Feedback on the Lip Sync Task

After returning home for Christmas I still haven't heard from my module leader due to the email must have gotten lost in the system somehow. After sending another one I received and answer a couple of days ago.
The biggest problem is that the animation is too exaggerated and that it would be nice with a view of the face cam as well. hopefully I will have this ready after the new year as a family visit keeps me kind of busy as well as I want to enjoy the holiday.

So see you next year :)

WIP Lip Sync Task

So far I have kind of blocked and splined out my animation so far and I have sent this to my module leader and I'm now awaiting feedback during the next day or two:

Lip Sync Task

So I have decided to animate a really short clip for the lip sync so I hopefully can get started with the other 2 more demanding animations.

So far I have made a reference video of myself acting to the clip as well as a reference for the lip sync itself:






Next to this I have also made a transcript breaking down the lip sync. This is a helpful tool for me once I start the animation:

New Module, Animation Practice 2

It is time to start working on facial animation and lip sync to create even better character performance and acting than previously and I'm really looking forward to getting started with this module.

During this module there will be given 3 animation tasks which are more time consuming than the tasks that were given in the previous module:

Lip Sync:

Accurately lip sync the mouth of your character to provided audio clip. You are free to include facial expressions and acting. Though this is mainly a test of accuracy of your lip sync.


Presenter Task:

In this sequence your character is a TV presenter walking and talking to the camera with personality.
It is important to ensure that your character maintains eye contact with the camera and shows interest in his surroundings.
He does not have to walk for the whole clip. He may need to handle props depending on your choice of clip. You are allowed to include a second character if appropriate.

For this sequence you will have the choice of four audio clips
All preparatory sketches and thumbnails for this sequence should be done in your sketchbook and clearly marked.

Duration, the length of the clip plus up to two seconds either side.
You can use your own audio clip but you must have it approved first by your module leader.

Song And Dance:

Your character is to accurately lip sync to the song and deliver a convincing performance in terms of facial expression, movement and acting.
All preparatory sketches and thumbnails for this sequence should be done in your sketchbook and clearly marked.

Duration, the length of the clip plus up to five seconds either side.
You can use your own song clip but you must have it approved first by your module leader.


In addition to these 3 animation tasks we are also given a presentation task were we can either present alone or in teams, breaking down an animation sequence in detail for the class.

Animation Practice 1, The final hand-ins

Even though I planned to hand in on Monday the 6th, I ended up handing in 10 minutes before the deadline today.

The hardest thing about animation is to let it go since one can think that the animation still isn't good enough.
I am pretty satisfied with the result I have now finished but of course I can still see things that needs more work and that there is still room for improvement.

Even so, it is also nice to finally put the animations to the side as working more with them right now will probably drive me nuts (working for too long on the same piece of animation isn't exactly good for the mind)

With that said I now present to you the final versions of the different tasks from Animation Practice 1:

Animation Task 1: Bouncing Balls

I haven't really done much with this animation as I think it is satisfactory. I do realize that the small ball should have a bit less hang-time in the air, but after trying doing changes to both timing and spacing, I couldn't get any better result without having to start completely over and with the deadline it simply wasn't enough time for me to do that





Animation Task 2: The Pendulum

Here I have increased the speed of the animation a bit as it was kind of "underwater" like.
I also made the pendulum start swinging to the opposite side as the base slows down to full stop.





Animation Task 3: The Ball With a Tail

For this animation I have made very small changes. What I have done is to add some extra animation to the ball's body as the camera zooms out, making the ball look more excited than he did in the previous version.






Animation Task 4: The Thief

This task was about creating a walk cycle that has a stop in it. As I have described my idea earlier I will not go more into detail about that.

I have now worked more on the animation making the bag look more heavy, I have also smoothed out the animation the best I can.

Instead of laser beams I have now changed that with jail rails that fall down from the ceiling.




Task 5: Posing and Staging

For this task I have made the following poses:

I'm free
Waiting for news
What's in there?
Dancing to impress
How am I going to do this?
I'm angry with you

Click the image for full size




Animation Task 6 and 7: The Lost Bucket

We were to choose one of the tasks but I combined them into one as I had a cool reference with a interesting scenario that I wanted to use.

