The Midterm Cometh

Today was our midterm presentation and I reached my goal of posing Justin and figuring out the cameras in time. Unfortunately, because of two corrupted tiff files, I couldn't show my full story reel. However, I did pull it together, so here it is:




I feel like I'm on pace relative to the rest of the thesis class, though I have a lot of work ahead of me. March is serious animation month--ideally I finish the animation in March and get down to the nitty gritty texturing and lighting and rendering in April. Thats the plan for the moment at least.

Pieces in the key of Justin

(Image found on Head Injury Theater's website for Art Crash in September of 2006)

I've set the goal of having a completely posed, camera ready story reel for next week. So I've been spending a lot of time figuring out how to end the piece. After posing Justin all the way through attaching the red piece I had animator's block and couldn't figure out how to have the last yellow piece arrive.

In talking to Jenny, she referenced choreography advice that she had gotten--establish a pattern and then break it. It seemed like sound advice, and I'd already established this pattern of the pieces falling from the sky. What if the last piece existed already? This would inextricably bind up Justin as fated to construct this puzzle (if there was no way for this puzzle to be completed without the piece he possesses, then only he can finish it). But where to put the piece? It has the shape of a key, but unfortunately the piece is too big to fit in a pocket or go around his neck.

So I started thinking about somehow having the piece be a part of him...its somewhat outlandish, but after watching the Oscar Nominated Shorts at IFC Film Center, and seeing Maestro by Geza M. Toth (below), I reminded myself--push for stylized animation!

I didn't want him to lose a piece of himself--i.e. ear, nose, foot...so I'd rather the piece be imbedded in him. I couldn't seem to resolve how to do this, make it visible to the viewer and seem integrated into the world. I did like the idea of it in his neck and he goes back to scratch his neck and finds it, but it ended up being a little too complicated--and not in keeping with the world I've constructed.

In the end I decided to imbed the piece in the rock and what draws his attention to it is a smaller version of himself sitting on a rock on the piece--I love this idea (thanks to Lauren) because it enhances the idea of worlds within worlds. So, now I just have to pose it all and figure out cameras!

Setting new goals

To start, some inspiration...


The following video was made by a band called The Cobbs(formerly Mad Action). The song is called Smile and the video was created by Jonas Odell who works for a company called FilmTecknarna which is based in Sweden. I discovered a partially completed version of the video submitted at www.ralphrocks.com for a competition, but heres the finished version...damn impressive compositing work:


After meeting with Hosenfeld last week I was again reminded of a Radiohead video that is entirely CG with an unsmoothed Polygon look to it. I hadn't been able to find the video, but I finally buckled down and searched for it pretty hard and discovered it, for the song Go to Sleep:


Now for an update:

I've been working pretty hard this week on posing Justin, especially putting together the first three pieces--attempting some positions that don't work and then figuring it out. I've given him two failures and then a success each time so far, three is always enough to seem feasible but not too much to get monotonous. Of course, with three more pieces to add I intend less attempts for the others, probably two for the white piece and the red and yellow are pretty obvious once everything else is in place, so he'll probably just turn it over and inspect the puzzle and figure it out on the first go with those two. I also deleted the FPO (for placement only) cube and created a reference file for the rock, with a preliminary model. At the moment its bigger than I imagined, but it looks pretty good.

Some issues that have arisen as I've been working:

Shot 1, towards the end, when the camera starts to pan up to reveal the first piece falling. I'm realizing that he will be singing throughout the piece (though I'm only showing his lips here and there, so I will only be creating a lip sync occasionally, but I want it to feel as though he is singing the whole thing)--and I don't really want him to be singing "You were sent to me, fallen from the sky" before the piece lands in his lap...so I need to figure out what to do with the camera so you don't see his face when the lyrics start. Maybe I can cut to shot 2 earlier--at around frame 400 the camera has pulled in and not yet panned up to show the piece and the lyrics haven't started. I could just have the second shot follow the piece from further out.

Shot 6, the one after the close-up on "hey" and before he is down crouching on the ground has been broken into two shots: 6 and 6a. In 6 the camera pulls across to the right as the orange piece lands next to him. Then it pulls up over his left shoulder as he figures out how the green and orange fit. Shot 6a is still in the works. Somehow I need to show the blue piece land on his right side without completely disorienting the viewer. Cutting from over his left shoulder to a medium shot on his right side is jarring to say the least.

Shots 7, 8, 9
At the moment shot 6a pulls in slowly to show him fitting the blue piece in. Shot 7 then starts out again and follows the same long slow pull in to show his eyes reflected in the puzzle during the lyrics, "But no one can find me when I'm lost in your eyes." Both shots suggest a long slow pull...I just have to figure out how to make them different...shots 8 and 9 currently pan back and forth as he climbs back up on the rock and puts together the last few pieces--I need to minimize the panning, its a little much, and I'm toying with the idea that he doesn't get up and sit on the rock again...that maybe all the pieces land within reach on the rock or the ground and he finishes the puzzle sitting on the ground---this could mean that as he realizes that its a little planet, he stands up in shock...nice change of pose to denote change in emotion...this would completely change all of the camera movement...


