Post #11 Lip-Syncing

Animating characters so that they look as if they are speaking naturally is much harder than it looks! For my character, Lionel Clegg, I recorded a dialog track in keeping with something I would probably have him say in an animation (if I were to make one): "We all have to work together to keep our planet beautiful".

One of the things we learned when trying to match up the dialog to facial expressions were to keep the sound of the whole word in mind, rather than breaking it down into individual letters or syllables. Also, it's best to skim over the words so that you can avoid having the characters mouths opening and closing constantly. 

One of the problems I had with my lip sync was that the dialog is spoken very quickly, and the words tended to blend in to each other. A handy function to have would have been if you had been able to hear audio playback when you flick between frames, but I couldn't find a function like that.

One technique that I sort of discovered on my own though, was forming the mouth shapes before the dialog occurred. All I did to achieve this was shift all the frames forward on the timeline. For example, I formed the mouth shapes for the word 'beautiful' about five frames ahead of when we actually hear the dialog.

Then I found this tutorial online that backed up that technique, and also showed me that you don't always need a lot of mouth movements to create a good lip-sync. You only really need to mimic the main vowel sounds.

I think that it doesn't work so well on my lip-sync because my character's face isn't moving (only his mouth), so it makes it more noticeable. Oh well, lesson learned!

Post #10 Walk/run cycles

We've started to get into some more difficult territory now! We learned about walk cycles. There are a lot of things to keep in mind with the walk cycles. There are several different positions that you need to draw in order to get a smooth and natural looking walk. When people walk, their body tends to move up and down depending on where in the cycle they are.

Lower Body Walk Cycle.

The feet follow a pattern of heel to toe. The legs cycle through various positions of being bend and being straight.

Post #9 Ease in Ease Out

I've started working on the Wacom tablets properly now - unfortunately I couldn't put it off any further as we need to start working on Flash animation. I really hate using the Wacoms for anything complex, but for simple things (very simple things!) they can be quite useful.

This time we were practicing the 'ease in, ease out' principal of animation. This is basically having objects and characters gradually come to stop rather than having things bounce around too quickly where it looks unpleasing to the eye. Sometimes this happens in reality (as you can see with the pendulum), but other times it just looks more pleasing to have things gradually stop or change direction rather than a sudden change (as with the bouncing ball).

For an 'ease in, ease out' you need to animated more frames closer together at the start of a movement and at the end of the movement.

For example, in the bouncing ball animation above, there are five frame almost on top of each other near the  start of the movement. Then in the middle of the movement the frames are more spread out, before they begin to overlap again just before the first bounce. Also, before the ball hits the ground, instead of a simple circular shape, the ball changes to a more oval shape in order to give the ball a stretchy/bouncy look. 

Post #8 Character poses

Learned some interesting things about character poses, the main thing being about the line of action. There can be several lines of action but the primary line of action runs from a characters head, through the spine and down the leg. Basically, having a curved line of action will prevent your characters from looking stiff. 

Source: https://warosu.org/data/ic/img/0015/74/1383132525978.jpg

Dynamic lines of action are most obvious in cartoons such as 'Tom and Jerry' where the characters have highly exaggerated poses. As you can see above, the line of action is a curve, which helps the characters to move with flow, rather than on sharp angles that make the animation a bit more clunky. 

Here are a couple of poses I have done for my Lionel Clegg character. Still need some work. I think the first pose with his arms outstretched has a bit of a curve to it. The running pose has a straight diagonal line of action so it does look a bit more stiff. 

Post #7 Character Turnarounds

Having decided what my character (Lionel Clegg) looks like, I've managed to make a character turnaround.

I didn't find this to be as difficult as I thought it would be. Having learned how to do character proportions I found that useful in keeping everything consistent from one frame to the next. That said, there are still a few problems with it. Some of the character heights have changed a bit from frame to frame as the feet have been repositioned. Also, I think the second frame (the three quarter) is little bit off in terms of the shoulder height. That would probably wouldn't be too hard to fix if I was working in Flash as I could just scale it down a bit.

Film Review: The Alchemist's Letter

This is a film written and directed by Carlos Andre Stevens and has John Hurt voicing the character of the alchemist. Wow, this is an incredibly impressive film in term of the visuals! 

Post #6 Body Proportions

Getting body proportions right has always been something I've always found difficult (not that I've had much recent experience in drawing). It's been great learning some techniques for getting this right. Having a formula to work by is really helpful. We learned how to draw characters in proportion based on head-heights.
Body sizes can also be very important for building compelling characters. I've noticed quite a few examples where body sizes have used really well to play with audience's expectations.

