Trash Can Rebelion - The Storyboard

Good Day!

I am presenting the storyboard for my short film idea, which I published in my previous post. 

This storyboard content is not so much about key poses, or beautiful drawings, but is directed at visualizing the essential and ideal camera shots for the primary actions and any camera movement that it requires, and is also useful for me to have an idea about the duration of each shot in my movie. 

This is a completely new area for me. Before I started these projects, I had zero idea about how to develop my ideas into concrete stories, how to present them and how to decide, organize and apply the required camera shots and positions. I have a better idea now, or better said, I have the knowledge, but as with everything in life, this process requires a lot of trial and error and a good deal of experience to be able to use it with all the potential it has, towards planning a movie.

This following link will lead you to the PDF that contains my complete storyboard:

Trash Can Rebelion - Storyboard

Having had some time to reflect upon my storyboard, there are a couple of things that I would have done differently. 

 

Simple Storyboard example.

To start with, I would definitely draw my shots a lot more simpler and with more precision regarding the camera position and movement. Some of them are not exactly as I pictured them in my head. That might also be because I can not draw so well in perspective, and even though I can see every shot in my head exactly as I want it to be, it is still hard to draw it correctly. So, simpler drawings would be better. 

 

Camera angle example.

One other thing is me being unsure about what camera angles, or camera movement work better. I for one, am not a very big adept of too much camera movement if not necessary, so I try to keep my shots still unless they require movement to emphasize the action. As an example, on shot number 05, I decided to go for a Close Up of Frank´s (the kid character) face and them to make a Zoom Out  to a Low camera Angle and reveal what was the shadow that came upon him.

However, it then came to my mind that maybe if I had just had changed to another camera, with a Low Angle, the scene would work better and emphasize much more the dimension of the Trash Can, and the fear sensation that Frank feels, instead of a perhaps confusing (for the audience) camera movement.

On the other hand, on shot 07, I do believe that the Zoom Out really does work, because in this shot the important aspect is that Frank is physically lost, and the Zoom out reveals the environment surrounding him. If this camera movement is fast, it works even better. Of course, I might be completely wrong, although I really do believe it works.

And, as with shot 07, the shots I did not mentioned satisfy me, because they express my idea and the way I want people to see my story. I like the sequence of the intense "coffee cup hitting the Trash Can", and I believe that sequence will be a fun part of my movie!

 

 

Storyboard template example.

About the Storyboard template, I made that one myself, and comparing to the ones I found around the internet, I believe that it works well, is easy to follow and has all the necessary information to allow for a fast and understandable reading.

That´s it for now. I will soon complete my 2D Animatic and post it here. Stay tuned!

The piece that was missing.

These last few days, while drawing some sketches of certain key scenes, I could not stop thinking that my story lacked something. It lacked the reason why the trash can would go berserk. It was not funny enough and my inciting incident was being to simple and not "inciting"enough.

And then it occurred me: what if instead of just throwing away one coffee cup, Frank (the character) would be repeating this action for six days in a row? This would give strength to the point i´m trying to make with my story and make it more understandable, while adding much more humor to it. And it would also emphasize the fact that lead to the rebellion of the trash can.

I have now added this to my story, as well to the treatment. It is looking like this now:

I believe that the story is much more complete and it strengthens my message!

Back on track!

Hello world!

I am now back from some super summer vacations, huge computer problems and lots of work, to start with my school projects again.

Getting closer to the final project, I am now introduced to a more detailed process of thinking, editing, presenting and creating our animation film ideas. In my previous post, I used different techniques to allow my creativity to flow, and I had some nice ideas for short films that came up in the process. One of them, I decided to use as a base for the three projects I have to do, which all complement each other, and I would now like to start writing about my story, and explain a bit more what is going on in my head, and how I plan to complete all of these projects.

So, my story is very simple: it is about a young guy that does a very common think among us humans, he throws most of his trash to the ground, without much thinking about the consequences of it. But this time, there will be a consequence, involving a trash can that got fed up with this attitude. Therefore, I decided to name my short story "The Trash Can Rebellion".

