Animation 1: Character & Narrative Weekly Summary 4

Front view of Seth w/ guides

This week consisted of a lot of discussions and resolutions to potential problems that might erupt during the full-fledged production process. After the deliverance of the Interim Crit, me and Jay considered to apprehend minor alterations to our original story - eliminating the unnecessary meticulousness of some of the scenes. First off, we figured that the original idea I had for the POV telescope scene did NOT add to the narrative but was purely aesthetic (a blink shifting the point of view) and would consume necessary time. Taking our tutors' comments into account, we just decided on modifying the scene in such a manner that it does not complicate the flow of the story or the audience: a paralaxing POV that glides to the scene and introduces the island and lighthouse effectively. In a parallel, I designed the full front view of my character and had to scale some of his limbs (including the head) down in order to match the first design of the profile character for the sake of consistency. However, I believe that the most sustainable progress we've made is the full elaboration on every asset of every scene. In other words, we know how which element shall be made as we have outsourced and divided the work for a more flexible flow: I model the ocean and how it interacts with the debris and characters, whereas Jay models the 3D assets (and then allows me to design the textures for the UV maps). In order to grasp a visualization of how the water is going to overlap the elements of the animation, I made a placeholder test of After Effects edited movement of water (already elaborated upon in the second "Research" post). Next week is going to mark the proper immersion of production as this week was also packed with tasks from different modules (that I'm sure everyone had to attend to) for which I had to divide my time.

Potential & Limitations 2 - 2D and 3D Asset Interaction

Ocean in "Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack"

Although 2D and 3D when synthesized have multiple potentials in emphasizing an animation's aesthetic, they hold within them numerous limitations and possible problems that one is to solve or ruminate about BEFORE getting well into the process of production. Me and Jay have identified several of the limitations that might transcend into dilemmas regarding our choice to do mixed media, him sticking to 3D whereas I am opting for the 2D assets. Furthermore, we resolved the main dilemma of choice of style through compromises where I would focus on animating the ocean and how it would interact with still 3D images created in Maya (of the island), whereas Jay shall focus on the meticulous design of the island with me doing the textures for the UV maps. However, taking all this into consideration, the main call to research here was HOW the water is going to be animated - traditional style, layering, 3D? I researched plenty of animations which have bodies of water interacting with the characters or the environment, as well as techniques that resolve this problem. I found out that there is an ocean tool in Maya which simulates the gravitational flow of water, however, I was not quite sure how it would interact with 2D images since because if the ocean is 3D, the characters and assets must be implemented within the sequence, which will make them appear paper 2D. Moreover, since it can only be rendered as a video to interact with Photoshop or After Effects, we would have to make a line mask for every separate frame where one part of the ocean would have to overlap everything that interacts with it, and the other go behind said everything, proving to be quite a tedious process. Casting this aside as a peripheral resolution, I came across the manner in which The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack's ocean is animated. Although it is stop-motion, the technique can be applied to 2D: layering of water. I figured that in order to retain the flexibility of the space and avoid the risk of creating a flat space shadow is key, where every layer would vary in darkness, forming an effective gradient around the assets. Inadvertently, with the debris in the water already having been created with a gradient (an example would be the pill I modeled as shown in my 3rd week's post) and interacting with the light, I figure it would give no spatial confusion when the audience is to absorb the scene and the scale of it. Even with 3D, if the island is to be exported as a still (meaning, it would technically be a 2D image with a 3D illusion) it would interact with the ocean in the same manner as a 2D drawing of it would. Thus, I created a placeholder animation of how this problem would be resolved in After Effects through the technique of layering. Although this placeholder animation is 1/4th of the complexity I would apply to the water, it gives me a sense of understanding and visualizing the outcome, effectively eliminating the majority of the problems that might spark up during production.

"Placeholder - Waves" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqj2yakGOWg

