We had a meeting with Niall after Matt and Eoin completed the storyboards and this was his feedback. Notes in white are Anni’s, notes in grey are mine.
After Niall’s feedback we decided to work on an animatic while the backgrounds were being done. However the process was taking too long so we were forced to jump straight into animation. Which I knew wasn’t a great idea but we were beginning to fall too behind. I worked up a Shot list of the animation shots similar to what I’d done with the backgrounds and everyone was able to choose whatever shots they were keen on. No one else in the group seemed keen on doing the voices and I knew we couldn’t get anything done without it so I also recorded some lines in audacity and then pitched higher or lower for Lyra and Darkstar respectively.
I got stuck into Shot 02, since I had the background for the pan. I made the mistake of doing too much work on Zack’s hair before realising my mistake and blocking the rest of the scene. I had a look at a load of skating reference from YouTube.
The gif of my first pass is too big to be posted to the blog so there’s a link here.
My second half focused on Zack’s walk, which was moving way too fast.
Thankfully Niall offered me some feedback on my walk cycle and was extremely helpful with the lip syncing since it was an area I was particularly weak in.
He also offered me some great video examples to help with the lip syncing:
head_turn_example_graduateslayers
The basic take away was to do pose to pose animation and fake the movement with secondaries. Holy shit was this a god send, it spend up my work phenomenally.
I returned to Niall for more feedback and recommended adding another pose to the skate and tweaking the skid.
I worked on Zack’s torso first, making sure I got the walk down right. Then I did his lip sync on a separate layer and once I was happy with it I combined the two together and synced the head movements to the walk.
I was really happy with how this shot turned out. I had previously really struggled with the lip syncing and was surprised when I managed to get it to work. I got some advice from my co-workers who recommended I shorten Riley’s skid. I had always intended to add dust to it so when I got the chance I found some reference off and then went back later and added it.
However it’s only after posting this to the blog that I realise I must have messed up Riley’s eyes when I started playing with the timeline. Sadly, I’ve already submitted the video so I’ll just need to keep an eye out for those mistakes next time.
My next scene was shot 16 which featured our three main characters running at each other before a smash cut to title. I had a look at Richard William’s guide for running animations.
It was very similar to a walk but at some point during the cycle both legs were off the ground. I started with Darkstar since she would have the most basic run, the main issue with Darkstar was her cape, which I knew was going to be a nightmare to animate. I used Darkstar’s run to help guide me with Zack’s run.
I simply traced over the drawings then went back later changed the timing on the runs so it wasn’t identical. Riley’s run/skate was tricky, I wasn’t quite sure how to do it and since she was skating fast she technically wouldn’t be making much movement. I found reference online for hockey players on how to skate forward fast.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxTfcGBRxKGucfsKGGS4dTBnzusrmZREts
Darkstar’s run turned out okay but Riley’s skate was far too mechanical and needed to be completely redone. Zack’s was fine in terms of timing but his arm just did not look good. I decided to continued with Zack’s secondary actions, adding movement to his hair and coat. I found this video online for cloth that was super helpful with Zack’s coat as well as a cape guide.
The coat looked good but his hair was bouncing too much and his arm just looked dreadful. I spoke to some of my co-workers and filmed some reference. I had broken my own cardinal sin and tried to base the run purely off Richard William’s guide.
After studying the reference I finally realised that his arm should be moving in a 3D plane not 2D. It needed to swing forward as he ran, not simply bounce up and down. I toned down his hair flick too and finally got a result I was happy with.
Next was adding secondary movement to Darkstar. The cape was tricky, especially finding good reference. I tried some gifs I found online but just couldn’t work it the movement from the angles and the right timing.
Thankfully remembered the running segment from the Thor Love and Thunder trailer. Which cracked the issue since he was running from a side view.
Anni pointed out I may have changed the mass a bit too much with the flick so I turned it down in my next pass. I went back to the drawing board with Riley’s skate a completely redid it. I found some better reference of an old man skating about England and a guy playing street hockey, which better fitted both the movement and the character. The old man clip I used to give me an idea of how Riley’s weight should move as she pushed herself on skates and the street hockey clip was super useful for her arms and to give myself a better cycle reference.
The first pass wasn’t quite right, her legs were doing this weird warping effect. So i scrapped if and started again. Focusing this time on legs first to make sure I had a good base.
This new pass was a huuuuuuuge improvement although it still had a little bit of an mechanical edge to it I was happy enough with it to continue since time was getting of the essence.
The next stage was to create a birth card background from my characters charge at each other over. I found a tutorial online for After Effects that I followed.
I’d be lying if I said I thought the end result was perfect but it was good enough to get the idea across. I made a copy that I could share with the rest of the time for their scenes, although I don’t think anyone had the time to ever use it. Probably not a bad thing either since without the characters being coloured it’s kinda hard to see what’s going on.
Next I made a super quick title card to cut to so my animation didn’t just end in black. I was actually pleased with how the title card turned out, it wasn’t anything amazing but it was simple and got the job done.
For clarity I’ve included a version without the birthing card.
All in all the animations in this scene aren’t that bad. I was happy with Zack’s run and I thought Darkstar’s run turned out pretty good, the cape cycle was also pretty good for a first try. I wasn’t too keen on Riley’s skate though, it still felt too still and a little awkward but since it was only on screen for a few seconds I wasn’t going to worry. Scene however by itself is not great. The staging is painfully dull and really could have done with either an improvement at the animatic stage or I should have redone it myself before I started animating, although I was concerned by how playing around with the staging this late into the game without testing how it’d look next to the other shots would have worked. Zack’s run could be a nice portfolio piece though and I think some kind of soundtrack building to a conclusion would have helped the scene.
Eoin was kind enough to put together a final edit of all the shots.
We had a few scenes missing and some were unfinished. Truthfully we didn’t really stick the landing with this one which I kinda figured would be the case. I think an animatic would have really helped us spot some of the issues before we started animating and looking at it now in it now in it’s entirety I should have sped up Riley’s skate sequence. All in all the final product was mostly just okay.