animators are actors?

As you may have seen in one of my previous posts, in the last week and a bit we have had Ed Hooks lecturing us at Bournemouth Uni. Now his lecture series has come to a close I'd thought I would share with you some of my thoughts about his theories, and expand a little bit more my previous post and the question are animators actors?



Psychological Stuff

First of all I'll talk about the last of his lectures. We started looking at psychological stuff, more specifically status transactions and negotiations. Ed Hooks says that status transitions happen all the time through 'negotiation'.

A conversation is a perfect example of status transition. For example students give a lecturer high status by listening to them, then when a student asks a question the status is transferred to the student as people are listening to them now. A good example of a negotiation is eye contact, we do this all the time, when people catch you looking at them and you look away quickly. You are 'negotiating' at this point, if you hold their gaze you're engaging them in some way, whether it be showing you're listening or challenging them. When you look away you are saying 'fine you caught me I don't want anything to happen'.

He went on to talk about how as humans we see 80% and hear 20%, therefore what you show the audience carries more power than what is being said. This is where 'psychological gestures' come into a performance. This is when an actor makes a gesture that contrasts what is being said, and by doing so adding some more depth to a performance.

For me personally this is a really fascinating way of seeing our social interactions, it's really interesting how quick negotiations can be and how our body language can contrast what we're saying, it definitely puts a new perspective on things when I'm people watching. As Ed says, if you're an animator, you have a licence to stare!



Animators & Actors

There was some more stuff Ed talked about regarding heroes and villains, human emotions and micro expressions, but I'll save that for another day. I am now going to delve into the are animators actors debate once again.

I said in my previous post that I believed animators were actors. I wrote this post after coming out of the lecture, and I had my stubborn head on. After posting I had a discussion with a course mate about the issue and it really got me thinking.

My course mate (who isn't an animator) agreed with Ed on the issue of the present moment vs the illusion of the present moment, whereas I've always gone with the whole 'animators are actors with a pencil' argument. The case I was making was that Hooks' argument lies solely on one point, a big point, but still just one part of a larger process, and if the process is almost identical then I don't believe the two areas can be so definitively separated. Hooks' argument essentially boils down to spontaneity and that animators cannot really achieve this as an actor would. Anyway this debate left me thinking for a few days about my stand point on the whole issue.

So some time went by and i had another discussion with an animator this time. We discussed some more things Ed talked about, in particular delving deeper into the present moment argument. I mentioned Ed made a point about eyebrows. That an actor is not concentrating on his eyebrows during a scene, but as an animator we think about them for every frame and what they're doing and when exactly, emphasising his theory of the present moment again. He believes the characters are the actors, which is fine, they are technically the ones 'on stage'. But surely just as a live action actor would get into the character, an animator does as well. It just happens to be for a significantly longer period of time.

My animator friend then came back and said that an acting choice is an acting choice no matter how long it takes to arrive at that decision and if you're not a performer you'll never "get" the character enough to convince people. This is exactly what I agree with, to create a convincing performance you have to 'get' the character, regardless of the medium you are using to create the performance.

It was nice to hear that someone shared my original views of Ed Hooks' theory, and after some more time deliberating I've decided I am going to disagree with Ed Hooks, and I'm going to stick with my original belief that animators are actors. But it is nice to now have a deeper understanding of why I believe this.


Well that was a long post, I hope people out there find this stuff as interesting as I do, it's nice to get into discussions about these things, it gets you thinking. If you made it to the end congratulations. :)

Stu

acting for animators...

Hello again! It's been a while since I last posted, but I've been quite the busy bee with my innovations project. Its coming along nicely, but this post is not about that. This is about the very interesting lectures we've had so far this week from Ed Hooks. (Brace yourselves, this might be a long post).

Ed Hooks is the author of 'Acting for Animators' and has taught all over the world in all of the major film and games studios. He is obviously teaching us about the art of acting, and in particular acting from the point of an animator.

One of the first points Ed made was that animators are NOT actors. I do believe that animators ARE actors, however Ed makes some interesting points against that. Mainly that the animator has 'no present moment', they just have '24-frames-make-a-second, or the illusion of a present moment'. This makes sense, although I still believe that as animators we prepare in the same way as actors, and although our 'present moment' might be different we go through a very similar process from start to finish. This includes researching the role through to taking directors notes and changing the performance accordingly.

