I am a qualified graphic designer, so I decided that instead of using a camera frame from the library, that I would just design my own one. I designed logos and then made a mock overlay for the final export of the animation. This will be a nice way to introduce the different performances.
Experimentation
Here is all the different logos I made, I shared these screenshots with the group on Discord so they could have a look and see which ones they preferred. They all liked different ones so Made a compromise to used the last one you see as it takes into account all the elements they liked.
Mock overlay
I decided to make a very simple overlay so it wouldn’t take away from the animation but adds to the realism of the experience. I sent this to the group and got positive feedback so they are happy to use this style.
Also for my character I decided to name him DJ STITCH. This is just to have a little fun with the personanna of my character. I wanted to use the screens from the stage environment to make it look asthough he had his own branding.
Research Branding
I used the images online from the Stitch movie to create a back drop for my character. I used the same typeface as in the film title – Buka Bird Typeface. And pipetted the same colours to design my own DJ Identity.
My performance is quite different from my other group members because it is less of a dance performance but small movements like the head bopping etc. I am going to be doing a walk cycle for the entrance and then have stitch say hello like in the film. I think this would be quite a funny way to start the performance.
Acting reference for beginning of set
Blocking of stitch
I took screen shots from a set of the DJ Honey Dijon to start to use more animations than just bopping of stitches head. I looked into the way she moved across the decks with her hands. Small movement but important work for a DJ set when live. I liked the way she flicked her wrists on the decks, I added this shot in to stitch with his hands.
Now I am in the spine and polish part of my performance animation. This is the hardest part for me as I still find it hard to know if I am doing is the right thing. Hopefully this project will be an improvement in this area. In my honest opinion I don’t think I will be applying to these kind of finishing off animation jobs. I don’t think I have the knack for it but who knows in the future.
So going through the blocking animation I needed to change the fingers as they are the same through out. Below, I have balled the hands so that it fits with the dance moves
When the hands were resting I wanted to make sure they were in a more believable position as they hang naturally. I tried to also include some overlapping of the fingers but I don’t think it was as good as I wanted it to be.
I made sure I added in the blinking of the character as I always forgot this part in the last animations I had don and wanted it to look a bit more realistic.
Obviously when I did the mouth animation I wanted to add in more tongue movement which made it look more realistic. I think I attempted this more than I had done in previous projects. Hopefully this was clear.
Watching a tutorial on Youtube I wanted to make more of an effort with the trail and making the hips move in front of the animation so that it was more of a dance style of movement. I over dramatised this in the animation so that there was more rhythm. The youtube video I used is below. I thought it was explained well and clearly.
I have decided to choose a mundane male rig to act my reference. I decided on the rig David. As you can see he has a lot of controls which means he will be easier to animate the face as this is places a large role in the animation. I like that he looks mundane and a standard man with this underneath persona of loving dancing.
I broke down my reference into a story board so it was easier to break down the poses.
Mexican Eyebrow Wave Reference
Final Blocking Playblast:
Here is my final play blast for my blocking of the animation. I just went frame by frame from the screenshots I took and matched them as much as I could. I think that it is a an okay standard for a blocking but will need to polish up the steps and add in overlap to the spine and get those hips moving ahead of the body as the character is moving very intentionally.
We talked about the music he would make for my Stitch performance. I said I had really liked the Lo-fi house music he made but I was thinking it would be better to have a higher tempo track to suit the scene of getting a large crowd involved at a festival. So we agreed he would make a techno track. I encouraged him to include his music from scratch so that it was all his work and not just mixes of tracks together.
I also mentions about other sound effects which would create more ambient feeling of being outside and surrounded by people.
This could include:
Crowd cheering
Microphone/speaker glitches or white noise
Wind from the surroundings
Birds and tree movement
He seemed to accept and agree with my suggestions. So he will be going away to either find or make these sounds.
We were infomed that this will be our last collab class for the term as we just needed to crack on with the work really. Luke will still be available after 6 for feedback or questions. We were asked to start to figure out what we would like to specialise in. My thoughts have been leading towards Houdini. I have really enjoyed working with Medhi and I think each week has become slightly easier and I am able to wrap my head around the concepts and structures of procedual working.
We should be using real time rendering as it will speed the previs process up. Luke advised that if we wants to use unreal engine that this was another option to update work and link between workspaces.
This lesson was all about smoke and how to create it. This looked really facinating from all the examples Medhi showed us. From smoke you can make fire or magical illusions. There are a lot of possibilities as an effect and would be great to learn more like these.
