Further Developmet

After drawing out some initial designs I came up with a design I liked by combining a few features from each. I have drawn this character out on four legs, and I keep going back between whether it will be on four or two, however now I have come to a decision for four legs. I looked at meerkats after drawing out initial designs and found that they were a perfect subject to look at as they run on four legs but will stand up on their hind legs to look out for predators. I drew from an image I found off the internet as I found that it best represented what I wanted to draw. This design is still subject to change with the patterns on the fur and the colours, so I created a colour sheet to try out different shades and will get feedback from others to see what suits other people. From here I will then develop it further towards a final design and might adjust eye colour to compliment the fur colour, I will then be creating an expression sheet to go with this and will try sculpting my character out in clay to get a better idea of proportions.

Cities and Film - Writing Task

The city has long been used throughout art, photography and cinema, the first images appearing within illustrated journalism. Previously the main focus would have been landscapes and rural settings however as times changed and people moved forward, cities and urban life became more common, these rural landscapes did not provide enough information about urban life so this is where illustration took it further "It had created a visual culture embedded in the social reality of urban life and had urged visual art generally away from landscape toward cityscape, from stasis to kinesis." (Stout, 1999). From here cities were then included within photography and film. When looking within film, genre is always one of the main subjects and this can determine how a city is portrayed. A sci-fi film for example could make a city look more futuristic whereas a detective film, mysterious and dangerous, the city represents this to add to the specific genre. The city can also show the true reality of life, it may not in this case be a portrayal of a genre, but in fact a realization to the audience. "...the viewer confronts and subconsciously confirms the artist's perception of the reality of modern life." (Stout, 1999) What may initially be seen as just a movie and a storyline can bring up subjects that audiences may not have accounted for, it can provide self-reflection within the medium of cinema.

Walter Ruttmann created a city where it was more of a vision, something that derived from his imagination. Cities within films can be a consequence of certain actions such as pollution and global warming or in other cases just a product of the imagination. It can be a way of conveying and introducing new ideas to an audience "His city - a combination of footage of Moscow and of a number of locations in the Ukraine - provides a metaphor, a projection, for the structure of vision and perception embodied in the 'eye' of cinema." (Donald, 2010) Film, along with photography also showed the darker side to cities, it made it more obvious towards audiences and made them see the city for what it really was. Where before viewers would look away from such dark images of the city, "...photography rivets the gaze on an unpleasant but inescapable social reality." (Stout, 1999) hopefully by being aware of these issues, the viewers may stand up and do something about it, but it's never the case. Instead it is a reminder of what is out there, right under our own eyes. A lot of films hold a deeper meaning, whether it be social or political or how technology is affecting our everyday lives "...the most compelling narrative strand concern forces which, once unleashed, have an unmanageable capacity for destruction." (Donald, 2010)

Donald, J. 'Imagining the Modern City: Light in Dark Spaces' in Bridge, G. and Watson, S. (eds.) (2010) The Blackwell City Reader, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, pages 323 - 329

Stout, F. (1999) 'Visions of a New Reality: the City and the Emergence of Modern Visual Culture' in LeGates, R.T. and Stout, F. (eds.) (2003) The City Reader, London, Routledge, pages 147 - 150

Initial Drawings

I started drawing up some initial designs and from here I will be developing a certain aspect to create my final character. In the previous post I mentioned designing a character that would be four-legged however after drawing up some ideas and asking some people, I found that by having the character sitting on its hind legs it looks more cute and innocent. I tried some animal influences to see what I could come up with and what I've taken to the most is probably the big bushy tail from red pandas. By having it wrap round itself it looks far more innocent and cute which is what my character needs to be. There needs to be a false sense of security.

The next stage is to develop my ideas more to come up with a more refined character. I'm going to play around with proportions more - equal sized head to body or larger head in comparison to body. I want to create fur in Maya for my character but have never tried this before (hopefully it's not too difficult) so I will have to come up some designs / patterns for the coat of my character. Colour is going to be a big part of it as different colours represent different feelings and emotions, as I want there to be a colour change anyway when my character goes from normal to angry I have to make sure its normal state will be an obvious change yet doesn't clash or look too impossible.

I have started developing some ideas for the eyes, these still need more work but the general idea are wide eyed with big pupils. When I have decided on the final design for my character I will then experiment with different emotions and how they will transition from one to another.

Power to the Pixels Exhibition

We had our first public exhibition of our work from one of the modules, the Game Art and Machinima module. We showed a collective of work from concept art, to character turnarounds and the final cinematics. It would have been nice to have longer to prepare for this and to refine work to a higher standard but it was also good to see that even on short notice, we were all able to pull it together and what we achieved in that time was not too bad. I felt that overall it didn't feel as professional as I would have liked, we probably needed more time to organise and set up the place. Going down there and checking out the venue before hand would have been useful, to physically see the space we were dealing with and what we could do to enhance it. I definitely think that the next exhibition we hold, there needs to be more publicity, only family and friends really turned up to see it this time round, but it would be nice to get the outside public in and maybe some industry practitioners. For our first time though I guess it was better off being like this as we now know what to do next time and what not to do. It would never have been perfect and correct the first time round, just next time will need improving a lot.

Something else to bear in mind next time, will be to include little blurbs about each piece of work, just to explain in short, the process and what it actually is. If people don't want to be standing by their work all night, this is an alternative that may work if the viewer wants to know more about the piece. Next time I think a different location may be something to look at, even though it's meant to be an up and coming art area, I know it made a few people uncomfortable walking to and from the venue. Because of the location and the feel of the place I think it made a few of us feel unenthusiastic about the whole exhibition, if it was somewhere more central then things might have been different.

All in all it was something new, for the majority of us we had never really put up an external exhibition before, so it was a learning process. We made mistakes but we know what to change next time and hopefully it'll be better and we'll feel more happy about it all. It was still nice to see all our work up and presented though as it's normally just put up online and that's that. An end of year show would be quite good as by that time everyone will have branched out a bit and have produced something individual and unique to themselves.

