Animation Practice

I managed all the sound personally and sourced from royalty free recordings.

I knew I wanted a quirky and cartoony sound for the introduction since that act in my script was classified as “humour”.

I used a small bell sound for the tail wiggle of Harper. This is important because regular bells sound like chimes or alarms. It improved the scene immensely by drawing the audience into the detail and anticipation.

The sound of the landing of Harpers jump was a snow thud recording and a wet splat. This seemed to make it more natural for me since snow and water are elements in the animals real surrounding. The tail when it moves before jumping actually thuds on on the snow. It was hard finding a thud sound for this and I had to change the pitch because shes small and delicate and a heavy thud would have been too overpowering for a small tail. The pitch and volume made it higher and lighter.

The crack was sampled from real ice cracking. And the under water sounds add a detremental impact that really sounds like being submerged. These were actually taken from a drama royalty free music track on Youtube. I had to download plenty of sound and listen to the entire length to find the right clips to portray my scenes. Since I spent so long animating I had my story memorised and if I heard something I knew whether it would fit and where it would fit immediately.

There are two versions of hopeful songs that come into the end. And throughout the film a real life recording of winter ambience background sounds have been used. So it portrays a lifelike atmosphere and sells the story better. This all emphasized the movement and the portrayal of life and character. So it was fundamental for the animation to have sound that did it justice.

My way of describing the 12 principles of animation. Based on my study from The Illusion of Life.

Behind the scenes of my animation showing the jump stages which use the full body to convey realism. It demonstrates squash and stretch, anticipation, acrs, exaggeration, staging and secondary animation. The video also shows the render without motion blur and pays attention to examples of overlapping action on Harpers tail.

Joint controls weren’t working for me so I animated the whole thing moving each bone joint at a time.

I used these references as inspiration and research. Drawn to life is a book by Walt Stanchfield that focuses on capturing posture and emotion. I used this to learn about the history of art and animation and the way it portrays life.

The text images above are from The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

The seal in snow was revealing to show the playful attitude of harp seals which I used in my character Harper.

The quote is what inspired my message to the audience to take initiative and adopt a positive mindset towards the future of the planet.

Books:

Stanchfield, W. and Hahn, D. (n.d.). Drawn to life.

Some scenes didn’t render with the preferred outcome. I used things I learnt in VFX Studies to correct them. Such as keying, tracking, rotoscoping, grading and colour correcting.

This scene for example, didn’t have Harper in it at the beginning. When editing the story order was subject to change and Harper’s entrance wasn’t working. The scene was meant to be one smooth take. But having it cut from beneath the surface, in the unknown and then cutting to the air up above made it much more dynamic.

To put my harp seal in the shot, I used the bezier tool to roto around and track her into the frames. This was gruelling because I was manually tracking and it was in Premiere pro. Yet still, I’m certain it was faster than re-rendering so it worked out to be a great way to problem solve. Funnily, because the roto key frames weren’t coordinating - i.e, when one roto keyframed at a transform location on the frame, the following frame would be un-coordinated and lose it’s original position.

So I could only work on making the keyframes work for either the beginning half or the end half but the underwater clip could not have Harper keyframed into the whole sequence. So, I exported the first half then keyframed the second and exported that. I used the two separate videos together however, the beginning and end had no middle - it was too tricky. So I made the executive decision to put another clip in-between.

I used the following clip which is shot above water. And the aforementioned benefit of this was purely unintentional, I did it to correct the errors. It turned out to work well and perhaps even better...

The sound for this was an issue because I used the Denoise mixed which is nearly impossible to detect which of the sounds it has changed. I will need to use subtitles as well as correcting the sound at the beginning. Beyond this, the snow sounds and thud of Harper’s tail before she jumps could be emphasised.

Using the roto pen in Premiere pro on different mask layers to match the colour, lightness and brightness of the two scenes that rendered with the same camera but for some reason with different exposures and warmth.

They’re still to different to go after one another so I used a clip in the middle to bridge them and disguise the flaw. The clip wasn’t working for the scene because it returned to the same angle so it seemed unnatural and didn’t flow smoothly.

