Animating a Shot: Part 4 (End)

A still from a my Dialogue Piece

 


      It's funny how different you can feel in a span of ten minutes. Before your work is done you are begging, "No more, let it be done... take it away.. take IT AWAY" ..but ten minutes later when you realize you are done, you discover a craving for more; Another idea, another project, the sole possibilities of what might be your next art piece, is too much to bare. You'll find yourself nose first in your sketchbook roughing out and brainstorming your next big idea..

     So here is my finished piece of animation. I do like it but I hate it as well. 3 weeks it took me to complete it and I'm pretty proud that I kept myself to a constant pace of work. I always learn more form completing a piece than I have things to boast about it. IT's always possible to FINISH, just set your mind to it. the more you follow through and finish, the easier it becomes.

-I wont fill in the characters unless I have to, it's a personal choice. I like seeing the lines. I personally like rough animation and pencil test more than I do finished "tied down' drawings of animation.

-ATTENTION TO DETAIL
     -A few explanations of my choices in this animation piece. 

     Why a sunset background? The mood wouldn't be the same with a bright sunny day. The audience would be questioning the setting if I staged it at 4 in the morning, 'Why are they out there that early?' I chose sunset because it is the END of a day. It's when you have to call it quits and accept that theres no more daylight. similar to how my character is accepting that, "It's not for me." He too is accepting his fate.
      When making small decisions such as background and setting, The amount of attention you give each choice can only improve and add depth to your art. It was a conscious choice of mine to keep all shots of my Main character clear and just leave sky in the background. He has his mind made up, he is thinking clearly and knows exactly what he wants. So I chose to represent that with a clear background of the sky.    
     On the other hand I chose to crowd my secondary character's composition as much as I could with out making it obvious. I added power lines in the first shot and a expensive car in the background. Not only do they crowd the composition and made it 'busy' but the power lines added a diagonal that I enjoyed. With the secondary characters next shot I crowded him yet again in the composition. A little bit more to show some progression. I am mainly crowding him to contrast the main character's composition. The secondary character's mood is a bit more sour, aggravated and indifferent. I think a crowded composition with a few diagonals represent that just fine in comparison to the main characters shots.

(diagonals, straights and other visual story telling vocabulary are all real elements that animators, directors, and other artist use when making an art piece. If you didn't know, go out and educate yourself on it. It'll change your perspective on film dramatically)

-ORCHESTRATING A CLIMAX
      I added one subtle thing I'd like to point out. I had established in the opening shots that my main character was Screen Left and my secondary character was Screen Right. But in one shot I switched the main characters orientation in relationship to the screen. I put him on screen right. 'Whats the big fukn deal DANNY!!!!!??' you ask. Well this is an example of emphasizing a point within your shot.
      In the beginning I listened to this dialogue and tried to figure out where was the POINT, where was the Umph and climax of the line of dialogue. It had to be "It's not for me." That part of the dialogue seemed to me to carry the most weight. So without doing a cliche' gesture and over the top acting to point out and say,"Hey everybody look at this, its the most important part!" like how most people tend to do, I took step back and asked how else can I emphasize this part. While taking a story telling class with Mark Andrews back in college I remember one thing story boarders tend to do to emphasize a point in the scene, it was to mess up a pattern or a 'Normality' that has been established. So decided to break up my screen direction. It didn't bring attention to itself or disrupt the flow of the animation piece so it was a success to say the least. It's not a big deal BUT, it does add that layer of complexity to the pice and keeps it from looking bland.

-CLOSING THE BOOK
     So I will turning this in for this months contest at http://www.11secondclub.com/ If you'd like to participate and vote be my guest. We'll see how it goes. I do not believe it will win on the count of how limited my animation is, people tend to like the cartoony stuff and appealing acting. If I could do this again I would not change it, I felt this line of dialogue called for a limited acing role and performance that in some cases might be more powerful than overacting. What will I work on next? I don't know... actually I do know. But I wont finish it till June or July of next year. 


I hope you enjoyed and found these 4 post helpful or at least insightful. Don't stop sending me work, I always love critiquing and giving advise back to you guys through email. I liked it so much I'm doing it professionally now. I just started at Animation Mentor as a mentor. But you could still send me your work for me to critique here for free :) like how I believe all information should be.

