AfterLives : Week 6

Metamorph-uh-this?

I got a substancial amount of animation done this week, and this had to be done in tandem with my team. One scene required quite a lot of characters morphing from one to another due to the indecisiveness of the interviewees, and this is where I came in! Since I did a lot of animal morphs in the Context of Practice module, I volunteered to do all the morphs.

Some morphs I did in the 501 module

There were a lot of characters and therefore, a lot of morphs. And there are many ways of animating these morphs. I explored all sorts of smears, warps and transitions but in the end we settled with a bouncy, organic transition that wasn't too gross but was still slightly stretchy.

The final morphs

I also used this 'morphing skill' to help Damo out with the character design of the chimera which was meant to be a strong animal + a mysterious one. It might as well be a halfway morph of an elephant and bat!

What went well:

• Animation was well on the way, using my experience with morphs meant we didn't lose momentum.
• Feedback on the morphs from my team kept me from animating morphs that didn't fit the narrative style,
• The anticipation, follow thorugh and overshooting of bits like hair, ears and feathers really sold the speed and direction of the morphs.

What could be improved:

• The sitting position of the morphing charcters shifts slightly but only because characters were designed to be flat and side-facing,
• The voices show no change while morphing, but this can be easily overlooked.

AfterLives : Week 5

In the background(s)

This week I got a lot of the backgrounds done. My process was drawing quick, sketchy thumbnails first, shading it roughly to figure out light and dark, then adding detail. I struggled with perspective, and creating perspective grids, but ultimately they came in very handy. Set designing is something I found surprisingly interesting even though it's not similar to my usual compositing and fx interests.

Since the audio of the pangolin had lots of wind that couldn't be removed, we decided to make the setting almost outdoors, in a conservatory. I did some concept sketches then added to it. 

Perspective errors in my sketch shown by the perspective grid

The props in the scenes reflected what the character was like and created a world around them.

To keep track of all the props in the setting, I made a 'prop panel'

Using a warping persepctive grid to simulate a camera tilt

We also kept in touch with each other over the Easter break using Google Hangouts and Facebook messenger. We used screensharing to update each other on our progress and receive feedback. 

What went well:

• The perspective grids worked well in creating a relaistic environment
• The props brought subtle life and character to world,
• Feedback from peers meant I could fix mistakes before I dedicated too much time on them.

What could be improved:

• Some scenes may be too complicated for the few seconds they appear in the documentary (the Chimera Detective background), this time could've been used elsewhere.

AfterLives : Week 4

Documentary in the Rough

Once the interviews were done, Cameron began storyboarding them. I then took these storyboards and compiled them together into a static slideshow to help with timing. Then I took some of Damo's character designs and animated the roughs into the animatic. Since this was a character-animation-intensive documentary, reference footage was essential. Cameron and I shot embarassing, yet useful reference footage to help with the roughs.

Since I like spreadsheets so much I began to do the work of a producer too, organising and listing things that needed to be done in Google sheets. I may have gone overboard and cause panic among my team because of how detailed they were, so I toned it down and reduced it to simple check boxes.


What went well:

• Animating the roughs meant I could figure out the limits of the character designs, i.e. head angles that'd be impossible or would run the risk of becoming a Simpsons/Peppa pig forward facing monstrocity. I gave and receieved feedback to Damo so the character design process was fluid and effective,
• The key and extreme poses really helped sell the performance, and helped with the timing too,
• The reference footage, as usual, proved invaluable to the perfomance.

What could be improved:

• The line between animatic and rough animation was quite blurry in this project, although I feel I could've kept it less detailed to allow for the animators to have more freedom.
• Keeping checklists and gantt charts simple is key to a perfectly organised project, I need to make sure my team is on the same page. 

AfterLives : Week 3

Interview Time

The team, exhausted from all the interviews

This week we conducted the interviews. It was quite an experience!
We booked an interview microphone from uni (which I handled during the interviews) and went around asking people three questions;

• "What do you think happens after we die?'
• "What would you like to happen after we die" (to ensure we got a wide variety of answers, instead of just "Nothing")
• "What animal do you feel best represents you?" (this helped us depict people as animals without the risk of offending them.)

After the interviews, I trimmed up the sounds so they were concise and manageable, which I then converted into a transcript. 

What went well:

• We interviewed quite a lot of people, and so we got very interesting, satisfying answers,
• The clever follow-up questions gave us rich descriptions to animate,
• The transcript will help us time the lipsync and animation and also can be converted to subtitles too.

What could be improved:

• I'm not very outgoing and confident, so anxiety and nervousness made it hard to interview people. We also had to be considerate of body language, to not intimidate people and had to word our questions carefully so as not to offend anyone.
• We could've interviewed a wider range of people to get more varied results.
• When writing the transcript I found it difficult to understand some words, especially when multiple people were talking at once. Thankfully, Cameron rushed in to save the day!