Animation Process and Practice: Week 1

Animation Performance 

For the first term we have been assigned to create a character performance based on an eleven second audio clip. The audio clip is some dialogue from the film ‘Hot Fuzz’ where Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) interviews a resident (Stephen Merchant) about a missing swan, and he must describe what the swan looks like.

Within the context of the film, this is a silly situation because everyone knows what a swan looks like, yet he must describe it for a police officer, moreover a highly trained police officer is sent on such a ridiculous task.

We must listen to the audio track over and over again to gain an understanding of the actor’s within the track, their pauses, breaths and thoughts. From there we must visualise the situation and breathe life into the character we choose to portray. Part of the unit includes choosing which medium we will use to create the scene (2D, 3D, Stop-motion).

Personally I have chosen the 3D route, this is because I already have some experience animating a rigged character in Maya (as mentioned in my SG Gaming Experience post) and I feel this will be the field I wish to pursue as my future career. For the 3D route, we are provided a fully rigged model, unlike last year where we were taught to model and rig the characters. This allows us to focus on the animation, and performance of the character rather than the technicalities of Maya.

Despite the medium choice, the principles and fundamentals are the same throughout. Therefore we share the lectures together to discuss ideas based upon the ideas of the animation principles and how to bring out the best performance in our characters.

I intend to plan the action of my character first and I will do this by first understanding the audio. I have decided upon a situation where the character is asked what the swan looks like. The character will be on board with the idea and describe the swan, and when he believes he has described it effectively, he finds it insulting that he has to point out that it is a swan. Much like a game of charades that the only person you see is the character, and the other who is asking the questions is behind the camera. I would like to take this idea further and have the character acknowledge there is a camera and this is shown through eye movements and consciousness of facing the camera. I believe this will add an additional layer of believability and express aside of the character such as embarrassment and consciousness of the camera much like an interviewee.

I started with initial sketches and ideas on how the character can be posed, if he talked with his hands, his emotions and how this changes through the clip. There are a lot of factors to consider, I intend to incorporate complex emotions and how they change through the clip without over acting the character. This will be done through eye movements with strong staged poses.

Initially I had trouble finding a 3D model which both provided enough control including facial features, and worked properly. I found models I liked including the ‘Morpheus’ Rig from the 11 second club, and I have chosen to use this rig so far. I had to search a number of answers first regarding customisation and problems with the rig.

I have created the first three poses illustrating the first positions the character will take. I have tried to time the positions to the audio, as I plan to create the key positions and animate between them. As I have had initial trouble with the rig, I will ask my tutors for help regarding this problem, but what is important that I have established the initial poses of the character; developing his personality.

I will continue my work with more thoughts on how to stage the poses to ensure that the body language alone illustrates the thoughts of the character effectively. I will do this with more thumbnails and experimenting the limits of the rig. 

SG Gaming Work Experience

Summer 2016 Work Experience 

SG Gaming

Introduction

Over the course of the summer I intended to gain valuable work experience with the time I had, to further my learning in animation and the industry. I applied to a number of places both nationally and internationally, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a week of work experience as part of the ‘SG Gaming’ company. 

Who are SG Gaming?

SG gaming are a company which produces gambling games for larger companies. You can find more information about the company here: http://www.sg-gaming.com/. 

Examples of their games include: Rainbow Riches and many more with recognisable franchises including: Monopoly, Rocky, Spiderman, Iron Man and more. 

Creative Director; Peter Tyldesley offered the work experience to both Siobhan and I for the week, where we worked with two different teams and spent three and a half days with each team. The two teams were the 3D team and the Concept team. The 3D team consisted of modellers, animators, riggers, etc. who create the 3D aspects of the game including: background, characters, titles and their animations. The Concept team directed by Peter receive ideas from their superiors and develop the ideas into reality through visual concepts. An example of this could be the superiors want a game about dogs: therefore the concept team would produce layouts and designs of what the game would look like. We spent whole days working with the teams from 9-5 and presented our work to the rest of the day at the end of each day.  

We also spent time to famalierise ourselves with the games by testing a numberofthem in their demonstration room. These would later become great references for our work. 

3D work

I started the first half of the week as part of the 3D team; I was assigned to create a number of animations for a new Rainbow Riches game. I had to create a number of idle animations for the Leprechaun character who would feature in the game. He would stand next to a well; he would turn the wheel of the well to present the bingo numbers. However when he would not be turning the wheel, he would still have to passively express life and character; otherwise he would look like a statue. 

Therefore I thought about the character of the leprechaun and what he would do if he was waiting on someone. I had to consider the time of the idle animation; that it was not too long, in addition I had to consider that the animation may be cut short because the player may decide to play at any moment. Therefore I had to think of movements which were not too extreme which could snap to the wheel turning animation at any moment. 

I created a number of short animations with the fully rigged character model provided by the team: 

I learnt a great deal about Maya during the time as part of the 3D team. I learnt how to animate a character within Maya and a number of useful tools.  

Concept work

After I had worked with the 3D team, I moved to the concept team. I was given the job from Peter to create concept designs from a number of names given to me. As he was given themes such as ‘Jungle’, or ‘Crime’ he had to create names of potential games. One of which were ‘Amazillions’. I started with sketches and initial ideas. I took the concept further by not creating the expected; the first thing that came to mind was the zillions was associated with gold and lot of money (the quantity). I created the concept of a lost lizard tribe called the Amazillions, and the player would take on the role of a treasure hunter discovering the lost tribe and their hidden treasures. By adding this depth, I wanted to give the player the opportunity to immerse him/herself in a whole world.