Here, I show the roto mask used for the opacity. I instead layered the lighter clip on top and changed the overlay settings. I then used the roto pen shown to keep the movement of the character in full colour. If I didn’t use the roto Harper would have looked transparent and ghost like. See below.

Word count = 927

Introduction

Arctic animals seem quite distant from the popular storytelling narratives, since the environment is quite barren it would make it difficult to tell compelling and entertaining stories. Compared to jungle or woodland/forest creatures, arctic animals aren’t personified as often. So, I set this challenge to make my characters more relatable and fun for the audience of 5-11 years and that’s why I scrapped ideas of showing any death which was my first idea, and instead created a less solemn and more uplifting story.

Story and audience

My animation conveys an ecological message regarding endangered species by demonstrating inner feelings and emotions of the animals when they witness a drastic side effect to climate change. Exposing children to the personification of the harp seal and polar bear evokes empathy and draws importance to the problems the creatures face. The narration follows a more personal perspective of climate change which is a first-person viewpoint of someone who has discovered the devastating truth about climate change. This ties together with the visuals and completes the story by guiding the target audience to what and how they should be feeling about it. So instead of feeling negative the animation instils hope and determination for the future, which is the attitude that helps solve the problem. The voice-over script was inspired by a saying, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” So, from this, I set out to deliver a message in the story that even the smallest person, or seal, can have big beliefs and larger results simply by having hope. This is also why the voice is quite soft, youthful and light-hearted, making it relatable from the perspective of my audience of children.

Process and workflow

I encountered many problems with my project work, corrupted Maya files resulting in starting from scratch days before the crucial project end, render times and more. The biggest dilemma I faced, however, was fear and lack of confidence within the software. All the errors made became a launchpad for me into advanced and familiar usage of Maya. The one thing I was most comfortable with was animating – applying the 12 Principles of Animation. As a traditional hand-drawn artist, this was the most rewarding task for me. Most of my time was spent re-rigging the characters for ease of movement and smooth weight-painting that affects the mesh. Despite this, I managed to demonstrate secondary animation and overlapping action with flair. In order to portray the importance of the message behind the arctic tale a lot of storytelling takes place with good staging, dynamic compositions and clear and definite actions. These components are imposing to combine in any scene and one element is a challenge to the best of animators.

My animation skills developed to showcase how to portray life in inanimate objects. I did this with animations as small as a change of expression or as big as the broadest physical action such as Harper jumping from the ledge of the ice block. Before she jumps, she crouches low, gathering herself like a spring after drawing backwards aiming herself at the place of the next activity. This is the oldest device of the theatre, and without it my young audience would wonder “What’s she doing?” The anticipatory moves may not show why something is happening but there is no question about what is happening, or what comes next. Expecting that, the audience can now enjoy the way it’s done. Errors and problem solving

Improvements

Given more time, skill and resources, I’d have liked to include all the scenes I planned which included more dynamic limb movements. I’d also have preferred to compose the music for my story personally which would emphasize timing and give me more control over manipulating the audience's emotions. Harper has a closed tail and fin end, so having her walk was near impossible. Given more time I’d have liked to experiment with any possibility. Some scenes exported with a different colour density and exposure despite not changing any settings. I’d love to explore the full controls of 3D software which would become fundamental to understanding and transferring knowledge to any future software, making any interface and workspace easy for me to use. My biggest desire of improvement is the varying types of animation. When Pyotr the Polar Bear is sunbathing, I’d prefer that he took his glasses off at the time of the crack in the ice. When he holds the glasses in his hand during the shot from below the water, I struggled to move his fingers to pinch the arm of the shades. This revealed how the rig could have been better to accommodate these kinds of movements. Beyond these improvements, my research on applying snow on the ground and falling from the sky in Maya would have worked well with more advanced textures in my scenes. These things however do not take away from the cinematic and charming animation that I produced and using the simple ‘Arnold aiStandard Surface’ shaders allowed me to manage my time more usefully.

Conclusion

I used Blinn in maya to make the sun glow. Blinn glow effects work better with Maya renderer instead of Arnold. The first image shows maya renderer which removes other textures because they were shaded and lit with arnold. If I had more time I’d like to have experimented with more possibilities of glow lighting within arnold.