Emotion to Emotion - Stop Motion

Above is the primary reference material which I utilised for the making of my second armature animation. After concluding in my previous stop motion blog post that I felt I should have performed and recorded the actions myself in order to emphasise certain movements and get my personal vision across easier, I done so with the primary material for this particular animation. I performed the actions in front of a mirror so that I can see the actions as I am doing them. For the shocked emotion, I stiffened my body to make the pose appear more tense for the shocked emotion, and relaxed my body for the relieved emotion.

From this video, I was then able to create a bar sheet where I simply illustrated key poses within the video, and then placed them beneath their according key frames, assisted by the timings on the original video. The faint lines between each pose on the chart illustrate the type of motion path which I feel suit the movement in between the key frames, for example, 'slow in, slow out'. This was something that was lacking from my initial stop motion animation, so hopefully this will help improve the quality of the animation.

https://vimeo.com/207766445

This is the result of my second stop motion with an armature, which was assisted by the primary research above. I felt as though during this animation, I have improved upon the handling of the armature itself, as in the previous animation I found it to be very fiddly and I couldn't accurately position the armature in between frames, which hopefully shows in this following animation. The emotions which I used in this animation were shocked to relieved, as I felt they were emotions which would realistically follow eachother, and both can be portrayed in distinct key poses. The poses which I made with the 'Buckid' rig in Maya really helped, as variants of both emotions were imitated with the rig, providing good material to base the key poses on. I feel that the result of this animation is a lot more 'cartoony' and exaggerated than my 'Stand up, Sit down' animation, which may likely be due to the reference material. However, this works in the animations favour, because I am trying to give emotion to a figure which lacks any facial expression, therefore in order to really communicate the expressions, I will have to exaggerate the poses somewhat. The story behind this animation which I had in mind when animating, was the armature was watching a motorbike accident, which shocks him, but is then relieved when he sees the victim is okay, however due to the abstract nature of the animation, I'm sure others will easily be able to interpret their own stories into the animation, such as names are being called on a register, the armature thinks he hears his name, before realising it's not. With the initial jump, I included a 'follow-through' technique, which worked a lot better than it did in my previous animation, and helps make the expression become more recognisable. There is one thing which I am disappointed about however, and that is the positioning of the feet on the armature, as they seem to aimlessly jiggle about at times, and I see their being two main causes of this; 1. in the reference material I did not alter the vantage point so that the feet are visible, therefore I had to assume how they'd realistically move, so next time I'll make sure to include my whole body in the reference material, and 2. I was primarily focused on the upper-body movement, as that is where the expression is typically shown, therefore the feet may have been nudged without my realisation, which is something which I will definitely work to prevent in the next animation. Overall though, I am very pleased with the result of my second armature animation, as the movements are smooth and the expressions are clear.

The Making of Project #2

I am absolutely gutted that we didn't manage to finish our project in time for the brief deadline, however I feel as though the making of video to go along with it, is in many ways an improvement upon my previous making of video, greatly due to the feedback which I was given on my first. Below is a link to what we managed to finish of the animation itself, the blank segments being the areas of the animation which were incomplete.

https://vimeo.com/208079127

Below is a link to the making of video to go along with this product, where I evaluate the piece and go over my development process.

https://vimeo.com/210791500

I feel as though this making of video is a lot more efficient, as a common complaint about my previous making of video was in regards to the middle segment, where the voice over is paused whilst music plays and a run through of my animation process is shown, as many thought it was lacking when compared to the rest of the video, I gathered criticism such as this -

"Include a voice over throughout"

"Try to lead the viewers into what they're seeing, sometimes its hard to comprehend when so much is happening in a short amount of time"

So in order to prevent this from becoming an issue with this new making of, I provided a voice over for the animation process in the same manor that I did with the rest of the making of, and made sure the stretch out the length of this particular segment so that my very complex method of animating is easier to explain and portray. I am very pleased that I was given this feedback, as without it I would have likely stayed to the same format as in my first, and the altered segment I personally feel is a huge improvement on the first, and hopefully explains my process a lot better. I kept the rest of video in the same format due to its positive reception, and I feel it works equally as well this time around. We used a colour scheme and style reminiscent of the source material which we were focused on, same as I did in my previous making of.

