𝕃𝕒𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕟_𝕄𝕒𝕩𝕨𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝔹𝕝𝕠𝕘

Focusing on my project and gaining new feedback this part of the week, I needed more anticipation put into my intro to lead more into the context of the scene and have a another shot put into the sequence as a type of close up of the Character A’s mental breakdown. So taking my time I started with the intro first with Character A walking in angry and frustrated at Character B for context of the scene by building up anticipation before Character A lifted and threw the plate to the ground smashing it. 

After editing the audio and extending the intro by adding an interior design, I moved onto the second shot scene where Character A is centred on the angle over the shoulder shot from Character B once the plate smashes and Character A giggles and laughs and brings us to the first shot afterwards back. I mainly focused on the timing and spacing of frames matching with the wavelength of the audio and experimenting with the new shot in one file and keeping the old version together following a strict timeline. 

Here is version 1 and version 2 of the animation videos to see the difference.

It was interesting enough once I had spare time to work on more frames to make it more rough but felt it drew back my time with adding the intro and the new shot in but nevertheless and I favour both versions of the animations all together and awaiting feedback before the week of making our presentations before we’re off for the Christmas break.

Moving onto the lip-Syncing and sound with our block outs, I got my most recent feedback from my lecturer on what area of my animation I should work more on before next week’s class. First taking my character B as they only stand and make so little movements taken from the animatic as I took that time to work on them before Lip Syncing. I knew I needed more anticipation to character B so I researched other ways on how a person or their body on reflex would react to something smashed and broken, filled with fear and being startled. I found a couple of clips on how the person would react to the other as they shield themselves with their hands up, covering themselves for protection and take a few steps back with routeing their upper torso to protect their vision and face.

Once I took care of character B’s movements through the block out and follow throughs with the arms and legs, I went back to Characters A’s mouth with the lip syncing with the audio I had collected. Using the resources from Blockboard I wrote out the script of the scene and drew out the mouth actions matching with the words of the script, for I had blueprint before drawing the lips movements. It was very helpful to aid the characters acting with only Character A speaking and having more frames/movements in comparison to Character B to make them more fluid. 

Just then I added the vowels to character A and movements to B to have more action and acting in this scene thanks to my references I collected to play the scene out which I found enjoyable, especially with the Lip syncing from previous years as it was easy enough to follow through with the timing of frames and the body movements to match with the head and rotation as I think it looked way better than before.  

After refreshing our minds with storyboards and showing our pitch videos and audios, we moved onto making a rough of our pitches this week in hopes of experimenting with references we collected. Once I showed both of my pitches to my lecturer Sarah, she though my second pitch which featured audio from steven universe and involved a characters mental breakdown as I wanted to work on an animation that conveyed emotion more than the physical actions in one shot. So once the choice was made I videoed myself for reference of movement between two characters this week to aid me in the animation sequence. First I worked on the prop of Character A throwing and smashing down in anger to the floor, using an arc to help with the direction of the throw. I then focused on Character A’s rough sequence with head turns and adding a nose and mouth (but no lip sync yet). 

The rough animation was fun and interesting, taking time to focus one task then the next with arcs, line of action and timing for sequences. Even though I can’t see myself doing colouring, clothes and detail for the characters in the next few weeks but I’ll try to once I get the roughness out of the way.

Once we finished our first assignment, eventually we were taken right into the second assignment. Individually we had to create an animated sequence of our choice with two characters interacting with each other. It was a difficult decision to choose audio for especially the theme I would go for, instead of the physical actions, I wanted to go for something more emotional between both characters and practise more on lip syncing so I may improve myself this semester. I thought of scenes which were emotionally and came across Steven Universe where one scene was sentimental and other was a major mental breakdown for one character. I wanted to understand body language and posture when it comes to sadness and depression for the following sequence between these videos down below. 

After reviewing both scenes I pitched my ideas and brainstormed on doing both to see what direction I would be taking and which scene fitted more. So I did both animatics this week and looked online about backgrounds and environments for the atmosphere about the setting. For one scene involved on a bench out in the open and the other indoors in a closed space room. I didn’t want to add any character details or work to much on appearance as I was only experimenting the movements first and foremost. 

Bouncing Ball 

Pose to Pose

Walk Cycle 

Run Cycle 

Flour Sack 

Pushing Block 

Basketball Jump

Reflection

After going back to basics from what I learnt in first year and doing each animation every week for the last 6 weeks this masters. I have seen a significant difference between previous years and up till now in my skills and animation exercises, which I believe have gotten better as I was able to handle the principles much easier, as I’m overjoyed with the outcomes I’ve made. I could’ve improved the most difficult problems I was facing with the FK-IK switch when rigging or the animation when it came to anticipation while refining previous animation exercises. 

I even hoped for more time to experiment more with the other animations but I’m relieved in what I have done with all my best effort put into it, thanks to the lecturers and the feedback they gave me. I learnt a lot more this semester and especially with the Blender software as previous years Maya was always my main app for the 3D exercises so I’m glad I came around it with many resources to instruct me on how to use. If I were to change anything this assignment, I could’ve mad the animations more fluid and spend more time on each one watching my timetable every week to expand more and improve my errors.