Crit week

During crit week i gave a quick reminder of the stage i was at during pitch week and showed my progress since then. Overall i feel the presentation went well however i do need to work on being more confident when speaking and perhaps also more clear as to what im talking about.
   I recieved a lot of useful feedback during the session both on my persentation and my project, the first bit of feedback i recieved was that during future presentations i should focus more of what i discovered from doing certain media tests than the media tests themselves. I was also advised to use some of what i had learned in my rotoscoping test to observe and try to pick apart films which i plan on doing in the near future in the form of case studies and it was also mentioned that i should focus more on the combination of motion capture and keyframed animation than them both seperately and to that end firstly identify the pro's and con's of each.
   The most important piece of feedback i recieved however i feel was to turn my research question on its head and rather than looking at how motion capture can benefit key framed animation to look at how key framed animation can benefit motion capture.

Motion capture using kinect

During pitch week one of the peices of feedback i recieved was to download some motion capture data and attempt to do some clean up animation on it. However instead of downloading the data i decided to try and capture some myself using a Xbox Kinect system, motionbuilder and software from www.brekel.com . Rather than explain step by step i will instead link i followed to achieve this  http://www.reubenfleming.co.uk/tuts.html .

This is an example of the captured data imported into maya, i have not attempted to edit it yet however i will be attempting it in the next few weeks. The most interesting part of doing this however was being able to have a character mesh attached to the skeleton while capturing which was entertaining and gave me some ideas that may be used in a future project.

Character animation

Concidering my project is not only on motion capture and imitaion i created a short piece of performance animation while attempting to keep a couple of things in mind. These were attempting to have 2 characters interact in a scene, animating a exaggerated and a subtle character, attempting to lead the eye of the viewer and basically most of the 7 essential acting concepts outlined at the beginning of "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hooks.

This is the piece i ended up with, allthough there is no sound to go with the animation my thoughts at the time was the first character asking " Well? What do you think?" and the second character repling with "it's ok". The scene itself was originally going to be losely based on my own personal experience of the university interview however as the scene developed so did the concept so it has ended up being one freind asking another for their opinion on their written work.
From this creating this short animation i have personally discovered a couple more useful things in relation to animation, one rather obvious one is that attempting a short straight ahead animation without storyboarding beforehand takes much longer than it initally should and also that when animating two characters interacting a scene attempting to animate them both seperately then animating the interactions does work but not as well as it could.

Rotoscope animation

Continuing on from my mimics before i have been looking into rotoscope animating in 3d. My reasoning behind this was very similar to my reason for the still image mimics, to try and imitate the feel and performance of a live actor in a 3d character. Also when researching into gollum as mentioned previously, I discovered that in some cases this was a technique they used to imitate Andy Serkis's performance. Allthough its a rather old technique which has been used in many 2d animations and also used by walt disney to study movement instead of direct imitation and tracing it was interesting to see it being transfered into a 3d character.
   At any rate below is my attempt at rotoscope animation in 3d using a scene from the film "Taxi Driver".

 

 

Allthough its not a perfect representation it is fairly close and i do believe i could have gotten it a lot more accurate if i had given it another few passes. What i have discovered from this test is firstly and rather predicibly that it is possible to re-create live action scenes in 3d while still keeping the same impact and emotion that is in a scene and secondly that the technique is also useful for studying the more subtle movements in a human or any creature in 3d also.

 

While animating this peice one thing that i did notice was that as an animator i wanted to exaggerate the movements of the character beyond the limits of the actor and had to stop myself from adding extra animation where there was none. Also that the live actor rarely blinks which is something that i  feel in animation adds life to a character.

Inspiration and current research question.

Since it has been a while since i updated last and i also realised i had forgotten to upload my inspiriation for my project so this post is simply to try and bring this up to date as will the next few posts.

Currently i havent narrowed down my research question completely yet however at this moment in time I'm currently researching how performance and motion capture can improve an animation but that isnt exactly what im finally hoping to achieve.

The following are simply films and animations that have inspired the direction my project is going in.

Firstly (and most likely the main inspiration) Gollum from Lord of the Rings the Two Towers. The character and animation pretty much encapsulates the direction that my project has taken. As Im sure i've mentioned before the way firstly that the keyframed animation and motion capture works together is seamless and adds a lot more to the character than one or the other could on their own, and secondly his schizophrenia is the best exmple of how a characters performance effects their appeal I can think of since he is essentially two characters dispite looking the same.

All pixar animations! (Brave is above simply because its their latest film and is based very near my hometown) For any 3d animator Pixar is always an inspiration however in relation to my project as far as performance through pure keyframed animation goes there isnt any studio that can do it better in my personal opinion.

Avatar simply because it is visually stunning and once again the combination between live action, 3d and motion capture is very impressive.

There are numerous other examples of animations and short's that inspire me and make me want to animate such as the "Mists of Pandaria" cinematic and "Ark" by Grzegorz Jonkajtys and Marcin Kobylecki aswell as many others however i feel these examples are the most relevant to the direction my project appears to be going in.

Pitch week

A little over a week ago i had my first pitch to see how my project was currently coming along this is a post containing some of my personal opinions and the feedback i recieved.
 Firstly i'll admit that at the moment pitching and public speaking isnt one of my strong points and i believe there was a bit more i had to say than i actually did during the pitch however i managed to get the main points across and got some interesting feedback.

