Conceptualization - Part 2

Hello.

I have chosen one of my previous ideas, the story Queues, and I have done a Storyboard for it. The idea of this Storyboard is to determine the pace, the different types of camera angles and shots, as well as to give a better idea of the flow of the story. The drawings are not very detailed, as this is not the objective of this Storyboard.

I have also done a Logo for "my company" of animation films, to better support what I am selling with this project.

I present you the story Queues:

Pitch

A busy day in the tax office. A regular guy goes to there to deliver some forms, but the queues are endless, and he has to wait a long time. While waiting, a succession of events happen, that make him regret being such a nice and respectful guy towards other people, since everyone just gets in front of him.

Plot

Charles, a regular guy, is waiting in the tax office queue. As usual, all of the open cashiers have an endless line. Suddenly, another lane opens, he looks to his back and everyone that was after him just moves really quickly to the open lane. He takes a deep breath and decides to stay on the same lane. A few seconds later, a new lane opens, he hesitates for a second, but then decides he goes for it, but everyone in front of him got there first, so he goes back to his place.

A minute or so later, he is the next in line to be attended, but the cashier just places a sign that the lane is closed. Starting to get angry he sees a new lane opening, and another lane almost empty, he goes for the new lane, but all of the people behind him get there before him, he stands between the two mentioned lanes, tries to go for the almost empty one, while looking back, and bumps into someone that gestures for him to go back to the queue.

Starting to get pissed of, he notices there is only two lanes open. He decides to be more aggressive, changing lanes every time he notices that one queue is shorter than the other. This goes on and on, until there is only him and two other persons, on in each lane. One of them leaves, and he rushes to the open lane, just to see that the person there left for lunch. He looks at the other lane, runs like crazy, and as soon as he gets there, the employee also goes for lunch.

Disappointed, Charles gets angry and walks towards the exit swearing and waving hands while looking back at the closed lanes, gets close to the door, and SLAM, hits the door hard, and falls flat on the floor.

The end.

Storyboard 

 

  Open publication - Free publishing - More queues

 Logo

Final Thoughts

Having to present my ideas in a more professional way, I feel that I do not have any experience on it. 

I believe the way I presented them, to be the best way to approach a producer and show him my ideas. But in the end, I cannot imagine what the reaction would be. Or even if I would have the necessary discernment to stay calm and say everything I planned to say, when I find myself in this situation. It is a whole different environment to be presenting the ideas to a live audience, rather then just writing about them.

It sure is a bit different of the informal way from previous projects, but as I always try to present my ideas the best way possible, so that everyone that reads them can understand what I intend to do, I took a very similar approach to it.

Of course, my way can be completely wrong, and I don´t even notice it, but one thing is for sure: I did what I thought it was best, so that must count for something.

Conceptualization - Part 1

Good day!

I am writing to present two ideas of mine for two short animation movies. First I will write a short pitch for each idea, then the story plot, backed up with images to better explain the visual style of the story.

Movie 1 - Queues

Pitch

A busy day in the tax office. A regular guy goes to there to deliver some forms, but the queues are endless, and he has to wait a long time. While waiting, a succession of events happen, that make him regret being such a nice and respectful guy towards other people, since everyone just gets in front of him.

Plot

Charles, a regular guy, is waiting in the tax office queue. As usual, all of the open cashiers have an endless line. Suddenly, another lane opens, he looks to his back and everyone that was after him just moves really quickly to the open lane. He takes a deep breath and decides to stay on the same lane. A few seconds later, a new lane opens, he hesitates for a second, but then decides he goes for it, but everyone in front of him got there first, so he goes back to his place.

A minute or so later, he is the next in line to be attended, but the cashier just places a sign that the lane is closed. Starting to get angry he sees a new lane opening, and another lane almost empty, he goes for the new lane, but all of the people behind him get there before him, he stands between the two mentioned lanes, tries to go for the almost empty one, while looking back, and bumps into someone that gestures for him to go back to the queue.

Starting to get pissed of, he notices there is only two lanes open. He decides to be more aggressive, changing lanes every time he notices that one queue is shorter than the other. This goes on and on, until there is only him and two other persons, on in each lane. One of them leaves, and he rushes to the open lane, just to see that the person there left for lunch. He looks at the other lane, runs like crazy, and as soon as he gets there, the employee also goes for lunch.

Disappointed, Charles gets angry and walks towards the exit swearing and waving hands while looking back at the closed lanes, gets close to the door, and SLAM, hits the door hard, and falls flat on the floor.

The end.

Style

In this story it would be important to characterize the main character and leave the other people present in the room emotionless, only reacting to the queues variations. The whole movie has a typical cartoonish style, so that it can somehow add to the humor and funny parts of the story.

