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!!!

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.

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!

Think Think Think… – MA – Discussions

Last week I spoke to Rob about my project and the direction it’s heading in. He was happy with where I was and saw the potential of what the outcome of the project will be. But during my discussion to him about what my experiment would entail, he came up with suggestion to something around Motion Capture vs Manual (Key-framed) Animation. He explained that there was great opportunities to compare the two methods in relation to my project and lots of research to backup my writing.

After hearing his case I do agree with him. Doing this experiment has a lot of areas for me to discuss with focus groups what communications forms stand out more between the two, it’ll allow me to focus even more on the performance aspect and I get to mess around with the motion capture suite, my concern about this though, is that the project might move into a different direction to that I was trying to accomplish.

What I mean by this, is that I fear my project will change to mo-cap vs keyframe, more than looking into what forms of communications are more prominent in a characters performance. Which isn’t bad thing because both are focused on performance animation, which is an area that I’m very interested in pursuing, but it may mean that some of the research that I’ve already done might not be related to the project anymore. It might not be the case, but these thoughts are buzzing round my mind at the moment, I need to really sit down and have a think about it before I move on to anything else.

On a brighter side, I have started attending “Acting for Animators” classes. The first lesson was really fun and the lecturer seems really passionate about acting and it’s relation to animation. I managed to pull her aside at the end of the lecture to speak with her about my project and my future ambitions, and she was very understanding, telling me that I was more than welcome to attend other lecturers and that if I need to conduct interviews with her about anything relating to my project and can do so!

P.S. I’ve made the video references for the next animation task. I am a little bit behind schedule due to other pieces of work, but I will still continue to work on it regardless.

Take a seat – MA – Animation Practice, Sitting Challenge

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Update:

It’s going very well so far, currently I’ve only done the blocking and some breakdowns for the movement, but I think it’s looking really good so far, and I got to give a lot of credit to the reference I shot for the pose. Though it looks good so far it’s missing some weight on the impact of the chair when the character sits on it, as well as adding a few more breakdowns and secondary actions. But so far so good 🙂

 

Just want to sit in my room and drink tea – MA – Animation Practice, Planning

Yeah that’s right, I have another out of context gifs… and what?

Anyway…

So one of my goals this year, as well as part of my project, is to practice animation more. I’ve come a long way from when I started in the first in my understanding of animation, but there is still a lot for me to learn before I apply for studios and I think that is all down to me practising by doing some short pieces throughout the year.

To get me motivated to actually stick to it, I spoke with Debra last year about an idea for a 1-2-1 in 3D animating, and she was all for it and actually made it as one of my timetabled lectures every Thursday morning (Thanks Debra you’re the best!!!). What we plan to do is to set a challenge every week for me to do, over the week I’ll make a start on it and have Debra teach me what I can improve and adjust, this way I can get practice out of it and anything that looks great will go on my portfolio, so it’s a win-win for me!!!

My first task will be a sitting challenge where I simply need to animate a character sitting in a chair.

The idea came from a Facebook group called the “AnimChallenge Group” that set challenges every month for people to submit and critique for free, it looks pretty fun and I may decide to participate when I have some free time.

My plan for the task is to film some reference videos of my emoting a person annoyed and sitting down, I picked annoyed because it’ll be a good opportunity to show some weight and secondary action, and then spend the weekend getting at the very the least the blocking done to show to Debra on Monday morning

 

Also who’s excited for One Punch Man Season 2? I know I am 🙂

Sulky boy – MA – Rig testing

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I’m back in Notts, which means I get to use my computer again, which means I can actually use Maya at home!!! To try and get back into the swing of things before lectures start up, I decided to continue my rig research by testing out some of the rigs I discovered over the holidays.

As you know from the last blog I found two useful rigs called Jin and Joe that looked like they were the perfect fit for what I was looking for, but unfortunately I couldn’t get them to download properly so I had to drop them. Luckily for me I quickly discovered another rig called “Tuna” (weird name for a character but hey ho we don’t judge on this blog) and had a little mess around with the controls and blend shapes. The rig controls very well to my surprise, the controls for the face are easy to navigate and the models limb controls are similar to the ones I rigged to my characters for the Thesis Film last year. The rig also has some great expressions to mess around with, I particularly like how easy it is to manipulate the eyebrows and how the rigger has functioned them to work. Overall a good find and definitely a rig I may use for the project if another good rig doesn’t show.