Moving onto the lip-Syncing and sound with the block outs, I got my most recent feedback from my lecturers Mike and Sarah on what area of my animation I should work more on before next week’s class. First taking notes for Character B as they only stand and make so little movements taken from the animatic as I took more time on A more so than B, luckily I had the time I needed to work on them before Lip Syncing. I knew I needed more anticipation to Character B as I quickly went to recap myself with the animation principle beforehand, then 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.
After adding in the block outs and a couple of rough sequences of the bodies movements to Character B’s arms and legs for secondary action and follow through moving onto adding in the lip syncs while following and writing out the script. I then drew out the mouth actions following each letter of each word, put all together to have myself a blueprint of the script itself and to put into the animation sequence matching with the audio watching my time and spacing to sync the body movements especially the head rotations. I used the resources from Blackboard from our lecturers which was extremely helpful for me to use for Character A as the only one who speaks in the sequence and I thought there was a better improvement to previous projects I have done. 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.Β
I went ahead with facial expressions after the choosing of fabric and accessories of each character from the White snake. Taken inspiration from multiple movies and shows for facial expressions, I looked into both spider verse movies with random characters facial expressions taken from their artbooks with their respectful artists and how they would display their characters matching with their appearance and personality.Β
With both sisters I created more expressions with them using Krita and how they would be similar but total opposites because their appearances and personality exactly like twins but expressing emotions in their on way. Especially with their hair and a snake face to toy with but found it enjoyable to explore my own characters as different versions of the original white snake movie. Afterword’s I drew the two men, the doctor and the monk with less expressions but simple enough to read them especially their roles in the story and what type of people (archetype) they are with their own morals in contrast to one another as being human. I got some feedback from one of the lecturer workshops this week who saw my expressions and really liked them but told me the tip pf watching out for line art and the sizes for outside the body line being bigger and the inside of the body lines should be smaller to highlight the character better to see the details for both.
We showcased our progress for our presentations on what skills were doing, the story we picked and where we currently stand in our progress same with the other students. For my progress I showed them I was in the Character Design stage and I hoped to get facial expressions, characters sheets, silhouettes and colour scheme done this month before December before moving onto the 3D Modelling after choosing one character to model in December. Here is the PowerPoint I have done since then.Β
This week I focused on my characters hair styles and clothes to see what final design I would go with the gathered resources I had in my Miro board. I also looked at online at websites exploring through character design and concept art to give me more ideas on how to expand my character design skills using these particular websites from Blackboard and a few artbooks I own such as Encanto and Spider verse to look at examples on how artists displayed the clothes for their characters and which to choose from.
Since I picked out hairstyles for the two sisters I went ahead to experiment with clothes from the tang dynasty to see which outfit which best suited with the characters appearance and personality. After I made my decision with the sisters and gaining opinions from other students, I moved onto the men afterwards with hair and clothes with less line up and their designs were limited. I did the same with the women and gained opinions on which designs they preferred and I knew I was ready to move onto the next step to facial expressions while I also uploaded them to my presentation to show my progress off to my lecturers.Β
After refreshing our minds with storyboards and showing our pitch videos/audios, we moved onto making a rough of our pitches/previs this week in hopes of experimenting with references we collected and putting in key frames from the start to finish with significant poses to showcase. Once I showed both of my pitches to my lecturer Sarah, she thought my second pitch which featured audio from steven universe with Steven and Spinel involved the characters mental breakdown more than the other and better acting. I acknowledged her option and went ahead to work on an animation that conveyed emotion more than the physical actions in one shot with the body and posture. So once the choice was made I recorded myself for reference of movement between two characters this week to aid me in the animation sequence for staging and to experiment with my movements put into the rough sequence with secondary action included while remembering the principle Staging for a quick recap.
But to understand the breakdown of the characters sadness and rage I went back to animated shorts, shows and movies I had watched before excluding steven universe to glimpse at different mental breakdowns and collided them together to come with their emotional collapse with overthinking and over flowing emotion act first than the physical. Also watching the breathing patterns as they try to breathe with the anxiety/fear they feel and the shaking of limbs from each different scenario of losing hope and filled with anger.Β
Taking my pitch idea and references I’ve moved onto my previs/animatic immediately and starting going through the process of animating the characters through pre production using the principles of animation and the skills I’ve developed from the last assignment. I started with the simple item of the prop which in this sequence is thrown to the ground in a fit of anger by Character A. For this I added an arc to the moment the plate is lifted and thrown like a ball to the ground but breaks on impact to help guide Character A’s throw and function of the arm going down. I added in more arcs for the characters rotation of the body, head, arms and the positions of the mouth, eyebrows and expressions after adding in the roughs and frames.Β I got references from other sources such and worked on the prop/item with 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 when I couldn’t see myself filling in the colouring, clothes and appearance details for the characters in the next few weeks but I plan for at the end of this pipeline to make it clean and clear once I get the roughness out of the way after the final video is done.
