I unfortunately missed last weeks lesson/feedback session due to health issues. I’m still dealing with that, so the project hasn’t progressed since my last post unfortunately.
Class Content
This week a few of us did mocap. I was able to capture various pieces of data, which I’m hoping to use for 3D animation pieces over the summer. Since mocap data cleanup would be good to have in my showreel if I apply to any VFX houses after graduation I have wanted to capture some of my own to have for a while now but I haven’t been able to get round to it, so this was a great opportunity.
Make sure IK/FK switches are smooth, and there’s no popping
Make sure animation is following nice arcs. Might need to animate on 1s/key certain parts of body every frame to achieve this
Make sure scene/props are set up at this point
Intro to Acting:
Jeff Gabor: Animator, very animated in his reference footage, great acting. George showed us some of his progressing showreels. He’s also good at animating women, and has clearly paid close attention to the small details of how women move and talk compared to men. With newer animators, it tends to be easier for people to act out reference and animate with characters of their own gender, since its what people know better.
You need a break in the line/in the acting, can’t just be one emotion through an unbroken monologue
Even if parts of body aren’t fully visible to camera, you should still roughly (at least) animate them to make rest of body more believable. If I adjust my feet when standing, the rest of my body will follow.
When starting this shot, some things to consider:
What is happening with the character before the shot that leads into this one?
We should know our dialogue by heart by next week, as we should be really familiarising ourselves to it in detail
Reference is absolutely needed, even if we’re taking our sound from a clip of something
We shouldn’t just recreate the scene our sound is from, we should be adding our own spin on it
This week’s assignment:
Final polish on body mechanics
Audio clip we will be using added to filmed reference
Plan sheet (example below)
Close up shot, chest up, 1 character only.
Avoid overacting in reference, don’t move around too much.
Blue line is the sort of wave the sounds takes, emphasis on different words, etc
Come up with a little bio for the character we will be portraying to give some direction for how we animate them
Week 4 Assignment: Polish 1
I had an easier time this week compared to last week with the spline and polishing, but it was definitely still challenging. I keep running into the same issue where the animation ends up looking quite janky and jittery. I tried to follow the advice of working from the core outwards to avoid some of this, but I found it still happened a fair bit and took a while to fix. When I have more free time I would like to go through a few quick shots and work on improving this issue.
I do really like how the body movement on the opening stumble improved from last week, that portion of the shot already feels heaps better.
Polish 01 Feedback:
Track the arcs of the hands on the shot opening, and make them more satisfying
The arcs of the hips and chest during the fall could be improved, would be good to have them go up for a few frames before curving downwards
The elbows and knees should be locked when weight is being put on them, currently they wobble around the floor a fair bit when the character is pushing themselves up after the fall
Today we explored metamorphosis in animation, and how some animation works are more experimental with how they portray their visuals and narrative compared to more conventional works.
One example work we were shown, ‘Love & Theft’, is an example of literal metamorphosis through the visuals, with no cutting between shots as the animation instead seamlessly flows into itself.
For my current previs work, I am realising my idea will need a lot of thought put into the transitions between shots, so this will be a topic worth revisiting when working on my FMP.
Topic Progress
While I’m still busy with other projects, I did start some research and came across the essay by Gwyneth Jones ‘Wild Hearts in Uniform – the Romance of Militarism in Popular Science Fiction’ that I found interesting and relevant to my thoughts from last week. While quite opinionated, there is some very interesting thoughts on the representation of militarism in science fiction that could make for good frameworks for my own research.
Still behind schedule this week with a just under half the shots still being storyboard panels, and I think I focused too much on individual shots rather than having everything at least in 3D stills, but I am happy that I managed to get one of the longer shots (Shot 0130) roughly animated. I did unfortunately have some issues cycling the run animation for the wolf, I want to go back and see if I can fix the cycling with some graph cleanup and tweaking. George did also recommend me a different, simpler rig to use though, so unless fixing the current wolf is reasonably quick I might just use the other rig instead.
I’m still finding it a little difficult to get the camera angles I had in mind working in 3D, so once I’m done blocking all of the shots I want to go back and tweak a few of those.