Throughout the few lectures we've had so far I have learnt an awful lot about acting, Ed has clearly spent time crafting his teaching of animators and has given us some very useful concepts to think about. Something which should stand me in good stead before tackling some of more important major project performances. Ed defines the role of an actor/animator as having to create empathy within the character they portray. I've always understood that, but have never been completely clear on how to achieve that empathy. We empathise with emotions, but how do we show emotions? Ed's formula is that 'thinking tends to lead to conclusions, conclusions tend to lead to emotions, and emotions lead to actions'. We have emotional responses to the conclusions we make, if we think someone looks threatening, we might come to the conclusion they will attack us, which leads to fear.This was a revelation moment for me, I now understand in a practical way to approach the thinking of my characters, and in turn, their emotions.

The second major point Ed made was that at any given point in any film any character should be 'playing an action in pursuit of an objective whilst overcoming an obstacle'. This really made me think about the animations I have done in the past and how I could improve them. As Ed said the reason characters become compelling is because they aren't just moving, they have a brain, they are thinking, and acting based upon their thoughts.

The most impactful point I've taken away from the lectures, is that you should animate the thought, not the word. He said it was a classic new animator mistake, and one I have fallen into. I've done several lip sync exercises purely thinking about the words, and not looking deeper into the thoughts behind those words, and the reason the character is saying them.

I'm sure that's quite enough of waffle for one post. As you can see, I've learnt a lot, and my animations will certainly be better for it in the future.

I promise my next post will have more moving stuff and maybe even a flashy image!

Stu

One man, four animations...

IT'S DONE! I've finished all four of my master class animations, and handed them in. It's nice to chill for a bit before getting back to the grind tomorrow.

Overall it's been a pretty good learning experience. I purposefully went for a more cartoony style of animation because I've never tried that before and it was nice to get away from realistic stuff. I've had a lot of good feedback from Kevan Shorey who has helped me out a lot throughout the process. Talking to him and getting notes has definitely opened my eyes to my work process and how to improve it. A general note he gave me in all of the animations was that I needed 'more'. I need to push poses and keep the audience interested. I improved my animations a bit on this front, but not as much as I'd like. It'll certainly be at the forefront of my mind in the future.

So, here they are, hope you like them:


The Clone Trooper Sting



The Sneaky Guy




The Angry Guy




The Depressed Guy




I think on the whole I was too timid from the start. I had some good ideas but was afraid to try them because I wasn't sure I'd have time to finish them, so my blocking passes were a bit dull. I think in future I'll follow the advice of Kevan - 'If a shot is daunting, pick the single most important moment/pose and begin to visualise around it. Pretty soon you'll have a shot!'. I think I would've had a lot more success if I'd have chosen the moments where the character interacts with the gate and worked around that. Having said all that, I am actually quite happy with the animations, they're by no means perfect, but I feel the perfectionist in me would make being 100% pleased with it impossible. There is always something I'd like to do better.

Happy animating!

Stu

A lot of animation...

It has been a while since I last posted. I've been working flat out on my master class animations, and as much as I am enjoying doing it, it's a lot of work. I need to get it done asap as well because I have innovations and the major to be working on. Also soon we'll be given the yet unknown AAT2 animation project. Hectic times and late nights ahead I feel.

Anyhow, I posted my blocking passes for the master class animations a while ago, unfortunately those videos are no longer on line, however I do have one of the animations nearly finished. Here was the first pass of splined animation I did - The Sneaky Man.

I was pretty happy with this and would have been happy to hand it in. However it was of course still worth getting feedback. So I asked some people and sent it off to Kevan at Dreamworks for some notes and critique. He was very helpful and gave me some good notes (as well as a telling off for not including frame numbers, haha). His main points were that the beats in the animation felt a bit separate from each other. I tend to agree with this, looking back I think it was my response to my animations being too 'floaty' in the past. So I made a concious decision to add pauses to the animation. Secondly he suggested that I look into making the piece more energetic, particularly after he does his tip toe run, as the animation slowed down after that and I risked losing the audience's interest. Finally he suggested I remove some of the fence so people can see more of the animation. Which I did.

So, after that feedback, this is my re-worked version (with frame numbers):



Hope you enjoy!

Stu

Dreamworks?! YES... Dreamworks!

Since I last blogged a lot has happened. Uni has actually properly started, and its hectic. Lots of animation for me to do this term, it's a bit daunting really.

Other than that we had the week of animation lectures from Kevan Shorey and his wife Robyn who work at Dreamworks in San Francisco. The whole week was a great series of lectures and talks about Kevan's process and approach to animation, it was an invaluable insight into how another animator works and I certainly came away from it having learnt a lot and will be applying a lot of what he taught us to my own process. On top of that Robyn talked a lot to us working in the US and the studio's pipeline and departments as whole, after hearing everything I was sure that Dreamworks is where I want to work one day. Overall it was an amazing week and it was shame we couldn't kidnap Kevan and keep him as a full time lecturer, haha.

