Project 1: Animation Reel 1

Oct. 15, 2021 

Following the week of my animation critique, I was putting my classmates' and my professor's critiques into consideration. They took note of my concerns when I expressed it to them, and they offered the best advice they could, albeit with a little difficulty: 

• There are too many sudden jumps in the animation
• The usage of stepped and splined animation is jarring and distracting
• There should be more frames to indicate character movement 
• The remote must be constrained 
• Character 2's poses (their annoyed pose and after pose) are out of sync
• Character 2's COG is too stiff; not enough movement 
• Character 1 is moving too quickly during the first couple of frames in the animation
• The camera is moving too quickly in the beginning

What I have definitely seen was this uncanny movement between Char 1 and 2: Char 1 moves too quickly during the first couple of frames and therefore has more key frames than Char 2, who barely has any movement. 

Oct. 8, 2021 - Blocking and Character Adjustments

To my avail, my progress has not been as strong as I have intended, but I believe I have made some decent progress. I continued my progress since last week for further improve the characters' poses to convey solid emotion. Said adjustments for the characters are as followed... 

    Character 1... 

• Rearranged her original still stance to make her move more 
• leans forward to the TV and leans back, 
• shifts in her seat to sit closer to Character 2 to point fingers at them

    Character 2... 

• leans close to the TV at first and then slouches down 
• flinches when Character 1 points at them

Despite these small adjustments, there are some minor errors that are very prevalent, even during the blocking stage: 

• The remote control is not set to parent with Character 2's hand. It is floating randomly around the screen and makes it hard for the audience to follow. 
• Character 1 only slides across the couch when it should be more of a scooting movement or lifting her body up slightly. If she were to slide, then her feet must indicate that they are pushing, in which they are not. 
• Some keys are set to stepped while some are set to spline. This is a very awkward adjustment because every key frame that I have created is automatically splined. This is merely a settings adjustment I have forgotten and must be done. 
• The camera is moving too fast for my liking. Maya was running slow during my progress, thus messing up my work. It is supposed to replicate the camera movement from the audio's original cut scene video.

In this screenshot, Character 2's arm clips through the couch when it wasn't supposed to. It can easily be fixed with minor adjustments. 

Character 2 was able to react to Character 1. I wanted them to retain their calm and collected stance but their pose still seems to be a bit dry. As mentioned, the remote is not set to parent with their hand so it is floating awkwardly.

I realized that my work progress was faster when I work on one character individually rather than two simutaneously. While it is a more comfortable route for me, I feel that focusing on one character does not leave room for the other character's reaction. This is why Character 2 "doesn't match" with Character 1 (their communication is not in sync). I feel that my progress would greatly improve if I were to record better reference videos. 

Oct. 1, 2021 - Blocking

From the critique a week prior, my classmates have implemented very helpful insight that is deemed necessary for me to improve my animation. Last week, I vocalized that the characters' emotions were not expressed directly and were therefore confusing, and that they have looked too stiff. My classmates responded that the animation lacked flexibility, and provided their own input: 

    Character 1... 

• should point to Char. 2 in accusation ("You owe me a new TV...")
• should jester to the TV in utter exasperation and disappointment ("...a new TV...")   
• should lean close to the TV, also make her shift in her seat and closer to Char 2.     

    Character 2...    

• should lean closer to the TV at first, and then slump on the couch
• should have their arm on the armrest in the start of the animation, and then make it hang off of the couch to show movement        

I added additional poses to further emphasize Character's 1 actions

    The biggest critique they have mentioned was that, meanwhile the upper body had a lot of movement, the lower body lacked, thus creating rather uncanny and stiff movements. I was able to fix a couple of aspects of this, including more lower body movement; however, it was extremely difficult for me to key certain frames along with the audio correctly because Maya lagged a lot. Hence, poses would be keyed where I did not want them to. I'm not too sure whether it is a software issue or just my laptop.

 

    The video provided is definitely not the final result. By next week, I plan to completely finish blocking Character 1. I also plan to edit Character 2's movements to compliment Character 1's, since their poses are off compared to hers. 

