This week we are going to be animating a ball with a tail, referencing squirrel footage for the moment. We aren’t going to be focusing too much on how the body moves, as we are mainly practicing the anticipation movement before the jump, and the follow through of the tail in regards to the body.
George also mentioned it’s better to exaggerate and overshoot these kinds of movements and then scale it back depending on feedback, since when working in a study animation supervisors don’t want to have to keep telling you to increase movements bit by bit by bit. It’s a better workflow to overshoot (within reason of course), and it saves time on feedback since whoever is critiquing can say something like “scale that back by about half” rather than having to guess how much it needs increasing.
The animation for next week should be blocked so we can practice working pose to pose and blocking out anim. The week after will be splining and clean up.
Pendulum Feedback
I uploaded both my pendulum plan and animation to syncsketch.
Feedback from George:
Bottom joint should trail back slightly more
Bottom joint shouldn’t go higher after stopping than while moving (I originally thought this might give the feeling of the base stopping suddenly some weight, but I can see now it feels wrong)
The movement of the second from the bottom joint just before it stops swinging back and forth should be reduced slightly
End of animation could do with being extended to give more time for the bottom joints to finish moving. Feels a bit too quick on the last few back and forth swings
This week we were exploring the history of experimental and abstract animation, and within this the difference between Formative and Conceptual abstraction.
From my understanding, formative abstraction refers to the visual language and aesthetics, whereas conceptual abstraction refers to the narrative and storytelling methods. With both, it is important to consider why and how something might be abstract.
Activity
An activity for this lesson was to choose a short film we think is experimental, and consider how we might argue for it being either or both formatively and conceptually abstract.
I chose the short film ‘Scavengers’ (2016), later turned into the series ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ (2023). I would argue that while it feels different, the narrative isn’t actually abstract or experiential. While the environment of both the short film and series, planet ‘VESTA – 1’, can be considered a character in its own right by the narrative, this isn’t a new or rare concept to see. I would look at iconic films and series to draw examples of this, where the way the characters interact and are impacted by the environment present the environment as a character itself.
Instead of being Conceptually Abstract, I would argue that the film is a piece of Formative Abstraction that is so successful it transforms the audience reaction to the narrative and tricks the viewer into thinking the narrative is unique. With the short film, we are repeatedly shown brutal and visually uncomfortable behaviours from the humans towards the planet, all so they can experience a moment of the feeling of their home planet. The visuals are like that of a nature documentary, holding on to the details and causing discomfort and sorrow for the planet and its creatures as they suffer the brutality of its own existence and the further impact of its human invaders.
The genre of “Scavengers” would traditionally be science fiction, however as previously mentioned the visuals represent that of a documentary, following both the planet and how it copes and suffers and adapts to the humans. In “Scavenger’s Reign”, this is explored further and we see how, in turn, the human characters react to the planet. I feel the focus on the planet being at mercy to the humans in the short film is representative of how the series as a whole explores the environmental character first and the human characters second. I would argue that the short film isn’t science fiction at all, it is a visually experimental, explorative, documentary of what lengths humans will go to survive and cope with their surroundings, and how in turn the environment suffers from these lengths when the environment isn’t considered as its own being to be respected.
My Research Topic
An activity for this lesson was to choose a short film we think is experimental, and consider how we might argue for it being either or both formatively and conceptually abstract.
I chose the short film ‘Scavengers’ (2016), later turned into the series ‘Scavenger’s Reign’ (2023). I would argue that while it feels different, the narrative isn’t actually abstract or experiential. While the environment of both the short film and series, planet ‘VESTA – 1’, can be considered a character in its own right by the narrative, this isn’t a new or rare concept to see. I would look at iconic films and series to draw examples of this, where the way the characters interact and are impacted by the environment present the environment as a character itself.
Instead of being Conceptually Abstract, I would argue that the film is a piece of Formative Abstraction that is so successful it transforms the audience reaction to the narrative and tricks the viewer into thinking the narrative is unique. With the short film, we are repeatedly shown brutal and visually uncomfortable behaviours from the humans towards the planet, all so they can experience a moment of the feeling of their home planet. The visuals are like that of a nature documentary, holding on to the details and causing discomfort and sorrow for the planet and its creatures as they suffer the brutality of its own existence and the further impact of its human invaders.