As for my projects, everything is plodding along nicely, I'm currently finishing up doing the layout for our major project. Once that's done I'll be focusing my attention on the Masterclass project and it's impending 3rd of February deadline. I had a good meeting with Mike Wyatt who set us our Masterclass brief. He says I seem to have a good sense of animation, I just need to push my poses more, which I agree with, it's come up a few times so I need to work on that. My innovations has been slow to get going, but after a meeting with my tutor this morning I've got a clearer idea of what my plan is and I'm really looking forward to that one.

Kevan mentioned when he was talking to us that animating a horse was hard, he was right, you can see my attempt here in my latest showreel edit. Hope you like it, let me know what you think.




Stu

Busy, busy, busy...

Hello again. I've got a lot to show you in this post. Here we have the environments for our major project. But this time we can see all of it as we fly through the Tudor streets. The (not so) stealthy cube in the posher street (1st video) is where the Doctor's surgery will be, however that is still to be modelled by Nesta.

   


   


Moving on. Next up we have the final and re-worked rig tests/walk cycles for both of our main characters. The sick man I've only done recently. But the Doctor I went back and started again after taking on feedback from one of our screenings. People generally said he looked a bit stiff and had no character. So I gave him his cane and tried to give him some more swagger. I decided he needed to look more posh and dignified, so I slowed his walk down from 16 frames a step 20. Which I think helps, it makes him look more deliberate and less in a hurry. I also added more shoulder movement because it helps loosen characters up and make them look less robotic. I don't think its quite there yet, however the Doctor only has to walk once in our animation, so for now I think I should concentrate more on the acting side of things.


   

   

I am very much looking forward to having some Dreamworks animators, Kevan and Robyn Shorey, coming to talk to us next week. It will be nice to learn from animators from one of the best studios in the world.

For now though the Christmas holidays have come to an end and I'm back to uni tomorrow. It seems like it's been non stop work for the whole of the 'holidays', however I'm sure it will be worth it in the end.

Stu

rigging up a storm...

After a long, hard fought battle with rigging I've emerged victorious. I've finally completed the second of our two character rigs. It was a long and at many times frustrating process but we got there.

The whole process of rigging two characters to a level at which they can move realistically was a challenge. It was the first time I'd attempted such a level of rigging, previously I'd rigged very simple cartoony characters. I didn't appreciate the amount of work involved, particularly in skinning. I was introduced to a few new things along the process, namely Pose Space Deformers (PSDs). These are essentially corrective blend shapes but are easier and quicker to produce using Michael Comet's scripts and plug-ins. Although the PSDs do the job on the rigs, I am curious as to how well muscle systems would've worked on our characters. The characters aren't very muscular, but they do have areas of loose clothing and I think that muscles would've been very useful to get a nice roll over and around the skin in the absence of nCloth. I've never used muscle systems but I'd love at some point to look into them when rigging, I think it's a very interesting area.

I am overall pretty happy with how the rigs work, if any issues crop up during animation then I'm sure I can go back and tweak the rigs suitably. So without further a due, here is the walk cycle rig test for the sick man:




This is just the rigged model. The displacement maps have yet to be added. I will post the final version up soon.

Stu

rigging the sick man...

So for the past 2 day I've been working (almost) solidly on the sick man rig for our major project. It's had it's up and downs but I'm back on track now. There's a lot more work to be done, but for now this is how it looks:

Unfortunately due to my lack of concentration on the first day I have spent the second day going back through the rig and fixing things. It's my own fault, I should have made a plan like it did for the Doctor rig, however I thought I could just breeze through this as it's pretty much the same. Alas it's never that easy, and by missing one little step I've managed to lose a day of productivity. At least I now know in the future not to be so keen and take the time to make a plan, especially for rigging, but also other things. The time it takes to make the plan will be more than made up for in the time saved from avoiding mistakes.

The rig is working pretty well now though, and is almost identical to the doctor's rig, except for a few spine alterations to allow us to hunch this guys back. I still need to do the hands and the face, and of course skin the damn thing, which is by no means the most exciting thing to do. However skinning is made a lot easier by Michael Comet's scripts and plug-ins, I don't think I'd be so keen on rigging if it wasn't for them, they save so much time.

Ah well, live and learn I guess. At least I can crack on and make some progress tomorrow (with a plan!).

Stu

major progress...

