Animation
In today’s class with David Atkinson, we started by looking at Still life with aeroplanes by Lloyd, a trippy and marvelous film sitting somewhere inbetween the analogue and digital world.

Tips:

• Find out what is important and leave out the rest
• Different parts of the body have different weights and travel at different rates

Eyes in Animation
We looked at the use of eyes in Lady and the Tramp to express emotions. Eyes can be used to bring a character alive and the blink is the cheapest animation you can have. If you have a character which doesnt move at all and just make it blink every now and then it will seem to be alive.

Eyese are important for story telling because it lets you get into the mind of the character, the eyes are the windows to the soul. Eyes can be used to illustrate thought. Thought -> Eyes -> Physical action. The first physical expression of a thought is shown in the eyes. Often the eyes can betray a character and reveal their true beliefs. Ask yoursekf how the eyes can heklp you in your animation?
Asymetrical eyse can create more interesting characters, in toy story we see very asymetrical blinking in Buzz’z eyes creating an even more bewildered look.

Eyes go with eyebrows and the two can be used to express so much, just look at Gromit for example, he doesn’t talk at all and expresses so much by his eyes and eyebrows.

When a character is thinking they start to look up or somewhere other than the person they are talking to as if disengaging and going in search of the bit of information that they are looking for.

Two frames are often sufficient for blinks. Blinks can be used for when the character is about to change the direction of their gaze or a head turn.

The eye line of the character can be used to anticipate the cut to the POV od the character, getting inside the character’s head. Or it can be an other the shoulder of the character shot.

Here is a little formula:

1. Setup POV
2. Show character’s POV
3. Show reaction of character

Our guest for the Hunters and Gathers lunch was our own John Powers, who showed us a messmerising array of films which can not be so easily understood yet they leave you with a definite feeling.

The rest of the class was taken by Yeap who showed us some funky ways to grow plants inside after effects, very useful now with all the water restrictions.

Finally I went to the Animation Club weakly meeting with my half finished film. I was the only entrant from my year which made me feel a bit of an outsider. The quality of the works was really amazing, I felt a little bit sheepish with my little half finished film but it was good to have a go. I will post some of my development drawings soon.

Digital Imaging
Matt Riley was taking us today and showing us that animation does not necessarily have to conform to narrative, t can be form driven, sound driven, mood driven etc. There are other ways of communicating than using character and plot. The computer has helped open up the media and now there are many different ways to go:

• Installations
• Webwork
• VJing
• Performance
• Machina, 3D virtual worlds
• procedural/generated animation

We looked the work of the illustrator/animator Adrian Rose (http://www.jettisoncargo.com/) , whose initial design athough great as illustrations they did not translate well and were not practical for animation. In the end he went with animating a the silhouettes of some of his characters to a great music track with excellent results.

Here are some other artist’s works that we looked at:

• Michael Buckley, gestural animation
• Patricia Piccinni
• http://www.2minds.de/
• http://www.pleix.net/films.html
• John Powers, time-based collage. Colour, space, shape instead of characters.
• http://www.lycettebros.com/ leading desginers. Visuals must say something else other than the sound, otherwise it’s just illustrated radio.
• Unreal tournament
• Clive Patterson, hand-animated and procedurally multiplied
• Here is another clip:

Nova (audio by Helios) on Vimeo

The following are the sounds heard in the scene which I have chosen for Exercise 2:

Bird sounds all around. Insects buzzing. Wind gently blowing through tall trees.
Creaking of a bicycle chain. The rhythmic breathing of the bicycle rider.
A truck heard in the distance, silence, then truck sound heard again.
Truck sound now closer. Truck changing gears.
Truck engine very loud (almost deafening) now as it passes. Truck horn a friendly “Boop Boop”.
Truck sound becoming more distant.
Truck engine not straining any more and almost disappears.
Rhythmic breathing can be heard again, now heavier than before. Chain creaking. Repeated for a minute.
Relieved breathing. Creaking chain not heard any more.
Sound of tires zipping on asphalt building up. Sound of wind rushing past.
Brakes squealing.
Sound of wind rushing past and tire-zipping sound even louder now.
Suddenly a thud and a buzzing sound from a confined space.
More frantic buzzing. Paniced slaps on a hollow object.
Angry buzzing. Scream: “ARGHHHH! #$@&!!!”
Screeching sound of bicycle tire on asphalt. Metal hitting and scrapping along asphalt.
Gravel being scrapped and scattered.
Heavy, fast moving object crashing through bushes.
Loud bone crushing thud of a body hitting solid wood.
Silence for a moment with only the sound of a bicycle wheel spinning freely.
The sound of the insects and birds returns. Sound of a wasp buzzing away.