At first I had made the above draft of the treatment, and after much thinking about of it, I decided to alter a couple of details that, in my opinion, will make my story easier to understand. These details were things like the boxing gloves, which I could not really see how I would fit them in the story, or what kind of relevance or emphasis it would add to it; The way the story ends. This was a major change, because the end I had previously chosen was based on a moral lesson, and as I learned later, this is not that good of an ending, so I decided to have a funnier ending with my message being sent to the audience anyway, but without ending in this moral issue.

Here is the final treatment of my story:

 

I think it is important to write about why I chose such a weird (?) plot. In my view of the world, I think people in general, everywhere, are a bit careless about this particular issue. They throw every single crap to the ground even if they are just standing near a trash can or something of the likes. I also understand that this might be a very wrong idea for a short film, and it might not make any sense, or it can be really wrong in a cinematic point of view.

However, I prefer working on a project that stimulates me, and shows a bit of my ideals, and that can have a useful message to who ever might end up seeing the movie. Plus, I thought of this idea with a specific target group as an audience: adolescents and children. Working for the greater good.

And even though my idea might seem wrong in a cinematic point of view, let me take a couple of lines more to show why I believe it is not that wrong (or maybe why it is right).

My story follows a three act structure:

-Act 1: Introduction of Frank; the environment where the action starts unfolding; introduction of the second, but not secondary, character The Trash Can;

-Act 2: The inciting incident that will unravel the plot and lead to a conflict between the characters: the moment when Frank hits the Trash Can with his coffee cup. 

The pursue of an objective is not directly related with Frank, but with the second character, the trash Can. He is the one that will pursue his objective: change the way Frank acts towards the world, more specifically, Mother Nature. Everything that happens in Act 2 will lead to the ultimate moment in the story, the climax: when Frank realizes he has made a mistake that might have had different consequences, had the Trash Can not been so friendly.

-Act 3: A breakdown in the action intensity, when Frank looks up and sees that he is still in the same place and is not really sure of what has happened, but still will pick up the coffee cup and throw it into the trash can, just in case what he experienced might happen again if he doesn´t. The action flows again towards the end, when the Trash Can comes in a big plan and shows a "mission accomplished" expression, mostly revealed by his eyes.

In the three Acts described above, I tried to include the most possible animation acting principles, such as conflict, pursue of an objective, doing something until something happens that makes you do something else...

What I explained above, coupled with some nice shots I have in store for the movie, that will be featured soon when I complete my storyboard, might make a simple story achieve something more than just being another animation short movie: to make a difference on other peoples attitudes.

Up next, the storyboard!

Idea creation - Several ways to start exploring your imagination.

Good day.

This time around I am asked to explore different methods that may help an artist in developing ideas for short films. As ideas are something that don't show up on demand, this is being a nice experience so far and will surely be a good set of tolls in the future.

First of, I have been pitching for 60 minutes random ideas of one sentence only for short films. I have to say that in the first 15 minutes I was taking some time to write them down, but things started to speed up the more I wrote. I came up with some nice ones, others I already had them in my mind. I wont post my ideas here because...well because this is the internet, and yes I am keeping them to restricted eyes only !!!

Another task was to use text generators, such as FILL IN THE BLANK, SEVEN SANCTUM and DADADODO. These were fun to play around with, I even made a couple of stories:

 

As fun as they were, I found them rather limited and repetitive, and after a few tries I started seeing the same text over and over again. I conclude that it may be a funny and easy way to find a simple story, but I would rather sit down and take my time to think and write them down.

Gladly there is also that task, of sitting down and writing stuff. Although with a twist. I had to write down whatever words I would think. I came up with two blocks of text. Maybe they don't make much sense, or maybe they do. I'll leave that to you.

 

I was also asked to write down the sequence for a couple of questions starting with "What if":

After this I was supposed to try some techniques for writing down ideas from this website. I didn't try them, I preferred to read them, understand them and imagine how could they all be useful. That being, I don't have a favorite one but I like to think of them as different approaches for different problems. They can help me write ideas down because each and single one of them is a different method and for an artist it is not so uncommon to be stuck in a moment of lack of inspiration. So they can all be useful at some point, ones more than others.

Two more activities to go, but those will have to wait.

Until then, enjoy!

