Synthesis Crit

A few weeks ago we had a synthesis crit where we presented our ideas, research and any practical work, showing how we were going to synthesis both practice and theory together. So far I had produced some practical tests of motion capture and also keyframe animation to see the difference between the two and how it would affect the overall performance of the character. Something that I've come across whilst doing this is that the rig that I've been retargeting the motion capture data to, doesn't have as much control as I would like. There aren't enough controls for certain parts of the body e.g the spine so I find that when I need to tweak parts of the motion capture data in the spine, it's not that easy and sometimes not possible to get to certain joints. To get around this would be to build my own model and rig (which I've done in a previous post) where I'm able to add in as much control as I need.

Regarding the synthesis part, I've been researching into the pros and cons of motion capture along with performance, appeal and realism vs believability. All of this will help inform my practice by giving myself prior knowledge to what will work better e.g certain softwares, performance and animation techniques, what makes a believable character/performance. I will incorporate this into my work and whatever I produce I will end up with my own findings which I will then relate back to my writing. I will be learning throughout and making links between both aspects.

Because I'm looking into performance and aiming more at film rather than games, it will be good to give my final animation a story, something I can work with that will make the whole thing more believable. In order to give a good performance you should understand your character first. A story can also add appeal in the form of how the character may react in certain situations. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out and if I come out of it with any new findings.

BAF Game

This year I only attended a few talks at BAF Game, ones that would be of most relevance towards my dissertation. The one that I really enjoyed the most was a talk from Warren Spector who designed Epic Mickey. It was great to see game animation that embodied some of the 12 principles of animation and had that appeal that you wouldn't necessarily get from other games. Mickey Mouse is such an iconic character and because of this the animation and style had to be recognisable to his original form. Luckily Mickey is a very adaptable character, over the years he has had many different design iterations, for a game though he had to come across as a 'hero'. The team had to make Mickey look like a hero but also have his original appeal.

The animators did a great job with all of the animations. They used old Mickey cartoons as reference in order to get his movements correct, they did these so well that when composited in the original scene, people couldn't tell that it was 3D. I was immediately drawn to the animation when Warren showed us at BAF, I went and bought the 2nd one for myself and the animation really impressed me. Because of it being a game, the animations have to seamlessly intertwine with one another. When a player wants to change actions, the movements have to change at any point and without being noticeable. Game like Epic Mickey make game animation more appealing for myself, right now I'm looking at feature film animation or commercials. Unless it's cinematics I find game animation somewhat repetitive , yet with Epic Mickey it feels more refreshing and exciting. It's combining the exaggeration of animated characters into game format.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

I went and saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 the other week after much anticipation. After seeing the first one when it first came out I was blown away with the animation and I love the aesthetic style of the characters. 4 years later the sequel came out and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was able to watch it with a greater knowledge of animation and notice things that I wouldn't have known about when watching the first film back all those years ago.

Cloudy is one of those films that is extremely cartoony, the animation is over the top and in many scenes the characters aren't restricted by human constraints e.g. stretchy limbs and breaking of the joints to create a more fluid motion in the arms or legs is a common feature that arises in both films. In animation you can break the joints, but it should be done in a subtle way that can enhance the pose, however because this film is so stylised it can get away with it as it fits in with the overall feel and aesthetic of the animated feature.

I've always been a fan of this style of animation and it seems to be an occurrence with Sony Pictures Animation as they used this style in Hotel Transylvannia. It's taking the poses and really pushing them to get an appealing performance. As an audience, you know that movements like this wouldn't really be possible as a human yet it is so enjoyable to watch. I think depending on the context of a scene would determine whether this type of animation would be suitable. As you can see with Cloudy it's not used throughout the film, just in certain places to convey emotions such as, panic, excitement, fast past action etc. Having a whole film in this extreme cartoon style would be overkill and it would lose its appeal.

I would really love to try out this style at some point as it's something I've held back on so far. It would be interesting to see how I would take to it and what I could achieve. What I might do for a test and to get to grips with this, is take an over the top movement from Cloudy and try and replicate it myself, then from this I could hopefully go on and create my own shot/scene.

