LUCY HARRIS
On this page there will be posted updates of progress for the animation to which I will submit to the monthly challenge, named the "11 Second Club". It will include personal commentary on certain areas of the animation, such as lighting or camera movement, to help show the progression of the overall piece.
The story :
In the distant future, an inventor sets upon a journey with a metallic companion who wishes to become a human so he can be apart of society without being seen as a heartless object. It is said that beneath an ancient fallen spacecraft lies a power that may very well grant him that very wish. But what history lies within those cramped tunnel walls, and will it fight back the invading guests?
To begin the process I repeatedly listened to the audio to enable myself to pick out the tone of the dialogue and any background noises that would assist me in thinking of a suitable setting and actions that would go alongside them. So after having a good think on where I'd put the characters, seeing as there are two voices included in the provided audio, I began to sketch down ideas, thus the thumbnailing took place. I wanted to be able to express some sort of disinterest or sarcastic attitude within one character in particular when I started drawing as I interpreted the statement; "Oh this...is pleasant", with a heavily unimpressed tone. For example, having him roll the eyes or rest unfazed upon an open palm, despite the environment I had in mind. I also interpreted this line with the character interacting with something that they deem "unpleasant" or seeing something that is anything but normal. Which leads me to the setting. Seeing as the dialogue involves the discussion of "history", I see it as the characters being placed in something old or in some way run down. Therefore I thought of a cramped tunnel with a skeleton slumped alongside the wall. Whilst one character seems unamused by the whole situation, the other seems intrigued and excited in an almost childlike mannerism, with the retort "Yeah isn't that wonderful ?!" Being full of enthusiasm. With the lines of dialogue contrasting, I wanted to have their actions and body language do the same. Having one character move with lacking motivation, whilst the other seems restless with curiosity will help give them unique personalities.
This is a more precise reference for the crawling action I had in mind.
Myself attempting to act out my thumbnails
These are the live action references I took using the thumbnails as a foundation for the key poses and expressions. The one on the left was the main reference for the character crawling/pulling themselves forward within the environment, which I decided upon being a cramped tunnel, and was extremely helpful for this complex movement. I also took note of the weight shift and the way the eyes examined the room. It was extra luck when the actor resembled the rig I was planning to use too! I then recorded myself acting it out, adding in the second character's actions to give a more clear idea of what the overall poses would look like. I also relied heavily upon the second reference for how the legs would move as I wanted the character to slide on their knees to then go into a squat. I chose to do this as I was informed that a character should move in a scene, going from pose A (the initial pose) to pose B (the end pose) rather than going from pose A to B then reverting back to pose A again. Such as the character looking around in a sprawled out position, then proceeding to crawl forward to then going back into the first pose.
This is where I blocked out my first sequence where I began to get a rough idea of poses and timing. I did, however, find that I would have to exaggerate particular movements to make them more powerful and effective. For example, you cannot tell that he has moved forward, it is suggested through the arm movement but is not followed through by the core moving nor the body approaching the camera in the action. There are also some very noticeably sliding limbs in addition to sporadic glitch like movements. Furthermore, it was only when I had begun to tween the sequence when it was pointed out that I had unfortunately been animating in AK, not in the appropriate IK setting, which meant that in the splining stage parts of the rig, such as the arms and hands, would slide and drastically twitch in a concerning way. As a result, I had to delete all the frames/animation I had done on the Malcolm rig and restart by using the IK option. Lesson learned.
This is the second attempt of blocking out the animation which I did in IK to prevent any parts of the rig, which weren't animated, to remain planted without intervention. I personally favour this version much better as the movement is far more weighted as well as expressive. Adding little quirks such as the occasional eyebrow raise to indicate how he feels helps push the animation forward so that the audience can engage with him somehow. However, there are still some clear problems with this. For example, the eyebrows are overzealous and the way he stands/gets up to squat is gravity defying, in addition to some major spasmatic movements with the feet and knee rigs, so that needs to be dealt with. Despite trying to follow the movement shown in the live action reference, it seems that it may be in my best interest to reduce the complexity of this action by potentially having him just raise one leg to kneel upon. I also need to adjust the finger movements as I haven't quite done that yet, but that will be done within the tweening stage. I have altered the set here also as before it felt too spacious for him to be crawling and failed at giving off that cramped atmosphere that I originally wanted to convey. So I proceeded to adjust the width of the tunnel and submerged the skeleton into the walls to suggest that it has bee partially buried by the dirt to age the scene a bit more.
I also animated to the skeleton to make the viewer understand that its unexpected adjustment is the reason he is shocked/bewildered, however, it was brought to my attention that it was over animated and cluttered the scene in addition to drawing the viewers eye away from the main characters. I shall adjust that soon and hopefully will fix this issue.
