AM - Class 3 / Week 1 - Lecture
Intro To Staging And Composition.
Lots of things are involved in the staging process, Characters, Props, Set.. etc, Camera Angle/lenses, & the action that will take place in the shot.
The most important thing about staging is clarity, you should make sure that the idea & the point of the shot is very clear to the audience while staging.
Keep it simple, and keep your full concentration on the message that you're telling the audience; Staging (with its simplicity) should help conveying that message.. not confuse it!
One of the most important things in staging is 'The Camera', its actually the seat of your audience, and you have to place it in the most interesting, entertaining, yet clear position.
Here are some of the main famous type of shots known in cinema:
Establishing shot (usually used at the opening of the scene), Long shot, Medium shot, Close-Up shot, High Angle shot, Low Angle shot, Over the Shoulder shot (used when having two characters in the scene), Point of View shot
(to show what the character is looking at), there are plenty more but these are the most commonly used..
Camera Movement:
Before animating the camera you should ask your self.. Why I'm moving my camera? I personally see some great animations that gets messed up by un-necessary camera movement.. the camera should move only for a purpose.
A good reasons for animating the camera would be: following a character, emphasizing on a character's reaction, revealing an important element in the scene, or maybe creating a sense of action.. but avoid camera moves that are pointless, or will distract your audience from the main subject.
Type of camera moves: Pan, Track In/Out, Dolly, Crane, Boom, Tilt Up/Down.
Type of camera lenses: Long Lens 100-200mm, Normal lens 35-50 mm, Short lens 10-20mm, Normal lens are the most appealing to the human eyes.
There is another question that you should ask yourself while staging your shots; What I'm trying to tell the audience with this camera angle? when you get used to asking your self these kind of questions your whole animation will
start making more sense.
Quick tips:
When framing characters, remember to leave some head / feet room.
Drive the viewer's eyes to the direction you want them to look at through your composition.
Do not forget the important Rule Of Thirds.
AM - Class 3 / Week 1 - Assignment
For the next three months we'll animate three shots, we get to chose between creating individual shots or making them connected together as one short film.. of course, I chose the short film :)
Since this class is all about advanced body mechanics, I decided to pick a shot from Spielberg's latest movie Tin-Tin
which has a very intense body mechanics, & use it as a reference for my sequence.
Hopefully it will be cool!! wish me luck :)
Since this class is all about advanced body mechanics, I decided to pick a shot from Spielberg's latest movie Tin-Tin
which has a very intense body mechanics, & use it as a reference for my sequence.
Hopefully it will be cool!! wish me luck :)
AM - Class 3 / Week 2 - Lecture
Blocking To Final.
Another blocking to final lecture by Dave Burgess... The Legend!! Check his movie credits to know why!!
Another blocking to final lecture by Dave Burgess... The Legend!! Check his movie credits to know why!!
AM - Class 3 / Week 2 - Assignment
Started blocking out the first shot, I barely had time to make the blocking because we were very busy at work!
AM - Class 3 / Week 3 - Lecture
Advanced Arcs and Path of Action.
Arcs can add more to animated scenes than any other animation principle you may know, it could lift up a shot form amateur level to a Wow!! professional level.
Every part of the human body moves on arcs, the only part that dose not arc on movement is the eyes, they tend to move in a snappy, poppy fashion... In fact, everything in life moves on arcs! well.. other than Robots of course.
Check out Dr. Harold Edgerton's book: 'The Anatomy of Movement' to get a visual idea about arcs in real life.
Adding arcs while animation any action creates more believable performance for your characters because it will feel more organic, no body could explain it better than Frank & Ollie, they said in there book The Illusion Of Life:
'Straight inbetweens completely kill the essence of an action'
so DON'T forget to add inbetweens that creates nice clean arcs in the scene you animate!
Its really a good Idea to grab a scene from your favorite animated movie ( Disney movie.. I like Disney ) and choose a part
of a character, like the nose, or the hips... & track it on your monitor with a dry marker, you'll be AMAZED to see all these arcs flowing, that's one of the reasons that makes these movies alive & iconic.
of a character, like the nose, or the hips... & track it on your monitor with a dry marker, you'll be AMAZED to see all these arcs flowing, that's one of the reasons that makes these movies alive & iconic.
Even though its sounds like tracking arcs is more towards the polishing stage, but you need to plan them early in the game, even from the blocking stage, because it will make the process of tracking arcs a lot easier.
The more you pay attention to details like arcs, the more spontaneous it will become, AND the better your work will be.
AM - Class 3 / Week 3 - Assignment
First pass of splining.
AM - Class 3 / Week 4 - Lecture
Locomotion.
