Maya_Buckdid Walk

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• This is final Buckid walk on Maya.
• I felt it is slightly better than first time because I used blocks to measure the distance between toe and heel.
• This time, I used side view when keyframe the buckid and it helps me to set out the accurate posture.
• I should focus on the four postures next time e.g. contact, down, passing and up.

Maya Sneak

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• This is the final sneak I have done on the Maya.
• It was difficult to operate the feet and pelvis but as the progress went along, the Buckid went better and better.
• There was one problem during the practice, the right foot did not fully landed on the ground, which resulted into a weird sneak.
• Apart from floated foot, I also noticed that the balance and weight were not fully expressed. As we sneak forward, the pelvis should have inclined one side, as the weight is fully focus on one foot. Therefore, I rotated the pelvis at the same direction as the foot with weight on. It would give a better understanding of the balance and weight expression. 
• If the problem rise again, I would look at some reference video in order to simulate the movement. 

Idea generation

We come up with two ideas. 
First one is Dinner Date. A boy will date the girl in the restaurant but he has no money. However, he got a magic bag and anything can be taken from there. The story will depict how is boy going to avoid of spending money by appearing the stuff from his magic bag.

With this idea, there are some pros and cons:
Pros

• simple location, only need a table
• interesting story line

Cons

•  too many shots such as close up, wild shot, over the shoulder...
• need more than one camera to film
• need lots of props such as rose, folks, plates...

Here is the storyboard of the Dinner Date, I have not finished it yet.

My second story is Daily Life. It will only be one shot of person stand in front of the wall, pretending he is walking. We will depict person from get up in the morning, change the pyjamas, have breakfast, travel to the uni, greeting to the peers and so on.                

Pros 

• only need one camera
• simple and easy location set
• we do not have to walk round

Cons

• need a lot of props
• hard to set the props in the air
• boring story 

After I have discussed with Juntong and Daniel, we analysis the advantages and disadvantages of two ideas, We initially agreed to use second idea 'Daily Life'. 

push and Pull

 Barsheet 

Gibbs Reflective Cycle 

• This is the first try of push and pulls exercise. I did not use any reference sources because I just want to give it a try.
• I think it is not that bad, at least you can see the purpose of the armature's trying to push the thing. 
• The good thing about this experience is that I have gained more understanding of dynamic, but still have to work on timing; it needs more hold while pushing the door, to show the struggles.
• I could add more frames to make the situation better, as well as more movements.
• If the problem rises again, I would repeat the frames in order to extend the timing.  

Push and Pull Second try 

• There is a obvious improvement in second try. However, I could add more body language to enhance the interests such as use shoulder to push the wall or slide the feet to show the dynamic. 

Research about Pixelation

Research of Pixelation Videos

This is a very interesting animated stop motion video. The director depicts a woman's daily life on the bed through one camera angle. I like how the things move through the room, it seems very smooth and fluently. However, I won't do this kind film because there are too many props and this is a big project.

I like this game idea, the boy was playing video games but been dragging into the TV by an unknown tentacle. Then become a game character and fight on his own. It could be an interesting point to start with, but it would be difficult for us to find a wide ground and we could not set the camera above the scene. 

Making of video 

http://www.wsj.com/video/how-vine-star-zack-king-makes-video-magic-digits/B382EADD-CA38-45BD-967D-F08B023911A6.html

This is an interview video of Vine star Zach King's magic video. Zach King is an American Vine star, a filmmaker and YouTube personality based in Los Angeles. He is most known for his video digital sleight of hand.

I have some ideas that inspired from his video. we can do T-Shirt changing when crashing on others. It seems easy as long as we catch the precise moment and edit together. We can also film the several scenes such as:

• throw the apple up and drop the melon down
• T-Shirt changing when crashing on others
• get in the room without open the door

We will do the experiments over the Ester holiday to see how it works. 

Schedule 

I have made a schedule for the team to ensure everyone's clear about what they have to achieve every week. This diagram has clearly explained the every week's task and hopefully, we will get the project done as we planned here. 

Three Step Walk 3

Gibbs Relective Cyle

This is third walk cycle I have done
It looks a lot better than last two but still odd
Especially the arms, they waved unevenly and messed up the walk.
I always aware that arms also wiggling like a pendulum, but my arms do not have any principle at all. 
Next time, I will focus on the arm movement as well, in order to make a better armature walk. 

Making of video editing

Me and Alice edited all the footage together today. We had putted all the images and video clips in sequences first, then applied video transition effects between two clips, make the video runs smoothly and naturally.  

Video editing took less time than we thought. Then we turned on the background music, Alice downloaded the theme song of Corpse Bride and intended to use it as background music. She will also record the voice over, explain the process of this project. I had written the script to her so she could voice over my part as well. 

