30/09/2015 - Visual Research 2

Week 04

Visual research:

"Tako Faito" - Giant Ants (2015) http://www.giantant.ca/ 

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew-pick/tako-faito-by-giant-ant-118066.html 

This animation is only a minute long (including credits) but the exaggeration in it is mind blowing. That is why I'm going to analyse this for my own project. Even though this is 2D, I feel the exaggeration on show could influence my own work in 3D as it has helped open up my eyes to the possibilities there are with exaggeration. I will also do some visual research in terms of exaggeration in terms of 3D animation as well as that would relate more to my own brief.

1:

This is the first screenshot I have taken from this. It is but one frame among many but this one has so much exaggeration in it.  His leg shouldn't be that length...but it is and that's what makes this animation really stand out in terms of exaggeration. I feel that this plays a lot with perspective exaggeration as well. I'm not quite sure how something like exaggeration with perspective (when it comes to an actual character) would be recreated in 3D and is something I will definitely experiment with. I assume in 3D I would need a character that can stretch to allow the exaggeration.

2:

This is another extreme case of exaggeration but more with movement than perspective in this case. From the proportions of his arm to his leg, this frame breaks reality, but, in the style of the animation it fits. All this squash and stretch and exaggeration create the effect of him hitting the ground hard and fast as he lands in this scene.

3:

This frame is just crazy with exaggeration with perspective and body shape. The way his arm is right on the camera and the rest of him is so far away, it works perfectly but if you look at where his right foot is (on the left) it is really close to the camera that further exaggerates exactly where the character is in relation to the camera. Based on his hand and foot he is right in front of the camera, but, based on his torso he is a good distance away. I would put this down to exaggerated perspective as well in this frame. I feel obliged, before i move on to the next frame, to point out the right foot being in the bottom left corner with his leg stretching diagonally towards the centre is perfect composition

4:

This is the last frame for this animation, even though I feel I have analysed enough about the exaggerated perspective in this animation this is one shot i want to mention because upon my first viewing of this it blew my mind open to the possibilities with exaggerated perspective.  Looking at this frame closely and observing how close the tentacle is to the screen and how far away the character is, his arm in reality would be stretched so much just reaching the tentacle which further highlights the exaggerated perspective in play here. This technique is the same as taking a picture of you holding the Eiffel tower between your fingers in a sense. Here the viewer is tricked into thinking the tentacle is really big but its just a trick.

Overall this piece exaggerates perspective in a very effective way and is something i could certainly use to help influence the way i animate my 3D show reel for this module.

30/09/2015 - Brief Digest

Week 04

Brief Digest:

Here I have taken the brief I have chosen and highlighted key areas where I have further expanded underneath in the green and pick text. Project 2 Suited to students interested in practicing 3D animation skills. Animating Actions You may use a pre-made rig of your choice, the focus is animation. The client would like you to produce a series of animation playblast tests which employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance; with particular focus on exaggeration.  At the bottom of the document are some recommended rigs for you to use. The client would like you to plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests (roughly 5-10 seconds each) which show his vision in motion. To concentrate on the animation, you should use a pre-made rig. Your client would like to see video containing playblast of the following actions: 1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s. 2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious. 3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing 4 – Jumping across a small stream.

Challenge: The challenges I face in this brief is employing character performance into my animation. I take the term “character performance” as a convincing portrayal of the action the character is performing.

The other challenge I have in this brief is expressing “exaggeration”. Exaggeration can be something that is hugely influential in the way the character moves or it could have a minimal impact with just subtle effects on the character. The challenge here is how much I utilise exaggeration. I will have to experiment with different degrees of exaggeration when I’m planning this but based on other animation based projects I have completed, I will probably end up with a fair amount of exaggeration which will also inevitably add to my “character performance”.

Objectives: My objectives for this brief are, “to produce a series of animation playblast tests” and to “employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance”.  The brief also states that I have to “plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests (roughly 5-10 seconds each)”. These are:

1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s.

2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious.

3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing.

4 – Jumping across a small stream.

