I want to use the knowledge I learned this term as much as possible in this task, but it’s a little hard to start. So firstly I watched some performance animation videos on Youtube. What I mainly watch is the showcase of animation mentor, their works can show a storyline in a few seconds, with or without dialogue.
After watching some other people’s works, I was more interested in the works without dialogue, because they can express somethings or some emotions only through actions and expressions. This makes the animation more interesting.
After thinking about it in my room for a week, I realized, why don’t I just animate my own life? Because of the epidemic, I stayed in my room for a long time, and boredom became my main emotion every day. But it is also very interesting to find some fun in the boredom. Combining the knowledge of body mechanics, I decided to make an animation to tell an embarrassment about a person turning a swivel chair when he is bored.
I watched some animations of swivel chairs, although they were not too many, I still found some good works.
This will be a short animation, so I want to determine the rhythm of the entire animation first. Because it is from boring to finding the fun of the swivel chair, this should be an animation from static to dynamic, from slow to fast. I wrote a simple script from this thought.
Then I drew a simple storyboard in PS to ensure some shots and positions. The process of turning text into images was also a process of conception,, which allows me to have a more accurate imagination of the final picture.
Shooting reference is a bit difficult for me now, because I don’t have a gimbal or tripod to hold the phone, and I haven’t found a very suitable place to shoot. So I first took a video in my kitchen with the laptop camera. The picture was ok, but my acting skill was too awkward. I think this can only be used as a reference for motion. My expressions and actions may need to be shot separately later. And I haven’t thought about the ending action, so I haven’t shot it yet.
The task is to make Phonemes animation based on audio. One of the difficulties for me is the handling of some English continuous speaking, it is difficult for me to say it myself as a reference. So I found a video of a cover singer, her lip shape of the song In the name of love is relatively clear, which makes it easy to observe and determine the key pose.
But because the video is a side view, it is difficult to observe a clear frontal lip shape, so I searched for a lip shape diagram for reference.
In this task, I mainly focused on the changes of the tongue, because in many situations a simple change of mouth shape cannot accurately represent a voice, and the audience needs to see the movement of the character’s tongue, such as L of Love.
This is the aniamtion of mouth:
After making the mouth shape, I added some facial expressions and body shaking to make the character seem more engaged in the singing performance. The expression animation mainly focuses on the character’s eyebrows, because there are many parts that require strength when singing, and the changes in the eyebrows at this time can best reflect the strength.
This week I polished the body mechanic animation. What I mainly did was fixing some poses and smooth motion curves.
There are two things that I have to notice.
First, the character’s hip and chest account for 50% of the rotation of the character’s body to achieve the correct rotation angle.
Second, IKFK switching is best done in one frame, which makes animation control easier. And the data in IK bones can be copied to the FK control curve to ensure motion consistent.
After watching so many films, when someone said I need to choose 3 movies to talk about, the first choice came in to my mind was the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.
Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors. I also watched the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Ant man, and Baby Driver. I really like his absurd comedy way to express various themes.
The first work of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy is Shaun of the Dead. The protagonist, Shaun, is a guy who can’t accomplish anything. He spends all day in the bar. He has no sense of responsibility. His only friend is Ed, who has also accomplished nothing.
But this day the whole city has undergone serious changes. Zombies have invaded, and anyone who is bitten by them will turn into zombies. After recognizing the situation, Shaun plans to save his mother and girlfriend, and kill the stepfather who he doesn’t like and has been bitten by the zombie. He imagined it very well, and at this time he was still the loser who thought he could easily achieve it by just talking casually.
However, when Shaun and Ed departed, they realized that everything was different from what they had imagined. First, the stepfather did not turn into a zombie, and the girlfriend was still with his hated friend. After experiencing a series of chaos, Shaun ‘s stepfather died, and his last words had a great impact on Sean. This is how he started to be the leader. He would yell his dissatisfaction with Ed, who was confused, and he would direct everyone to imitate the behavior of zombies to protect himself, and even stand up to save people after Ed attracted the zombies.
And when his mother was also infected, Shaun finally grew up, he could tell all his dissatisfaction, sincerely express his love for his girlfriend and his concern for friends.
This is a story about responsibility.
The second work is Hot Fuzz. Nicholas Angel works as a senior police patrol in London. It seems his greatest pleasure is catching thieves and solving crimes. For this reason, he became the most dedicated and capable officer in the police station. But this aroused the jealousy of the sheriff, so he was transferred to a remote and peaceful town as a policeman.
There have been no serious crimes in the town for decades. Nicholas was very depressed there, he felt that his ability to capture thieves had no room for display. What annoyed him even more was that Danny, the son of the chief of the police station in the town also came to join in the fun and became his partner. This new partner was extremely troublesome, asking about police officers in big cities all day long. Nicholas was worrying about the town. When the trivial affairs and the stupid partner around him, a case happened in the town, Nicholas smelled the opportunity to show his fists, and the thrilling battle began.
