Final Crit: Feedback

There was actually quite a bit of positive feedback for my animation. I am proud of it, considering all the time I put into it.

The feedback was mainly regarding issues with audio, since you could barely hear my character, since he was whispering the whole time. There was also a problem with the scene where Moom breaks his arm with the chair. I thought it was quite clear that he was whacking the chair but it apparently wasn't. I was told to recolour the chair so that it stands out a bit, but that would take a lot of time to do, considering the method I used to make the animation. I basically made each shot into a separate document so that I could render each one faster.

The names are based on the panels on my storyboard. This is actually saved a bunch of time rendering, because I render each scene when I was finished with them. However, if I was to change the chair colour, I would have to recolour it in every file it is in, and that would take too much time. It stands out anyway, because it's got more texture than most of the other objects in the scene.

Instead, I will remove the white flash from that (which I think just threw people off) and instead add another visual 'smack' effect over the area he interacts with. The scene also begins with the camera panning out from the area where the chair is.

Other than that, I just simply need to boost the voice-over audio and I'm done. Simples.

Creating the Wheelchair for Moom

I made a design sheet for the chair Moom is interacting with in the animation. I had the idea of designing a wheelchair for him because I could have fun with it by making Moom mess around and go nuts on it. There were, surprisingly, a few design changes to this damn thing, though.

I basically just took an image online and drew that. I didn't trace it, though, I only needed the image for reference so that I could simplify it on paper before actually making the model.

This sheet, I made to get a better idea on how big the chair should be in conjunction to Moom. I can resize the model on Maya to match this design.

Lastly, I needed to focus specifically on the wheels and legs of the chair so that I can get the right level of detail.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stick to this complex a design. I had to remove the arms to save time, and so that I can properly use the only chairs available as reference (none of them had arms on them). Not only that but I completely messed up the model after finishing it using these design sheets, so I had completely remake it with a such simpler aesthetic. I removed one leg, and only used one wheel for each leg (rather than a set of two wheels and a pivot each).

This is how it turned out in the end:

A pretty great deal of compromise was made for this, but it works fine. Moom can still roll around and have fun on it just fine. I still the first model (which I deleted) hadn't have completely screwed up, since it looked much better.

Getting to Know Moom

Before I updated the storyboard, I wanted to get to know Moom a little more. Since I'm primarily working with storyboards, I had to have a good idea on how he would be drawn, so I made a couple of design sheets, just copying the already made 3D model. It was handy knowing the anatomy of the character, so that I could determine the size and scale of both the object I'll be making, and the room the animation is set in.

Storyboard/Animatic Change

These were the original storyboards for the animation. They were kind of rushed, since I wasn't entirely together that day, and was sort of last minute, but it was basic enough to get an idea of what my animation will entail.

Granted, these were made before I made that spreadsheet of all of Moom's faces, that I mentioned before, so I didn't quite know what I was capable of doing with Moom at the time. I think I went a little overboard, because quite a few of these poses and expressions wouldn't have been possible with Moom. So I decided to update this with the help of that spreadsheet and some more knowledge about Moom.

Here, I improved some of the more basic issues with the first one, such as the lack of detail on lighting and shadow, but I also changed the camera angles and the beginning leading up to where the audio begins. I figured the camera beginning straight away with a speeding camera that stops instantly would be a bit too disorienting. Plus, I felt like him writing on a piece of paper next to a stack of papers established quite well that he was a guy who had been working for too long, plus him gripping the pencil too hard and it breaking was funny symbolism of his mentality "snapping". I also wanted him to interact with the chair more so I added him moving across the room on it, and falling down on it in the end. Also, might I add, the arm he broke was also his writing hand, quite the definitive "I'm so done with work" action, since he can no longer work now. Oh yeah, and there's actually audio in the animatic now.

Animating the Camera in Maya

As I was setting up the scene in Maya, I realised something. I have no idea how the camera works. After all, wasn't that one of the things I was focusing on? How to take full advantage of the camera? So I stopped to practice animating the camera, and it turned out to be one of the more frustrating things about animating on Maya. That frigging camera was difficult to learn. Of course I would always look at the guide given on the Autodesk website. It's never done me wrong to look at the official guides, and I did learn the basics. So I made another video to practice the basic camera movement.

Yeah... I was getting kinda crazy that day, and I figured the content of the video wasn't exactly going to effect anything, but hey, all that matters is that I managed a decent camera pan and zoom. To be honest, animating the facial expressions was harder than animating the camera... I guess I was just bored.

Anyway, I did learn about the camera from this, I even found out I can mess around with it on the graph editor. I know there's more to the camera than just this, but after this I can learn about the camera as I go along.

Extreme Emotions - Proof of Concept

I also wanted to look at exaggeration, which, as I mentioned before, is something I adore in animation. Since I am fairly limited with the character I was given, I decided to mess around with the face of the character, to see how much freedom I actually had with the character's expressions. This would also prove useful for when I am making the storyboard and I need to know the poses I draw on each panel is even possible. So what I did was I made Moom pull a bunch of faces then drew them. I decided to draw them so that I would know how extreme his emotions could be and I could learn to draw them well for the storyboard.