Responsive - Explorations and Decisions - Loop de Loop

For one of the responsive live briefs, I have chosen to do Loop de Loop's Breakfast theme hence I got a brainstorm of ideas once I sat down and thoroughly thought about the module. As I mentioned before, I would like to attempt working within a cyclical timeline hence I've seen many brilliant small but nifty animations that embrace the power of looping. Furthermore, seeing as I used plenty of looping movie clips as animation assets when working on The Other Side in Flash, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to build upon what I already know. Another thing that intrigued me about this brief was the opportunity for comedy within it, since I have a natural low tone atmospheric fabrication of ideas when presented with a classic story-driven, expressive timeline. In other words, whenever I get an animation brief I tend to drench it in symbolism and connotative messages, instead of just focusing on pure comedy and whimsicality that fuels stylistic experimentation. Initially, as I tackle all my ideas, I made a mind map of everything that came to mind. The main concept that resonated in my mind was the anthropomorphism of the ingredients (eggs, bacon, etc) that constitute a breakfast, which calls for all sorts of frivolous but quick character designs and behaviors that will facilitate comedy. I also thought about the medium of animation and its effect, judging that stop-motion or watercolor animation (which is something I might try to experiment with for another Responsive brief) would give off a different tone. Furthermore, if it is to be a perfect loop, no music must be used in order for not overlapping - I want it to have the smoothest transition. Lastly, I can use the properties of the ingredients to make gory humor (example: blood is tomato's juice). Taking all of this into consideration, I jotted down thumbnails of the ideas that came to mind, one of which I shall take and fully develop to eliminate all possible mistakes.

Ideas:

1. Static pan, bacon gets tossed in the pan, sizzles and screams since it is anthropomorphic. Once it is cooked, it is pulled out, oil is poured in the pan, and the animation loops.

2. A head with an opened mouth is placed horizontally where the character punches all the non-breakfast associated foodstuffs away as a load of food is falling in his mouth.

3. Sizzling pan with a piece of bacon and tomato, egg jumps and performs a stunt before breaking mid-air and landing on the pan. Process is repeated where the egg misses the pan, hits the grip, and tumbles over the pan. To initiate the loop, another pan is placed and another piece of bacon and tomato is thrown in.

4. A bread loaf stands dormant, ingredients are thrown in (cheese, lettuce, ham) and the final piece of bread is punched on the sandwich. Sandwich is then taken away, a new loaf is placed, loop repeats.

Page 2 of thumbnailed ideas

Animation 1: Character & Narrative Weekly Summary 3

This week's workflow of mine has leaned towards the digital creation of assets towards my animation. Slowly finishing up with pre-production and entering the realm of production, I designed several elements that are to define the environment of my animation. With Jay creating his own, we figured that we are to blend both of the background elements we make when constructing the independent scenes and shots (all when we are underway with our production). By scanning my sketchbook, I created the blocks with faces of despair and demise onto them which are to serve as ambiguous items floating in the air to solidify the dreamscape-like notion of our animation. Alongside this, I made a pill which is to be used several times within the animation - both in the water and immobilized in the air - based off the reference of a picture of an actual pill. Furthermore, since these assets are going to be interacting with the main light that the lighthouse will emit, I made a gradient within the pill that is to define the importance of the atmosphere that the light creates (based on the initial placeholder shot I designed). On the other side, I finished drawing the profile view of my character which gave me a meticulous reference based on which I shall create the other poses of Seth. Moreover, I used the parameters of his size to draw guides which will aid me in maintaining the consistency of his shapes and structure (which I already have used to make the head for his frontal shot). Even so, I spent a day discussing the influence of my character's color on the ambience of the animation, since we are following a more-or-less strict color schematic. Thus, I made several color chrome sheets from which I will decide the most fitting color for Seth before I actually start rigging him, since I figured organizing it in a manner where I draw every single pose first and rigging them all later would be a much more effective workflow because it will envelop the time I spend on each section and give me a reference for time management. Finally, just in time for the Interim Crit as well, me and Jay spliced together the animatic in order to roughly reference the length of each scene and how it blends with the soundscape that I created. Furthermore, we put together the fundamental sound effects that will guide and follow the flow of the animation, from character movement to environmental interaction. Although it is not impeccable, the animatic resolved our skepticism on how the scenes will transition between one another by giving us a rough representation of the narrative. I believe that the synthesis of music and ambient sounds will be highly complementary with the visual dark space that surrounds our characters, emphasizing the passive but nightmarish realm in which the characters drive the narrative but the environment defines the context.

"Animatic - Adrift" -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddakspiXFs

Chrome Color Sheets

Designing the pill in reference with a real pill

"Face of Demise" asset - will be perspectively distorted for each scene

Guides and parameters used for frontal character layering - only face done so far

First draft of pill, colored and digitally drawn

"Face of Despair" asset, also to be distorted during layout

Doing DUIK - Simple Character Rig

First rig, incorrect - aspect ratio is off due to a misconception (explained)