I wanted to add a fast paced punky song to the previs as this is the kind of music I would like to use for the FMP, so I chose “Worms On Tarmac” by Soft Play (latest fav band). I am also planning to find the email address for their manager to give a shot at asking if I can use the song. I have other songs in mind from smaller artists that I could use, but while studying my BA I was able to get permission to use a Porter Robinson song at no cost (despite offering) and he was a much bigger artist than Soft Play at the time of my enquiry, so I think it’s worth asking. I would like to have some kind of style concept/work to send with the email before I ask though, so I’m planning on waiting until around the start of Term 3.
Previs Feedback
George recommended this Wolfdog rig as an alternative to the one I’m currently using (since I had some issues with it in Shot 0130)
For Shot 0170, try animating the camera slightly following the wolf’s movement with some lag as if a real person is filming it
For the transition between shot 0190 and 0200, could try something like the transition here
This week we got feedback on our splined side step animation, and learnt the importance of weight distribution balance in preparation for doing our side step animation. To help us learn how to balance weight distribution, we will be posing the Bony rig using our pose sketches as reference. In general, learning weight distribution is going to be key for any weight shift animations we do in the future.
Ball with Tail Spline Feedback:
Feedback from George:
Keep tail scrunched up for longer, until frame where ball jumped up, then have tail whip down within 2 frames
Tail still needs pulling up to follow the curve of the ball/itself more
Make tail whip after landing quicker and add secondary flick in also
This week we examined how animation has been used as commentary on social and political topics. Within these topics, messages can be delivered through moving image as things such as propaganda, subliminal messaging, documentaries, personal experiences, etc.
Activity
Our task for this week:
Research and present an argument for an animated work you consider tackles any issues of equality, diversity or social injustice (150-200 words)
I decided to do this research on the Netflix series Arcane. The article by Perdhana and Kusuma (2023) highlights how various characters in Arcane struggle, benefit from, and work through social injustice, by closely examining various frames from the episodes. Yet I realised quickly that the, arguably, main two characters of Arcane weren’t discussed directly at all, Vi and Jinx. Within the story, they are the two characters immediately introduced as victims of the social injustice against the lower class of Piltover, suffering the loss of their parents and forever traumatised. They continue to suffer within the system of social injustice throughout the story. While every other character is explored through how they interact with the inequality, many even enforcing it for their own benefit, Vi and Jinx’s stories are the most profound because they are the most realistic depictions of victims of the system throughout the series. They care not for the system they are victims of. They show little interest in fighting against it or using it for their own benefit. Vi wants to save her sister and regain some of her lost childhood. Jinx in the first season wants to find reassurance that she isn’t broken, and in the second wants to walk away from her broken self. Even when pushed to interact with the social injustice they live in, they either reject it or merely go along with what the narrative forces them into.
Perdhana, P.D, Kusuma, A.S. (2023) ‘Representation of Social Inequality in the Netflix Series Arcane (Semiotic Analysis of Roland Barthes Model)’, Proceeding ISETH (International Summit on Science, Technology, and Humanity), pp. 1654–1668. Available at: https://proceedings.ums.ac.id/iseth/article/view/4558.
This week Serra showed us some physics in UE5. We learnt how to make objects fracture upon impact, and how to constrain objects.
Project Progression
I bought the Apollo and Artemis rigs and, following the creators instructions, used a wrap deformer to attach the provided outfit to the rig. I’m planning on using Apollo for the main character, and I can use Artemis for one of the background characters. I have other rigs I would be happy with as the other background characters. I did however see on the Discord server for the Apollo and Artemis rigs that the creator, Ramon Arango, is going to be releasing six more rigs soon that look really cool. Depending on the timing of the release and the cost, I might buy these as well, both for the background characters on this project and for future projects.
I also finished my storyboard, and next will be taking pictures of the sketches and editing them into an animatic. I found music I like (link), and while I’m not certain I will use it for the final edit (mostly due to timing, but I could always edit the music also), I can at least use it as a stand-in for now.