Here is a description of the scene:

Jack leans forward on his bike as he starts to climb the hill. The songs of the birds and the hum of the insects is only broken by the rhythmic sound of the pedals turning and his breathing becoming heavier. In the distance a truck can be heard intermittently as it winds around the twists and turns of the hilly road. The sound of the trucks engine becomes a roar as it gets closer to jack. Great puffs of diesel stench engulf Jack as the trucks roar becomes deafening and the driver not realizing the impact of his vehicle gives a friendly “Boop Boop” on the horn of the truck as he passes.

Struggling to breath, Jack slows down to increase the distance between him and the truck. In the distance the truck’s engine stops to strain as it reaches the top of the hill and it’s peaceful again.

It seems to Jack that getting off and walking may be faster and less strenuous but in this condition any change seems to be too hard work so he slugs through for another few minutes before reaching the top of the hill and claiming the downhill as his reward.

As he picks up speed the wind makes his eyes full of tears and blurs his vision. He carefully brakes and turns the chicane before picking up speed again. Suddenly a wasp slams in to his helmet and goes through one of the ventilation holes in Jack’s helmet. Jack can feel something crawling around his hair. Frantically he slaps at his helmet trying to free the wasp but the buzzing becomes angry. Jack screams as he is stung by the wasp and he grabs the brakes in reaction which makes the bike slide from under him causing him to lose control and crashing into a tree on the side of the road.

The Digital Image - Visual Style
Today we were given our first class by Mathew Riley ( http://matthewriley.net/aim/ ). He began by showing us some of the work that he had done and moving on to the works outstanding past RMIT students such as Jonathan Nix ( http://www.studionix.com/ ). We looked at Jonathan’s “Hello” which was done for his major project at RMIT AIM, going through some of his travel sketches, and developmental shots. Here is some advice on Visual Style that Jonathan gave to the student some years back:

RMIT
AIM Centre for Animation and Interactive Media

The Digital Image
Visual Style

Advice by AIM graduate Jonathan Nix regarding Visual Style

In the context of the AIM course, or any project for that matter,
I would recommend a few things.

1. Spend some time developing your characters prior to production.
( If you are going to have any)
Get a book or piece of paper and draw them in 10 or more different
emotional states. Exagarate them.
Through this process you will refine your designs and come to understand
your characters better.

2. Think about the integration of character and background.
A great example of really clever design is the Studio Ghibli film
My Neighbours the Yamadas. Essential elements only are included,
and yet there is a lovely use of 3D as well.
If the idea / story is good, you can do it B+W with stick figures.

3. Tailor the design to the timeline and support you have available.
You can’t make ‘Spirited Away’ on you own in three months.
Keep it simple and focus on quality of narrative and animation.
Don’t let the computer drive you, drive it.

4. Think beyond the side on mid-shot.
If your animating it, the camera could be up a nostril or
inside a pancreas.

5. Mock up a few images that show the final look you are after.
Take note of the process involved in creating this image.
Ask around to see if there is a more efficient way to achieve it.
If you ask John Power, write down your question first so
you can remember what it was.

6. Be careful drinking those modern energy drinks like ‘V’.

7. Matt may seem kind and cuddly, but he has disguised his
acidic tongue and derision for fools very well.

In regards to using 3D environments with 2D characters we looked at Andy Buchanan (RMIT AIM 2005) “Looking for Joe” and we were adviced by Matt to figure out how much time we have and to find what you can fit in that amount of time; do still images of how you want the film to look, how long did it take to do? From this estimate how long the whole piece will take to do.

Using digital collages is another approach which was shown in the piece “Skyfall”, based around the theme of cyclic nature of things. This was a collaborative work containing no character animation, using flat art work and transitions to communicate with the audience. Another example of digital collage was Shy Limanon’s (RMIT AIM 2004) work which is anti-realist with no perspective or spatial depth and all visual are flat and compressed. This piece was done in flash.

Other works we looked at were:

• Matt Owens ( http://volumeone.com/ ) interactive narratives, turning art work into linear narratives.
• Future Farmers ( http://futurefarmers.com/ ) Manga influences, with soft gentle colour palettes with garden metaphors and ideas around nature since the founders were originally farmers.

In the afternoon we werew introduced to Yeap a past student from 2005 who started off making videos and directing music videos and now working as an animator in Flash. Yeap will be teaching us Photoshop and Aftereffects in the coming weeks. His advice to us was to realize that the whole process is based on problem solving. It is important that you plan out what you are going to do before you start and then work on solving each problem as it arises. Understand your limitations and plan your scenes accordingly.

Animation

In character design it is good to emphasise the face because you can show so much emotions through the face. Animation is concerned with creating an illusion, synthesizing movement in space. To do this it often helps to break things into smaller pieces, for example we put the background on one level, the figures body on one level and the head on another level.