In this film, Nicholas and Danny influence each other. From the beginning of the stranger to the last good friend, Nicholas also learns how to relax himself, and Danny has also become an excellent policeman.
This is a story about society and justice.
(I have to say that I like this shot so much. Shooting while riding a bicycle is so funny.)
The last work is The World’s End, which is my favorite in this series. It can be called drinking to the end of the world. The story is like the title of the film. In order to make a promise when he was young, Gary King, who is overly indulged in alcohol, finds his friends who now have their own families and careers. They meet to return to their hometown of Newton Haven to try again. Find the happy hour of 5 people, 12 bars, and 60 beers all night.
At first, the protagonist Gary’s paranoia disgusted everyone. Everyone lived their own lives. Happiness and difficulties coexist. Gray didn’t have a family, but he was also very unhappy. The only thing that made him happy just a hangover when they were young. Sometimes I don’t understand gray’s madness. He is just a lunatic. And tt was confirmed later, and it really is. But he didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of mental illnesses and lead a boring life. This is a story of nostalgia and friendship. After the unfriendliness and contradictions between the characters are gradually enlarged, the whole movie is full of grievances and trivialities.
At this time, the sudden situation changed the tone and the risky drama was staged. The process of fighting with robots adds a touch of thrill and fantasy to the movie. Everyone has become united because of the robot, and when they are in danger, they naturally forget some trivial things. In the end, the Gray and his friends really defeated the threat.
However, the Gray’s stubbornness and madness angered the aliens, and the aliens launched a large-scale electromagnetic disaster. The earth’s civilization has been extinct and returned to the dark Middle Ages. The ending is good for Gray, but it is a disaster for the earth. But I think the what the director wants to say is that instead of becoming a screw of the mechanical society, even if it is gilded, it is better to fight for the freedom of your heart.
(Live a life that follows your heart, no matter how bad it can get.)
Every story in the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy has something in common, that is, persistence and devotion to a certain feeling. “Shaun of the Dead” insists on responsibility and friends, “Hot Fuzz” insists on justice, ” The World’s End ” insists on youth. Each of the three stories has a sentimental opening, followed by an unbelievable situation, and after a happy battle, there is an ending that still sticks to the heart. No matter what the world becomes, the protagonist walks better on the original path in his heart. This is more directly expressed in the ending of ” The World’s End “.
About my assignment brief, I have no specific ideas yet. I was playing Detroit: Become Human recently, and I have always been interested in interactive movies. (Quantic Dream is the best!!!)
For me, I can do some real-time technology research, but I am also very interested in the narrative strategy of this kind of work. I think I can decide after reading some more articles. The following link is the article I read.
This week’s task is body mechanic. As usual, I first need a good reference, and I also want to make some cool-looking actions this time. In the end I chose an action called macaco in which the character flipped back with one hand.
In order to make the reference clearer and coherent, I edited the two movements together for easy observation.
This is my reference video:
After analysis, I think the difficulty of this action is mainly the switch between IK and FK. When the character moves from standing to supporting the ground with one hand, his feet are in IK state and his hands are in FK state because at this time the feet must be fixed on the ground and the hands have not yet reached a fixed point of support.
In the latter part of the action, the character supports the ground with one hand and both feet are off the ground. At this time, the character’s right hand in contact with the ground must be switched to IK, and the feet must be changed to FK.
In the last part of the action, the hand become FK again and the feet become IK.
Therefore, it should be noted here that during the IKFK switching process, the matching of the character’s action can not show the incorrect movement.
At the beginning, I wanted to find a suitable plug-in to use. I tried the universal IKFK Switch tool. It has a good performance in converting FK actions to IK actions, but when IK actions are converted to FK actions, satisfactory results are often not obtained. .
But I also found out that I can manually copy the bone parameters in IK state to FK. Although this operation is more troublesome, it can be FK action or exactly the same as IK action.
IK FK key frames：
The process of Blocking is the same as before. I chose the basic key frame, which is based on the change of the movement trend. For example, 1-10 frames are hip down, 10-16 frames hip up and so on. The principles to be concerned about in this animation are Timing, Arcs, Slow in&Slow out, Stretch&Squash, Overlapping.
This is the blocking animation I did:
In the spline stage, I found that there are some small actions that need to be added, which should belong to the secondary action in the principal, which can add more details to the entire animation. And the timing of the entire action needs to be adjusted, and the part that needs to be more prominent.
This is my spline animation:
In addition, I also made another action blocking. I tried to connect the two actions, but I found that simple connection of this kind of action is not enough. The overall movement trend and power point need to be designed to make the animation appear coherent. I will continue to try.
This week I learned how to track object in 3Dequalizer. The task was to match the Ironman helmet to the head of a man looking at his cellphone on the street.I am familiar with the operation of 3DE through the study last week. The first steps are the same as before. First, you need to track the camera trajectory and select some clear points in the foreground, middle ground and background.
