SS2 - Acting Reference Study

Once I decided two go with this idea my plan of action was research and study as many monologues and character performance.

Here are the selection of  performance I have choose to use along with a few great performances.
All of these scenes I feel captures a different emotion that I would like to show in my animation.

 

 from 1:19 to 1:35

From 0.48 to 2.05

Specialist Study Two

Okay, so my final module Specialist Study Two, has commenced and the goal is to produce a finish high polish animation. With specialist study one my aim was to enhance my knowledge of character animation as well as learn new skills and gain a solid grasp of character animation and performance. I feel I had achieved these aims through the micro-projects and 11 seconds club entry. Thus prepared me for how I will approach Specialist Study Two.

So, for my Specialist Study Two I have been juggling around a few ideas for my final animation piece. Going back to what Ed Hook's mentions in Acting for Animators on the subject of conflict and there  being three types of conflict which are as followed: conflict with self, conflict with situation and conflict with another character.

Bearing this in mind I chose to do conflict with another person. the reasoning behind this is that I wanted to show the intimate or conflict between two characters communicating.

Demonstrated in this AM showcase.

I like the simplicity and the intimate feel it gives off between the two characters as well as the dialogue. The animation is fluid, with very nice nuances in the acting, this all adding to a  believable and natural performance.

This is a great piece and demonstrates numerous aspects I want to convey in my piece. I also took note of the animator's comments about improving the scene your animating. 



My Learning aims are as followed:

To develop and enhance my existing knowledge of Maya to a professional Level.
Demonstrate a good technical understanding of character animation.
The ability to specify efficient work flows
To generate and evaluate the substantial piece of work I created
  
Update
  
I have made a few changes to my idea. firstly being that the conflict scenario between two characters has been scrapped in favour of a one character scene. So basically I have simply moved from conflict with another person to conflict with self. The decision to make this change came from discussion with my tutor and group tutorial. Were I could do two characters, reducing it to one character would allow me to solely focus on it. Which I thought would be better for me.

This AM showcase is a great character piece that solely focus on one character.

The changes also came from watching a scene in The Big Lebowski where the landlord is auditioning for a role. My idea developed from there to where I would have my character auditioning on stage given he's rendition of a few iconic scenes from films.

Here's the scene

As I was watching Ultimate Spiderman which might I add is not as good as Spectacular Spiderman or Spiderman The Animated Series (1996) but still fairly entertaining. There was a scene that lent itself kindly to my idea. This was a great scene and help me further visualize how I want my animation piece. Cartoons

Here's the scene

Novermber's 11secondclub Competition Animation

Having to work fast in order to get this done in time for the competition, only a few more days to finish it off. I started work on the other character. First blocking out his key poses adding the inbetweens and then smoothing out his animation.

Once I'd finished with the second character I started to lay out the scene. little focus on the background however I did want to convey to the audience that they were in jail or in captive by what they would see. This as an early test.


Playblast Test
 

 Final animation "What now?"

Overall I am pleased enough to enter my animation into the 11 second club. However I feel there are a number of improvements which could be made to this animation. However completing it in the time period that I did I am pleased. Just have to wait and see what the club think! 
 

Novermber's 11secondclub Competition

Update - Performance I have decide that the performance animation micro-test will be my 11 second club animation. 

This month I plan to enter the 11 second club. For this I would be animate to a sound clip.  I thought this months sound clip was particularly good. So I was looking forward to hopefully creating a good piece of animation. The sound clip featured two people talking, the second person speaking was the more dominant voice so I decided I wanted to focus on him first. With what I had learned from looking at the few of the professional animators and there workflow. My  process was the same as it had been in my previous micro-projects.

This would be my first entry into the 11 second club and so I wanted to push myself with it. make it about performance and have my character really make strong poses. I want to implement the principles of animation such as exaggeration, anticipation and appeal as well as all the others. I started by first acting out the scene.I created key-poses my character was going to make.

 key poses.

 
Blocking stage

Once having completed my planning stage I started animated this is the blocking stage of the second character.

Looking At Character Animation

In Ed Hood's book 'Acting for animators' he highlights the fact there are only three different conflicts in animation these are:

1. Person vs person
2. Person vs self
3. Person vs environment 

These are some Character Animation I looked at for inspiration. The three videos demo straight the three different conflicts faced in character animation.

Character Animator - Andrew Gordon

Who is Andrew Gordon?

Andrew Gordon is a character animator who has been working at Pixar studio for 15 years.

He recently did an article with creative blog which highlight his time so far at Pixar. I found this to be a very interesting and insightful read. One of the things he says I found especially interesting was his answer to the question "What do you prefer about 3-D animation vs 2-D "

"I like the subtlety of acting and the very small minutia that you are able to get in 3D animation" 
 

Click the link below to read the full article, and find out which one in the photo is him. If you don't know, here's a clue he's wearing glasses.

http://www.creativebloq.com/animation/andrew-gordon-interview-1012880

Character Animation Micro-Project Facial Expressions

One of the key areas I looked at was facial expressions.  Facial expressions is a key area in character animation and one I wanted to enhance my knowledge and skill in.

This is a very useful chart or infographic I found highlighting the various facial expressions we make. I am sure I will be referring to in the future.

I used the site Reference Reference, which is great for, you guessed it references for animation. The video I choose was of a man terrified.

Expressions test animation 1

In the second facial test animation I wanted to show the character nervously eye darting before looking towards the camera, as to say he knows his being watched.


Expressions test animation 2

I decided to composite the two facial tests together to make this one animation. I think it works well overall and makes for a good short animation.


Compilation