The Disney style of animation is so labour intensive that it becomes unproductiove for begining independent animators to emulate. It is better to work in a smarter way by breaking characters into smaller parts which can be animated independently without having to redraw the whole drawing again.

The analogue way of doing animation has 80 years of history behind it, the digital world of animation is only a few years old, at this point it is often good to work in between the two. Creating images in the analogue world and then using the digital realm for helping to animate them. We looked at various examples of past students work showing how they used 2 1/2D techniques in their films.

Justin Foo, a past graduate working in the industry now, visted us for the hunters and gathers lunch and talked to us about his experiences working in the industry and his year at RMIT working on his film Unmarked.

Editing
The Preproduction, Production and Postproduction stages of a project were discussed and where editing fit int the whole process.
Flow diagrams of the the way hand-drawn linear animation, flash animation and stop-motion animation progressed were drawn.

Non-linear editing, refers to editing which is done on a computer where we can jump to any point of the film at any time. This is in contrast to linear editing done on film where to get to a point on a film you need to wind the film to that point. Linear editing forced the editor to THINK before he did anything. But with the introduction of the computer you can now do before you think (with mixed results). It has become so easy to cut here and cut there that many beginning editor don’t think about what they are doing and end up with 50 different cuts and then can’t chose between them, the tyranny of choice. A better way is to think about your cut before you start clicking away. In editing the stuff that you leave out is just as important as what you leave in.

Our screenings will be on Betcam SP and our frame rate will 25fps. The dimensions of the image depend on the pixel aspect ratios. The computer has square pixelsand video has rectangular pixels. When doing stuff on the computer work at 768 x 576 PAL. DV Pal is at 720 x 576, this is the dimension as it is written to the Betcam SP. If working in flash then use 768 x 576 Square Pixels 25fps. SMPT time code was explained.

We were then given a crash course in Final Cut Pro.

In animation the relationship between the animator and the character is one of master/slave, where the character can be made to do anything by the animator and this god like power is what attracts many megalomaniacs to the field. When the animator know his/her character well the charcter starts to have a life of it’s own and the animator knows how the character would act in different situations.

Since the appearance of a character can be readily changed in animation, the character designer is able to push features in a direction which suits the personality of the character.

Here is a list of things that the class came up with in regards to what makes a character:

• Physical characteristics/clothing
• Anthropomorphic
• Idiosyncrasies
• Contrasts
• A past which influences the way the character behaves now
• The way they sound
• The way they move (e.g speed)
• Relationship with others
• Flaws
• Wants/Motivations
• Abilities/Disabilities
• Environment and how they react to it
• Their mood
• Personality
• Reactions
• Change, character arc

It is important to remember what a character sounds like, it is easy to get caught up with the visuals of a character but the sound will make up a large part of this character. The character does not necessarily have to be humanoid, for example a chair is in Norman McClaren for at NFBC. For the character to be believable it must act consistently within the story, the character can change (an the audience enjoy seeing the character change in some way) but this is a gradual change (character arc) and is different to the character acting one way one minute and acting in an inconsistent way the next moment. In this case the audience will find it hard accept the character, is he one or the other?
The audience’s imagination is powerful tool, use it to save on animating things, you dont have to spoon feed everything to them, leave something to spark their imagination and it will be more powerful than any animation. Interesting results can be achieved by putting known characters in new environments.

We looked at the short film Cloud Cover which elegantly deals with the issue of depression. In this case depression is represented as a cloud which is a character of it’s own in the film.

External Manifestation of an Interior State (EMIS)

• What do we know about the character?
• How do we know it?
• What do they want?

As an example we looked at the short film Hitch where in the first part of the film we are misled by the clues that we are given about the types of characters we are seeing. This surprises the audience and puts a smile on their face. It’s good to play with the audience’s expectations to break them out of the patterns which they have seen over and over again. Balance your characters so that they are a match for each other, stories are about conflicts and no one likes to watch a one sided conflict.

Here are the notes for character: http://aim.adc.rmit.edu.au/kcawley/Scr_chrctr.html

Going all the way back to 1914 we looked at the amazing work of Winsor McKay, it is unbelievable what he managed to do so long ago. Gertie looks very solid and it boggles the mind how McKay wouldd have animated these sequence without any cells, redrawing every frame!

A major asset of animation is Abstraction, the amplification of ideas through its simplification. What we want to say if filtered through the medium of animation before reaching the audience and the design approach used in the animation process is able to embue character.

Here are some examples of different designs in animation:
Rotoscope - direct reference to live action
Superman - still very figurative
Anime - figurative
Ren & Stimpy - very stylized to the point that it is hard to know what the animals are. This style gives so much room for wild and exaggerated animation.