However there are a number of issues which I have with this new edition which were absent from my previous video. For one, due to communication issues I was not able to gather voice recordings from my partner, and therefore wasn't able to include her thoughts on the project and a more in-depth look into her process, which makes the video feel more personal than it should for a group project, so in order to prevent this on my following project, I will make sure I will have a more efficient form of contact for my partner/s. Another aspect that I feel let down the video, was the fact that as what I have done in this project is so similar to my previous project, I felt as though I was repeating myself several times in the original script, so a lot of information was cut in fear of it feeling the same as my last one, so without watching both, my main inspirations and some of my process is lacking from the commentary on my new making of video, in order to prevent this on my next project, I will ensure that I pick a project which is different from my previous two, thus allowing me to create a new and hopefully interesting making of video. 

As there is a lot of similar source material, there is a lot of ways in which I can extend this project, however as I have done something similar in my past two making ofs, I would prefer to experiment with something new.

Posing with the 'Buckid' rig in Maya

In order to get used to the rig which I will be using for my Maya animations for this module, I practiced a few key poses with 'Buckid', trying to communicate as much emotion into this simple rig as possible, which was mainly accomplished via curves and arcs of the characters' stance, and the extent of open and closed postures.

This was a 'shocked' or 'devastated' pose. I had Buckid learn back, clenching his head, as if he was chucking his head back in shock or devastation.

This was a 'sad' pose. I saw this as a pose which would likely come after the previous pose, therefore would  be good for pose-to-pose. I felt as though the arch of the character as well as the dangling arms and head really help to communicate this emotion.

I wasn't focused on a particular emotion here, I was instead imitating a stance from a video game character which I like, which I feel work out relatively well.

This is another pose imitating a video game character.

I was not pleased with the outcome of this one, the intention was to make Buckid seem as though he was shielding himself via his hands in a scared or afraid manor. However a more closed, clenched and protective stance would have helped to communicate this expression more effectively, instead this just looks as though he is pushing an object.

This is another pose imitating a video game character. I really like this one due to the cartoony and exaggerated pose which translate well into Buckid.

This was not based off of anything in particular, and instead is a reference to my previous stop motion animation.

Playing around with this rig came through very naturally to me, perhaps to my preference to digital media, and I feel as though I have been successfully able to create several decent poses and am anticipating on working with Buckid further.

Stand Up, Sit Down - Stop Motion

Above is the primary reference material which I utilised for the making of my first armature animation. I made sure that the subject in the video emphasises each movement so that the become more clear when interpreting them into animation. The subject was meant to look as though he is watching a plane fly by and stands up to get a better view. I produced a bar sheet from this reference material.

Bar Sheet Scan

https://vimeo.com/207766286

This is the result of my first ever stop motion with an armature, which was assisted by the primary research above. I found trying to subtly moving the parts of the armature between key frames to be very sensitive and therefore difficult to correctly position, however I feel as though I will get used to this in time. For my first time, I am actually impressed with how it has turned out, the movements at the start are relatively smooth and realistic. I am disappointed about the middle of the animation however, as there is an obvious jump in the animation from where the armature tumbled over, meaning I had to reset it in the same position in the previous frame, utilising the very helpful 'onion skinning' feature. I find this spoils the animation, and seems to create an unintentional 'follow through' effect as the hand is raised,  which is too exaggerated and jumpy to be effective or realistic. The hand movement itself was improvised as I went in to the stop motion room, as I felt the intention behind the movement wouldn't be as clear when the exact actions from the video were translated into animation. I feel as though after the pause, the animations quality increases again, however if I were to redo this (or any other similar animation) again, there are several things which I would change; I would make sure the armature is balanced at all times to prevent it from falling over, I would improve on my bar sheet design, and finally I would act out the reference material myself, so that I can portray the movement exactly how I desire it.

Update on my 'Making of' project #2

For this making of project, I am paired with another student on my course, Chelsea. We have very different styles in terms of drawings and animation, which may cause some issues, but also could make some very interesting outcomes if we use our different abilities together effectively. This may also push the both of us into areas that are out of our comfort zone, allowing us to experiment with new techniques and mediums.

