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!

Concept Art - Final work and some thoughts

Good evening!

Today I finally managed to finish the whole Concept Art project. I had some problems with my computer, so I had to format my computer on Monday. Good thing they invented disk partitions and external hard drives. It is now time to sum it up. 

To begin with, I would like to explain my point of view when one talks about the term "gang member". It is very easy to have a general idea about gangs and gangsters, they are an active portion of today's society, coming up often on news papers and news reports. 

For me, a gang member is someone that belongs to a group of people that live, and in some cases, die by the same ideals. It is someone that takes part of actions that usually benefit this group, in most cases being those actions illegal ones. Is someone that identifies him/herself with the other members of the group, and this is what makes gangs strong and to stick together. The one thing that probably makes it somewhat different is that my gang member belonged to a gang that was fighting for an ideological good, rather than a material or sentimental one.

This is also the case in my specific story.  I tried to represent it by designing a common identification mark: the red stripe on his pants. It just had to be there.

On another subject, I would like to talk about the clothing style and the way I colored it. My gang member belongs to the low end of the social scale in the 1850's. The only way to reflect and represent this on the design of the character would be the dressing style. He has a regular cotton shirt, typical working trousers, a regular hat and the most common footwear possible for a poor guy (they were called Brogan's). Yes poor because at the time the difference between social classes was tremendous. His clothes are stained from his hard work, most definitely on a mine or possibly a production factory. 

A quick remark about the drawing and painting process. I have always made some drawings and paintings for fun, but I have never learned how to draw or paint properly. I didn't know any techniques. But nowadays with the use of the internet it is possible to find resources for almost anything. 

This was the case. I found a very good website about comic book drawings, http://www.idrawdigital.com/ and even though it is about a specific type of drawing, if one understands the basic flow and techniques, it can be used to any type of drawing. I applied some basic techniques to help me draw the different poses for this drawing. 

As for the painting process, it was easier, because I already use Photoshop a lot. I scanned my drawing and then I clipped the front view by erasing the white paper and isolating the black lines:

 After this it was just about creating several layers for the different clothes and accessories:

And this was how I colored my character.

I would also like to mention why did I chose the axe as his weapon. He is poor, and even belonging to a gang I don't see him having access to fire weapons, as powder was expensive and guns even more. A white weapon just fits and supports everything I want to transmit about my character.

With these choices in mind, I am expecting that when an audience looks at my character, they can identify exactly where he comes from and that they can understand the chronological and social factors he is inserted into. This is, from my understanding, what colors and clothing style should be allusive to in an animated film character design.

One last note on my character, that also has to do with the color's and clothing styles, is that in my story, my character is a "thug", the kind of guy that does the dirty job's, the one that takes the fall. The one that fights and would die to defend what he believes in, which in my story is the love for the Democratic ideology.

So here it is, my final character model sheet:

To conclude my work I will also leave you the final 3D models of the three accessories I chose to model for my character: the boots, the hat and his weapon, the axe.

This was a challenging project, as well as very entertaining and educational for me to go through. I enjoyed myself a lot. I should now go to sleep.

Good night!

Concept Art - About shoes...and hats! As well as axes!!!

Hello!

I have been considering my footwear decision for my gang member, and my conclusion is...the shoes I had previously idealized do not fit him. I mean, after reading about fashion in the 1850's, I came to the conclusion that the type of shoes I had attributed where shoes that would fit a character from the noble social class.

For my working class "thug" I would some "Brogans", that even though they were much more "in fashion" during the civil war, they were previously whore by soldiers and workers,since they were sturdy and trustworthy for a man! They looked like something in these lines:

 

So that's it for shoes. Now about hats...I mean, I really do think that a hat does fit a gang member at the time. First it was very fashion to wear one, second most working class men whore it instead of helmets, since..well, since they really didn't had them. Plus, I love to see my character with it! This one, without the silk stripe, is THE one:

 

 And last, but not least, the last accessory is the axe. I decided to go for a more primitive weapon, since guns were something somewhat exclusive to gang leaders and law enforcement individuals. So this is the axe type, characteristic of the time:

 That's it for now. Be back soon.

Concept Art - References for the gang member

Good morning.

I have been gathering information and visual references for my gang member character concept and his accessories. I found out that, among other things, that shoe fashion in the 1850's was so weird. Men whore quite exquisit shoes as you can see from the following images (yes the first ones are men's shoes).

I decided to go for the following style, as they are more of a regular type of shoes, whore most definitly by the average men at the time:

As for the dressing style it would have to be something related to a normal working class men, simple dirty shirt and pants, with the latter having a red stripe on them. My character will also wear jockstraps, which is a common feature among men fashion at the time.

As fot the accessories I would go for the shoes, definitly either a knife or a sword, maybe even a gun, since the battle at the time had a lot of gun shots going on, but these were probably used by the Police members, however since in America law permited the use of guns among the common civilians and guns were as well distributed by the faction leaders to their supporters, so a gun can also be something a person involved in the conflict would have had. I could use one and it would fit the story. 

However, I am most inclined to not using a gun and instead give my character a weapon that would fit this scenario in a more accurate way: a brick rock, a sword or an axe. This is, in my opinion, a much more fit weapon choice for a common civilian at the time. 

These are the things that run through my mind when I try to visualize a person from 1850's, living in a big city, belonging to the working class. Another thing that is very common fashion among men of the time is mustaches. Maybe I will include one on mine.

There are a couple of things that I should mention. First, when I chose the story to use as a background to my character, I realised that a movie had been done about this specific historical moment in the American society. However, since I have never watched the movie, I do not have a visual image of the happenings, so I am not being influenced by someone else's perspective and ideas of how things should look like, otherwise I would not have chosen this piece of story.

Another thing is why is my character a men instead of a woman. This is simply due to the fact that at the time, women were very opressed, and they had a very specific role in the society, to take care of the house and have children. This is not my opinion of how things should be among men and women, but is just an historical social fact that I am trying to be accurate with. So that's why it will be a male character, since men where the ones taking part in these happenings, as well as in other roles of the society, such as politics, economics, etc.


Now that I have gathered some references it's time to draw and model everything.

I'll be back soon!