Creative Collaboration-

Weeks 6 - 7

Our schedule

After settling on the concept behind the video, our group had to decide upon how to communicate the yet to be confirmed narrative inside the storybook structure that we decided upon. One of my main concerns was that as I am the only one that will be contributing to the animation process itself (asides from backgrounds and concept art), I wanted to story to be communicated in a way that would be time-efficient for me, thus allowing me to keep on top of the schedule. The main reason as to why I was so unsure about my ability to complete the task in time, was that due to the fact that I had never animated a dog before, a lot of research would have had to be taken out in terms of quadruped walk cycles, how mood affects their movements etc. 

It wasn't until I came across a clip from an old Simpsons episode, that I found a creative, time efficient method of quickly portraying a character's backstory to an audience, yet still managing to be emotionally engaging. Using inspiration from the abundance of 'I take a photo everyday for ___ years' videos on YouTube, the clip shows an animated summary of Homer Simpsons life by showing how he and his surroundings, upbringing and quality of life changes overtime through a series of still images. This means that I have set myself much more of a realistic task to produce before the deadline, as I would only be key poses of the dog that I would need to illustrate, and I would not have to worry about in-between frames aside from the opening and closing scenes of the book opening/closing. I am glad I realised this before we began work on the script, as the narrative would have had to be built around this idea, assuring that it can be told though a single camera angle across a sequence of still images, which this Simpsons clip manages to do perfectly, and manages to show a lot of gags in the process.

But we still felt that it was not yet time to come up with the story, as we thought that in order to communicate an accurate representation of what certain rescue dogs go through, and importance of adopting, we should gather research from professionals in the field. Josh, being in charge of setting up and carrying out the interviews, managed to grab us an interview via a friend on a biology course, with a woman who runs her own dog-walking company, known as 'All about the dogs'. What we hoped to gather from this interview, was an insight on dog behavior and a professional outlook. I went along to the interview and took the role of the cameraman, so we could use the footage for our making of, and refer accurately to what was said in the interview at a later stage.

We assured to have permission granted from the business to use their image in our making of

Personally, I think that the interview went perfectly, Josh had valuable questions which were answered informatively, and many topics that were brought up would without a doubt shape the story. At 12:34 - 13:02 in the video, we were given an ideal situation to base our story around, as apparently it is a common causation of abandoned dogs. The situation was that the family would have a baby on the way, therefore progressively neglect the dog more and more in preparation to the baby, who they feel would come first. 

It was not only the story ideas that became a valuable asset from this interview, as the woman that we were interviewing helpfully gave us a sheet listing how dogs show certain feelings, intentions or emotions, meaning that when it comes to drawing out key poses in the animation phase, I can accurately illustrate how a dog would react in the given circumstances. When posing my character later, I will definitely use this as a guideline.

Doggie Language

After me and Chloe collaborated on the character design, Josh took lead role in the structuring of the narrative, with me and Chloe still regularly inputting our ideas and suggestions. As I previously mentioned, we teamed up with two English language students in order to elevate our narrative structure to a more professional level. They were informed about our premise and the research that we gathered, and from that they bounced ideas from one another, whist we recorded them all and combined the best of both to create a story that we felt best accomplished our goal. This discussion was recorded for the making of video documentation.

The main goal for our story was to evoke sympathy from the viewers for our character, in order to persuade them to choose rescue dogs over breeders. This caused me to research effective ways in which to communicate a sad story to the viewer, which is when I came across an excellent video on YouTube from 'TheCloserLook', where emotional scenes in films are analysed and their effectiveness is explained.

From this video, I have learnt that despite the popular belief that in order for a character to become sympathetic they have to be relateable to the audience, instead all the character requires is for their unfortunate situations and circumstances to be unjustified in their innocent actions or behaviors, which if done well will cause the character to become sympathetic, regardless of if their situation has been experienced by the viewers. I kept this in mind when helping out with the narrative of our piece, in order to better achieve our intention.

Another element that Josh, as lead narrative designer wanted to ensure we implement, was 'The Hero's Journey'. The reason as to why he felt that this was so important was that this structure ensures that the central character goes on a journey with the audience in which they learn, adapt to and experience knew things in a flowing structure that would help keep the audience interested throughout. Personally, I was not familiar with this narrative structure before this session, as I was used to Tzvetan Todorov's narrative theory regarding equilibrium. However after seeing how we managed to shape the structure of our story using this new method, resulting in something that I feel ideally communicates our intention, it will definitely be something I will consider using in future narrative-based projects.

An illustration showing the hero's journey

Below is an outline of the story that we managed to produce, and a finalised script. I realise that this will likely change a lot as we progress from script to screen.

