So I spent my entire day yesterday wrestling with Adobe Premiere. Heck, I even spent the time I was supposed to be here typing an update about how I was wrestling with Adobe Premiere wrestling with Adobe Premiere. What a pain.
The problem I've encountered is that it wants to be very snooty with how I set up the project. I've tried several identical projects with different settings and different render settings, but it will not render in widescreen and still allow Quicktime to play the file. I can get it to do one or the other only - either it's widescreen and Quicktime can't read it, or Quicktime CAN read it and it's smooshed. Obviously there's something I'm doing wrong but I can't figure out what.
We'll get there. Also, don't mind my idiocy in my last post... rendering it then recording in Fraps, eh, was definitely a Monday... But the Chroma key's quality is rubbish, so though I'll take a peek again to see if there's a way to improve it, I'm mostly going to move away from that idea and see if Adobe Premiere understands empty space on layers. Since Photoshop does I'm guessing Premiere does too, but we'll see.
This morning I've been trawling Conceptart.org for faun designs and I've found a few that interest me:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=207015&highlight=faun
The Faun character viewable in this thread is of particular interest because it actually has the same shape that the brief said my character had to have: skinny. Character just has to be skinny. Though I do like this work and the way they've taken a reasonably well-used concept and made it interesting by embellishing the character, it's a bit too flowery and nature-oriented, that would suggest they're going down the usual fantasy-elves-live-in-peaceful-forests-with-magical-trees type route, which isn't really what I'm aiming for. I'm wanting something a touch tribal with some modern trappings for familiarity. So though I do really like it, don't think I'll be doing something all too similar.
One faun I found that I really like is this one from 'Pan's Labyrinth':
http://www.americanneopaganism.com/2006_pans_labyrinth_wallpaper_002.jpg
...because it really has an interesting way of embellishing the whole inhuman side of the creature; this faun is not just a human with goat legs, it's something else entirely. That's something I'd like to nail with my design - hopefully the mannerisms involved in the actual animation will make up for what more human characteristics I'd remove physically - as well as the whole tribal thing. Let's be honest, though, that faun is incredibly interesting looking but also very creepy. Let's try to steer clear of creepy.
On the other side of the spectrum completely is Mr. Tumnus from 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. Now this character is, honestly, just a bloke with goat legs. But he's so cute and endearing I just had to give him a mention.
http://jamesmcavoy.fansiter.com/pictures/james-as-mr-tumnus-narnia.jpg
I also found some pretty nice 3D models of a faun character, among other things, here:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=faun+character&view=detail&id=0F89312BF43D43E95C4A7C32B798EAE17F883149&first=1&FORM=IDFRIR
Now to be fair, these are obviously for video games, not animated film/shorts like the kind of stuff we're shooting for, but still, they're fantastic. Same problems though, too familiar...
I'll figure something out. Hopefully. But it's gonna have to be soon, because I don't have forever to finish this model, and it's best to make changes while it's still in progress.
Here're some other pieces I enjoyed:
http://www.conceptart.org/index.php?artist=Exeivier&cat=updated
I just adore the simple and warm style here. It's quirky and easy to get into. I wonder how it would come across in 3D?
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=194252&highlight=faun
This man is so creative with his creature designs it actually gobsmacked me. Fantastic, make sure to look at every page of that thread, or your life is incomplete!
Next thing to do is to brush up on my tribal research and finish touching up this character so I can make appropriate changes to his 3D model before I get too far along into it. Rigging starts soon and I don't want to fall behind and miss the rigging!
'Til next time.
Wednesday 16 March 2011
Monday 14 March 2011
3D Character Animation Start
Well, back after a good week break (that, I have to admit, I desperately needed) and I've got my new brief.
It's the best brief in the world.