Panopticism - Writing Task

The Panopticon was designed by Jeremy Bentham as a new sort of prison which through it's architecture created a new form of observation and surveillance. A tower was the central object within the Panopticon where all the cells contained within the prison were built around, everything was open and visible which was drastically different to a dungeon where the main function of it was to deprive light and hide. "Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap." (Foucault, 1997) Being on display, with nowhere to hide allows a person to be fully observed, and this observation is constant due to the central tower which leaves the people thinking they are always being watched. There comes a point where over time this would lead to the person becoming reformed as why do something wrong if you are forever being seen, the main drive is to achieve something without being caught "...they know they are under surveillance but cannot control exactly when they are really being observed - would have to lose the possibility, and finally the desire, of doing wrong." (Kaschadt, 2002). The main objective for the Panopticon may have been a way to reform prisoners, however because of the constant observation this could also lead to assessing different people such as psychiatric patients. It could have been seen as a place of scientific experiments due to the reforming of individuals and correcting their behaviour. "...the Panopticon was also a laboratory it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments..." (Foucault, 1997).

The architecture of the Panopticon could be adapted to suit other types of function such as schools - no copying off other students and no noise, hospitals - where any contagious illnesses would be kept apart, work places - where there would be no distractions between the people. "The arrangement of his room...imposes on him an axial visibility...this invisibility is a guarantee of order." (Foucault, 1997). Theatres influenced Bentham's Panopticon greatly as there was a central platform where the actor would be viewed from. They undertook a similar design, the actor would be constantly visible yet they would also be able to see the actions of the audience, observation takes place from both parties in this instance.

Taking this into the modern day, though Panopticons may not be in use anymore, the idea of it still is around. Certain spaces are laid out in a particular way to achieve the best outcome, open office spaces where everything is on view makes the workers be more productive as there is always the feeling of being watched. When looking at CCTV cameras, these are always watched society, trying to deter crime but there are so many in the world not all of them can be constantly watched. Our actions are always seen but are they always watched "...one is totally seen, without ever seeing..." (Foucault, 1997) Comparing functionality to scientific experimentation, the Panopticon seems to be more of a place of observation and reforming where experimentation can take place. "Under the watchful gaze, criminals would gradually mend their ways..." (Kaschadt, 2002)

Foucault, M. 'Panopticism (extract)' in Leach, N. (ed.) (1997) Rethinking Architecture: A reader in cultural theory, London and New York, Routledge, pages 356 - 367

Kaschadt, K. 'Jeremy Bentham - The Penitentiary Panopticon or Inspection House' in Weibel, Levin and Frohne (eds.) (2002) Ctrl [space]: rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Cambridge Massachusetts, The MIT Press, pages 114 - 119

Looking into animal behaviour

I'm looking into animal behaviour as I want to see what I am able to incorporate into my character. The way an animal goes from their normal state to defensive is quite interesting as their whole body changes, not only the face. Some animals will puff up their fur or feathers to make them appear larger than they seem, whereas others will snarl and roar.

On the right you can see cockatiels, they will puff up their feathers and on the top of their head they have other feathers which will stand up on end when they become interested in something. Four legged mammals such as tigers, lions, dogs, wolves etc will tend to lean into the direction of the threat. Looking at the pose of the tiger it is far more dynamic and powerful - there is more movement within the whole body. I think a four legged animal or creature is the route I might take as it allows more scope for dynamic poses and movement. This tiger is in a more defensive pose, however with my character it will be on the offense so more than likely it will lean into the direction of the photographer. The movement will have to be quick and powerful and I will also have to make sure that the construction of my character will allow me to push it's body further.

Pixar's Brave came out in summer and looking back on the film it seems quite relevant to what I'm trying to achieve. In the film there are two bears, one gentle and kind the other aggressive and powerful. What's interesting about the bears is how Pixar distinguished between the two, by pushing back the ears and contorting the face and making the pupils smaller the bear drastically changes from a sweet and harmless animals to something far more ferocious.
 
“By changing the closing of the eyes, changing the scale of the iris and pupil, it goes from Elinor as a bear to…a bear.” - Bill Sheffler, character supervisor on Brave

Now the problem I need to solve is that real animals going from their normal state to defensive don't tend to change too much, I want a character that looks really cute and innocent to begin with yet will change drastically. I need to find a good balance the cute small bears shown on the right and the angry snarl. There needs to be a powerful transition yet also needs to feel believable that my character could get so angry.

Moodboard

I have created a moodboard, looking specifically at animated characters as I find that it's their expression and exaggeration I want to achieve when it comes to my character. At the minute I have mainly chosen characters that show their anger and how it is portrayed through their faces and the rest of their bodies.

I have found that large mouths with a number of teeth are always a prominent thing as this adds to the 'scare factor' it makes the character more sinister as there is and added layer of danger. The way the body moves is also something that is very important as if it was just their face it wouldn't look natural. By moving the body, if done correctly it can add to their anger as it could show power and force through their movements. They want to be moved in a dynamic way, the line of action must be powerful.

Colour change adds to the overall mood and atmosphere, with Hades and Dracula they both can be quite angry, however their full force isn't shown all the time, so when it does show a visual queue is put in place - colour change. Red is for anger so we as an audience make that connection between the facial expressions and the colour change on screen.

When you look more into facial expressions you notice that the most prominent feature is the eyes. The eyes are the main focal point in any character as we are always drawn to that place first. Eyes need to show emotion, they need to tell you that emotion straight away, it shouldn't be conflicting or else there would be confusion and the overall expression would not look right. Eyes get bigger when angry and pupils are reduced in size, almost as if they are pinpointing the subject at which their anger is about. When it comes to my character I will make sure that the eyes will have enough control on them to create something believable and exaggerated.

The next thing I'm planning on doing is looking more at real life reference e.g. animal behaviour and how it can change when protecting territory or stalking prey. I will also look at any other attributes that could be incorporated into my design. From the top of my head right now, I might look at cockatiels and how they put their head feathers up when interested. Some animals have similar things to this but to warn off predators or others of their species when defending territory. I think it could be easily added into my design at it is something that will emphasise the overall look and add more emotion to my character.

