Digital Environment Painting 1

After I did the collaboration of environments photos, I montages the castle behind the grave scene and used the filter to change the photograph into painting-look.

As Alice suggested to make the painting panel shot, I am going to add more things to it such as forest, old town and so on.

In addition to work on Photoshop painting, I also looked at some after effect tutorials because we are going to animate the background such as rotate the moon, trees wiggling, fog appears... to make the scene interesting.

I tried to corporate the new techniques I learned from YouTube, but it did not work very well in our background, so I just decided to do simple rotation of moon with the previous acknowledges.  It seems worked pretty well. 

Block Challenge

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• This is the block timing challenge that I did in the Maya
• I felt struggling to figure out the timing as two blocks had to move in the different times but relatively. Also, I did not know how to make blocks jump and set the correct frames for them.
• The good thing about this experience was that I got a bit idea about how to start walk. As Johny mentioned, if we experiment with the challenge, we would understand the basic idea of walk cycle. And here I am, after complete the exercise, I've learnt how to move two block effectively as human feet. However, it still seems unperfected. 
• This situation could be improved if I do the practice again
• I am sure that I will make the block challenge much better than this one next time.
• If the problem rise again, I will practice more often. 

I did timing challenge again and this time it looks much better. As I had experience from last, the distance between two blocks are even and appropriate.

Research about Environment

Alice and I talked about environment design of this project, and we think we could do the sets digitally with Photoshop and After Effect. There are some places where is suitable for theme:

• Forest
• Castle on the cliff
• Church 
• Grave 

Redo-Buckid Poses

Gibb's Reflective Cycle

• I made several buckkid poses again because I want to practice more and enhance my acknowledges with IK and FK
• I felt pretty confident this time as I had some experiences 
• The good thing about this practice is that I gained more experience with IK and FK techniques, however I felt bad when make his legs bend because there's not IK/FK on his knees.
• I could adjust his toes or hips to simulate the reference photos.
• I could also rotate the legs to improve the poses
• If the problem rise again, I would focus on the existed tools rather than pissed off by non-exist things. 

Reference Video and Bar sheet for exercise 2-Emotion to Emotion

Observation -reference video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoyizS-5GL4 

Here is a video that I used as reference video. In this video, it depicted the audience's reaction while watching horror movies, I decided to pick the reaction of laughing and scary for the exercise. The actors in the video performed very well although it seems slightly exaggerate in the real life. Their reaction is the perfect reference source for animator because their body language is abundant.  

Translation -Bar Sheet

Gibb's Reflective Cycle

• Here is my bar sheet for exercise 2 Emotion to Emotion. I've chosen joyful and scary as two emotions I'm going to develop. I first came up with two main poses and then pondering in between poses. 
• I felt proud of my drawing because this time I drew every main pose on the bar sheet to help me guide the timing. 
• The good thing is I understand every movement I am going to use, but I am not sure about the timing and spacing. As you see, I put some question marks on it to show the uncertainly. 
• To solve the timing problem, the best way is to do more practice. People learn things from experiments. 
• I could also read more books about animation principle to enhance my acknowledges. 
• If the problem rise again, I would spent more time on observation and count the time the actor's been used. 

 

Moodboard of Stop motion Films

I did some research about the stop motion films and collaborate all of them on the moodboard

Behind the scenes- Stop Motion Films

Go Behind the Scenes of Kubo and the Two Strings | stop-motion and voice production

"Coraline" - The Biggest Smallest Movie

      JOHNNY DEPP: Behind The Scenes On "Corpse Bride"

Buckid poses

Pose 1- Sit on the floor with legs slightly lean back, one hand put on the floor to support the body weight and look forward. 

Pose 2- stand up with one leg and arms wiggle around around

Pose 3- look confidently with one hand pinch the waist and one leg slightly rise the tiptoe

Pose 4- half leaning on the floor with one elbow support the body and the other one put on the bent  knees 

Pose 5- Stand relax with one hand rise over the ear and the other put on the waist, legs across each other as well

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• I designed several relax poses with Buckid to develop and practice my understanding of Maya animation such as rigs, path controller, joints adjustment etc. 

• I feel it was difficult to move the rigs at the first because I often accidentally clicked on the Buckid's body instead of the rigs, which leads to broken body. In addition to the rigs, I also struggled with IK and FK.

• The good thing about this experience was that it developed my knowledge of rig animation and the bad thing was that it confused me a lot, sometimes, I could not figured out the IK and FK.

• To gain more understanding with IK and FK, I could do some research to get the basic information about it.

• I could also watch more tutorials on the Lyda.com, it is a excellent video education website that helps people with various of programs.  

 

• If the problem rose again, I would do some research first and watch the tutorial or ask professional people to help me. I would also spent more time to practice in order to understand it  in depth. 

Armature Sit-Stand exercise 1 bar sheet

Here is my bar sheet of exercise sit -stand.

Storytelling-Character Design Review

I like Danniel's character design. Her characters were details that showed different facial emotions on each paper. Additionally, her story was interesting as well, I really looking forward to see the final animatic of it. 

Armature Exercise 1 Sit-Stand up-Look around-Sit

The first exercise of armature is to make it sit, then stand up, look around and sit back again. We aimed to characterised the armature by consider of the ages, genders, personalities and physical abilities...