Here is is the link to mine and Alice's Making of video 

https://vimeo.com/208205042

I am really satisfied with our final making of video, especially love Alice's voice over, as it explained our process clearly and successfully. Nonetheless, there are two elements I think we could improve if we have more time. Firstly, the video is too short that does not meet the requirement 3-5 minutes. The beginning where the moodpboard and idea maps were too quick for audiences to read. We should have make it a bit slower. Secondly, the video of the graveyard was shaking too much, make viewers feel dizzy. It wasn't easy to shot the graveyard with hand hold camera, that's why it shakes so much. However, we will make it better next time. 

Final composite

Here is the final composite of the project. We intended to put the puppet in front of green screen, so we can composite in the after effect a bit easier. However, we did not find any green background, so we only used the photography that we already took in the stop motion room, it still works very well. I cleaned up the extra background around the puppet and imported into the background. In addition, I also used the tint and colour correction to adjust the tone of the puppet so it looks match to the background.

Walk cycle barsheet and reference video

This will be the reference video for my stop motion exercise.I had reduce the speed so viewers can see the movement of the feet clearly. 

As I observed the video above, I noticed that the average time of each step is around 2 seconds. Therefore,  the total armature video will take 8 seconds that include 2 seconds hold.

Reality is always crueler than planning. When I started animate the armature, the timing is too quick and it felt so wrong. There are several faults in the video, firstly, timing. The armature walked too fast, which completely different from my barsheet. Secondly, the distance between toe and heel is not right as well. Thirdly, the staging is horrible as the viewer can not see the waving arms at all. 

The walk still looks very odd but slightly better this time. When left foot step forward, the other foot seemed slide backward, which look like Micheal Jackson's dancing step.  I don't know the reason yet but I will do more practice to get a better walk cycle later. I am happy with my progress as first time I did a terrible video without timing and spacing, but this time, I'm getting improving.

Puppet Making

Alice had completed the basic puppet in last few weeks and it looks fantastic. I love the shape of the body, she's very skinny but characteristically. We decided to paint together, to make the puppet more real. 

I really like her hair as the red colour made her more recognizable. We got this idea from a television program character (I don't know the name of her), it inspired us of creating a strongly feature of a character, so audiences can remember it easily. 

We intended to paint her dress in brown but it did not work well, because she looked bloody and violent, which is not what we aimed for. Therefore, we painted blue over the brown and it looked slightly better. Although we are not satisfy with the dress, but we got some experience of puppet making and basic colour theory. 

Location Research

 To get a better understanding of horror atmosphere, I went to South Cemetery to take some photography of real gravy. 

There are hundreds and thousands of gravies in the graveyard.

There was a church that filled with western style and I though it would be great to utilize it on the background.

Background Composition

Today, I have finished the all the background effect and exported them into a video. During the process of adding effect, I met several technical problems and it had stressed me out. For instance, I could not move the CC light ray follow along the moon, I attempted to make the moon bright and shinny so it would make the whole background looks fantasy and mysterious, but I failed on the area of move the light ray. 

Another problem that annoyed me was that the final video looks desultory, especially when the moon's rising up the sky and rotating itself, it seems like paused video that makes intermittent video quality. 

Then, I tried to export the video in format of  mp4. and this time the video plays very smoothly, but the video colours looks slight darker and duller. 

Statement of Ine

I decided to choose The Body Language in the character design as the topic for the essay. 

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• I've chosen the body language in the character design as the topic for the essay
• I felt it will be easy to find lots of resources or other references materials because anthropologist has been studying the human behaviors for long time and has been publishing a lot of relevant books.
• the good thing about chosen this topic is I can learn more acknowledges about body language and gain more understanding about the importance of gesture and poses in the animation. However, this is wild topic that contains lots of information, I better have to narrow down the field I am going to write in order to make a effective essay.
• to narrow down the subject, I should read the general content of the body language and choose the specific area to write
• I could also get recommend from other people such as tutor or friend to help me with specific subject
• if the problem rise again, I would do some research such as read the content of the book first, and then choose a specific area to study.

Walk cycle

In animation, a walk cycle is a series of frames or illustrations drawn in sequences that loop to create an animation of a walking character. A good walk cycle is very important to the character as it indicates the personality and features of the character. 

The image above is the walk cycle reference from The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. You can see the method he used is key pose to pose where he had drawn five key poses: contact, down, pass position, up and contact again. These five key poses are the essential of a walk cycle, with this you can create a fluently walking character.  

Emotion to Emotion Exercise

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

• This is emotion to emotion exercise. I've picked joyful and scary as two emotions of armature going to present.
•  I felt unsatisfactory about the final video I've done because it did not show the joyful clearly. People would confused of the action armature firstly did. I attempted to make it applaud and laughing while standing up, then cover the eyes, sit back again. The pose should clearly communicate to the audience the mood, but my armature did not pose well which confused the audience about what he's doing.
• The good thing is I presented two poses, joyful and scary in the stop motion animation. Nonetheless, the pose of joyful wasn't been presented clearly.
• I could apply the principle Staging in the video. Staging directs the audience's attention toward the most important elements in a scene in a way that most effectively tells the story.
• I could also make a better joyful pose such as jump up or lean backward to show the happiness.
• If this problem rise again, I would make stop motion few more times.