Performance and Character: Week 6: 29/10/18: Animators survival kit DVD's and heads up about character performance.
In week 6 of Performance and Character we took a look at some of the Animators Survival kit DVD's to give us some advice and ideas for our character walks which we would review for next week. Johny our tutor also showed us some audio clips that we would be using in our next exercise in character performance. The idea being we would create a character performance based on said audio clip and how we may see the performance. However we were warned that some of these clips were audio scenes from movies that we may recognise. We were told not to copy that sequence but rely on our own imaginations.
When we were listening to the audio clips, I could recognise one of them from the Disney Film enchanted I felt this was an example of how we shouldn't copy the sequence from that film if we've seen it before. However in other clips such as the first one which sounded like a kung fu expert I felt it sounded funny and could already visualise a sequence idea in my mind. The fourth one I thought sounded like a very strict moment like a teacher was telling off a student for disobedient behavior and how it ended with a strict looking face.
In terms of facial movements Johny said the exercise focused on the performance but we could use lipsynch in 2D if we wanted to, but when doing it leave lip synch for last and do the poses first. I could see the sense in doing the poses first as I found out in first year Creative play lip synch was rather difficult to do in 2D animation. In 3d animation if using it we were told we could use the Keith rig as that would possibly be best for character performance I would need to consider this when fully briefed on the exercise.
On the matter of the walk exercises, Johny advised us when doing them to try and avoid going straight into the performance of a simple walk cycle and consider elements that lead up to the performance. This however confused me as I believed it was like the walks we did in first year but with more performance and personality, but Johny then assured us if we wanted to approach this as a walk cycle we could which made me feel much more assured.
We were given time to work on and receive feedback for our walking animations in their current state whilst working on them. I showed Johny and James my child walk and bad limp attempts in 2D and 3D for feedback as these were the ones I felt needed looking at.
James advised that I need to look at the holds in the bad limp in Maya. I had tried to add holds before and explained my original idea was using a walk cycle then building upon it which in point of fact was an element mentioned in todays lesson. The overall thought was to re-visit the limp and focus on doing holds for that position.
In terms of the child playing puddles walk Johny was impressed that I looked at the use of perspective lines in the animation to help in scaling the character. One area he suggested I looked at was keeping the head shape consistent as it seemed to change shape over the animation and that was because I was tracing from the layers before the poses and in-betweens. Johny advised in terms of perspective that I think of the lines as rail road tracks and use the sleepers to help pin point the foot placements as they seemed out of scale.
He recommended for size reference that I looked at Andrew Loomis's PDF book on figure drawing and that the size and head heights of the characters could help in the characters size. I felt this was helpful as it reminded me of the head heights element from my college life drawing classes. Johny advised I revisit the animation and place in a clean up layer of the animation to help in terms of foot placements.
Looking back on this session I would think its helped tremendously in terms of my pre work review and having a basic idea of how the character performance audio exercise would work. Learning from the audio clips I may revisit them and attempt some dummy animation tests to get a better grasp of the characters performance and create reference footage while the audio is playing to help with the lip synching and performance when translating to 2D,3D and stop motion.
I could see the sense in the feedback as these were the two animations I needed feedback on before the review week. In conclusion the session has helped me get a grasp on the next exercise and help me to develop my walk exercises over the next week. In future I shall look into using the train track sleepers idea for perspective animations that I'll perform in the near future.
When we were listening to the audio clips, I could recognise one of them from the Disney Film enchanted I felt this was an example of how we shouldn't copy the sequence from that film if we've seen it before. However in other clips such as the first one which sounded like a kung fu expert I felt it sounded funny and could already visualise a sequence idea in my mind. The fourth one I thought sounded like a very strict moment like a teacher was telling off a student for disobedient behavior and how it ended with a strict looking face.
In terms of facial movements Johny said the exercise focused on the performance but we could use lipsynch in 2D if we wanted to, but when doing it leave lip synch for last and do the poses first. I could see the sense in doing the poses first as I found out in first year Creative play lip synch was rather difficult to do in 2D animation. In 3d animation if using it we were told we could use the Keith rig as that would possibly be best for character performance I would need to consider this when fully briefed on the exercise.
On the matter of the walk exercises, Johny advised us when doing them to try and avoid going straight into the performance of a simple walk cycle and consider elements that lead up to the performance. This however confused me as I believed it was like the walks we did in first year but with more performance and personality, but Johny then assured us if we wanted to approach this as a walk cycle we could which made me feel much more assured.
We were given time to work on and receive feedback for our walking animations in their current state whilst working on them. I showed Johny and James my child walk and bad limp attempts in 2D and 3D for feedback as these were the ones I felt needed looking at.
James advised that I need to look at the holds in the bad limp in Maya. I had tried to add holds before and explained my original idea was using a walk cycle then building upon it which in point of fact was an element mentioned in todays lesson. The overall thought was to re-visit the limp and focus on doing holds for that position.
In terms of the child playing puddles walk Johny was impressed that I looked at the use of perspective lines in the animation to help in scaling the character. One area he suggested I looked at was keeping the head shape consistent as it seemed to change shape over the animation and that was because I was tracing from the layers before the poses and in-betweens. Johny advised in terms of perspective that I think of the lines as rail road tracks and use the sleepers to help pin point the foot placements as they seemed out of scale.
He recommended for size reference that I looked at Andrew Loomis's PDF book on figure drawing and that the size and head heights of the characters could help in the characters size. I felt this was helpful as it reminded me of the head heights element from my college life drawing classes. Johny advised I revisit the animation and place in a clean up layer of the animation to help in terms of foot placements.
Looking back on this session I would think its helped tremendously in terms of my pre work review and having a basic idea of how the character performance audio exercise would work. Learning from the audio clips I may revisit them and attempt some dummy animation tests to get a better grasp of the characters performance and create reference footage while the audio is playing to help with the lip synching and performance when translating to 2D,3D and stop motion.
I could see the sense in the feedback as these were the two animations I needed feedback on before the review week. In conclusion the session has helped me get a grasp on the next exercise and help me to develop my walk exercises over the next week. In future I shall look into using the train track sleepers idea for perspective animations that I'll perform in the near future.
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