Rope a dope

Often, my scenes have funny intermediate states. Sam's hand grab is particularly good when looped.

Thoughts on Animation

How has my approach to character animation changed over the course of this film?

I plan things out a lot more. Probably a third or half the time on each shot is spent planning out the camera and poses. Earlier, I'd rush through the scene and go straight to subtle stuff like the fingers, but now I spend the bulk of my time trying to iron out the timing of the main actions.

I also step the keys a lot more, which is making 3d animation seem more and more like 2d animation since I feel like I'm animating keys and holding them on 3s, 4s or 6s before doing in-betweens. It's all perfectly obvious now, but it's taken me a while to start thinking like that.

I go a lot broader on facial animation and close-ups. A lot of my earlier scenes are quite stiff because I was being too subtle. Some of the faces were so rigid that I went in and reanimated them, particularly with Bir.

On the other hand, my body animation is a lot less broad than the usual manic stuff I churn out. Part of the reason is that Looney Tunes animation wouldn't really fit the content and style of this film, but I also try to plan each scene around fewer big poses than I used to. That way, I only emphasize what I want to in each scene by balancing big and small, fast and slow gestures. So if there's enough slow and medium paced action, fast action stands out more, and vice versa.

Similarly, less is often more. By resisting the temptation to do a zany wrist snap or an overexaggerated take, I am trying not to distract the audience in order to give them more time to digest a shot and understand its main point.

Of course, my animation might still not be any better, but I like to think that it's clearer.

Anatomy of a Shot

I picked a random shot to illustrate the steps that I go through. I'll keep updating this post until the final render.

Shot 53: Goon moves toward Bir
Animatic Duration: 2 sec

Stage 1: Storyboard/Animatic - mid-December 2007



Stage 2: Layout Create Maya scene and import characters. Rough out camera angle/scene composition. - July 2, 2008

Notice that the screen direction is flipped horizontally compared to the storyboards as a side-effect of some story edits that I made during the animation phase of the film.

The character design has also changed significantly. I didn't feel that this character (Sam) needed a beard because the hat is the point of the story. Also, Maqbool already has a beard which will contrast well with Sam's lack of one during the final confrontation scene.

Angle 1:


Angle 2: Roof lines up better with his eyes


Stage 3: Animation July, 2 2008

1st pass blocking/rough animation



More blocking - the hand wipe was really slowing down the momentum of the scene, and felt out of character/confusing i.e. is poor Sam sweating and tired after a long day of killing people? I considered other options such as having Sam wipe his mouth instead or maybe spit, but none of those actions seemed to fit either. So now he's just going to walk towards Bir. By framing the shot wider, Sam doesn't need to raise the knife as high, again making the shot less over-the-top as compared to the storyboards.



Several hours later, this is the final animation. I also adjusted the camera movement.



Since I use RenderMan to smooth the models at render time, I usually do a quick render to preview the animation without paying much attention to lighting.



Sure enough, I ended up tweaking the camera angle based on the preview render - I widened the shot by changing the lens so you can see Sam's leg stepping over the dead body. No one will probably notice, but I like having it in there because it also breaks up the walk cycle a little bit.

Stage 4 - Crowd - November 25, 2008

I usually add in the crowd right before I render, because my pipeline involves getting all the crowd animation into Maya, and this makes the scenes really heavy. At this stage, it takes about 5 minutes just to open the Maya file for the shot.

Stage 5 - Lighting/Rendering - November 27, 2008

I'm not the best lighter :) so everything comes out looking pretty flat usually.

Stage 6 - Compositing/Final Shot: March 8, 2009

Here's where I add dust, depth of field and color correction.

Phew.

Weaponry

Should Sam have a dagger or a machete? The machete has drawn some strong reactions from classmates about potentially being over the top ("too Arabian Nights"), but more threatening and a lot easier to see. At the same time, I've heard accounts that swords were used in these riots. So I have a decision to make. For right now, I'm leaning towards the dagger because I've tried to shy away from overstating the violence in the film to make it feel a little more realistic as opposed to exaggerated. Of course, using the word "realistic" is a contradiction because I just mentioned that swords were used in the Partition riots, but I need to be conscious of both historical accuracy and cinematic stereotypes.

I'll ask the faculty what they think at a later date

Machete:


Dagger:


And here is the same comparison with movement:
(The difference is more subtle when the characters are animated but there are going to be enough scenes with the dagger/machete that deciding between them is important.)

Machete:



Dagger:

Goon #1: Sam

This is the character who threatens Bir at the climax of the film.
(His name is Sam because Brittany thinks he looks like Sam Waterston)




Here's how I got there:

Step 1: Start with Maqbool


Step 2: Get rid of all the hair and modify the base model so the face starts to look different



Step 3: Start adding back hair, eyes, etc., and try to tweak each component as it's added


Step 4: More tweaks after a review with colleagues - add a widow's peak, get rid of the beard, and a nose job. (He resembles my dad slightly, which is not surprising since I used a picture of my father as a loose reference.)


Final: More tweaks, a change of clothes and some stubble.



The base mesh looks like this:


Final Final: Oops. I got some more feedback saying that he was too handsome. So this is the new and more evil Sam after I made his features more angular.

Prayer reference

Some references for Scene 3, when Maqbool prays on the train.

Fighting

This the first pass on the beginning of the riot. There will be more characters added, but I'm trying to get the blocking/edit down.

V1:



V2: Tighter shot on the two characters fighting