Digital Acting 2 - Lip Sync Comments

Good evening.

I would like to make a post talking about which principles of animation have I used on my own animation, as well as enumerate differences from my own animation to other students projects.

First of all the animation principles presented, is that my character has an objective in the scene. He is making a satirical comment to the economical situation in Portugal.

The second animation principle present is that he is playing an action until something happens to make him play a different action. He is acting as a reporter, he was going to tell the news he was supposed to, when he got to the local, but then something happened, something went by him and that made him change his action. In this particular animation he changed from his secondary objective to the primary objective in the scene.

Another one is that my character is reacting to an emotion, and he does something about that felt emotion. He expresses the emotion by being completely surprised with what went by him, and then he does something about it: what he saw was unknown so he tried to find out what surprised him.

All actions begin with movement. This principle is present all over the animation, and especially notorious when he notices that something is going by him, moves his eyes first towards it, then moves his whole head to follow the movement of the unknown object passing by.

Empathy. Maybe this particular scene has a unique humor not understood by everyone. But for those who understand the joke, the scene is empathic. The fact that he acts so surprised because he could not identify IMF at the first glance, and then when he does, he just smiles. He smiles because he, as well as many others, thinks IMF is a two sided solution and should not even be considered as one viable way out of an economical crisis. Bear in mind this is a personal opinion which I am not going to deepen any more.

Thinking leads to conclusions. This is present when my character glances at the object and interrupt the news report, is present when he tries to figure out what it is and when he makes his conclusion of what it is. He thinks about it, feels something about it, and reacts to it.

Regarding the differences between my work and the other students work...well I will not refer to any one in particular, because most of the workflows are similar. As well as the things everyone has in mind, with paying close attention to be able to have, if not all at least some, of the animation principles present.

The only real big difference is that I had myself to observe, to hear, to practice with. I was able to repeat my text in front of the mirror I have on my desk so many times, that I have to admit it was a much greater help to act the scene than to just write down on paper every single mouth movement.

I will be honest, when I have to do this again, I will use an exposure sheet of course, but I will definitely act out loud and observe myself expressing the emotions of the scenes.

That's all for now folks!

Digital Acting 2 - Lip Sync Final Animation

Good morning!

I have finished editing my animation. I felt it still needed two small sound clips to emphasize the "woowww mannn" part of the animation, to give the idea that something really went by my news reporter.

I never thought I would say this, but I am now tired of listening to myself! So here it goes, my final animation:

It was very hard to find a background video located in Lisbon, with the right light, the right duration without too much movement. So I had to use a few seconds of one big clip from someone talking about the Comerce Place in Lisbon. I had to slow it down so that the person which is behind my character didn't show. I think it turned out ok. 

Hope you enjoy it :)

Digital Acting 2 - Lip Sync project

Good day.

It is now time to wrap up my Lip Sync project, since I am done with the animation, rendering and composing. I will give a description of the process I went through to accomplish this task.

1 - Planning

The first thing I did in the planning stage was to decide whether I would go for a full body or a facial only animation. As this project objective was to study, experiment and produce a lip sync animation, I decided I should choose the facial animation so that I could focus only in the essentials of Lip Sync.


The rig choice I made was also with this objective in mind, so I went for Tito Rig, courtesy of Enrique Gato Borregán (http://www.xaloc.net/freeStuff_Tito.htm). The rig has 17 expressions that can be used from the morpher channels, and allows for quite nice control over facial expressions and construction of phonemes.

The next step was to choose a sound file to use. I made the decision of making one myself, first because it was fun and second because it allowed me to introduce a bit of my creativity into the project and create something funny (at least for me) to work with. I made a simple script line stating the following:


"Good day! We are now live from Lisbon to report an... Woooooooowwwww maaann! Did you see that? What was it? Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No wait... It´s IMF!"

This might not be that funny, but my intention was to make a satirical joke about the situation in Portugal, with the arrival of the International Monetary Found to help with the economical crisis.

