Week 9 - 18th Nov 19 (P.a.C.):
Taxi Version One
Behind the Scenes (Version One) Video
Reflective Evaluation
I was required to carry out a dialogue performance animation to show to the class which involved the incorporation of one out of four dialogues of 11 seconds long from the website the eleven second club (The Eleven Second Club, 2007). I selected the audio from the movie ‘Enchanted’ (Lima, 2007) which was an audio relating to the section in the movie which says “Ah, I was looking for some help. You see, I’ve been wandering very far and long tonight, and I’m afraid nobody’s been very nice to me.” *Laugh* “yeah, well, welcome to New York.” “Thank you!”
Version One
When I first started the animation, I struggled to decide on an idea of what to do because I did not really understand the task fully. This made me feel anxious and slightly stressed. After speaking with family members about the project, some ideas came to mind and I decided on a scene which involved a guy taking the woman’s taxi (jumping the queue and stealing her taxicab).
I also would have liked to have drawn up a storyboard, which is common in the industry, however, I did not feel confident with my own drawing skills and therefore tried to produce a storyboard artist (mum) but she did not have enough time to help me with this. I therefore went straight into production on the animation as I had a fair idea and felt fairly confident of how I wanted it to look.
I began production by going into audio first, importing the audio into software and then started making the assets of the story I came up with. I therefore made a taxi rig from a car we used last year and changed the grey colours to taxi colours (yellow – New York). I felt happy when carrying out this task as I was learning how to rig a vehicle – I took the doors off and changed the colours of the windows and the car and then put some seats and a steering wheel into the vehicle as it originally looked quite bare inside.
As I needed a driver for the car, I decided to use the Keith Rig as the driver, so I put him in a seating position which was fairly easy to do. I also required two characters (one male, one female) therefore I started using a Buckid rig that was compatible with my computer because my graphics card was not the correct one for the software. I also changed the colours/textures of the characters to blue (male) and pink (female).
Things seemed to be going well and I only had a few more scenes to render until I had a problem with the file as it became corrupted which made me feel annoyed and very stressed. However, luckily the computer had generated a white temporary file, so I was able open that in Maya and it brought my work back.
Prior to showing the animation to the class, I asked Joe and Johny to confirm the timings of the animation and they confirmed it had to be 11 seconds long. I felt nervous and sick to my stomach because my animation was 38 seconds long and I did not have time to reduce this and was now concerned that the animation was not quite right as it did not follow the 11 second brief which I had not seen before the class showing.
After the feedback review, I was very annoyed that the animation was not right which made me feel upset and disappointed that day.
I also would have liked to have drawn up a storyboard, which is common in the industry, however, I did not feel confident with my own drawing skills and therefore tried to produce a storyboard artist (mum) but she did not have enough time to help me with this. I therefore went straight into production on the animation as I had a fair idea and felt fairly confident of how I wanted it to look.
I began production by going into audio first, importing the audio into software and then started making the assets of the story I came up with. I therefore made a taxi rig from a car we used last year and changed the grey colours to taxi colours (yellow – New York). I felt happy when carrying out this task as I was learning how to rig a vehicle – I took the doors off and changed the colours of the windows and the car and then put some seats and a steering wheel into the vehicle as it originally looked quite bare inside.
As I needed a driver for the car, I decided to use the Keith Rig as the driver, so I put him in a seating position which was fairly easy to do. I also required two characters (one male, one female) therefore I started using a Buckid rig that was compatible with my computer because my graphics card was not the correct one for the software. I also changed the colours/textures of the characters to blue (male) and pink (female).
Things seemed to be going well and I only had a few more scenes to render until I had a problem with the file as it became corrupted which made me feel annoyed and very stressed. However, luckily the computer had generated a white temporary file, so I was able open that in Maya and it brought my work back.
Prior to showing the animation to the class, I asked Joe and Johny to confirm the timings of the animation and they confirmed it had to be 11 seconds long. I felt nervous and sick to my stomach because my animation was 38 seconds long and I did not have time to reduce this and was now concerned that the animation was not quite right as it did not follow the 11 second brief which I had not seen before the class showing.
After the feedback review, I was very annoyed that the animation was not right which made me feel upset and disappointed that day.
The feedback I got from my classmates in today's Formative Feedback day was very constructive but mostly negative.
Caroline: I've got two things, like one, I don't think the constant footsteps are necessary, it gets annoying after a bit and then the second one is the first part when she puts her hands on the window, she should really keep her elbows down because I don't think many people actual go like that.It was just hard to figure it out, but I could try. I will have a go.
Caroline: You could just rotate the elbow point down and you could twist the hands, so it's more that way (grabbing the window frame). It will just look a little bit more natural.
