Animation has begun!

Production on The Life of a Student Animator has now officially begun! I'm a bit behind, but animation started yesterday. It took me some time to push myself to begin (starting is always the hardest part), but once I got into it I really enjoyed it. I blocked out three shots yesterday:

(She is laughing because she is playing with a character rig, deforming it.)

Of course, with a new stage of the project came a new organisational list to keep me on track! I took my old shotlist and added columns that would allow me to check off each stage of animation for each shot (since each shot goes through several passes of work before it is finished). The aim is to turn all those pale blue boxes red. Once that happens, I'm into post-production! (The grey boxes are gaps - because I want my shot numbers to stay the same - or stages that don't apply to some shots.)

(Click image to enlarge. You can see the actual spreadsheet here, which I will be updating continually as I animate.)

What I have realised, looking at this handy table, is that I have a lot of boxes to check and not much time to do so! But with the shots varying so greatly in length and complexity I will simply have to wait and see how I get on before I can further evaluate my workload and schedule. At least for now, step-blocking (putting in the main keyframes and setting the tangents in the graph editor to 'stepped') does not take very long, so I should be able to block out the majority of the film quite quickly.

Since starting animation I have learned what an interesting piece this is to work on, as it is a continuous process; as I consolidate my ideas, I begin animating them, and as I animate them I pay attention to myself as I do so and then put what I notice back into the animation. Even as I was animating my character, Phoebe, laughing at the deforming rig on her screen, I was doing exactly the same thing to her!

(Tee hee…)

So I'm going to continue to stay aware of the way I work so that my animation can be as believable as possible.

Caitlin :)

Refining my idea based on "Acting for Animators"

I've been digging into Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators, and it has really helped to get me thinking more in depth about the ideas in my final year project. For instance, Hooks emphasises the idea of 'theatrical reality' - essentially a reality with conflict that gives it more interest - by writing, "your character should play an action in pursuit of an objective while overcoming an obstacle" (pg. 18). This made me wonder how I could strengthen the scenes in my animation to reinforce this idea of the student pursuing her objective of finishing her animation while overcoming obstacles.

I also began to think about how my character could be more effective, and decided that I would never see her as anything more than the rig I downloaded unless I gave her at least a couple of basic facts. So she is now Phoebe, an independent, 20-year-old student. These seem like obvious statements, but they really do help me to see her as a character rather than a character rig.

Off the back of things I was reading and thinking about, I made a big chart detailing the mood and motivation of each shot. Since both Hooks and my supervisor are big on 'scenes start in the middle', I put in a 'before and after' column so I would know how Phoebe comes into and goes out of the shot in terms of movement and mood. (The purple is for Phoebe's housemate, Melissa.)

I referred to this table between filming each shot of my video reference, and I will do so for each shot as I animate it, too.

In February I will be attending the Animex animation and games festival held at my uni, and as part of that I've also opted to take part in Hooks' Acting for Animators Masterclass that he runs every year. Though the animation of my project will be complete by that point, the class will definitely help to develop my animation skills for the career ahead of me.

Caitlin :)

Reference footage

This week I shot a lot of reference footage to use when I begin animating soon (my schedule is having to be rearranged a bit, as predicted). I did a couple of versions of a lot of the shots, giving me lots to choose from to base my character acting on.

This is a highly edited version, made to (almost) fit the timings of the previs I made, to show the basic idea of how the character will be acting.

I still don't know if I'm trying to cram too many ideas in, as this seems kind of fast… I'll see what my supervisor says when I present my progress review next week. The good news is I made myself laugh with the footage I filmed, so hopefully other people will laugh too! After all, what's the point of being an animator if you're not going to make an idiot of yourself on camera at some point? (My inhibitions are slowly being destroyed as my course goes on.)

In other news, I created myself a professional Twitter account for networking and such (so far I'm just tweeting and pretending that people will see it): www.twitter.com/Caitlin_Vickers

Now to make a presentation!

Caitlin :)

Asset modelling begins!

While I still have a little pre-production to do (namely reference footage), I have now begun to move into the production stage of my work. Exciting!

My environment is simple, being just a bedroom. While I want the assets in the environment also to be simple, so that I can put most of my time into the animation, I also want them to make a believable and clean background. My initial frame of reference for this was 'Violet Hill' - a student piece by Sam Haley:

Since blocky asset models like this don't take much time to create, I decided to put more detail in than this just to add some more texture to the scene.

These are the things I have made in Maya so far:

These models will not be textured, but they will be coloured and have appropriate Maya materials applied to make them look more like what they are meant to be.

Initially I thought my room layout didn't look too bad, but once I saw the more detailed models side-by-side with the original cuboids I realised just how much more they added.