In this lecture Dave Mullins talks about locomotion in the human body; He shot himself performing different types of physical actions like siting, standing, lifting, throwing, then analyzed these shots in terms of 'source of force' and 'weight shift'.
Here are some random notes I got from Dave analyzing his reference:
- Fulcrum is the point of balance in a character or an object.
- The mass is evenly distributed around the Fulcrum ( or what we call center-line of gravity )
- Our bodies developed a way to move in the most efficient manner, always taking short cuts to preform any action.
- In order to the human body to stay in balance while moving, it counter balances its self between the hips & legs to sustain a well balanced locomotion.... that's a very confusing sentence :)
- External force changes the natural flow of any locomotion.
- When lifting weights, the heavier the object being lifted the more body parts are involved in the process.
- Anticipation before the movement, and settle after the movement, are key elements in animation.
The butter of this lecture is that, before you start animating you will need to shoot / find a reference, analyze it thoroughly, find out where the fulcrum is in the character, how the weight is shifting between the legs once that is well understood, fire up Maya, & start animating!
AM - Class 3 / Week 4 - Assignment
Final splined shot.. Well.. Not Really!! I don't like the parrot so I will change it latter before the end of this term! InshAllah!
AM - Class 3 / Week 5 - Lecture
Blocking to final.
Another blocking to final lecture, this time by Pixar animator Dovi Anderson, this was the best blocking to final lecture by far!
For some reason I felt very related to the way that Dove approaches his shots because he animates the same way as I do, He dose not use stepped tangents, he blocks his shot straight into Spline Tangents, & keeps adding levels of polish until its done.
Check out this short Youtube Video from Dovi talking about how you should tackle revisions and feedback on a given shot.
AM - Class 3 / Week 6 - Lecture
Advanced Overlap & Anticipation.
Quick notes :
- Just a reminder! overlapping action is breaking of movement so it dose not feel mechanical or fake.
- The 'Lead & Follow Principal ' and 'Reversals Principal' gives a very interesting fluid feel to the animation.
- Anticipation before movement leads the eyes of the audience to the next action & prepares them that something is about
to happen.
- Anticipation is related to the action follows, settle anticipation for settle movement, big anticipation for broad movements.
- Anticipation should not always be big & noticeable, it could be something as simple as an eye dart before speaking, or
pushing the hip an inch to the right before a walk to the left.
- Don't always choose a cliche anticipation, try experimenting with something new.
A great advice we got from Bobby during this lecture, He said : If you just animate.. that is great! but if you want to push your work forward you need to look for references, or shoot your own reference, and while you are animating show the stages to others to get feedback.. and that what will make your work becomes better & better!
I always keep reminding myself about references because, even now.. I still sometimes get carried away & start animating without doing my reference homework
AM - Class 3 / Week 6 - Assignment
First pass of splining, I merged the two shots together to check the flow.
The old parrot was looking very stiff due to rigging limitation, so I had to model & rig a new bird.
The old parrot was looking very stiff due to rigging limitation, so I had to model & rig a new bird.
AM - Class 3 / Week 7 - Lecture
Phrasing!
What is Phrasing?? Well.. phrasing its defining the beat & rhythm in a shot, each time you hit a pose in a character it creates a beat or what is called a 'Phrase'
Phrasing helps you clarify the ideas your trying to tell in a scene by breaking it up into beats, so you're telling the audience one thing at a time, sometimes you'll need to combine beats in a shot in order to make it more interesting, and that's what is called 'Overlapping Ideas'
Texture in animation is creating some contrast & variation in the timing so it will not feel linear, we can achieve that by having slow animation in some parts, followed by fast movement in others; the main thing is that you don't want your 'phrases' to have a unified tempo, slow settle movement against fast broad movements creates a very nice texture in a shot.
ALL ACTIONS ARE DRIVEN BY THOUGHTS, this is what we called before in the 'Force' lecture 'Internal Force'
A nice tip we got from the lecture which was: in order to show that separate actions of a character are motivated by a single thought in that character's head, just simply overlap these actions to connect them together.
Phrasing should be as clear as possible and easy to read by the audience, that can be achieved mainly by having a clear posing, without too many poses to express a single attitude or phrase. Ollie Johnston once said ' each scene should be able to be expressed with only two or three drawings' this might not be the case with scenes are more complex now a days, but it certainly something worth exploring in order to keep phrasing as simple as possible.
When phrasing a shot with a dialog, try using the holds in the dialog to create the phrases, but that's not always the case, some times phrases could overlap with each other to support a certain emotion.
At the end.. Phrasing is all about clarity in communication, & that is what's animation is all about.. Clarity of Communication!
AM - Class 3 / Week 7 - Assignment
This is the polished version of the second shot with my mentors notes applied, I'll keep animating the bird to the end!
