Week 9: Final Submission

I have learnt a lot about the work flow process of an animation and how each stage leads to the next, which at the beginning of the term I wasn't sure about. working through the different passes, from stepped to linear, to spline was a simple way of working and was really intuitive way of working. I would like to have more tutor contact at the last stages of the animating process, to receive feed back but also make sure that everything polished off nicely. Out of all the stages i feel that this part was my weakest and subsequently i feel that my animation has more potential and could be improved. 

Overall I found the experience, all be it frustrating at times, simple and we were given time to just work which allowed me to experiment and play around with depicting a character and story telling. I also liked the fact that I could use a skilled actor for my reference instead of using my own, limited acting skills. I felt this really influence my animating process.

If I were to complete this process I would have liked to have got to the final stage earlier so that I could have more time to polish off the performance and add extra small movements which I felt really improved the performance between my first take and my final submission.  

Final Animation Submission:

Week 9: Final Animation Take 1

This was my first full take of the animation. Although I think it works well over all I wasn't happy with it.  The eyes needed more animating- they felt too still and therefor dead. I don't feel that they should move around more but the skin around them should move more.

I also felt that the last shot didn't work well. I decided to lengthen it making both characters breath, especially Shylock as he, for my animation, just finished a big out burst. It also allowed me to show a little more action and reaction between the characters.

In a previous post I made mention to Glean Keane and how in one of his tutorial he was stretching the neck of one of his characters. I decided to use this type of exaggerated animation for Salarion's reaction to Shylock's sudden lunge forward.

I stretched the neck by moving the shoulder as I decided that the move backwards would be lead by the shoulder. The head then moves past the shoulder before stealing above the shoulder. I though that this created a good reaction to Shylocks actions and created a lot of overlap with the head and arms.

Shylocks Speech: Take 1

Week 9: Final Clean Up and Facial animation

This part of the animation process involved many areas of change:

The body movements in the previous pass were still very even as the computer was completing all the in-betweens. I had to favour possesses creating uneven spacing when the body moved form one pose to another. As you can see in the graph editor big changes are anticipated or processed with a lot of key creating easing in and out of poses making the movement not so steeped. 

Also as part of this process I deleted extra keys and changed come of the curves in the graph to have smoother animation where needed. 

I also worked heavily on the facial animation, working on the mouth, moving the nose and cheeks in relation the the mouth movement and the eyes. I added so extra eye movement when he looks down to make him look like he's think and not just saying something. The diagram bellow shows that  down cast eyes are an indication of emotional involvement which is what i wanted to convey. I also made the eye movement from looking down to looking at the other character more snappy to give the impression the eyes are flicking about.

Pass 4: Final clean up

Week 8: Further Secondary Blocking

This further pass was tightening up the animation making sure that the character flowed smoothly from one pose to another without an glitches. As can be seen in the graph editor I added some easing in and out of poses and quicken some of the movements.

The next stage will be to create more overlap with the arms and head movement and some anticipation of movement. To help me understand this I looked at Gleen Keane's tutorial on how to anticipate movement. his style was very exaggerate, such as stretching the characters neck. I decided not to go that far with my mine as I want to keep my animation subtle. The reason why I want to keep a subtle realistic look is due to the content of the dialogue, it doesn't lend itself to comical exaggerated animation.

Gleen Keane: 

Pass 3: Further Secondary Blocking

Week 8: Secondary Blocking

I decided to use Al Pacino's performance as a reference for my animation as it is far better material to copy than my own performance.  Pacino's performance was a good reference for the overall body movement as well as the facial expression and lip movement.

In terms of body movement for this part of the dialogue, he moves slowly shifting his weight from one side of his body to the other when he changes positions slightly. He also moves towards camera slightly as he starts to talk which i have also incorporated into my animation.

When Pacino speaks he doesn't always look at the other characters. He looks down when saying 'if it will feed nothing else...' and look back saying ' it will feed my revenge'. This I felt was really powerful as it exaggerated the words said as he looked up. Also the way Pacino speaks he exposes his bottom teeth, moving his chin/ jaw and bottom lip when speaking. This really influenced how i moved my character and felt it gave some individual characteristics to my character.

In this part of the animation I changed the animation form stepped to spine (although I know know that I should have gone to liner first but i found the process i used worked well for me). here my main concern was holding the key poses and getting the timing with the words. the reference of Pacino helped as i could see when he moved in relation to when he spoke.

Pass 2: Secondary Blocking

Week 7: Blocking

To show the process I went through i'm going to focus on test and the developmental stages of just one part of the animation.

Shylock: To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else; it will feed my revenge.

Internal Pace and Rhythm:

Shylock has just turned around to face the man who has just spoken. He rises out of a resting position and moves slowly towards the other character, the camera and audience. His movements are slow and purposeful. He has many pauses as he thinks things through. Unlike the rest of the dialogue he doesn't always look at the character. He looks down at the floor as he collects his thoughts at the start of sentences.

Emotional Need:

He's justifying his need for a pound of human flesh and even though his words are dark he is not yet angry. He is filling his emotional need to express his views and shows the audience that his anger come form somewhere deeper. However looking at Al Pacino's interpretation he doesn't appear sad- more deep pondering, a calm before the storm.

Posing:

These are the key poses for this piece of dialogue. Working in some feed back from my formative I have kept his body language opens the character is trying to express himself as a posed to closed body language which is more linked with a shy nature. The red lines show the flow lines of  the body and the yellow show how the lines of the body, particular the arms lead the eye up to the characters face and eyes.

The first stage of the animation is done on stepped animations as this helps establish posing and initial timing. I decided to create my key poses on operative words in the dialogue where the character would place the greatest emphasis. For example the movement of the head upwards was done to emphasis the words 'my revenge'.
Animating to Camera:

I decide the best way to create strong poses was by animating to camera. I set up the camera I was going to render out of at the right aspect ration and placed a render gate so I could see what would appear in shot. Using this two window set up I could navigate in perspective and change my poses in there but be able to see how that looked to the camera. This allows me more flexibility as some poses might cause some pinching but it that didn't appear on camera and created a strong pose then I don't have to worry about it.

Pass 1: Blocking

Week 6: Formative Feedback

I received some good feedback form the formative and also some alterations and some suggestions.
I look at a number of interpretations of this part of Shakespeare play, two which I posted but decided to stay close to the version my dialogue was taken form.

I particular like the way the camera framed Shylock as he moved around. Dan suggested that as the character builds up a crescendo that he could move closer to camera. I like this suggestion as it fits the dialogue and his movements will emphasis the rise in voice tone.

I will also make changes to the timing of one of my cut aways. the last shot was originally going to show Shylock lunge forward invading Salarino's personal space after say his last line. I have now decided to change that so he moves forward as Shylock says his last line 'I am  a Jew'.

I also decided to remove the extra character from the second shot as he doesn't say anything nor appear further on in the animation or add to the overall narrative or performance. Without having an extra character to animate I can focus more on the key characters in the performance.

Animation Schedule: 

With the confirmed deadline extension this is now my schedule for the animation. the blocking and secondary animation (which will involve facial expression and lip sync). the last part will be a clean up process, removing extra keys, phasing, micro movements and eye and lip movements.