MACA – A documentation
Easily my favourite workshop of the term. All these years of art has given me the ability to sort of eyeball perspective and get things done. In this process, I’d given up on sitting down and actually learning the basics properly. When I found out we would have a workshop on perspective, I knew I had to be there.
There’s not much I can write about the workshop but I did make plenty of attempts during the session that speak more than any words will:
This was our second time working with Bianca and our first time this term. I’ve always been grateful for the input we get during her classes as they’ve constantly been the most engaging sessions for me. This time we got into the storyboarding element of narratives. After briefing us on the importance of different kinds of shots and sequences, we were given a small script to storyboard at the end of the day.
The script:
The final results:
During the storytelling workshop, we learned the structures (Hollywood and European) of storytelling in depth. We covered the needs of storytelling and the need for storytelling too. I’ve had some prior experience with storytelling, and scriptwriting during my undergrad but one of the biggest things I learned during this session was about the European structure and the high point of the story being the penultimate scene right before a drop in tone. A lot of stories I’d grown up with started making sense to me immediately.
We delved a little bit into establishing conflicts in a story to make it interesting and how conflicts and resolutions are the foundation of every story. These are some of the notes I’d taken down during the session:
During this workshop we got a look into the world of colour and pre-production in animation. Pre-production has always been my favourite part of the process and my strongest points. Since the course began in September, I’ve been focusing on animation to rekindle my love for it, but this workshop was a reminder as to why I put a lot of my time to specialise in this. And even so, I picked up so many new things during this session.
We covered the do’s and don’ts of composition (of which the don’ts are few and far apart) and got some tips on colour and contrast and on how to make things more visually pleasing. We learned about the tricks of using warm and cool toned colours to create depth and using colour to add layers to our storytelling process.
These are some of my notes from the workshop:
During the clean up workshop we were given a briefing on the clean up process and the industry requirements for it. Clean up has always been the most intimidating part of animation for me and listened to Alumnis of this course go into their process and reassure us that everyone feels similarly about clean up and have people to guide them through this until they get a hang of it eased my mind a little. We got to look at some of their works and discuss the process of it. We also discussed in-betweening key frames and did a little brush tutorial on TVPaint.
Lipsyncing with a theme. For this, we as a class had to decide on a theme that we’d like to work with and collectively we came upon the idea of animating Vines (seven-second videos from the site Vine that was big in pop culture about a decade ago). The audio I picked was the “Lipstick In My Valentino White Bag” vine.
This time I wanted to exaggerate a little more on the character designs and move a little outside my comfort zone.
The designs:
The first draft:
The final animation:
Reflections: By the time I arrived at this assignment (the last one of the term) I could feel the start of burnout from my uneven pacing. Though there were animation-based revelations I had, one of the biggest things I learned from this exercise was to pace myself and take breaks. I tried to work smarter instead of harder and tried to achieve the same end results considering as this was only a rough animation. My favourite part of this exercise was trying to step out of my comfort zone a little with the style and adding in the smaller details like the drink swirling in the cup or the slight jump of the Valentino bag when the character bangs her hands on the table. I realized that the finer details in storytelling bring me a lot of joy.
Objective: Lipsyncing with a partner in the language of their choice.
For this assignment, I worked with Renad Al-Alola and in the audio, I recorded her, she said “Hello. My name is Renad. I am from Saudi. I love Qahwa(coffee) and Henini” in Arabic. I designed a character to look pretty similar to Renad herself and went ahead from there.
The character design and initial mockup:
The mouth movement:
The first final version:
Corrections after feedback: I was asked to move the audio a fraction of a second ahead so that it felt more natural. And to not overlap the action and dialogue too much so that it looks unnatural and staged.
The final version:
Reflection: This was the first exercise where I got to animate with a character that I designed, and I had an incredible time with that. I tried to slow myself down and not overdo anything in the animation since it was such a small clip. I wanted it to be impactful and subtle and I tried my best to get that out. During the feedback, I also figured out ways to correct myself quickly and efficiently after a moment of panic. This was one of my favourite assignments.
Second exercise of term 2. We were given a pre-made character for this so we could focus on the expressions instead of the design. We were once again asked to explore a character interacting with a few listed things and I chose to make my character interact with visual media on a screen while they were knitting.
Acting reference:
Final result:
Feedback and corrections made: I was asked to make the character blink at certain intervals for it to look more natural. And to exaggerate the poses.
Reflection: Exploring expressions finally was a very distinguishable step up from all our previous exercises. It started to feel more human in a way. I’ve always loved the art of storytelling through expressions. I believe a person’s face can tell as many stories as their words can.
First exercise of the term. We were given a brief before the holidays to pick a character from one of our classmates’ character design work and build a sequence of interactions in animation using the character. I chose to work with Anne – a noble and a knight designed by Isobel Wilson interacting with an insect. I wanted to portray her as someone who was incredibly well acquainted with a sword. The character design by Izzy and the storyboard are as seen below.
The character design by Isobel Wilson:
First mock up:
The final result:
Reflections: Most of the issues raised were technical because I’d saved my file improperly and lost a lot of data in the process. In the remaking stages, my key frames turned out a little uneven and hindered the final bit of the animation (where Anne lifts her sword and seems bigger in size for a fraction.)
If I could change anything about the way I worked on this, I would be more careful about how I save my TVPaint files to avoid losing data. Biggest lesson learned.
On the 21st we finally started working with 4 legged animals and the walk/run cycles with them. We had three different dogs in for live drawing sessions and spent the first week observing rather than animating. I tried to give animation a go regardless, and it was a very rough draft of what I would be working on the next week.
On week 9 of 3D class, we animated another voiceover.
And on the last acting workshop of the term, we learned about reactions, walks and character quirks.
During the final official week of the term, we finally animated the four legged walk cycle. This was the end result:
And during the final 3D class of the term, we animated Binky and Bonky interacting. I played with the cameras on Maya and it may have gotten a little out of hand because of my excitement, but putting together the blogs made me realise how far I’ve come in regards to 3D animation.