This week we worked on the blend shapes. Blend shapes is a standard approach to make facial expressions by deforming the mesh. Usually it is unique for every character and with this you can add personality to a character. As facial expressions are one of the main way of communication thus blend shapes are one of the key things in the rig.
I have worked on several shapes this week include expressions like blink, smile, smirk, frown, angry and with the expressions I have also made phonetics. As this character has a bit of rough personality that is why I have kept the expressions a bit rigid.
Blink
Eyes blinking is the key expressions so I started my process with it. This blinking action sometimes causes problems in between where the eyelid blend shape often intersects with the eye therefore it is suitable to add an in-between blend shape as well.
Video showing Blink animation
Frown
Video Shown Frown Expression
Smirk
Video Showing Smirk Expression
Angry
Video Showing Anger
Smile
Video showing Smile Expression
Thinking/Processing/Recalling
Video showing Thinking/Recalling Expression
Phonetics
After making the expressions I have made phonetics so that I can easily do the lip sync animation afterwards.
Last week we did the blocking of the walk cycle. Our task for this week was to refine it and add in between key frames to make the walk cycle more smooth. I have given my character slightly cartoonish feel through animation.
First Pass
This is the first pass of the animation. Still feeling some abnormal abnormal behaviour in the knees.
Gif Showing Walk Cycle (In Progress)
Final Animation
I adjusted knee pops and stretches and here is the final animation.
We have explored facial rigging this week. Facial rigging is the process of adding controls to a face for animating facial expressions. These controls are commonly bound to either deformers or blendshapes, both together modify the shape of the face.
Customization of the Head Model
The first part of our assignment was to customize the model of the head to give it a unique and personalized look. I decided to give it a hybrid creature look. I used the sculpting tool to make some adjustments in the jaw and forehead bone. I also added some boils on the head and gave the creature a very unique nose and chin. I transformed the ears into elf’s ears and gave the eyes a very cunning look by adjusting the shape. Lastly I modelled horns to give the head a more Godly and magnificent look.
I have attached step by step images of my model below.
Image showing the customization of the head by using Sculpting and Modellingin Maya
Image showing the final head model in Maya
Making the Joints
After making the head I made a basic rig by adding joints in the neck, head and lower jaw. Then we connected eyes with the head joints by adding parent constraint so that it moves with the rig. After that we selected the bones and mesh and bind the skin.
Image showing the joints in the head and hierarchy of joints in the outliner
Weight Painting
After binding the skin we painted the skin weights. Weight Painting is the most crucial thing in the rigging process. If not done properly it will not give the right feel to your model and it will look less life-like or believable. I painted the weights of neck, head and lower jaw so that the influenced part of the mesh moves with a specific joint.
In this class we explored the structure of the report writing and practiced paraphrasing.
Original Paragraph
The authenticity of a documentary is deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality
Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paraphrased Paragraph
Honess Roe (2013, Animated Documentary) believes that the accuracy of documentary depends on the concept of realism and the authenticity of images showing that the event actually happened.
The term ‘animated documentary’ may seem like a contradiction. While documentary films endeavour to depict ‘real life’ and ‘the truth’, animation is associated with humour, exaggerations, and visual fantasy. But despite their apparent differences, animation and documentaries have often appeared side by side and even together throughout film history. Any piece of moving imagery that is stating the facts and when done through the medium of animation is called an Animation Documentary. According to Honest Roes’ ‘Taxonomy for documentation’， animation documentary is also an integral part of documentary and it is a rich way of expression.
MyTroubled Mind
Today I am going to talk about an animated documentary series “My troubled mind”.
My troubled mind is a series of powerful animated short film documentaries exploring through personal testimony, the experiences of teenagers dealing with mental health issues including eating disorders, anxiety, addiction, and depression. By bringing together knowledge on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent.
Honess Roe describes “My troubled Mind” as a non-conventional form of animation documentary. According to him it is a non-fictional documentary, and it highlights the mental health topics that are still not openly accepted in our society, without breaching anyone’s identity.
I consider that this film can be classed as a documentary. The animation in this film enhances our knowledge of an aspect of the world and to the extent that the separation of the animation from the documentary is either impossible, or would render the inherent meaning of the film indecipherable. (Honess Roe, 2013: 10)
Reference list
Honess Roe, A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This week I am going to talk about an abstract film, “Collision.” The analyzation will bebased on its categorization, form and functions, process, and elements.
