Audiovisuals, Winter 2014

Here is a sequence of audiovisuals collection. I've been working on it throughout the winter for a couple of events. At the moment I'm thinking how to integrate digital painting too... I'll share some test results at some point I think. Thanks for watching (:]

BP Animating Progress and Process

It is the end of second week of animating the Queen of Baltic Pixies. I have roughly 53 seconds animated. This week was generous giving me 6 seconds a day.

 In the process of animating Vaiva, I start with blocking key poses which tell the story within the shot. After that I make sure to create some equally strongly posed in-betweens. Third phase is adding some delayed animation poses for separate parts of the body. All of this done in stepped mode of animation (non-smooth flow of action) . Having done that I hope I have mapped out something decent and with my fingers crossed spline the animation curves.

 Still not good. Splined animation gives dirty anchors and brings out mistakes naked to the surface. At this point I work on ‘cushioning’, as Richad Williams terms it. It is essentially making sure that there are not a single hard stop within animation curves, meaning every action would start or end incrementally and organically, unless otherwise intended. Lastly, refining and tweaking anything to hit the right timing is what I end up with.

Also, when thinking about the quality of animation I almost never consider film, for, as I mentioned a while ago, one animator has the whole year for 2 min of animation. Instead I always have in mind a commercial quality type of animation, for a typical commercial project has roughly the time I have to animate the character, which is – from 3 to 5 weeks ( 3 for me).

 I am reaching the ending scenes at the moment and am hoping to move to some secondary animation ( rainbow, riverside, ‘Laumikas’ and so on. )

Vaiva's Animating Progress

First week of animating has finished, so far I have 18 seconds of animation. Here I add a short glimpse to Vaivas introduction animation. To see clean shape deformation it is rendered out as AO pass (ambient Occlussion)

The rest of planned animating time ( 2 weeks) have the rest of 70 seconds…. However it is far from bad news. Usually getting into animating and solving those last rigging problems, which appear only when controls are used intensively, do eat some time.

Also, I thought this is an interesting fact: A standard length of completed animation per animator, in studios such as Pixar, is 1,5 min maybe 2 min …per year (!) … I suppose therefore everyone in CG Arts who’s in this task of bringing their characters to life during the relatively short time we have left , should take this fact into consideration and in a way have realistic expectations.

Lastly, I feel fully in the mindset for animating and thinking with the character ( Vaiva now appears in my dreams too ) And it seems that couple of scenes are asking for slight modification to work out audience’s distancing to and from the character better.

Acting Reference

It was clear very soon, that acting reference was key for creating Vaiva’s performance. So many expression nuances were hard to capture solely in storyboards or pre-vizes. The images represent stills of the reference footage.

 

With the help of time code and the grid over the footage, I’m comfortable to attempt constructing accurately timed and well spaced performance.

Vaiva's Controls Test Animation

This is an exercise of Vaiva’s body animation controls. The animated sequence has only some indication of her character, however I was more concerned with learning the workings of her rig and warming up.

 

 After this test I see that some controls work very closely together, so it means when using a particular handle it would only work correctly if couple of others go with it, for example: her feet controls work together with the middle ring of the spine, which is responsible for the skirt and the avoiding of leg/skirt geometry clashes.
  Also, great consideration should be taken to create organic and feminine animation instead of something closer to Ivan the Bird – clunky robotic animation :D However I have great belief in acting reference I am filming at the moment (with some struggle taken to borrow a camera from Universities resources for photography students). Lets see how it will work :]

Wolves Sliding Jump Animation

Sliding jump animations for both of the wolves have reached a decent stage. With these animations I was trying to emphasize the gracefulness and lightness of the good wolf. He jumps high in the air and lands dynamically. For the evil wolf I was emphasizing his heavy mass and an ice-like materiality. Therefore, as he lands down, there is a notable sliding and anticipatory crouching.

Landing and Sliding Jump animation

Lately I’m working on Good wolfs landing and sliding jump animations. These are examples of first pass animation, which later will be further defined and adjusted to the scenes.

There were no longer any reference images from Muybridge, therefore I have looked for some videos on youtube and print-screened some key frames to inform my animating.