Nicky: Without the dialogue it's really hard to tell what's going on, first when she goes up to the window and starts opening the door It looks very much like a Grand Theft Auto where they’re about to steal a car from you rather than someone who is lost and looking for directions. Just going straight to the window and putting their hands on the window is quite confident and not someone who is unsure of where they are.
Ffion: I think you could probably focus on what the dialogue is actually saying and like use that and how they would express what they were talking about, rather than thinking about a story that goes with it, like she would be more lost…I was just struggling coming up with a story, behind it. That was in the 11 second clip. What I would do with it.
Ffion: Not necessarily a story but more like the expressions of the emotions rather than a whole story.
Jack: The character reminds me a bit of a Roomba, you know the hover, the robot one where it just goes, it is a right angle, do something then move again another right angle. A bit robotic.
Johny: With some familiar interesting comments there. Just to pick up from what Jack said, I was looking at things like the alignment of the feet on each step.That was a bit hard.
Johny: It does seem very very…, everything Stuck to 90oC. Real living creatures typically very very far from spectral art. You might want to think about breaking the pattern and having a little more haphazard. Continuing what Caroline said about bringing the elbows down, it easy to forget that gravity is acting on the character all the time, typically living creatures not necessarily lazy but it takes a lot of energy to hold your arm out like that you would typically only do that if you were lifting something heavy.
Johny: Just think about that gravity is constantly pinning us to the floor and the only reason you would be really like fighting against the gravity would be when you were angry or struggling with something.I tried to learn it on the window frame but I didn't move the arms forward enough.
Johny: In terms of body language, when you pose a character doing something like that, every pose communicates a particular idea. So if your poses aren't quite communicating the idea then were breakdown some of that communication. So try to avoid things like that especially with the arms up like that maybe use one arm.I had to find the scenes with the smallest time to render by working out how many frames the rest of the scenes (Scenes 4 to 10) had, to get as many scenes done the day before the review session but finished the animation with play blasts. When I rendered scene 7 the taxi did not show because the control layer was set as template so did not show in the render until I turned template off.#
On reflection and on evaluating the feedback I now realise that I did the animation incorrectly, as the emotion in the dialogue did not portray the correct emotion for the animation I created. My female character asked for help; however, her body language did not portray her anxiety, but instead, seemed to depict confidence – by showing my character resting her arms on the taxi window. Having taken on the feedback I realise that the character’s arms should have been shown with her elbows pointing towards the floor at a different angle, showing gravity pulling down on her arms. (Williams, 2001) emphasises this point by stating that “we should feel we only have the body to tell the story.”
On further evaluation and having discovered that the animation should have been 11 seconds long; the animation only had to be in the length of the audio, not 38 seconds long. I now recognise that I need to be quite clear about the logistics of the task before commencing with the animation as in a previous lesson the tutor stated that all we had to animate was one of the 11 second audios on Blackboard but did not mention the length of time of the animation. Therefore, on reflection if I had looked at other students work in the class before showing my work to my peers and also ensured I fully checked out the brief and clarified with my peers and tutor earlier, I would have had time to correct my misassumption around the timings and could have produced the animation within the correct time length (Student Dialogue Performances, 2019).
In the next couple of weeks, I will reproduce the animation so that it fits into the 11 seconds required also ensuring that it captures the emotions the characters are feeling. Therefore, I will focus on the feedback and ensure that I address this within this work.
I plan to start the animation from scratch, using the two characters within the scene without any props in order to portray the story using only the characters body’s (Williams, 2001). I will also revisit my peers work to help confirm what elements I need to ensure are incorporated into the animation and to help clarify what I need to do from this point on.
I plan to start the animation from scratch, using the two characters within the scene without any props in order to portray the story using only the characters body’s (Williams, 2001). I will also revisit my peers work to help confirm what elements I need to ensure are incorporated into the animation and to help clarify what I need to do from this point on.
Simple Version Two
Behind the Scenes (Version Two) Video
Version Two
I took the feedback on board from version one and recreated the dialogue performance from scratch because I was finding it difficult to reorganise and reanimate version one.
When undertaking this work, I felt more stressed as I did not where to start the second time around. I therefore put both the characters in the scene and set it up ready to start.
In order to understand where I should be next and to listen to the audio and depict what movements the characters would be carrying out; I asked my mum to help me with the project. I produced the first sentence of the lady’s voice “Ah, I was looking for some help. You see, I’ve been wandering very far and long tonight.” I had to take a break at this point but did continue to work on the animation later that day whereby I managed to complete the remaining dialogue of the lady’s voice “and I’m afraid nobody’s been very nice to me.” *Laugh* “yeah, well, welcome to New York.” “Thank you!”
