Wednesday 22 October 2014

"When Will My Life Begin?" Development

After re-evaluating my initial storyboard I decided to simplify my idea, due to the complicity of Maya and my lack of experience in it, I wanted to set myself more realistic goals to achieve with this animation. Here's another storyboard I made for it:


I think this idea flows through the story well, with the transactions between scenes and the simplicity of the actions will allow me to focus more on lip syncing and developing my skills in Maya at a realistic pace.

Here are the props I could use:


Trying a few designs out allows me to see what I want to design compared to what will be achievable in Maya. There's not much difference in what I want compared to what I can achieve, since the simpler the objects the better and easier to work with.

I will consider everything I've documented here and produce more refined designs.

Monday 20 October 2014

Responsive: The First Three Briefs

A few days ago my course (joined with the Illustration course) were briefed into the new module 'Responsive'. It's split into 3 parts, and revolves around starting to get our work out into the world; The first part of the year - what we're starting now - is entering competitions and taking on live briefs. We have to choose at least 5 briefs in total, whether they are competitions on popular websites or tasks set by someone you know. As long as I expand on small tasks and document everything I do towards the briefs, then I can do anything.

After our introduction, we were asked to look at all the websites provided and choose 3 briefs ready for our second session. Bearing these questions in mind:
To what extent  will the briefs allow you to your criteria for success within the module?
To what extent will the briefs benefit you with regards to the benefits of entering competition briefs?
Any problems that you can foresee with the briefs in relation to the issue discussed in the session?

I chose:

Moo



http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2014-15-ycn-student-awards/briefs/moo

This brief seems like a fun one; it revolves around a business card printing/designing company which could be an opportunity for me to practice my design work. My ultimate goal in this module is to create decent animations to potentially show in the future, and this brief seems like it would incorporate that. A few limitations could be in the guidelines with their colour selections, but this brief seems creatively free enough to accept most entries.

Propercorn



http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2014-15-ycn-student-awards/briefs/propercorn

This is a very open, creative brief which can involve any medium we wish - though it's too open to the point where I don't know what they want as their final outcome. This being said, animating popcorn would be interesting and could be good practice for the future.

Digital Cinema Media



http://www.dandad.org/en/dcm-show-emotion-film/

This is a primarily animation-based brief, with a very specific creative challenge compared to the other two I have picked; they want a 25 second ident that visualises the true power of cinema. It could potentially be difficult to capture the right emotions in an ident that they are asking for, and there's no target audience, but I could brainstorm and work around that if I were to pick this brief.

I will take these to the next scheduled lesson and see what I can do with them next!

Experimenting with Maya

As part of my first study task I had to make an object of my own choice using Maya. I ended up making a mobile phone, but at first I tried to make a Wii Remote:












Getting the basic shapes was easy enough, but trying to curve the corners and make it look more realistic proved to be difficult.

One of the negative points about working with Maya is that sometimes technology can go wrong, and with Maya when it goes wrong it looks something like this.

Thursday 16 October 2014

2 Potential Ideas...

Idea 1

'Yellow Submarine' - The Beatles.

"In the town, where I was born,
There lived a Man, who sailed to sea,
And he told us of his life,
In the land, of submarines"

I could use this in a storytelling environment, put on a posh voice and make Moom read a story from a book; This would give me the opportunity to dress up Moom and create strange props such as the yellow submarine, to bring the story to life in a fantasy way, much like the Beatles with their videos that look slightly like hallucinations.




Idea 2

'When will my life begin' - Mandy Moore, Tangled.

"7AM the usual morning line up
Start on the chores and sweep 'till the floor's all clean
Polish and wax, do laundry, mop and shine up,
Sweep again, 
And by then 
It's like 7:15"

This could be said enthusiastically, as if I can't wait to do all of these activities, or I could say this in a bored, fed up manner making it sound like I don't want to do the activities listed. This could allow me to practice body language on the character as well as lip syncing; and the list here gives me a few opportunities to practice modelling a variety of props (choosing only one or two out of this list).





For this module the main focus is animating with the Maya software so idea 2 would be better to explore this. Idea 1 would be better for making the sequence look nice and experimenting with textures, but primarily what I need to focus on is animating.
I will develop idea 2 further and try to simplify it.

Progression of an Animated Shot

Animating on 3D computer technology can be a long process. The artist has to model the character, rig it so it can move, insert the basic keyframes for all body parts and develop on them until you get to the final product. This video shows the process an animator at Disney went through to reach the final product:


Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled from Jamaal Bradley on Vimeo.

In some ways it's less complicated to animate using key frames and repeatedly going over the clip because it allows the animator to see their process clearly and perfect it as they continue to develop their work. This also makes it easier to see if the artist goes wrong and how to fix the problem they've encountered without having to undo their hard work.