I am aware that the sliding jump animation seems to rely on translate keyframing, meaning the body seems stiff. I'll revisit this one after some time off, as I found it is worth animating back again with a fresh eye.

Wolves Run Cycle Animation

The animated sequence presents both wolves trotting. I’ve laid out the base animation which will be pulled for scenes. The second pass of animation will be done once they are put within the environment and the particular situation. The key achievement in these sequences are the proper use of the animation handles so there is no twitching anymore. Also and again, Muybridge’s photo sequence of dog run cycles were invaluable reference source.

Good Wolf's Walkcycle Test 1

This is today's first attempt in animating the basic quadruped walk cycle. It is not stylized to suit the character type, I focused on basics first.. .which actually were/are quite hard to get . I have followed Williams' Animator's Survival Kit.



7 hours of animating and I have a pain filled walkcycle. At the moment it looks like the wolf is walking rather in pain. :D But it really helps as a starting point to spot the problems and areas of focus. All in all, this 1 minute long animation is a luxury to focus on quality instead of the quantity, which was the case in 4 minute long Ivan the Bird animation. I find that after this exercise I’m in a much better position for the future attempts. For example, there is way too much action in the upper spine (neck area). Also, there are some problems, which I guess are coming from the rig: legs twitch at times.

Also, as I was animating other problems became evident and I attempted to fix them, such as skinning problems, or shape deformations in legs particularly ( I now have created an overall blend shape sitting on top of all the other ones, so that geometry could be easily altered from scene to scene if needed )

So… 6 seconds of arguably crappy animation, but it doesn’t feel like a loss today. And hopefully during this week's time there will be those better animations.

Researching Quadruped Animation

The project is stepping into other stages of animating. A challenge of animating quadrupeds asks for some better research into approaches and techniques. To start with I have looked at real life references. BBC Motion gallery  and Frame Pool websites offer a great deal of sources.

For instance there is a variety of videos of wolves and dogs in differing  situations. Time lapsed videos and those X rayed ones were the most informative. 

At 11 second club , a website for animators, the topics of how to animate quadrupeds directed quickly to Edward Muybridge’s Books. The animators have discussed the images are as useful as giving 70 percent of the entire animation. Therefore this will too be the key source for animating the wolves.

Another hugely useful thing to do was to read about the general breakdown of dog’s move. Apparently, there are mainly 5 types of movement dogs/wolves do:

Diagonal walking – diagonal legs move simultaneously at the same direction

Pacing  - legs on the same side of the body  move at the same time and direction, there is more roling in the body than in trotting

Trotting - (inbetween walk and sprinting) legs move in diagonal pairs, leghtening the distance of coverage , but not  in simultaneous order , so that one of the  feet is  on the ground

Sprinting – ordinary run

Galloping – moving in a series of leaps , front legs then back legs hit the ground , barely touching the ground. (looks like flying).

The animation will be aiming to build a believable yet stylized animation, so I also looked at some existing animations of quadrupeds. Most interesting seemd to be   Andreas Deja, animator of The Lion King’s  Mufasa character take.

 

 In his opinion building animation of animals one has to suggest real animal qualities but in humanized shape (with expressions and body language, behaviour). Also, there are no hands which help to express a great deal of ideas, therefore the concentration goes onto the overall pose attitude, angles of head, face. 
Some other references are films which showcase some wolves animation, such as The Secret of Kells (2009), Princess Mononoke (1997), The Lion King (1994).

So far this was the initial research before going to animating the characters.

Closing Shots in the Island

SO that's it :] I'm done with animating Ivan for this animation. It already feels like I'm finished, because it was such a... loong loong thing this animating.Now lighting , rendering and composing the entire thing .