Sept. 23, 2021 - Blocking

    Following the last critique, I was able to work on the blocking stages. I referenced off of my own recordings instead of following drawn instructions, which proved to be a major lifesaver with proper and accurate body mechanics. In these pieces, I tried to emphasize as much emotion as possible. Character 1's emotions are more exaggerated therefore making her stature and movements very stiff, meanwhile Character 2 is a lot more slouched with their stature and movements looking fluid. 

    The animation that is provided is not complete. The blocking process is done for the first half of the eight-second audio clip. I was not able to block the entirety of the animation, so that will be my goal for next week. Attached below is a much longer animated segment. 

    This is only a rough structure of their movements, so it is currently on its way for improvement, but I believe that their emotions are not conveyed clearly and it would cause confusion. For example, Character 1 is supposed to drag her hand down her face as an expression of frustration, but her pose still looks stiff and unclear. By the next two weeks, I plan to exaggerate the character poses even further. 

Sept. 17, 2021 - Character Development, References, and Staging

    With the help of my professors and classmates, I was able to understand my issue and tackle it. I was informed that, instead of "not getting carried away with the animation" to make the posing simpler, I must exaggerate their movements as much as possible to display a clear and crisp story. 

    This, in turn, has allowed me to formulate how Characters 1 and 2 react in the present situation according to their provided audios: Character 1 is more uptight and irritable contrasting with Character 2's laidback and dismissive attitude. 

    The animatic was enough to help me formulate the pacing and staging of the scene, but not the blocking. With the assistance of my sister, I filmed myself acting out how the characters would move: 

Reference for Character 1

Reference for Character 2

    I myself did not model characters for this animation, so I have downloaded two rigged 3D characters as well as a TV and a couch prop. Provided below is the initial scene setup, with the characters' contrasting poses. I made sure to emphasize the stiffness of Character 1. Unfortunately, no blocking was able to be set up, which was something I wanted to accomplish by this week.

Meanwhile I want to get the texturing down to clean out the scene, but my biggest focus is the animation. By next week, I intend to have all of the key poses down. 

Sept. 10, 2021 - Storyboard Animatic

 

    This project will be an 8-second animation sequence of a dialogue scene from the video game No Straight Roads. I chose the You Owe Me a New TV audio to start with because, since the original clip didn't involve a lot of movement, I was eager to recreate the scene with my own poses. My main intent is to focus on character dialogue and personality in this scene, so I didn't want to get too carried away with the poses. I settled for a scene where two characters are sitting on the couch and their TV breaks.

 

Below are Frames 1 and 2. I decided that key framing small movements would help me block the characters better. 

My biggest issue with recreating the scene was that my own storytelling struggles to match with the audio. For example, PERSON 2 (character on the right side of couch, holding remote) is supposed to be irritated at the fact that PERSON 1 points the problem at her, but the voice actor responsible for her line states it more as a factual statement rather than sounding annoyed. 

I struggled to recreate the scene, so I am curious on whether to redo the poses or select another audio clip. 

Sept. 6, 2021 - Planning and Audio Gathering

    My intent for this class is work on animation sequences involving interaction between two or more characters and action/fighting scenes in order to emphasize storytelling in my works. Meanwhile I consider it important to dabble on both cinematic and video game animation to gain expertise, my actual intent is to narrow down to a particular path. 

    I have also decided to work on short animation reels with a maximum 10-15 seconds. This is because it will assist me on working quickly and on time. I have mapped out a schedule to further assist me on working efficiently: 

• Week 1: Gather video source     
• Week 2: Gather models and props for animation
• Week 4 - 5: Block key frames 
• Week 7-8: Splining   

The schedule may be updated over time. 

My audio source will be cutscenes from the video game No Straight Roads. With this video, I have selected 3 audio clips to use for my animation. 

You Owe Me a New TV  - start at 3:30 on the video

I Got a Text Message - start at 1:21 on the video

We Have Nothing to Lose  - start at 2:28 on the video