My final animatic

Overall I think that this module has gone okay, I think that because I couldn't keep my mind made up on what type of scene that I was doing held me back as it made my start the actual animation process pretty late into the module which didn't help with the fact that I am a very novice animator and this is one of the first times that I have ever delved within the field of animation as this even though we are a at basic stage.

Even though I have struggled with some area's of this module I feel that I have learned a large amount about the animation field in general not just how it fits into the gaming side. I feel that learning about the basic principles of animation has helped me understand how to approach the task and what areas to look at next. One of the main things that I have learned about animation is to try and get as much feedback as you can when taking on an animation project as it helps to get different perspectives on your scene as even though you may think that for example a character may walk correctly another may see the minor detail that you have missed that might make your animation a whole lot better.

Concerning my own work I am happy with the way that the animation has turned out in the end and I hope that people can understand the joke as I have not just copied the scene but taken it out of the movie and put it into a whole other different scenario which I think helps the scene take a different direction as on its own its a very memorable able but boring scene.

I am planning to keep going with the scene at a later date to try and incorporate my skills that I may pick up in the future to try and make the best out of this scene to try and further my animating skills. I think that the lip syncing needs looking at, as in some areas it is not the best that it could be and also the movement towards the bottom half of the body as that is one of the areas that I struggled with.

Final animation completed with sound

Above shows the final animation without any sounds put in.

Animation is coming along nicely, the first bit a talking is pretty much there but after that it goes a little downhill. I am going to hopefully fix this problem and get the lipsyncing to a higher level.

Here is a gif of my scene currently.

Here is a redone version of my animatic as I had another idea of what to do with my scene, which I like more, I will add more frames and a close up angle in order to break up the scene but just wanted to get a quick prototype out to see what it will look like.

 Sad

 Anger

 Disgust

 Happy

Fear/Surprise

This task was to get used to the different types of facial expressions that a face will make depending on the emotion of the character at that point in time. Here is a variety of different facial expressions that I may use within my animation and also it points out how the face chances depending on the expression.

Finally I have taken this and used it on my own animatic, I have recorded myself acting out my animatic and then gone through the video and taken out the key poses which I have then over layed a quick sketch to further highlight the extreme poses.

Both with and without the overlay on the extreme poses.

This video is showing a wonderful actor displaying his reaction to eating something that doesn't taste very nice. I have then gone onto plot out the key poses and have identified the extreme poses within the short video.

These are the key poses that I have over layed a stick figure on the top to draw interest to the poses from a video referencing task in which I have jumped. The key poses show where the character is in the different frames and what the main poses that the character will make when completing the task.

Here is the video to go with the key poses above showing the whole array of movement.

mouth animatic

Due to feedback from an earlier animatic I have added extra detail to the close up shot of the face, rather than having just eyes I have added the nose and mouth to add an extra dynamic to try and get a more emotional response.

revised animatic

This is another reworked animatic, this time I have added another camera angle to the short animatic to keep it looking dynamic rather than having just one angle to the scene throughout. I have tried to show the emotion in the face when he is speaking.

Here is a revised version of my animatic which I have changed due to the feedback from my lecturer, I have tried to make it so the characters are not exactly like the film and have more action and emotion in the animatic.

Here is a redone version of my animatic to hopefully get a better idea of what will happen within the animation.

This is the final product which has both movement of the ball and a touch of squash and stretch where the ball hits the ground. Overall it looks very realistic and I am very pleased with the results, the small hint of squash and stretch adds a lot to the animation even in the short time when it is used in the animation. If i was to improve on this I would go over all the timings again to make sure they are perfect and add extra frames to the start of the animation so that the audience can see where the ball is bouncing from.

Again I have added another element to the initial bouncing ball animation, I have changed the position and scale of the ball so it bounces across the screen using shift-w to set the different frames. In addition to this I have made the ball bounce lower and lower after each bounce to feel like it is slowing down in momentum.

squash and stretch

Above is a variation of the previous bouncing ball animation, here I have added a large amount of squash and stretch into my animation to emphasize what will happen when the ball hits the floor. As you can see it looks more realistic and feels like an actual ball, however the amount of squash and stretch that a certain item has when it hits the ground depends on what type it is, such as a tennis ball would have more squash and stretch than a bowling ball when bouncing.

bouncing ball

Here is the a video of a ball bouncing. This is it in its primary form which shows the movement of the ball. I have deleted the history and frozen the transformations before starting to animate the ball, then I have used shit-w to set the location of the ball in different frames rather than just using s to lock out all the different transformations when setting key-frames. As you can see it is very basic and I will be adding different elements to this animation to make it look more believable.

I have auditioned a few different rigs from the 11 second club website and have come to a decision for which one that I want to use for my animation. I have chosen the MAX rig as I feel that it will be the best for my personal animation due to the fact that my animation will be facial expression heavy which I have found this rig is better than the others that I used.

Script

TRAVELLING UP THE WINDING MOUNTAIN PATH BATTLING THROUGH ALL THE ELEMENTS WE FIND A SMALL CAMPSITE WITH TWO TRAVELLERS DWELLING. ONE HAS BEEN OUT TO SCAVENGE AROUND THE BARON LANDSCAPE WHILE THE OTHER HAS PREPARED WHAT LITTLE FOOD THEY HAVE LEFT. BOTH TRAVELLERS ARE EXTREMELY TIRED AND HUNGRY AND CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT FOOD THEY HAVE TO EAT.

