Character and Narrative: Creating Our Demo Character in Maya Part 2

In this session of maya I created a foot, head and hand for my demo character, and found that it got a bit harder to do that because of the amount of times you have to keep switching from the front view the the perspective view just so that you haven't made any mistakes. I also had to keep making the character go into smooth mode to see what it would look like and to see if it looked semi realistic because I don't won't the character dropping into the uncanny valley.

Starting with the foot was simple enough to follow because it's just extruding it out from the leg and then just resizing the extrusion to make the shape of the foot. the hardest part was just trying not to select vertices and edges I didn't want because then it will start deforming and the foot will turn into an abstract foot. I feel like I've done a decent job with the foot but it didn't look exactly like the one in my tutors tutorial but hay no one can get it exactly the same because then it wound be unique.

The head was the second body part I created after the foot, which was harder to make but a simpler shape to model if that understandable? the hardest part was getting the top of the head in the right position, and also the mouth because I had to bevel an edge and then move the edge in on its self and insert an edge loop on the lips so they wouldn't curve as mush. This was hard to do because it was my first head that I've modelled with a mouth, however it was interesting to see how a simple mouth was created and now I feel that I could do it again with out help hopefully.

Next was the hand, which took me three hours to do (but only because I was in the living room with a load of people distracting me). I feel like this should of been simpler however staring at a computer screen for three hours can slow me down and give me headaches. Other than my excuses I had an interesting time seeing how I can make short cuts to create multiple figures i.e. using the duplication tool, plus it's just extruding edges and resizing them to create the hand shape.

Overall I'm quite pleased with my model and I feel like I've learn quite a lot about building a character and how if you think simple about designs, it's easier to model in maya. Also creating a character is simply just about extrusions and inserting new edge loop tools and then just resizing to fit the characters design.

After modelling most of my character we then had to mirror half of the model so that we can get a full one. We did this by duplicating the half model and if you've followed all the guides correctly your model should look fine and normal. I also modelled eyes on my character, which where really easy to do because it's just two cylinders, one of them is hole and the other one is split in half to make the eye lids. I found doing all this was simple enough but if you did have something wrong on one side of the model it won't mirror correctly.

Song in Animation (copyright)

For my animation I chose a song which fits in with the tone of the animation, which is 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' by B.J.Thomas. I realise that if I publish my animation to the public media I would have to get permission by the songwriter/musician that created the song, also if I used a cover of the song I would have to get permission from the person who did the cover and also again the songwriter/musician who created the song. Seen as though I'm not publishing my work to the public and that I'm just using it for educational purposes only it's okay to use the music I've chosen.

Finale Animaiton

For my final animation I've decided to choose the element of water but more precisely a raindrops journey when falling down from the clouds. I chose to do this because I found it interesting not to base my animation on characters but on a real moment in nature, just so thats it's different from everyone else's animation. Throughout the brief I've found it easy to animate but only when I've gotten into the momentum and figured out which layer in photoshop goes with which frame and thats not easy when you have 240 frames to go through.

Evaluation

Evaluation

For the classical elements brief I had to produce a twenty second animation on either water, fire, earth and air. I chose to create an animation about the journey of a raindrop. The things that I like about my animation are the fluidity of the movement of the raindrop, the tone/feel of the animation, which is happiness and way the music (‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ by B.J.Thomas) fits in well with the timing of the animation. I like these because the fluidity shows how much effort and time I’ve put in to the process, the music fits in well because when I was showing the animation to other people someone said that she liked the swooshing sound in the animation when the raindrop hits the leaves, but it was actually the music that made that sound. Also I made the tone/feeling of the animation happy because I’ve already done comedy for another animation and I didn’t really want to make a sad one this time, also the songs a bit cheerful as well.

However, some parts of my animation I don’t like and they are how when the raindrop is falling towards the camera it starts to get blurry. Also how the bird isn’t in the animation for that long and that you can’t see it when you get an overview of the raindrop falling, and I don’t like the way the camera zooms in on the frog at the end of the animation because it seems a bit shaky. These are because in the scene before the bird appears you should able to see it because your looking down and you can see what the raindrops going to hit, also I think that blurriness of the raindrop at the beginning has something to do with the way I drew it then expanded in so it looks like its coming towards you.

