The Last 10%

So what exactly is this last 10% a.k.a the polish phase that most animators refer to. Well it's the same thing that's been keeping me busy since the start of this last term of AM, hence a lack of presence on the blogs >.<
In any case it may be a little misleading calling it the last 10% as most of us tend to get the impression that it's simple cleanup house keeping etc. In reality, it can be anything from minor tweaks and cleanups to major overhauls and massive changes in your shots. Remember that feeling you got the last time you looked at your shot and went, "Geee...i wish i had changed how he got to that pose" or "hmmm he didn't looks quite like that was what he was doing". Yeah this is the time to make those changes.
I guess it's important to get yourself used to making big changes as working in the industry is no different. Director or supervising animator wants a change and bam you've gotta make that change. Don't be afraid to blow away large chunks of your animation, as this is all for improving the shot as a whole. Simple easy ways to manage the "bleeding" when you decide to "re-open the wound" would be to key all keys on the first pose just before the area of change and the last ok pose of that change, then WHAM delete everything and start fresh. This would mean doing the same things as before, blocking with nice solid poses splinning and pretty much the works.
You don't always want to re-renovate everything, at times working it through might prove to be the better option. Becareful however of "noodling" your shot to death (Reworking and adjusting things) You might end up losing important timing, accents and beats.

"It's not about the what, but the who."

Haven't been posting for a while now. But learnt something pretty useful today and thought that it's good to share.

It's thinking about, "It's not the what, but the who." in either story development or character development in animation.

Basically to rip of Chuck Jones example in his book "Chuck Amuck". He basically talks about, you having a situation. For example, someone slipping over a banana peel, that is the what.

The stuff that gives it more bang for the buck is, the who. For a comedic effect, you could have a proud, know it all snob, sashaying down the sidewalk and he slips and fall. Take that and compare it to a feeble old man, walking down the sidewalk with a bag of groceries and he slips and fall. That could make you want to sympathize with the old man.

Sometimes "the who" could even give you an idea of "the what".

So remember to keep it mind "the who" before your next piece of work=)

Personality

So today in my A.M QnA, we were on the topic of personality and how it helps us improve our animation and take it to the next level. Often time we hear the age old complain of "the rig doesn't allow me to show my character's personality." Personally, i think saying that is not being really fair to yourself. We talked about how something as simple as a bouncing ball can have a huge array of different personalities, be it sadness, excitement or disappoinment. When all that's been said and done, a ball has only one controller and is a basic shape. Pushing the boundries of what your rig can do will really help with pushing your poses and passing the "rig is the problem" mark.

Personality also helps differentiate one character from another. You may have pegged a certain character you're animating with a trait. Let's say he's a grumpy person. Animating your character being a generic grumpy person will only get you so far. What helps you get past cliches and stand out above the rest it to be specific. Perhaps he's a grumpy person who has a chicken and egg problem. He wants more friends and because he has none he is grumpy...which is why he has none. Sooo adding this in means that not only will he's poses be grumpy, there will be instances where he would probably try to make some kind of effort at being friendly but still being grumpy all at the same time. Your poses will change accordingly along with mannerisms and acting choices for that character.

Having a good backstory is also a good way to come up with acting choices that define the character's personality. If you have a character that is supposed to be annoyed, it could be for many reasons that may not be present in that shot you are animating. It could be because he already has been bugged for the 100th time today. Or maybe he's just had a fight with his wife. Perhaps he's trying to concentrate on something. All these reasons give life and change to the acting choices that you decide.

Secondary Actions

Hey guys! It's January the 25th 2011 4:26 pm over here in Aussie land. Today's topic will be about Secondary actions. So wat exactly IS secondary action? Most people tend to get it mixed up with actions like: Arm dangling after and huge action. Tail dragging along. Hair trailing behind the head, etc. So just to clear the air, secondary actions are actions undertaken by the character that are seperate or apart from the direct action of the said character. Most often, these actions tend to either show the character's mood, habits, characteristics or thought process.

For example, if i would to say, animate a character saying "Hi" to someone. I could do this is many many different ways. I could have him be embarassed while saying hi. To show this i may have him rub his elbows while saying hi (Secondary action being rubbing elbows). Another example would be if a character is greeting some friends while he's adjusting his tie. (Secondary action being adjusting his tie. Maybe he's trying to appear neat)

Secondary actions are a really neat way of helping you phrase your key poses together. It ties in the action from one point to another all the while keeping the character focused on what state his mind or thoughts are on. It's always good to add some form of secondary action in your animations as this will really bring your characters to life and convince the audience that what they are seeing isn't an object moving but rather a character in a show or movie that is believable and one that can be empathized with.