About the Film
Collision is an abstract short film made by Max Hatler in 2005. It is a 35mm film. The formats are available in Digi Beta, DVD and Blue Ray. It harnesses the communicative powers of both graphic and sound design. Collision draws on Islamic patterns and American quilts as well as the colours and shapes of flags from both cultures to give the abstract commentary on the events of Iraq war.
Categorization
Collision is an abstract film that runs on the theme of war. It is a visual spectacle in which the artist constructs and deconstructs, morphs, and reproduces abstract patterns of American and Islamic connotations. (Dr Nadia Mounajjed, 2012, LSE Middle East Centre Blog).
It comments on politics through abstraction, by exploring graphic art as a metaphor. Discarding traditional storytelling, it presents a marriage of image and sound to produce a kaleidoscopic take on our geopolitical situation. Subtle and bold at the same time, the film aims to mesmerize the viewer with symbols that are detached from their established context and applied in the service of an alternative reality.
Form and Function
The two-minute Busby Berkeley-like dance of nationalist symbols, directly imparting its political insights to a contemporary audience. Through the continual build-up of forms and frenetic motion it unmistakably evokes references to wars, conflict, and a general clash of the cultures. These animated graphics are underpinned by an audio track that also references the machinery and explosions of warfare.
This abstract animation offers a space outside of realism and enables different perceptions from the ones we experience daily. It is an abstract satire based on the geometry of flags” Time Out London, 2006
Process
The film Collision is a 35 mm audiovisual film. It was made in Adobe After Effects: We must note that Collision was made in 2005, which is many year before the ubiquitous use of kaleideoscoping in digital motion graphics software nowadays. Thus, collision is a true innovation in our current era of digital motion design.
Formal Elements
The basics of Collision are constituted by the colours, geometric patterns, and shapes of flags. The green of Islam is contrasted with the American (and British) red and blue. However, red is also the colour of Arab nationalism while white features in the flags of all parties involved. All this is mixed again with the graphic patterns that are central to the heritage and identity of these cultures, American quilts on the one side and Islamic patterns on the other. Animators crackle and explode; pattern and rhythm enkindle war paradoxes between the U.S. Government, the special interests of the U.S. Government, and their Islamic adversaries. The sound design is significant and remarkable. The crackle-crisp sound adds extra depth, while punctuating the graphic.
Rather than focusing on differences, the film points out similarities across these cultures, symbolized by their cultural iconography. While the film follows a clear narrative structure, it is at the same time open to interpretation. The film ends with a sequence in which all the colors collide and create intricate morphing kaleidoscopic patterns to the sound of gunshots and fireworks.
Torre, D. (2015) ‘Persistent Abstraction: The Animated Works of Max Hattler‘, Sense of Cinema, 15 September. Available at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2015/feature-articles/max-hattler-animations/ (Accessed: 9 November 2022).
Flusser, V. (2011). Into the Universe of Technical Images. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
This week our task was to do the planning and blocking of a walk cycle. I have seen a lot of reference videos for this assignment.
I took the main guidance and reference from the book, “The Animators Survival Kit” by Richard Williams. I blocked the walk cycle by key posing the main poses like Contact, Down, Passing Position, Up and then again Contact.
Image taken from the book, “The Animators Survival Kit”, showing the key poses of Walk Cycle
The agenda of this week was to understand the basic human modelling by keeping the anatomy in mind and then make a rig of that model. We were also taught how to make controllers and join them with the rig.
Basic Understanding of Rig
Rigging is a technique used in skeletal animation for representing a 3D character model using a series of interconnected digital bones. Specifically, rigging refers to the process of creating the bone structure of a 3D model. This bone structure is used to manipulate the 3D model like a puppet for animation.
The Process
We started of basic shapes and made a model. After making the model, we adjusted the naming conventions and put them in an organized hierarchy.
Image showing the model and the hierarchy in the outliner
After making the model and organizing the hierarchy I then made leg joints and put IK handle on it. IK handles are suitable for weight shifting in the animation.
Image showing IK joints in legs
Later on I made the controls from the NURBS Primitives and added parent constraints with their allocated body parts so that they can control them.NURBS curves help to select the objects that we are animating. We can select the joints by directly clicking on them without the need for the curves. But the extra curve controls are intuitive to pick, easy to show and hide, and you can zero them at the default pose.