It is much more obvious now what is what! I still have quite a few things to make, but seeing as the five things above probably took two or three hours between them I'm not worried about time. It will be worth it when I have a good-looking animation. :D

I am also currently putting together a progress presentation to give to my supervisor in a couple of weeks. Since the main aim is to show what research we've been doing, I should probably use this time to get as much of it done as possible!

Caitlin :)

Previs

I spent the past couple of days blocking out my previs in Maya, just roughly animating the character in the space. I found it really helpful to get a feel for how long certain scenes might take, how much effort they require, how they look in the 3D space and how long they actually need to be on screen.

(See my previous blog post for a screenshot of my blocked-out bedroom environment and a link to the rig I used.)

Limited animation, as you can see! There are places where storyboard panels sufficed, like for the shots of the computer monitor, and where I couldn't figure something out soon enough, like a reflective mirror (I don't think it can be done without rendering) and a second character who is the right height... but it mostly does the job. It is obviously lacking humour as the humour depends on the way I animate it, and this isn't really animated. You also can't see the passage of time in this; I didn't think to put some lighting in until after I finished. But it will be there!

I feel a lot better about what this involves now, having been through each shot and really thought about how they work. While it is still a bit long, at least half of it is not challenging (images on the monitor, the student clicking and staring at the screen), so I feel the workload is achievable.

Caitlin :)

Post-animatic - organisation, previs and a rig

My last post was about the animatic I created to demonstrate the length and timings of my "life of a student animator" idea. It ended up running nearly two minutes, which is naturally concerning when I'm doing a twenty-week project! I decided to create a shot list - something that would not only tell me how many shots I have, what is in them and how long they each are, but would also include estimations for how difficult I deem each shot to be in terms of how time-consuming the animation will be.

The shots are in order down the left (with some greyed out that I will probably not use), and there is a key at the right showing what each colour means. I have then totalled up how many of each shot difficulty there are, how many seconds they add up to, and the percentage of the whole piece they take up!

(Click image to enlarge. You can also go here for the live version, which will be updated as I go along.)

With the shots I cut out my piece is still ninety seconds, but I couldn't really refine my idea any further just by looking at the sheet. My supervisor suggested I move onto the 3D previs (previsualisation - the next stage up from a 2D animatic) to get a feel for how the shots work in 3D space. The previs involves almost no animation, having the characters just sliding around the scene purely to get a feel for the placement and timing.

In Maya I built a very blocky environment that the character could move around in the previs. While I want my finished environment to still be very simple, it will have more detail than this as it doesn't take very long and I already have the skeleton now. I will also add basic colours.

It is just a simple, yet nice, student bedroom, designed from a mix of two rooms that I have lived in as a student. I put the window where it is so that when the camera is watching the student working at her computer, we will be able to see the time of day through the window behind her.

The rig I have chosen to use for my piece is called 'Bonnie'. She was made by Josh Sobel, and you download her free for Maya here. She has detailed controls and nice textures, so that added to the fact she is free makes her perfect!

Here she is in her new, grey bedroom.

So… onto the previs! I will update again once it's done.

Caitlin :)

Rough animatic - sketchy sound effects and all!

I finally drew my storyboard, so today I scanned it and timed up the panels in iMovie. There aren't many frames, just enough to get the main story points across, so while some frames last for a long time without much happening this is because there will be action and movement in the animation!

I quickly recorded some sound afterwards to help clarify some of what was going on (and add some more humour).

Now that I have uploaded it, I wonder if an extra twist on the end would improve the whole piece - for instance, that error sound playing again and the student's eyes flying open... haha! The ending seems a bit too soft and happy at the moment, so an extra moment of comedic peril might be a good idea (even though I do not wish that on any animator).

The main thing I have got out of this animatic is seeing, finally, how long the piece will end up. At nearly two minutes I'm a little concerned it's too much animation to take on, but I'll think on it. A lot of the shots require very little movement, so maybe if I can make a shot list that details how much is going on in each bit (in a more practical way than the script) I can get a better idea of the workload.

Caitlin :)

Schedules and surveys

After finalising my script, I have been able to properly dive into my project now - or, in my case, take tentative steps into storyboarding! (It is not a stage I particularly enjoy, but it is a crucial one!)

The first thing I did this week was to make a schedule - a plan of what tasks I aim to get done week by week. I've learned over the past couple of years that while I can be pretty useless without some sort of plan to keep me on track, with a plan I can be very effective! It also relieves stress as I know that if I stick to the plan it will get done in time. Here is my lovely rainbow schedule:

(Click to enlarge. For a more up-to-date view you can see the actual spreadsheet here.)