Chelsea's notes

These are the notes that the two of use produced after our first discussion. We decided that we definitely wanted to produce a 2D animation, but we wanted to make an animation for an excising audio product which lacks any visuals of any sort, which is the same as what I did with my previous making of project, therefore hopefully improving upon the skills that I established within that project, and with the introduction of Chelsea's skillset, hopefully develop some new skills. We both set off after this discussion to find an audio file to animate over. These are the suggestions that I came up with.

https://youtu.be/j8PNuc6heyw

Being a fan of the BBC TV series 'The League of Gentlemen', this is the one that I was very keen on doing, however I understand how it's not everyone's sense of humour, so I wanted to make sure Chelsea enjoyed it. I thought that we could animate a character each, therefore utilising both of our styles and skills, I think our contrasting styles would work well together, and her style fits the dark undertone to the piece.

https://youtu.be/8xoG0Xv3vs0

I just like this song. We could shorten the audio and create a music video for this or another song, I just thought we could do a lot with this one in terms of narrative and style.

https://youtu.be/qeKvJenyKeo

This is a voiceacting showreel for a YouTuber I like. I think we could have a lot of freedom with this one in terms of character design.

https://youtu.be/kxnwHn0OhVQ

This is made by the same people who made the audio for my original making of project, therefore it would save us a lot of time in terms of character design and that, but I wanted Chelsea to have more of a part in the planning stage, and as the character designs and styles were already made, I will probably leave this one as I was considering doing this one in my own time anyway.

In the end we both decided upon my first suggestion, League of Gentlemen - Missed Your Train Mate? 

We both thought it was funny, which I am glad about as I really had my heart set on that particular piece. Inspired by a recent Simpsons couch gag, where Homer Simpson, a digital 2D character, interacts with paper-cutout, stop motion characters resembling the South Park characters, we thought our two vastly different styles could work well together if we both animated a character each. The Simpsons clip is linked bellow.

For context, 'The League of Gentlemen' is a BBC comedy which started out as a radio series, where three actors, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss portray every barmy character in a fictional town known as 'Royston Vaysey' (formally Spent).

The League of Gentlemen

Chelsea thought my cleaner style would be better suited towards the uni graduate character, and her more creepy style would be more suited towards the murderer, so I got to work designing that character, along with a 3D turnaround. As many of the characters from the radio broadcast version of 'The League of Gentlemen' are also portrayed in the later released TV adaption, the character I was going to animate from this audio clip was also a character in the TV series, he was known as 'Benjamin', so I based my design on him.

Benjamin, as he appeared in 'The League of Gentlemen', portrayed by Reece Shearsmith

'Benjamin' 3D turnaround

After another discussion of Chelsea, we decided to scrap the idea of having us both animate a character each, as due to the feedback from others who were told our idea, we thought that the two contrasting styles would be too distracting for the audience, especially during the aspects of the piece where the two characters had to physically interact with eachother. We instead decided that I would animate both characters, and Chelsea would instead spend her focus on designing the settings and backgrounds, due to her liking of background design. During this meeting, Chelsea also managed to get a rough story board done, so that I could start animating from them.

Page one of rough storyboards

Page two of rough storyboards

I then got to work animating the other character. Unlike Benjamin, this character didn't appear in the TV adaption, therefore I had no material to base the design on. This gave me a lot of freedom which I was pleased with, however I still decided to base it off the actor that portrayed him, 'Mark Gatiss', but stylise him in a way which suits his character in this short sketch.

Mark Gatiss, one of the three 'League of Gentlemen'

'Nutcase' 3D turnaround

Chelsea has since sent me her rough sketches of most of the backgrounds required for the animation, which will help me greatly when positioning and framing the characters for the animation.

I think our project is going well so far, and I am anticipating how our final product will look.

Feedback from initial 'Making of' project 

The feedback from my making of project was generally well received from my coursemates, though there were some aspects of the video that were criticized by some individuals, which will definitely be taking into account during the production of my second making of project, here is an image of all the feedback that I received - 

From these notes, I can conclude that it is the middle segment of the video that is lacking in terms of quality in comparison to the rest of the video, and I agree with this. The reason that I included it was because I felt the video would become boring if I narrated the whole thing, and also exceed the time limit, so I decided to have a musical break where I quickly went through my unique animation process. However this was part of the problem, as it was said to be too quick at times with too much happening on screen, therefore making it hard for the audience to take it all in. To resolve this in my next making of, I will chose a different method of recording the process to make it more comprehend-able, or narrate the video throughout. There are other minor complaints about the piece which I will also take into account. People seemed to like the way I included my influences and the way in which I shown and talked about them, so I will continue to do so in future similar projects. 

