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

Animation: Boy with Fire

 

      And you can always see what kind of student some one is by looking at their work. I went to the California College of the Arts Animation Show last week and saw a lot of amazing good stuff. A little Stop Motion, a little modelling and rendering, some amazing 2D animation as well as some very nice 3D animation. But no matter the quality you can always kinda guess the students work flow. Just keep that in mind when you are hoping that you can fool your teacher by doing your work the day before it's due...

When ever an animation assignment is given to a student, there are three types of students that I have observed.

-The type that procrastinate. They start late, they have an epic short film and want to finish it two weeks before it's due..

-The type that over estimate themselves. That start early and they want to do a fifteen minute short in 5 months...

-And lastly the type that is right in the middle. They don't aim to be epic, and they do not procrastinate.

______________________________________________________________

Here is what I animated for the CCA Animation Show 2011. Hope you like it.
If the Video Does not play, here's the link Boy with Fire



      I was asked to make this 3 weeks before the show, so that gave me 2 weeks to animate. So a couple of all nighters here some Starbuck breaks there and this is what you get. Thanks to my friend for the special effects with photoshop!  I also Provided my Pencil Test version with no sound and no special effects so you can see all my notes and mistakes flash and pop in the corners of the pages. You will see numbers and drawings and those help me keep track of my drawings and planning when I am in the middle of animating. Do notice the fire! It was my first time animating fire and it was fascinating. I will have to do a whole post about just fire soon to share some stuff I learned.

(Sorry no Pencil Test, could not upload)

      I cannot stress how important it is to always do your own work on the side even when you do have a job animating. A lot of Artists NEED that certain type of freedom that allows them to explore, and there's no better way to do that than on your own terms.
      But if you do need some structure I want to tell you about SPLINE DOCTORS. They're are having a month long animation contest. It starts May 9th and ends June 10th. If you're gnna say that you wish you had time or that you are too busy, those are excuses. The hours from 10PM to 2AM I find are Prime animation time that any one can tap into to. No one bothers you, nothing on TV. It's golden. MAKE TIME to do art. The link to The Spline Doctors Web Page is on the upper right side of my page. They are offering Prizes for the top three best animated pieces they receive. Good luck!

-Daniel Gonzales

How To Animate A....

     A fist slam is a very simple action but it involves a lot of animation principles and is very physical. I currently gave this task to a friend of mine, she is studying at A.M. (Animation Mentor) I am also helping her on the side develop and get a better understanding of animation. I give her assignments, she sends back work, then I critique work and show her mistakes as well as show her the solutions.
     Learning how to animate should not be a privilege and the information should not be kept a secret. So I'll share the Critique of her fist slam right here for all to read. This assignment shows a nice honest example of a student making some great general mistakes and the best part is, she was big enough to admit and ask, 'I'm stuck, how do I make this better.'

The Video: This is what was turned in:

Above: So it's not bad right? She has some body anticipation, a general arc that her wrist follows, she breaks the joints in the right spots, even some nice subtle settling there at the end. Looks like a success..      ...um .. yea if you're BLIND! Sure this gets the idea of a Fist Slam across but there are some hidden mistakes in her arcs, stiffness in the body, and some weirdness in the head. This assignment will turn from a nice piece of animation to a great example of animation. 

Below upper half: THE BODY-

- Is the most important part. You need to give a lot of attention to this. Bc if it's wrong.. then everything is going to be harder to animate later on. Have you ever gotten yourself into a spot while animating where you get stuck and can not figure out what is wrong and have to backtrack in your animation? It's most likely because your body ('Root' for the animation nerds out there) is not animated right. If you look at her example you can see the body starts of good then stops moving once it is upright. Let me tell you one thing: when animating: NEVER leave something NOT moving. It pixel locks and it destroys the illusion of life. So put a drift or find out how you can keep it moving in a way that makes it feel natural. Take a look below, This is how I would make the body move. It goes up the same way she has it going in her assignment, but the way I come down, I drag the upper body a bit and then do a little overlap action at the end. I hope it is clear because it is greatly exaggerated. 

Above lower half : ELBOW ARC WITH BODY ANIMATION-

- This is a study to help imagine the relationship between the elbow and the body. Do you notice that as the body goes back and slowly starts to go forward? That gives the elbow time to go up and allows me to create an arc. These points are not where the elbow HAVE to be, I'm just trying to get the relationship between body and elbow across.