To emphasize the message of the movie, only the main character would have a defined face. He would wear light brown, or light blue suit, to make him stand out from all of the other people. The closest example of how I want him to look like, even personality wise, would be along the lines of the main character, Franky, in the movie "The Goon", by David Fincher:

All the other people would just be assets to better tell the story, being them faceless, wearing grey or close to black colors, not as basic as on the image bellow:

The scenario would involve a room, with close to no furniture apart from the counters, the people behind the counters would have faces, but with very dull expressions that never change. 

 Movie 2 -One plus One makes One

Pitch

A mathematician has decided to find a mathematical explanation for love. One night, after being closed in his office for weeks, his wife approaches him, begging him to come and spend time with her. He grunts at her, and goes for a last try in his equation on that day. With no success, he goes away. His pencil and rubber come to life and start writing on his book, to give his problem a solution that he had never thought of.

Plot

Hans, a mathematician, has spent the best part of the last four weeks desperately trying to find a equation that would explain love and what makes it bring two people together. 

One late night, his wife enters the room and tells him that he has not been spending any time with her, and that she misses him. Upset, Hans tells her to leave him alone, and delves again into his problem, only to conclude that he gets again the same solution he has been getting for the past weeks, for the equation he is trying to solve: 1+1=1. He does not understand why.

Frustrated he gives up, raises himself from the chair and leaves the room, leaving the desk light on. A few seconds later, his pencil and rubber, become alive. They stand in front of his book, looking at the equation. Looking at each other with a compromising expression, they decide to put an end to Hans problem, and solve it for him.

The rubber jumps onto the book, and starts erasing the best part of the equation. With a swift bump, the pencil pushes the rubber away and starts writing like there was no tomorrow. At this point the audience does not see what is being done in the book. Alternating between writing and erasing, the pencil and the rubber draw and draw until its morning. 

With a satisfied look in their "faces", they finish they work and congratulate each other with a affirmative nod and return to their lifeless states. Hans returns to his desk, to continue pursuing a solution for his problem, only to find something very surprising and unexpected: there is no equation any more in his book. There is only a sketch of his wife´s face, but rather being done with lines, it is done with the final result he was having all the time: 1+1=1. 

Hans understands then, that love, cannot be translated into numbers, and the solution that he was looking for, has always been right there, without him even noticing it. He closes his book and steps out of his office, feeling happy and with a sense of realization to meet his wife. 

The pencil and the rubber, standing besides each other, exchange a compromising eye blink and lay there with a smile.

Style

The environment for this movie would be only one: the office at Hans house. It would have a wood desk, a picture of his wife, pens, books, papers, etc on top of the desk. The ambiance is heavy and dark. Only the light on top of the desk and the light from the moon coming inside from the window would light the scenario. 

Character wise, Hans would be close to a real person, but distorted in a way. In my mind I can see him slightly distorted as in Chris Landreth movie, Ryan. Well not so altered but representing a broken body, controlled by obsession. 

The pencil and the rubber would be something along these lines:

This is it. I hope you enjoyed reading and I will be back soon!

Concept Art - 3D Pre-Viz

Howdy!

Yesterday I finished my first 3D Pre-Viz of the Trash Can Rebelion Story, and I have to say that it felt good to have a "camera" in my hands.

When I wrote the story, I had a lot of images, poses, and ideas for some shots that I wasn´t being able to visualize on paper, but with the production of a 3D Pre-Viz, everything just got easier and I managed to represent most of my ideas on it. And it makes it possible for other people to see my ideas in a clearer way, with some color, movement, perspective. It´s just perfect to quickly see what works and what not.

For the Pre-Viz, I decided to use my favorite parts of the story: the moment that leads to the inciting incident and the speedy action that follows it. For this I modeled a simple trash can, a modest park scenario and a boxing ring. I used Max rig since I am familiar with it, to be able to work with ease.

So let´s start at the beginning: the inciting incident. It all starts when the trash bin explodes with anger after six days in a row being hit by the coffee cup that the same guy never seems to be able to throw inside the bin. I created all of the six days actions, so that I could also experiment with video transitions, and see if they gave the correct idea that time was going by after each shot. At first, I had thought about doing these shots with some sort of counter in the top of the screen, indicating the days going by, like "day 1, day 2, etc", but following my teachers advice, I used video transitions and I found that it was not necessary to have any indicator at all. 

The only thing I did differently from what I had planed in the storyboard was to change the camera position as well as the light position slightly in each shot, to achieve a certain chronological difference in the shots. It worked well, although I am still unsure about whether or not the idea that a day went by is achieved, but for the moment I don´t think that I need to change it.

Another shot that I want like to talk about is the moment when the trash bin goes wild and grows immensely, covering the character in shadows, scaring him.