Becareful however so as to NOT distract the audience with too much movement from your secondary actions. If it starts to move the focus of the shot away from it's original intention, then you've probably taken it too far.

Setting The Background of your Character

This week i thought it would be nice to delve a little into how to make your acting clips more believable. An important aspect of this i believe, is setting the background and/or backstory of your characters. How the audience percieve your animation as believable or not is mainly based upon whether or not they empathize with it. It may be something that happened to them that was similar or to someone they know, that makes it real. Or that the scene brings out certain familiar emotions that people can relate to.

So here's just a little bit from something i've learnt of an easy way to setup your character for your acting shot.

AGE: How old is your character? This will have an impact on how he/she behaves.
Ethncity: Asian? Coacation? African? etc... Cultural variations
Occupation: Defines outlook of life? Stress levels.
Core personality traits: Timid, Bold, Crafty, Selfish, Helpful etc...

Next comes the context of your shot

Where does your scene take place?
When?
What did your character do before entering the scene?
What is the long term goal of the character?

What is the character's wish? What is his scene specific goal that brings him closer to achieving his long term goals?

The Conflict: What does he have to overcome to achieve that goal?

Actions: Actions taken that describe the shot.

These are just a few examples on how you can break down the planning stage of your shot to help things along.

Silhouette Studies 2

Adding on to what Jono was talking about on Silhouette Studies here is another clip which has been online for quite a while now. See how the 2 duelists are posed and how their different line of actions, posing and the timing of their movements informs you about their personality. The duelist on the left is more confident and proud, thus that "C" curve in his spine. While the one on the right is more unsure and thus that slouchy "S" curve is running through his pose. Awesome stuff, simple lines yet you can tell so much from it.

hope it helps!
-yk

Classic screen types by NY Times.

This is a gallery of classic screen types by the NY times interactive magazine. Featuring Hollywood actors and actresses.

Look at how Matt Damon moves around the stage, it shows that even it's a half body shot, you got to translate the hip, and not just rotate it around as if on a stick. By translating it gives more believability to that character you are animating. It feels that the character is shifting his weight. Even though you cannot see the legs, simply by rotating the hip and not translating won't cut it.

And also a lot of good acting elements in the rest of the clips. Things like subtext, facial expressions and posing etc.

Good stuff. Have a look here!


hope it helps=)
-yk

Motivation, how it works for me

Motivation.. It's a hard thing to grasp. Especially how to motivate yourself to keep on animating, be it for work, or just animating a personal piece. Because seriously, even though how much animation runs in your blood, there are seriously distractions. That game, the ukulele lying in the corner of your room, online shopping...

I personally feel that the important part is to get yourself started, on that 1st thumbnail drawing, or that 1st "golden" pose in 3D (depending on how you work). And once you have that the rest will just come naturally, you'll want to add on to what you initially started, and before you know it, you have the key poses more or less sorted out by now. And so on and so forth. That's why i spend quite a bit of time on my 1st pose. the all important pose that sets your character in the mood of things. And seeing that pose acts as a motivation for me to continue animating.

Another way i find quite useful is to listen to some podcast of animators, from places like spline doctors, speaking of animation, animation podcast etc. Because during the intro, they always say how they started out being an animator, their first job which is not kinda what they expected, drawing saturday morning cartoons, freelancing, being laid off and such, until finally they reach where they are now. So it kinda reminds you that even these guys had it tough once. And in turn it might motivate you to keep going.

If all else fails, maybe draw on something that is within you (i know it sounds pretty corny) People who support you in what you are doing or the reason why you started animating in the first place.
Mine was in my final year at Nanyang Poly, during my portfolio review.
Lecturer A: "Hmmm, from your portfolio, it seems that you are pretty adept at modelling, maybe you can concentrate on that,"
Lecturer B: "No I don't think so. From your reel, I believe that you have potential in animation, and I seriously think you should look into that."
And there you have it, simple as that. That was how I got started on animating haha

So draw on that and just get yourself started on the animating process be it thumbnailing, video referencing, posing the character key pose etc. Whatever works for you. Use it!

Keep on animating!
yk

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Jono Li said>>

Yeah, you got that right. Motivation is something that all animators find tough to balance. I mean getting motivated can be easy enough, watching movies, looking at inspiring animators and clips, video games etc. Staying motivated, now THAT's a whole'nother can 'O' worms.

I personally find that sometimes, you just need time off. EVEN IN A WORKING ENVIRONMENT. Animation is not something you can force. It's not something that you can sit at your desk and the longer you do the more you get done. In fact it's probably the direct opposite. The longer you sit at your desk trying to animate when you're un motivated and drained, the longer you're gonna NOT get anything done. Think of it as a spell or skill on cooldown for all you gamers. Generally, skills with short cooldown are early or crap skills. The ones with huge cooldowns really bring the rain. It's the same with animation. You want good quality stuff done fast? make sure you get breaks in between renergize and get right back into it.

