FINAL ANIMATION

After trying real hard and doing my best, this is what I came up with. I'm quite happy with the result. I know there is lots of fine tuning that I could do further to make it look better. My strong points in this assignment are the camera shots, composition of the frame and the sync with the dialogues. I need to work on my timing and controlling the motion with time aspect. I'm sorry but I couldn't figure out how to turn the face controls off.

What did I learn from all this?

The following is an explanation of somethings I learnt in this unit and a note on how I've adpted them in my project:

1) Pose to Pose and Straight Forward Animation

I learnt that once you've narrowed down on your key poses it's then easy to work on the rest of the animation. You've won half the battle if you've got this sorted. From here onwards its more about working on the details. Let me warn you... it takes IMMENSE amount of patience JUST to decide on that! But it's lots of fun trying to observe other characters and then to adapt their mannerisms to your own.

2) Line of Action

Since it was a really short clip that I picked to animate, there wasn't much movement among the characters. Hence the line of action was quite static. i was concentrating more on the gestures, postures, body language and the facial expressions. I've tried to convey most of the message through the movement of the character's upper body. Movement of arms and raising the shoulder etc.

3) Composition of Frames

I first created an animatic with the composition of frames. This was I clearly defined what I wanted my audience to see in each section of the dialogue. Once that was sorted the other information in each frame was to be imparted through the body language and expression of the movement of the character itself. I followed the RULE OF THIRDS in most of my composition.

4) Readability

I tried to adapt poses that were clear and not complicated. Once I'd fix on a key frame i'd make sure if the action was clear if the pose was expressive in its silhoutte state. If it wasn't then I'd change the pose to soemthing more simple and clear as that is what is easy to animate and people udnerstand what's going on.

ANIMATION!!

Reflections: This is my first attempt at the animation. Some shots are a little slow. I'm still working on it. But I'm quite happy with some parts. I'm trying my best to sync it with the dialogues but some parts still seem to be in slow motion. Bloody timing!

Animation / Animatic

Animatic Take 3: Animating the characters

Reflection: After setting the frames and the camera angles, I then worked on the body language and the gestures for each character. This is one of the initial playblasts. I realised I need to work on some frame timings as they were too fast.

Animatic Take 2 : Frame composition and Timing with dialogues

Reflection: This is a rough animatic I put together with the given audio. This is only to see how the frames look like with the particular section of the audio. This also help me realise the 'timing' element. Once I fixed the main cameras I figured how long each frame had to last with the dialogues.

Animatic Take 1: Setting Frame Compositions

Reflection: This was the first try for the frames once the cameras were set. Starting with the establishing shot I worked on the composition of the frames giving importace to the character who was speaking and showing the audience what I wanted them to see.

Storyboard

Reflection: This is hand drawn version of the storyboard. I was chalking out the dialogues with the rough frames with who and what I wanted to show in those frames. I mean to fine tune the compositions once I switch to maya and set the cameras.

Animation Exercise - II

Reflection: This is a more faster version. The character here looks more surprised than the previous clip. But it's quite short. I need to work on increasing the number of frames and giving more time for anticipation.

Inspiration/Research: After observing the video reference that Chris put up on the Blackboard, it was easier to figure out the timing and to get the chracter to anticipate the action much faster.

Reflection: This was my first shot on following the video and to replicate the action. But this one worked out to be way too slow. The anticipation was there but it didn't look like 'shocking' surprise. It looked more like a 'oh did I notice something there' kind of look.

Animation Exercise -I

Reflection: Animation of a character reading a book, then looking up with surprise. This was done using video reference provided in class.

Inspiration/Research: I love watching Disney characters and their movies. So I like to exaggerate the action of the character. I've observed the movement and body language of alladin, the dwarfs etc.