I think part of the success of my making of video comes from how proud I was with my actual animation, as I had never produced a full-length animation from the ground up before, so I was very pleased with my outcome, and thus I shown this pride through my making of video. The animation itself has since been well received by Peep Show fans, gaining 1200 + likes on the Facebook, and 100 + comments, the overwhelming majority of which are positive, which gives me great confidence for the second making of project.

Making of project

I was highly anticipating what I would come up with for my making of project after I was set my brief, as it was very open therefore I could focus on my own skills and abilities whilst producing a making of video to go along with it. I decided that I wanted to produce an animation of some sort, and a 2D digital animation as that is what I am most interested in, but I had no idea what to base it on, but after re-watching The Ricky Gervais show, a show which consists entirely of podcasts staring Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, which have later been animated, I became inspired to produce an animation for an already existing audio product which lacks any visuals of any sort.

The Ricky Gervais Show

I first wanted to animate another Ricky Gervais podcast which had not been animated by that show, trying my best to imitate their style. However I later decided that I wanted to make this more personal to me, by creating everything for the animation (bar the audio) from the ground-up, and choosing an audio source which is more personal to me, as well as establishing my own style in the animation. After a while of deciding what source of audio to use, I eventually decided upon using a BBC Radio 4 sketch from the show ‘Mitchell and Webb Sound’ due to my love of the work from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and the fact that they consist of comedic sketches (which is the genre that I am enticed by the most), with nothing more than their voices and the occasional sound effect. 

That Mitchell and Webb Sound Series One CD

These comedians are best known for their character’s from ‘Peep Show’ and ‘That Mitchell and Webb look’. As there are a lot of existing sketches from this show, I asked a Peep Show fanpage on Facebook for advice on what sketch to use, and the majority of votes opted for the cash register shop sketch.

My Facebook Post in 'Peep Show Quotes'

The original audio file is linked below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_KlckKFFc0&t=60s

I carried out further research to see if this idea has been done before, and I found a few examples that I used as inspirations, my favourites have been listed below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVG8GI2INw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eahA3dB-eqQ&t=41s

For the animation, I wanted the character designs to resemble the actors, so I originally planned to use my designs of them which I created for my Simpsons celebrity caricatures page, however I felt I wasn’t experienced enough with animation to successfully animate in a similar style to the Simpsons, so I instead decided to redesign them in a similar style to the much more simplistic style of the Ricky Gervais show. 

My Mark and Jez from Peep Show Simpsons caricatures

Early designs in the 'Ricky Gervais Show' style

Near final designs

Final Designs

After the designers were finalised, I drew them in a full 360 view, in order to provide a base for each angle when it comes to animating later, and I also drew many different mouths for certain distinct vocal noises for each of the characters to create a more realistic lip syncing effect (more on that later), I drew a separate set of mouth for both characters as I believe it adds a lot to their character, and I can make it easier to add their little unique quirks in. Many specific facial expressions were also drawn for later use.

3D Turnarounds for both characters

Different Mouths for both characters

The next step was to illustrate the setting, which was the cash register shop. My main concern with this aspect was that I wanted the background to seem feasible, by not having aspects and areas of the shop popping from nowhere, hence the reason why I gave the location a full geographical map, as well as some exterior shots which were never used in the animation itself. I also drew the background in the same style that I utilised on the characters, but had everything including the objects consist entirely of different shades of blue, thus in theory causing the characters to stand out more, which I believe worked relatively well. 

Exterior of the Cash Register Shop, with my own personally designed logo

To add to the humour of the piece, I sprinkled a few references to some of the cartoons and shows which inspired this animation, including Rick and Morty, Peep show, Mitchell and Webb Look and the Ricky Gervais show.

'The Ricky Gervais Show' Karl Pilkington reference

'Peep Show' Super Hans reference

'Rick and Morty' Hungry for Apples? reference

After that was finalised, I then got to work roughly planning the shots and character directions via storyboarding. Great consideration was taken in how to position each of the shots so that it obeys the setting which I previously mapped out. Also using my knowledge of cinematography, I made sure each shot is as appealing as possible, via obeying techniques such as the rule of thirds. Although for the most part these sketches in the storyboards almost perfectly resemble the outcome, Many of these shots were drastically altered in the production phase, for reasons that I will address later on. On these story boards, I included an outline of the movements which I wanted a character to perform, and well as specifying any camera movements or zooms.

Example of Storyboard (1)

Example of Storyboard (2)

Now that I had all the preparation work done, it was finally time to start animating! The programs I primarily used for this were Serif Draw Plus x8, and Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. This is the process that I went through to produce this animation -

Step one – designing the set.