Also made planing for the new sequence & shot a reference which was way too cool to post to the public :)
Also made planing for the new sequence & shot a reference which was way too cool to post to the public :)
AM - Class 3 / Week 8 - Lecture
Clarity and Overlapping Ideas.
As animators, we tend to over complicate things because we have so many ideas on our mind & we want to get all
of them on screen - That totally describes my situation.
In this lecture Bobby explains how we can keep our ideas clear and easy to read by the audience.
Clarity of ideas is one of the skills that is not very easy grasp in animation. When talking about clarity in animation we're talking about : clarity in 'Posing' and clarity in 'Movement'. We cant have a clarity in movement without having a clear poses, clear posing comes with clear silhouette, clarity in movement comes with:
- Simplicity in the movement.
- Exaggerating certain gestures to help making the action more clear.
- Careful acting choice, and keeping your character opened to camera so the audience will have a clear view of the character.
- Showing your shot to others to see what's there immediate reaction.
There are some common mistakes that animators fall into while animating, stuff like :
- Having too many ideas in a shot to a degree that it becomes very complicated ( I'm suffering from that in my shots )
- Having too much movement or what we call over animating which is confusing to the audience ( I do have that as well )
- Putting details in the wrong place, you should concentrate on the main core of the shot & spend most of the time getting
that right, then start adding small details where it matters the most.
- Forgetting about the basic animation principles while animating.
- Letting Maya do the inbetweens for you ( lazy animator )
Overlapping Ideas: if you lay down your ideas in a scene without overlap it will look very lame, when you overlap ideas they become alive and interesting, but some times beginner animators overlap ideas to a degree that it will become very confusing to the viewer, and that's when 'Holds' become handy, holding a pose on screen for some time will help clarifying that pose; Its just a matter of keeping balance between overlapping ideas & holding poses for some time on screen.
Subconsciously, we tend to over animate a shot because we see lots of opportunities to add overlapping action, and we get carried away to a degree that we forget the main purpose of that shot, To prevent that from happening we need to know what is the point of that scene & focus everything around it, planing, posing, acting, and keep it as clear & readable as possible, & always show your work to your peers to know if you are going on the right track.
AM - Class 3 / Week 8 - Assignment
Blocking the last shot for this term, I kind of changed the idea I planned last week so it would fit into 200 frames.
AM - Class 3 / Week 9 - Lecture
Blocking to Final.
This time by Jason Ryan. For those of you who don't already know Jason, he is a supervising animator at DreamWorks, and recently established his own animation school iAnimate.
This time by Jason Ryan. For those of you who don't already know Jason, he is a supervising animator at DreamWorks, and recently established his own animation school iAnimate.
Jason is very famous for planing his 3D animation in 2D using Flipbook before jumping into Maya, check out his website
for some animation demos.
- Creating different timing for actions to add texture to the animation, so it will feel more dynamic.
- Spacing makes the character alive.
Q&As with Jason Martinsen
Although I was unable to interact during the Q&As this term because I was attending them from work, but I really enjoyed every minute of it.
My mentor Jason Marttinsen used to grab clips from animated movies & analyze them in terms of posing, overlap, anticipation.. etc. Also it was Super Awesome to watch him drawing on top of my work frame by frame, then hit play!! and Wow!! the shot is alive!! I mean all mentors draw on top of student's work but not all of them can draw frame by frame on a sequence!! Hats off.. Jason :)
Here is Jason's assessment about my work in this term:
Best wishes to Jason
My mentor Jason Marttinsen used to grab clips from animated movies & analyze them in terms of posing, overlap, anticipation.. etc. Also it was Super Awesome to watch him drawing on top of my work frame by frame, then hit play!! and Wow!! the shot is alive!! I mean all mentors draw on top of student's work but not all of them can draw frame by frame on a sequence!! Hats off.. Jason :)
Here is Jason's assessment about my work in this term:
Areas of strength: It was a pleasure seeing Manar work. He has very strong posing and blocking. Good sense of body mechanics and weight. Has natural feel for splining. Experience or talent is helping him overcome some rushing of the planning. Good understanding of arcs and weight. Strong ideas and camera staging.
| |
Areas of improvement: Time. Working two jobs probably not helping. Just keep looking at spacing, arcs, slow ins, slow outs, moving holds. In some future assignments, trying to get more cartoony/interesting breakdowns, subtle, asymmetrical anticipations to get the most out of your work. In others, try something more realistic, push yourself and you will find the happy medium that is your style and challenge yourself along the way, thus learning the most you can. Always keep trying to find ways to offset arms and legs and stuff in and out of holds to make animation more organic and interesting. Good luck!
|
Best wishes to Jason
No comments:
Post a Comment