THE LONELY OLD MOUNTAIN STANDS PEERING ABOVE ALL OTHERS OVERLOOKING THE TREES WITH TREMENDOUS SUPERIORITY HOUSING TWO MEN COOKING LUNCH ON TOP OF AN OPEN FIRE. MULLING OVER THE POOR STANDARD OF FOOD THAT THEY HAVE IN THEIR MITS A DEBATE BREAKS OUT ABOUT THE FANTASIES OF FOOD THEY’ED RATHER HAVE.

SITTING DOWN BESIDE THE ROARING FIRE WITH NOTHING BUT A FEW HERBS AND SPICES TO TRY AND SALAVGE THEIR DINNER THEY START TO CHATTER AND BICKER WITH ONE ANOTHER.

MAN 1 LETS OUT A HEARTY SIGH BEFORE AND LOOKS OVER AT THE OTHER MAN.

MAN 1 - “What we need is a few good taters”

MAN 2 BRINGS UP HIS HEAD, AND WITH A CONFUSED AND BEWILDERED LOOK REPLIES.

MAN 2 – “What’s taters precious? What’s taters eh?”

MAN 1 LOOKS OVER AT THE OTHER MAN WITH AN ANGRY, SHOCKED LOOK TRYING TO COMPREHEND WITH WHAT HE HAS JUST SAID.

MAN 1 – “PO-TAY-TOES”

MAN 1 KEEPS STERNLY LECUTERING HIS FRIEND TRYING TO EXPLAIN HIS REASONS.

MAN 1 – “BOIL EM”

MAN 1 – “MASH EM”

MAN 1 – “STICK EM IN A STEW”

END

 

Here is the basic animatic for my scene.

Here are some very rough thumbnails for my animation. I have chosen to do a scene from Lord Of The Rings.

Bouncing Ball

I have experimented with basic animation, trying to get myself used to animating within Maya due to never really using it before, I have only animate within flash so I know a little about key frames. Here I have started off with the ball on the floor then going in the air then back on the floor. I have frozen the transformations then set the key frames and have moved the pivot point to the bottom of the ball. In addition I have changed the angle of the tangents in the graph editors as at first it looked like the ball was slowing down before it hit the floor which wouldn't be possible or happen in real life. The image below shows he flow of the graph after I have changed the tangents.

Next I will be looking into rigs, which is again the first time that I have delved into this area, I will try to have a play and get to grips before I start animating my final piece.

Animation Presentation

During the 1970's there was a boom in techonology and software which helped Computer graphics and animation break out into the world due to the work of the well respected Ivan Sutherland in the 1960's. He helped to pioneer computer graphics with his work at MIT with the development of a program called sketchpad which allowed the user to interact directly with the image on screen, this was considered as the first Graphical user interface. He then teamed up with David Evans in the late 1960's and started the company Evans & Sutherland which was a driving force in the creation of hardware for the Univeristy of Utah such as the Head mounted display, frame buffers and flight simulators. In addition to this both Evans and Sutherland were professors at the University.

The University of Utah was one of the largest areas for computer animation as it had developed a number of basic techniques for both computer graphics and computer animation such as Gouraud, Phong and Binn shading, texture mapping, raster image display hardware and many more. Due to the higher caliber of hardware at the university they housed a large amount of successful students such as Ed Catmull – co-founder of Pixar and John Warnock of Adobe Systems.

In 1969 the Scanimate was an anolog computer animation system designed to produce a vast amount of video animation on television, it was widely popular due to the speed in which is could create animations in real time rather than waiting for the animation to load like the older film based animatino techniques. The thing that helped distinguish the Scanimate from other systems was the way it used 60 fields per second rahter than the 24 frames per second which made the colours much brighter and more saturated.

There were other areas of the world where computer animation was booming, one of theses areas was the National film board of Canada. They started to delve into computer animation in the early 1970's and completed a few animated films. Metadata was one of the early films completed, in the film it used "interpolating" otherwise known as inbetweening or morphing, this was a technique where the drawings were animated by gradual changes in the images making them seem like they are changing into one another. Another film to come from this area was a film called Hunger/La Faim which was one of the first films to have solid filled raster scanned rendering in their animations.

After this a full length feature film was released in 1974 called Westworld, this was the first film to use digital image processing. It used it to portray the point of view of a robot which was more pixelled than a normal view. Towards the end of the 1970's the direction of computer animation turned to using more 3D techniques within animation. In 1976 the sequel to Westworld, called Futureworld was one of the first films to use 3D wireframe imagery. It was used to create the computer generated face and hand that was used in the film. Furthermore additional films used this technology such as a number of vehicles in the Star Wars such as the Death Star plans and Millennium Falcon. Due to the success of this technology it was used in more and more films , such as The Black Hole in 1979 to create the black hole, and in Alien where it was used to render the navigation monitors in the spaceship.

In addition to this more 3D technology was developed to further advance the film making process and the limitations it had. The Framebuffer, fractals increased the realism that could be created within 3D animation and in the late 1970's motion control photography was developed which was a technique where the computer records the exact motion of a film camera which can be duplicated. This helped to perform motions around stationary models for a more coordinated shot.