I worked on the bottom half of both the lady and gentleman’s bodies to depict what postures they needed to show. It was very difficult to depict their body poses in a short amount of time and 11 seconds was extremely difficult to animate into. I therefore had to move a lot of key frames around to meet the time criteria.
After the postures of the characters had been completed, I focused on the smaller details such as the face and mouth movements.
When undertaking this work, I felt more stressed as I did not where to start the second time around. I therefore put both the characters in the scene and set it up ready to start.
In order to understand where I should be next and to listen to the audio and depict what movements the characters would be carrying out; I asked my mum to help me with the project. I produced the first sentence of the lady’s voice “Ah, I was looking for some help. You see, I’ve been wandering very far and long tonight.” I had to take a break at this point but did continue to work on the animation later that day whereby I managed to complete the remaining dialogue of the lady’s voice “and I’m afraid nobody’s been very nice to me.” *Laugh* “yeah, well, welcome to New York.” “Thank you!”
I worked on the bottom half of both the lady and gentleman’s bodies to depict what postures they needed to show. It was very difficult to depict their body poses in a short amount of time and 11 seconds was extremely difficult to animate into. I therefore had to move a lot of key frames around to meet the time criteria.
After the postures of the characters had been completed, I focused on the smaller details such as the face and mouth movements.
Owen a previous graduate told me on the 2nd Dec after looking at my new dialogue performance that when the woman opened the arms to said long and far, they shouldn’t ease out and just be a linear movement so needs to be changed in the graph editor.
The feedback I got from a Maya technician/teacher on 9th December was very constructive.
James stated that the arms should not be symmetrical and that my characters were too symmetrical also commenting that the woman’s feet were too still and that there needed to be more movement. Also, when the top half of the character moved around, the bottom half of the character did not, which appeared unnatural.
After I did the dialogue performance wrong, I started it again from scratch making the animation simpler. This helped me focus because rather than editing the previous animation and trying to get this precise, I could just focus on something simpler and not have to think about re-organising. I personally found starting the project from scratch was much easier than trying edit an already completed project.
In the second version I focussed on movement associated with the dialogue, which I did not do in the first version. However, I experienced difficulties in carrying this out due to not fully understanding what was being portrayed to me and having not previously focussed on the dialogue I still found this a barrier. In order to overcome this barrier, I asked another person to listen to the audio with me so that I could compare my views about the movement of the characters with this individual to gain another perspective and feedback. By doing this, this validated that I was on the right tracks regarding the emotion and movement of the characters which helped me move forward and feel more confident in doing so.
I also now recognise that it can be more positive to simplify my animation because I can focus on other aspects of the animation such as emotions within the dialogue, rather than just making it look good (Owen, 2019). Furthermore, on evaluation I should not overcomplicate my work by focussing on background information such as the environment, cars and the driver’s movement because this distracted me from the characters emotions and movement that were being portrayed in the audio. I also recognise that I tended to focus more on the story than on the emotional aspects in the dialogue.
In relation to the female character’s movement as pointed by James, I am now aware of the inaccuracy of this character’s movement between the top and bottom half of the body. Therefore, I am now aware that I need to focus on ensuring that these correlate with each other to portray an accurate posture, stance and movements that appear natural.
References
Lima, K. (Director). (2007). Enchanted [Film]. USA: MovieMaker Publishing Co. Clip retrieved from https://youtu.be/oSj-MzCwvAE
The Eleven Second Club. (2007). the11secondclub. Retrieved from http://www.11secondclub.com/
Williams, R. (2001). The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators [PDF](pp. 346). Retrieved from http://index-of.co.uk/Animation/The%20_Animator%27s_Survival_Kit.pdf
Student Dialogue Performances (2019):
Barrow, D. (2019, 12 Nov). Dialogue Step 5 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/372726550 [Accessed 26/11/19]
Chapman, F. (2019, 15 Nov). Audio x3 [Video file]. Retrieved fromhttps://vimeo.com/373392231 [Accessed 26/11/19]
Davison, C. G. (2019, 13 Nov). Dialogue Performance Animatic [Video file]. Retrieved fromhttps://vimeo.com/372940515 [Accessed 26/11/19]
Delreux, G. (2019, 15 Nov). diolougue sequence [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/373883589 [Accessed 26/11/19]
Kazusek, P. (2019, 7 Nov). AUDIO 4 ANIMATION [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/371640085 [Accessed 26/11/19]
Moreton, B. (2019, 9 Nov). Buckid Dialogue Performance x3 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/HJMZ2cMtfWo [Accessed 26/11/19]
Tjon, C. (2019, 18 Nov). Dialogue - Audio file 3 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/373873315 [Accessed 26/11/19]
