Mimes mimes mimes

I've spent most of tonight polishing. I think I'm nearly there, though watching back now, there's still the odd jitter in the elbows, and a few little timing issues in the facial work I might need to go back and tweak, but this will do for tomorrow's show and tell.

Scott finalised the the set for the group today, and it looks great! However, for some unknown reason, when he sent me the file, all I got was a blank scene. The outliner in Maya said all the geometry was there, with visibility turned on, but we couldn't see any of it. We both tried different versions of the scene, referencing the scene, importing into the scene, but to no avail. Hopefully It'll work when i pick up a physical copy tomorrow, as opposed to one sent over skype.

You can take a look at the set here.

In other news, SCott took my initial audition tape idea, and churned out this beauty. Complete with full audio.

Nice one Scott!

Mime presentation ideas.

We've had an idea that involved a sort of intro, that showed a series of posters and newspaper clips of the directors past work. However, after talking with Siobhan, it was suggested we went for a more, stylistic approach. I had the idea of an old, lost audition tape, grainy, roughly cut together, maybe not even in colour. Above is a test i threw together in Premiere. It's nothing final, but i gets the idea across. I like it, but we'll see what the rest of the group thinks tomorrow in class.

11 Second update.

Today i've been beavering away, looking for suitable rigs and making props for my pro granny skateboarder scene. I looked at a few rigs, both different variations on the well known Morpheus and Norman rigs for Maya. I want to stay with Maya for the rest of this module, see what I can learn before we kick off with the major project next module.

I looked at a few rooks from this site, HERE, posted by Rachel in the MACHARACTER Facebook Group. I tinkered with a few, but to be honest, I much prefer using Morpheus, thanks to the Mime task, I'm used to it. So I've decided to modify my own. I've also been building the necessary props, i.e helmet, skateboard etc. I have plenty of skateboards around here for reference, so modelling one wasn't an issue. I still need to fully model the scene, I'm still unsure with where to go with it...

I'm not sure how to go about texturing stuff in Maya, so Scott is going to show me few things after class tomorrow. But I at least am able to begin ploughing on with animating the shot now.

Here's a teaser.

Ther personalities are there, but I think the added textures and costumes will really bring the characters home. The pro just doesn't look elderly yet. Well, best be getting on.

Rossini Progress WITH NEW AUDIO

Boom. Right, I think I'm nearing the end with this one. I've marched ahead after getting the all clear for the new ending, and am now cleaning up in spline. I've added the new audio from tuesday's studio session, big thanks to voice actor James for his brilliant ad lib performance, it's even better than the last one!

I still need to go back in and animate Rossini's muttering at the end, as well as more to his fingers, and generally iron out the curves some more, but I like where it's at. Feeling good.

New NEW ending

Okay, so I showed the new ending around some, and I got pretty much the same response. Why was the box suddenly so heavy? Why was Rossini struggling so much. So I changed it up some more.

This way, he pushes the box away, AND manages to walk of screen in disgust with the Director and his insults. He gains speed as he walks off, just to doubly make sure the audience know it's the same, not too heavy, box.

I've managed to get as far a reasonably tight linear pass. Just gotta keep chipping away at it. I plan on starting the final facial work tomorrow too.

The Retro Rollers.

Just a small update today. Been working out the scene layout for the ii second club piece.

I've decided the pro's skate team should be called something like 'The Retro Rollers', I can't think of anything better at the moment, so it might stay that way.

Anyhoo, I want the scene layout to look something like this

The shot will open on the right side of the scene, just revealing the tent material behind them. Then as the pro moves to the left, the camera will follow, finally revealing the team poster, security team, and finally the half pipe beyond.

11 second club cont.

I want to go in the direction of the long suffering PA for the 'Mrs Crawley' character. A few ideas were tossed around about whether she should be a wannabe skateboarder, or a fan, but after a discussion with Kristian, I settled back on the idea of the PA. I think the contrast between the cool, calm, pro, and the flustered, wreck of an assistant just works better.

11 Second Club

http://www.11secondclub.com/

The next part of the Acting for Animators assignment is a 2 character dialogue piece, courtesy of the 11 second club. The clip can be heard at the link above, the the transcript is as follows.

Voice One: "Please don't think we're ungrateful for your enthusiasm, Mrs. Crawley, but there comes a time when things are best left to the professionals."
Voice Two: "But I...."
Voice One: "And now I really, I really must go. Good day."

I've started planning my scenario and character profiles, basically, the 'Pro' is a 76 year old skateboarding badass, about to perform to thousands on her best selling skateboarding stunt show, and the other character is her ever worried, daughter in law, who would rather face the crowd herself than see her aged mother in law perform such dangerous stunts on a nightly basis. She needn't worry though, the pro can handle it.

I've started tinkering with some designs too, I think i've pretty much got the pro sorted, and will have the "Mrs Crawley" character done by tomorrow, as well as the beginnings of a storyboard.

Linear 350

Last post of the night.

I managed to get a further 150 or so frames kinda polished, for tomorrows feedback session. THe later 50 or so frames still bug me, the wipe down of the box isn't right. Too floaty, and in need of some definition on the fingers. The rest is pretty much just more curve polishing I think.

Anyway, more tomorrow folks.

Yet even more Linear progress.

Yet another post! This must be a record... ANyway. The first 200 or so frames of pretty much tidied linear. Sure i'll end up going back to, but I want to press on for now. Rossini seems to have developed a bit of springiness, Not sure if I like it at this stage, but I'm going to follow this new route and see where it leads me. Anyway, more later.