Moving on with ideas

So my initial idea was to create a character that seemed quite mysterious and ominous but would turn out to be actually quite gentle and more afraid of other people. It seemed like a good idea however no ideas were really formulating in my head and there just wasn't a spark. I had an idea to do something with large round creatures, almost like balloons however when I thought about this more it was restricting in the animation sense. Within this module I really want to experiment and develop of facial animation, so an alien that would be a bit more complex would allow me more scope for animation. I watched Hotel Transylvania the other month and I fell in love with this film for the style, exaggeration and technique. Throughout the film Dracula's personality will drastically change, as seen in the video below. This is an idea that I would quite like to work into my vfx short.

My idea has now developed further to where the main character, once taken on board the spaceship will see this alien, all cute and innocent and decide to take a picture. Little do they know that the flash of a camera sets it off, so the alien will change dramatically, roaring and looking scary, almost as if it's defending its territory like an animal. By developing on this idea I can play around more with blend shapes and really get more into the animation. Along with this I will also have to make sure the timing is spot on in order for the reaction to be correct. From here I now will start to draw up some initial ideas for aliens, spaceship and the interior before drawing out the final storyboards.

Identity

The traditional approach to Identity is Essentialism, this is basically our biological make-up - we are born with it in our genes, however this approach allows a lot of stereotypes and cliches. When looking at the historical phases of identity it tends to be that within pre-modern times, identity was stable; the modern age, there was more of a choice, there was a wider range of social roles and within post-modern this is where identity is created and constructed by ourselves and not determined by another.

There are many writers on Identity and each had their own view on the subject. Baudelair spoke of the gentleman-stroller as an identity how they would show themselves off within society. Simmel spoke of the Trickle Down theory where people would hide behind what they wore. Whatever the upper class wore, would trickle down into society and soon enough the lower class would wear similar clothing to try and fit in, but obviously at a lower standard. It was and endless cycle of wearing something new to distinguish social standing.

Foucault introduced the Discourse Analysis where identity is constructed out of the discourses e.g. age, class, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, nationality. If you take class and look at the work of photographer Martin Parr - Ascot 2003 it could be suggested that is he making a social comment on class and the people trying to pursue a different identity. Are they upper class by just attending Ascot and dressing in a very formal matter? Under gender and sexuality the fashion industry where it is mainly targeted towards women, is actually the work of men.

The postmodern identity is constructed through our own social experience. We have the option of inventing our own identity, it is not something that has to be discovered. We have the means of technology to create our own identities in the form of social networks or within a virtual reality like Second Life. Virtual worlds provide environments for experiences however it can be an artificial representation of who the person really is. There are no boundaries within the virtual world, you can be whoever you want to be and this can actually lead to an alienation, a bleak life. People may end up living a lie, constructing a fake life and living it within a virtual world. To some people it's probably easier becoming who you want to be in that world than in real life. It is a form of escape.

Showreel

So I've finally got round to creating my first showreel, this was mainly for a work experience application but either way it's good to have one to summarise what I have created during 2012. Looking back over my previous and most current work I picked out the best parts which would go at the front and end of my showreel. You want to grab the viewers attention so it's always best to start and end with the best. The good pieces should go in the middle, there were some pieces I wasn't too happy with so I thought it best not to include them at all as I knew I could do better. I got the help of Jamie in first year as I'm not too confident with editing. What we ended up with is something that I will be proud to show and even though it is a short showreel I spent a good amount of time on each animation. The more animation I do the more choice I have over what to include in my showreel, and also the more practice I get. This is only my first so there will be more to follow in the near future!


Animation Showreel 2012 from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Stash DVD - 40

The library at uni has a great collection of DVD's from Stash - a monthly DVD magazine that covers animation, vfx and motion graphics for advertising and broadcast. Not only are they the actual pieces themselves but it includes the making's of too which are always really useful. These are great because they cover a range of media and normally things that I have never seen before. All the pieces are from around the world from large companies to individual people. I borrowed one DVD out last year and recently took it out again as it is now really relevant. There were two pieces on issue 40 that really stood out for me.

The first one being the Snickers Rugby Ad - the making of found HERE. The ad itself is very dynamic and powerful which is portrayed through the large demeaning characters and their movements. The way a character is designed and moves gives the audience an instant idea to the feel of the whole piece, so with this ad it builds up the powerful tone and this is also emphasised with the music used. At the minute I think I'm more looking at the making's of to see what was involved in creating a short piece and how in that short time they are able to hook the audience in to it.

The footage itself was shot first as a back plate and then the cg elements added on top. An interesting thing to note is how some of the cg elements aren't very noticeable - at first glance you would just assume it was a real object and not a 3d model. Anything can be cg it just depends on how well you make it seamless with the real environment. I think that's the key thing when you composite cg onto live action footage, without the seamless integration you will loose the audience immediately as they will be too focused on how much it stands out and the immersion will be lost.

There is one part of the ad where one of the characters turns into a human, for this an actor used and they had to film him doing all the movements, even when it was the cg character's part this was so that they could blend the cg and the real together more easily. Props were also used as a guide to show the placement of certain cg object, this gives the actor something to react to and also a reference as to where the 3d model should end up being placed. Everything needs to line up exactly so reference points are key.


Snickers - Rugby from Spy Films on Vimeo.

The second piece I looked at was created by Joh Kuemmel. This was slightly different in the fact that he filmed all the actors against a blue screen and then added this into the 3d model / environment. The waves were actually real footage that was shot on location and then composited on top of all the cg elements. This is a different process to the Snickers ad and I think it depends on your subject matter. You have to figure out what will best suit the idea whether that is more cg models with real actors or a real environment with cg elements added within that. There are pros and cons with each and each can produce different things it's really all down to execution and the idea at hand. This short Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior would have been a lot harder to film on location so it makes sense that the majority of it is cg, yet because of it being executed to a high standard the audience may not realise that it has been created in 3d. The sound also plays a big part to sell the realistic nature of this ad because without it you would instantly know it wasn't real. Folie and sound effects need to be added on top to give that extra layer of realism and immersion. I found that out in the previous module, by creating sounds for even the most mundane things such as the ruffle of a coat you can see how much of a difference it makes, as without it, it just doesn't seem right at all.