In this scene I went for a Full Shot, with a slightly high camera angle, to emphasize the powerless situation of the character as well as diminishing his presence and strength. In this scene I tried different camera angles, such as a Close Up of his face, a Medium Shot with a low camera angle, but I realized that this was the perspective that would represent what I intended in the best way.

One thing that I would do differently is to have his whole body inside the frame.

Moving on to the transitions between scenes in my story, when the character is thrown up in the air and lands in the boxing ring, is where I feel I could have done things differently. The action is too fast in the beginning and one can not really see what happens to the first scenario. The High camera angle and the Dolly Out followed by a Dolly In to emphasize the greatness of the jump he takes, give a different idea of what I intended. It seems the character is falling rather than jumping. It doesn´t look bad, it just doesn´t look like I want it.

The last part of the Pre-Viz contains another one of my favorite shots: when the character finally sees the trash-bin and really gets scared by it, but only for a brief moment. In this sequence I used a Medium shot right after he landed, so that the audience could start seeing where he had just landed, see him wondering where he is, and finally looking at something that scared him. I then changed the camera position, using a Reverse shot, so that the audience could see what my character was seeing, and with a low camera angle to emphasize again, the weakness of the character regarding the power and greatness of the trash-bin, having both characters in the frame (Two Shot).

After this, and to complement the previous shots, I used a Dolly out with the same camera, when the trash-bin reveals the chalk board. I feel this gave the scene a more dramatic feeling.

It would be nice to block the whole story in a 3D Pre-Viz, because it really is a powerful way to block camera action, position and to see how the storytelling process is working, If one is achieving what is intended.

All in all, I was really nice (once again, I always say this -.-) to fulfill this project. I believe that my story makes a lot more sense when its visually represented that when it was just on paper.

 So here you have it, my final 3D Pre-Viz:

Concept Art - Activities

Good day!

Today I am to comment on a video about two guys that have some problems between them, take their differences and solve them on a Shootout.

I was presented with five different versions of the same story. The difference is the way the cameras are set to tell the story. In my opinion the clip that tells the story the best way is actually the first one:

Although I don´t like the way the first camera is set, in a low position revealing only the lower part of the first introduced character, it actually makes a lot of sense with what happens next. One has the feeling that this character is being revealed little by little, first with a low angle, then a medium shot and finally a tracking shot that reveals the character identity.

In between, we have the introduction of the other character, first with a long shot, and then a close up of his face, completely revealing his identity and also, in a way, indicates that he is aware that his rival has arrived. The introduction is followed by a two shot, which unleashes the action. 

One of the things that made me choose this clip above the others, was the way the action was shown to me. A medium shot of the first character calling the other character out, followed by a simple two shot with a low camera angle facing the second character, which is the one that wins the shootout. This low camera angle is very good to emphasize the power the second character has, it induces some respect for him...powerful! 

And then the story ends with a dolly out of the face of the dead character, emphasizing his loss in the shootout. I think it was very good camera movement for an ending of this particular story.

The story pace is really good. It starts slowly, but with the development of the story, it starts speeding up, with everything happening faster, which transmits a feeling of a certain anxiety towards whats gonna happen next.

The assets present in the clip, compose the story so that it feels that we are in the middle of a western. I don´t have that much to say, other than it was a good choice and that they complement this simple scene.

With this said, I will soon post my own version of this story!  

Write ya soon!

Trash Can Rebelion - 2D Animatic

Hello!

So it all comes to an end, with the completion of the final project: production of a 2D Animatic of my story.

I added sounds, and experimented with them, which gives me a different perspective on how will sound affect certain key scenes in my movie. I think it´s looking kinda funny :)

When making the animatic, I could clearly understand that it is a vital step towards the pace of the movie. In my Storyboard, I had defined an estimate amount of time for each shot, but when producing the Animatic I saw that I could make some shots shorter, and some others longer, even though my Animatic does not have every single action in the movie, which is something I need to consider on my next storyboard: more shots, to have a clearer understanding of the pace of the movie.

The good thing is that, according to my calculations, the duration of the movie is under 60 seconds, so that would give me room for the necessary changes and eventual shots I would need to add to the movie.

From an editor´s perspective, I can definitely see that this workflow is such a time saver towards planning of the movie´s different shots, plus it allows the editor to either exclude or include more scenes without having to "film" them all. Cost and time effective process.

One thing that I could have added to the story board is color. Although it may not be necessary, it would definitely emphasize the dimension of certain scenes, characters, etc, . But on another hand, it can also make things more confusing and might not be so practical. I would prefer to have a stage in my workflow where I draw characters and scenarios focusing solely in the design aspect of the movie.

All in all, these three projects were very productive and knowledge full. I must say, that for the first time, I feel myself looking at my ideas with a production point of view in mind. And this experience is invaluable in my professional future.

Thanks for reading!

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!

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.