#animation 102

During today’s lecture, we discussed walk cycles in greater depth, talking about the different poses of the walk, which we saw last time, now being named. We focused on bipeds (Two legged being) as opposed to a quadruped (Four legged). The first pose in the walk is referred to as contact, as one of the feet contacts the floor in this frame, followed by a down in which the head bobs down, a pass pose in which one foot passes the other, before moving into the up pose, during which the head bobs up as the character begins to lift their foot up and forwards. This is then followed by the other foot’s contact, before the cycle repeats with the feet positions swapped.

EVALUATION

101

In Semester 1 we looked at how to animate the movement of objects and how the weight, density, material and size - of an object must be considered in order to create natural and realistic movement.

I was tasked with animating a ball tempo, the movement of a pendulum and a wind-up animation. For the wind-up exercise, I tried using the 3D program Maya. I wanted to add a rig allowing me to stretch and warp the size of the cube in order to implement squash and stretch into the model. However, I couldn’t figure this out so I had to leave it as it was. My confusion with using Maya and lack of confidence asking others for help was frustrating. For the next exercises, I used digital 2D and stop-motion mediums. I will practice using Maya and better acquaint myself with the basics and going forward I will need to overcome my reluctance to ask for help.

For the ball tempo, I used Procreate for iPad which I’ve used in the past. I made two variations on the test: a pink orb moving from point A to B at 12 frames per second, and another at 24 frames per second. While exporting the 24-frame test as a gif/mp4, I noticed a flickering effect with circles jumping to different parts of the screen for a frame or two. I discovered the frames were out of order, so I rearranged them. This error was me not adjusting the opacity of the layers temporarily so they could be distinguished from the new frames drawn, then resetting the opacity to full when finished. I’ll remember to do this in future.

I animated the pendulum using paper cut out stop motion on a light box. Filming frames and animating on my iPhone with the app Stop Motion. One was a looping animation, the other a pendulum coming to rest. I'm happy with the result, especially the looping one. I do wish the moment where the pendulum was losing momentum was slightly quicker and less drawn out; my attempt looked unnatural to me. In future, I will keep in mind how long the last few lingering swings of the pendulum should be.

The next part of the course was animating balls bouncing using live action reference footage. I filmed videos of three different balls bouncing. This showed how the weight, size and material of each ball impacts the way it moves. A soft, rubbery, bouncy ball will have more squash and stretch to its movements on a hard surface. A firmer, larger basketball won't squish against the contact point. If a ball is dense and heavy like a bowling ball, it will not squash and stretch, and will give only a few low-level bounces. The three balls I used were a ping pong ball, a tennis ball and a football.

Whilst animating the bounces on procreate, I used reference videos/gifs and went through each frame to make sure the movement felt accurate.

One challenge with the animations was keeping the shapes of the balls consistent. As I was animating frame by frame. I initially just redrew the ball using the frame before it as a guide. Eventually though, I decided to copy the previous layer, paste it to a new one and move it slightly according to the movement. For solid objects such as bouncing balls, I will utilise the copy and paste option in future to keep the shapes consistent and solid.

For Halloween, we were asked to animate either a pumpkin or a spider swinging like a pendulum. I chose the spider. I assumed the exercise was supposed to be done exclusively in Maya. Once again, the program was confusing and hard to navigate, but I did complete it. I later discovered we could have used any medium. If I had time, I would’ve made a 2D version with a frame-by-frame animated spider. I need to communicate better and ask my tutors more questions.

Creating a showreel. I had HD footage of all my animations except those made on Maya. I couldn't find all the Maya files I’d worked on, and some wouldn't open. So, I used a lower-quality version I filmed using my phone. I was also required to download graphics from Blackboard to mark the different clips. The download didn’t work possibly due to my version Premiere Pro not being compatible with the graphic. So, I created a similar graphic from scratch using the Premiere Pro shape tool. For music, I used the royalty free site Mixkit.com, which had free songs I could download that complimented the video and gave it a sense of professionalism without sounding corporate and lifeless. I’m happy with the music I chose.

Overall, I was happy with my 101 showreel. I was not only able to brush up on my Premiere Pro editing skills but also my animation clip editing skills. Learning how to use tools such as the shape tool to create professional looking graphics and discovering useful resources such as Mixkit.com, which I will use again in future projects.