I have now added more extremes and really tried my best to smooth out the animation, adding follow through and overlapping action where needed. There is still areas that definitely could use one more polish to smooth the animation even further but I'm out of time and it is about time I let go of this animation.





This now concludes Animation Practice 1
of course stay tuned to this blog as I will continue blogging here for the following modules. Next up, Animation Practice 2 :)

Climbing and Lifting Animation WIP, Splined version 2

In this version I have done changes based on the feedback from the previous version as well as started to add extreme poses for the secondary character.



It is unfortunate that I am this late with the task but I have also lost a day of production due to illness. Due to the bad weather conditions in Middlesbrough these days I do have some luck in because of the deadline being extended even further until the 8th of December.

So now I'm working as much as possible and I am aiming in on finishing my ICA for the 6th of December.

Climbing and Lifting Animation WIP, Splined Feedback

After showing the clip to my class I have gotten some good feedback on the clip.
At the end, they didn't like the BIG double head tilt. It is supposed to be a sigh but I guess I went a bit over the top with that one so I have to make it more subtle. Also they didn't like the hat falling down in front of the camera so I have to fix that.

Next to that I just have to keep on working with all the things I already know needs tweaking as well as adding the extra animation to the secondary character.

Climbing and Lifting Animation WIP, Splined

After being up all night I will now rest for about 2 hours before showing this to my class.

I have now implemented the new idea to the scene and added most of the breakdowns for the main character. The secondary character is still just floating across the screen as he still only has the storytelling poses applied to him.



You might now have noticed there's a fall here. I think this really spiced up the scene. It was a tricky one to do though as I did not have any reference for this and pretty much just had to go with a feel to it, but I think I have managed to create something quite convincing based on not having the reference for it.

The animation still needs more work on the timing in some areas I feel. Especially as the paint bucket gets stolen I should work on the timing for the main character as well as creating a better follow through action.

Climbing and Lifting Animation WIP, Block with extremes

I have now added more extremes to the main character and also did send this clip to Penny and did get some feedback from her:

"

Hi Remi

It is looking good, nice touch with the hat.

You might want to add add a couple of story telling poses as your characters leave the scene.

"




I did also show this clip to my fellow student, Daniel Natland and he did give me some pointers as well as he was commenting the part where the character runs down the stairs to catch up with the thief.

The comments I got was that the character might be going a bit too slow if he wants to catch up and this has given me some pretty interesting ideas on how to make the whole scene interesting as well as finishing it.

Final Animation tasks for Animation Practice 1

The final animation task for AP1 is 2 tasks to choose from. Either it should be a character lifting an object or a character climbing up and down from an object.

Earlier we had been in the green screen studio to shoot reference footage for these tasks and Penny made them all available on Vimeo.

Even though I had made some ideas in the green screen studio, I did fall for the idea of 2 other classmates as I think both their acting was good as the idea combines both tasks in one which is why I have chosen to make my animation based on their reference:




I am also behind on my walk cycle task at this point but I can't wait longer to get started with the last task either so I just have to get this running as well.

Climbing and Lifting Storytelling poses block

So here I've gotten started with my last animation task with the storytelling poses in block version:

3D Poses Feedback

After showing the poses to Penny she also agrees with me that the new poses work much better so now I'm putting those to the side to get started with our final task.

3D Poses Update

So based on the feedback I have gotten from Penny I have made some new poses that I will show, which I think works a LOT better:


The class has also been lucky to receive some good news about our deadline. Luckily it has been extended until the 5th of December which couldn't fit me better as I am now way behind on several tasks for spending so much time on posing.

Feedback on 3D Poses

Later today I received Penny's feedback on my poses and I here quote her response:

"
Hi Remi

Poses Feedback.

Now how am I going to do this ..

The pose is not strong, you are relying on the staging. I suggest you try a different idea.

What's in there ..

works OK

Waiting for news

works OK

Angry poses

I agree, that both need more work.

when angry the body is tense .. shoulders up and hands in fists or pointed finger.

Angry with you implies that the character is looking at someone/thing.

the fancy staging with the bathroom is rather OTT.

Your pose with the computer is sort of the action (acting) pose after the angry pose. .. Try showing him to be angry with it pre baseball bat.

Dancing

Again too much reliance on the staging. The pose needs more swagger and attitude.