Alien Animation - Exhibition

As an exhibition to showcase all of our work from the previous module, Game Art and Machinma - the process behind it all and the final outcomes are going up for one night this week. Some people have taken different jobs to promote the exhibition and create showreels. As I want to become an animator I will take as much practice as I can get so I volunteered myself to create a short animation that would be part of the stings. The stings will go infront of each final cinematic to show who made it and have the title of our exhibition, 'Power to the Pixels'. We chose to use the alien as it has been a reoccurring theme during the Game Art module as we all had to complete one as part of the tutorials.

To make it more interesting I gave the alien more weight, so you could see the sign being a heavy object on him. This also gave me the opportunity to do something more than just a walk cycle, before this point I hadn't really touched upon weight. I think what I have created has turned out well and the more animation I'm doing, the more I'm understanding and realising how much the body actually moves even when just walking.

Not only was this beneficial for me in the form if more animation practice, but it also gave me a chance to work on a very short timescale and it was interesting to see how much I managed to achieve in just under 2 days. It's nice to do these short animations as well as it is quite refreshing and you get used to working in a short period of time. When looking at industry they normally expect someone to be able to complete so many seconds I polished animation in a week, so I think it would be good for me to get into the habit of doing this. It will also allow me to add more pieces to my showreel and I will be able to push myself that little bit more.


Alien Animation from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Gloam

This is a lovely little short that I came across awhile back, I just love the style of the whole piece and how the main character blends in so well with it's environment. The character itself is very mysterious but draws you in at the same time. When you watch its movements, it moves almost in the same manner as a human being, it's very lifelike and at some parts it looks like it could just be a person in a costume. I like the idea of a character that seems like something you wouldn't normally approach due to its appearance and size, however in actual fact it's just lonely an probably more scared of you than you are of it.

What's good about this short is that a breakdown is provided (HERE) of not only the character, but how it was composited into the shots. When it comes to vfx there are two different ways, footage is shot first then CG elements are composited on top of that; or the filmed footage is green screened and then placed within the CG environment. This short has gone for the compositing the CG onto the clean back plate. It's interesting to see how there is a lot of 'clean up' that is involved, you can't just go putting CG elements onto a shot without adding colour correction, filters and other techniques for it all to blend together seamlessly. For vfx to be realistic all the elements need to come together without the viewer being able to pick it apart and distinguish where it has been composited.


Gloam from We Are The Forest on Vimeo.

Visual Effects and Animation for Film Production

New module time! Visual Effects and Animation for Film Production. Our brief is based around the title of 'Invasion' and we have been given a pre-made storyboard where we have to follow the first 3 shots exactly, the last shot is entirely up to us and we have free reign over it. I am really looking forward to this module as I know I am able to push my animation further especially with more facial expressions with the use of blend shapes. This wasn't possible in the previous module due to the animation being imported into a game engine. The only worry I have at the minute over this module is time restrictions, as I will be away for one week during February for the Animex conference. Another hinderance may be some possible work experience at the end of January (this isn't confirmed yet but there is a possibility of this happening for a maximum of 2 weeks). To make sure I am best prepared I have already started planning out my time and distributing my work between the weeks as best as I can at the moment, without knowing fully what I am going to be doing. I will also make sure that I don't make too much work for myself, not overly complex models and environments. As I want to concentrate on animation this is the area that I should spend the most time on.

I have began to look at different vfx companies, films, adverts and shorts to get an idea of what's out there and to gain some inspiration. There will be blogs up shortly of my findings and hopefully some initial ideas of where I may take this project.

Creative Rhetorics

The main thing that was spoken about in this lecture was creative flow. D&AD started a project with many famous creatives who would all share their approach to the dreaded 'blank sheet of paper' - The Blank Sheet Project. It's always a daunting thing, facing a blank sheet, where do you start? Will this idea be good enough? Will it be the best?

Renzo Rosso the founder of Diesel Jeans spoke of 'the next is always the best'. This suggests that no matter how good you think one idea is, your next one will be better. You have to nurture your skill and evolve it to progress in your field. It can also suggest that art is beyond definition, it's constantly changing therefore who's to say what's good and what isn't. Teamwork is key, without teamwork it is very had to get ahead. One person on their own isn't enough, it may be to start out with but to develop an idea, to push things forward you need a team. You need to be able to work well with others and collaborate with different creatives.

The creative genius is something interesting to look at, as artists we are the creator not imitator, we create new rules and should be empowering other artists like us and boosting creativity. Creativity is an individual decision so it is up to us whether we want to push ourselves or not. It is so easy to just give up and not reach our full potential but at then end of the day it is down to ourselves. If we do not have the motivation or passion why bother. Our creativity is something we should be proud of, it should be something we pass onto others to inspire.

Final Cinematic

Below is the final video of our group cinematic. There were a few issues that crept up during the whole process, most of which were resolved, however the main thing that got to me the most was the animation when it was exported out into Unity3d. The problem was that some of the geometry ended up moving about on their own without having and key frames on them in Maya. Apparently this is happens because Unity tries to convert the curves from Maya and it's not as stable as it should be. To overcome this problem a possibility would be to put it through Motionbuilder before Unity, this should in theory stabilise the animation more. I guess there are just compromises to be made, especially when doing something like this is, has hardly been done before. It's good to see how programmes can be used together and how the industry is using this to their advantage. When Unity 4.0 comes out it should be improved to a much greater standard so hopefully this issue will be fixed.

I'm quite happy with how the animation turned out in the end considering it was my first real attempt to make a substantial animation using biped rigs. There are many things I would change but that comes with time and practice - walk / run cycles for example.

Gloria Kendrick - Private Eye from Siobhan Parkhouse on Vimeo.

Key Frame Animation

I just came across this film that was produced in 1971 by the National Research Council of Canada which shows how key frame animation and 3D models were produced. It's quite amazing to see how far the technology now has progressed and how much we take it for granted. To make a simple cube it involves drawing out the individual lines whereas today it's pre-made, no work involved. The whole process it takes just to key frame some animation is a lot of effort, there are a lot of stages that need to be done before you can move on to the next pose or frame. Watching this has just made me appreciate Maya even more and how much you can actually do with it. We shouldn't be afraid to push the boundaries as if people back in the 70's didn't do this 3D modelling and animation may not be as progressed as it is today. The people back then were pioneers and what we have done in this module within Unity is something that has not been done as much so you could even say we are pioneering to an extent.

