For this week, I have updated my animation and rendering progress on the shotlist below, indicating my work for this week will be focused on shot 8. Due to the technical aspects of the rig connecting and disconnecting within this shot, I have allowed myself the week to experiment and gauge the best method for achieving the finalised look.
Shot 8
Due to my primary dance influence deriving from ballet, I initially started out researching and watching videos of ballet dancers on youtube to watch how they point and transition between different poses. Due to my more ‘staccato’ animation stylisation, I aimed to take key poses from these videos and translate them in a way that does not require excessive keyframes to make kinetic sense.
This was particularly challenging when facing jumps, as the timing and poses had to be very specific to appear convincing on landings while maintaining the poise and elegance of ballet dancers. However, in order to get a better conveyance of weight within the jumps, I animated more frames specifically leading into and out of jumps working as a ‘slow in’ and ‘slow out’ function with the limited animation.
The most challenging part of the shot proved to be the last section, where skeleton b’s body falls to pieces into the hole. Due to the way I rigged the character, I could only detach certain limbs such as the arms/ forearms and hands, as the IK placement make it very difficult for me to make the legs detachable. Due to this, I eventually decided that it would be much more effective to place an unrigged model into the scene, and swap them at the frame the skeleton starts to disassemble. in order to get this to look convincing, I had to ensure that the model was in the exact same position as the rig.
The next challenge was making the different bones of the skeleton fall convincingly. In my initial attempts, the timing seemed very off, as I was animating on 2’s and the sense of gravity seemed inconsistent with that of the rest of the scene. Improving upon this, I began to animate the different sections on 1’s, as this created a fluency and sense of weight that did not draw attention to itself.
In order to get a rough idea of how these bones will fall, I took a handful of pens and pencils and filmed me dropping them in slow motion, to get an idea of how they fall. The main thing I noticed was how they rotate sightly but all in the same direction. With the longer limbs such as the arms and the legs, the motion will be very similar and it made the application of this to my animation a lot clearer.
During the fall, however, I wanted to make sure that the head was one of the last things to fall out of frame, to stay focused on the character and his expression.
Film Reel Editing
To add further authentication to the time contextual setting, I wanted to create an introductory film reel roll, to give artistic reference to old film projectors. In order to make this as convincing as possible, I went online and found the sound of a film projector warming up, and laid this with edited effects in da vinic resolve to create a film reel look. Once edited into black and white, with noise grain added, I feel this may look convincing and sets the tone immediately for the film’s aesthetic reference.
Next week’s goals:
Going forward with this technique I will utilise and reference what I have learned from this week’s animation and create a faster and more effective piece in the following week.
. In the next week, I wish to finish shot 9, therefore completing the animation of the film.
. I need to set up and finish at least half of the film renders