Assignment no.3 - Final Scene

Week 7 - Final Animatic

This is the final rendition of my animatic storyboard. I didn't alter much of the second animatic storyboard for this final version. One of the changes i did make was to the scene in which the protagonist is knocked down by the antagonist. As the protagonist is getting up I changed the camera angle from being from the protagonist's perspective to being from the antagonist's perspective. Doing so made this part of the scene look much more fluent and gave better communication to the audience as to what is happening in the scene. The other problem I fixed was to do with some of the timing within the animatic. Within a few areas of the second animatic, there were some frames that were on screen for too long and others too short and so I went through the animatic in Adobe After Effects and located these off frames. This final version of my animatic storyboard involves, apart from some simple background scenery, everything I will need to have planned out in order to assist me in developing my final scene.

Pose of the Week (Week 7) - Weak

This is my attempt at week 7's pose of the week, that is, weak. I drew some of my inspiration from the two images below, one being Homer from the television show "The Simpsons" and the other being an exhausted marathon runner. Homer's facial expression is what I had aimed for for my pose. Half shut, blankly staring eyes with a relaxed, drooping lower lip give the face a very exausted look. To get the body language of a weak pose right I looked at the image of the exhausted marathon runner. Having the character weak at the knees is a very expressive way of getting a weak pose across to an audience and so an exhausted runner seemed to be an obvious figure to draw inspiration from.

Week 6 - Extreme Poses

The following videos are playblasts of the significant extreme poses within the final scene. Within these gestures line of action, composition and readability are important factors in communicating the characters' actions and emotions to the audience.



This playblast displays a couple of the extreme poses the character, Surly Bob, will goe through within the final scene. First, he goes from a slouched position, sitting on a bar stool to standing upright, sticking his chest out to look intimidating. To make this transition from one extreme pose to the other I made sure to make use of line of action properly, with the two extremes being opposing shapes to one another. Hopefully, this will allow the audience to read the change in character from dosile to intimidating within this small time frame.
The other extremes happen when Surly Bob hits the table. His poses go from standing upright with this fist in the air to being hunched over the table with his fist slammed down on the table. I made sure to give this movement anticipation with his back being arched over backwards as he raises his fist just before he slams it down. Using proper line of action within this movement was important to making it look angry and menacing as to communicate these emotions to the audience effectively.



This playblast displays the character, Happy Gary, throwing his head back to swig a shot of whiskey, an important piece of the final scene. To give this movement maximum impact to what is happening and communicate across Happy Gary's over the top personality, giving it the right extreme poses was important. I may have stretched the line of action a bit as he tilts back to swig the shot, but I really needed to exaggerate the movement to make it as over the top as I think it needs to be for this character.



This playblast involves Surly Bob knocking happy Gary down with a bar stool, another of the more important parts of the final scene. The extreme poses for this movement go from Surly Bob swinging back and lifting the stool, arching his back in anticipation to leaning forward and swinging the stool downward to hit Happy Gary over the head with it. To get the anticipation right for this movement I had to make sure that the two extremes had an opposing line of action. This helped with creating the impact of the hit when the stool makes contact with Happy Gary's face. The only problem is the timing of the downswing. It's not fast enough and so it doesn't look like the hardest hit.

Week 6 - Mannequin Coin Pickup

This is my attempt at the coin pickup animation using the mannequin rig. My animation involves the mannequin attempting to pick up a coin on a really windy day. Its pickup attempt results in the mannequin being blown away after struggling against the strong wind. This animation didn't work out too well as some of the timing and anticipation of actions was off. These problems threw a large amount of the animation out of balance and left it looking very unnatural and stiff. As the mannequin approaches the coin it's supposed to look as though it's struggling to get to the coin in the wind. I think the audience can pick up on this, but the movement still looks really stale and lacks any real feeling of struggle due to stiff and poorly timed movements. The final sequence of the animation, in which the mannequin picks up the coin only to drop it as he is blown away by the storm, would have worked well if i had timed it better. It is completely out of time with the rest of the animation and so its seems the animation suddenly goes into a slow motion sequence, which isn't what I had aimed for. My animation of this part of the sequence was, in my opinion, done reasonably well, I just needed to pay closer attention to its timing with the preceding events of the animation.
Overall, this wasn't the best attempt at the animation I had planned out in my head. Although, it probably wouldn't take too much to go back and fix up the pile of small problems riddled throughout it.

Assignment No.1: Animation Tests (Sheila)

These are the animation tests for the character, Sheila. I used these test animations to experiment with her personality and the different emotions and actions that will need to be dealt with her character during the creation of the final scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Sheila's attitude. As a negative character, who doesn't want anything to do with the antagonist who is hassling her, I needed to test out her reaction to this type of situation. My aim was to make her go from a calm and collected manner to a cold, irritated manner. This test animation does a reasonable job at displaying these emotions and a transition between them. Reference to this will help with communicating her emotions during the creation of the final scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Sheila's frustration during the scene. She is frustrated by the other two characters as they ruin her night out and wants nothing more to do with them. I attempted to portray these emotions by having an exhausted and irritated look on her face while shaking her head in shame and sighing apathetically. The only problem with this animation is the way her arm moves as she rests her head on her hand. This is something to be tweaked in the future. This test animation will make for good reference while creating the final scene as many of her movements during the sequence will be similar to this.

Assignment No.1: Animation Tests (Surly Bob)

These are the animation tests for the character, Surly Bob. I used these test animations to experiment with his personality and the different emotions and actions that will need to be dealt with his character during the creation of the final scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Surly Bob's angry personality. He is knocking a bottle of the table in a fit of rage. This is not a sequence planned for the final scene but it will make a good reference for his facial expressions and bodily movements as he is angry and frustrated for most of the scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of Surly Bob's walk cycle. He is the only character is the game in which the audience will be able to see him walking and so this is the only walk cycle I have created within my series of test animations. As the this character is drunk, I had to make this obvious with his walk cycle, which I found a bit difficult. His shoulders and hips don't move properly and so quite a bit of the movement is thrown off. I also did a dodgey job with the arm movements, which also throws the sequence off a bit. Although, despite these problems, the animations still gives a basic idea of what this character's walk cycle is to be like. I also tested out this animation on a couple of people, minus the bottle of scotch, and they were able to pick out that he was drunk.



The above sequence is a demonstration of an enraged attack Surly Bob engages on the protagonist. As this is to be part of the main action sequence of the final scene i thought it would be a good idea to use it as one of my test animations. Also, getting the character to swing the chair with a proper motion curve, while also moving the body with it to give the motion a sense of force was difficult and took me a couple of attempts to get right. The emotion on the character's face is also very important for this sequence and i spent a while trying to make it look convincing of his anger and fierceness. This test animation is almost good enough for the final scene and hopefully with a bit of tweaking it will be fit for it.