Avatar: The Art of Performance Capture

An insightful look into the mechanics of Avatar's animation. This looks like motion capture is being used to its greatest advantage!



via EXXCORPIO tweet
via eguiders.com

Walk Cycle video

Finally i've worked out how to get suitable lighting, camera setup and rendering out of Maya. So here is the video of my finished walk cycle made with the Animo rig from digital tutors...



Somewhat better than my robot walk cycle from first year at Uni! =D


Soundtrack: Moreno Trio - Du Dja Yal

The 10 Principles of Photoreal 3D

During some research into Maya's texturing, shading and render stuff, I came across an article from the website of Visual Magic Magazine. It suggests that there are 10 Principles of Photorealism in 3D and attempts to explain them in great detail.

The 10 principles are...

1. Clutter & Chaos
2. Personality & Expectations
3. Believability
4. Surface Texture
5. Specularity
6. Dirt, Dust and Rust
7. Flaws, Scratches and Dings
8. Beveled Edges
9. Object Material Depth
10. Radiosity

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

via CGTalk - Maya: Shader Networks


Soundtrack: Billie Holiday - All Of Me

Animation Basics: Maya Bouncing Beach Ball

In my first year at uni a small 1 hour class project was to create a bouncing ball. I couldn't do it, well it looked awful so I think that's why i've gone back now to learn the steps of creating a believable bouncing ball. Also, because it uses the first of the 12 principles of animation; squash and stretch.

I found a great tutorial from Digital Animation Guild which also helped me to better understand maya's lighting and rendering.

Eatliz - Hey

This is the first time (to my knowledge) that I have discovered a really good band with good music, through their awesome music video! For me its always been the other way round, so it's quite exciting this time.

The animation took three years to complete and the story was written and directed by the bands guitarist and composer of this song; Guy Ben-Shetrit.



The style of the song first reminded me of Sleeptime Gorilla Museum, especially her voice. But there is something unique about it and i'm not sure what. There are definitely a lot of influences in this song.

Direct link to the songs website!

You can also download their album for free on their website!

Christmas 2009

It's that time of the year, where I get to spend a lot of time with my family; eat, drink, play games and be very, very lazy. It's also a time of presents and this year I think i've done quite well. After my research project I decided it was time to get some decent animation books and here they are, taken by my new camera too! :-)



Merry Christmas all and enjoy the time today with your family, friends and loved ones.

Live Client Project - New Brief!

After a conversation today with Smoke & Mirrors I found out that they will be sending me a new brief. It seems that their pitch didn't win the Churchill Dog advert and Glassworks did.


Follow this link to read about and watch the finished advert.

My only problem with this is that the product ended up different to what Churchill required in their brief. I was told the the whole dog needed to be animated; as it walks along a path and then jumps up onto a wall, then talks to the camera. In all they just animated the head and facial expressions!
Also, I don't like the kitchen scene very much. It says in the description that there were reactions from both kids, well, only one laughed, the other had her head in her food.

Anyway, I should receive my new brief tomorrow lunch time!


Soundtrack: Billy Holiday - Body and Soul

Walk Cycle

In a previous post I said that this holiday I would be concentrating on the curve editor, or graph editor as it's known, in Maya...

21/12/09 - 02:20

It's a really good tutorial i'm working from by Digital Tutors so far it's going well. I've realised already why my last walk cycle was so bad!

This is simple pose to pose animation.

This might be the next tutorial I follow to learn how to animate the Churchill dog for Smoke & Mirrors.

Update:
21/12/09 - 21:53

It's going really well; i'm really getting into the graph editor and this guy on the tutorial i'm watching, even though he's messed up a couple of times (!) is very good at explaining what he's doing.

Only thing i'm not enjoying is I can't listen to my music!

Update:
22/12/09 - 03:30
I've finished the generic male walk cycle. Now I have to figure out how to render nicely in Maya and i'll upload the video!

Update:
30/12/09 - 17.25
FINALLY!

BBC 1 - Animated Xmas Short Film

Look out for this...