AD108 covers 3D character animation, which has long been a subject of interest for me. A while back I began to learn basic modelling, rigging and animating in Blender. Since I started college I haven't had much time for it, but I've been trying to brush back up on that as well as practice in Cinema 4D. It's crazy how different the two programmes are, considering they both do pretty much the same thing. Though admittedly I haven't read about any Blender equivalent to Cinema 4D's NURBS (and also, what does that even mean? A nurb? )
But I'm feeling motivated and quite excited to get back into the meat of it, though I might tweak my character design a bit (I never actually liked it... but it ticked the boxes for the module).
Another good thing is that I passed my two previous modules! Actually came as a BIG surprise because I was almost entirely certain I'd failed, and miserably at that. But hey, I must have done something right!
What's even more surprising is not only did I pass, I passed better than any pass I've achieved previously. So what I thought were my two weakest modules actually turned out to be my two strongest... it's a strange world.
Oh, speaking of which, I think I might have come up with a much easier and more time efficient method of combining the two halves of my ident. Before the problem was that I was animating in Adobe Photoshop on a decent sized canvas. (Bare in mind I'm not the best when it comes to animating in Photoshop). I'd have this big canvas, then, and one run of the Granny's arm animation is almost 60 frames/layers. The cat, if I remember right, was between 40 and 50 frames/layers. As you can see on my last post, the Granny does her motion about 6 times. So 6x60 is 360. 360 frames for the Granny plus the approximate of 40 for the cat's single run, 400 layers. Then consider whatever final touches, like extra E4s or leaves falling (these could be keyframed for position change but rotation would have to be done manually, so let's say an extra 30 layers for all of them)... we're looking at 430 layers on a whatsit-by-3000 pixel canvas.
Wouldn't be a problem if I was using something like Final Cut (if I were any good at using Final Cut...) but in Adobe Photoshop it just becomes much more difficult. Now, two options.
1) Continue in Adobe Photoshop, weathering the struggles of my poor tiny computer, and chip away at it
2) Struggle with Final Cut Pro (Hey, it can be tricky you know!) which would get the job done but I'm not awfully experienced with...
But first, I'm actually going to try something that, if it works, will let me combine the two halves with minimum effort and super quick. Basically I've been trying to learn how to use Adobe Premiere and its chroma key effect. I'm going to remove the background from the Granny and the Cat, replace it with a strong green or so, render, record at max quality with Fraps, go into Adobe Premiere and chroma key them back onto the original background and together.
It might not work. It might be a trainwreck. But if it does work it'll save a lot of time and effort and lag. I'll just have to give it a go and see what I can come up with. And also, I can't forget to put the sound in.
Either way, I'll probably repost the final once I've puzzled out the best way to go about doing it.
Related AGAIN is that I got to see everyone elses' idents too, and my, they're fantastic. You guys better upload them soon so I can oogle at their animated brilliance again, okay?
What else... oh yes, we watched a lovely little film called 'Cat Shit One', where two rabbit soldiers take on a base filled with enemy camels to rescue hostages. It was actually really, really good, if bizarre, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. War films usually aren't for me, but thanks to quirky writing and cute character design I got really invested in the two protagonists really quickly, and the animation was brilliant.
Oddly, though, I could tell by looking at it that it was Japanese in origin. I think there's a particular style in Japanese animations that involves character expressions, lip movements (like the shapes that the mouth makes, even if the English speech is synched well) and the camera angles. I felt like I was having flashbacks to the idealized style of Final Fantasy Advent Children all the way through.
Japanese animations seem to keep mouth movement to a minimum; characters often seem as though they should be opening their mouths wider and making more distorted expressions but don't. The same is true for the facial expressions in general; any distortion is very minimal. A lot of the expressions of the characters seem to be created using the movements of the eyes instead.
Unfortunately, Youtube doesn't seem to have an good quality clip from Final Fantasy Advent Children, but here's a decent example of what I mean. In the first 20 seconds of this clip, watch Cloud, the blonde man with spiky hair who's being addressed. Watch his eyes. Though his face hardly ever changes, his eyes are used to express his emotions instead. He goes from quiet anger to uncertainty to fear to annoyance in 20 seconds. And most of his face barely moves.