My last mentor always told me that she constantly goes to malls to do window shopping when things don't go well or when she's really drained and then comes right back the next day ready to tackle the job renewed.

Even my current mentor mentions that when you take these breaks, take is as though it's all part of your whole animation process, don't seperate the two, lest you lose focus.
December 8, 2010 12:13 AM

motion in words

*excuse my cheapo looking mindmap haha

This was something i learnt during class at Bournemouth University, MA3D.
Something taught by Steve Harper. Thought that it'll be nice to share it.

This chart describes motion, which is categorised into 3 sections, Weight, Space and Time.

Heavy or light for weight, direct or indirect for space, sudden or sustained for time.

And by picking one characteristic from each category, and putting them together in any order, decribes a particular motion.


Below are some examples;

a heavy, direct and sudden combination might give you an action that suggests a punch.


a heavy, direct and sustained combination might give an action that suggests a push



and a light, direct, sudden combination might describe a tap


I hope it makes sense and hope it helps too^______^

Good Day,
yk

Animation Food For Thought - Video reference and Stick figures

I know that we may not always have time, especially if we're working on a TV series or short clips that require us to finish under an extremely tight deadline and sometimes we get lazy. We go, "ahh stuff it i can't be bothered shooting reference and/or thumbnailing." Truth is, without first planning your shot, or having no form of reference or research material, it's bound to look nothing like what you envisioned. There's that common saying: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," and animation is no exception to that. You want to improve your quality of work, you've GOTTA shoot reference, do your research and draw Draw DRAW!

Some people say, "ahh but i'm not actually doing any work when i draw or shoot ref. I should just quickly do it and get it over and done with." Truth is many of us feel this way. One of my mentors used to tell my class: "Take it as part of your animation process. Do not seperate it. Planning -> Shooting reference -> Thumbnailing -> Blocking -> Blocking Plus -> Splinning -> Polishing. I don't view the first 3 steps as getting no animation done as it all contributes to the entire clip."

Which is easier? Getting nice poses on paper with a pencil or getting a nice pose on the computer with your rig? I think it's kinda obvious. In the time taken for you to pose out something that you may think didn't turn out so well, you probably would have drawn 30 variations of that 1 pose in paper.

What if you can't draw that well. Hey MANY of the good animators and not pro animators, myself included can't draw that well, but that's not stopping us. Use stick figures, get the shoulders and hips in there and start drawing those poses out. Push those poses on paper so that you know EXACTLY how it's gonna turn out on the computer. If you need a good example of how this works, look no further than Jason Ryan's amazing stick figures.

Video reference is also a good way to find out things about your animation action that you didn't know or are confused about. Never never copy or roto your video ref, unless your job IS to roto then...yeah. We're animators! we make things fun and spruce up the motion, add life, zest and character to the rig. Remember that video reference IS NOT what your clip is gonna end up looking like. It's to help you figure out how you should be going about tackling that particular motion, be it a jump, backflip or crawl etc.

Another good way is to bring your drawings into flash or something similar, so you get even your timing down pretty well there. Han Xiang uses this method and i think it's served him pretty well so far, but like i said, for all those who don't want to "waste" so much time on it, hey! drawing is fast so JUST DO IT!

Animation Food For Thought - Manhandling Poses

I'll be honest. I used to animate by first setting up your golden poses then filling in the gaps with in betweens that you may need. The rest is done by the computer when you hit the spline button. By doing so you either find yourself pleasantly surprised or totally shocked and apalled and most of the time it's the latter.

The main problem with this is that you don't have as much control over your animation. Ever feel like, "damn...that didn't really come out the way i planned or thought that it would." Well, the reason is NOT ENOUGH POSES. I'm sure you've heard soo many people say this but when you get down to it, it simply just doesn't work out. Then you go back to your old way of animating and getting all nice and comfy which essentially stumps your growth process. So what exactly does 'NOT ENOUGH POSES' mean? Well it basically means just that. For those who are scared that it'll mess up your animation, it most definately will and that is why you need to keep fixing it and keeping it all under your control.

Letting the computer do your in-betweens is as good as hoping for the best. Take control of those poses, if you have to key every frame so be it. That's how the old skool animators used to do it. Trust me, the computer is a lousy LOUSY animator. Trusting the computer to do inbetweens and breakdowns for you is like animating while having your eyes shut.

In any case this is my take on it having gone down both paths. Is it the gospel truth? I would think not. (Eg. some animators create brilliant stuff with just the graph editor) But for those who are in similar situations like me...try it out! You won't regret it...well maybe on your 1st and 2nd clip when you hit the spline button.