All this will require some visual research on my blog for exaggeration and once I have done that I will then also do visual research for each of the required animation playblasts with analysis on my blog to aid me. This will give me a good understanding of the types of exaggeration I can I can employ and also help with expressing the movements of my required actions.

30/09/2015 - Visual Research 1

Week 04

Visual Research:

"Man" - Steve Cutts (Copyright © 2012 stevecutts.com)

https://vimeo.com/56093731 

This animation is titled "Man" and is basically highlighting villainous, horrible humans who have no care for the planet and the other life on it. This of course doesn't represent all of humanity but it does do a good job of capturing  humanity in its inglorious nature. The reason I have chosen to analyse this animation is for the character performance. The way the main character holds himself is really well animated so that is what I will talk about under the screenshots below.

1:

This first screenshot is from the first walk cycle we see of him. I want to draw focus to the way his hands are clenched into fists which help to show his attitude, which is an over confident, arrogant individual. There are also subtleties in the position of his facial features which give him a menacing look. From the little smirk of his mouth to the little scrunched bits under his eyes, it all helps to give the character a menace.

 2:

This is the character a little bit further into the animation. Here he now has a fur coat and some leather snakeskin boots. I want to point out again, his clenched fists. They seem to add an uneasy, dangerous factor to his character. He still has his menacing facial features as well.

 3:

For this screenshot I want you to ignore the dead bear as I want to focus on the performance of the character. Not much has changed since the last screenshot but now he is in an action pose rather than solely a walk cycle. Here his eyebrows are pointed downwards as he smiles. This shows the mean streak in him as he holds the bears head (now we can acknowledge the dead bear!) while seeming proud of his accomplishments, but again, the smile makes this seem all that more sinister. He even has pointed teeth here which help to show his dangerous side.

 4:

This screenshot obviously is referring to deforestation...but that's not the important part of this, although knowing the context of which a character is in greatly helps to visualise the characters performance. The way he is now skipping through the forest, turning all the trees to paper as he skips along shows that he has no care for nature and his menacing facial features have not changed since the start. This scene is just him skipping and twirling through the forest zapping trees into piles of paper (with his magical wand), The characters performance here is malicious and carefree which is executed perfectly.

 5:

This is the last scene of the animation where the main character is sitting atop a big rubbish dump on a throne (smoking a cigar). The way he is leaning back helps to portray the character relaxed and happy with his success, which is a continuation of his arrogant ways throughout. We can see that he has no remorse for what he has done, or that he even realises the damage he has done. All this can be gathered from this one screenshot with his posture.

Overall I found this an enjoyable piece to watch with a really strong character performance from our main character "man". Everything about the way he moves and the way he holds himself gets his personality across without any confusion. 

29/09/2015 - SES

Week 04

Self Evaluation Strategy:

This is my own self evaluation strategy I will use for my work when assessing it.

23/09/2015 - Brief

Week 03

Briefs

On Monday past, we got access to 18 different briefs of which we had to choose one to work on.

In today's lecture I spoke with the lecturer and have decided that I will be doing the "3D Technical Art and Animation" brief. In this brief there were two projects to choose from, I have chosen project two. Below is the segment of the brief that is relevant to my project.

{:Project 2

Animating Actions

You may use a pre-made rig of your choice, the focus is animation.

The client would like you to produce (Objectives) a series of animation playblast tests which employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance;(Insight Strategy) with particular focus on exaggeration(Opportunity Insight).  At the bottom of the document are some recommended rigs for you to use.

The client would like you to plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests(Challenge) (roughly 5-10 seconds each) which show his vision in motion. To concentrate on the animation, you should use a pre-made rig.

Your client would like to see video containing playblast of the following actions:

1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s.

2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious.

3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing

4 – Jumping across a small stream.}

I have chosen this project because I am interested in furthering my animation skills this year.

16/09/2015 - People in Motion

Week 02

People in Motion

Today’s task was to go out into a public area and draw quick sketches of people walking by. The aim was to try and catch any number of things like, someone’s emotions, gestures and poses. 

