Character animation

The most important part of this assignment is to consider the principles of animation: Timing, Exaggeration, Silhouette Technique, Stretch and Squash and Anticipation. The Character needed to reflect personality and show a process of thought and react accordingly through use of Body Language. I decided to produce an animation in Maya. I hadn't before animated a human character in Maya before and had only really experimented with the Sac rig. The first week I spent practicing moving the Andy Rig around so I could get used to animating in 3-D. I hadn't used lip synching or face movement tools before and it was really interesting experimenting with different facial expressions. Before I got anywhere near animating the character a needed to listen to the dialogue we were given and understand how a person would move when saying "aaaaaah, maybe I should quit and go back to making noodles". The best way to do this was to film myself acting out the scene and watch it back. I filmed myself 3 times and carefully watched how I moved. I saved certain key frames and practiced drawing them out in stick men poses so I could gain a better understanding of the positioning of the body. I took the saved still frames and compiled them together to create a rough outline of how I wanted the character to move. After listening to the sound I had to break it down phonetically to write it on the Dope sheet. This would help me with timing in when I was doing the lip sync. I also drew thumbnail sketches of my body positions alongside the dope sheet so I knew what frame the pose started and ended at. The dialogue was short and I hadn't spent any time on character design so I wanted my Andy rigs surroundings to set the scene and begin a story. I built a small mini golf green for the character to play on he misses a putt and then say the dialogue. It was important to me that the golf swing was correct as well as including all the vital anticipation and exaggeration needed in the body movements to get across the characters emotions as the golf ball approaches the hole and misses it. By editing the timeline play back "stepped" animation I was able to concentrate on creating accurate poses and change and tweak the timing. When I was happy with the timing I watched the animation back in real time and made changes so that it flowed better with no mistakes. Unfortunately whilst animating I think I may of concentrated more on the poses being correct as opposed to the timing of the whole piece because after some constructive criticism I realised that the animation was a bit too rhythmic which took the attention away from the body language of the character therefore losing the emotion and thought process of the character. Each pose almost falls on every second I need to hold some poses for longer and edited the movements so the animation can really come to life.

Lighting in c.g: Exeter Ident

Now that all the animation was done in c.g it was crucial that the C.G department were given all the lighting shots from the stop-mo team. I needed the shot of inside the tower from the stop-motion team so that i could match up the camera angle and copy the lighting in Maya. It was a tricky and frustrating task matching the cameras in c.g to the shot in stop-mo but by trying two different methods I was able to achieve it. At first I took a picture of the stop-mo scene with a piece of paper lying on the base of it. I then brought the image in on a plane in Maya, drew a grid the same size as the paper then looking through the camera I moved the shot around until the grid matched the paper on the image. The second method was to use a camera with an aim in Maya and record all the camera details so that any of the stop-mo and c.g shots could use these settings when matching the camera shot to the stop-motion. The Cogs and Zoatrope require the same camera settings as I recorded other wise they wont look good when the stop-motion and c.g is composited.
I then used the same image of the stop-motion scene to set up the lighting in the shot. it was easier than I imagined. I simply looked at the actual real life stop-motion lighting and placed similar lights in the same positions in Maya. I then experimented with the intensity of all the lights and checked the mouth in the render view. After the lighting was complete I rendered the scene out in Maya, it took around half an hour to render completely. The compositors will now have to start creating masks to lay over some of the C.G shots.
This task wasn't the most interesting but I have definitely gained a better understanding of Maya and the general Production pipeline.

Animating The Phoenix: Exeter Ident

Originally I had planned to Rig the textured Phoenix but it seemed pointless as all of the movements only required locators to rotate the head, jaw, body ,wings and feet. So i quickly was able to do this i start thinking about the animation. This week I have started animating the movements of the Phoenix throughout the whole animation. I was giving some of the Block tests in Maya so I new where the camera was. The Phoenix had been fully textured to appear like it was made from rusty metal. Because the design of the phoenix suggests its a wind-up toy the movements were going to be quite mechanical but i still wanted the Phoenix to appear as though It had just been born. I watched some short clips of eagles opening there wings and tried to incorporate this in the animation of the Phoenix. I drew i small step by step storyboard to the animation and played around with the phoenix for a while to refresh myself with timing. Because this shot isn't particularly long its important that the movements of the Phoenix quickly suggests it has just been born. The phoenix lifts its head and opens it beak at this point the sound team will need find a apply a young bird noise that could be the noise of a Phoenix. The movement of the head and wings will also require some kind of metal scraping sound. The Phoenix has simple feet that made the animation of the body movement look quite crude if I had more time I would consider changing the feet so hat a body rotation could look better. The Playblast let me see how the phoenix would look in real time and the Art director and I were both happy with it, both agreeing that the movements would look good with the stop motion. The Zoatrope animation needed changing. The timing was wrong for the length of the shot and it didn"t rotate. I quickly done this in after animating the phoenix bringing the two animations together to create a finished shot. I then moved onto the second shot of the phoenix looking out of the clock tower. Because I had already textured the tower and animated all the moving parts for shots one and two i simply brought the Phoenix into the tower and but a camera looking over the Phoenix shoulder out of the stain glass window looking at the rotating cogs and clock face. This was the first time i really worked with moving the camera around in Maya and I really enjoyed experimenting with different shots and trying to match them to the animation. The Phoenix required little animation for this shot it just needed to look consistent from the last shot so it just looks up from the floor to the window. The next shot needed me to maintain the consistency by making sure the phoenix first movement was the head looking at the window then looking down at the floor before it jumps out of the clock tower. This shot involved some of the basic anticipation and jumping animation I learnt last year. The last shot is of the Clock tower and the phoenix is shot out of the clock tower. The animation for this was simple but we made a change to the shot. Instead of the camera facing the clock face i moved it to a slight sidewards angle so that when the phoenix flew out the audience can see the distance travelled making it more effective. The After Effects team are using firework effects to make the phoenix appear as though its on fire. The majority of all the C.G elements are now complete the only thing that needs to be done is the lighting but the c.g team require the stop motion team to give them all the lit shots so that the stop mo elements match the c.g ones.