Animating

I did all the animation within Maya and in a previous post I mentioned that it took me a long time and a lot of different iterations before I was happy with a run cycle I had created. Throughout the whole animation process I have constantly been going back through my reference videos we took at the start to work out how our characters were going to move. I also would act it out to myself to understand the weight and movement of the character more.

To begin with I blocked out the animation which gave me a good idea of how long the shots would be and I could work with that when refining the animation. I was then going to change the curves from stepped to linear and then to spline, however I found this really awkward, when changing between them my movements ended up being all over the place and I couldn't edit them too well. I'm not sure if I keyframed everything each time so this could have been the reason why so I may try this technique again at another stage when I have more time. Because of this however I ended up starting from scratch and using the auto tangents. I didn't really edit the curves too much once I keyframed it all, maybe a few tweaks here and there for timing but I didn't really have the time to go in and really analyse each part. I would have liked to as this would have given me more practice within the graph editor. I did keep referring back to the blocking animation though to make sure I was on track with the timings.

The video below shows a playblast of where Gloria falls into the buildings which consequently knocks them all down, because I couldn't get any reference for this I had to guess and luckily it turned out really well on the first attempt. I made sure they fell one after another, but at a quick enough pace to look convincing. I think they all fall over a couple of frames which may seem really quick but it needs to be that fast, needs to be punchy. I love animation and even though I struggled with the run cycle it just takes time and practice to get it looking right, by doing this module it just confirms that I do want to be an animator and more specifically a character animator.

Cities and Film

Throughout history, cities have developed and evolved to something that is quite substantial. Cities have great influence on social and cultural aspects of our lives. Take films for example, the majority are centered around cities, you could just say that this is the environment however it may have a deeper meaning and add to the actual story of the film. Don't Look Now (1973) was set in Venice and due to it's specific layout and architecture this weaved itself into the plot of the film - confusion, recurring memories.

Within games, cities are mostly a prominent feature, whether it's part of the map to explore or part of the storyline. L.A Noire is all about interrogation and investigation whilst reviving the past through the medium of games. The player would be transported back to the 1940's and this is emphasised not only through the characters and props but through the environment, the city. It almost replicates how cities looked in real like during that time period. All the missions within this game revolved around the environment in one way or another, you are either exploring the area, the missions take place within a certain place. Where L.A Noire revives the past, the film Bladerunner shows the future. Made in 1982 it gives a perception of what LA could turn out to be like in 2019. Cities will always be an integral part of films whether that be past, present or future, you could say there are no limits with it. They can be altered to a huge extent yet we as an audience will accept it as in our everyday lives, for the majority of us cities play a major part - working, living, spending time within the city.

Sound Design

At the beginning of this module, once we had created the animatic I found some royalty free music that seemed to fit out genre quite well so Phil added these in as a test to the animatic along with voice overs done by me and recorded by Lija. Animatic found HERE.

It gave us a good overview of how our scenes would play out and also gave me a tone to work to whilst I was animating. When it came to putting it altogether we realised that we needed extra sounds such as footsteps and some character noises as we found it was lacking and by doing this it gave the characters more life and it ended up just sounding more of a complete project as a whole. Lija and Phil recorded my footsteps so we could play this when Gloria runs. To get it synced up we played the shot of her running and I ran at the same time, trying to sync my footsteps with hers. It worked quite well and we did the same thing for Harold's footsteps and other character noises. By watching and recording at the same time it saved Phil a lot of time as he knew they would match up when it came to putting it altogether.

We recorded the sounds using the sound booths at uni and used the programme Audacity. When it came to recording folie sounds, we switched the microphones over to something that was more suited to capturing specific / close up sounds. Phil then took all of these recordings and edited them together with the recording of our cinematic in Final Cut.

It was a really enjoyable process and it is something I think I will get more into - recording my own sounds for my future projects. It just makes it that much more personal and when you work on a character for so long you know how they walk, how they should sound so in a way it is better and more beneficial for you yourself to do it.

Run Iterations

I spent a long time working on the run cycle, probably over a week and it got to the point where each time I edited it, it would just get worse so in the end I think I deleted it about 4 or 5 times to start afresh. I took reference videos of myself running in similar style shoes to our character, I even looked at references off the internet and other students work to get a better understanding of how they were working. I even got feedback from another animator yet it still wasn't right. I just wasn't happy with the way it was going. In the end I finally got out 'The Animator's Survival Kit' and as soon as I did this it all just clicked into place. I took screenshots of the main poses of one reference video and used that to create my key poses of the animation, however I think because our character was so stylised and her proportions aren't of a normal human being, the run would have had to be adapted in some way. That's what is good about 'The Animator's Survial Kit' it shows you many different iterations of runs and walks, some stylised, some more humanised; it even highlights certain aspects of the cycle that I would have never even thought about, such as offsetting the timing so everything isn't moving at the same time as each other. By doing this one little thing and offsetting by just a couple of frames it changed the look drastically.

Walk and run cycles are always going to be the hardest things to animate as everyone knows how someone walks, so the smallest of things will stand out to the normal eye. The only way I'm going to get better at it is just through more practice, and looking at more reference and really sitting down and studying it before I go ahead and animate. Throughout the whole time I was animating I kept getting feedback from others but the problem was that I just got told the same things I already knew and it was hard to see how I would go about to change those factors. Either way though feedback is always useful in whatever you're doing as it can point out things that you may have never of noticed beforehand.




This last video is where I pretty much gave up and scrapped the whole lot to start again. Sometimes it is needed though, just reworking the same thing over and over again was only making it worse, starting again allowed me to have like a clean canvas where I could just concentrate on the movements from scratch and not have other things distracting me. I think next time I will definitely draw out thumbnails of the main poses so I know what I'm working to and look into doing dope sheets. Dope sheets help with organisation and timing of the animation and are really useful, I look back on it now and I realise how much use it would have been to me if I had actually done this.