-Daniel Gonzales

Animating a Shot: Part 3

     

     Happy first day of fall! So I'm just about over the hump of the hardest part of completing an animation piece. Yes yes, I had the beard going, blood shot eyes, the zombie stare, the anti-social anti-food anti-TIME feelings flowing freely in my mind. I was in the Zone. It doesn't look pretty from the outside (ask my girlfriend haha) but on the inside, it's wonderful, my mind was 100% on creative mode.

     If you think physical/acting animation is alone the toughest part of the whole process, you haven't animated dialogue yet. Not harder but it's almost the same level of difficulty as acting and physicality. I believe it takes the most amount of attention and concentration. Your background music, podcasts and side conversations must be put on hold when you are listening and drawing mouth shapes for dialogue. So in tradition of the first person story telling style of the last 2 posts, here I go:

THE MOUTH
     I know mentally this is the most draining part of the process. So as I prepare my desk by setting up 2 mirrors and an extra pillow on the seat of my chair, I'm mentally thinking of all the mouth shapes one see's through out the day. The funny thing I noticed is that YOU DON'T SEE mouth shapes. You kind of interpret the shape when it flashes by. And in a sentence you only see the Major sounds take shape in the mouth.

e.g: "Fuck"
-You will see the 'F' shape very clearly and is mainly the only shape you have to nail when generally animating the word. The rest is just jaw and a general 'UGH' mouth shape.

     So I'm going over all I know mentally before I start. When I start animating, I initially want to exaggerate EVERY LITTLE SYLLABLE. But a quick trick where you put your hand under your jaw, and say the line of dialogue and take note how many times your hand dips. The points when it dips/or opens wide, are the points to exaggerate the jaw opening. This keeps me from animating my characters mouth opening on every syllable. So I first draw in the key poses when the jaw opens in my animation. I time those poses out to match the dialogue perfectly. Then I move on to other major mouth shapes such as the M's B's F's P's V's. I make those shapes very clear so that they can be read at a moments glance.

IN-BETWEEN THE LINES
      While animating the mouth you always have to be aware of a very important thing. That the mouth is connected to the face. If you are just animating the mouth and not moving the head, nose, or jaw; your mouth would look like it is floating on the surface of the face. So all it takes is a small stretch of the nose, or a blink on a hard accent, or countless other tricks to make your mouth feel connected to your face. Also (to those 2D animators out there) always check the distance from the top lip to the nose and bottom lip to the chin and try to stay consistant. Many times I found my mouth drifting closer and closer to my characters chin with out my knowledge.. Lots of erasing... lots of finger cramps..

Here is a video of the dialogue (90% finalized)

FINISHING UP
     If dialogue was the biggest mental drainer, then finishing up and 'inking' of a piece is physically draining. As i finished up doing my dialogue I was OVER my piece. I wanted it does, I wanted to be done, I was ready to start on something new. It's a very trying time. I took two days off my work. Went outside and got some sun, I went to Santa Cruz and visited my brother, caused some trouble and just messed around. I was not eager to start the process of drawing wrinkles in clothing over and over again for 150 frames straight. I was not eager to draw an oval of a head 500 times and keep it consistent, I was not eager to sit 10 hours at a time and kill my hand tracing and erasing and tracing over and over again...
      But I went online, read a book (King Lear), watched a movie (The INSIDER) and went on a campaign to inspire myself again. And that's all it took, at eleven at night after watching a movie with my lady, the surge and energy of inspiration hit me and I immediately took advantage of it because i know in the morning the inspiration it would be gone. 'Aren't you coming to bed?" she would ask, "No, I feel like [I gotta work] work, I have to get it out of me."

     When I animate and I'm nearly done, I POLISH as I INK. which means as I am outlining my animation with black, I take notes on what can be pushed or tweaked. But I don't always fix them as I come across the mistakes for fear of ruining the momentum I have at the time. If I was to stop to solve the problem I have found, it drains the clock and it also drains my motivation. One hour and finishing a scene of 5 seconds? or spending an hour fixing 4 frames (5 percent of a second)? What makes you feel like your being more productive?

SO here is me while I am finishing up, hopefully I have time to really polish the hell out of it. It's the last push so I'm going hard: more hours, harder concentration, and keeping constant pace.  I do still see mistakes in my animation but I'll try to finish first then go back and fix them.

How I feel right now: tired, motivated, and a urge to push until I break which comes from insperation