For example, body sizes were used to great effect in Pixar's 2004 film 'The Incredibles'.
There is a great scene near the beginning of the film where Bob (aka Mr Incredible), a super-strong massively built superhero, is called in to his boss's office. The boss, Mr Huph, is sitting at his desk lecturing Bob before he jumps out of his seat revealing that he is very small. This sets up a interesting switch in character arc types that play with audience expectations, where generally you would expect the larger character to hold the balance of power.

Depending on whether you want to go for a more realistic look you can make you adult characters eight head heights. 

Drawing cartoon characters gives you a bit more freedom to experiment with body shapes to suit different characters. 

Film Review: Banana Bandit

This is a film I found on YouTube called Banana Bandit. Other than that, I can't find any more information on it. In general, I think this is a really good little film. It has similar traits to a Pixar short film - story told through clever cinematography and character expressions.

Post #5 Character Sheets and facial features

I decided to work on making a character that I would use for the rest of my assignments. We were given character sheets to fill out to help build our character/s. I've done these before while screenwriting for the films I've made and they can be quite useful. To get a really engaging character, I find that you really need to know everything about them, not just what they look like and what they're job is. It's all of the tiny details and quirks that really "sell" characters as believable. Everyone has their own quirks and habits - some of these are physical, some are psychological. A character can act very differently between one person (or group) to another person (or group) - the way you speak to you friends won't be the same way you speak to your family or to your boss. Each character reacts differently based on their relative 'status' to other people.

Also, backstory can greatly affect the character's physicality. For example, a character who had a difficult childhood (maybe he/she was overshadowed by a brother or sister) might have developed a more aggressive demeanor which could be conveyed by the way the character walks - maybe he/she has a heavy-footed stride.

I started filling out the character sheet first before I really found out who the character was:

I decided to make a character called Lionel Clegg. This is a character who has a strong social conscious with particularly strong views on environmentalism. I can see Lionel in child friendly cartoon like 'Hey Arnold'.

I also started experimenting with facial expressions:

These are just a few basic drawings experimenting with different mouth shapes and eyebrows.

Film review: 'Lifted'

I enjoy most of Pixar's animations.The strength of Lifted is it's simple premise: An alien is taking an test on abducting humans. Somthing that Pixar does really well is setting up the premise of an idea very efficiently using just a few key visuals. 

Post #4 Shapeshifting

Today we worked on using simple geometric shapes as building blocks for drawing cartoon faces. The idea is to basically use a shape, or combination of overlapping shapes to guide for placing feature similar to the pictures in this link: http://drawsketch.about.com/od/cartooning/ss/morecartoonfaces.htm

For most of the drawings I didn't start off with any particular idea of characters, I just molded them based on whatever seemed to come naturally.

(From top left to bottom right): 

1. First image was just a standard circular face shape without much expression.

2. Second image started off as a rectangular shape.

3. I overlapped two oval circles, one on top of the other, to see what I could form from that. Made a sort of crude looking platypus...

4. Went with an circular shape again but tried drawing at a front on angle and experimented with a different mouth shape.

5. This was a similar idea to the first image, but just scaled up and with more expressive and exagerated features. Tried to add a Tin Tin style flick of hair as well (I find drawing hair is especially difficult).

6. Used overlapping horizontal and vertical ovals to create this Freddo Frog type character.

7. This one used a triangular base. Wasn't too successful here...

8. Started with a circular base then layered an oval on top of it. I got the main face from the circle then used the oval shape to add a cap, added in some expressions to make it look like a clown.

9. Used a rectangle and an oval shape.

10. Started with a vertical rectangle and a diagonal rectangle which seemed to work best in creating a side view. Not sure what I ended up with - sort of a space marine style helmet.

11. Overlapped a square and triangle. 

Next I tried used different expressions on the same face. Kept it fairly simple but I think it looks effective enough (although I've just noticed I haven't drawn an ear on the last face).

Finally I attempted to draw a bearded character. Needs some work. Got a bit frustrated and went a bit wild with it, but it has a sort of early Disney, Fantasia-like feel to it...

Learned some useful tips, but obviously I need a lot more practice. When I'm storyboarding for films, I usually just draw blank mannequin-like figures as I'm pretty crap at drawing anything living, but hopefully by the end of the course I might be able to draw at least good enough to indicate expressions.