Today I'm packing to go home for Christmas tomorrow evening. But me and Lewis have found some time to finish up the exterior environments for our major project. Here they are:

This is the first scene street

Second scene street

So our project has two exterior scenes, both streets however both need to have different vibes. The first one is meant to be a posher more up market street, it has bigger houses and is where our doctor character will live. The second is set at night and is where the murder will take place. It's supposed to be a poorer street and feel more claustrophobic and intimidating.

I think these streets have come out really well, I modelled all of the houses and laid out the streets, then Lewis come along with his TD hat on and procedurally generated the cobbles and curbs for the streets. I think we've really managed to capture the feeling of each street, and even though the second street isn't lit correctly it already has the feel of being close and a little bit uncomfortable. Also what helps is that there are few straight lines leading down the street, we originally had the curbs of the street straight down the middle and it just looked too CG and perfect, so with a quick lattice deformer we managed to give the street a much more organic feel. If I had more time I think I would add more detail to some of the houses, but ultimately they're not the centrepiece of the animation and they don't have to be perfect, I'm confident that they'll do the job as they are.

Next up - rigging the old man. I'll let you know how it goes.

Stu

the big one...

The second of my projects for this year is THE major project. The culmination of 3 years at uni, the thing you have to show for your efforts. It's big.

So for my major I'm in a group with three of my friends; Nesta Smith, Agatha Gomes and Lewis Haley. Our project is set in the 17th century and is centred around a plague doctor and a sick man and it's called 'His Cure'. I'm not sure you want me to explain it all, if you want to know more then head over to Aggie's director's blog, which can be found on the right of my blog.

My contribution to the group is rigging and animation, and I also happen to have modelled the Tudor houses for the streets in our piece.

These are the houses, the cobbles are generated procedurally by our TD Lewis. This isn't the final layout for the houses, but I think it gives a good feel for the scene.


The rigging for the Doctor character is done and the man will be done soon. The only animation I've done so far is simple walk cycle and rig test for the Doctor.




It's not come out exactly how I would hope, I'm happy with the mechanics, I think they work fine. But the walk lacks any real character, you get no sense of who this guy is, or what his demeanour is. The one thing I'm really going to have to think carefully about and work on before I get into full swing animation is acting. Getting into character and really thinking about what their motivation is etc. I know I've got the ability to animate well, I just need to stop being so cocky sometimes and rushing into it, I need to take a step back and plan my animations, take time to really get into the moment.

But that will be the focus over the christmas holidays, for now I have to rig the sick man.

Stu

A class from the masters...

The first project I'm writing about is the masterclass project set by Blue-zoo. As a course we had a choice of briefs covering different areas of CG, each set by a different studio including MPC and Framestore. As I want to be an animator, I chose the character animation brief set by Mike Wyatt at Blue-zoo.

For the interim deadline tomorrow we had to block out 4 animations. One 2D animation which would be a sting/ident for the NCCA, and three 3D animations based on a given scenario. I chose the going over a fence scenario. The interim deadline is so that we can get feedback from the professionals, sort of like getting a shot approved by the director.

This is a great project and having contact with professionals in the big studios we hope to work at one day is invaluable.

Anyway, that's the project, and these are my efforts for tomorrows deadline. Enjoy!

2D Animation (geeking out with a clone trooper)


Angry Guy


Sad Guy


Sneaky Guy

Overall I'm pretty happy with all four of them. I'm not sure what Mike will think about the fact that I've used 3D assets in the 2D animation. This was more of an aesthetic choice as the Lego blocks at the end weren't really reading as Lego in 2D. But we'll see what he says, it's easily changeable.

As for the 3D animations, I'm pleased with how they look in blocking, and I think most of the timing works. The sneaky guy was really hard to get right, and definitely gave me the most frustration. I did consider changing the idea completely to something else, but I decided to stick with it and I'm glad I did. The issue was that I took reference of me being sneaky, and when animating I stuck too rigidly to real life and didn't push any of the poses, so the animation looked dull and also the timing was off as it turns out I'm not very good at being sneaky.

The sneaky animation was the only one of the animations I made a proper plan for. I took reference, drew key poses and the animated around that. I'm glad I did it, and i wish i had done it for the others, it certainly sped up the process of animating, even with the initial set backs i encountered. It meant I could go back to my plan and drawings and assess what it was i didn't like and change that. Without this plan I fear I may have changed my idea.

So that's the masterclass project.

I know this post is a bit long, but I'm getting into the habit of assessing my own work and practices for my Advanced Aesthetics and Techniques 2 (AAT2) exam. I'm still a bit unsure of what exactly the tutors are looking for, but hopefully I'm on the right track.

See you next time,

Stu