Character Design can tell the audience alot about the character even before they start to move. The character design will determine what the character is ggoing to do and what their history is, you can feel this history in the look of the character.
There are endless possibilities in character design and stereotypes can be used to some extent to quickly get one with the story since short films do not have the luxury of taking time to establish the personality of a character.

In American animation the inididual is idolized, the cult of the individual. While in European animation we see the character being used more as symbols rather than individuals.

Two examples of character design looked at were: Jaffar from Disney’s Aladin and The Penguin from the Aardman’s The Wrong Trousers.

Jaffar has a very angular face which quickly stablishes his sinister intentions even before he lays his sleazy hands on Jasmine. In contrast The Penguin in The Wrong Trousers doesnt have an y expressive features at all but this down playing of the cliche bad-guy characteristics gives the audience room to fill in what they think the penguin will get up (with some help from sound and under lighting off course!).

It is important to know a character before starting to animate. Take a character that you know and ue this as a basis to start to emblish until you have a design for a character.

Model sheets are important so that things stay consistent. They help you to know your character and how that character works in terms of the actions in the film. Model sheets also have to make sure that the character is able to do the business that is required of it in the action.

It is good to boil down the character to an easily identifiable shape, one which is different from the shape of the other characters in the film, this will help the audience to understand which character is doing what.

There is a dance between Abstraction and Realism and films like the Incredibles try to push things as much as they can.

Mannerism and Habbits can say alot about how a character feels. Try to come up with interesting mannerisms for your character which will enhance communication with the audience.

After the “hunters and gathers” lunch with Al McInnes we looked at some short films where the sound played an important part. After the screeing we were divided into two groups, one group was taught by Jeremey about digital sampling of sound, technical terms such as frequency, amplitude and sampling rate. 44kHz and 16bit is probably the magic figures which we need to stick with for films, this is CD quality.

The importance of recording audio at a ‘good’ level was stressed as clipping and distortion could mean that the sound will not be suitable even if it was a goodd take from the actor. Everything is recorded at the same level and then things are adjusted in the mix. The AIFF and WAV are what we need to use because they are non-lossy formats, as opposed to MP3 which will lose its quality.

The groups then swapped, with Al teaching us about using the sound booth and the software Soundtrack. Various effects were created and we were taught how to clips things, loop them and get them in a ready state for looping. It is important to have the start and the end of a sound which is to be looped at level 0, thhis can be done adding a short fade/in at the start and a short fade/out at the end.

Since a lot of things can be done on the computer when recording things all we need to do is to make sure that the gain for that channel is such that we have a ‘good’ level (not to low and no clipping). Leaving the fader for the channel and the master fader on 0 is a good starting point, the gain of the channel can then be adjusted during a level test before a recording is made.

Out came the computer and the scanner for a demonstration of how we go about scanning art work and what creates a good drawing for the digital inking process.

Tips:

• 72 dpi is the average required for video work
• The smaller the area to be scanned the higher the dpi required to fill the frame
• Nice dark lines with lots of contrast between the background and the line work will minimize the amount of fiddling around which needs to be done before ink and paint.
• An audience will respond more to a film which looks like it has been hand-made by one person (the personal touch) than a film which looks like it came out of a factory of people.
• A fill colour does not neccessarily have stay within it’s outlines.

Tuesday’s are storytelling days and today we were discussing the integral part that sound plays in any production.

We looked at the interactive quiz game “You know Jack” with 2 students volunteers going up against each other in this fast paced, amusing game. With very limited animation the piece relies heavily on audio to succeed.

Sound is a very important part of any audio/visual production and it should be thought of as such. Here is a list of how sound may be used in a audio/visual piece:

• Foley - SFX created
• Dialogue
• Atmosphere
• Music
• Narration
• Effects - fade in/fade out/warp
• Theme tunes - character identification
• Incidental music - to highlight certain events

As an example we looked at the student film “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with the sound off. We tried to guess what sounds would be used in the piece and guess what was actually happening in the film.

A production can be enriched by using off screen sounds and saving on animation.

Having looked at how sounds were used, Robyn then went on with the question of Why sounds are use in a production:

• Anticipation of an action.
• Enhance actions
• Putting the audience in the right emotional state.
• Increase richness and size of environment e.g atmosphere of a city.
• Reinforcement of an action
• change/reinforce POV
• Give information
• Off camera action
• Suggest a different culture.
• Change of mood
• Contradition of image e.g “Apocalypse Now” Ride of the Valkyries
• Creating contrast
• Rhythm of music being the driving force of the piece.

Course notes and assignments can be found here: http://aim.adc.rmit.edu.au/kcawley/scr_index07.html