The Script

Chloe worked on the storyboard, roughly sketching out how she envisioned each scene would play out after the rest of the teams input, this was then given to Josh, who I helped to translate what was given into a full length animatic of the final animation. As I would be in charge of structuring the final product myself, it was essential for me to be there, as with a firm idea of how I plan to show each scene through character performance, I advised Josh on the timings throughout the project, to make sure that I would be able to fit what actions that I intended to portray in the times given with as little filler as possible. I understand this will just be used as a guideline for me, and may very well have changed dramatically by the production phase, but it was still important to see if the piece would flow effectively to the audience before we proceed to animate, and after analysing the animatic, I am pleased to say that if translated well, this would be an ideal way to pace and structure the piece. The final animatic is shown below.

A little something that I produced on the side of the main project work, was a logo to would help create an identity for our team. I separated a human face outline into three sections, giving key characteristics from our team (My freckles, Chloe's Hair etc.) to each of the three separate sections, thus representing how we are all putting in a little piece of ourselves into this project. I imagine this working well showcased at the end of our final product, as well as throughout the making of documentary.

Our Team Logo

I am incredibly glad that this project, which I was very unsure about in the previous two weeks due to a mismatch of ideas, has completely turned around in these past two weeks, as I am certain that our combined vision will combine to make a piece which we are all equally proud of, and now that all the pre-production work is close to being finalised, in the following weeks we can jump right into animating. 

Performance and Character - Weeks 5 & 6

Limping Walk Cycle

After reaching a comfortable stage of my 'wall climb and throw', I decided that I would next move onto the three separate walk cycle tasks. I have memorized from past experiences each key pose and the typical timing between them within a walk cycle, and even explored how to adapt that into a run cycle, however I never delved into how the character's mood, motive and circumstance would effect how their walk would play out. I have decided to begin with animating 'a person walking with a bad limp'. Due to the lack of detail given with this task unlike the previous one, I see a lot more freedom in terms of how to communicate my intention, as we are not told how severe the limp is, the mood of the character or their motives. 

Character Bio

Regardless of the simplicity of this short animation, I still felt it necessary to flesh out the character, as I feel that quirks could still have the potential to show through this simple animation, thus creating more of narrative behind the piece. I did feel a little less inspired to create a story this time however, as I don't feel as though the situation that I create could be interpreted into anything resembling it's intended meaning, so this character bio if for my benefit more than anyone else's. One of the main things that I wanted to ensure when creating this character though, is that the limp that is portrayed in the animation isn't something the character would have lived with for a while, as I feel experiencing something such as a mobility impediment for a long time would effect how you worked around it more effectively, therefore not being as interesting to animate.

Name : Rudy Williams

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Ethnicity: Caucasian, grew up and still lives in Cardiff, Wales.

Family: Has a happily married mother and father who, much to his discomfort, still treat Rudy as if he was 11.

Intelligence: Cleverest person in his relatively large circle of friends, often being looked up to for advice.

Education: Despite his intelligence, he never took up further education due to things moving quickly with his girlfriend.

Occupation: On the dole, devotes most of his time to chilling with his friends and caring for his girlfriend, Liv.

Religion: Introduced to Christianity by Liv, which he claims to follow despite his doubts.

Sexual orientation: Straight, engaged to get married to Liv.

Goals, ambitions, dreams and secrets: He wants to settle down and start a family with Liv whilst still keeping the party-animal inside of him alive and not become boring, which is what he felt like happened to his Dad.

Fears/phobias: Ending up like his parents, becoming dependent on his parents, loosing the trust of his friends.

Favourate kind of music: 90's music.

Sense of humour: Often takes his jokes too far and causes unintended discomfort, but for himself he mostly sees the humorous side of any bad situation.

Adrenaline moments: Gathering the whole gang together and having a 24 hour long party.

Physical description: Tall, nimble, fairly weak.

Physical disabilites: His tenancy to get too drunk often results in him suffering with minor, temporary inconveniences for a couple of days after the incidents, whether it be headaches, limps or aches.

The situation - It is the day of Rudy and Liv's wedding, and despite knowing how much he wishes to devote the rest of his life to spending with Liv, Rudy can't help but picture himself becoming his Dad, causing him to drink excessively hours before the big moment, which he begins to regret more and more as he gets drunker and drunker. When the time came for him to say the words 'I do', Rudy looked to the crowd to see his mother and his father, who's lack of charisma that was once true in themselves becoming extremely evident to Rudy, causing him to tear up, unable to look the love of his life in the eyes. Sensing Liv's anger and upset, Rudy shoved passed the priest, proceeding to violently kick the stand behind him, fighting off those who came up to attempt to calm him down. After the outburst comes to an emotional and abrupt stop, Rudy, whilst muttering "I'm so sorry" under his breath, stormed out of the church in a different to a heartbroken Liv, leaving a baffled crowd of loved ones behind them. Rudy continued to wonder off to where-ever his damaged state took him, alone. He was limping due to injuries sustained in his outburst, and was also still intoxicated and only just slowing down to comprehend what he has just done. This is the walk that I wish to capture.

