Wandering Eyes

So I happened across this picture in a recently purchased book, Manwatching by Desmond Morris.

It seems pretty bad ass. It is an older book (from the 70's) but it has a wealth of knowledge on human behavior, gesture, etc. Anyways the picture.... ummm here it is....any second now...there we go!

Ok...so now that you see the picture..what the heck does it mean? Well I might as well just quote from the book.

"When we stare closely at a human face, we do not remain fixated on exactly the same spot for any length of time. Our eyes scan the features of the face, but concentrate most on the eyes and mouth, as revealed by this experimental record of eye-movments made by a subject staring for three minutes at a photograph of a young girl's face."

It may be something to think about while we figure out how we are going to animate our characters in close up shots, where to spend our time (if we are on a tight schedule), and/or how we will stage things.

I think this helps show us that the audience will focus mainly on the eyes and mouth. They will take other things in, but the main attention is in those key areas. Hmmmm if I was to make a bold statement I bet the audience will spend more time at the eyes than the mouth. That's my guess, what do you think?

Cartoony 3

I was surprised to find an email from a woman by the name of Megan Hobby. She had read my blog entries on cartoony animation and had gone in search of animations that would exemplify what I said. She then compiled a group of frames from an animation, and sent them to me to see if it was an example of what I meant. She had found a perfect example...so I thought I would post it here for all to see.

The images happen to be from one of my coworkers, Aaron Hartline. If you haven't checked out his stuff you really should! It's kick ass!



So as you can see it has a slow out on the first four frames....then on the fifth frame it goes through the entire motion and overshoots the final pose, then on the last three frames it slows in to the final pose.

If you would like to see it in motion here is a link to the animated shot.

A big thanks to Aaron Hartline and Megan Hobby for making this entry possible. :)

Less is more...

You know what? I'm beginning to think that sometimes less is more. There is a time when you want to go all super crazy, but I also think there is a time when not really moving at all is more appropriate, and possibly equally as difficult (harder in my own opinion). Because how do you animate it if it's not moving? You would be surprised at how much animation you have to do to make something look like it isn't moving (yet still alive)

For example:

Maybe accenting only one thing. All the rest is subtle eye accents and changes..maybe a little breathing... mouth stuff... cheeks... nose... slight keep alive on the body! I dunno...the possibilities are endless!

If you design your main pose carefully, do most of the main acting with the eyes/brow and a slight head accent, do all the other little subtle movements, etc. You may be surprised... it could easily be more powerful then all the fancy patterns in the world. (hmmm of course this applies when the scene calls for such things.)

Relating to a character

"How can we relate to the character?" That's a question I ask myself a lot.

I think a big part of it is finding those little moments that we can all relate to. For example. Lets say you have someone cleaning their ears with a q-tip (random I know)...

Now you could approach the scene by having that person put the q-tip in his ear, swirl around, pull it out, and throw it away. Simple enough, and gets the job done.

OR

You could have him put the q-tip in his ear, swirl around, pull it out, look at the q-tip, than throw it away.

It seems like such a subtle difference right? To me that subtle difference adds oodles and oodles of thinking and life to the character.

Here is another example. Lets say you have a guy falling down...

You could have him fall down, stand back up, and then keep walking.

OR

You could have him fall down, stand up, look around slightly to see if anyone saw him fall, and then keep walking.

These subtle differences bring us closer to the character. They let us relate.

Joe Ranft

Joe Ranft, a legendary story artist and a founding member of Pixar's creative team, passed away on Tuesday. I did not know him personally, but I, like the rest of the animation community, mourn his loss greatly. My deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends.

Andrew Gordon Notes from CG Char

It was great fun for me to go over to CG Char tonight and see a post from Andrew Gordon about polish. Andrew was one of my teachers, and he definitely knows his stuff. Below is what he said over at CG Char.

Andrew Gordon Polish Notes

Facial polish stuff....