Following a session on the conventions of the After Effects plugin DUIK (which I've previously started getting accustomed to), we were to create a simple character rig and manipulate him in a 5 - 10 second animation. Knowing that I would be animating my character for Telling Tales in DUIK, mostly in a profile form, I decided that it would be quite efficient for practice if I were to do the same with this task - have fun and practice. I drew a simple profile robotic character in photoshop, all limbs and extremities in different layers, and started cracking on with the rig. Unfortunately, I failed to understand the restriction on resizing characters, so I didn't do my rig on a 1920x1080, but instead had the aspect ratio cropped to his size specifications in Photoshop. Rigging him once I understood that I could not manipulate him outside of his "box", so I had to re-rig him again. This mistake guided me in understanding that any animation is to work WITHIN the composition of the character (where all the layers are) and not externally outside of the rig. I am quite happy that I made this mistake because if I were to do it while I was rigging my character for Telling Tales (considering he is a bit more complex) I would have wasted a lot more time understanding this After Effects parameter. Progressively, I got it right the second time, directly understanding that it is actually quite time consuming, but once one gets used to the position of all the bones as well as the interface the process speeds up. Furthermore, even if small points during the making of keyframing are displaced, the movement of the character seems unnatural and clunky. Another thing I am to focus more on (by using the mistakes from this second rig) is the time intervals within the work window. In other words, how many frames are in between keyframes based on how FAST the action of the character is intended to be. I understood this solely because I opted for making my character perform a slow walk first, then jump quite instantly. Finally, the last thing I am to focus on is keeping the balancing foot of the character static while the other foot moves, and vice versa, lest I distort the illusion of movement by making the character "float" a bit. In order to complete the test, I added sounds that add to the movement of my character and the tone of the background. All in all, I'm quite satisfied with my first proper Duik animation, as this was based on exploring the Auto-Rig function, which is good for tests, however, according to some tutorials I've seen it is much better to rig a character manually with knees and elbows being separated in different layers for a more non-bending flow of character movement.

Drawing character in Photoshop

Second and final rendition - working within the composition

Compositing in Premiere

"DUIK - Auto Rig Test" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXNXnNQGJPI

Responsive - Exploration and Decisions 1

Lip Sync from my animation "The Other Side" - needs improvement

With the proper green-light beginning of the Responsive module, I immediately started exploring the range of briefs offered by a myriad of creative-based websites and organizations. Considering that time is of the essence as every brief has its own independent deadline (promoting a practice of professional time management), I initially searched for the live deadlines of most of the briefs from THIS day. Wanting to lay out the intensity of every brief, I took into account the time necessary (based on speculation) for the completion of a full brief. I believe that I will stick to the animation briefs because of two reasons: animation briefs would be excellent practice much more relevant to my own since I've already been doing illustrations and photography independently for album covers etc., and because I am not that experienced with illustration in order to be competent with the illustrators that will be tackling the briefs. However, I'm not keeping myself limited. My professional practice involves structuring of work load in order to balance it out with the time I possess (time management), thus I've settled on doing one major and two or more minor projects - the more the merrier.

Considerations:

Loop de Loop
I was particularly interested in Loop de Loop due to the fact that I take pride in the creation of the perfect and smooth flow of animation, in an OCD manner. With this brief I am given a lot of freedom in terms of media and it poses a distinct challenge: make a perfect loop. This will make me focus a lot more on pre-production and frame consideration hence the last and first frame MUST blend together in the same manner as all previous ones will. Furthermore, without the limitations of this brief, I can embrace the whimsicality behind animation and make it as "wacky" as possible. Even so, it will give me further practice in traditional but digital animation which is what I want to explore and develop further since I haven't done much of it.

11 Second Club
This brief is PERFECT for practicing lip syncing with animation, something I need to practice well. Unfortunately, this month's competition is more than half done, which is why I will be entering next month's. Even more-so, the stars have aligned for time management purposes as if I focus on Loop de Loop or Full Secs now, I will begin just in time for the 11 Second Club brief of November.

Full Secs
A frivolous one second animation - wonderful for starting Responsive off, one small step at a time. This will help me stimulate my idea generation hence the limit being the length of the animation will assist me in trying to get the message across in a minimalistic way. Considering that it is to be one second, the titles should enhance the story (judging by the Full Secs animations I've seen displayed on their website) which will be proper practice of the skill of narration through a visually stimulating approach.

Do It In Ten
A very interesting and challenging brief, however, due to it ending early November (giving me a lack of reasonable time to do it) I might be considering next one. Having in mind that this would require decent planning and effort, I would align it with 11 Second Club in terms of intensity. In other words, as my more fundamental project for this first brief I would either pick this or the 11 Second Club brief. This more major animation brief would be fit for time management as well as exploration of style (hence the competitive vibe it is giving off is motivating me into being eclectic for this module). Nevertheless, I will get back to this consideration once the next month begins.

These three are the main considerations I have for more modest briefs, whereas I am going to look at the fresh, live DNAD briefs and see whether their intensity can match individual work, marking it a major brief instead of perhaps 11 Second Club or Do It In Ten.