I'm currently in week 4 of term time, and judging by the number of coloured boxes this is quite a busy week! I basically just want to have my idea storyboarded and made into an animatic (which I then show to friends around me to see if it conveys what I want) as soon as possible so I can confirm all the timings and move on to the rest of my planning.

Another task I set myself for this week was to, as part of my research, create and distribute a survey/questionnaire that would help me define what other people think of animators - in case my project idea is something no one else understands - and the industry in general. Once I close the survey I will format the results nicely and post them in a new tab on this blog. It is a digital survey, done through Google Drive's 'form' creator, that I posted on my Facebook page, in a forum, and on my Google+ page. It has been online for just over a day now and I've already received some very interesting, helpful and insightful comments from those who have taken part. They are all anonymous, which make it more intriguing for me as I can't guess what was written by whom!

I plan to leave it online for a week or so, so if you are reading this before November 2013 and you would like to help me gather as many results as possible, please take part in my survey here. Thank you!

All in all, things are moving along nicely.

Caitlin :)

The first stage - the project proposal

Hallo! Just a quick update to say what I'm up to with my project. The first official deadline has passed now (yesterday, in fact). It was only a small one - worth 5% of my total mark - but it required a lot of thinking! Before my project could officially go ahead I was required to write and submit a proposal that has to be approved by my tutor. It is generally more of a formality, as very few people will request to do something that would be rejected; it is mainly to get us to think thoroughly about our projects before ploughing ahead with insufficient planning, as it required us to detail what the project is about, why we are doing it, what it will involve, in what time span we plan to get it done, and what research we are going to undertake to support it.

The good thing is my supervisor likes my idea, so I didn't have to change it before writing my proposal! I'm also excited about the research phase, which I didn't think I would be. I've chosen some texts and websites that are both valuable and interesting (this list is not exhaustive of everything I have included in my submission):

• Acting for animators by Ed Hooks, in which he uses classic acting theory to describe how we can improve our character animation;
• Cartoon animation by Preston Blair - an older book about traditional animation with awesome drawings of poses and cycles and methods for animation;
• fxguide has new articles almost every day from industry professionals on all things film and 3D;
• Digital-Tutors has hundreds of video tutorials on software, subjects and methods (Teesside University currently has a group subscription to this);
• and 3D World magazine has a variety of articles from theory and art to specific tutorials, so I will be using some of these to strengthen my work, too.

I mentioned in my last post that my piece will be character animation based with simple block environments; here is a student project (also from Teesside University) I found online that shows the kind of look I'm after - clean, polished and understandable:

I've cut down my lengthy script to more reasonable length now, so after I've made a more thorough schedule I should be able to start storyboarding. Hooray!

Caitlin :)

Introduction - this blog and my project

While I already have a blog on which I post updates on my 3D work, I was advised to create a new one for my final year project -- one that would make sense to anyone marking my project or judging if I'm appropriate for ExpoTees, for example, without being distracted and confused by loads of stuff that isn't directly to do with this project!

For those who don't know, ExpoTees is Teesside University's own student showcase, where the best students in the School of Computing can, if they are chosen, exhibit their final year work and have employers from animation and games companies from London and all over look at it. Needless to say if you want to nab an awesome job it's somewhere you should aim to be!

So for clarity, this is where I will post everything to do with my 'Computer Animation Project' module, showing every stage of the process along the way.

Since I want a job as a 3D character animator when I leave uni, the focus of my project will be on creating some really awesome character animation. This means lots of emotion, acting and comedy in my character, with very simple block environments to keep the audience's focus -- and mine! -- on the animation. Rather than creating a showreel I want to make one cohesive story -- not a short film, as such, but a one- to two-minute piece that shows off the different kinds of animation I am capable of and my ability to tell a story.

The idea I am going to focus this piece on is "The Life of a Student Animator". This means I will effectively be animating someone animating! I want to portray the humour and trials an animator faces through their day, from pulling funny faces in the mirror for reference to nearly falling asleep while waiting for a render. I want this piece to be relatable -- something that aspiring, current and used-to-be animators can all watch and say, "Man, I know that feeling!" and that at the same time can have non-animators watch and say, "Wow, they go through a really crazy process!"

I have written my proposal, so that just needs to be approved now, and while I have a first draft of the script it needs shortening quite a lot before it will be something that I can realistically finish for hand-in by the 21st March next year. I aim to have the planning process -- script, storyboard, animatic, reference footage, scheduling -- done my mid-November. I'm glad, at least, even if the whole idea of doing the project seems a bit scary at the moment, that I know where I'm going and what I need to do next. Having a blog also motivates me and keeps me excited, because even though I don't know if anyone is reading I am still eager to share what I'm up to.

Caitlin :)