Kamal's Animation Blog

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Acting for Animation

Task 1 : STAIRCASE ANIMATION

This is my first task of this module which has full of acting sequences. In this exercise I will need to animate a character going up some stairs. It should be absolutely clear about who your character is, what mood they are in, what is their objective and obstacle. The concept for this task is described below,

A character is talking on the mobile phone while walking on the steps and suddenly he hears the sound of door bell, he is looking down for someone else to open the door as he is busy with an important conversation on phone but unfortunately no one opens the door. He heard the ring again and this time he asks his friend to hold the line and frustratingly dashing down the steps and opens the door furiously. He doesn’t find anyone at the door then he looks around the places for a while then shuts the door with force. Then he realise that he is still on the mobile conversation, by looking at his mobile he goes back upstairs normally. Halfway through the stairs he hears the door bell ring again, he turns around annoyed. Finally the shot ends here with a close-up of his frustrated face.

In this particular task, I had spent lot of time on the video references and also got a feedback from the Actor ED HOOKS. According to the Actor, I had changed my idea to make the scene more attractive. I've taken the video reference of this task according to the first idea and then I started animating modified idea using the same video reference.

The storyboard of this task is given below,

This storyboard is created according to my first idea where the character sitting and talking on the phone on the steps. According to the feedback, I've made lot of changes on my script and finally end up in a good way.

The video reference of this scene is posted below,

After taken this video, I've started my blocking and while doing blocking I find little difficult to get the character's expression. The original footage which i took is just a single shot where I cannot find the expression of the character, so I have taken another footage just to focus on the expression part. I followed the two footage to make my sequence more interesting. The blocking of this sequence is given below,

Once the blocking has been done and started fine tuning my animation. I made this sequence in two different shot and then I combined both scene into one at the final composition. While fine tuning the animation, I couldn't show the two difference mood of walk on the character. After the several experiment, finally I showed the two different walk on the character where the chracter begins walking in the normal mood and then turns into angry. I've changed the animation according to the feedback given in my class and that also make my scene looks more attractive at the end.

The final output of the sequence is given below,

The staging is quite clear and also made the camera pans and follow the character in the middle and I totally used four camera angles in order to show the character expressions as well to appeal the audience to understand what is going on in this scene.

Task 2 : MIME

The Mime is the theatrical technique of suggesting action, character, or emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement. This is my first experience animating a character without having any probs and dialogue and it teached me a lot in both the technical side as well on the acting side.

At first, I dont have any idea about how the Mime is and then after my lecture, I came to know the exact process of this theme. My concept for this task is,

A character gets up from the bed and take a deep snuffle then started going to the toilet by opening the toilet door. Once he opens the door, he started walking towards the toilet basin and opens his pant zip and pissing on the basin and then goes out of the screen. At first, I had an idea of doing the character brushing his teeth instead of pissing on the basin. Then I thought it will not be register for the viewer so I've changed my concept to make my scene more funnier.

I've taken a video reference on my own and acted out myself and it was more funny when I am doing this particular video shoot. The video reference of this task is given below,

At the blocking stage, it was more easier to make an extreme poses because the action is very simple and also quite realistic. I blocked an extreme keys according to the reference footage and it worked out well through out the scene. The blocking of this scene is given below,

At the blocking stage it was easy to make an extreme keyframes but when fine tuning the character, it was quite difficult to show the charater weight because the character standing in a same place for a while and doing a little action. I acted out myself so that I got an idea of where the character make hold for a while and how to move the hip when it is just a simple action. I've learned a lot in this scene especially the character balance and weight.

I've also made the character face white to show he doing the mime. There is a seperate costumes for the mime artist with painting their face with white color and also making their eyes and lips into different color. I had also textured my character face to white and also textured his shirt to black and white so that audience would realise that he doing the mime.

The final output of this task is posted below,

I've staged this shot into two different angle to make the audience to register the action as well as the expressions. This is the lengthy shot which runs almost 35 secs and I've taken more time on it than other two tasks.

Task 3 : 11SECONDCLUB ANIMATION

This is my third and interesting task which have to animate the 11secondclub online competition dialogue. The dialogue is about the two men arguing about each other and the dialogue is "MAN 1 : I am a pretty good liar, I've done lot of lieing in my time, I've lied to the men who wears belts and I've lied to the men who wears suspenders, but I never be so stupid about the men who wears both belt and the suspenders. MAN 2 : hows that again".

My concept for this competition is, A man trying to convince his colleagues and his boss in the board about his innocence. I've choosen four characters in this task, the one is the boss and the othere three were his colleagues. This was a very interesting task for me to animate because it has four different character with four diffrent moods and emotion. The four characters are doing different stuff which the main character walks and speak the dialogue to the boss and the bosss is busy writing on his file. The third character is browsing on his mobile phone and the fourth character is typing on his laptop on the table.