I'm free

Again too much reliance on the staging. Without the headstone .. would the character look free?

"

She is so right!

I guess I have just gotten too carried away with staging and telling a character's story and it has completely taken away my focus from making GOOD poses.

Also I suppose I have been trying too hard to do something that's really original and avoid the "textbook pose"

But of course, one can't invent the wheel over again so I have decided to put the whole story concept aside and work on POSES.

I still can't believe I have been so blind to not see this myself though.

Poses in 3D

It took me quite some time and what's really bad now is that I'm kind of tangled up with the posing task and haven't gotten started on the climbing/lifting task as well as I'm still working on the walk cycle with stop task. Despite that, hese are the poses I have now emailed to Penny Holton for feedback:

Posing task

For the posing task we have gotten the following scenarios to create from:

1. Waiting for news
2. Pleased at the result.
3. Now how am I going to do this?
4. What’s in there?
5. I’m very angry with you
6. I’m free
7. Dancing to impress
8. Er .. excuse me

We are to choose only 6 of them.

The poses should also be staged in a way that helps to tell my character's story.
Starting off sketching a 2d pose which later on will be made in 3D.

To be honest, I thought this would be one of the easier tasks to do and I did kind of delay it too long and unfortunately I still haven't started in 3D but I only have 2D sketches to show my class for tomorrow. I think this could be a good way to help me decide which one to go for in 3D as well.



I guess my biggest problem is my drawing skills (as I haven't been drawing for quite some time) and a lot of frustration with perspective and proportions.

We were to fill out an entire page with lots and lots of different poses for each sentence and as embarrassing as it is to admit, I did struggle with good ideas as there is always one pose that comes to mind instantly for each sentence, it seemed difficult for me to come up with new ideas.

But this is what I have to show for my class so far

Personality Walk with start and stop Feedback

The feedback I got from my class is that I need to work more on the pulling. Make it more believable in terms of weight and I totally agree. It is something I've been trying to do better up to this show and tell but didn't get that far.

Other things to improve would be to make the character pull himself up slower so it looks like he has to use more force.

All of these things I will try and tweak and will show more later on.

Personality Walk with start and stop WIP Splined

I have been working further on with the animation, continuing adding extremes and breakdowns and I have now reached the point to where I am using splined keys.

This is the version I will be showing my class for further feedback:

Personality Walk with start and stop

So the next task is about making a character walk where the character either:

1. Walks into shot, stops for a moment and then starts walking again.
2. The character starts walking from stationary position, walks a few steps and then stops.

Also adding on one of the following themes:

A. Walking carrying an object: such as a bag or a pile of dishes
B. Walking pushing/pulling an object: such as a trolley or a lawnmower.


Also it is encouraged to add additional animation in keeping with the personality of my character and his/her reason for walking and stopping.




With this in mind I started thinking about some ideas and decided to go for a combination of 1+B

I also made a simple storyboard for the basic idea of the scene:

As I started animating I decided to make some changes. Instead of making the character carry his bag over his shoulder, I would make the bag so heavy he would have to drag it with him along the floor. This was to give myself a bigger challenge and some more interesting animation.

As most people know, animating without reference is difficult so I made a reference with the help of Jo Christian Figenschou:



With that, I have started animating and blocking out the storytelling poses with some extremes:

Feedback from my Ball With A Tail

Today I showed my animation to the class and the response was surprisingly good :)
The one comment about improvement was related to the few seconds the ball is waving it's tale in excitement. To make this even better I have been encouraged to make the ball look even more excited by adding some more animation to the ball itself and that's what I'll try and tweak for my final hand-in.

Stay tuned for more posts ;)

Ball With A Tail, First Hand-in candidate

So I've done some refining to the animation. The blocking was taken quite far so it really wasn't much more to it than to add some breakdowns to the tail and body.

By this I mean adding the famous "S shapes" to the tale in proper breakdown positions and making sure the ball squashes and stretches properly and on time with the impact.
As I had gotten to this stage I also had received feedback from my fellow student, Daniel Natland. He did have some comments on how much the ball squashes that makes it look like a fat character which does make it cute so it wasn't a negative comment initially.

But thinking about it and what the ball does in this animation I decided to tone the squashes down a bit so it seems a bit lighter.