After collecting enough resources for each character, I went on to the concept art stage and started with drawing sketches of the characters in my artbook as I found it more suitable than the digital version and made it possible to experiment with them more. I took each character from the story and started experimenting with shapes, colours, hairstyles and clothes for each one to match their appearance in my art style and above all else their personality. Back on Miro board I created and simplified their roles and personalities to help with their concept art and appearances to mesh together. I also drew a few snake doodles along the way so I could experiment with the version of the snake better if I get to the stage of character modelling better.Β
For next week we had to do another progress presentation like the previous ones to show the story we picked, what skills are we doing and how far has our progress been from week 3 – 4 and what our pipeline for the next for weeks will be.Β
For this assignment, we were given the task to create an animated scene between 10 – 15 seconds which should have two characters interacting with each other and one prop involved. After completing our last assignment and going over the principles I knew I had to pick the 2D animation for this project to help improve my techniques for the future and the 3D option would’ve been good too however the 2D was mush simpler for this project while using Krita.
Once we had the task at hand, my head was swirling with ideas but I had a deep think of the pitch idea as I needed to know what type of project I would focus on especially the theme whether it was going to be action, comedy or emotional. For myself I wanted to focus differently with the characters than mere action but something deep and personal with their emotions and how I would want to express them through this animation. I went ahead to gather audios from scenes I have collected from memory which I remembered were moving to the audience which included clips from Steven Universe the first with pearl and steven audio and the 2nd with Spinel and Steven having a major mental breakdown after the fight and the other watching and deciding whether they should comfort them or not.Β
It was a difficult decision to choose audio from both animatics, 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 to sync with audio and mouth shapes. I had to understand body language and posture when it comes to sadness and depression for the following sequence between these sequences. After reviewing both scenes I pitched my ideas and brainstormed on doing both to see what direction of acting and staging I would be taking and which scene fitted more. 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 and left their appearances made up of shapes for better quality.Β
After further research and analysing each character role and archetype with the references I collected, I narrowed them down through multiple designs of appearance, colour schemes, historical clothing and accessories across multimedia films/shows along with story illustrations for designs I preferred over others. I thought more for the concept art and character design stages once I was still beginning at concept stage. There is a total of four characters that I picked which are Bai Suzhen (White snake), Xiaoqing (Green snake), Xu Xian (Love interest/Doctor) and the Buddhist Monk (antagonist) all involved with main plot and didn’t go for any minor characters or spirits whatsoever.
Going through appearances I thought hard about the hair, clothes and accessories related to legend and cultural background especially in the era of the tang dynasty, most importantly what colour schemes go along with the colour theory for each character to match their role. Using Miroboard, I brought all my research and inspirations for each character all together to brainstorm ideas on how I would draw them into my own art style with accurate details and matching each characters personality with their specific type of hair, clothing and body shape.Β
Research and Planning Mood board
Close ups
Pipeline for the first stage of Character Design
I quickly made a pipeline of my production for both my skills and techniques that I hope to improve and develop within this semester with Character Design Sheets and 3D Modelling/Grease Pencil. That way I can stay focused of my schedule and keep on track on each step I have to take while balancing myself with the other module each day of the week with every hour passing plus breaks. Even though we started with this specific project a little after 3 weeks makes it difficult that both of the skills I’m covering doesn’t even it out for 12 weeks even with the Christmas holidays out of class.Β
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.Β
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.Β
In my mid-semester, we were given the information for our next assignment and were given the time to look back on our previous exercises which were due soon at the end of October. I used this time to finish my exercises and let my lecturers view my work and to give me significant feedback on what I needed to do to make the animations better and how to expand more with the animation instead of being basic and plain.Β
Using my time this week, I reflected on my work and looked out for more reference and videos on the critical animations I needed to work on to make them more refined and offsetting a few of the animations I had to redo and go beyond pushing the limit.Β
We went back to basics of body mechanics like last week with the moving block and jumping flour sack but this time experimenting with a basket ball throw on Blender using the origami boy to throw a basket ball into the hoop. We went onto references for any type of basketball a person would do regularly and explain how they do it and I went back to the basics of body mechanics with weight and flexibility with Richard Williams survival kit as the aim was to focus on the balance, weight and line of action.
It was very difficult personally for me as I had help from both lecturers to help with the process of the body mechanics and the arc and stretch and squash for the basketball which that part was easy enough. I even made sure to have anticipation in when the model takes a step and jumps.Β
Using blender and Action editor I was able to get the keyframes inserted to the original model and went ahead for in-betweens for both models and action. I would often forget about the FK-IK switch and how to join or release an item from child constraint as rigging isn’t my biggest strength. I tired to anticipate the actions, watch the timing and add mechanical movements till the end while I would wait for feedback on improvements I needed.
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