Mocap setup

This is an image of an actor, Kevin J. Ryan, that I motion captured performing some fight sequences (with my classmate, John Helton) in the fall semester. At the time, the footage was shot as a test, but I now plan to include it in the final film (it's the fight between Sam and Manoj, my secondary characters).



The markers are very reflective and appear to glow because of the camera flash. Note that the fingers are not mocapped and need to be animated by hand.

(Btw, Kevin's a great actor to work with, and I highly recommend him for both mocap and live-action shoots).

Sam's friend, Manoj

Well, they're not actually friends. Sam and Manoj will scuffle in the beginning of the film (the fight that leads to Maqbool being pushed over and losing his hat).

I tried to make him more blocky as opposed to Sam's angles, and messed with his clothes so it'll be easy to separate the two characters. I think he's my best model yet and it's a pity he's only a cameo.

First Cut

After exactly 7 months of animating, I have my first cut of the film.

Naturally, since this is an important milestone, Blogger won't let me upload the video. But I want to mark the occasion with a post anyway.

While there's still a lot of work to be done on the crowd/animation fixes/lighting/rendering/etc, I'm at a point at which I can get feedback on the film as a whole.

Video Reference

Video reference is pretty useful, especially when animating scenes where there is a lot of complicated body movement. For example:

Reference:
(with classmate Paul Shepherd)


Rough Animation:



Final animation:



Another Example:



A lot of things change during the animation, but the reference is a great way to avoid starting with a blank piece of paper.

(I also feel that reference video footage will soon be replaced by low-cost motion capture systems. Same idea, but the reference will automatically be available as 3D information in the computer, and then you can either layer keyframe animation on top, or use it purely as a traditional reference.)

Yet Another Example:

Reference (starring myself and classmate Joanna Griebel):

Animation:

Motion Capture Performance Final Project

Should've posted this a while ago - my final from the Eric Furie/Robert Zemeckis Motion Capture Performance class which includes more crowd work. (I also shot some fight sequences that were not yet reconstructed in time for this video but can be seen here.)



The foreground and middle ground crowd elements are motion captured (the performers are my classmates John and Nahomi, myself and an actor, Kevin), and the background crowd elements are generated out of Massive. This is my new approach to the crowd because I can still art direct the crowd manually and then just give it additional volume using Massive.

I liked where this is going, but my advisor, Christine Panushka, wants to see A LOT more people and some children so I need to work on that. RenderMan for Maya 2.0 supports instancing, so my plan is to create instances of the FG and MG crowd individuals that I already have, giving me a lot more volume closer to the camera without a substantial performance hit (I hope).

Other than that I got good feedback on the look, the design of the crowd, etc. from the faculty.

Ollie Johnston's Notes on Animation

These are posted on an old Siggraph site, and John Lasseter got them from Glen Keane who got them from Ollie.

1. Don’t illustrate words or mechanical movements. Illustrate ideas or thoughts, with the attitudes and actions.
2. Squash and stretch entire body for attitudes.
3. If possible, make definite changes from one attitude to another in timing and expression.
4. What is the character thinking?
5. It is the thought and circumstances behind the action that will make the action interesting. Example: A man walks up to a mailbox, drops in his letter and walks away OR A man desperately in love with a girl far away carefully mails a letter in which he has poured his heart out.
6. When drawing dialogue, go for phrasing. (Simplify the dialogue into pictures of the dominating vowel and consonant sounds, especially in fast dialogue.
7. Lift the body attitude 4 frames before dialogue modulation (but use identical timing on mouth as on X sheet).
8. Change of expression and major dialogue sounds are a point of interest. Do them, if at all possible, within a pose. If the head moves too much you won’t see the changes.
9. Don’t move anything unless it’s for a purpose.
10. Concentrate on drawing clear, not clean.
11. Don’t be careless.
12. Everything has a function. Don’t draw without knowing why.
13. Let the body attitude echo the facial.
14. Get the best picture in your drawing by thumbnails and exploring all avenues.
15. Analyze a character in a specific pose for the best areas to show stretch and squash. Keep these areas simple.
16. Picture in your head what it is you’re drawing.
17. Think in terms of drawing the whole character, not just the head or eyes, etc. Keep a balanced relation of one part of the drawing to the other.
18. Stage for most effective drawing.
19. Draw a profile of the drawing you’re working on every once in a while. A profile is easier on which to show the proper proportions of the face.
20. Usually the break in the eyebrow relates to the highpoint of the eye.
21. The eye is pulled by the eyebrow muscles.
22. Get a plastic quality in face — cheeks, mouth and eyes.
23. Attain a flow thru the body rhythm in your drawing.
24. Simple animated shapes.
25. The audience has a difficult time reading the first 6-8 frames in a scene.
26. Does the added action in a scene contribute to the main idea in that scene? Will it help sell it or confuse it?
27. Don’t animate for the sake of animation but think what the character is thinking and what the scene needs to fit into the sequence.
28. Actions can be eliminated and staging "cheated" if it simplifies the picture you are trying to show and is not disturbing to the audience.
29. Spend half your time planning your scene and the other half animating.
30. How to animate a scene of a four-legged character acting and walking: Work out the acting patterns first with the stretch and squash in the body, neck and head; then go back in and animate the legs. Finally, adjust the up and down motion on the body according to the legs.

I pasted them here in case the source site disappears.

Music

I can't listen to music when I'm doing the thinking part of the animation e.g. poses, but I do listen to it when I'm watching the edit. This way I have some internal rhythm to edit to. Of course, this doesn't have to be the final music but just something to set the mood in my brain. The music I listen to varies widely depending on the scene and its emotional intensity/tone. For the more dramatic slower scenes that I've been working on recently, I listen to Zakir Hussain's Kalpana a lot. Not that I listen to a lot of classical music but this track is one of my favorite pieces of music. I would've liked to use it in the final music but it may be too meditative for the film.