With most shots (with the exceptions mainly being extreme close ups), the composition consists of a backdrop and a foreground. The foreground is where the focus is meant to be centred, and often has the character and their movements animated within it. This is animated on Serif Draw Plus against a green or blue backdrop (depending on whether or not Rob’s green shirt is within frame), which is then Chroma keyed out in the editing software after the animated segment is completed and placed against that scene’s backdrop, this allowed me to animate the characters freely without fear of them interfering with the background and also allowed me to alter the background easily later if need be, such as blurring the background to give more of a cinematic look. All assets are positioned and drawn accordingly, and sometimes another layer is added on top of the other two, particularly in ‘over the shoulder’ shots. The characters are also designed so that each body part that later require individual movement in the animation are separate assets, so they can be easily moved and rotated.

An example of an 'Over the Shoulder' shot which utilised a background, in-between and foreground layer

Step Two – Keyframing the characters.

Using my storyboards, I then keyframe each movement by specifying key positions for the characters and objects and then having the program fill in the gaps, trying to sync it to the expressions via timing as best as I can to bring as much life as possible to the characters. The motion paths are also altered depending on the context, for example if there is a drastic facial expression change, the fast in and slow out is often required (also often using the squash and stretch principal to emphasise movements), and if there is a more natural movement, a slow in, slow out path is used. Sometimes the shape of a head, body part or facial feature needs drastically altering, most commonly when a character turns his head, in cases such as these, the assets are quickly keyed to a position and/or size with resembles the upcoming change, and then I would add a second long pause in the animation before cutting to the altered state of the character and naturally continuing the movement established in the previous keyframes, which is all trimmed down during the edit, making the drastic change in shape appear more smooth, natural and invisible. This is the same process that I utilised on my animation for my A Level Graphics final piece ‘Ipkiss and Ivor’ (a link to which can be found below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-57rnYBgY1M

Screenshot of the keyframing process, making a walk cycle for David Mitchell

Step Three – Lip Syncing.

A long process is later carried out in order to produce a successful lip sync animation. This was an improved method from what I originally used in my ‘Ipkiss and Ivor’ animation, where I simply altered the shape and size of mouth within the keyframes, to very unsuccessful results in my opinion. Instead, I decided to capture the each shot a numerus times, each captured with different mouths on the characters, and then placing them accordingly in my editing software when that mouth shape is required for the vocal noise produced in the audio. After the initial animation is completed with the stock mouth, I will make a list of all the syllables or unique mouths required in that shot and then map the mouths one by one onto each individual keyframe and capture them. The result is much more believable, if a bit of a tedious process.

Step Four – piecing it together

After repeating this process with every other shot, the final step is piecing each scene together in accordance to the audio. These steps are repeated for every single shot until the animation is complete.

A screenshot of the editing process

A lot of consideration was taken into how I would prevent the humour present in the original piece from becoming diluted due to the addition of a visual aspect. For example, if I were to simply animate Mitchell walking up to the saxophone as he mistakes it for a Cash register (as was originally depicted in my storyboards), the joke would have been lost, as the audience would be expecting it, hence why it worked as purely an audio piece. I resolved this by having extreme close ups of a sequence of cash registers being opened, but one of them being the saxophone, but is only revealed to be so as the noise is made and the camera pans out, making the surprise and joke stay intact. This editing style was inspired by the amazing way director Edgar Wright uses visual humour in his work. This technique was used numerous other times in the piece, such as when Mitchell backs away to reveal the robber standing behind him. 

Link to example of Edgar Write's visual comedy - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOzD4Sfgag

Link to final animation -

https://vimeo.com/201221354

Link to Making of documentary - 

https://vimeo.com/201186673

Overall, I am VERY satisfied with my final piece, and though it took a long time to produce, I enjoyed making it thoroughly. Due to time constraints, I was only able to animate a 2-minute sketch, but this has inspired me to continue with this technique and improve my skills further. If I were to have more time, I would definitely be interested into fleshing this out into a full series like the Ricky Gervais Show, as I have already been getting requests from Mitchell and Webb fans to do so.

For the making of video itself, I wanted to show clips of the videos where my inspirations mainly came from, show how the programs that were used to produce the animation are used, and show the development of the piece itself. To make it my own, I dubbed over it with my own voice.