102

Our 1st task for Animation 102, was to create character expression poses. Initially I used Maya, but I encountered difficulties accessing the files from home, so decided to create poses using a stop-motion armature. I made reference videos of myself in the poses and drew them on paper. Then I worked on posing and photographing the armature in the stop-motion booths.  I really enjoyed this process as it was less technically demanding and fickle compared to working with the Maya 3D models and, up to now, I had no experience working with a professional metal, ball and jointed, magnet-anchored stop-motion armature before, so it was a great experience.

The second exercise involved our characters transitioning from one expression to another. I decided my character would transition from curiosity/inquisitiveness to surprise/fear. Using hand drawn key poses and enacting the movements myself, I was able to see how natural movement would occur. For example, if the character was going to raise one leg during the surprised/scared pose, I acted out the movement from leaning in curiously to jumping in surprise to see which leg I would naturally lift, which leg would be on the ground, etc. I animated this sequence and the sitting/standing animation using the Stop Motion app on my iPhone and a small phone tripod. The result was good, but I realised I should have done live action videos of these sequences to use as reference and that the finished film was slightly shaky due to the basic tripod and iPhone set-up. If I were to reuse this set-up, I would need to stabilise the camera and tripod better.

For the third animation, I sought the help of the stop-motion tutor, Owen who showed me how to use Dragon Frame. Using this, I made the walking and sneaking animations. As first attempts, these both looked slightly awkward, but it was excellent practicing using this new software and camera.

Using Dragon Frame, I then completed four further animations; lifting a heavy object, lifting a light object, pulling an object and pushing an object. There were a few practical issues such as, my armature did not have fingers to grasp the paper and lift it – I used blue tac to attach the paper to the hand. Another issue was sourcing a heavy looking weight, so I made one using magnets designed for keeping metal armatures feet in place.

Another problem was the armature couldn’t hold the weight in the air - I realized I needed to tighten the joints of the figure. I also accidently brushed against the camera causing it to zoom in during filming the ‘pull’ sequence - I will need to be aware of my movements when working in the booths.

My final animation was a short story. I wrote a brief synopsis of mysterious lidded box, armature removes lid and slug creature emerges. One problem I encountered was when I exported the frames to video, the lower half was cropped, and my hand was in shot despite me having deleted these. I asked Owen to help me identify the problem. Seems I had edited the wrong cache of photos, so I edited the correct set and removed the hands

Sequences complete, I edited the work into a showreel on Premiere Pro - adding titles and music then uploaded to Vimeo.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with the work I produced in Animation 101/102 so far. I’ve gained experience in stop-motion and learned the basics of Dragon Frame. I have problem solved practical issues. I am honing my skills in using the metal armature to breathe life into a character. I feel I’ve improved in my ability to animate these professional armatures and have come far in a short amount of time. I hope to have the opportunity to work with 3D stop-motion animation in future. I feel I have great potential in that field. I want to learn/improve my skills in Maya 3D. Apart from difficulties with Maya I’m still happy and satisfied with my work in 101/102. I have learned many valuable techniques in a range of mediums and software.

A SHORT STORY STOP-MOTION

My final piece of filming for Animation 102 was to create a short story animation using one of five prompts as inspiration;

Dental Pain

The irritating insect

The kitchen mishap

The mysterious package

The wilderness walk

I decided to base my animation on the mysterious package idea but incorporate some elements of the irritating insect. With an insect-like creature being revealed to be in the box.

With this, I wrote down a rough plan of the actions in my story as a reference for the animation.

I decided to make the creature in the box a slug, as the shape would be simple and easy to animate and because I could easily sculpt it in plasticine. To make the eye stalks, I used two sewing pins with pink tips. Cutting off the sharp ends with wire cutters.

I had nothing to use as the box that would contain the slug. So I looked around the classrooms at the campus for something feasible and finally came across a box of story dice.

I went into the stop motion studio and booked room 1 to film my story. While I worked on my animation, I took a timelapse on my phone to catalog the process.

Overall, this process took roughly seven hours.

One problem I ran into was after the production when exporting the video. When exported as a video, the lower half of the picture was cropped. Not only this, but the frames where my hand was in shot that I deleted were somehow still present. I tried several times to make different versions that didn't crop out the lower frame and did not contain my hands, but they didn't work.

The day after, I met up with the teacher in charge of the studio, Owen, to take a look and help me identify the problem. For one, the reason the hands were deleted on the file but not the video when I exported it was that I captured the HD photos on the camera, and these were a different library of photos from the ones I was using in the program. By clicking a diamond icon in the sidebar over the timeline, I could see these HD camera photos and finally take out the photos with my hands in them.