The genre of “Scavengers” would traditionally be science fiction, however as previously mentioned the visuals represent that of a documentary, following both the planet and how it copes and suffers and adapts to the humans. In “Scavenger’s Reign”, this is explored further and we see how, in turn, the human characters react to the planet. I feel the focus on the planet being at mercy to the humans in the short film is representative of how the series as a whole explores the environmental character first and the human characters second. I would argue that the short film isn’t science fiction at all, it is a visually experimental, explorative, documentary of what lengths humans will go to survive and cope with their surroundings, and how in turn the environment suffers from these lengths when the environment isn’t considered as its own being to be respected.
This week we opened a sample project so we could use existing assets to learn about sequencers in UE5.
Sequencers are essentially timelines, and are a key aspect of making a film in UE5. It’s best to have different sequencers for different types of assets, and then a master sequencer from which the film will be rendered out from.
We also looked into cameras, and how we can use prexitising settings to replicate different brands/models of physical cameras.
Project Progression:
I found a rig I would love to use for my project (the Zio rig by Hernan Ares), but despite many of the creators social media pages saying it was available to download, I couldn’t find a page to actually download it. I contact the creator via email in hopes he might be able to provide a link to a purchase/download page or even provide direct access to the rig for a fee. In the meantime, I can focus on making a rough storyboard and looking for alternative rigs to use.
Serra also was able to find the city subway train project from the Unreal Marketplace again and its actually on sale for free at the moment, so I was able to add that to my vault for future use. I’m also planning on exporting the model to use in the previs. Serra also sent me a link to some documentation on 2D Materials in UE5, which I will be referring to when I start experimenting with materials myself.
This week George showed us a cool gif that explains and shows examples of the 12 Principles of Animation:
Squash and Stretch
Timing and Motion
Anticipation
Staging
Follow-Through and Overlapping Action
Straight Ahead and Pose-to-Pose Action
Slow In and Out
Arcs
Exaggeration
Secondary Action
Solid Drawing
Appeal
George mentioned to think of the solid drawing more as solid posing when it comes to 3D Animation.
We also watched a video about using spheres in more complex shots to break down motion arcs, and how tracking over existing shots with high visual appeal with spheres can show how simple it can be to create such appeal. The breakdown of the shot from ‘Brave’ was my favourite, as when viewing the shot alone it was easy for me to get overwhelmed when thinking about how the animator managed to create such satisfying movement in the characters, and while the overlay of the spheres doesn’t discount the animator’s talent it does make it seem much more achievable with practice and understanding.
George advised we do some post sketching, focusing on anticipation, lines of action, and clear silhouettes. I went to the V&A museum to sketch some of the statues, and also used the Bodies in Motion site to sketch some still frames of interesting poses. I sometimes focused only on the silhouette, sometimes only drew a stick figure representation, and sometimes sketched out the full or nearly the full pose. I also tried to draw over some with lines of action so I can translate this understanding of them into my 3D animations.
For the practical work, we animated a pendulum shot today, with extra focus on learning the ‘Follow-Through and Overlapping Action principle.
We also got feedback on our bouncing ball animation from last week.
My bouncing ball animation:
My feedback:
Have more of an arc on the entrance drop of the ball
Have the stretch come in a little later and make it more extreme
On the later bounces, track how low the ball is and make sure its height at the frame before impact is getting lower each time
Drop off the squash and stretches sooner
Have more rotation on the last few bounces and as it rolls
Add a few more frames to the end to give it time to come to a halt
Our lecture for the first week was cancelled, so we had an introduction to the brief this week before the main lecture.
We were taught how we can approach picking a research topic, such as considering what skills we need to attain for the area of the industry we want to go in and how the research topic could help with that.
We were also taught about the different art elements to consider both with our practical work and when critiquing work as part of our research pieces. Observing, documenting, and learning from our visual environment is always important to developing our artistic skills.
History of Animation
Originally, animation was taking up as an art movement, and was celebrated as a new way for artists to express themselves in ways they had never been able to do so before. Being able to make even the most abstract of ideas come to life and have movement was an exciting new medium to explore.