This was the sort of thing that happened in Cat Shit One. The faces of the characters were quite still, but the eyes told you what they were feeling.
Camera angles is a bit harder to go into, and in Cat Shit One the oddly recognizably Japanese use of camera angles was mixed together with more standardized war camera angles (yep, over the shoulder shots and the like frequent war films), but they were there. I think the general difference is American or English films tend to make dialogue between two characters easy to keep track of, often simply having the camera flick back and forth between the characters (and the characters do not invade and move around each others' shots) while Japanese animations are a little more dynamic with how the characters actually speak to each other and don't follow the speaking character quite as obviously. Like I said though, it's hard to explain, and there's no set-in-stone formula or overriding rule of 'American cameras are like this, Japanese cameras are like that'... it just felt Japanese.
Overall, though, it really worked for me. The lip synching left a bit to be desired but it wasn't hugely distracting, and the story was told well with good pacing. Thumbs up! If you get the chance to watch it, I'd recommend giving it a look in.
Well, I think that's all the blabbering I have to do today.
It's the best brief in the world.
AD108 covers 3D character animation, which has long been a subject of interest for me. A while back I began to learn basic modelling, rigging and animating in Blender. Since I started college I haven't had much time for it, but I've been trying to brush back up on that as well as practice in Cinema 4D. It's crazy how different the two programmes are, considering they both do pretty much the same thing. Though admittedly I haven't read about any Blender equivalent to Cinema 4D's NURBS (and also, what does that even mean? A nurb? )
But I'm feeling motivated and quite excited to get back into the meat of it, though I might tweak my character design a bit (I never actually liked it... but it ticked the boxes for the module).
Another good thing is that I passed my two previous modules! Actually came as a BIG surprise because I was almost entirely certain I'd failed, and miserably at that. But hey, I must have done something right!
What's even more surprising is not only did I pass, I passed better than any pass I've achieved previously. So what I thought were my two weakest modules actually turned out to be my two strongest... it's a strange world.
Oh, speaking of which, I think I might have come up with a much easier and more time efficient method of combining the two halves of my ident. Before the problem was that I was animating in Adobe Photoshop on a decent sized canvas. (Bare in mind I'm not the best when it comes to animating in Photoshop). I'd have this big canvas, then, and one run of the Granny's arm animation is almost 60 frames/layers. The cat, if I remember right, was between 40 and 50 frames/layers. As you can see on my last post, the Granny does her motion about 6 times. So 6x60 is 360. 360 frames for the Granny plus the approximate of 40 for the cat's single run, 400 layers. Then consider whatever final touches, like extra E4s or leaves falling (these could be keyframed for position change but rotation would have to be done manually, so let's say an extra 30 layers for all of them)... we're looking at 430 layers on a whatsit-by-3000 pixel canvas.
Wouldn't be a problem if I was using something like Final Cut (if I were any good at using Final Cut...) but in Adobe Photoshop it just becomes much more difficult. Now, two options.
1) Continue in Adobe Photoshop, weathering the struggles of my poor tiny computer, and chip away at it
2) Struggle with Final Cut Pro (Hey, it can be tricky you know!) which would get the job done but I'm not awfully experienced with...
But first, I'm actually going to try something that, if it works, will let me combine the two halves with minimum effort and super quick. Basically I've been trying to learn how to use Adobe Premiere and its chroma key effect. I'm going to remove the background from the Granny and the Cat, replace it with a strong green or so, render, record at max quality with Fraps, go into Adobe Premiere and chroma key them back onto the original background and together.
It might not work. It might be a trainwreck. But if it does work it'll save a lot of time and effort and lag. I'll just have to give it a go and see what I can come up with. And also, I can't forget to put the sound in.
Either way, I'll probably repost the final once I've puzzled out the best way to go about doing it.