After seeing a drawn version of the scene done for the basic timing of the animation, I can see how animating in 3D made a big impact on the film. For example the photo below is a screenshot from the film; The colours look very bright and vivid, which would be harder to achieve using traditional materials.

Picture from the film Tangled

Despite Glen Keanes sketches looking good, this film is the first feature length 3D animation that Disney have ever made, which shows how they are adapting their work to appeal to new audiences. This being said, Disney are best known for their drawn animations, setting high standards in this area of film, so was it necessary to risk delving into the 3D world as well? Considering they are partnered with Pixar (since 2006), they do have a lot of experience behind them and they have proved with the films Tangled and Frozen that they are capable of using this technique. It is also good that they are trying to create fresh stories that have a spin on their old fairytales and are starting to create a new name for themselves.

Wednesday 15 October 2014

Using Maya as a Software

As I'm getting to know how Maya works, I realise I have to learn how to make my character rig and props move in the best way possible. This video gives me a lot of examples of how certain objects move and can be stretched and creased depending on which part you manipulate:


fStretch 2 for Maya® - 2011 from Matthieu Fiorilli on Vimeo.

An advantage of using Maya is that the object/character you're moving keeps the same weight and can measure back to its original state with flamboyancy; whereas with 2D animation you have to re-draw every frame so sometimes the shape and measurements change slightly as the animation continues.

This video in particular shows how simple creases being squashed and stretched can add so much volume and realistic values to the object you're animating, compared to how that same pose would look without the detail.

I can bring this into account when designing my own props as this module carries on over the next few months.


Sunday 12 October 2014

Mind Map/Idea Generation

To figure out a starting point for my new project Character and Narrative, I created a mind map of songs I could potentially take lyrics from:


After contemplating all of these I drafted out my ideas in these thumbnails:


The first idea, 'U can't touch this', is originally an upbeat song about how high in confidence/ego the singers are. Another way to interpret the phrase 'can't touch this' would be in a strict manner where someone isn't allowed to touch a valuable object, such as in a museum with rare artefacts.

The original song 'When will my life begin' shows Rapunzel in the film Tangled running around her tower listing off chores/activities she does whilst stuck in the tower. A more obvious way to talk about doing chores is if there's a child/teenager that doesn't want to complete the chores, so my idea would involve me sounding tired and fed up listing off chores I had to do later that day.

'Yellow submarine' was originally sung by The Beatles, in a generally surreal experience singing about a man who lives in a submarine. It could be interpreted into a storytelling environment talking about a man that I know...

The song 'Patience' by Take That sings of a love story where the man needs time before they can happily be together. Another way I could take this phrase is if someone is frustrated and asking someone else for patience as they try to get a job done.

'Home' is sung by Michael Buble and describes his sadness about missing his family while he's travelling the world. An idea I thought of relating to this involves a documentary style tone to the voice describing my surroundings and time period.

'Be our guest' is a song that features on the film 'Beauty and the Beast', involving the servants inviting the main character to enjoy their service. I would say the lyrics in a similar way to the original except having one character giving a tour of the kitchen/dining room.

Out of these ideas the two I like best are 'When will my life begin' and 'Yellow submarine'. I think both have a lot of potential, so I will draft them both into storyboards to see which idea pans out the best.

Saturday 11 October 2014

3D Animation - Jonathan Mafi

This is a good example of character animation in 3D:


Finished 3d Animation from Jonathan Mafi on Vimeo.

You can tell how the characters are feeling based on their body language - the character that walks in the room and shouts is obviously angry and assertive based on how he looks and interacts with the other character, whereas the guy on the left seems slightly frightened and stands up straight readily listening to his commander. Based on these observations we can tell that they are soldiers, because they are trained to walk and act in a certain way.

I have to take this into account when making my own animation, once I decide what dialogue I'm using I also have to get the right body language to complete the action to a realistic standard.

Friday 10 October 2014

Character and Narrative

So my class had our first briefing into the new project today! We found out that this project will be based on learning Autodesk Maya to lip sync a rigged model to our own voices.

We will be taking a verse or chorus of song lyrics to record ourselves, but they can be said in any way that we wish. This ranges from screaming and shouting our lungs out to whispering or muttering, depending on which way we want to take this project.

This is the character I will be animating, called Moom (given to the whole class):



He's an interesting looking character, who is easy enough to adjust and change features slightly (such as the teeth), so I'm looking forward to experimenting with it!

This character also needs at least 1 prop to assist in the performance, so I will need to take this into consideration when generating ideas.

So the first thing I need to do is start generating mind maps with different song lyrics and movements of Moom.