"Full Secs" - minor brief in consideration

"Loop de Loop" - minor brief in consideration

Animation 1: Character & Narrative Weekly Summary 2

Seth - Digital - What I have so far

With the creative roller-coaster being underway, this week was much more organized for me in production. The main goal that me and Jay have achieved this week was completing the storyboards, ergo finishing the story in its obscure entirety which gives us the green light on thoroughly tackling the digital side of pre-production before getting into animating. In the beginning of the week, I was tackling more sketchbook work where I was refining my character, trying out facial expressions with charcoal since I'm still keen on having his face grainy and noisily textured, however, I have decided that I shall do his face digitally with a distinct, custom brush that mimics charcoal. Furthermore, I made measures for my character for the main parts of his body in order to simplify the process of me digitally drawing him. Alongside that, I drew two key shots in my sketchbook that were derived from the rough story in my mind in order to visualize how the focus and blurs would work in the scenes. After this, I continued doing the thumbnails of the story in order to finish it, and once that had been done me and Jay created the final storyboard with making a few adjustments to the story (such as discarding the second close-up eye shot and replacing it with the succubus casting a shadow over my character). We thoroughly discussed the intended effect of every single shot and how it assists the narrative of having a comprehensible, descriptive flow. I had not given much thought to it before, but during the session where we nailed down the final storyboard I realized the massive influence the perspective of a shot has in conveying a message and relaying the tone. Finally, me and Jay discussed the color palette of the animation and we roughly have a perception of how it's gonna look like (based on mood boards and the placeholder shot of the lighthouse, both mine and Jay's), however, we pinpointed a direct reference of it - an album cover that I displayed during my PPP presentation. We found that the album cover of "Trevor Something Does Not Exist" is almost perfect for referencing the color palette we both had in our heads.

Album cover reference, however, palette might be a bit darker

Layering of  test rig face + the reference skeleton

Sketchbook 1 - 2 initial shots

Sketchbook 2 - finishing thumbnails before storyboard

Sketchbook 3 - Seth and his measures

Sketchbook 4 - Faces and joint points

Getting accustomed and slowly going into the digital world, I was watching duik tutorials and along with the puppet pin seminar I started rigging a test head of my character, drawing his assets in two layers in order to assure a more natural control of movement. Having two layers for the head (jaw and upper head) and for the hat (front and extension), I skipped the possible mistake of making the character seem flat and against solid drawing by limiting the flexibility of his assets, seeing as how the hat can go in front of his face or behind his head - fit for making my actual character. Having all of this settled down, I started on the first design of my character in profile (having this being the rig I shall mostly use) by doing his head, hat, neck, and torso, all by following a rough drawing I made of my character from the references in my sketchbook. The separate layering of his assets will allow for a smooth flow of animation.

Finished colored storyboards

Potential & Limitations 1 - 2D Rigging

How 2D rigs function -a reference picture I was researching

Considering that I'm going for a multimedia blend of techniques disregarding stop-motion (except for minor details), I might step into many limitations for this module. One of them is 2D rigging, which is something I haven't done before but understand the conventions of. With my partner Jay having used the technique for a while, I considered I should use it to add a new perspective of 2D animation to my arsenal (taking into account the classic 2D I did for "The Other Side" module last year). Being told that Duik is a really nifty and adequate plugin for After Effects, I started doing research on its practicality and functionality - practical and visual research. It was quite a coincidence that seminars on the puppet tool and duik are round the corner, hence they will solidify my self-deducted research even more. Being a visual stimulus student, I watched several tutorials on duik and the effects of it, and what I found out was that it incorporates the puppet pins that come in default with After Effects, and along with last year's tutorials I jotted down the main elements that work round the functionality of duik. However, there are many ways one can composite a 2D rig, where I found that the most effectively professional way is to use separate layers of every movable body part within Illustrator first, and then import all of it into After Effects for rigging and direct animation. Furthermore, by linking pins to new controls made by Duik the inverse kinematic effect can be achieved with anchor points through connecting pins. In other words, a final character rig with sufficient anchor points and controllers at the end of each main part is much more versatile than just a normal puppet tool rig. I feel that with the puppet tool the dynamic is limited because there is no hierarchies in pin points, which may distort the character. Even so, the rest of the pins follow the main anchor point which calls for an easy yet flexible manipulation of a character. The potentials of this magnificent rig tool is the smoothness in the movement of the character without separately drawing every frame which will induce line boil (which sometime is needed as an aesthetic effect, and sometimes not).