Reference video and observation 

Here is a referenced video that performed by my little sister. She acted quite unnatural but it's good enough for me to translate the movement onto the armature. 

From her movement, I can see she's kind relax at the beginning as her back leaned forward and her legs were kicking around. And then, she stood up quickly and shakes the head rapidly. It did not take long for her to stand up because she's young and actively. one thing I noticed from the observation is that when she's standing up, her arms rocked forward because of the dynamics. It also demonstrated the age effects to the behaviours as she's not mature enough to control the body. Finally, when she sat down, her back was straightly and putted her both hands on the knees, her legs closed tightly. All this movement has suggested that she's shy and slight embracing to act in front of the camera.

Translation and Animating 

Armature Exercise 1 Links https://vimeo.com/202738636

There are massive differences between the observation and actual animating. My final armature does not look like the reference video at all because of a number of reasons. First of all, I tried to make her two legs kick up to show the energetic, but  the armature fell down the chair once his feet leave the floor. It was really irritated that I could not balance the character. 

Therefore, I gave up the idea of making her energetic, and focus on shyness. Well, this time it looks pretty good and characterize. 

For improvement, I had a solution to make the armature's leg kick up. I could lift one leg up and stick the other one on the table with magnet. In this way, the armature won't fall over again and she can also show the personality as well, two birds with one stone! 

Video Analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTrEFU_s5UI

Larva TV Series 

This is a computer-animated comedy television series made by Tuba Entertainment in South Korea. I love it because it depicts two larvae: Yellow and Red who are the main characters's daily life in a incredibly humorous way. To me, the most successful elements of this animation are the character designs and storytelling. They characterised the Yellow, Red and other insects very well, not only featured on the aspect of the 3D computer techniques, but also presented the various of personalities and interesting behaviours. 

For example

Yellow (the images above)- is a dimwitted and happy-go-lucky yellow coloured larva with an antenna. He is my favourite character because he owns a good heart, he always adopts the abandoned or lost animals in the TV. However, He is always abused by Red, but that never endangers their friendship. Although usually he obeys Red, he loses his mind in front of food.

Red- is a mostly hot-tempered and greedy red coloured larva. He is always mean to the Yellow and his specialty is shouting and kicking like Bruce Lee. He is always showing off and abusing Yellow, but he often ends up hurting himself instead. 

Although Larva is a brilliant comedy computer-animation, the major drawback of this approach is unsuitable contents to children. There are some pervasive gross-out humor (such as farts, burps, urine and bird poo are frequent fliers) and physical exchanges between the grubs, which are pretty humorous to watch. On the other hand, Larvae also run the risk of glimpsing things parents might not want to see in magnification, from a bubble inflated by farts to mysterious Yellow liquids that stream down the grate from passing dogs. What's more, the fact that characters communicate in grunts and squeaks rather than in words makes their physical behaviour even more prominent. 

Research about the Vietnam War

As I  got genre Documentary, I decided to do a short war documentary based on Vietnam War

Research 

This is a short documentary on the Vietnam War, all its factors and how the people suffered.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKhhbmk-akk

Short Summary of the Vietnam War

During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States fought wars to stop communism Vietnam had been a French colony since the 1880s. The Vietnamese fought for independence and won in 1954. The country was split into communist north Vietnam and non-communist south Vietnam.

Video Presenting

Description 

Today, We screened the video and got some lovely feedback from people. 

Feelings

I think I did a good job about the primary research and digital painting. However, I don't like the voice over as it has lots of background noise during the taking.

Evaluation 

I think the video is good to contextualize and show some research, as well as the sound track.

The only off putting thing was the noise behind the voice when I spoke. 

Feedback 

Analysis  

I should have solve this problem when make final video. Recall to last week, I still have couple days off to make video even better. I could ask James to help me with the technique problem as well.

Conclusion

I could also re-record the audio. As I still had time to improve it.

Action Plan

If this problem happen again, I would try my best to get rid of the noise by watching online tutorial or ask professional person. 

Story telling and Script

Description 

In first week's storytelling session, we used two techniques: 

• Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse also know as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of works or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence. 

• Geometry Reflection 

Using geometry to create the character by overlap the shapes or adding facial expression 

Feeling 

I liked the Exquisite Corpse technique because each participant would take turns adding onto each other's drawing and collages resulted in fantastic composite figures. The drawings below are some particularly interesting exquisite figure that combines a humorous and absurd array of features such a girly head combined with bug's abdomen and a pair of claws. I personally think it was a perfect parlor game, involving elements of unpredictability, chance, unseen elements and group collaboration.

Evaluation 

The good things about this session is that we been taught to create a character with different methods and it's entertainment too. However, I didn't like the second technique, which is geometry reflection. The reason I didn't like it was that it kind limited my mind. For example, when I looked at a triangle, my brain would automatically links to house, trees, hat ... anything that based on triangle shape. This is bad as it limited the imagination and I could nerve jump out from this logical zoom to the creatively and unpredictability zoom. 

Analysis

Because of my logical mind, I could not expand more on the shapes, I knew that rather than think about character, it was more about react to the geometries. To make a better situation, I could have looked at other's work and get some idea inspiration from them, it might help me with character invention.

Conclusion

In addition to refer to other's work, I could also draw more shapes. 

Action Plan

If I lack idea again, I would refer to other classmate's work and create my own character.