This wasn't the only thing I did, mind you. I had to see how I could animate poses for Moom as well. So afterwards, I made a little video of Moom making random faces and gestures to practice animating and transitioning between emotions. I was still learning to animate Moom at the time so this wasn't exactly perfectly animated, but it was good for this. 

Acting Proof of Concept

A while ago, I looked all the different performances that would influence the acting in my animation. The performances were all very relevant to the type of acting I would end up doing in my short, since they were performances that established their character's insanity. I figured before recording my dialogue, I would practice by filming myself re-enacting a scene from one of the characters I looked at. I chose to try out part of the Lloyd scene from The Shining, since it kind of resembles the performance of my character and the peak of going insane.

I'm no Jack Nicholson, let's that straight, this was still a decent performance for me, and it totally got me prepped for my voice acting. I did the Kubrick thing of recording a million takes before finding the perfect one. I'm perfectionist, which is kind of a weakness of mine, but hey, at least it leads to perfect results. Well, maybe not this time, this was just practice after all.

A Change in Style

This happens quite rarely for me, when I get a sudden need to change the art style of something I'm in the middle of creating, but when it happens, it always leads to fantastic results. This time is no exception. I was in the middle of creating the set for my 3D animation, and I was trying to create the colours for the walls. I was also going to include all the little details, such as window frames, floor textures, etc. Suddenly, as I looked at it with the solid grey-scale colours, I noticed it actually looked pretty darn effective the way it was, considering the themes of the animation.

This is how it was originally designed:

There's a lot of detail and several props here. Everything would have been mostly symmetrical and realistically coloured, with dark blue lighting.

This is how it looks now (with extra lighting added so that you can make it out):

It works extremely well the way it is now, I find. The simple look makes the distortion translate very well. I'm using a camera with the Lens Squeeze ratio set to 3, since the set is rather small, and how it distorts the setting gives the solid textures more character. It also fits the rather comically bleak tone I was going for, because the bleak colours and over-the-top distortion fits the theme of broken mentality, and the comedic tone. This style also automatically draws the eye towards Moom, since he's the only coloured model, and the distorted imagery fits his emotions and current state of mind. The shadows also stand out pretty well and look fantastic, since shadows are symbolic of a darker side I really wanted them to be emphasised in exactly this manner.

I'm glad I chose to stick with this style. It actually has kind of the same effect as the video game Killer 7, which used a very similar style, which added a lot to the game's dark and surreal tone:

Animating Emotions: Proof of Concept

Since I'm going to focus a lot on extreme emotions throughout my animation, I thought I'd start by practicing animating emotions. I already made a bunch of emotions to draw on a sheet, but I made that so that I could make a storyboard and scene layout sheets whilst taking the limitations of the character's model into consideration, I never actually animated them. So here's a proof of concept I made with Moom making random gestures and transitioning between facial expressions:

Interim Crit - Responses

So the responses for my interim critique were fairly positive, overall. Everybody seemed happy with my approach and, and I managed to catch some wincing amongst the group when I described what sound effects I would use for the arm breaking, so I know to definitely keep my sound effect for that in.

In terms of feedback, though, I was mainly advised to plan my lighting effects more clearly, since I mainly just designed the room and not really took notice of the type of lighting (I guess I just assumed everybody would know what the lighting would be like, since the idea was in my head at the time), so I'll do some more concept artwork for the room that gives a clear depiction of what the lighting would be like.

I was also told to look at more actors for reference, to observe and analyse their performances, the different manners in which they act. I can therefore get a clearer understanding for how to act the way I want to, crazy but in an over-the-top manner. I also thought to look at other animated characters for reference, rather than just live action, and I thought about the animations for the character, Artorias the Abyss Walker, from the video game Dark Souls. Who, just like my character, has a broken arm.

Finally, I was told to take advantage of the prop I chose, a computer wheel chair. At the moment, Moom only interacts with it a few times. The idea would be that he moves quite frantically on it, and the chair rolls around everywhere in the environment.

Some great advice, overall. I will definitely make those changes. I'm expecting to find myself take advantage of the environment I've created once I actually model it.

Animation Skills

I recently learned to animate on Maya. The given task allowed me to practice what I had learned on objects designed for animation. The animations were to demonstrate five key words for Maya: Turntable, pendulum, overlapping pendulum, bouncy balls, and anticipation.

Turntable was pretty simple. I just had to create an object and make the camera rotate around it, using the "turntable" tool, for animating, and set the easing in and out, with the Graph Editor, in a manner that lets the camera turn constantly.

It's pretty dark but It works fine.

Pendulum was quite simply animating the motion of a pendulum. Rather familiar territory for an animator, but this was just standard practice for learning the software. The easing was accomplished using the graph editor.