After analysing all of this and if I had to redo this project again I would change a couple of thing in my animation. One of the things I would change is the frog at the end by making it smaller and maybe changing the colour to black and white like the rest of the thing in my animation because I feel like the frog is stealing the focus from the raindrop as the main character. I would also change when the bird’s appearance begins in the animation just so that it’s accurate when you’re looking down at the raindrop. Something that I would change about the animation is the sound, what I would do is take out the music and replace that with some sound effects like droplet noises, swooshing sounds for the leaves and maybe put in a croaking noise in there for the frog as well at the end when he winks at you.          

     

After Final Crit Development

I've changed one bit in my animation and thats where that frogs tongue no longer just sticks out and waits for the raindrop to fall on it. Now the frogs tongue comes out catches the raindrop and goes back in.

I then had to put the final edit into After Effects and change it around, so I took out the old animation and placed in the new one. I did this so that I didn't have to redo the credits at the beginning and end.

Toy Story (1995)

Heading towards the digital age a new film came out which was the first feature length computer animated film by Pixar, this was Toy Story. This film is about a cowboy toy getting jealous that his kid as been given a new toy for his birthday, which is a space ranger.

John Lasseter was the directer of this film and was chosen by Disney to create a full length feature film after the success of his short film 'Tin Toy' (1988). Toy Story lead on to be the top grossing film on its opening weekend, and earned over £361 million pounds worldwide.

Some interesting things that the animators did in this film are that when the characters in the film blinked they didn't blink at the same time, and all of the car toys had a license plate stickers which said november 95 on them because that was the year the film came out.  

Luxo Jr. (1986)

Luxo Jr. is a two second animation created by John Lasseter, which is about how an older lamp called Luxo Sr. watches over while Luxo Jr. messes about with a ball, which he accidentally pops.

This animation was created for an annual computer animation exhibition called SIGGRAPH, and to show off how he used the shadow maps within the rendering software, and to show the 12 principles of animation even though the characters are made of metal/plastic like squash and stretch, secondary motion and character appeal.

This animation was so good that it lead on to be the logo for pixar and appears in every movie at the beginning.    

Tron (1982)

Tron directed by Steven Lisberger, is about a hacker/arcade owner how gets trapped inside one of his own games by a software pirate called Master Controle. In here he meets up with a guy called tron and they join forces to defeat the Master Controle in an infinitely challenging computer game.

Although this film was the beginning for computer animation and the first movie to extensively use 3-D computer graphics, it was a flop at the box office and was disqualified of winning an Academy Award for special effects because at the time the Academy thought that it was 'cheating' using the computer.

A fun fact about the movie is that to inspire the actors/actresses they placed arcade games on the production set and could be played during downtime. Also the name 'Tron' is actually a basic programmers command which means to 'TRace ON'.    

Snow White (1937) Vs Brave (2012)- Women in Animation

In these two animations done by Disney the main characters are both women but both of them are very different in opinions and attitudes. In Snow White the character doesn't turn out to be the true hero at the end of the film because she needs a prince to to come rescue her from her sleep, where as for the main character in Brave is the true hero because she sorts out her problems all by her self and doesn't need a man to come along and save/help her.

This shows a huge development in the animations Disney has produced throughout the years with female characters. They do this by showing in the newer animations that the female characters are more independent, smart, not just a pretty face and brave. Modernising a female character helps inspire the children more (especially the girls) to grow up to be intelligent, hard working and independent. And it only took them around 70 years to figure this out.

Praxinoscope 1876

In 1876 in inventor called Charles-Emile Reynaud a device called the 'Praxinoscope', which is like the Zoetrope, has a cylinder and inside it it has a strip of 12 images which when spun shows an animation. To see the animation you have to look at the mirrors inside the cylinder which reflects the 12 images to create to illusion of movement.

The name Praxinoscope actually came from two Greek words which are praxis, meaning action and the word scopein, meaning to look at.

Steamboat Willie

Steamboat Willie was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and was one of the first animations that had successfully synced sound with the animation, where as Fleischer Studios tried before but their animations kept going out of sync. This animation was considered to be the start of the characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse even though he appeared in an animation several months ago in 'Plane Crazy'.

