HOLY REFERENCE BATMAN!!! – MA – Animation references, Discussion

I had a word with Andy about my questionnaire and some of the troubles I had with it, and he gave me some useful advice on improving my questionnaire.

We identified with the last one that the questionnaire was too open in terms of how people can answer it. For example because the question is asking “What do you first pay attention to when communicating with someone” it’s hard to identify what scenario they should be responding to e.g. are they talking to a doctor, a friend, a boss, etc… So in order to get the right results, I need to make a questionnaire with some context to it.

To achieve this I needed to take the questionnaire into a different direction in terms of structure. Andy came up with a clever idea of provided examples for the audience to respond to, something similar to what I originally was planning for my final experiment featuring my animations. In this new structure I will get the audience to look at the examples provided and have them identify what form communication they’re paying more attention to, this way I can get more clearer results for me to evaluate  in my write and it also serves as practice for setting up my actual experiment, but what I need to do is find some good examples to use that demonstrate all three forms in different ways.

These first two references I found whilst looking at Kyle Kenworthy’s 100 acting references. Kyle has spent time collecting references from a variety of different films, talking about specific scenes that demonstrate some good performances from different actors that animators could learn from, if you want to take a look at his list click HERE. The reason I picked these two is that they both have a good balance of different forms of communication within them, and because of this I expect that the audience response will be fair.

As for this one I thought I’d throw in an animated one in seen as this is for animation write up, but besides that, this clip demonstrates a good balance too, and I’m quite interested in the response with an animated performance as animated films tend to use more Visual forms than the other, but we’ll have to see on the results.

I’m going to whip up the survey and post it to a number of different groups on social media to get diverse range of answers. Hopefully by the end of next week the responses will look good for me to evaluate.

“We’re in the Endgame now…” – MA – Research, Discussion

I’m back from my Easter Break!!! After a nice relaxing two break from this project I’m ready to get back in and finish this as well as my University education once and for all.

Over the break, as part of my research I conducted some interdisciplinary research through Survey Monkey. My aim was to use a simple question relating to my write up and use social media to get random people, friends and family to answer it. The feedback was surprisingly interesting, with 16 people replying, 12.5% of people chose Non-Verbal, and an even split of 45.75% between Verbal and Visual. This is quite interesting as Merhabian’s theory had Visual having a far greater response compared to Verbal that had low responses, whereas my survey had them evenly tied. This could be because of how basic the survey was, and anymore context could of changed the outcome, but non the less these results will prove useful in one way or another.

Side note I should of added a “and Why?” section to see why the participants chose their answers, as it would of provided more context to the way they answered and would of helped with explaining the results in the write up. Perhaps I will do another one and add it so my research is more accurate.

 

P.S. Gonna watch Avengers Endgame tomorrow and I’m so ready for it!!!

In a whole new light – MA – Animation, Lighting, Test Rendering, Discussion

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Been messing around with some lighting and rendering for each of the performances that I’ve been making, needless to say, they look pretty good.

Whilst I was trying to achieve the clean renders, I ran into an issue with the Tuna rig, as whenever I tried to look at him through Arnold he looked like a plastic doll, because his original textures, which were ‘Phong’, heavily reflected the lights that I put in, making him look very shiny.

Here’s an example of what the ‘Phong’ texture was doing

So to change this, I applied a standard arnold surface texture to all of the elements on the Tuna rig and made sure that the “Specular Roughness” was high enough to not reflect any light. Then when I did that I whacked in a backdrop so it wasn’t so dark and viola!!!

Break it down now ya’ll!!! – MA – Discussion, breaking down performance

I had a word with Andy yesterday, and we discussed the progression of my project so far.

I showed him the animations that I made and he gave some really good feedback with the ‘Gift’ and ‘Scolding’ pieces. He recommended with the ‘Gift’ that when the character receives the object, I should give the them a sense of discovery when they look at it by making them inspect the gift in some form of way, like checking the weight or shaking it to hear what it is, this way character will look more excited to get the gift than just simply taking it.

Which interestingly leads to the next topic that I will move on to. We discussed about my questionnaire that I planned on showing my focus group, and he asked what was the context of what I was trying to convey with the pieces, which I couldn’t really answer and the more I thought about it, if I didn’t know what I was trying to convey then what answer am I expecting to get to help with my write up.

So I sat down and broke down each of my pieces looking at what I hoped to convey and what forms of communication should the audience identify:

Turn Around

Conveying: What I’m trying to convey is that the character is lost and is trying to get back on track

Forms of Communication: Facial Expressions, Hand Movements, Posture, Timing, Non-Verbal

Scolding

Conveying: That the character is being told off because of something they’ve done, but they don’t care

Forms of Communication: Facial Expressions, Hand Movement, Posture, Timing, Non-Verbal, Verbal

Gift

Conveying: That the character is surprised to receive a gift and excited to see what it is

Forms of Communication: Posture, Facial Expression, Hand Gesture, Verbal, Non-Verbal

By identifying this, I can then show this to the audience and see whether what I was trying to convey was a success or not.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! – MA – Animation, Animating, Progress update

Here’s a quick progress update on both my performance for the Gift and Scolding Animations.