BBC One
Christmas Day @ 5.30pm
THE GRUFFALO



via Oliver Ladeuix Blog post.


Soundtrack: Captain Beyond - Raging River of Fear

Yr 3 Term 1 - End

I feel a Godzilla analogy coming on...

Yeap...

Apologies in advance...

Yesterday was the end of the essay-zilla; the monster of all essays that ever was! I killed it, and I think I killed it good! So now the world can go about it's daily business without the fear of such an menacing, evil villain.
Ok, stupid Godzilla analogies aside, the PRP research paper was a very difficult task so i'm just glad to be done with it. I think I gave it my best so i'm eager to find out the results.

Celebrations to the end of the essay were had in good style last night too. My band Spring on Jupiter played at the Horn In Hand. We had a great time and the rest of the evening with MM students was, to say the least, epic!

Now i'm focusing on my Live Client project and speaking to Smoke & Mirrors today to get more info. It's quite an ironic project in that anyone who knows me, knows that I have a fear of dogs for many years now and the project is to design and animate the new dog for the Churchill commercials. *hmm, perhaps I can use my past experiences and turn them around into a story for this project...*

If you don't know which dog i'm talking about, here's the little fella...


I'm glad I have this project though because my view at the moment is that I will be researching dogs and hopefully educate myself about them and be rid of my fear once and for all!


Soundtrack: Meshuggah - In Death -- Is Death

The Passenger

This seven minute short film can be summarised in seven short words... brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! :D Created by Chris Jones. This is a fantastic story and excellent soundtrack!



The YouTube link is poor quality, so if you have a good internet connection (and 5.1 surround sound) you can watch the film in HIGH QUALITY here.

Fortunately, Jones documented every step of the way!

Live Client Project

I have just completed the first part of my final year major project; Personal Research Project. The research paper was an enquiry into the methodologies animators use as core principles to bringing characters to life.

Now my new big project is the Live Client. I have managed to secure a brief from Smoke & Mirrors in Soho, London. My brief is to re-design, model, rig, animate and place into a scene the new dog for the insurance company; Churchill. Many people from the UK will know this 'thespian of pantomime' dog all too well, so it's a great privilege for me to have the challenge of the re-design!
Smoke and Mirrors have more recently adverts such as; Rock Band Beatles, BBC Electric Proms 2009. Music Videos such as; Paolo Nutini - Pencil Full of Lead. They are one of the top leading Post Production studios in the UK. They have Maya specialists there so I will be working in Maya to get the most advice from their 3D artists.

More info soon!

Music: Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay

PRP - Update (final week)!

Image from kf6nvr.net

After a week or so with not much on here about my Personal Research Project and seeing as though it's 4.30am, i'm drinking coffee, listening to a post-rock compilation (great to work to) and I am working on the PRP right now, I thought i'd post an update on how things are going...

I want to start off with a confession. It seems I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge and an overt appreciation for many many things. This becomes apparent if you look at the myriad of topic questions i've had since beginning this project.

First there was Foley; i'm a musician too, apparently.
Then after the holiday I changed to bringing inanimate objects to life
Soon after there was a tutorial from which I took advice to look at choreography.
After that came something about character arc.

But wait, there's more...

Then character design was a point of interest.
And finally, finally I realised where i wanted to go; character acting in animation.

So my research topic question is:

What techniques of believable character acting give animators the ability to influence audience’s emotions?

I can't help the fact that these different things do interest me greatly. To the point now where I am learning how to draw and practicing everyday (which is getting in the way of my guitar playing! lol) and my interest in animation has grown ten fold.

I plan to make the most of this year; make some really good animations (as soon as I learn how to use the curve editor in 3ds Max and Maya(?) properly!)

Anyway, back to the point of this post. It's going quite well now. I've got so many quotes about acting in animation and some about acting in general which will back up my points in the discussion and so on. I've been in touch with a few professionals and asked them questions which has been a great help too.

Next week this will be over!

And you will find me in the (Horn In Hand) pub!