Related AGAIN is that I got to see everyone elses' idents too, and my, they're fantastic. You guys better upload them soon so I can oogle at their animated brilliance again, okay?
What else... oh yes, we watched a lovely little film called 'Cat Shit One', where two rabbit soldiers take on a base filled with enemy camels to rescue hostages. It was actually really, really good, if bizarre, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. War films usually aren't for me, but thanks to quirky writing and cute character design I got really invested in the two protagonists really quickly, and the animation was brilliant.
Oddly, though, I could tell by looking at it that it was Japanese in origin. I think there's a particular style in Japanese animations that involves character expressions, lip movements (like the shapes that the mouth makes, even if the English speech is synched well) and the camera angles. I felt like I was having flashbacks to the idealized style of Final Fantasy Advent Children all the way through.
Japanese animations seem to keep mouth movement to a minimum; characters often seem as though they should be opening their mouths wider and making more distorted expressions but don't. The same is true for the facial expressions in general; any distortion is very minimal. A lot of the expressions of the characters seem to be created using the movements of the eyes instead.
Unfortunately, Youtube doesn't seem to have an good quality clip from Final Fantasy Advent Children, but here's a decent example of what I mean. In the first 20 seconds of this clip, watch Cloud, the blonde man with spiky hair who's being addressed. Watch his eyes. Though his face hardly ever changes, his eyes are used to express his emotions instead. He goes from quiet anger to uncertainty to fear to annoyance in 20 seconds. And most of his face barely moves.
This was the sort of thing that happened in Cat Shit One. The faces of the characters were quite still, but the eyes told you what they were feeling.
Camera angles is a bit harder to go into, and in Cat Shit One the oddly recognizably Japanese use of camera angles was mixed together with more standardized war camera angles (yep, over the shoulder shots and the like frequent war films), but they were there. I think the general difference is American or English films tend to make dialogue between two characters easy to keep track of, often simply having the camera flick back and forth between the characters (and the characters do not invade and move around each others' shots) while Japanese animations are a little more dynamic with how the characters actually speak to each other and don't follow the speaking character quite as obviously. Like I said though, it's hard to explain, and there's no set-in-stone formula or overriding rule of 'American cameras are like this, Japanese cameras are like that'... it just felt Japanese.
Overall, though, it really worked for me. The lip synching left a bit to be desired but it wasn't hugely distracting, and the story was told well with good pacing. Thumbs up! If you get the chance to watch it, I'd recommend giving it a look in.
Well, I think that's all the blabbering I have to do today.
Saturday 5 March 2011
E4 Ident - Two Halves
Okay, I promised myself I'd post sometime yesterday but I ended up sleeping for most of yesterday (I didn't sleep at all through Thursday night, I was trying to push to finish the thing but... gah, the speed at which I work is nothing short of pathetic). So, today, I'm finally updating. Go me!
Though I didn't -quite- manage to outright finish my Ident, I did complete most of the animation for it, which, as usual, I didn't make an easy task for myself (yes, my Granny DID have to move in 1s and have almost 60 frames for one movement of her arm. It was completely necessary!) - but, in the end, I'm reasonably pleased with what I have. I just wish I could have combined everything into one truly final piece before the deadline. And when I've recuperated from the terrible effects of deadline week, I will finish it. For myself mostly... I'm one of those 'start a billion projects all at the same time and never finish them' type people and believe me, I'm going to change that. It already drives me crazy when I can't bring a close to my personal projects, it becomes extra frustrating when the habit spills over onto my college projects as well.
But enough of that, here's the first part of my animation. Please bare in mind how this is intended to work; the Granny version of the animation is the required length of 10 seconds. The Cat version would be intergrated into this, not added on, so the final thing would be exactly 10 seconds long, as the brief specified. The Cat is part of the Granny animation, the Granny isn't a part of the Cat animation. If that makes any sense.