As for the cropped frame, I did not have the letterbox view on, so I couldn't see how the frame would be cropped to a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. To fix this, when in the exporting menu, I should turn the aspect ratio mask off. And if the menu says I can't export because of the pixel size, I'll just need to delete a single pixel or two.

With this, I went home, and edited my filmed short story on Premiere Pro, adding titles and music. I chose a piece of music that I would describe as relaxed jazzy lounge music because I felt it added a kind of comical yet classy element to the piece. I then added the Short Story to my showreel and uploaded the now complete showreel and the stand-alone short story to my Vimeo.

As part of my work for Animation 102, I completed my four outstanding animation test exercises over the course of three days. Using my free time during the Easter holidays to rent a space in the university campus's stop-motion animation studio and a stop-motion armature to complete the animations. I also utilized the stop-motion program DragonFrame for the animation process.

The first animation I started was the animation for lifting a heavy object. Using some footage, I had been able to have filmed by a colleague at the uni of myself lifting a box as a reference for the character's performance. I chose a discarded Post-it note in the other room as the heavy object. One difficulty with this was when the character had to lift the paper, as the hands of my armature didn't have fingers to grab the sides of the paper. I borrowed some white tac from the receptionist and used it to stick the paper to the armature's hands.

The next day, I worked on the animation for the light lift. I thought, in a similar vein to using the paper as the heavy object in the light lift animation, I'd use a heavy-looking object as a light one to subvert expectation in a comical way. Although I couldn't find a weight or any other heavy-looking object on the campus for me to use, I was able to construct a convincing-looking weight using the spare magnets used for keeping the metal armatures feet in place.

Another problem I ran into was the armature not being able to lift the weight in the air properly and hold a pose with it, which made these portions of the animation frustrating. Eventually, I realized the problem was the joints were too loose to hold a pose with the weight. So I used the joint adjuster tools that came with the armature to tighten the joints of the figure.

The next day, I filmed the live-action reference, this time pulling a wheely bin outside my home and pushing a wall for reference in the final two animations, I'd be animating. For the pulling animation, I used some wooden blocks held together with white tac as a stand-in for the bin, using a tiny bit of white tac to keep the hands on the blocks.

For the push animation, I decided to not use a prop and instead have the shape of a wall be implied through the armature's performance, similar to a classic mime routine.

During the filming of the pull sequence, I realized at some point, the camera had zoomed in randomly in between frames. I figured this must've been because, at some point when I was walking between taking the pictures and checking the computer monitor with the sequence playing, I might've grazed against the camera shaft, making the camera zoom in slightly. It was too late for me to fix the camera and redo the frames. next time I will try to be more aware of my surroundings, especially around the camera.

Finally, after I saved my animations onto a USB to bring home, I uploaded the tests to my Vimeo page and edited together a showreel using Adobe Premiere Pro. Of which I also uploaded to Vimeo.

For my Animation 102 class, I was tasked with creating a test stop-motion animation where a character sits down and stands up. To start I filmed some footage of me sitting down and standing up on my phone and tripod as a live-action reference.

In the stop-motion booth I proceeded to set up my equipment. To ensure my camera was stable and I didn't have to place the armature too far away to get a good shot, I bent the tripod legs of my phone tripod to a splayed-out position and low to the table's surface. This would provide stability and prevent the tripod from falling over.

Like the last animation test, I made very rough sketches of the specific beats of the movement from sitting down to standing up and walking away.

While animating the armature itself, I incorporated some small mannerisms from myself in the live action reference footage. Such as my fidgeting, the way I leaned forward and the way I held my hands and arms. This would give the armature more character and inject it with a sense of authenticity and life. I also used the case the armature came in as a stand-in for a seat.

Once animated, I exported the video to my phone camera and uploaded it to vimeo.

On Wednesday, 25th of Jan, I went to the university campus to use the facilities. Specifically, the stop motion studio for an armature body expression test as part of my Animation 102 class. In the studio was a photo camera on a tripod, but I couldn’t get it to turn on, and I think it was out of batteries. I didn’t know who oversaw the studio and couldn’t find them to help me with the camera, so I couldn’t use it. Luckily, I brought my mobile phone with the Stop Motion app and a mini tripod. So, I used my phone to take photos for the animation.

