Crowd reel

After much procrastination, I am starting mocap shoots for the crowd scenes in the film. My goal will be to capture small segments of animation (e.g. walks, characters sitting, etc) that I can blend together to create different crowd people. I hope to use Massive to achieve this blending, but given my lack of progress at learning the software, I may just have to do all of this in Motion Builder and Maya (i.e. create the scene by hand, instead of relying on Massive's AI).

I compiled a reel of crowd shots from 'Gandhi' and 'Water' to help me figure out what I need.

Hmmm...too dignified?

What if he was younger? Maybe then it would be less obvious that he's a good guy. And what if he's the guy fighting in the beginning?
If he's younger, then he's going to come across more as Bir's dad than his granddad.

Maqbool Update

This is Maqbool, rigged and ready to go...his collar and cuff textures will be updated eventually. I made some tweaks in his outfit to make him appear more dignified - so now he has cuffs and is wearing some nifty mojaris on his feet. His hands aren't great but I will probably just tweak them in specific shots if I need to.

Character facial references

Now that I'm animating, I turned to some of my favourite films for ideas on facial expressions and acting. These really help get me thinking about how far I can push my characters, as well as how to express certain emotions.

Bir
Dash is a really great character study because he's a manipulative brat and cute at the same time - studying him has helped me loosen up Bir's animation so that he's not so angelic all the time.




Santosh
Looking at Elastigirl/Helen Parr helped me develop the mom into more of a character as well, instead of the stiff person I had in my storyboards. However, I've always found the animation on Elastigirl to be just a little bit awkward, so studying the animation also helped me dial into the elegance that I wanted in my character (of course, whether I'll succeed is another issue altogether).

Opening sequence

Shot notes

1. Shot 5 - Bir plays with Train
1. Pooya: Camera pull out looks weird, cut to scene 6 looks weird because of all grey
2. Sheila: Pause on mom's hand, her head looks mechanical, exaggerate head shaking
3. Christine: Moms hand looks float
4. Me: Redo Bir's flop down
   
2. Shot 6 - Ma, eh gaddi
1. Me: Do I need a wider establishing composition?
3. Shot 10 - Bir runs to train and is scolded
1. Instead of having him look up at the mom, have him continue to have his head down and just raise his eyes to look at her - i.e. more sheepish - or maybe he just leans away from her, a little afraid
   
4. Shot 13 and 15 - Bir peeks out from behind Mom
1. Sheila - Mom looks floaty
2. Me - Bir could dodge a crowd person in either of these scenes
   
5. Shot 92 - Bir takes cap off and looks at it
   
1. Me: Fix the part where he grabs the cap and also have the cap deform
   
2. Sheila: Train could accelerate out of station
6. Shot 94 - Bir turns and goes into compartment
   
1. Christine: Bir is floaty at end - have him pause for 6 frames after he turns