• Avoid even timing on jawUD
• Slow in and Out
• Watch corners of mouth
• Arc corners and jaw in dialogue
• Compress closed mouth shapes
• overlaps fleshy parts of mouth
• don't forget to animate the cheeks where needed.
• Layer in Squash and Stretch
• Do closeup records for detail
• anticipate shapes
• don't over complicate brows
• Remember how the eye works
• Get those eye blinks looking good.
• don't have those lids hit a wall
• Change shapes on eye direction changes
• use the brow in conjunction with the eyes

General

• Plot your arcs
• Pay attention to your patterns
• work on your physicality - re reference a move if needed...
• Get your contact points working well (for ex: foot squashing when it contacts ground)
• Make sure you are starting and stopping your character properly
• break up twined poses
• fingers? are they animated
• so on and so on..

Animation is a medium of design, right? As we do different gestures and movements they make up different patterns. You may have a great acting idea, but how your head and arms move, may not have pleasing patterns. This is not to say that everything you do should look like a dancer. All I am saying, it to pay attention to what the different parts of the body are doing. Design your motion. Notice that things do move in interesting patterns. Arcs and Figure eights and so on... When I show a clip of a politician waving his arm around, it is to show the path of action his arm and hand move on as well as how much you as the viewer are mesmerized by it. When ever I am animating a scene, I try to block in what I am feeling for the scene. Then I will often go back into the shot and clean up things and work on a specific area. The patterns may be one thing I am trying to work out. Patterns can be arcs, head movement, or general motion of limbs in a spacial area. What I was talking about, was mostly related to the patterns of motion created by gesticulating with your arms and hands.

Observation 1

I've noticed that if you add a subtle little foot adjust here and there to your animation it helps bring it to life. It feels more real. It's very easy to just leave the feet planted, and in a lot of ways it always reads as if they are glued to the ground.

The subtle little adjusts of the feet happen in every day life, so why not put them into your animation? They don't have to feel like they are conscious movements..they can be the little stuff you don't think about while your doing an action/or saying something. Keep an eye out today and just observe all the little adjusts people do when they are standing still and talking.

On the flip side you can easily go too far. You don't need a lot of steps (in most cases) It will make your animation feel over acted, or just not real (again just in most cases). I think that is the mistake a lot of us make in the beginning (myself included). So maybe tone some of those steps down and give the adjusts a try. Who knows it may look more real...or it may not. *shrugs* You will never know until you try it.

...

what are you still doing here? I thought you were going to try it!

Cartoony 2

So I started thinking about how to create those extreme movements over a few frames and have it read correctly. I even wandered around work asking different people that I thought pulled it of well. And do you know what I found interesting? In a lot of cases it takes more frames to do the zippy/snappy/quick animation then it does for a more normal movement.

So what I've gathered the spacing would be something like this. Lets say we are animating a punch...

So you would have your fist pulled back..you would pull back some more for your antic, then you would slow out for say oh I dunno three frames. I'm talking just a little slow out, not a lot, then on that 4th frame you pop the arm out to past fully extended (overshooting your pose). Then you let it slow into its finish pose over 1-3 frames. So all your frames are favoring your start and end pose and there is nothing really in the middle.

I dunno. Give it a try and tell me what ya think. If you want to push the cartoony even more for that one frame of overshoot you could even scale the arm/hand and make it a little larger.

Cartoony

So working at a place like Blue Sky I get the chance to see a lot of amazing animation in a style very different from what I'm used to. I learned a more truth to materials approach to animation, and as we all know places like PDI, Blue Sky, and others have a more cartoony style.

It blows me away to see extreme movements over a few frames. It blows my mind when I see things like an arm moving across the screen in one frame. In the past if I did that, it would have come across as a pop. Something that must be fixed, yet some how the people at these companies can pull it off. To be honest it has me in a state of awe.

It shows me how much fun you can have with animation, and that there really are no limits to what you can create.

A Smile

Soooo...there I was watching Wedding Crashers for the 2nd time (btw freaking funny movie) and I noticed something amazing, and yet so basic.

I may have noticed it before, but I think this is the first time it really clicked. When some people smile their ears raise a little. Seems so simple right? Why didn't I ever think of it before?!

Perhaps if a scene calls for it, and you want to add another little subtle detail..consider maybe putting a little ear movement in there with the face. After all, it's all connected right?

Wow my first post.

Weeeeeee. And so it begins. Dum dum duuuuuuuuum.

Anyways this will probably be a blog about the little things I think about related to animation and life. Hopefully you will find something useful or entertaining in it. If nothing else, it will keep me entertained :o.