Final Hand-Ins and Conclusion

Finally, I have handed in my 3 animations for this module:








It has been a great module and I have learned a lot. In this module I have really gotten to explore how it is to animate the face of the character as early as at the blocking stage and it has proven to be extremely beneficial as it has helped me to put myself into the same emotion as the character I am animating. It helps me to avoid over-animating things as well which is another field I have gotten to explore in this module. Doing extremely subtle movements so the character doesn't look too floaty.

Doing lip sync before the block on 11 second club was also a very interesting experiment. It does actually work quite well but I guess doing it afterwards wouldn't be too much of a problem either though. What I do think was nice is to get the lip sync over and done with at an early stage. The fact that the characters aren't moving either is good as well. I know that of course if the characters are moving, doing lip sync shouldn't be any problem because we can constrain a camera to the character's face for the lip sync. But based on the previous module, even doing that after the character is animated can give one some challenges as I experienced things obscuring the camera.

The dance that I did in AP2 is a perfect example of this as the two characters kept on obscuring each others face cams and it made the lip sync a longer process than it had to be because I had to do it in the perspective view.


When it comes to the animations I've done for this module, I am satisfied with what I've managed to deliver.

I didn't add the extra animation to the mime for him to better define the wall though. The reason for this is simply, I didn't have enough time for it. I decided it is better to leave it out than to try and put that animation in there and it would look half finished in the middle of the sequence. In simple words, quality instead of quantity.

The staircase would benefit from one more pass, refining and smoothing out the movements.
The 11 second I would do over again if I could to give it even better flow.

All of the 3 animations could have been done better but I guess that's the curse of being an animator, one just can't let the animations go and they're never good enough.

Even though they all could be better, I am also glad to let them go now as I have been working around the clock for the last 1-2 weeks and I'm pretty burnt out now and I need something new to work on (after 1-2 days of rest).

This concludes Acting for Animation.

Mime WIP 7

I have now smoothed out the animation in the end when he walks in front of the door to paint the doorknob.
When he goes back behind the door however, I came up with another idea. Instead of having him just walk back, I wanted to try something more cartoony, allowing me to experiment a little with Squash and Stretch. Personally I think it works quite well and after showing the following clip to my fellow students, Jo Christian Figenschou, Lauren Orrels and Daniel Natland, we all agreed that it worked and looks better than the original idea:




So now I'm working against time rushing through the final frames before I'll render and hand in my animations.

Staircase WIP 8

In my last version I had animated the sequence ready for polish up to the point when the character places his first foot on the staircase. I did expect to spend a lot of time on the part where he looses balance but still surprised it has taken me close to 8 hours on that small part of the animation alone.

After working for 1 hour trying to make it work, I realized that my current poses did not work at all and my reference video did not help me either as I could not see much what was going on with my pelvis or legs so I made a new one to help me through this part of the animation:




As soon as I've gotten passed this point, the rest of the animation wen fairly quick as it already had some really good poses where very few breakdowns where necessary in order to achieve respectable animation.

I have also now added animation to the items on the tray, I even tried animating fluids.
This version is pretty much the final version, the only difference is that it is not rendered:



Could it be better? OF COURSE! there is still room for a lot of improvement, it always is! Especially with him going off balance. But as hard as it is, I have to let the animation go now so I have a chance to finish my mime before the deadline.

11 Second Club WIP 6 and Final

Based on all the feedback I've received, I have now refined the animation as much as possible before I textured the characters and rendered the final version for submitting to 11 second club.

I think I have ended up with a quite decent result, but if I had the time, I would have started over on blocking, making stronger poses to animate from as I think I got too focused on my reference videos.
The latest WIP before the final is actually still a stepped version but still looks quite smooth because I have taken most of the animation down to 1s. It has given me a lot of new experience to really nitpick on every frame like I've done with this animation. The result is a curve editor that looks like this:



So here is my latest WIP and the final version:







It is very exciting to compete for the first time, I can't wait to find out which place I end up on.
Only a few days left before the module deadline now so my focus now turns to the staircase before I return to the mime.

11 Second Club WIP 5

After posting my previous WIP on Facebook I received the following notes:

Lauren Orrels: Remi, what those guys need are hawaian shirts! XD hehe! In terms of the animation I think it's coming along really well. There's a definite contrast in body language and attitude in the two characters.

Siobhan Fenton: Love the backdrop Remi, v effective [and the shirts!] Still think your guy in red needs to look away [full of himself] when the other guy looks at his watch OR you need him to notice the guy look at the watch and react to that in some way. Very good stuff.

I do think Lauren's idea about the shirts is cool but it's not what I had in mind and I'm not sure they will come across as door salesmen if I do so.

Siobhan's suggestion to make the main character appear more full of himself was a good idea and I have addressed that in this version:

11 Second Club WIP 4

When I started this animation, I thought it would go much quicker for me than with the mime as this is only 300 frames in comparison to 1200 frames.

I was wrong. Walk cycles are the most difficult thing to animate and here I have two characters doing walk cycles and I really want them to obviously be two different characters walking differently. And after all as I said, it is two characters. That's twice the work as it is with one.

So far I have animated the first 100 frames on 5s and this is what I've got so far:



Also I have started preparing for render when taking some short breaks from the animation and I've done a test render:

I have also posted these things to Facebook to see if anybody has any more comments and feedback.

11 Second Club WIP 3 Feedback

I have received some more feedback from Siobhan on Facebook:

Really like being able to see them come close to the camera at the end. You might find you keep the character in one spot and they walk up to it - you could look at that but I do think it works well with them closer in the second half.


Personally I think it is working quite nice now as it is and I really want the camera to track down the street in front of them so the mailbox isn't revealed before a little later.