We were tasked to find films where artists/animators celebrate the artform of animation from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. While it might fall a bit out of the time frame, I thought of ‘Betty Boop: Snow White’ from 1933. The animation medium in this short film was used in a way that harnesses the ability to animate surreal concepts, especially with the scene featuring the song ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’ by Cab Calloway.
My Research Topic
I’m not yet exactly sure which topic I want to base my research on, but I have had an interest in both how experimental visuals advance animated media, and the phycology of media and fictional characters for a while, so I would like to involve one of both of those topics. I also became very interested in the representation of rebellions through media such as ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Andor’, which could potentially tie in well with phycology. I could also explore something mentioned in our lecture this week, this being how in the absence of TV and cinema, art was the main movement of culture. I would be curious to explore how animation has been used to both represent and create movement in rebellions.
While my undergraduate dissertation analysed the closing scene of ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2’, I focused more on how the visuals summed up the tragic events of the film and the bittersweet ending for the protagonist than the theme of rebellion. I did however touch on the tragic nature of the protagonist being a tool of war, and still find this topic to be very interesting and would love to have the chance to explore it more.
For this week, Serra showed us how to set up our UE5 project and the importance of project structure.
From the start we should be keeping our outliner and project files neat and organised so we and any collaborators never have trouble finding specific assets.
For the Content Browser tabs:
Favourites: assets used a lot I want quick access to
Project name (SerraClass_02102024 in this case): current project assets
Collections: I can make collections of assets here. Good for collaborative projects where each person can have their own collections that can be viewed and accessed by everyone else.
Serra recommended we have multiple content browser tabs open at the same time, so we can have different types of assets on each tab and speed up our workflow. She also recommended we have a folder for in class work so we can have it stored separately from out of class work we do in the same project.
For lighting, we made an emissive material to use on one of the cubes we loaded into our scenes. We shouldn’t use emissive materials as a main light source, especially when we have many better lighting options to use, but they can have a nice visual effect elsewhere (neon lights for example wouldn’t be used to light an entire street, but should still give off light to look accurate).
We also added in the starter content pack to our project, which can also be added when setting up the project, from ‘Add Feature or Content Pack…’. The same menu can be used to change the format of the project. For example if we are working on a film but want to turn it into a first person game, this can be done from here.
Using a few assets from the starter content pack, we learnt how to merge them if we like the arrangement and want to repeat that several times in a level. Merging is different to grouping, because when merging objects they essentially all become one mesh and material and cannot be separately edited after merging.
Going back to materials, we were shown how to make a metallic/shiny material. Serra explained the reason we turned roughness to zero and metallic to one for this example is because a fully shiny material has no roughness and is fully metallic. For more realistic metals, we would want some roughness in there, how much depends on how worn/imperfect the material might be.
Next, we looked at levels. Sublevels can be used to make changes to master levels for different circumstances. For example, when making a film I might have a forest that has some day shots, but I also want some night shots later in the film. Rather than having two different levels where only the lighting and a few other assets change, I can make the forest on a master level, and have two sublevels for night and day. If we forget to make a new level and are currently working on a master level, we can change levels by selecting the assets, right clicking, and clicking Move Selected Actors to Level.
To finish up, Serra recommended we open sample projects and explore them, especially with how the project is structured so we can see more examples of that in relation to this week’s lecture.
Project Development
I’m currently torn between two similar ideas. I was still set on my previous idea with someone on an underground train thinking about their day and those thoughts being visualised and animated out the window of the train, integrating with the blurred shapes of the passing tunnel.
But when I was doing some visual research (particularly for aesthetics/colours for the project) I found an artist I’ve been a fan of for a while again, James Fenner.
The heavy use of bold eyes on silhouetted faces and heads brought to mind the anxiety I sometimes feel on busy trains, where I sometimes start to feel like everyone is looking at me. I had the idea of someone being on a train, and there being other passengers that slowly start staring at them. The colours and shapes get more bold and distorted to represent the main character’s growing anxiety. The film ends with them stumbling off the train onto the platform breathing deep gasping breaths, and the people in the background either not looking at all or just looking concerned.