I recorded myself saying it so that I could observe all of the expressions used by me while saying the script. I felt this was a better option than finding a sound clip in which I could only hear the voice of someone acting. While a bit embarrassing, it was a better study material. This was the clip I made of myself:

I then picked up an exposure sheet so that I could write down the phonemes used by me while saying the script. I only used 9 of the 40 existing phonemes in the English language, as advised. They were enough, and I understood that we actually don´t pronounce every single word with our lips while talking, and by using only these 9, I could come quite close to the expressions made.

In my exposure sheet, I had 50 frames by page. In this project I used a frame rate of 24 fps, so I divided the sound wave in sections of 2.08 seconds each, which corresponds to 50 frames. I did this, so that I could have an image of my wave to paste over my exposure sheet and write down the phonemes used at the correct frame. This also allowed me to time my animation quite well, even though it was not 100% accurate.

2 - Animation

Having the planning done it was time to start animating. I used my sound file in 3D Max so that I could synchronize my animation with the sound, while I was creating the key frames. I had watched several videos, and read several pages about Lip Sync to discover which methods I could use and which ones I felt more comfortable working with.

There was a reference in our school page´s that was the best one for me: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-lip-sync-animation

The way Thadeej breaks up the process in 4 steps really makes things a lot easier. I decided to follow his method and it worked out quite well for me.

So my process consisted of these four steps:

Foundation

This was where I heard my audio file hundreds of times, said the script myself, watched myself saying it. I just had everything in my mind before I started.

 Structure

I created all the frames correspondent to the mouth positions I wrote down in my exposure sheet. This gave me a very good starting point. It broke my animation in four simple mouth movements: Wide, narrow, open and closed.

 Details

At this point I started adding the small details to the mouth positions and making them more correspondent to the phonemes I wrote in my exposure sheet. I also created the basic eyebrow, head and neck movements.

Polish

In this final stage I rendered my whole animation because I wanted to have a look at a preview of the final result so that I could write down the final adjustments needed. I found several things I had to change. Most of them were in the Eye phonemes and the OOO phonemes. I had keyed them a bit exaggerated so I changed them to give a more fluid and natural feeling to the animation.

3 - Post production

With all of this done it was time to render my animation. To support my story I wanted to add a video of a location in Lisbon, called the "Praça do Comércio", so I rendered my animation with a green background. I then added the video in Premiere, and added as well some other small details (a news network logo) to make the scene complete.  

This project was extremely fun to do. I have a tendency of looking at peoples lips when I talk to them, so I am used to reading phonemes in peoples lips, I just did not know that what I did instinctively could be so useful for me as an animator. I will post my final project in a separate post as I still need to add a couple of things.

Edit: I had to edit the post since my scans of the exposure sheet didn´t show everything I wrote, some parts look erased.

Digital Acting 2 - Push and Pull animation

Hello!

Another of the tasks in Digital Acting 2 was to create a Push and Pull animation, with two characters interacting with each other in a conflict situation.

The plot for this animation goes as this: Two friends met in a bar, had a couple of drinks and decided to ask for the check. The barman sends the check to the one that asked and then they go into a conflict to decide who pays the drinks. Then the barman decides to intervene and stops them, takes the check away and gives one check to each.

It is not a very polished animation, as this took me around 10 hours more or less to do. Hope you enjoy :)

Digital Acting 2 - Facial Animation and Lip Sync

Good day!

Another activity in Digital Acting 2 was to pose a character that is holding a really dirty and smelly cloth and express the emotion of the character through his posing and facial expression.

We were supposed to use another rig, but I used Max Rig (http://www.3dluvr.com/clisk3d/) since it allows me to set up facial expressions and I already know how to work with it.

I started of by watching myself in the mirror and observe the position of my lips, eyes and eyebrows, to better understand what sort of expression would I do if I was imagining that I was holding this disgusting cloth. What I observed was that my eyes would curve themselves a bit upwards, they would be almost closed. My head would be turning away from the cloth to try and avoid the smell while holding it. My eyebrows would form a sort of inverted U, with the outer parts more curved, and they would go upwards. And my lips curved downwards, in a inverted U form, like my eyebrows. My mouth would be slightly open showing a bit of teeth.

I then grabbed my sketch book and made some simple posing of the body. I did not observe this in myself, I decided to trust my imagination and draw it off to see what i came up with. Result wasn't that bad, and with all this information was time to pose the rig.