The phone tripod I used was a bit bendy and very wobbly. To keep it in place, I borrowed some blu-tac from reception and put a pieces of it under each leg of the tripod.

To keep the armature from falling over and in place, the studio has metal tables with detachable magnets underneath that the metal hold the armature’s feet in place. At times, the magnets under the table were hard to work with as I couldn’t precisely tell where on the top of the table they were magnetized to. I also placed the armature in the middle of the table to get its whole body in the frame. This added to the confusion of how near or far away the armature and magnets were from each other. This led to the armature not being in the right place at times and falling over on several occasions. It was incredibly frustrating to get frames where the character was off balance or standing on one leg.

When planning out the movements of the armature, I first drew a few key poses and extremes on a piece of paper for reference. I acted out the movements myself to see what movement would naturally occur. i.e., if the character was going to raise one leg during the surprised/scared pose, I acted out the movement from leaning in curiously to jumping in surprise to see which leg I would naturally lift, which leg would be on the ground, etc.

I also considered adding a brief scene after the character gets scared and stumbles forward awkwardly. After animating this scene and playing it back, it didn’t look right or natural enough, and it felt like it was unnecessarily dragging the runtime out. So, I deleted the frames for that scene.

Overall, I’m happy with the resulting animation. If I were to try something like this again, I would record and use a live-action video of an actor or other person playing out the movement to use as a reference. I would also try to use the small screw tools that came with the armature to tighten the screws, specifically on the heels, so the character is more stable when on one leg. I will also figure out how to use the proper camera used in the stop motion studio so that I don’t have to always rely on my iPhone and the stop motion app and get a better understanding of industry-standard stop motion tools and programs.

For my first piece of homework in Animation 102 (continuing from Animation 101) - I was given a task of drawing six or seven poses, expressing several distinctive emotions and translating them to a 3D model. For this exercise, I and the rest of the class were given a 3D model in Maya called ‘bucket kid’ to work with.

I started by posing the bucket kid model from a default T-pose into a neutral pose. Following the directions of the handout Animation 102: Introduction to Character Rigs - I went to the layers above the play controls, and on the mesh layer,clicked the box next to V until it said R. This made it so the limbs, such as the arms, legs, and head, were anchored to the body instead of detached if I tried to move them around. I encountered an error where the legs merged into each other, as seen in the picture above. My teacher suggested I first open a new Maya document and then open the bucket kid file so errors like this would not occur.

Unfortunately, the class ended before I could really play around with the model. But I was able to save the Maya file in a folder which I then saved to a shared discussion folder. This should have enabled me to access the file from home via my Microsoft one drive. However, when I checked, the folder wasn’t there, and I couldn’t continue working on the model from home. I did, however, use this time to draw a few poses for my model, such as satisfaction, fury, curiosity etc.

When I went to class the next week, the teacher said my problem accessing the shared OneDrive folder was one several other students experienced. I realized this would prevent me from working on my model at home, which could hold me back in the long run.

I then remembered the last lesson, where my teacher brought in a stop motion armature and asked whether I could use an armature for my posing exercises for this class. He said yes, so I booked an hour or two with an armature in the stop-motion studio. Keeping the armature in place with magnets under the metal table. I also used my iPhone to take photos.

A few weeks before my return to university after the holidays, I saw the Mackinnon and Saunders 30 Years and Beyond exhibit. Held from the 9th of November to the 25th of February. An exhibit dedicated to the animation and puppet-making studio that created the stop motion models and armatures for animated productions such as The Corpse Bride (2005), Fantastic Mr.Fox (2009), Frankinweenie (2011), Mars Attacks (1996), and most recently the Guillermo Del Toro's stop motion version of Pinnochio in 2022.

Coming to this exhibition with my family, I knew it would house many stop-motion puppets from notable productions like Del Toro's Pinnochio. But it was only until I saw these signs with the Mackinnon Saunders logo and the list of staff who worked on their productions. It was eye-opening knowing just how many productions this studio contributed to so many of the most iconic and critically acclaimed pieces of stop motion animation, yet the general public and animation fanbase credit the craft of these films to a single individual such as the directors of these films (Wes Anderson, Tim Burton Guillermo Del Toro, etc.). It made the concept of animation, especially films and feature films, a collaborative effort shaped by an entire team of talented artists rather than by a single genius auteur sink in.

Plus, it was incredible being up close with stop motion armatures from animated films that I've watched and continue to inspire me. As well as incredible to photograph and film them.