I remembered how much of a pain splining my body mechanics shot was due to a lack of blocking keys, so with this blocking plus I wanted to block as much as possible to make the splining process less daunting. I really like the results, and I’m actually pretty excited to go to spline this time around.
Blocking Plus Feedback:
Asymmetry is there in the face now, but needs pushing a lot more at points
Lead into the start of the dialogue with the mouth shape more
Have eyebrow lift and lead the head (then body) upwards
Expression should turn sooner during dialogue pause
Work on getting some of the mouth shapes into more appealing shapes
This week I managed to do a lot more work on the clothing concepts, and while I haven’t decided on a final look for the FMP character I’m happy with the designs for progression onto learning Marvelous Designer.
To start, I exported the Minerva M-Rig out from Maya in a neutral pose, and imported that into Marvelous Designer. I decided to try making the bodysuit first, as I assumed this would be the easiest garment to make. While the basic pattern was pretty easy to mock up, refining the cuts of the cloth along with getting such a tight fitting garment to simulate correctly proved very tricky, especially as I was completely new to the software.
In the end, I was able to cut the pattern up in a way that resembles my concept for the item, but I am still struggling to get the garment to simulate on the model. I am already wondering if tight fitting items would be more suitable as skinned meshes within the rig rather than simulated on top of the animation, but I want to keep pushing forward in order to learn as much as I can since that is my overall goal with this project rather than the visual output.
While working on my previs this week, I was considering what sort of things I could fill the empty space with in the opening shots of the main character (Shot 0010/0030/0050/0070), and I remembered the striking visuals in the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners opening. I wanted to attempt recreating this in 3D to see if I could potentially develop my own version of it later for my FMP.
I started by roughly copying the pose of the main character, David, from the Edgerunners opening using the Minerva rig by Ramon Arango. I then used toon shaders and toon outlines to essentially create masks I could later use for the photography montages. If I do develop this technique for my FMP, it would be much simpler to use Nuke, but for this experiment I wanted to use the tools I already had access to for a quick test.
Next, I took a playblast PNG and brought that into DaVinci Resolve, where I used the separate colours as masks combined with various photo montages (with each image at 2 frames, again to match the Edgerunners opening as closely as possible for now).
For the photos themselves, I used stock images that I then took into Photoshop and edited to have the same posterised, comic look to them, along with the same colour scheme. I chose nature photos to go within the character, signifying her home and her culture, and then city photos for the background to represent the city she is in during the show and how much this contrasts against her core values.
I wanted to add in some of the bold yellow seen in the original opening, so I used a Paper Effect keyed to expand outwards as a replacement for this.
I really like the results, and I’m looking forward to developing the technique to be more personalised for my FMP. I also made sure throughout the process that everything I was doing would be the same if the character was animated, so if I have time in the coming weeks I would like to try the same technique on an animated character. While the character isn’t animated, I still used an image sequence playblast to ensure I was testing that it would work the same.
As for the main previs itself, the updates were mostly to Shot 0020, 0060, and 0180. I added backgrounds to Shot 0020 and 0060, and also adjusted the pose for Shot 0060. I really like the idea of the wolf slowly pacing through a city, with the city being miniature compared to the wolf. I would want to make sure there are enough visual elements to avoid the city looking like a miniature set with a normal sized wolf verses a to scale city with a giant wolf. I also adjusted the poses on shot 0180 and added in the viewport FX slash to the weapon. I think the arm should be lagging behind even more than it already is, so I want to push that more next time.
During my 1-2-1 tutorial with Nigel, he clarified and explained some aspects to the brief that up until now I had misunderstood. I thought this critical report would be a predecessor to the thesis and as such I was trying to focus my critical report topic within the scope of what I wanted to explore in my later wider research. Nigel explained that while we could do this, it would be more effective for us to move onto a different topic for the thesis, especially with the limited word count of the critical report.
Since the 1-2-1 I’ve been considering alternative topics for the critical report, and I think I would like to explore how digital media can specifically help the healing process of viewers struggling with mental illness. While I have seen a lot of research on the general effects to mental health across the board, and on representation of mental illness within digital media, I haven’t seen specific research on my specific desired topic. I do think I would be able to find a lot of interesting research supporting the topic, yet I would be curious to know how well documented it is considering the ethical implications of conducting a study on such a topic when, unlike more traditional treatment methods, I assume it doesn’t have a viable basis as a potential treatment method depending on the outcome of such a study.
If I were to research this topic, I think it would also be useful supporting research to have examples of digital media specifically centred around exploring mental illness in a respectful yet accurate/realistic way. The first two examples that come to mind are Joker (2019), and Russian Doll (2019).
With the Joker, I found the depiction of a man being let down by the mental health treatment system very profound in a time where many are experiencing the same thing. I have seen some criticise the movie based on the idea that mental illness is being depicted as the reason for the main character’s violence, but I personally consider it a (perhaps extreme but still realistic) example of how mentally ill people can suffer and cause suffering when the system they ask for help fails them repeatedly.
As for Russian Doll, I see the series as a raw and honest journey from the point of suffering with mental illness and trauma to finally being ready to start healing. Both characters Nadia and Alan are forced by the narrative to acknowledge their mental health issues, with the narrative both punishing them when partaking in toxic and unhealthy coping strategies, and only progressing as they choose to take the difficult steps towards healing.
While I think the Joker could be an interesting way to explore how difficult the healing process can be without the proper help from the health system, I feel Russian Doll would offer a more clear and concise narrative to explore such a topic with.
I’ve been a bit slow with progress the past couple of weeks, but I’ve managed to make a start on animating. I’ve also found a few more issues with the rig that I’ve been able to fix, one by using the Discord server the creator of the rigs made for users. I also added a Bugs/Issues page to my Google Sheet that I’m using to keep track of the project, mostly so I can note down issues as they come up to look into later and keep track of what I’ve done to fix issues that may come up again and need the same fix. This sheet did prove helpful when I had to redo all of the changes I made to the original rig file due to part of the rig breaking in one of the early rendition scenes. I didn’t notice this issue until part way through animating, but was able to use the sheet I made to quickly reapply the changes without having to try and remember off the top of my head what changes I made.