I made one simple pose and six different camera shots:

I think that most of the angles, if not all, could work. But that's just me :).

Write you soon!

Digital Acting 2 - Pose and Act

Hello!

Lately Blogger UI has been down so I could not post updates on how my project is going. I have already done some of the activities and Pose and Act was the first. The objective is to pose a rig in two extreme and opposite poses expressing a feeling.

I chose to pose mine in, first, a pose of extreme anger, as if he was taking part of an argument with some other character, and second, and opposed to the first one, a pose of extreme happiness and joy.

These are my poses:

The happy pose works pretty fine, when I posed  the character I tried to have the audience in mind and to think from which perspective would help bring the emotion my character is expressing in a stronger way. I also had in mind that in this case, even though his body language gives the audience a sense of happiness, the flow lines in his pose lead to his face, which is where I intend to lead the audience eyes to.

Now on the angry pose, even though it is strong and expressive, and as it was pointed out by my teacher, there is one thing that could be improved to express exactly the feeling of anger: the camera position. It should be pointing up, towards my character's face. This just gives the pose a much stronger impact towards the audience. I posed him accordingly and this is how it looks:

 

There was also a quiz to be completed with this activity. Here are the questions and my answers:

Question A:

1. Thinking leads to conclusions; emotion leads to action.

Human beings, either consciously or unconsciously, are constantly thinking. Thinking makes us feel, it leads us to emotion according to the situations we are in. And when we feel emotion, we always react to it. This is what makes us humans and sets us aside from other animals.

2. Acting is reacting. Acting is doing.

To do something is a response to a felt emotion. In order to do something towards that emotion, we first need to feel it and then react to it. Humans never sit and feel an emotion without any kind of exterior evidence or reaction shown about it.


3. Character needs to have an objective.

A character needs to be doing something 100% of the time he is in a scene. He needs to have a purpose and pursue that objective by performing actions that will ultimately lead to it.

4. Character plays on action until something happens to make him/her play a different action.

This rule relates to the previous one. Our character needs to constantly be active, to have a purpose or a reason to be doing something, until another objective is presented to him. He should always be moving from one action to another.

5. All actions begin with movement.

Theatrical actions require a more expressive external movement, than real life actions. This is related to the fact that emotions lead to actions. If our character does not express his emotions with an action, he is not acting.

6. Empathy is the magic key as audiences empathize with emotion.

Empathy is what an actor, or character, should make the audience feel towards his expressed emotions. If an audience relates to that characters emotions, they empathize with him and this builds a connection between character and audience.

7. A scene is a negotiation.

Negotiation implies conflict, obstacles and opposing needs, and suggests a positive resolution. Theatrical moments require conflict, they require overcoming obstacles. These conflicts can be internal, with other characters or with the situation.

Question B:

1. Is it best to animate force or form in your character animation?

It is best to animate force because it is a result of thinking and emotion expression and the audience empathizes with that.

2. Who talks about ma? What is ma?

The Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Ma is a pause in the action. Ma, in my point of view, creates a stronger emphasis in sound-less moments in the action of a scene.

3. What is a Power Center? Can you give an example of a Power Center?

Power center is a body reflection of ones personality. Everyone has a different power center. A confident person has its power center in his chest and its power center leads his movements forward, normally pointing his chest out, showing that confidence.

Question C:

1. What is meant by Active listening?

Active listening is actually to be doing something while listening. To hear, understand, determine an answer, realizing your surroundings while not speaking in a dialogue while the other person is talking, and at the same time to express all these actions without saying them.

Question D:

1. Why do you have to remember the fruit salad?

Because you can't reach the end of a scene without having your character to go through all of the thoughts that the scene action requires. Otherwise your character performance will always lack something.

2. Who was Denis Diderot? What did he write about? How does this help animators?

Denis Diderot was a philosopher that wrote about the duality in action, on how an actor must always have control of his performance, and can never be observing their acting. The actors, no matter how much they try, they can't be 100% in the moment of the scene.

His theory is important for animators because the way we act while animating is exactly by using the duality that Diderot refers to. We act and observe our acting.

That's all for now. Be back soon!