 

A whole lotta Tuna! – MA – Animating, Performances, Progress update

Been a little busy of late so I’ve been a bit behind on blog work, but I’m here now so…. yey!

So the main thing that I’ve been focusing my attention on is the three performances that I’ve been working on. Since getting the references sorted for each one working hard trying get these things done before the Easter break arrives in a few weeks.

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First one is the scolding performance. The blocking for the piece has been done and most/all of timings have been sorted, and now moving onto doing the breakdowns and inbetweens. The performance itself is coming out nicely, character has a good sense of emotion in hos actions and you can really tell that he is fed up or not bothered with anything that the person scolding him I saying, I especially like the shift from leaning forward to sitting back in the chair with their arms crossed.

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The second one is the gift performance. Same with the “Scolding” one I’ve done the blocking and most of timing done for this piece and I aim to move onto the breakdowns and inbetweening, but at the moment there’s a few keys that are a bit off in terms of their timing. I’m aiming to fix this by using the graph editor that rob has been so kind to hold my hand through, showing some neat tips and tricks. It’s has so far helped with some of the jancky movement that I had with the hands that were upsetting the timing, and now I’m simply going through each controller that I’ve used and seeing if there is anywhere I can edit and improve. But besides that the performance itself is looking really good so far, because the audiences attention will be focused on the upper body, I’ve had to put more a lot more attention to detail to hand movements and facial expressions, and they really are looking good, even Rob complemented me on my progress on not only the piece but as an animator saying that my use for exaggerations, expressive facial features and main keys have been my strongest skill as an animator, was very nice of him to say.

Just a Tuna boy, in a Tuna World – MA – Animating, Video Reference

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So I made the decision to use the Turn around challenge a part of my project, as I stated in the last post that envelops the forms of communications and can become a good performance. Anyway so because I’m using it, I’ve had to go back and touch it up so it’s extra crispy and full of goodness.

Within the 1-2-1’s with Debra she has been showing me where I can make the appropriate edits to the keyframes, as well as showing me a few tips and tricks with showing weight and anticipation, which has helped my skills as an animator greatly, and the performance is looking better than ever!

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I’ve also made a start with blocking out the other performances now that I’ve got the video references for the movements now, which by the way massive thank you to Brad, Patrick and Victor from the acting classes for helping me out.

So far I’ve started blocking for the scolding performance, but my plan at the moment is to completely block both performances and finish touching up the turn around, and then move onto doing the breakdowns and inbetweening for blocked pieces.

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The idea for planning this is that I want to be able to set myself up for the end of the term, so when I return I can move onto sorting out the focus groups and the write up.

So many questions… So little time… – MA – Formulating questions, planning research

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on how I’m going to structure my experiment. As you can see in my posts there has been a lot of back and forth in terms of how I would approach the project, what questions to ask and how I would present the final pieces to my focus group. But now that I have my pieces storyboarded, I’ve been looking to nail down my questions for the focus group so I can move forward and be ready when the time comes to execute.

Below are some rough questions to ask Focus group:

What is the first thing you notice when you meet someone for the first time?

…After showing pieces…

Whilst watching those three performances what was is it about those performances stood out to you?

…Then follow up with…

Do you think that it’s important for animators to consider the communication model whilst animating characters? 

…Or…

How does the use of the different forms of communication help with the performance of an animated character?

I aim to get the audience to think about the subject of different forms of communication first, then show the examples and apply that same thought process to animated performances. Then wrap it up with using the question that I aim to answer in my write up, and with the data I collect I can utilise in my write up!

Also, side note, I’m going to try and do interdisciplinary research either this week or next. My plan is to take a microphone and interview students asking them “When you meet someone new, what is the first thing that you focus on?”  and they relate to the different forms of communication. I need to ask Dave or somebody to see whether I need to fill out some paperwork first before I interview random students, but when I’ve done that I’ll proceed with interviewing.

 

Getting giddy – MA – Turn Around Challenge, Animating, Animation Challenges

Here’s an updated version of the Turn Around piece, I’m really pleased with how this has come out, it’s really nice to see how I’ve improved over the few weeks I started these tasks. There’s a few movements that are too quick, and some secondary actions that I need to fix and add, but so far so good!!!

 

Here’s an updated version I worked on this morning, with a few slight alterations like the last turn!

Awful Storyboards – MA – Storyboards, Planning

Here are the storyboards of the animated pieces I will use in my project. Each one will aim to have a good use of all forms of communication so that I can test them on my focus groups. (Also I apologise for the crappy SB quality)

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Here we have the storyboard for the ‘Turn Around’ piece that I’ve been working on. It originally was just a task that I worked on, but as I worked on it I saw the potential of how useful it would be towards the project, hence why I storyboarded it.

Here’s the next piece I aim to work on. This will be interaction between one outside voice, scolding the person at the desk. I aim to utilise the eye controls on this one, and have the them try and avoid contact with the direction of the outside voice.

The final one will be someone receiving a gift. I’m gonna try and use squash and stretch with this one when the character see the gift.

Here’s a dancing hot dog for your entertainment!