Texturing The clock tower: Exeter Ident

This week I have just completed texturing the clock tower. I decided to take on the role so i could develop my skills in Photoshop and understand a little bit more about how texturing works in Maya. The task seemed extremely teadious but after I had completed two of the tower textures i got used to the software and was able to quickly complete some church style brick texture for the majority of te tower. I focused on making the textures similar to the original design of the tower as apposed a matte texture colourful tower. I used a gold phong in the hypershade and a wood texture for the other parts of the tower such as the top and the owls. Pete was able to design a simple stain glass window in Photoshop that i used as a texture fr the stain glass window on the tower. I altered the middle window by placing a bird over it a saturating the colour to make it part of the stain glass. Once i had applied the texture to the model i increased the transparency of the texture so it resembled a stain glass window. The clock face and the phoenix were both textured this way. I used a simple wood texture for the owls and made the rim of there eyes a gold phong so that there was a pattern dow the face of the clock tower.
I feel as though I learnt alot doing this and will continue helping towards production using the maya programme.
The stop motion team have the set ready for animaton and test are taking place. The Lighing has been experimented with but a choice on what lighting to use hasn't been made. Its crucial that this decision is made so that the c.g team can light the tower and pheonix correctly from looking at the shadows and light in the stills.
Artistic changes have been made to the background design however it is mainly just colour alterations. The layers of Plants will look really effective in aftereffects. My favourite thing about the background is the revolving son it gives the animation a fantasy, abstract look and works really well with the moving clouds.
My next task is animating the elements of the clock tower and correcting any camera movements tp fit in the animation and stop motion.

Maya: Changes and development to the model phoenix

Whilst working on the Ident today Ben and Ralph decided that the wings and tail of the Phoenix needed to change. The old tail and wings didn't have much detail so after looking at some new sketches I started building new wings and adjusted the tail so it was flush with the body. I think the new wings give the model a more mechanical feel and will look a lot better when we come to animate the phoenix.

Animated Exeter: CG modelling

At the end of this week it was my aim to get all the CG elements of the Animated Exeter ident built so that next week we could start bringing them all together and experiment with textures and lighting. I was very pleased with the work that all the Maya guys done and luckily we have all the models built. In case the contemporary crafts students cant make the Phoenix in time me and Andy completed building a CG model of the phoenix. Ralph was able to draw up a design for the phoenix but it is very dull so me and Andy added some nuts and bolts to the model in Maya to give it more character and make it appear as though it is made from scrap metal. I took responsibility for building the body while Andy concentrated on building the head. I used a variety of methods creating parts of the model but mostly it is all created using polygon cubes that have been shaped by altering the vertices's. I was glad to be able to refresh myself with building in Maya because recently I have struggled using the programme after forgetting most of the software over the long summer break. This year i intend to be completely competent using the software.
The zoetrope and cogs were built in Maya by Dan, Jacob is building the clock face which is probably the most complicated part of the building structure and Sam was able to build the whole clock tower. Originally the top of the clock tower was going to be built as part of the set for the stop motion guys to work with and the wooden owls were going to be placed on top but we thought that the pan up the clock tower and change form Maya to real life wouldn't look quite right so we decided to build to top of the tower in Maya and Sean offered to build the owls in Maya. The owls were original small wooden 3D puzzles that the consumer builds. We took the stencil of all the pieces for the puzzle and Sean created them Maya he then spent long hours putting these pieces together so it was kind of like doing a puzzle in Maya. To see the owls visit Seans page
I have also been working with Alex and Mike for the Background design thay have been coming up with design ideas that will be completed by next week so that the background and moving elemants of the background are finalised and can be passed on to the special effects team and compositors.

The Pitch: Designing the website

Over the last couple of weeks I have been developing web page designs. Using the logo and flow chart we were able to create a design for the website that reflects music, animation and an urban lifestyle. The layout of the pages combines the profile elements of facebook with the graphic style of 123 Klan. We needed to include design pages for each genre of music and animation`as well as a profile page for the user, an animated introduction to the home page, a registration page, a watching page (for users to watch a larger screen), a chat room for users to communicate and share music, animations and ideas. The user will be able to create there own profile dedicated to one or more genres of music. They will then be able to upload there own songs or animations so that they can be listened to on the users profile page. By using the chat room the idea is that musicians and animators can communicate with each other so that a musician and animator can work together to produce an animated music video. The user can also download animations and music from another users profile provided they have access and permission from the user to work on there music or video. Any completed music videos are then placed onto the genre main page where they can be viewed by anyone but not downloaded. Users then give the videos ratings, the video with the highest ratings and most viewed will appear on the short animated show.
For the designs i focused on urban lifestyle and graffiti. Each page includes the 2dchoonz logo as well as our edited city image and wall.
This is some designs in development. When the characters for each genre of music have been finalised they will be included.