The Granny Version:
Okay, here we go. The Granny was intended to be the main focus of the animation, though she is the most boring aspect of it. My original intention was for her to be hand-drawn in each and every frame but I decided not to - both for time constraints and so that she would feel extra static; the less interesting movement to be observed from her body, the more attention you pay to the part that IS moving - her arm. If you're watching her arm, you naturally follow the arm to the walking stick. And from there, the bright colours of the E4 logo itself should catch your eyes, making you aware of it. But it's not in your face, which is a complaint I had with a few idents I looked at. I preferred, largely, idents that made you aware of the E4 logo but didn't feel the need to shove it so close to your face you felt like it was going to bang you on the nose. So that's what I tried to do.
Problem with this is that it is, at the end of the day, boring. So when I was drawing the storyboards I added in a little bit of randomness to try and inject a little offhanded humour into it, and hopefully something a tad unexpected. And that's below:
So down falls the cat and the lawnmower. The cat itself was generally taken from the old 'old lady trying to get Tiddles the cat out of the tree' sort of idea, the lawnmower was added for an element of the randomness and unexpected entrance I was after. Besides this, I wanted there to be this sense that there's this woman, and she's prodding at this E4 'apple', and there's odd stuff going on around her but she's so absorbed in the E4 that she doesn't notice anything at all. The final animation would have had quite a loud crashing sound effect when it fell down and a loud engine roar as it moved, just to drill in the point.
Well, I hope anyone reading liked this anyway. It was fun, but tiring, and I think this project (and the module running along with it) have been my weakest yet. Still so much room for improvement. But, looking at the bright side, each module I've done the final animation gets closer and closer to being finished. My first animation was barely there at all, my second was halfway done, this one very close to completion. The next one will be finished by the deadline! ...Geez, my time management is awful.
Though I didn't -quite- manage to outright finish my Ident, I did complete most of the animation for it, which, as usual, I didn't make an easy task for myself (yes, my Granny DID have to move in 1s and have almost 60 frames for one movement of her arm. It was completely necessary!) - but, in the end, I'm reasonably pleased with what I have. I just wish I could have combined everything into one truly final piece before the deadline. And when I've recuperated from the terrible effects of deadline week, I will finish it. For myself mostly... I'm one of those 'start a billion projects all at the same time and never finish them' type people and believe me, I'm going to change that. It already drives me crazy when I can't bring a close to my personal projects, it becomes extra frustrating when the habit spills over onto my college projects as well.
But enough of that, here's the first part of my animation. Please bare in mind how this is intended to work; the Granny version of the animation is the required length of 10 seconds. The Cat version would be intergrated into this, not added on, so the final thing would be exactly 10 seconds long, as the brief specified. The Cat is part of the Granny animation, the Granny isn't a part of the Cat animation. If that makes any sense.
The Granny Version:
Okay, here we go. The Granny was intended to be the main focus of the animation, though she is the most boring aspect of it. My original intention was for her to be hand-drawn in each and every frame but I decided not to - both for time constraints and so that she would feel extra static; the less interesting movement to be observed from her body, the more attention you pay to the part that IS moving - her arm. If you're watching her arm, you naturally follow the arm to the walking stick. And from there, the bright colours of the E4 logo itself should catch your eyes, making you aware of it. But it's not in your face, which is a complaint I had with a few idents I looked at. I preferred, largely, idents that made you aware of the E4 logo but didn't feel the need to shove it so close to your face you felt like it was going to bang you on the nose. So that's what I tried to do.
Problem with this is that it is, at the end of the day, boring. So when I was drawing the storyboards I added in a little bit of randomness to try and inject a little offhanded humour into it, and hopefully something a tad unexpected. And that's below:
So down falls the cat and the lawnmower. The cat itself was generally taken from the old 'old lady trying to get Tiddles the cat out of the tree' sort of idea, the lawnmower was added for an element of the randomness and unexpected entrance I was after. Besides this, I wanted there to be this sense that there's this woman, and she's prodding at this E4 'apple', and there's odd stuff going on around her but she's so absorbed in the E4 that she doesn't notice anything at all. The final animation would have had quite a loud crashing sound effect when it fell down and a loud engine roar as it moved, just to drill in the point.