So, my current goal is to try to get basic poses and cameras done for the whole thing by the end of the week...its a lot of work as I've only done about half of it so far, but I've done the harder part--it gets easier and there are less major poses. If I can get some more textures done early next week then for my wednesday meeting with Hosenfeld I can render out the whole thing. Ideally I'd reference in the puzzle ball twice more and place pieces floating in space as well as texture an environment sphere. That may be pushing it, but it would be a lot of progress from two weeks ago.

Group dynamics

After a lot of prep work I've begun the process of animation...Yay!!!
(Above is Justin's first pose that I worked on yesterday)

Lets recap on what has occurred to this point:

The problem of the IK/FK switch that stopped working when scaling Norman was fixed miraculously with the aid of Morgan Loomis (who wrote the script). Leif had me contact him, saying that he wasn't sure it could be fixed, but Morgan might be able to help. As doubtful as this made me that there was a solution, I pressed onward and contacted Morgan, who (again) miraculously, had a newer version of the script in which that problem has been fixed...so far so good.

My attempts at reskinning Norman are utter failures, as evidenced immediately upon posing Justin. (You can see the shoulder problems somewhat in the above image) I intend to go back and restore the skinning to the original settings. Along these lines, after having my first meeting with Hosenfeld today, he emphasized that I make sure not to push too much towards realism...stay stylized. With this in mind, I'm giving up trying to unify the arm and leg Geo...Justin will be puppet-like...perhaps I'll have holes in the knees or patches of different colors, but the simpler the geo the better.

Now, to what I am working on at the moment.

I have begun to create poses for Justin--attempting to put some timidity and childlike behavior into them...first I'm just trying to get the basic concept down, then I intend to go back and work on silhouettes and body arc lines. Below is one of the poses...



As is evident in the image, I'm beginning to get him to put together the pieces. As of yet I haven't decided when and where and how to constrain the pieces to his hands. However, I did decide to create a grouping system in the reference file so that there are nested groups for the putting together of the puzzle. I can animate the green piece alone until the orange piece gets slid into place. First off, to make sure that the green and orange piece lock solidly, I reset their translate and rotate to zero so they are at default position, where they are already together. Then, there is a group above orange and green that contains the two together. So I switch from animating them individually to the group above them. This group is then grouped with the blue piece to create a new set, and so on...giving me a tiered system to animate different groups for each phase of the puzzle. I haven't quite figured out how I will go about making sure the pieces don't jump around as I switch groups, but for the moment its a very helpful structure for blocking out the poses.

Reality Check

Above is my original Production Schedule as I planned it last semester during PreVis. Based on its progression, I am behind schedule, as I am finishing week 2 of the semester and should have completed shots 1-3 preliminary animation. In retrospect the schedule was a little too optimistic about my ability to model and texture everything in a couple weeks. However, I feel I gave myself way more time to do animation than is necessary (of course, the more time I have, the better then animation would be--but I have to balance the time spent on animation with completing all the other elements as well), so I'm not too worried--I expect to start animating in a week or so and believe I should be able to do a first pass of the entire piece in 2-3 weeks, and that should put me back on track.

Once the cameras are set, beginning animation should be fairly simple--I plan to reference in the two Justins into the Master File and scale them based on the Normans that are currently in the scene. Then I can block out my animation based on the simple poses I created for Norman--but with quite a bit more thought put into silhouettes, body curvature...etc...

I was a little worried that since I changed my cameras between my second animatic and my final Previs materials (because of slight story changes), that it would be a lot of work to fix them. Fortunately, they are all iterations of the original cameras, and it looks like I only have to change a couple shots. So the goal for the day is to get all the cameras set so next week I can begin animation!
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(Later that day...)

I've not only set all 9 of my cameras according to my shot sheets, but I've created a new camera rig where all 9 cameras are inputed into a new shot cam so I can quickly see what an edit would look like. Of course, I can still render out from each individual camera, however, this way I can play blast the whole piece quickly and get a sense of how the camera movement and character animation are looking over a number of shots.
As well, I've referenced in both Justins and scaled them according to the corresponding Normans that I used as placeholders. I still haven't figured out what to do about the IK/FK Switch issue, but I'm going to move ahead and hopefully will not need to use it. If a solution comes about, it shouldn't be difficult to scale the placer back to 1 (if necessary) so I can make the proper adjustments.
Starting next week I'm going to pose the small Justin based on the original poses I created for Norman and can begin to nail down the blocking.
I expect that the camera will have to change some since the blocking I did for Norman was so quick and dirty. Fortunately, since each shot is its own camera, adjusting for pose changes should be really easy. As such, I don't plan to render out anything until I have the cameras set. I can create new playblasts as I'm altering the poses and cameras to further my story reel from the animatic, but its just a waste of time to render before I have anything that can be deemed "final."
Meanwhile, I plan to continue fleshing out (literally) Justin and the planet modeling and texturing as I begin the animation process. Theres only so long you can animate before you start to lose it!