I had to rebuild Ivan's joyous flight , because it is supposed to be one of the most beautiful sequences. I hope now it is working better. There are also very short sequences ( for example CU of feets running through the air) which are not included in this video, but would be helping for better editting and jump cuts




ant this is pretty much all what would be happening in the Island. 5 more seconds left and thats done! :]

The Big Flight, Lifting in the Air and the Flick

Ivan for the first time lifts in the air and realizes where all of it is heading : he is about to reach his dream island. However, one last chalange awaits. He, not yet knowing how to use his new ability, is easily torn by the wind. Turns in story and cutting in the video is, again, a match for changes in the soundtrack ( which premiere refused to render in for 4 times :/ )




I swear, this easy and happy looking animated 10 seconds were the hardest I've ever done... still requires cleaning and tweaking... but I believe now at least it is hitting the notes and going the right direction.




the Flick

Animating Ivan

Soon after realizing he is not a ship and could never swim to the island, he discovers what he actually is - a bird-lantern. instead of swimming, he starts lifting up. Cutting pace is , again, suggested by music.





I'll use this single post to upload all the animations for my latest animated short - Ivan the Bird.
I'm moving into the third act and this is the point in the story where  Ivan  sinks instead of floating to the Island. After understanding that he grows into sadness. The very last shots move to the point of discovery , that he is in fact a sky-lantern:

Project progress: Lighting and Animating

Today the time was spent to get the lighting working when character was finally set in to the scene.

Each bit of  scene ( in total 7 for act 1) is lighten separately.

For example in this scene  four more lights support the character to create a volumetric lighting. Key light,  few section boost lights and rim light shape the bird in this image. I think more work is needed still. For example light wings. Also it is clear now, the background is to empty .

This scene I'm pretty happy with. Though it looks like it still needs some tweaking on shadows.

In this scene I used rim  and Rembrandt short lights (light which is 45 degree to the character) to separate  the character from the background .

All the images have render layers combined. So this perhaps would be the end result of animation looks.

And here is the portion of animation. The Bird after encountering the enchanting Island rushes towards it and gazes at it in chill amazement.

As usually after seeing a sequence of animation I go back and do some curve cleaning, but essentially it is the same what's in the video.

Animation progress: the Beginning of Act 2

This week I've started animating Act 2.
The story reaches the point where bird is exploring both the world and himself. As he is discovering more and more, he also discovers the Island.

The pacing in second  act is  much slower. Also Bird's position is changing: he moves from his infancy stage to a more mature one.  To convey the point camera angles are used (  from slightly up above him to facing straight), his overall pose changes ( legs are longer now, pelvis more straight, wings looser and open and so on).

Here is the video of aniamtion sequences:



the animation when played in the set up sequence showed some issues. I went back to animationcurves and cleaned them up, also checked camera moves (especially vertigo shot).

Week's progress



Developments on Animation's looks: ambient occlusion pass


Recently I spent time on blocking out the world and solving the looks of the animation. I decided to look what could be solved with parallax planes. So that I can plan out the production better,  what must be built and where I can save time.

These are the images of outside environment 'framed' using planes to suggest forests, sky, mountains.






I think these will still develop allot and the layering will be enhanced, because at the moment it does feel flat I think.

Also I'm slowly from time to time am modeling the sets, but my main focus and true work goes on to animating. After few test animations which helped to spot issues as as well as ( hopefully) better the animating,I think I have the first decent bit of animation. That is of Ivan waking up and exploring the world.




I find the tips and tricks website very useful, also thanks to Alan's and Phil's advice and suggested materials I'm beginning to find the animating easier.

Let the Penguines Walk: Setting for Animation

In this project decision was to first do the animation and only then go to detailed set building.

So I started looking at substances to prepare myself for animating. Also it really helped to go into the mindset for animating. So first of all , I want to share what I found .

Animation tips and tricks is a blog where animators answer common questions and share their own techniques of animating, whether it would be the pipeline, trickery or a "checklist". Also they've published 2 free e-books for downloading .

These resources inform my practice.

Other than that I'm now looking for video references to inform the animation scenarios.

For example,in the beginning, while the Bird is unaware of himself in his infancy stage, he walks much like a penguin. So to test animate the walk cycle I first looked at penguins walking.




and here is very first animation test. As I decided to spend some time and get acquainted with Bird's controls ( and there were some problems to solve as well...)




I spent.. well, a bout 8 hours there... I did few of the animations but didn't hesitate to start all over when it was clear that there wasn't anything substantial..

This test was one of more...something. But still.. It so clear that I need to work on animating skills... I think I'll go back to bouncing ball :D start from there perhaps. Get the weighting sorted.