Well, I hope anyone reading liked this anyway. It was fun, but tiring, and I think this project (and the module running along with it) have been my weakest yet. Still so much room for improvement. But, looking at the bright side, each module I've done the final animation gets closer and closer to being finished. My first animation was barely there at all, my second was halfway done, this one very close to completion. The next one will be finished by the deadline! ...Geez, my time management is awful.
Tuesday 1 March 2011
Deadline Woes
Well, it's that time again. Or at least, it's almost that time again. We have our work due for this Friday, and, truth be told, I have more than I can manage.
At this point it's quite obvious that there's no way I can pass both modules, so I've been thinking that my best bet is to pick one -the biggest one- and just focus on that. It improves my chance of passing that one but pretty much assures that I'll fail the other, but at least I'll have one clean and clear out of the way. I can, I believe, resit the second module, and since it's the smaller one it should be more managable running alongside my next modules. It's not in concrete yet but I really see no other way - it's a choice of do I want to tackle four modules at once, or three?
I do wholeheartedly blame myself, though. It was me who put myself into this situation. Though events that have transpired recently have had me stressing for a week and then mourning for another, I should have just bitten the bullet and got on with things rather than just sit around in self pity. Everyone else seemed to just manage to get on, but no...
Well, that's the state of play.
Taking all things into consideration, I'll be focusing entirely on AD109 and pretty much ignoring AD102, so my week is as follows:
Monday - Worked partially on AD102 and AD109, have since decided to give priority to AD109 (unless, of course, Dave comes along and clips me about the head for making such a stupid decision)
Tuesday - Focus on finalisation and neat presentation of all research - Ident research, Ident style/visual references
Wednesday - The Ident itself should be finished by the end of Wednesday, early Thurday at the latest, giving me time to evaluate. Storyboard and concept visuals should take a backseat, but I would like them to be coloured and presented today, if not
Thurday - Storyboards and concept visuals should be fully presented by the end of Thursday at latest; evaluation of animation complete
Friday - Tidying up, any final presentation and file sorting done, then hand in.
It's gonna be a busy, busy week.
At this point it's quite obvious that there's no way I can pass both modules, so I've been thinking that my best bet is to pick one -the biggest one- and just focus on that. It improves my chance of passing that one but pretty much assures that I'll fail the other, but at least I'll have one clean and clear out of the way. I can, I believe, resit the second module, and since it's the smaller one it should be more managable running alongside my next modules. It's not in concrete yet but I really see no other way - it's a choice of do I want to tackle four modules at once, or three?
I do wholeheartedly blame myself, though. It was me who put myself into this situation. Though events that have transpired recently have had me stressing for a week and then mourning for another, I should have just bitten the bullet and got on with things rather than just sit around in self pity. Everyone else seemed to just manage to get on, but no...
Well, that's the state of play.
Taking all things into consideration, I'll be focusing entirely on AD109 and pretty much ignoring AD102, so my week is as follows:
Monday - Worked partially on AD102 and AD109, have since decided to give priority to AD109 (unless, of course, Dave comes along and clips me about the head for making such a stupid decision)
Tuesday - Focus on finalisation and neat presentation of all research - Ident research, Ident style/visual references
Wednesday - The Ident itself should be finished by the end of Wednesday, early Thurday at the latest, giving me time to evaluate. Storyboard and concept visuals should take a backseat, but I would like them to be coloured and presented today, if not
Thurday - Storyboards and concept visuals should be fully presented by the end of Thursday at latest; evaluation of animation complete
Friday - Tidying up, any final presentation and file sorting done, then hand in.
It's gonna be a busy, busy week.
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