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.

Assignment No.1: Animation Tests (Happy Gary)

These are the animation tests for the character, Happy Gary. 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 happy Gary's outgoing and silly personality. During much of the final scene he is happy-go-lucky and sees the fun side of the situation. Though it is not planned for him to rock in his chair in the scene, I think it, along with the goofy laugh, demonstrates all of these qualities well. This will be a good video to refer back to when animating this character in the future.



The above sequence is a demonstration of one of the other emotions this character will go through during the final scene. It displays a feeling of anxiousness and bewilderment in Happy Gary as he turns around to see what is behind him after the antagonist points in that direction. This animation could use some tweaking to make it more believable, which will be done when preparing it for the final scene.



The above sequence is a demonstration of the character confused, in pain and irritated. During the final scene it is planned for the antagonist to hit Happy Gary with a bar stool and this is his reaction to that event. This test animation is basically what I planned for the final scene and I'm pretty happy with it. The only problem is really have with it is his right hand's fingers curling in agony. This part of the animation doesn't achieve the look I desired and so I'll be sure to tweak it for the final scene.

Assignment No.1: Character Pose Sheets

The following are character pose sheets for the three characters of the scene, with these characters being Happy Gary, Surly Bob and Sheila. These character pose sheets were created in the hopes of further developing each of the characters' personalities and the emotions they are prone to within the final scene.

Assignment No.1: Character Descriptions

The following images are character description sheets for the three characters of my scene. These characters are Happy Gary (protagonist), Surly Bob (antagonist) and Sheila (damsel in distress). All information to do with each of the characters' physical and personal attributes, respectively, are included for a comprehensive description of each.

Pose Of The Week (Week 5) - Thought

This is my attempt at week 5's pose of the week, that is, the thought pose. It was hard to break away from recycling the overused 'thinker' pose, but I think I managed to do so and come up with a different and effective thought pose. Below are two images i used as reference when attempting to create this pose. One is Homer Simpson from the television show "The Simpsons", while the other is a random photo of a monkey in thought. These two images were great references as they consisted of the different elements I wanted to incorporate into my pose. The hand resting on the chin while gazing into space and curled up lips make the thought pose very obvious. I also added my character scratching the back of his head to further exaggerate his deep thought.

Week 5 - Acting Thumbnails

These are some thumbnails of the three characters acting out some various parts of the final scene. These six thumbnails display all of the different emotions each of the characters go through throughout the scene and some of its major events.

Pose of the Week (Week 4): Angry

This is my attempt at the week 4 pose of the week, angry. The facial expression and tilt of the head work to give the character an angry and frustrated look on his face, though i am unsure of the body language used when i posed the character. I aimed to make it look as though the character was clenching his fists up towards his face as many other characters have in various enraged scenes from different television shows and films. A couple of examples of this pose (from 'Ren and Stimpy' and 'South Park', respectively), which were my inspiration for this pose, can be seen below. I don't think i completely achieved what i had aimed for with this angry pose, but it was a decent attempt and with a bit of tweaking i can make it better.

Week 4 - Mannequin Knock Animation

This is my attempt at the mannequin animation. My animation involves the drunken mannequin accidentally knocking over a bottle of alcohol. With the mannequin not having a face, it was more difficult to express the emotions involved without facial expressions. This made me focus completely on using body language to communicate the situation to the viewer. I aimed to make the mannequin appear extremely intoxicated, attempting to clumsily pick up the bottle of alcohol, but knocking it to the floor. After a desperate attempt to catch the bottle before it hit the floor, I tried to portray a feeling of despair from failing to save the bottle. I did this by having the mannequin slam his head onto the table, depressed by the wasted alcohol. At the same time his arm that had attempted to catch the bottle goes limp to his side. This was how i tried to make it seem as though he had passed out. Overall, i think my pose to pose animation works quite well. The body language I used portrays that of a clumsy drunk and it's what I had aimed for.

Week 4 - Animatic Storyboard Refined

This is my second attempt at creating an animatic storyboard. Unlike my first animatic, which was sketched out in 2D, this one was created in 3D. With this animatic i tried to make the scene a bit more coherent with proper camera angles, character positioning and timing as the original animatic was a bit dodgey due to the lack of ability to freely edit with these attributes of the scene. This animatic storyboard is close to what I aim for in my final scene but there is still a bit of tweaking to be done for me to be completely satifisfied. The part of the scene in which the protagonist proceeds to get up after being struck by the bar stool needs a different approach. The camera angle and way in which the protagonist gets up looks awkward and doesn't do a good job of communicating to the audience what is supposed to be happening. Further revising of this animatic storyboard will be done in the near future to fix this problem and any other minute problems I may come across in the process.

Week 3 - Storyboard and Animatic

This is the first, and probably last, draft of my scene's storyboard. It shows the main points of what is going to be happening within the scene, though more information on what is to be happening will be displayed with the animatic. I placed important information for what is happening under each of the frames. Hopefully this way it can be seen what is supposed to be going on in the scene. If any major problems are found within the plot of my scene or in any of the poses, animations, etc, those will be found and sifted out by the animatic I'm about to begin working on.



