Style Tests and Maya Exploration
The bulk of the first half of the week was dedicated to creating some style tests for the design of our animation and experimenting in Maya with what was feasible to get a feel for the logistics before starting on our animation. I created the style test seen above in Photoshop (using some assets such as the lighthouse and the island which I created in Illustrator) based off some of the ideas we had written down in our sketchbooks. We already had a rough idea of how we wanted our animation to look from the go ahead, but it is important to evidence this through the creation of style tests so that we could garner feedback form tutors and our peers. Since we are going for a sort of dissonant art style for our animation it was important to me especially that the final style we go for be aesthetically pleasing, as I feel there is a real danger, since we are experimenting with so many different styles, of the final product lacking appeal.
I also spent quite a large chunk of my week reacquainting myself with the tools in Maya, as for a large amount of our animation I am hoping to include it somehow for some of the environments and props within the environments. Most of my time was spent experimenting with different ways to model and shade a lighthouse as well as ways of simulating water, which was simple enough with the help of various maya plugins. What is important however is that we get the water looking right, so it meshes well with the 2D assets of the animation and does not detract from the overall aesthetic of the animation.
So far I am fairly happy with the results from a modelling perspective, where I feel there is room for improvement is in the colouring, lighting and shading. I tried experimenting with Maya's Toon Shaders (as you can see above') to mixed results, so for the final product I am hoping to use UV mapping to colour the meshes in Photoshop beforehand (while still retaining the simple low-poly style) in order to save a lot of hassle and allow for a more freeform modelling process. I will continue to experiment with Maya and find solutions for problems we may encounter in the future in order to nip them in the bud early and save us stress in the future.
'Character and Short Story Design' Seminar with Steve Henderson
Midway through the week I also attended a seminar with Steve Henderson outlining some of the key features of narrative in animation and some of the ways in which we could enrich our narratives through implicit narrative design and layered narrative planning. He showed us an example of a short film with a strong layered implicit narrative; 'Runaway' by Cordell Barker.
'Runaway' is a prime example of a short form animation with a multi-layered narrative. The explicit narrative is that of a runaway train and the hijinks that ensue when it's conductor is absent, but the purpose of the animation very clearly lies in the less obviously yet infinitely more interesting implicit narrative which is a scathing and satirical send-up on capitalism.
Almost every design decision, from the design of characters, to the composition of the mise en scene, serves the purpose of reinforcing the implicit anti-capitalist narrative. The carriages are laid our and structured very much the way the Capitalist system is ordered, with the rich put first and the poor figuratively and then literally left behind. The core idea of a runaway train also reinforces this idea that the Capitalist system is 'a runaway train' heading for disaster, with the peaks and valleys of the environment almost symbolising the fluctuating stock market and uneasiness Capitalism brings. Barker's imaginatively animated short film is a densely packed critique yet also an entertaining and, at least on the surface level, light-hearted short narrative which works so well precisely because it has such strong implicit and explicit narratives.
'A film needs to be honest. Not just a project to get a three picture deal from Hollywood. It should be from the heart.'
-Don Hertzfelt, Director of 'Its Such a Beautiful Day'
The rest of the seminar explored lots of other ideas of how writing should be structured in a short animation. Being the organiser of the Manchester Animation Festival, Steve is an expert in this field. One of the main things I took away from it is that writing is not just the creation of a script, it is the transferring of ideas from your head to the page, anyway you want to. Work how you want to work and however is best for you when you can. While scripts are expected in industry, ideas can form any way. A script should be seen as a shopping list for what you need to create a film, the ideas and crux of the narrative should be figured out and defined before you write the script.
Storyboarding
Ideas for Storyboard Thumbs
Our rough storyboards are now finished and ready for colouring. We worked on them collaboratively to ensure there was a proper synthesis of our ideas and so that we could properly split the amount of work done this week between us. We started off by referring to our notes and basic narrative outline and came up with the descriptions of the shots and shot-lists before illustrating the individual panels. This was done to ensure that every shot led into the next one and was motivated by some kind of directorial decision, whether it me to flow into the next shot, or for some broader thematic purpose, such as framing the characters in a certain way in order to show the power dynamic or placing objects in the foreground to divert the viewer's attention in the frame. It is important to me that the storyboards be succinct and cut out any unneeded fat which doesn't build our characters or progress our narrative, in order to create a straightforward yet richly detailed animation which will fulfill our artistic ambitions as well as the brief.
Rigging Tests
As well as creating our animation using 3D assets, we have decided the characters will be 2D assets rigged in After Effects using the Plugin DUIK. So, ahead of creating the final rigs which I will begin work on once the storyboards have been coloured and finalised, I created a test rig to test the style and to see what changes could be made to the design in future in order to ensure a more fluid model in the final animation. Assets for this rig were created in Photoshop after I tried recreating a hand-drawn looking style in Illustrator but couldn't quite get it to look the way I wanted it to with Vectors. While the assets for this rig were created as raster images, I drew them at 300dpi at a significantly higher 5400 x 7200 resolution, meaning they wont appear pixellated at 1920 x 1080.
Character Rig created in Photoshop
DUIK is a plugin for After Effects which allows you to use the pin tool to create bones and hierarchies in a model rig in order to simulate more realistic movement and animation, particularly in character rigs. In order to create a fully posable leg for example, first you must pin the thigh, knee and ankle, then select the layer and create a 'Bone'. In order to create the hierarchies for the leg I used the parent window in After Effects to parent the ankle to the knee and the knee to the thigh so that when for example the knee moves the ankle follows suit, which cuts down a lot on the tedium. Then in order to create a working bone which could control the limb realistically I selected the ankle and created a 'controller' layer, selected the bone pins in order of hierarchy and created an IK chain, which allows for the limb to move without bending out of place or distorting the image for more realistic character animation. While I do feel this test was a success, I will make a few changes for the final rig, such as creating the assets in a T pose.
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