Overlapping Pendulum was much more advanced, for having to animate both a swinging in an arc motion, and the overlapping action. This meant that as one part of the pendulum swung, so did the others, and taking the laws of physics into account, this meant that, given the nature of the object, the end of the object would move freely and the closer to the main joint the pendulum was, the more stiff it would be.

Bouncy Balls was, again, very much standard for an animator learning new software. I simply had two different coloured balls, one a solid and the other squishy, and I simply had to animated them both bouncing, while taking account their solidity.

Anticipation was there to practice my ability to animate an anticipation motion, which would then lead to a follow-through movement. I took the green ball and made it crash into a wall, stay there, and then finally bounce back.

Strike a Pose

So for this task, I had to strike poses, depending on what type of emotion I was supposed to convey, and make Moom's model copy those actions. This was a particularly fun task, as I could act as wacky and over-the-top as possible, since it's animation. I've always seen animation as a purely visual medium, so the character's actions on-screen must be emphasised completely; I wanted my poses to fit that idea, and I basically pretended I was in a silent movie, since the acting back then was supposed to emphasise the emotions, since the films had to be told visually with not much dialogue and any sound effects to work off of.

This emotion was "Happiness"

Obviously not how anyone would realistically show emotion, but this is animation after all. I wanted to take body language into consideration, and that meant using the entire body's actions.

Turned out well. I captured the actions rather well and managed to exaggerate the facial expressions too. I added a plane and a spot-light for comedic effect as well. That wasn't entirely necessary, but I just thought I'd have a little fun with it.

This here's "Envy"

I figured I would establish envy by acting jealous. I thought a lot about how I would act blatantly envious towards someone, so I imagined someone winning the lottery right across the room from me and thought of this pose. I figured my body wouldn't be facing directly towards them, since I'm acting uninterested but my envy leads me to look in that direction. Since I'm jealous as well, I'd look with a sour expression.

This is how it turned out. It was really awkward crossing the arms like that, since his hands were so huge, but I did my best. Again, I love how this turned out, especially with pouty facial expression. 

And this one is "Confusion"

For this one, I couldn't exactly move my entire body, so I only really focused on the upper half of my body, while my legs would just stay in a regular standing pose. An easy signifier for confusion, though, is head scratching, even though it realistically isn't an action I would typically do when I'm confused. So head-scratching was what I went with, but how would I exaggerate an action as simple as head scratching? Notice my left arm is motionless, and my head is tilted towards the right arm; this draws the viewers' eyes towards the action I'm performing and tells them right away that I'm supposed to be confused. I also topped it all off with a "thinking" facial expression.

This is how it turned out. I added a few extra details to it. I added a slight bend to the legs and slumped the arm forward. This gives the character more of a dopey gesture to add to the emotion of "confusion" that he wants to convey. I manipulated the eyes too, so that his facial expressions are emphasised. I tried making it look as though he was making an "ehhhh" sound, with the way I shaped his mouth. 

This emotion is "Fear"

Language suggesting I "just witnessed true horror" was what I thought. As usual, I ignored the rule of subtlety (less is more) in favour of the cartoony pose. Leaning as far back as possible with my legs far apart, both hands on my head, whilst screaming (I didn't actually scream, just opened my mouth) seemed to exaggerate this emotion rather well.

Here, I changed the angle of the legs, and took the hands of the head. I also really wanted to make the eyes pop out as far as they could go, without the face clipping through them. Not too different to the reference picture, however; I just manipulated Moom's body language in a manner that felt the most natural to me.

Lastly, here's "Anticipation"

This was a tough one to pull off, because I wasn't 100% clear on how to pose in a manner that suggest I'm expecting something to happen. I tried leaning forward in a way that suggests I'm looking closer at something, and put my hand to mouth in supposed intrigue.

This worked out well in the end. I added an action to the left arm so that it supports the rest of the body language, rather than just sort of hiding behind my back like in the reference photo. I kind of improvised with the eyes and eye brow, since they weren't exactly clear in the photograph. I think the facial expression compliments the entire pose very well.

Modelling Skills

I've started working with Maya (3D animating/modelling software) to develop my skills beyond the traditional 2D animation software, and so far I'm finding it pretty challenging but still lots of fun. Since I'm accustomed to this yet, I was given a very simple task of making a 3D model of a truck.

I think it went pretty well. I learned a lot about Maya during the making of this. I even made an animation of this truck, just for funsies:

Next I was tasked into making another object of my choice. I tried not to go overboard with my decision (and by I overboard, I mean I was originally going to pick the Great Sword of Artorias from Dark Souls) so I settled with making a very simple coffee mug.

I think it went pretty well. This took some trial and error, of course. I find that that's a good method for me to learn about the software. It takes some time getting used to though so I did get help from others, telling me about the different tools and reminding me of what I can do. In the end, I've learned quite a bit and I'm looking to learn how to animate as well.