Music: Explosions In The Sky - Magic Hours

Greed

This.
Is.
Awesome!...



Made by Alli Sadegiani
This link will take you to an Interview with the creator and the making of!

MAGI Synthavision

After discovering the Where The Wild Things Are animation by Lasseter and co, I found out which studio (as well as Disney) helped to achieve this. It was MAGI Synthavision and here is there 1984 show reel. It's actually really good, except for the walk cycle they show, and from 2min35sec - 2min41sec it really made me laugh!...

Where The Wild Things Are, by, Disney??

I recently discovered that back in 1983, before Pixar, John Lasseter created an animation test with Disney for Where The Wild Things Are. Back then Disney owned the film rights to the Where The Wild Things Are books... they didn't use them, though, so they lost them.

While he was working on “Mickey's Christmas Carol”, another movie titled “Tron” was under development in Disney. John happened to watch some of the early tests and was excited, not for the quality of the stuff but for the 3d feeling it generated. He found tremendous possibilities with the use of computers and knew it was the future. Lasseter wanted to create a 3d world where the 2d characters could move around. Together with Disney animator Glen Keane and Tom Wilhite, Head of the Production, he made a 30 second test film titled “Where the Wild Things Are”, where they combined the hand drawn images that Glen did with a computer generated background. They moved the camera like a steady cam shot for the first time in animation, following the animated character in and around objects.

Check out this amazing test, which combined traditional hand-drawn, 2D animation with then-state-of-the-art 3D computer animation!

"Their next dream was to make a feature in this fashion and they selected the story of “The Brave Little Toaster", by Thomas Disch. Lasseter made contacts with people in the Computer Graphics Industry which included Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith of Lucas Film Computer Graphics Group. Lasseter started his works to make the dream true. But things went wrong when he unknowingly upset a few superiors in his effort to pace their dream project. When Lasseter presented the idea it was turned down and in a few minutes time he got the information that he was fired from the company.

But the man joined Lucas Film with Ed Catmul and Alvy Ray Smith to create the first complete 3d animated short "The Adventures of Andre and Wally Bee".It was followed by other shorts like Luxo Junior, Red's dream, Tin Toy and Knick Knack before moving to make his dream of making a fully 3d animated feature true."

From Here It Begins.blogspot.com

Useful Animation Tips (keep 'em close!)

From the official Frank & Ollie website. This is what John Lasseter said at the SIGGRAPH '94 conference...

"When I was an animator at the Disney Studios, I had a xeroxed list of simple notes from one of the great Disney animators, Ollie Johnston, pinned to my drawing table. The list was originally written down by another great Disney animator, Glen Keane, after working as Ollie’s assistant for a few years."

"These notes have been an inspiration to me for years. Even though they were meant for hand-drawn animation, I believe that they still apply to computer animation."

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.

Music: K.D. Lang - Bird On A Wire

Nine Old Men and the 12 Principles of Animation

Recently I found out about these important figures in the animation world and what they contributed and I found it really interesting so I had to post something...

Nine Old Men was the name given by Walt Disney to his core team of animators (even though they were in their thirties or forties at the time) who created some of Disney's most famous works, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs onward to The Rescuers. All members of the group are now deceased.


Les Clark (November 17, 1907 - September 12, 1979)
Ollie Johnston (October 31, 1912 - April 14, 2008)
Frank Thomas (September 5, 1912 - September 8, 2004)
Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman (June 26, 1909 - May 22, 1985)
John Lounsbery (March 9, 1911 - February 13, 1976)
Eric Larson (September 3, 1905 - October 25, 1988)
Ward Kimball (March 4, 1914 - July 8, 2002)
Milt Kahl (March 22, 1909 - April 19, 1987)
Marc Davis (March 30, 1913 - January 12, 2000)

The Nine Old Men also refined the 12 basic principles of animation ( a book now on my christmas list! ):
Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
Slow In and Slow Out
Arcs
Secondary Action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid Drawing
Appeal


Music: John Scofield & Pat Metheny - The Red One