I think I like this idea more as, while very similar to my first idea, I can focus more on the animation and interesting visuals (something I wanted to experiment with a lot during my studies). The previous idea could potentially take up a lot of my time with figuring out how to integrate the thoughts of the person’s day visually into the blurred tunnel, whereas this idea already has some ground work for the visuals.
I continued to build a Pinterest board for this idea to help me when it comes to experimenting and developing materials in UE5. I think before I start doing that though, I want to mock up a rough previs/storyboard as I don’t want to get too attached to an idea that isn’t feasible to complete in the time we have. For myself, nailing down the length of this project is going to help a lot in the long run, and once I have that I can also make myself a project schedule.
Next tasks:
Make a previs/storyboard/mix of the two to give an idea of how long the project will be and what elements will be involved.
Plan out a schedule, including allocated time for different stages. Give some overlap for things that end up not taking as long/take longer.
Start doing look development, particularly with materials in UE5, exploring potentially animated elements so I can have the materials distort more and more throughout.
Ask Serra if she has the subway pack in her Unreal Engine vault (during our talk about my idea she mentioned she might already have one of the subway packs I showed her, and asked me to remind her to check during the next lecture).
For this lecture, we were introduced to the brief and George demonstrated how to do a bouncing ball animation in Maya.
We were shown a good YouTube channel, 3D Animation Internships, which shows shot progressions from various big 3D Animated films.
For Maya, we were first shown how to set up a new project:
File > Set Project…
Then George showed us how to change preferences and the best preferences to use:
Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences
Once we had set up the new project and our preferences, we then downloaded a ball rig from Behance and referenced it into Maya. George then drew out how to time out the bouncing ball, explaining how the motion and energy of the ball drops off steadily until it comes to a stop. He also explained how the ball will be at its slowest at the top of its arc, and fastest at the bottom, and drew the timing of these frames accordingly. As a class we followed along with George as he animated the ball in Maya using the drawn out timing as reference, first blocking out the ball at its lowest and highest points, then the arc of the movement, then the speed. Finally, we added in some squash and stretch. He also explained how even realism animation has squash and stretch, just not the change of volume that stylised animation has, such as crouching before a jump and then stretching out during the jump.
George also explained that rotation order when animating is important to avoid gimble lock, which can cause animations to bug out and not work as wanted. When using the rotation tool while animating in Maya, the rotation order should be x>y>z. This can sometimes differ between different software.
Before the next session, we need to make a SyncSketch account (for feedback sessions), finish the ball shot, and upload it to Syncsketch. We should only playblast our shots for these feedback sessions instead of rendering, which we should do for the final submission.
We were also told to buy a copy of ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’ which I already own from my previous studies.
We spent most of our first lecture introducing ourselves to each other, and being introduced to the unit and Unreal Engine 5. Serra showed us how to download UE5, and showed us some examples of past student work for the unit.
For the unit, we will be taking a familiar physical space of our choice and deconstruct it so we can approach the technical task with an experiential attitude. We were advised to start thinking and researching what sort of physical space we want to work with. We should pick environments that will help utilise the work we want to put into them.
The first thing that came to my mind was the London Underground trains, and how I often space out thinking about my day while on the train there while looking out the windows at the tunnel streaking past, made up of blurred lines and blocks of colours. I think I want to start my project with someone thinking about their day, and then pan over to the window were things they are thinking about are animated into the blurred shapes of the tunnel. We were shown a student example were someone used block colour shaders that I think could potentially work well for this, but I want to later do some visual experiments to find the best look to match my ideas.
I made an account with Epic Games with my UAL email, and downloaded UE5. I also browsed the store for potential assets, and found a few cool looking subway trains I could use, but Serra also mentioned UE5 will be getting an update in the next couple of weeks so the store will change up a bit, so I haven’t downloaded anything just yet to account for that.
I also asked how we can use assets from outside the Unreal store, and Serra told me we can use any music as long as it is copyright free, and other assets are fine as long as they work in the version of Unreal we will be using. She recommended TurboSquid as an example of websites to find good assets on. For music, I definitely want to find something that gives off similar vibes to the urban landscape of London. My initial thoughts are either British punk music, or hiphop music that originated from London.