Below upper half: ELBOW AND BODY- cont. 

-In this drawing I am showing that EVEN with (ok) body animation that it doesn't mean the elbow arc is going to be what you imagined. This elbow arc is almost a perfect circle and that's not what we want. We could see why it's making a circle, it's because of the spacing of the body animation  (It goes forward a bit to soon and fast, it doesn't give the elbow any time for 'hang-time' at the top of it's arc.) So in this case, if your arm animation is not doing what you want it to do, go back to the body again and don't erase your animation but adjust it.  

Above lower half: HER ANIMATION-

-This was her animation in her video. Do you see how the body just goes straight forward? There is no follow through, no overlap, no going backwards then forward. Her animation looks good even with this kind of animation, but it can be improved.

Below upper half: LOOKING CLOSER-

- "b B But Danny! If you look at every other frame her arm animation looks just fine. What do you meeaan it can be improved? I think Danny if full of B.S...." Even though her animation looks fine at real time speed, and it even looks fine when you draw and trace every other frame (see below) You can see clearly the Elbow and Wrist Arcs are good and the hand overlap is pretty damn spot on BUT.. yes there's a but.. lets check out those in-betweens..

Above lower half: THE IN-BETWEENS-

-The dark circles represent her in-betweens on the left. That elbow arc doesn't look so pretty now.. you can see where the in-betweens WANT to be because you can spot where the general arc is. On the right is how I would do the elbow spacing and the arc (in RED) and I put her arc and animation (BLUE)  right on top of it so you can compare.

Below upper half: ELBOW AND SHOULDER ARCS-

- Looking at how I would do the spacing and arc, here is a more detailed view of the relationship of the shoulder (RED) with the Elbow (BLUE). 

Above lower half: SHOULDERS ELBOWS AND WRIST oh my-

-The Animation with the wrist and hand included. I also drew the arcs on the side. When the body and elbow animation are done right then the rest comes easy because all you must worry about now is the Pose the lower arm is going to be in and then drag the hand on top of that. The elbow arc animation will be 'echoed' in the wrist and hand arc animation. It's all the same. And all this ONLY works if the body animation is done right. other wise something will be off or at least feel wrong.

Below upper half: HER ANIMATION-

- This is how her arc and her arm animation was working together. You should always do this to your work, trace your arcs and animation! Go buy some tracing paper and scotch tape and keep it by your computer AT ALL TIMES. 

Above lower half: COMPROMISE- 

- This is me trying to animate her elbow using the body animation she originally had but EVEN then I still tweaked it so that the body goes backwards on a frame...

Below upper half: THE HEAD-

-We're not done yet. the head animation is clearly a little funky. There are some pops in her animation. When animating the head you can either LEAD with it, or DRAG it. Here is how to do both with some body animation. If this is confusing just look at the number and the corresponding head. And Animate it in your mind. Train your eye to animate something in place. YES, like Bobby Fisher playing chess with no chess pieces.. all of you must become Bobby Fishers of animation...

Above lower half: CONCLUSION-
- Sure we fixed and went over animation.. and if you think we're done and covered everything there is to fix here then you need to drop your lollipop and listen up because you still have a lot to learn.
      "Your IDEA" I asked her, "Was that the BEST arm slam animation you could of came up with to say 'ARM SLAM'?" Her arm slam was pretty realistic which is nice.. It was actually pretty damn nice. But the subtext of her animation is saying something more like 'hey! here's my new dead weight of an arm..SLAM.. '
        Because we're Animators: gods of motion and life, lets look at the other side of the spectrum. How could of we have pushed it to make it FEEL more like an arm slam. So I drew her 5 drawings here on top of each other one at a time. This is real life exaggerated but you benifit from exaggerating real life bc you can get a better sillouette, you can improve your line of action, you can emphasize, you can mess with spacing and timing. You can actually do what real life can't which is what ever the fuck you want! Tweak and mess with any element you want, go be a god. Before you do though, make sure you understand what real life has to offer then improve upon it. Every animation book you will ever buy will tell you figure drawing and drawing form life is key and observing life is a must. THEN and only then will you see what parts of your animation to make cartoony and which parts to treat as real life.

I hope this was helpful to those starting out and an insight to those who just like to read. I'm now to return to my own animation that I will post up soon..

-Daniel Gonzales