Unfortunately, I don't feel as though I will incorporate enough elements into my short performance that would communicate the character that I am attempting to show. It may still make perfect sense in the context of the situation, though I predict it will in no way show it out of context, this is because of the length of the footage that I require. From this, I can conclude that a bio of this length isn't necessary for this animation, and in later tasks, I will only provide a bio such as this if I feel like it would make an impact on the animation itself.

Before filming my own reference material for my walk, I felt as though it would be beneficial to gather some secondary resource source material, in order to gain a better understanding of how to communicate the type of limp that I wish to capture.

At the 5:00 mark of this video, the actor demonstrates a 'leg asleep' walk.

I found this video very useful, as not only does provide a side and front view for better reference, but it is also more of a naturalistic response to the idea, as most of the sources I found were overwhelmingly cartoonish or theatrical.

An animation which contains strong silhouettes, breaking down a limping cycle frame by frame.

This source concentrates on the curves provided by the body posture at different stages of the walk.

A source which indicates all of the key frames in a typical walk cycle animation, and shows how they are adapted to show a limp.

A much more exaggerated, theatrical response.

With all of this knowledge of how to emulate a limp, I felt it an appropriate time to record my own primary footage, whilst keeping in mind the character that I have established, his emotions and particular circumstance. I thought that instead of pretending to have a limp, it would make for a more genuine display if I put a stone in my shoe, therefore making my performance more accurate. I walked up and down my room several times, and took the best take, as it took me a while to work out how to walk in this situation.

When recording this material, I took into account the complaints I had with my previous reference material for my previous task, which is why I stood my camera on a tripod in order to gain a better sense of distance progression and a clearer image. I found the fact that I performed this in the privacy of my own home also helped me to be more confident, and get into the mind of the character a lot more effectively.

From all these sources, I have noted down 7 things to keep in mind when trying to emulate this movement for myself, which are as follows;
1. The injured foot travels a lot less in terms of distance in each step then the alternate foot.
2. The body attempts to keep the majority of pressure on the non-injured leg/foot, which is shown mainly through the hips.
3. The character pushes off from the injured foot, producing a relatively large leap for the non-injured foot, thus shortening the amount of time that balance is shifted towards the injured foot.
4. Arms typically point outwards and wave around more, as they are being used to help the keep balance for the slanted posture.
5. The injured foot drops slowly, meaning that each step differentiates in length of time.
6. Body arches upwards when pressure is put on the injured foot.
7. The body travels at a lot less of a constant speed.

As is the case with all my animation exercises, it was time to gather a better understanding of the timings for all the actions, by analysing the video frame by frame and creating notes. As I was focusing on a walk cycle, I already had a clear idea of what positions I was looking out for, so all I had to do is write down at what frame they appear.

Although I said in a previous blog post that I would like to explore alternative forms of animation, I felt I was really getting into Maya during my previous animation, therefore want to further the skills I have started to develop, and I feel the other forms of animation I mentioned would be best suited to some of the other tasks that we have been set.

Above is my limping animation, I feel as though I have managed to capture what I intended to, and I have no doubt it would be read by others to be a limping walk cycle. As always though, I will keep and open mind and come back to this animation to make any adjustments if anyone points them out to me. The timings and poses were drastically altered from the notes I made, this was due to me wanting to give the piece more passion and drama by (among other alterations) adding the animation principals known as 'anticipation' and 'exaggeration', to make the struggled leap from his right foot seem more evident. Due to the fact that this is a walk cycle, after fully animating two full steps, I could repeat the frames, making traveling straight along the X axis the only movement that is progressive, therefore not reverting to the location it started, which meant that I was able to produce this animation a lot quicker than my previous animation. 

The graph editor for the entire animation, notice how only the blue lines of certain elements are the ones that are gradually progressing in terms of height, as they are the only movements which don't revert back to their starting location relative to the rest of the body

Again, I am  happy with what I have accomplished and feel as though my skills in Maya and my understanding character animation in general are getting stronger, however there are still some aspects of my animation process which I hope to improve/change in future animations;

- Create a simpler narrative behind the next piece, whilst keeping a deeply thought out character, therefore still showing personality, but having a less complicated story to communicate to the viewers.

- Diverse the characters shown in my pieces, get a new actor if need be.

- Produce some 2D animations for these tasks.
- Depending on the complexity of the narrative that I am trying to convey, simplify the bio, only including relevant information to the action/s that I am capturing.

https://vimeo.com/241341607