I then tried to to a test rig of my character's face (rough, without the correct colors) in order to get a grasp of how duik's bone system works. Unfortunately, I got in a bit of a jam where the puppet pins distorted the image solely because the names of the two different set of pins (those for the jaw and those for the upper head) had the same name. However, after resolving this issue, I got the jist of how duik functions and am fairly confident that I will be able to tame it for my Character & Narrative animation.

Moving the face with puppet pins through Duik

Duik Tutorials I Watched:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipgyv4f2rc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayBaiElEeLI

Puppet Master - Practical Introduction to Puppet Pin

Original image

This study task arrived just in time, as I had already been conducting some research on 2D character rigging for the main Telling Tales brief. Although I got into using Duik as the main element to 2D rigging (which is something that we are going to tackle next week), I believe that the puppet pin tool is essential to be comprehended hence Duik uses that tool into its interface. Nonetheless, after having the puppet tool, its conventions and technicalities in class I started with the process of exploration and experimentation. Considering that I needed a transparent picture of myself, I covered my surroundings with the color white in order to edit out the edges much easier. Thus, I struck a non-overlapping pose in order to have the mesh distributed properly and my extremities anchored with pins properly as well. Using one of the older techniques of mimicking earthshakes, upon every step down I made I shifted all layers' positions up and down by exponentially decreasing coefficients, adding a sense of gigantism. Exporting everything as an image sequence from After Effects into Premiere, jotting it down to 24 fps, I added strobe lights, lighting, and a lens glare to add a bit of semi-realism into the sequence, adding to the comical effect. Finally, I added a Frank Zappa song to seal the deal with an abrupt beginning and end to induce a notion of frivolousness. All in all, learning whilst having fun is one of the most effective intrinsic motivators that solidifies the acquisition of knowledge. Furthermore, this session helped me refresh my rough understanding of the puppet pin tools, which has helped me immensely for delving further into 2D rigging.

Puppet Pin Export - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKjbvnyXM2Q

Photoshop edit

Premiere Export

Animation 1: Character & Narrative Weekly Summary 1

Digital rendition of placeholder shot

During this first week I have attempted to structure and organize the initial ideas I got during the briefing as me and Jay immediately started brainstorming into "Adrift". Through a coordinate plain that divides 4 aspects of our generation of ideas (technique/aesthetic, soundscape/atmosphere, character, and narrative), we recorded every single idea, inspiration, association, and concept we came across in our pensive session. Leading to that, I mapped out a rough idea of story progression on the spot by jotting down key movements and details that might serve as elements when we craft the final diegesis. With this, me and Jay also discussed a multimedia approach where we blend several techniques into one, initially jotting down which elements are gonna be handled with which technique (written in sketchbook). Thinking of my character, I got into crafting him through iterations and brisk designs of his appearance in my sketchbook, trying to map out a few different shapes of the character. Refining him along the way, I drew different faces, different body shapes, and got an idea of doing the character's face with charcoal to instill a more expressionistic emotion range that would go with the atmosphere. This is where I created a mood board that outlines most of the elements in the animation's environment and space suggesting the dark tone as well. Moreover, with the idea of the atmosphere being dark and macabre in the form of a dreamscape where the environment is a psychological plethora of symbolism, I wanted the character to reflect his own subversive nature.

Mood Board

Along to all of this I created one rough sketch of a shot which I had in my mind - an above introductory/establishing shot which I mapped out based on an actual image of a boat going through the sea. With a few more pages of rough character design progression, I drew expressionistic emotions which can be used in the background as symbolic elements (along with the pills and bottles of alcohol that are gonna flood the space). In the meantime, both me and Jay did our own version of a placeholder possible shot for color chromatic and spacial reference - digitally, whereas along with this I made a short stop-motion animation stemming from a sudden idea by using oil, black ink, gold ink, and milk in a bowl and taking pictures of the brew stirring up sequentially, emulating the cosmos. Don't know what we will use it for yet, but my guess is it can serve as an intro or as a moving background. Finally, I mapped the diegesis progression through the tragic drama scheme of plot along with thumbnails that further articulate the story although the final one (storyboard, animatic) has not yet been assigned.

Stop-Motion Asset - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXTu01_s8lM

First sketchbook entry of brainstorming mapping

Dividing plot into acts - most important elements before thumbnailing

Narrowing story with possible script - page after brainstorming

Progressive thumbnail pattern for narrowing down story before storyboard

Thumbnails of shot ideas and expressionistic emotion paints for background

Fourth iterations of character, top right being the main rendition for now

Establishing shot representation

Third iterations of character - form of face and body 

Secondary iterations of character - types of body shapes

Initial iterations of character