This is my first attempt at an animatic. It's not perfect but it displays the basic premise of what is to happen in the scene, with basic camera angles and frames, etc. Though there are still quite a few bugs with it and a redrafting of this animatic will be necessary. Many of the camera angles displayed in this animatic aren't exactly what I have planned out in my mind and I wasn't fully successful in depicting them, while others just don't work as well as I had hoped. Hand drawing it didn't help as it restricted me to retaining the static images I had created, without being able to edit just the camera angles and framing. For more freedom with these camera controls, the next revision of my animatic will be created in Maya with the AndyRig with some simple pose to pose animations.

Pose of the Week (Week 3): Strong

This is my attempt at week 3's pose of the week, that is, strong. As the AndyRig's character model portrays quite a meek character with a very small build, it was essential to make full use of facial expressions and body language. I attempted at making it look as though he was grimacing and flexing his muscles (or lack there of). I went for a sluggish, brute kind of strong rather than a well postured, superhero type of strong. In many of the cartoons i have watched, a large, brute of a character usually has a reasonably large slouch, with his or her knees constantly bent, never standing up straight with a strained look on their face, grimacing at whatever they are looking at. Here are two examples of my inspirations, both from the cartoon 'Ren and Stimpy':

Week 2 - Character Concepts

Character Descriptions

Protagonist - Happy Gary



Happy Gary is the protagonist of the scene. He's a dedicated university student who still enjoys letting loose on the weekends and will probably need a new liver by the time he hits 21. He acts as though everyone is his best friend and doesn't like to pass up an opportunity to help someone out for some praise to feed his big ego.

Antagonsist - Surly Bob



Surly Bob is the antagonist of the scene. He's a loud, obnoxious, angry man who practically lives at the pub. He's very sleazy when it comes to women and when he comes across one at the pub he clings to her and refuses to let her leave. He can't stand other people, especially when he's been drinking and won't stand for anything they have to say to him, even if it's a friendly 'hello'. His surly behaviour has also caused his involvement in a few bar fights in his time, but he only ever takes a swing when the other man's back is turned.

Damsel In Distress - Sheila



Sheila is the scene's damsel in distress, although, unlike the typical damsel in distress, she isn't begging for help and is quite happy to fend for herself. She's very sarcastic and stuck up and constantly has men at the local pub hassling her for her number, though they never succeed. Even though she constantly refuses many of the men's advances, they never leave her alone and so she has a constant frustration and rage pent up inside her.

Influences

I derived influence for these characters from some of the characters from cartoons such as 'Ren and Stimpy' and 'Family Guy'. Many of the characters within these television shows consisted of loud, over the top characters that make use of facial expressions and eccentric movements and gestures to effectively juxtapose emotions and different actions within a comical context. These characters also consist of various stereotypes and ridiculous personalities, such as beligerant drunks, angry antisocialites and loud, stupid, happy-go-lucky characters.

Week 1 - Animated Sequence Concept

Concept

My concept for the animated sequence derives influence from slapstick humour from animated television shows i grew up watching such as 'The Simpsons' and 'Ren And Stimpy' as well as animated films I've seen more recently such as 'Dead Leaves'. This concept involves two intoxicated men fighting over the only woman at the pub. The antagonist is hassling the woman at one of the tables and the protagonist has steppedin to get him away from her. The protagonist then challenges the antagonist to a drinking competition in which whoever manages to not pass out gets the girl. After a few shots of hard liqour, the antagonist convinces the protagonist to turn around and then hits him over the head with a bar stool. With the protagonist on the floor, the antagonist begins laughing uncontrollably as the protagonist regains consciousness. He then takes one final shot, mid laughter, and then proceeds to suddenly pass out and come crashing down to the floor.
Within this sequence I will be including the over the top and exagerated emotions, body movements, gestures and actions trademarked by those cartoons I grew up watching. With the drunken pub setting and slapstick, comic theme, i hope to make an enjoyable, humourous animated sequence.

Director Inspiration

One of my many inspirations includes Hiroyuki Imaishi's work as the director of the animated film, 'Dead Leaves'. The film incorporates many elements of action and comedy, utilizing the endless possibilities of two dimensional animation with eccentric character movements and actions, and strange, elaborate character designs. The character designs included characters having strange body parts such as one of the main characters having a television for a head. Characters' bodies do a lot of unnatural stretching and warping throughout as well as expelling ludicrous amounts of blood and gore. These techniques made use of exaggeration to visually communicate character emotions to the audience and add more of a sense of comedy to various situations of the film. Imaishi incorporated comic strip styles into the film with the use of text in action scenes with words such as 'BLAM' and 'THUD' giving further exclamation to the injuries sustained by the characters during different scenes. Imaishi also made use of extreme and obscure camera angles to display the discomfort of the film's characters, which worked very well as another technique of visual communication to the film's viewers. He also made use of bright and intense colours to further develop the film's comic style and distill a further amount of absurdity into the story. All in all, 'Dead Leaves' was a very well constructed animated film. Hiroyuki Imaishi's use of various comic book styles and over the top actions made it an incredibly enjoyable viewing experience.