For me this animation as inspired me think of simplicity in my animations and that it doesn't matter how much is on the screen but how the images tell the story.    

The Classical Elements: Final Crit

For the final crit we had to show our final animations to the class then analysis it together. With my animation people said that they liked the style of it because I only used straight lines using the lasso tool in photoshop, they also said that they liked the way the music (by B.J.Thomas 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head') fits the animation smoothly and creates the feel of happiness.

Some of the things that people said that I could change was that before the bird comes in to the animation were we're looking down at the trees and seeing the raindrop fall, that the bird should appear there as well so that it's on screen for longer. They also mentioned that the frogs tongue shouldn't be sticking out already because they don't do that in real life, and so I'll have to make the tongue come out the mouth then catch the raindrop and go back in again.  

After listening to the feedback I will go back and tweak my animation so that some of the things that have been said above will have been applied to my animation like the frogs tongue etc.  

Fantasmagorie (1908)

Fantasmagorie is known to be one of the earliest traditional animations, created by Emily Cohl a french animator. It's also mentions by historians as one of the first cartoon animation.

The animation consists of stick figures moving around objects that constantly morphs into something else, for example it'll go from a wine bottle to a flower. The animation also consists of live action where the animators hand entering frame to draw on the page.

The film is a tribute from the incoherent movement because of the many transformations. the title fantasmagorie is a reference to 'fantasmograph', a nineteen century variant of the magic lantern which had ghostly images that floated across the walls.

Matches an Appeal (1899)

This animation is known as one of the earliest animations made in 1899 by using the technique of stop animation. In this animation the matches join together to write on the black board, which promotes the appeal by Bryant and May match company to donate money to supply soldiers of the British. This animation was created by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper.

The Classical Elements: Development

In this animation I found it to be easy and efficient to make but only when I sorted out where all the layers and frames are going to be and which frame goes to which layer.

on problem that I had was that when I tried to render it all on photoshop the animation only lasted for a couple of seconds. So I decided to put all the frames into After Effects and make an image sequence out of the frames instead. 

 After I created the image sequence I placed in some audio to go along with the animation and tweaking the audio so that it would ease in/out of the animation. The audio that I used was 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' by B.J.Thomas

I also added in some credits in the beginning and the end, to show what its called, who it's by etc.

The Classical Elements: Flip Book Anmations

In 1868 John Barnes Linnett invented a book that had a series of images which when flicked through fast enough it'll create the illusion of movement this was called the 'Flip Book'. This works on the same principle as the Zoetrope.

Flip Books are now known to be toys for children, but they have also been an effective promotional tool since there creation for such decidedly adult products automobiles and cigarettes.

The Classical Elements: Zoetrope Animation

Zoetrope animation is a type of animation thats from 1834, it's where you place pieces of card which show some sort of movement or animation in the inside of a cylinder. When you spin the cylinder around you'll be able to see the animation from the outside through the slits on the side of the cylinder.

William George Horner was the inventor of the zoetrope but he called it the 'Daedatelum'. A French inventor called Pierre Desvignes renamed it to zoetrope.

This pre cinema animation device is referred to in movies a lot but the main movie which people will recognise is Tarzan when he is figuring out who he really is.

Classical Elements: Development 2

After speaking to the tutor about the digital drawings he said that he thought that my animation would look more like an animation on Vimeo called 'The Trip'. So I watched the animation and it gave me inspiration to not bother with the background too much, so I'll add colour to the background instead.
the trip from antonio vicentini on Vimeo.

These are the new digital drawings that were inspired by the video above, but I decided to make the colour black and whit and only colour the raindrop so that it makes it stand out more.

Classical Elements: Development

After the Interim Crit I decided to work more on the backgrounds for my animation because I feel like I've been focusing on the actual raindrop. I also experimented with the style and colour of the animation and see which one works best.

The first digital drawing that I did was for the animatic/storyboard, but it wasn't the best of drawings because it was just a quick sketch but that was my first initial idea.

I then did another two drawings on photoshop but I used the lasso tool and coloured it in. I think that I like the style of it but these something about it which I wanted to change but I didn't know what it was.

Classical Elements: Animatic

This is my animatic that I've created to show how the animation might look like and for how long the animation will run for.