Here I will be completing my second assignment of my Animated Narratives module – The Monty rig. During this assignment I will be producing two separate animations of a rig we have been given. One scene should convey weight of motion / action / mechanics of the character. And another scene should convey emotion / personality of the character.
To start off, I want to explore the world of 3D animation – exploring and studying other artists / animators techniques and styles will give me a sense of inspiration.
The first animator I found was Jamaal Bradley. Jamaal is an animator, artist, storyteller, & director. He has worked for Dreamworks, Disney, Sony ImageWorks and also runs PopWilly Productions LLC. Jamaal has a website/porfolio showcasing his creations and progression.
Source: https://www.jamaalbradley.com/
One of his challenges shown on his website that was interesting to me is ‘Progression of an Animated Shot: Mother Gothel & Rapunzel‘. Throughout the video you can see the progress of creating this shot from ‘Tangled’ from the Layout, 2D Showing, life reference, blocking passes, and many more polishes until the final render. This was amazing to watch and seeing how life reference can be used so effectively actually encourages me to try it out too. Jamaal effectively captures the confused daze on Rapunzel and the effect Mother Gothel has on her as she spins around the dark room unexpectedly.
I’ve also been watching his short film ‘SUBSTANCE’. I’ve seen the way Jamaal creates emotion in the characters through their expressive physical and emotional actions, all without dialogue or sounds from the characters: only the music is present. There is contrast between the two brothers playfully fighting at the start and the real fight that the substances cause. This is easily highlighted and expresses their relationship and their different intentions to help the future of the family. In the end, the presence and heart of the child was able to change this situation for the better. This film highlights the realness of the substance situation as it can happen regularly in real life.
This short film gave me inspiration because of its overflowing range of emotion captured in 3-4 minutes. The way the body and face is positioned in each character to always convey a sense of emotion, makes it seem so real and genuine. I hope to capture this level of emotion some day. Source: https://youtu.be/c650yL4X7Wk
Another animator I have found is called Nathan Engelhardt. Nathan is a Supervising Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios has worked on many films such as Frozen 2, Ralph breaks the internet, Moana and Zootopia. Nathan regularly posts on his Instagram page his previous works and progression. Source: https://www.instagram.com/nathan.engelhardt/
There are two posts of his that stood out to me. One is about the blocking passes he created for a scene in Ralph Breaks the Internet with the character Vanellope. I love the description Nathan provides explaining his process and thoughts on the action he is trying to achieve.
Instagram post quoted below.
‘..In both blocking versions You can see I had a section where I lifted the hands off the car hood for an additional gesture. One was more of a powerful fist pose to show the energy of how she felt when she thought about racing in that new game. The other was using two hands as if on a steering wheel, pretending she was racing again in the game for brief moment. In the end, we all thought it was cleaner to not lift the hands at all in that section while she was reminiscing about the new racing game and only lift them off the car hood when she moved to her next main internal thought, which was a sort of a summation or assessment of her experience. this was just another great reminder for me to only move the character (or pieces of the character) when I have to. Typically when the internal thought changes.’
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMQhPmHj1ys/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is one out of the three videos featured in the instagram post.
I love the thought process of linking personal traits to the
actions of a characters body. The idea that Nathan had in mind that her moving hands would symbolise how she would be holding a steering wheel, would have been great to see. It just adds so much detail, personality and meaning to her actions. Although progression of the characters thoughts matter more, I would love to learn from this good idea.
Another post is about how Nathan adds drivers to his progression to help him understand what constraints he needs to work on in a shot. he talks about the importance of planning from this shot in Frozen 2.
‘Planning is key to making your shots (and life) easier. The times I don’t, I struggle way more. So when
thinking about constraints in this long scene, I tried really hard to think about the anatomical dependencies and what pieces of each body drove the other pieces.’
He goes on to say that he’d much rather use life reference to capture the scene between Olaf and Anna.
‘After I did this thought experiment, it became clear that there was no clear constraint solution that could support everything I wanted to do, so I didn’t use any constraints. That setup (or lack there of) was a pain with the hand contact, but I usually babysit hand contact stuff per frame anyway; plus it kept me free to push things around without a ton of counter animating…
…It’s usually around this time I simultaneously look for inspiration in art or life. My son happened to get pretty sick that winter I was animating this shot, and I managed to capture some sweet inspiration. I love the way my son plays with my wife’s hair. So stinkin adorable! I ended up trying to use some of that “hand wandering” in Olaf as he’s talking to Anna.’
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCZA7UhjpG3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Although planning with drivers may be a good tool to use in other cases, Nathan proves that impactful references can help out just as good, maybe even better. Nathans thought process and detail to work inspires me to do as best I can in my assignment and structure my work well.