Here I have reduced some movement in the Malcolm rig to prevent him from being over-animated in the final sequence, still, need to do some tweaking such as reducing his eyebrow movement in addition to portraying more clear and dynamic weight shifts, especially when he is pushing himself up from the ground. In addition to the potential clutter, I received feedback on the layout of the scene and one thing that needed changing the most was the position of the skeleton, commenting on how it is clipped through the wall in an unnatural way, therefore a simple adjustment of the tunnel width is an easy fix to this issue. I'm still saving the finger movement until the tweening stage in case some issues occur with the poses further down the line, especially when there are still issues to be dealt with such as the twitching eyebrow and clipped through texture of the jeans.
Finally, time to spline! This was the first spline play-blast which meant a whole lot of unwanted or accidental key-frames were prominent and any sliding during the scene, even more so. First of all, I believe I managed to convey the weight transfer within the action of him placing his hand onto the ground as he pulls himself forward. The rest needs a little tweaking as the transfer of weight during his actions seems a little to light for a full grown man. Also, it is very clear that parts of his body disappear through the floor which is a definite issue, most likely with the translate Y graph. I still haven't seemed to figure out how to fix the issue with the clipping legs through the jeans, it may be an issue with the actual rig so I'll take some time to investigate that issue further. Otherwise, I am quite happy with the progress so far in the splining stage.
Yup! I found the culprit to the knee clipping through the jeans and it has been dealt with quite gladly. The movement of the body is pretty smooth so far and I'm happy with the facial expressions, such as rolling his eyes and resting his head onto the palm of the hand. I believe I conveyed the shift of weight quite well, I also managed to adjust the glitching feet, elbows and made some minor torso movements as I was reminded that any kind of upper body movement comes from the core and therefore should move alongside the rest of the rig to ground it. I still need to fix some sudden jolts the shoulders as well as beginning the lip sync, but I'm waiting on the rest of the animation to be complete, although I have animated the jaw to open and close where the dialogue is within the timeline. It'll come in handy when I do start that stage! However, I received feedback from my peers that pointed out how the skeleton's arm moves when the human moves his hand, giving the idea that it pushes the skeletal rig to move, which wasn't my intention, so I will shift the arm further backwards to solve the problem.
Okay, so here I was made aware of a slight problem. Whom was the one talking when the line; "Yeah isn't that wonderful?!". was spoken. First of all, the framing of the second character is poorly composed. The central character is blocking them out, making them seem unimportant to the scene, as well as making it difficult for the audience to engage with them as I portrayed the robot to be the one speaking that line as mentioned previously. Furthermore, the skeleton is just being a plain nuisance at this point, I may have made the skeleton more of a distraction by trying to convey him as a reanimated corpse, but I think I'll adjust that to a more subtle level so that its more of a detail than a contributing factor of the conversation at hand. So in regards to the robot, it's an easy fix of just moving some of the wall geometry around and having him placed further forward so it's more definitive that he's speaking.
After rearranging the geometry as well as the camera to stop the Malcolm character from blocking the robot character out of the audience's view, I went onto smoothening out the spline. One thing I really wanted to show in this was that the robot had a quirky character of its own. I decided I could show that by his body language, the tottering walk towards his human companion, the broken helm which he has to push up twice to indicate to the audience that he isn't a perfect machine despite the appearance, and lastly the movement of his arms when he says "wonderful". If you noticed I made him put his hands together onto his chest, in some sense conveying a sweet demeanour about him, which was what I intended and am quite happy with the result! Other things you may notice is that the skeleton no longer arches forward, nor has much drastic movement to distract the eye nor clutter the scene. As well as prolonging the amount of time Malcolm has to push onto his hands to get up to add more weight and realism into the action.
It took some time but finally, the lip sync and all the splining has been done. I've adjusted the amount of eye and head movement as I was told the Malcolm rig was over animated, so I deleted some of the frames on the head and the eye's world control to calm the whole thing down, which I believe has helped greatly. I also had enough time to animate Malcolm's fancy hair curl! I wish I could have done more to this, such as adding an extra few seconds onto the ending by having something happen but I didn't want to push myself to the borderline of the deadline as I also have to render this out, and that'll take a major amount of time from what I have remaining. So, for now, I simply focus upon the lighting and, if you have spotted this, the environment. I've changed it from being a regular old tunnel to a tunnel beneath an old spaceship, this explaining that dodgy looking ceiling and peculiar holes. Those are to give off a metallic panel vibe to suit the setting I had in mind for my story behind these characters as I have realised I didn't pay it too much thought beforehand. Now to move onto lighting and then rendering!
Finished render:
This is it! After 5 or so hours of rendering, this is the finished product. I can say without a doubt that I'm happy with the result, excluding the graininess which was an overlooked setting but sadly at this point I haven't the time to re-render it out again. But to start off with the lighting, I had major help from an amazing studio assistant who was a brilliant lighting artist. I gathered image references for the lights and took inspiration from film scenes like "The Good Dinosaur" and "Alien". The rays of light coming through the holes is my favourite piece of lighting in the scene as it adds such a nice dramatic effect which is emphasised by the atmospheric AI added in with Arnold. Its a shame about the graininess but it's an easy fix that I would happily apply if I had more time to do so. But overall I'm very happy with the animation itself, including the lip sync! A great thanks to all who helped advised me along the way!