With all these changes made and refining done to the animation I present to you my first Hand-In Candidate, Fully Rendered:



Please Watch in HD

Ball With A Tail Block Animation

So here is my animation at it's blocking stage from both the perspective view and the camera that will be used in the final hand in:






As I got started with the blocking I soon realized that I had to cut off the last part of the animation where the ball catches fire since I've already exceeded the 10 seconds.

I also showed this to Penny Holton and the feedback I got was to drop the flames and end the clip where the blocking ends. At least for the ICA and if I want to I can add these effects and extend the clip later for my own showreel which I think I might just do :)
But for now it will have to be without flames and as the clip ends before the ball realizes it has caught fire, there isn't any need to add the flames around the ring at this stage.

But with this feedback in hand I continued and took the animation to the next stage of refining it.

Ball With A Tail

I've been looking forward to this exercise as it is so much more interesting to animate something with personality and to be honest I have already made a rig for it 1-2 weeks ago when I got to know about the exercise.

I have also made a render of the rig so you can have a look at what it should look like when rendered:



" IT'S SO FLUFFY!! " =P









So the exercise specifies that the ball has to jump on a "box" and back down.
As the ball should have personality, I think the ball should have a reason to go on top of that box but coming up with a good idea seemed kind of difficult for the small time frame and the short animation so to make it simple so I could get started animating I decided to make the ball jump through a ring of fire. At least that's my initial idea. The clip should end with the ball being proud to have done the stunt and then shortly realize it has caught fire, freaks out and jumps into the camera and faints (and possibly burns up).

To get started with this idea I made a small thumbnail storyboard which you can see below:



With that settled I got started animating, blocking the animation out.

Improvements to the Pendulum

So I've gotten my feedback and most of it was that the pendulum seems to be going a bit slow (underwater animation) so the main thing I've done is to speed the whole animation up a bit.

Also giving the pendulum more of a "throwing swing" as the pendulum stops.
The pendulum also now starts swinging as the base is breaking into rest position.
I will be working more with the animation later on to give it more flow, but this is what I've got for the moment:

What's been happening lately?

Hi.

Well it's been a while now since I've made any updates with what's going on. Sorry about that so now I will fill you in on what's been going on.

First of all I guess I shouldn't post my animations as final ones before the ICA is handed in as I did get feedback on both my bouncing balls and pendulum animation about improvements that can be done before the final deadline. Of course then again, the one animating a sequence will never really find a point to decide that "Now it's finished". There will always be a room for improvement but one has got to draw the line somewhere, right?

Next to this I have also worked on my ball with tail and done improvements to the pendulum animation which I will discuss in separate posts following this one.

This is just to make it more organized and easier for YOU to read :)

Pendulum, Final Version

The feedback I received from Penny Holton and other students was that the pendulum should settle quicker than it does as well as smoothing out the animation.

What I've done is making the extreme poses less extreme which results in the pendulum settling sooner and deleting the animation that's unnecessary. To smooth out the motion as much as possible I worked with the spacing, making the breakdowns much more subtle than previous which did give me a smoother result.

So here is what I have ended up with:

Bouncing Balls Final Version

After receiving some feedback from Penny Holton, I realized that bigger changes to the animation was necessary. The ball simply bounces too much for a tennis ball. But changing the way it bounces in some point of the animation, will drastically change how the ball will continue to bounce the rest of the animation so I had to delete any animation that was made after the point I needed to edit.

Through the process leading to the final version I deleted my animation 1-3 times before I came up with a result that seemed correct

Here is an example of what I mean:




The ball simply bounces too far out from the wall and hits the bowling ball one last time and I decided I'm not buying that so I scraped the animation and edited this.








Now the ball hits the ground earlier and settles down much quicker which I think seems much more realistic.










After doing these adjustments I feel like I can wrap this one up. Of course there is still room for more improvement. It always is with animation but now I feel like I can put this animation aside and move on.

Pendulum Animaiton Version 2

I have now managed to smooth out more of the animation but still there is something about the upper segment of the chain that moves kind of choppy when swinging back the second time that I am still trying to figure out what to do with in order to smooth it out. The rest of the animation is starting to come together I think.