Cut Scenes - Interactive vs Non-interactive

I decided to look into cut scenes and how different they are between games, some are interactive whereas some are non-interactive. Most of the games I have played (bearing in mind I am not a huge gamer and have only played a small handful of games) the cutscenes have been non-interactive where you would just sit through it and watch it play. There are many pros and cons to this as you could say does it actually take away the immersion from a game? You would be playing a part of it and sometimes I have felt the cutscene has been really abrupt and takes you off guard. Other times however it is a nice break inbetween almost like a point in time where you have reached a goal.

An interesting article I came across was on Gamasutra found HERE where game writers are discussing whether the non-interactive cutscenes should not exist anymore. It gives an interesting view and brings up the point whether gamers these days actually have the patience to sit through cutscenes. There are some cutscenes that are just too long for their own good, it may have been the fact that it was just too long or maybe the story didn't grab me enough but I have found myself loosing attention and the patience to sit through them. Cutscenes should be an extension of the story within the game and hold your interest to carry it through to the next level. Another interesting point that is brought up is the fact that "...the jump to a cutscene removes much of the empathy that you might have in a movie...". The cutscenes themselves may be produced to a high standard and hold a great deal of emotion however because of the jump from interactivity to non-interactivity you loose the immersion; it breaks the player away from being engrossed within the game.

There are very simple interactive cutscenes such as 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' where the gamer is still able to move the characters head around so you can take in the surrounding area. This is still just as effective as it keeps the gamers interest with other things but doesn't take away the full immersion of the scene. Cutscenes don't have to be complicated interactive cutscenes to be successful.

At the end of the day it's the gamers personal preference, peoples opinions differ and it depends on the game itself. It may benefit the game to have non-interactive cutscenes as it gives a break form the game, almost like a breather. This is similar to Studio Ghibli films where in every film they always include a section where it's very tranquil and you can just take in the environment and scenery. It gives a break and allows you to take appreciation for the art style. In accordance to our own cinematic, ours is non-interactive, however it could easily be made into an interactive one by adding a first person controller into the scene and making the gamer move around with our character.

"Let the entire character -- the model, the voice, the animation -- tell their story" - Chet Faliszek

Character Animation

Below is a quick test of a piece of animation I have done on our second character. Lija rigged him and weight painted and she did a good job with it, especially with the face (shown HERE). We had spoken before that the main aspect of this character was his moustache so it should be able to move in a variety of ways. I enjoyed animating this scene as I could play around with how his moustache could convey his thoughts and emotions. It would have been great to be able to push this further, however due to the fact that Unity can only take bone driven animation, blend shapes weren't an option. It's a shame really because some really interesting facial animation could have been created but I guess that is something to explore in the future.

Even though this character is hardly on show, probably only for about 10 seconds or so I still want him to be a believable character and this is all down to performance. For this I ended up pulling a variety of faces in the mirror to see how his face would deform when he would be on screen, obviously I then had to simplify these down as the facial rig was only very basic for it was going into a game engine. I'm quite happy with how it has turned out so far, I just have to be careful when it comes to animating him further because as he is so blocky and low poly, he can't move as much as Gloria. There are certain parts of him that will just deform when it gets to a certain point, Lija has gone in and locked off and limited certain attributes but I have actually gone back in and taken some of the limitations off. I did this because I felt that I could get a better idea of how far I could push it with the animation before it became deformed. Limiting is always a good habit to get into when create characters as in industry, this is what I would get being an animator - a working character that has been set and locked off. Obviously within industry they have far more complex rigs that work to a higher standard so going back into the attributes and changing things would not be necessary.

Critical Positions on Popular Culture

When looking into Popular Culture you first need to understand Culture itself. It's a particular way of life, a set of ideas. Karl Marx came up with the concept of the Base and Superstructure, he divided society into two, the Base being economic reality, the employer relations that make up society. The Superstructure is the direct result of the Base which would be laws, politics, culture, the way we think of the world is direct result of the Base. All in all, the Base produces the Superstructure however the Superstructure maintains the Base.

Culture is a product of the Base so Popular Culture could be classed as inferior to culture as it is made from the masses for the masses - popularism. Before, it was all shared 'culture' it was and always had been produced by the rich. They would determine and define what culture would be  and this could easily be turned to high and low culture - culture doesn't have politics, anything with an agenda isn't culture - Matthew Arnold 1867. The Frankfurt School however argued that popular culture actually maintained social order and perpetuates it, strengthens. There is an endless stream of popular culture so much so that it promotes a false consciousness, it's very limited. When looking at the  contemporary culture industry there are many things that actively disguises the real world and exploits people below them, such as The X Factor. It teaches us nothing so in the end real world problems never get solved and the radical ideas get dissolved.

The problem with popular culture is that today it is getting mass-produced without a care in the world to try and make it different in any shape or form. The movie industry, mass movies yet only slight alterations between them. The plot becomes predictable and we as viewers have seen it all before - movies recently have been moving towards making adaptations from books which shows in a way that the movie industry are running out of good ideas for plots. The music industry is almost the same, selling exactly the same thing but slightly different. The thing is, it's easy to produce and easy to consume, and endless chain of consumption.

Blocking Animation

In industry, animation is normally blocked out first to put down the key poses and to get a sense of timing. If anything in the script was to change, this would be the ideal time to do it. II thought I would try out this method as before I was just keying the animation using the auto curve and adjusting it from there. Everyone has their own way of working but I thought I may as well try this technique out. Blocking gets across the idea and motion of the character easily, I have showed the rest of my group the below video to get feedback and before I change the curve from stepped to linear I will adjust a few things, such as slowing down the run cycle. I also need to add in some facial expressions, blinks and just general small things that will add to our characters personality.

When I go to change the curves to linear, I will be adding in extra key frames to smooth out the animation and maybe deleting any unnecessary ones. After it has been completed with linear curves, I will then take them to spline curves, this will be the last stage and hopefully the refinement of the animation where I will be adjusting things here and there.

The below video is the blocking animation, not all of it is there as our second character is just being finished off at the moment. To utilise our time the most efficiently, I have begun animating with a non textured model and environment. These are not needed for animation and it means everything is progressing and nothing is on hold. They eye texture is present however as I wasn't able to gauge the eye movement very well without having anything on the eye geometry.