The difference is that you need to know the camera is fixed, so you need to change the positional camera constraint in the camera settings, and select the fix camera position constraint. In this way, the correct calculation result can be obtained.
Because the camera is at a fixed position and there is no obvious rotation, I did not need to choose a lot of tracking points to get good results.
The next step is to track the object. The task is to match the model of the ironman helmet to match the movement of the man’s head, so the tracking points should all be on the man’s face. Here we need to create a new point group and choose clear points on the man’s head. The principle of selection here is basically the same as the camera one.
After that, we imported the helmet model into 3DE. Then you need to match the tracked points with the model one by one. The function used here is Extract Vertex. This is the effect after matching.
Adjusting the position and rotation of the model so that the helmet can wrap the man’s head. It should be noted that the scale should not be changed here, because if the size of the model is changed, it will affect the next step. The size of the model should not be changed during the entire process.
Then it can be exported to Maya and nuke. In Maya, the original obj model is replaced with the fbx model to make animation.
Finally, import the rendered sequences into nuke to get this.
Afterwards, some incorrect parts need to be deducted by roto. Here I mainly show the final tracking result.
Joseph Campbell is an American writer who studies comparative mythology. In his book “Heroes with a Thousand Faces”, he proposed the prototype of the “monomyth” narrative model. That is, the core formula that the heroic adventure must follow: separation ⇀ initiation ⇀ return. It is divided into seventeen stages.
For decades, Joseph Campbell’s analysis of mythological stories has attracted writers on literary, television, and film platforms, providing a well-known guide for the characters’ journey to begin-and the many stages of challenges and conflicts they are responsible for overcoming.
Chris Vogler later simplified those seventeen stages into twelve with his book, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.
His version compressed Campbell’s seventeen stages to better adapt to the narrative process of novels and scripts.
Dan Harmon came up with an algorithm of sorts that compacts a story’s narrative into an eight-stage circle theory — similar to what Campbell and Vogler developed in their own writings, but a bit more accessible and broad.
1-A character is in a zone of comfort,
2-But they want something.
3-They enter an unfamiliar situation,
4-Adapt to it,
5-Get what they wanted,
6-Pay a heavy price for it,
7-Then return to their familiar situation,
8-Having changed.
Harmon then goes into detail about what each stage means, and also classifies the words for each stage into a single word to simplify more for the author.
That’s what I wrote while reading an article called How Screenwriters Can Use Dan Harmon’s “Circle Theory of Story.”
For Dan Harmon’s theory, I’d like to dissect his Rick and Morty, which is one of my favorite animations.
When I saw his theory, I immediately thought of Rick&Morty’s season 1 episode 6.
The story of this episode is very clear. Morty wanted to win Jessica’s love, so he asked Rick for help; Rick made a potion that would make anyone like Morty (except his immediate blood relatives), but the flu caused the potion to spread. In order to solve the crazy suitor, Rick twice created the antidote, only to turn all mankind into a monster “Cronenberg”. Rick chose to find another parallel world, where Rick and Morty were already dead, and the two replaced Rick and Morty in this world and continued to live.
Although the story is simple, the structure is fully in line with Dan’s theory.
First of all, the first point, The character is in a zone of comfort. It was a flu party in school, Morty tried to invite Jessica as always, but failed as always.
After that, they Want Something, Morty found Rick and proposed that he wanted a potion that would make others fall in love with him.
3, They Enter an Unfamiliar Situation. Morty came to the party with the potion rick made for him and successfully made Jessica fall in love with him, but an accident happened. Jessica’s flu caused the virus to spread rapidly among the crowd, making the party uncontrollable.
4, Adapt to It. At that moment, rick ran to the school to rescue Morty and explained what happened.
5, Get What They Wanted. What They Wanted here is actually that Morty got Jessica’s love, but the price paid is the madness and mutation of people all over the world.
6, Pay a Heavy Price for It. Rick studied various potions, but in the end, they didn’t work, and people all over the world became the monster “Cronenberg”. In the end, Rick and Morty can only give up this world and go to a parallel world.
7, Then Return to the Familiar Situation. Rick and Morty traveled to a parallel world, where they died unexpectedly, there were no monsters, and the family was just like the world they faced. The protagonist returns to a familiar state here.
8, Having Changed. But something changed forever. Morty gave up his original family and buried the bodies of himself and his grandpa in the yard.
In Rick&Morty, the role is also a very important part. Why do the audience like this work so much, and why do they like Rick so much?
Psychologically speaking, if the protagonist of a story gains strong love or hatred from the viewer, the character likely represents the viewer’s own psychological projection.
Rick is set to be the person with the highest IQ in the universe. His IQ is so high that he can create any technological invention at will in a short time. He is never short of money, anti-system, anti-moral, and kills anyone. Almost the strongest person in the universe, of course, from the perspective of drama, if a character has only advantages and no shortcomings, it will not look good. So Rick’s stubbornness, lack of compassion and empathy, and childishness all add points to this character. Let the audience feel the authenticity of this character even more in such an unbelievable work.