During the pitch i had two seperate research questions which i talked about which were "how does the way a character is animated effect their appeal?" and " how can motion capture and composition improve an animation?". With the feedback i recieved i did notice that a lot more focus was put towards the combining of keyframed and motion capture which was useful to find out concidering thats the area i was beginning to lean to. I unfortunately didnt have that many media tests to show at the time since most of my work so far has been attempting to develop a research question and getting a better understanding of the field.  I do believe however i got the general idea of my project across at this stage and allthough the feedback was fairly general it was useful and unexpectantly Robin came up with a title for my project which will probably get used "Imitation, Interpretation and Animation".

By the next meeting i hope have my project more focused and backed up by a couple more animation media tests.

Notes on Gollum (The Two Towers)

This post is simply an update of some notes i've taken while looking into how Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films was created from a technical viewpoint mainly looking at the process involved and how it evolved into the final character in the film.

His design began with 2d concepts then his body was sculpted using real life inspiration to make him look realistic. The sculped model was then scanned to copy the scuplture as a 3d model. Origionally he was designed as a purely 3d and animated character and only a voice actor was needed, however they soon found out that expression and voice acting couldnt be seperated if they wanted a believable character. After this they began doing scenes with Gollum differently they did it in two stages firstly they did a animation reference pass with the live actor in shot to help the animators and also so that the rest of the actors know how to react to this 3d creature. Then they would do a mime pass which was initally going to be the final shot which was simply the same scene without the live actor that would be Gollum. Then due to the performance given by Gollums actor they decided to change his design mid production to make Gollum look more like him and be able to imitate his facial expressions more precisely. Gollum was resculped using the actor for reference and the actor now became the motion capture artist for Gollum. Gollum was animated in the end with a combination of motion capture and keyframed animation, facial expressions hand and feet movements were keyframed at all times and a lot of the more unrealistic shots that couldnt be motion captured also were. Roto-animation was a technique heavly used which is where the animators would use the animation reference pass of the film and animate over the live action shot while copying the actors movements acurately then edit the actor out. Originally the animators had a different view of the character than the actors so it was important for them to get to know the character better before continuing to animate him.

That is most of the relevant information i have taken from the various documentrys on Gollum from The Two Towers film. The main parts of this that i believe will be the most useful in  the future is the multiple passes of a live action scene and the use of Roto-animation.

Live action actors still image mimics

I have created a couple of mimics based on poses from various films in an attempt to imitate the look and feel given by each indivdual. All these imitations have been created using the Norman rig V010 downloaded from www.11secondclub.com.

My first attempt was with Jules from Pulp Fiction. The reason behind this choice was because it has become an iconic film moment and Samuel L Jackson delivered what I feel is a unique peice of acting in this scene. I believe with this one I attempted to edit the sizes and shapes of facial features too much to look more in proportion with the actor, unfortunately this doesnt help with the results.

 

Next was the Mask from the film The Mask. The reason behind this choice is simply because of the over the top and exaggerated character that Jim Carrey creates in this film and since the character is based on cartoon stylings it seemed appropriate.

 



The third mimc I created was yet another exaggerated character Austin Powers from the Austin Powers films. The reason for this choice is fairly similar to the one above except this is a realistic exaggerated character.

 



The fourth mimic i attempted is a more serious role The Joker from The Dark Knight. The reasoning behind this one was simply after attempting some exaggerated characters i felt it would be benificial to imitate some more serious ones and preferably a villian. Also most people would argue that The Joker is one of the greatest movie villians of all time.

Finally i attempted to mimic Maximus Decimus Meridius from the film Gladiator. This again is another iconic film moment from a realistic and believable character. Also with such an extreme facial expression it helped me see some of the limits of the Norman rig.

 

 

Conclusion



Through this exercise i have noticed how much of a difference a change of expression and pose can make in the look an feel of a character dispite being a single model. Also since these are only still images at this time i am hoping to learn more from full animation tests in the near future.

Meeting with tutor 1

I recently had my first meeting with one of my tutors and was given a lot of advice and a few suggestions on ways of focusing my project down. This is a list of some of the most notable points from that meeting:

• Defining appeal (actually a lot more difficult than it sounds)
• look at how to combine motion capture and animation
• look at the workflow of motion capture
• Mimic some poses and possibly animation of real life actors to help with performance
• Decide if i wish to be an animator or a technical animator

My own personal thoughts are that after the year is done I wish to be an animator as opposed to technical animator but I am still interested in technical animation so after some more research i will have a more definate decision.

research question development

To begin my project for the year I decided it would be best to identify what areas of the industry i am interested in personally. These are as follows:

• Animation in 3D
• Modelling in 3D
• Cloth and hair within program
• Composition
• Motion capture
• After effects on the finished project

After a lot of thought however I managed to come up with a research question that will for the moment give me a direction to work in which is "How does the way a character is animated effect its appeal?"

Below is the notes and mind map that led me to this and suggestions in what ways to develop it further.

Welcome

Hello, my name is Lewis Mackenzie and welcome to my animation blog. I am an aspiring animator that works mostly in 3d art I am currently studying at the University of Abertay as a computer arts student and am currently in my honours year. I'll be hopefully updating this blog regularly with any new projects I'll be working on.