I put on some more animation to the base, making it move in an arc and give it some more rotation as it stops, giving it the sense of more weight attached to it as this is the goal with the animation for me.
I want the ball of the bottom of the chain to be heavy and therefore not making a springy pendulum.

Pendulum Animation

Since the bouncing balls are close to completion I have decided to take a break from it and move on to the pendulum. So far I have animated the whole sequence but there is still need for a lot of tweaking on the timing and spacing in order to make the animation flow better.
I think the beginning looks good but as the base comes to a stop, the chain seems to pause for half a second and then shoot forward so I'm still working on smoothing this out.

Anyway, this is what I have so far:





Of course when doing this animation I have taken great use of Keith Lango's Tutorial on YouTube

His tutorial about overlapping action is a MUST SEE for everyone who wants to learn this principle:

Bouncing Balls Version 3

I have now finished the entire sequence. By this I mean that I have animated the entire scene to the point where both balls come to rest.
Of course there is still room for improvement but I feel close to wrapping this one up by now.

There are a couple of places where I know the tennis ball does have a bit too long hang time in the air. I'm still working on trying to fix this but it seems to be difficult as I am trying to change the spacing instead of the timing. If I am to change the timing it will immediately have an effect on the rest of the scene where the two balls interact and that's why I'm trying to solve this by working with the spacing.

Well, no more talking. Time to show:

Bouncing Balls Version 2

I have now worked further on the animation and have done a few improvements to the bowling ball. It now bounces a bit higher after falling off the edge and I have started the animation of the tennis ball where you can see it interacting with the bowling ball.



Of course I still have to continue the animation until the tennis ball comes to rest as well as improving the whole animation even further.

Bowling Ball Reference

Since I don't have a bowling ball myself that I can observe, I have been looking around the web for reference videos and I found a very good reference video at YouTube.

It proves that a bowling ball sure can bounce if it achieves the right height and momentum.
Of course there are several factors that decide how well the ball will bounce. The height, speed, the ball's weight and the surface it hits.
In the reference one can clearly see the balls bouncing as they are being thrown from a pretty high altitude in comparison to the altitude the ball falls from in my animation.

Based on my observations from the reference video, I do believe I should increase the bounce in the bowling ball a bit more but not a lot as it is a HEAVY bowling ball falling from a lower height than the ones in the video.

Next to this I will continue to smooth out the animation as good as I can.

The video reference I have found can be seen here:

Tennis Ball Reference video

It would of course be lovely to have my own bowling ball to study as well but I have decided to work on that without a reference and make it look right instead.
For the tennis ball I have made a small purchase of getting one myself so I can toss that one around and study how it bounces.

The one thing I'm especially trying to figure out by filming my reference and putting a frame counter on the video is to get the timing right.

You can see my recorded reference video here:

The bouncing balls

The assignment requires me to animate 2 balls with different physical properties, were I have chosen to use a heavy bowling ball and a light tennis ball.

The task also requires me to animate the balls hitting an obstacle such as a box. However, my idea is to make the balls interact, where the tennis ball hits the bowling ball.

If this isn't approved with my tutor, I will get the balls to interact with another object so the task will be answered.

So this is my first draft where I have animated the bowling ball:




It of course will need more tweaking to get the animation flowing better and maybe increase the speed of the ball as it gets closer to the edge. Now it is slowing down and then kind of taking off over the edge and I believe it will look better if it keeps a more constant speed through this part.

Our first assingments

Our first assignments have been given and it takes us all back to basics.
The famous Bouncing ball and pendulum animation.

Since we are going back to basics I have decided to go through Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit" once more to repeat all the basics and this is what I have spent a great deal of my time on now in the beginning as it will prepare me for both the animation task as well as the presentation task (Follow Through and Overlapping action) I will be presenting in the coming week.

I have also spent time on looking after reference footage of bouncing balls but I will also try to make some myself and post these later on.

Ice Breaker

Hi and welcome to my animation blog.

This is the blog where one will be able to read everything about my progress through my year as a Master's student at Teesside University, meaning all my work through all my modules leading up to the final project which will also be posted here.

I will be posting my animation WIP as well as some of the sketches I will be producing throughout the course.

Next to the posted work I will comment and reflect over it.

With that said, I hope one will find this blog interesting as it fills up with updates through the year.