Returning to my post yesterday about rendering as a shading style, it reminded me of some really nice artwork from the Playstation 2 game Ico. 

Source: http://videogamegeek.com/thread/841591/playstation-2-game-review-ico 

Source: http://www.destructoid.com/ico-the-essence-of-art-155124.phtml

Source: http://wall.alphacoders.com/by_sub_category.php?id=169874

 What made the game so great was firstly, the simplicity of the gameplay, but also how stunning and evocative the visuals and the sound were. It all adds up to a very dreamlike quality. There is virtually no dialogue (only a few lines of dialogue in the cutscenes, and there weren't many of those) and only a subtle score, so the visuals really have to pull their weight.
Anyway, I really like the style of the art work (especially the cover art) and I would love to be able to recreate it myself at some point (although this is in colour, I might begin with black and white first).

Post #3 The Dark Side of the Sphere

I did a bit more work on shading over the weekend. I had to run out and grab a few supplies before I could finish work on the blending and the rendering (figured if I was going to do it, I might as well do it properly). 

So I got myself some more pencils, blending stumps, brown pastels, black pastels, a plain eraser and a couple of kneadable erasers.

1. Hatching/Cross Hatching 2. Blending 3. Rendering 4. Squiggly Lines 5. Cross Contour Lines

Quite happy with the result. They seem a little crude close up but they looking decent enough if you take a step back. Found the blending and rendering methods gave the most realistic look, whereas the hatching, squiggly lines and cross countering gave a more impressionistic look. I wouldn't say any method was the 'right' way to do it, and I could see all of them being useful in different situations. You could easily mix most of these methods as well. I quite like the rendering method because, as you lay down the graphite originally, as you erase the background away you leave just enough graphite so that the background isn't quite solid white, which means you end up with sharp contrasted image. Also, i found it easier to get more graduated shading by using the combination of the blending stump and erasers.

I enjoyed this little exercise. Drawing is something I'd like to practice more. I'm not great at drawing people, or getting the scale of things correct, which are areas I'll need to address. Being a filmmaker, storyboards are quite important, so I'd really like to get better at drawing. 

Post #2: In honour of '50 Shades of Grey'...

Enjoyed today's class - we had an overview on the twelve principles of animation:

1. Squash and stretch

2. Anticipation

3. Staging

4. Straight ahead and pose to pose

5. Follow through and overlapping action

6. Ease in and ease out

7. Arcs

8. Secondary actions

9. Timing

10. Exaggeration

11. Solid drawing

12. Appeal.

I'm sure we will be going over these in more detail in the coming weeks.

In some ways I'm slightly daunted by the skill of good animators as I'm not a very good drawer. I'm not too bad if I can see what it is I'm meant to be drawing, but I find it difficult to draw things from my mind.

However, the principles helped to put things in perspective - it's all pretty logical when you think about it.

We got a chance to practice our drawing skills, adding light and shade to various shapes.

Quite happy with these. Not too bad for a rookie. (Some of the detail has been lost in the photocopier unfortunately). 

We also touched on a few styles of shading and I had a go at crosshatching.

Post #1. The Pen

Welcome to It's All Fun and Frames.  This is a blog which is essentially an electronic diary of sorts to accompany an animation paper I am studying at S.I.T. It is mainly to back up learning from projects in class and for tutors to check on my progress, but it's open for anyone to peruse if desired.

Today was just a brief introductory class while everyone sorted logins and such, however we have been set a task which is to find an animation we like and give a bit of information on it.

I'm a massive fan of claymation, so I decided to look into a New Zealand short film called              The Pen which I had seen on TV a few years ago.

This is the first episode in a series, made in 2001 by Prod Productions. It was written and directed by Guy Capper and produced by Elizabeth Mitchell. You may also recognise the voice of Flight of the Conchord's Jermaine Clement (who also shares a writing credit), playing the role of the laconic 'Robert' .

I really enjoyed this film, which proves again that you can make a very entertaining film with a run time of about one minute. The claymation might not be as polished as precise as those from Aardman Animations, but I think that actually adds to the charm. Very simple concept that doesn't need any setup because the characters are instantly relatable - we all know someone who's bigger than himself, especially after a few drinks, and we all know there's usually an enabler at his side.

The film won the Trans-Tasman Nescafe Short Film Awards and since then, several more instalments were made and shown online. Classic and iconic kiwi comedy.