A useful blog I came across awhile ago was, 'Animation Tips and Tricks' where professional animators give their insider tips. It's really helpful and gives you a good insight to the industry practice. One that I found was on blocking animation and why they do it within the industry, Animation Tips and Tricks. It gives the supervisors and directors a clear idea of what you are going to be doing and what is going on in the scene. One thing I haven't done, but will do in future is before I go in to blocking the animation I should really draw out thumbnails of each shot to give my ideas more grounding and stability. Looking at this blog and back at my blocking I realised in some places I could have not included as many key poses as it was clear what the intention was. This was my first go at it so there are still lots of things I can improve on, but at the end of the day it's a learning process.

Reference Videos

In order to achieve a believable animation, we shot some LAV's (Live Action Videos) for reference. I find it really useful to be able to refer to videos when animating as I can be sure that I'm putting down the key poses in the correct way, also by recording these I am able to scrub back and forth through the video and really analyse how the body moves and what parts move when. As I am going to be animating the character I thought it would be best for me to act out the parts as I could get a better feel for it and understand her movements more. Animators are pretty much actors anyway, you need to be able to understand the movements of a specific character and the best way to do that is to act it out yourself.

Lija recorded a wide range of videos, the main actions / movements such as creeping, running, turning around etc, but we also did close up of the feet so I am able to really study these and make sure that the way our character walks is correct to how it is in real life. I quite enjoyed acting out the different parts but still need to get in the habit of doing this all the time with any animation I do. If I had more time as well I would have liked to break down the video into key shots where I could just refer to these when blocking out the animation, rather than scrubbing the video the whole time. Scrubbing the video is useful to see how the the poses move from one to another, but with the blocking stage of animation this isn't too necessary at the minute. I have uploaded a couple of videos with the links below.

Creeping Walk

Sitting Up

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 4

The last day of Bradford Animation Festival, I only made it for the Aardman talk and the screening of The Pirates film but even just those 2 was worth the trip. Will Beecher was a character lead animator for the Aardman film 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'. I decided to go along to this as even though it is stop motion, Will Beecher is still an animator and any advice or experience from an animator will be very useful, and I was not disappointed.

Will showed us his student film which got him into the industry and highlighted the fact that even though his character did not move around, the interaction between the two characters is key. This is an important thing to show and this is something I will keep in mind when it comes to animating my two characters together.

What I really enjoyed about this talk was the fact that Will gave us a demonstration on how he would go about changing the faces on the Pirate Captain and moving the rest of the body for animation. It was great to see how the faces were changed as this was something I was never sure about, for Aardman the faces are held on with magnets so it's easy to swap them in and out. There were all these small pieces to the character that you could alter such as the Captains beard; when changing the mouth shapes the beard needs to move with it or else it would break away from the believability of it all. In order to do this there was a small allen key that cold be insert into his beard and depending on which way you turn it, the beard would either move up or down. This was great to see as for myself, I would have never have thought about this. It makes me realise that I really need to understand and breakdown a character before it comes to animating. I need to work out what parts of them will move and how much they should be moved. There will be some things that only need to be moved subtly, however if it is not moved at all, that one small thing could be quite obvious. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and informative talk and once again just as LAIKA did, we got to see the puppets up close.

I watched the film itself after the talk and really enjoyed it, I had never got round to watching it when it came out so this was the prime opportunity to watch the film. It was interesting to see how even though both LAIKA and Aardman used the replacement animation technique, their style was still different and obvious in each. Unfortunately after the film was over I left Bradford as I had work that needed to be done. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to the closing award ceremony and after party, however I think that is something I will be definitely attending next year. It's something not to be missed, another opportunity to get a chance to talk to more people in a relaxed setting and it would have been a great way to end an amazing week.

This whole week has been enjoyable, informative and inspirational. It has opened my eyes to new things and got me thinking about techniques and processes. Bradford Animation Festival is something that I shall be attending for quite some time from now on, even after university. It has given me so much motivation right now to be the best that I can be and to push myself further in my animations. I'm planning to book my Animex tickets soon and hopefully it will be just a inspirational and motivational as Bradford, if not more.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 3

Friday was the busiest day of the festival, lots of talks to attend and I planned to go to a networking event that All Animated had organised. The day began with a talk from Jason Theaker a freelance animator and tutor from Bradford Uni. He spoke about how at Bradford Uni they have a programme where students, along side tutors work on a professional brief. This gives the student more experience, skills and knowledge about working with a real client. The short that was shown had been nominated for a national prize so this would have given the students a lot of exposure. James Thompson, a student who worked on the short film was there to give us his point of view on working on it. He took us through the process and spoke about a few things that I had never really thought about before. If you're working in a group as long as the rigger has a rough model (all proportions should be correct) even if it's not completely finished, they can get started on the rigging process while the character is still being completed. Once it has been finished it can be passed onto the rigger who can then just apply the rig and send it on to the animators. This is a good way of using time, especially if there is a strict time scale on the project. After this talk, it really got me thinking about possibly doing a masters after my 3 years.

The next talk was given by Amanita Designs and Red Kite Games. They spoke about animation and games for new platforms and why they chose to produce mobile games. Jaromir Plachy who is an animator and graphic artist, showed some of his work that led up to him creating Botanicula for Amanita. I really enjoyed the animations that he created, they were so simple in terms of design but his humour translated through the characters and created a thoroughly enjoyable watch. It goes to show that even something so sim sole can really engage with the audience. Simon Iwaniszak, Managing Director of Red Kite Games previously had worked at Rockstar Leeds but decided this was the right time to go ahead and set up his own company. By being an indie studio you have more of a creative say with what goes on and with mobile gaming becoming ever more popular; you have the ability to create a game that you want to make.