Medhi’s examples
Turbosquiel
bend node
material workspace- atmosphere, volume, dust, lighting effects, add noise node, more realistic
For the smoke I need to create the flat circle node which will be scattered into particles. Circle – Scatter – Attribute -colours and density = 1
Volume rastersize attributes
drag to make general reference
animate noise node
null_out_source
smokesolver noe
smoke solver sperse node – smoke out of the box, new version
volume source
smoke name is density
buoyancy – make it more than 0
you need lights to see smoke shapes
dopnet node
dop import field node
add light in geo: arnold light, distant/directional
Make less powerful duplicate on other side with tinted colour to show all areas of the smoke
volume visulization – shading in viewport
physical blackbody – accurate representation of fire
gas turbulence node: scale – force, whirl size, pulse length – how fast it evolves
bound node: bounding box, padding
box – bbox () expression, making a bounding box
I needed to create a bounding box which set the perimeters of my smoke otherwise the smoke would just continue to dissolve on and on which isn’t how smoke works in the real world.
pyro solver node – flame
gas dissipate node – makes smoke disappear
aim to make it simplified
gas vortex confinement node – helps the smoke roll
gaswind node
merge node
voxel size – changes how fast with less detail, also the look/shape
Using the pyro solver is what will create gas like matter like smoke and fire that works with particles.
geo – VDB
convert vdb node
velocity -vx, vy, vz
vdb vector node
primitive node – precision
volume cache takes a lot of space
reduce half the amount of data to disk
arnold volume node to render geo
shader needed – assign node
Material workspace – arnold material node, standard volume
lights might need more power e.g. 1.5 exposure
shader is simpler than the standard surface
change col0ur of scatter – material emission settings, how powerful
volume sample float node
ramp node – rgb
black body – colour setting pre set
pyro configure node are set up VDB from polygons node
question: Do you usually use premade nodes e.g. pyro node or expected to know them from scratch.
answer: better to know how to do it from scratch
attribute create node
collisions with volumes
vdb from polygons node
connect to parasolves
fill interior
So for this lesson we have to make a sphere go through the smoke, to learn how to make smoke react to an object. I decided that it would be quite fun to make the Stitch rig I used in my collaboration project, into a superman stance and fly through smoke for dramatic effect.
Here is my first export attempting to create smoke using particles and the pyro solver. I want to spend longer on this exercise but I have to start next weeks lesson so maybe I can revisit it later and get the stitch rig in there instead of the ball. More things to consider it to experiment with the lighting and also including fire to make the scene more dramatic.
So this week I wanted to focus on creating thew environment as I am still waiting for our BA Sound Artist to create the music. This meant we had time to design how the scene the environment will look. I was really excited by this because I miss festivals and I could design it any way I wanted as there is so many environment choices.
I wanted to get Stitch into the scene to create the DJ booth. I tried looking online for any free assets but I couldn’t find anything so I decided to build it myself. I also build him a little decks which he will be playing his music from.
I tried to put in the texture of the grass on the floor plane but looked really bad. I saw there was the grass prop so I duplicated it (took a long time). I’m still not sure this was the best way to go about it so going to ask Luke if there is a better way. I did as the group how they would do it and Tina found a solution which was perfect!
This was my attempt at the grass…
You can see the grass close up but from a distance you can see how many I had to put in. I don’t think this is the most proficient way of making grass so I am glad Tina had an alternative way.
Remove the pirouette and replace with a close up of the face. “like a sissy girl.”
Face poses – Get them in there early. Dead pan expressions to make it serious.
Avoid the step forward. Best to keep it in the same place.
I didn’t have too much to change which is good, I think I will just cut out those parts and replace with the close ups. Hopefully, won’t take me too long. I like this idea and think i wont get totally bored with it. I still need to think of which rig I want to use. I initially wanted to use stitch but this rig is a better fit for my performance animation. I need a rig with great facial controls to help me succeed in the close ups. I don’t have much experience in facial movement so will need to research and use examples online. I don’t know how to do the eyebrow movement but have definitely seen it in a Pixar film somewhere.
I didn’t know how to do the Mexican wave with my eyebrows so I cut a clip from a youtube video of a Mexican wave tutorial. I want to use this when the camera does a close up on the face the first time saying “Like a sissy girl.”
Here is my edited version where I have cut out parts of the first reference to add in the close ups of the face talking very eccentrically and serious. I have uploaded to ftrack to get feedback.
Roll spine, thrust and make drastic changes for performance quality.
Notes to rerecord
We will have three weeks to animate
Break down your reference into manageable chunks
So I have decided to go with the clip from Bruce Almighty. I thought this one had a lot of room to play with as in the film Kevin Baxter doesn’t do much acting while saying “I do da cha cha like a sissy girl.” I wanted to over play this like my character was being serious about being really good at the cha cha. This juxtaposes the original scene as seen below.
1st Acting Reference
Here is my first attempt at my reference for my performance. I tried many times to make the dance moves fit to what he was saying and finally landed on this recording. I send my video to Luke to get feedback.