From there I began to create the interface for the Amazillions game. Using previous layout designs as reference, I created the Amazillions interface inspired by Amazonian jungles and South American ruins. 

Working closely with the Concept team, I changed and improved the design over the days as they showed me fantastic new tools within Photoshop which improved the quality of my work significantly. 

As Peter liked a number of my ideas which were often unorthodox, including the ideas that the player’s winnings could be taken away from them, and stacked bonus’s. 

Conclusion

Overall I found this a valuable experience and gained a fantastic insight into the professional working environment. I did find the work tiring, and was frustrated when things did not work properly, however I spent the time and with help with colleagues these problems were solved. I believed I worked effectively and intend to find future work experience again soon.  

I believe my work was significantly lacking compared to the professionals within the company; however I feel that I have improved significantly thanks to this experience, and wish to continue this in the future. I believe I worked well within the team and produced what was asked of me. 

Freelance Work: Dine Contract Catering

Dine Contract Catering

Freelance Work: Summer 2016

Over this summer I have taken the opportunity to find work experience to further test myself, practice and develop my skills. I had searched and applied for a number of places including: Disney, Nickelodeon and other studios within the U.K.

Our tutor Andy sent an email to the group sharing a freelance opportunity with a food company. Not many details were shared regarding what they wanted, as this would be discussed when we had met the person. Therefore I wasn’t completely sure what work would be involved but I still wanted the experience.

Meeting Rob Bruford for the first time was a nervous experience as I had no idea what he looked like or what the work would be. We only had only communicated over email and mobile, and we wanted to meet to talk about ideas and what the work would be.

Rob wanted to create two videos which would educate trainees on the company’s policies and how they should work. Dine Contract Catering is a nationwide company which needs to train people up and down the country. This would be done by employees traveling to different destinations to train in person. However this is a costly and time consuming method; therefore Rob proposed the idea of training videos which could be viewed all over the country without the need of an employee travelling.

Rob’s initial proposal was two 8 minute long videos; one about ‘Customer Service’ and another about ‘The Pre-Service Brief’. The Customer Service Video would be about how employees should engage with their customers, and what good customer service is. The Pre-Service Brief discusses the importance of group discussion about the day, an opportunity for employees to plan the day ahead and prepare for any potential problems.

After discussing with Rob, we decided that the videos would be around 4 minutes each, and would be animated with an informative style. As in the style would be inspired by instruction videos and warning signs. This would be to make the video both clear and informative. During this discussion I had to consider my time; how long would these videos take to create and would I meet the deadline?

The deadline would be the 8^th August as this would be the week Rob shows the finished videos to the board to take the idea forward. Before this work experience, I had booked a holiday for a week and had planned other work experience which would happen before the deadline. Therefore I had to consider the massive time restrictions and be honest with Rob what I could and couldn’t do. I decided the University would be the best place to work because I can focus properly, but I would have to ask for help to complete both videos on time.

I asked Siobhan for help with the project which she was happy to do. We decided the best way to work would be if we created a video each, Siobhan would create the ‘Customer Service’ video and I would create the ‘Pre-Service Brief’ video; we would simply split the invoice between us.

Firstly, we discussed the styles we would use within our videos, we decided two different styles would be effective because: we wanted both of the videos to be memorable in their own way. Therefore we took inspiration from the website and colour pallet of the business card; these would be consistent in both videos but would have our own flare in both.

I took inspiration from warning signs which produced the stick man figure. I then started creating storyboards based on the information sheets Rob gave us about what should be in the video. I broke each section down and thought how this could be visualised and how the characters could interact with it in a memorable way. After producing storyboards, I started to create the shapes and characters on Photoshop to see what they would look like on screen. Once I was happy with results I began to create the video.

Initially I had trouble finding a work flow as I had not used these software’s in a while. I used: Photoshop and Premiere. As the animation was simple I used Premiere’s own animation tools. I created the shapes and characters in Photoshop, then animated them in Premiere. I learnt a great deal of the potential of the effects used in Premiere during this project. I had also learnt a lot more about staging and timing with Premiere’s animation tools, which I can apply to later animations.

Over the next few weeks I continued to speak with Rob about the progress of our work and how things could be changed to ensure the final product would be the way Rob wanted it. As Rob had to work between both board and their needs and our progress through the project. I believe this constant communication reassured Rob of our progress and allowed us time to change aspects of the videos quickly which was effective.

From my other experience at SG Gaming I learnt a lot about Photoshop and its tools which allowed me to incorporate what I had learnt from there into the videos.

Pre Service Brief Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_oDywuv4PI 

Customer Service Video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZUh_T1p6NY 

The videos style is intentionally simple and I am pleased with the results. This project would have been better if I had more time to work on the videos, as I would have given more detail and expression in the characters.

From this experience I learnt:

 Time Management- through discussions with Rob and my nerves, I had to both meet Rob’s demands, and mange my time to be able to achieve what I am meant to do.

Software’s- Having used Adobe software again, I both refreshed my memory and learnt a lot more of what I can do with its tools.

Project Management- As I was the project leader, I had to discuss with Rob about his vision and discuss these ideas with Siobhan to achieve them. I learnt to communicate confidently with both sides and share these messages clearly to achieve a common goal.

Overall this has been an important experience testing my independence and management. I always strive for better and wish to have had more time to improve the videos in quality. Rob and the board were both happy with both videos and this could lead to future projects on other videos.