majority of the time. We had swap arounds at points, but they were for shorter periods of time.

We did some live action references for the beginning half of the animation. We weren't quite sure what would be the right way to make the happy part of the walk look, so I was recorded performing the action. We had to do it twice, because halfway through the first one I started laughing and ruined the take.

One useful thing about working in a group was having everyone contributing ideas that we wouldn't have thought of individually. An example of this within this production is with how the change of emotion is expressed when walking away. Jenny suggested that instead of having the puppet just shuffle off, he should kneel down and put his head in his hands. Leon then built on top of that by suggesting that when the head was cupped in the hands, the puppet could shake their head and seem like they're crying.

We didn't run into any issues with animation, and everything went smoothly! It was mostly due to the people I was working with, they were really helpful and it couldn't have been done without them! 

There was one issue later on; exporting. When I exported the video, I got home to find the video file had an issue with it. The top 60% of the shot was darkened, something that wasn't in the actual animation. I didn't want to go back the next day and reexport it, so I tried to fix it myself. I brought the file into Premiere Pro and messed about with it until I managed to get the effects to work on the video, leaving me with a fixed file!

After all that, this is what the final animation looks like!

And that concludes the final stop motion task! Overall, I'd say this was the best project for me personally. I think it helped me become a little bit more friendly with stop motion, definitely in a better place with it than I was a few weeks ago. I don't think I'll be doing it for the Mystery Box project though; while I have lightened up to the method, I think it was mostly out of the aspects of working as a part of a team. The Mystery Box is a solo outing, and I think that stop motion would be the wrong choice for me. But overall, stop motion has been an interesting experience if anything!