 

Practical Element - Character

Through testing out motion capture and retargeting mocap data onto rigs, I have found out that I'm not able to get the amount of control that I would like from some of the rigs. Also with the rig that I have been using I still find that it is not plain enough for it not to have any contributing factors to deal with aesthetics. As I am focusing purely on the animation and performance I don't want the model or textures to affect this. To overcome this I've modelled and rigged my own character. I've tried to create a model that doesn't have appeal in the way of design or textures, and to make sure that it doesn't fall into the uncanny valley I've taken away the face and hands and replaced them for basic forms. Eye lines are one of the key factors to any performance, but it can also be the tipping point for something to be uncanny or not. The eyes need to be believable and not feel 'dead'. As there is no face it wouldn't look right aesthetically to have human like hands, by creating mitten hands it also allows me to spend more time on the mechanics of movement and the pure performance. The iPi software doesn't capture finger movements, only the wrist action so I would have had to add these all in myself using keyframe.

I used the HumanIK system within Maya to set up my skeleton. When you retarget the data to a rig, you first have to make sure that the rig is characterised and you do this within HumanIK, so it made sense to create a rig in this way. I've weighted all the joints, however I'm having a few issues with the controls. With HIK it will set up the controls for you, I need to go back in and check a few things out, however when I tested it earlier the controls weren't working as how they should be. I may find out that I will have to put the controls in by hand (which isn't a major task) the worst case scenario would be having to delete the rig and start again, but this time rigging it by hand. Hopefully it won't come to this and that I can get it sorted soon. Once it is sorted though, I plan to put my old mocap data onto this rig just to see how it works. I may still need to tweak it and adjust a few things at that point. I want to make sure the rig is working to the best that it can before I move onto my major piece of mocap animation.

Animation Competition - Joy

Seeing as I have been entering a few 11 Second Club competitions, I wanted to try and find another type of animation competition. I came across this one that is run by Splinebomb.com. I thought it would be quite a good one to enter as you are given a emotion to portray, in this case it's 'Joy' and there are more stricter rules to follow which gives me good practice to working to a specific brief. I'm only allowed to use one character, the shot should be no longer than 6 seconds and no music should be added. Without the use of music you are just purely concentrating on the performance and animation.

I've come up with an idea for the shot that I want to produce, a girl playing with her teddy bear and hugging it tight and smiling. For this I knew I would need to model my own teddy bear and probably rig it in some way in order to get movement out of the legs. Even though it is an inanimate object, something like a teddy bear will still have movement when picked up, held etc.

Below are some screenshots of my finished teddy bear and its rig. I was planning on using the HumanIK system to generate the skeleton for me, but I had issues with mirroring the joints. I found it a lot easier to place the joints in by hand and constrain everything like I've done before. Because of the bear's simple shape it wasn't too much of a hard task to get this all done.

I've started setting up my scene and I'm planning to start blocking this out this week. I have until the 30th of November so I think I'll have enough time. The rig that I have chosen to use for the girl is the Andy Rig by John Doublestein - I wanted to try using a rig that I haven't used before and I found this one seemed quite good and you are able to change the appearance of the rig from male to female and also the clothes and hairstyles.

Ratatouille

One of the films that I'm going to look at for my extended writing piece is Ratatouille. As I'm going to be researching into appeal and performance, Ratatouille is a really good film to look in to as Pixar managed to make a rat appealing to the audience. A lot of it was down to the design of the characters as this is the immediate thing an audience would see, they needed to take previous misconceptions away from rats and portray them as something cute and appealing.

"If the visual qualities of character get the viewer’s attention during the storytelling, that’s appeal." 

With Emile it was a lot easier to make a chubby rat more appealing as this in itself makes something a lot more cute. Adding the type of personality that Emile has also adds to the appeal, clumsy yet friendly and most interested in his food. Through personality traits this can influence the animation style and performance. The 12 principles of animation will always play a bit part in any animation work, arcs, follow through, overlapping action, arcs, exaggeration, appeal, solid drawing etc - they all create a more realistic performance but in a stylised way. Animation performances can be extremely exaggerated but the characters still need to be believable and connect with the audience. For Ratatouille, one thing to pick up on is how the rats run, it's very quick but has a rhythm to it. The animators studied real rats and how they moved and interacted with objects, by understanding the real motion they could then take this and adapt it to produce a performance that expressed personality and charm.