More Linear Progress.

Still plodding on. I've retimed the 'tada' section, made it snappier and added a little more flamboyance into the mix. Making good progress, still plenty to tidy up, but getting there.

More reference

I need some more reference, to just to fine tune the timing of the section where Rossini defines his box. My current linear work is still a bit floaty, but want him to be quick, confident. AFter all, Rossini know's he's good. Please excuse the bed head... I had to kneel on my bed for this, due to lack of space, but the idea and timing comes across.

More linear progress.

Been working on the first 120 frames of linear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Mpm0muDRg&feature=youtu.be

Kristian suggested I change his left arm when he steps across, as it was looking a little bit unnatural. This way there's a bit of follow through for visual interest, and injects some of Rossini's flamboyance into the performance. Winner!

Still in need of tweaking obviously, of course there's no finger of facial detail in there yet, but i'm gonna smooth out the whole piece like these frames before moving onto that. Things seem to be moving on at a better pace now after last nights crisis of confidence...

Anyway, more tomorrow.

Linear Progress

Remember that mess of linear I posted on Friday? Well I wasn't getting anywhere with the elbow corrections. In the end, I resorted to just jumping back to FK, rather than battling with the IK and the up vectors. Sure there's still a lot of work to do before it's any where near presentable, but at least those arms have stopped flailing wildly.

More to come later.

Feedback March 30th

Met today with the guys to discuss a few things. First, we cleared up the issue with the scenery Penny brought up before break, and changed the brick wall for a plain, much less distracting wall.

Second, we showed where we were up to in our animation.

My feedback points are:

1) UP VECTORS - as mentioned before, these need fixing

2) Box consistency - Rossini's box seems to get smaller, just a matter of moving some IK joints to fix.

3) Static hips - in the middel of the piece, there is a reduced level of hip movement, they need a little more life in them.

Today I attempted to crack on in linear mode, to not much success. IN all honesty, I'm a little scared right now, I've been sitting here a good 3 or 4 hours, and all i've managed to do is loose a lot of the detail I established in stepped mode. maybe I need to define a little more in stepped. I am really concerned about falling behind at this stage though... I want to be solidly in linear by tomorrow evening, I think I'll email some tutors for advice. See you all tomorrow.

March 30th Progress

Okay! So I think I'm just about done with stepped, here's what we have so far...

I think I'm happy with the timing, the end needs work, mainly where Rossini walks off, and I think the part where he dusts off his arms needs work. I do like how he picks up his box however.

So, next we jump to linear, the result? Well uh, judge for yourself...

Elbows. Elbows everywhere. I'm pretty sure I can fix them by wrangling with the Up Vectors a bit. I was constantly hopping between IK and FK on his arms whilst animating them, so I guess some bizarre vector behaviour is to be expected. Welp, I know what I'm doing tomorrow, see you all then.

Presentation Planning

For Tuesdays presentation, i was given the topic of Defining Character.

I've laid out some bullet points to start me on my way.

• What is Character? Defining? Why is that important?

• Live action clip – Lord of the rings, Gandalf confronts Bilbo.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5yTB__AYHc&feature=fvsr

  - Gandalfs Rhythm, two halves, caring friend, powerful wizard.

  - Power centre, camera angle, lighting, etc.

  - What do we learn about Gandalf in this clip?

• Animated Clip – Beauty and the beast. Beast scares belle

  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qPFLcpkKZs

  - Beasts rhythm. Two halves, monster, unsure child.

  - Power centre, camera angle, lighting, etc.

  - What do we learn about Beast in this clip.

• Defining moments

  “Actions Define characters” - Ed hooks

  Carlos Baena on power centres

  Relationship between power centres and rhythm – Ed Hooks

• Comparisons between the clips.

  - Rhythm accelerations, rising power centres, then sudden drops.

  - similar scene composition

Difference between Live action and Animation? Both similar scenes, therefore approached very much in the same way. Animation has slightly more over gesturing, but it's in context. I.e, beast vs Gandalf, Monster vs old man.

Reference Shoot with Voice Actor

Voice Actor and comedian James Harris joined our reference shoot today, we got some great stuff! Having to react to James' orders and insults really added that extra edge of believability to our performances. It was like being in a real audition! James gave a great performance, really got into character. We will be using the audio from this session to animate to, until we record a final master version. I'm currently working on a final animatic, drawing on key poses from the footage. More to come soon.

Gary Resvick - Director

Kristian was charged with creating the director's character profile.

http://pose-to-pose.blogspot.com/2012/02/character-profile-director.html

Gary Resvick is a little bit egotistical, and we figured he'd have a sort of, 'wall of fame' of photos, newspaper articles, past production posters, lining the walls of his theatre. Kristian worked on the posters, and I worked on Resvick's photo and newspaper clippings.

Feb 24th Reference shoot.

A little late posting this, but it's valid none the less.

This was our first reference shoot for the mime assignment. It was more of a practice run than anything else, a chance for us to really get in the minds of our characters, and learn a little bit more about them, try different approaches. It was also a chance to se what worked in each scene, and what didn't, we were able to 'trim the fat' as it were, to drop any superfluous actions that just added dead weight to the scene, or took up too much screen time. From this session, came to realise the main character wasn't any of the mime artists, but the director. From here, the group fleshed out the director's personality, and added to the mimes accordingly. We wanted everything the mime characters do on stage to be a reaction of something the director says to them, be it following an order, reacting to an insult, or even ignoring the director completely. It's in these reactions, most of the pieces comedy lies.