I've taken the reference shoot for this task with four characters and it gone almost several takes to get the exact feel. The final take of this shot is given below,

The blocking stage was interesting because there was not much poses for the secondary characters. The main character had a lot of acting stuff when compared to the others. I've choosen the old man for the main character because it will exactly suit the situation because he is convincing his boss about his innocence. The blocking clip of this task is posted below,

I was experimented so many things while fine tuning this particular task. Animating four characters in a scene is really difficult to maintain the character mood and emotion through out the end. The secondary characters have to react to the main characters while he is speaking or doing something and the main character also consider others when expressing the dialogue. The difficult thing for me in this particular scene is the main character because he is walking all around the places and talking. I felt little difficult while animating this particular character. The first pass of this task is posted below,

I've made a little changes on my animation when compared to my original video reference and that small changes would really made the scene more attaractive at the end.

The final output of this task is posted below,

At the end, I've learned so many things in this module and particularly my acting skills and how to impliment onto the characters. The video references really helped my animation stronger and gave more appealing to the scene at the end.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Animation Practice 2

Task 1 : Lipsync

This was the dialogue which attracts me most because of the strong voice. I chose this character because it exactly suits with the attitude of the character and also to the voice. I have taken a self video referencing for this shot and especially for the lipsync. This is the first time i am doing a lipsync with twisting a mouth shape in various places rather than moving it in straight and i guess it is synchoronized well through out the scene.

I made a rough layout for this shot and also fixed up the medium camera angle which shows that character is sitting on the chair and reading newspaper. Then he realise something happens and reacts to it, finally he speak the dialogue "stop breathing down my neck".

The layout for this shot is given below;

The Final Output of Task 1

Task 2 : Presenter

This is the quite interesting shot with two person talking each other, the original video which my tutor gave was a ventriloquy stage show, where the ventriloquist interacts with his puppet(which is the ventriloquist himself) and the puppet responds.
This skit is based on the famous knock knock jokes, here is the dialogue between them,

person 1: knock knock....you say who is there
person 2: ahh...
person 1: i say knock knock, you say who is there?
person 2: but it is you Dave.
person 1: no, thats part of the joke, i say knock knock, you say who is there....knock knock
person 2: i know its you
person 1: no teddy.

I thought it would be better to take two character into this particular situation instead of represent the same puppet style. I directed the scene according to the two characters and I took the video reference for my animation. Here i made a conversation between the two characters which one is like a realistic type and the other one is little cartoony style. I had taken the video references seperately for each characters. After several tryouts, finally i chose my reference which is displayed below;

This is the reference for the main character;

This is the reference for the secondary character;

After the live footage was recorded, i drawn an extreme poses for my animation. This shot doesn't have big body movements for both the characters but it was demanded more on acting side so i focused more on expression part to give the emotional feel. The sketches for this sequence are drawn below;

I have taken both video and sketches as my references then i started my animation. At first in the blocking stage the extreme poses came out pretty well and when adding inbetweens it was really difficult to hold the character whenever there is no dialogue, so i made the character to react with the audience by looking at them intentionally. After the several feedback from my tutor and my friends, my animation gets polished better and better and finally it came out pretty well in the end.

Here is the Final Output of Task 2

Task 3 : Dance

The dance which i chosen was "Cassie- me and you", it is a Hip-Hop song which has fast movements in the body. In animation point of you, this dance sequence comes under pose to pose animation because the actions are taken place very fastly. This was the different exercise for me to animate the character which had an extreme poses came at every 4 to 6 frames through out the end, which was really challenging one for me to animate.

In the original video three girls were dancing for this song and i chosen a boy and a girl instead to attract the viewers. I staged this sequence in order to see both the characters so i placed the characters parallely and fixed up a camera showing it in a long shot. The video reference is very clear because it was captured in a front angel so that i can see the each and every movements clearly. The video reference are linked below and i had taken first 20 seconds from this video footage.

I have drawn the extreme poses from the video reference and i learned so many things while drawings this particular scene. I have got lot of poses to draw on this scene and those poses were very strong and i enjoyed drawings these sequence in particular. Those drawings are given below;

While animating the character it is very difficult to maintain the emotion of the character throught out the end and it is very particular about dance sequences. Unfortunately i did not get any feedback from my tutor for this scene because i started this quite late. I chosen a white backdrop because it will give a good feel for dance movements and i also gave reflection and shadows to attracts the scene more and more. Here the final output are linked below;

Here is the Final Output of Task 3