The big talk of today was from Mark Shapiro of LAIKA, the independent animation studio that created Coraline and ParaNorman. I was really excited to see this as I saw ParaNorman when it came out and was blown away at the technical side and also the versatility of the characters. Mark showed a wide range of videos that explained how they achieved the look of ParaNorman and the process they used for creating the faces using 3D colour printing. Some of these videos I had seen before, after researching into it once I had seen the film. There were a couple videos though that really broke down the process of the animation, and it really makes you appreciate and gain a new found respect for the animated that work in the stop motion industry. There is so much accuracy and dedication needed to create a stop motion film, objects and characters have to be moved a tiny fraction each frame and if it isn't accurate that one frame could cause quite a lot of problems. As Mark is the head of entertainment, brand marketing he also spoke about how they marketed the film to get people interested and excited about it. They created lots of short videos explaining the making of ParaNorman and placed these on the web with the hash tag 'WeirdWins'. This got people tweeting about the film and spreading the word. What was really interesting was that someone I know in America was really hyped up about this film, before I spoke to him I knew nothing about it but I had seen all his tweets and it got me intrigued about ParaNorman. I think because he ended up being a big promoter of the film by using twitter, LAIKA actually sent him merchandise from the film in appreciation, which I think is really lovely of them to reward the fans out there. It's really interesting to see how social media can affect the promotion of a film and how they use it to get more attention.

Even though I had previously seen ParaNorman, I saw it again but this time in 3D. After having the talk from Mark I found that I ended up paying attention to all the small details he spoke about and really concentrating on the faces. I noticed things I never did the first time I watched it and it made me appreciate the film more for what it was, now knowing more of the process behind it. I am normally not a big fan of 3D films, as I feel that sometimes it is a bit distracting and I find myself not being able to be fully immersed within the film. This was different however, I found that there were some areas that really benefitted from being 3D and made me feel more of a part of the film. I also got a chance to take a few pictures of the puppets themselves after the talk, it was great to see them up close and see all the detail that was put into them, for example for each character their clothing was individually hand made and sew on to them.

After the film I hopped on along to a networking event that All Animated had organised. Seeing as I missed the previous one in Leeds I knew I wanted to take advantage of this one. Whilst there I met the lovely Aaron Wood, Managing Director of Slurpy Studios and Billy Allison who gave me some really useful advice within animation and also a bit more confidence as I always worry that my way of working isn't the 'right' way. I spoke to Aaron about the Animex conference up in Teeside and he said it is definitely worth going as it would suit me very well what with wanting to go into CG, so I think this is the way to go and hopefully I will be able to catch up with Aaron again up there.

The last thing of the day for me was attending the animation pub quiz, this was a first for me as I had never even been to a pub quiz before and I was worried my lack of animation knowledge would fail me! Myself and Alex ended up teaming with Kath and Kim from All Animated, it was a good laugh and I learnt new things about animation I didn't know previously. There were prizes at the end, but seeing as we didn't come first we missed out on the art books, however I got myself a Rango Cactus Cup that I was pretty chuffed about! This is something I definitely want to attend again as it brings everyone together in a relaxed and fun setting and it's just something enjoyable to do.

Bradford Animation Festival - Day 2

Day 2, I was quite looking forward to as Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative would be doing a talk in the afternoon. Before this there was a couple more things to be seen, the first one being Professional 2, it was similar to the screening on the previous day however these shorts were created by professionals. Again there were 8 films shown in total, however due to me arriving a bit late I missed out on two of these shorts. I may see if I can find these online or on their sit as I caught the ending for one of them 'Bendito Machine IV' (Spain) and it seemed very intriguing and the animation was all done with silhouettes. There was an interesting short called 'Father' that was directed by a handful of people all from different countries. They used a combination of 3D and 2D which produced a hybrid of styles. The characters differed from one another quite drastically, some being quite stylised whereas another looked more realistic compared to the others. The story itself was quite haunting and really immersed me into the whole story about a dialogue between father and child that never happens. 'Edmond was a Donkey' was probably my most favourite one as not only did it include a lot of 3D elements, but the story itself was something different and really made you feel for the character. There was dialogue during this film however the main character it revolved around never spoke a work. I find that no dialogue is such a strong thing sometimes and more emotion can be shown just through their actions and expression. I really liked the lighting in this film as well, the majority of it was mainly a grey scale however when it switched it was really beautiful, especially seeing it contrasting against the grey.

I attended a talk after this about creating virtual urban environments. Vanessa Boyce from Double Negative, Martin Walker a lecturer in 3D computer graphics and animation, Ben Hall from Criterion Games and Jonathan Gales founding member of Factory Fifteen were bought together to talk about creating photorealistic urban environments. It was interesting to see the different approaches and what was produced from people who were coming from different areas of the industry. A recurring thing that came up with each speaker was the fact that because these environments are created virtual, 3D programmes have the tendency to make everything perfect and this is not how it is in real life. If they left it now it was, the environments wouldn't be believable and would distract the viewer from the overall experience. To get over this, they would go in and physically make it 'imperfect' adding in little details, textures, making sure lines are not dead straight etc. I had never really thought about this before but it is a very good point that I will keep in mind when I create photorealistic environments in the future.

The next talk was by Vanessa Boyce again but this time going into more detail about Double Negative's newest film 'Total Recall'. VFX is something that has caught my attention for awhile now, I love how companies are able to create vast environments that are so realistic, it really amazes me. Double Negative only had about a year to create pretty much everything from scratch so that was a massive job in itself. It was quite impressive how much was achieved in that time and the overall outcome of it. In my notes it explains the process they took when creating the environments. Vanessa is the CG supervisor and made the point that in the film they had 2 different types of vfx to do, putting the filmed shot into the modelled environments but also putting modelled characters into already filmed shots. Both of these ways, even though similar had to be approached in different ways. Seeing this talk it really makes me want to explore the industry of vfx and create some photorealistic work that I could put in my portfolio. I have been looking into internships this year and Framestore a vfx company in London normally do summer internships each year so I may apply for this and see how it goes.

The last talk of the day was from Valerie Kausen, the granddaughter of Chuck Jones. It was lovely to hear what it was like to have an amazing animator like her grandfather in her life and influencing the things she did. We got to see some of his shorts which was really inspirational and really makes me want to study 2D animation more for the principles and take that into my 3D work. I think this will be something I explore further as at the end of the day the principles of animation are the foundations to any good animation. Without a good understanding of them you can't get your animation to achieve it's fullest potential.