My evaluation will follow these images:

Evaluation:

For this task I used my time efficiently, I managed to fill up seven sheets of paper in roughly just over an hour. Although I found this task frustrating at times I kept on drawing people. My drawings overall have not been that successful in my opinion but I do feel that my observation of all the different characters walking by and every little detail in their gait and posture was good. I could feel myself inspired by all the different people but most of the time I struggled to translate that onto paper. The same thing happened with the perspective task last week where I found that my ability with a pencil hindered my observational skills.

The skills I am evaluating in this part are “working quickly and fluidly”, “capturing sense of movement” and “capturing a sense of personality or character”. I managed to work quickly and fluidly for this task and I rarely spent more than five minutes on a drawing. I struggled with capturing a sense of movement in most of my drawings though which I account for my lack of practise and I found it difficult to actually get the legs in the right position oddly enough. I did however manage to capture personality more than anything else in my drawings. I find exaggeration an enjoyable experience and I find it extremely useful for expressing a person’s character.

Even though I found this task frustrating, I still feel that it helped me. It is great for capturing the essence of true movement which is hard to capture without plenty of practise. I drew a lot of mechanical stickmen (as pointed out by my lecturer) at first but I also populated my seven pages with some more fleshed out drawings spread throughout. One thing I found really difficult was trying to draw a person and then suddenly they would change direction and I would be left with a completely new pose. I was often unsure how to finish the previous pose and if I should try and quickly capture the new one. I don’t think I managed to fully adjust to this element of drawing people in public over the course of this task, I found it extremely frustrating and it made me feel like my drawing was poor, but after the feedback from the lecturer it became clearer that it wasn’t the final outcome but the method and the thinking behind it that was important for this task.

After today’s task I will definitely be doing quick drawing of people in public more often to train up my observational skills and my quick sketching. For another project I am focusing on character development and this sort of task could come in good use for designing characters and how they could move as imagining how a character moves is vital to their design.

09/09/2015 - Perspective

Week 01

Computer Arts Practice

This blog is for my Computer Arts Practice module for year 3 computer arts at Abertay University.

This is a two term module, in the first term, we are undertaking different activities to assess our skill level. In this first post I will be evaluating a perspective drawing I did as part of the first practical. I had roughly an hour and a half to complete this drawing after I had found a location.

Evaluation:

When it comes to my time management for this drawing, I feel I did not use the time as productively as I could have. I finished my piece with at least half an hour to spare and I was unsure as to what else I could do to it. I felt my observation of the corridor was good though and I could see what I needed to do but it was the translation from the eyes to the hand that is where things broke down. I am reasonably happy with my line work for this piece, everything is clear and it does not look too cluttered.

My thoughts on the overall thought of perspective and my finished piece is that I found it quite frustrating at times because the measuring technique with a pencil can sometimes be off and distances are all too important in perspective. The only reason my piece looks somewhat convincing is because I had to freehand a couple of angles because my measuring was ineffective. Sometimes my angle I got from the pencil did not match up on the drawing and that is where I had to alter things to make it work. One limiting factor for me was my measuring, my pencil was shaking and I found it extremely difficult to get accurate guide lines. In future I will definitely use string as I have past experiences using and it has been effective for me in the past. I believe my strengths in perspective is being able to see the perspective and know what I’m drawing, but, my weakness is maybe finding the vanishing point and this is very detrimental to my strength. Once I find the vanishing point accurately, I believe the rest of the drawing will come naturally to me as I get the process that I have to go through but everything goes off the scale and perspective with little mistakes . After feedback from the tutor, I was told that I maybe should have picked two point perspectives and that by choosing one point from the angle I decided to draw, just made things a lot more difficult. Two point perspective never really occurred to me when I started the drawing,not from lack of knowledge but more lack of practice. Next time I do a perspective I will definitely consider all my options.

From today's practical class I will definitely work on my perspective, one point and two, in the future. Perspective for me is crucial for environment art/concepts and modelling, but, I am more interested in the narrative side of things so I feel it is not an essential skill for me to have, but, putting that aside, I will still practice perspective drawings in the future as it is not like the skill would be detrimental to my working practice.