Summer 'break' is up!

I've been fairly busy the last few months and haven't taken the time to write on my blog. Now's a good time though.
All my work on the various bachelor projects is done and third year on The Animation Workshop has come to an end. Instead of a quiet summer holiday in the sun I am going to spend my time working on a very exciting short film project!
You can check out some shots from the miniature sets here : www.blog.machinefilm.com
Two months of high quality CG animation should do me some good, I think. A few days after I finish on the production of Machine, the short film, I am going to Kilkenny, Ireland, to do my internship at Cartoon Saloon. I am very excited about both the opportunities I have been given during the rest of this year and I am sure I will have some interesting stories to tell on this blog from my experiences.
Also check out www.cartoonsaloon.ie

Stay tuned for more posts!

Stop Motion Planning, workflow and experience

Beside the fact that I'm not thumbnailing or sketching for a scene, stop motion has a very familiar work flow. I get the scene handed from the director, I look at the animatic, look at the notes the director has given me, I write my own notes and questions, I have a talk with the director and hopefully I get my questions answered and NOW I'm ready to stand on my own for a while and create the foundation for a strong scene.
I take a deep breath, I clear my mind, without forgetting everything the director told me! I imagine the scene as I see it finished. I run it in my mind over and over and take note of all things happening that I like. Big storytelling beats as well as small gestures that I like for the characters. Usually the animatic, and thereby the director, will have a fairly set timing on all scenes. On 'Forest' this is very much the case and the creative freedom does not lie in overall timing and story beats. It lies in all the character animation between and around the beats. The poses might already have been settled on as well so this isn't where I can experiment either. I find that especially the transitions and the timing of these as well as secondary actions are the areas in which I can make the scene into something more than what is to be seen from the 'blueprint' of it.
When I have a strong idea of how I would like the scene to be, I arrange for another exchange of words with the director. In this meeting it is very important to me that nothing is left unaswered. If some of my ideas for the acting or speed of the actions don't fit the directors plan, we need to come up with something he likes together, which usually works for us, or I have to rething parts of the scene. I already once tried starting animating a scene, while still having unanswered questions in my mind and it really doesn't work for me. It distracts me in the sense that the scene feels open to input and new ideas and this makes my mind wander off. When I animate, I want to focus on getting my planned motions down best as possible.
So I get all my questions sorted with the director, before I start animating. If I am still a bit unclear about what the director wants with a scene after our first couple of talks about it, I blog it out roughly and we take it from there.
The timing of transitions and of the scene in general is what is most unique about stop motion, I think. In Maya I can slide my keys around as I please and in hand-drawn scenes I can change the frame number and add, replace or take out frames in the process. In stop motion I don't have this possibility. This forces me to fully understand the velocity and motions involved in the scene, before even starting to animate the puppets. Thumbnails, small sketches or notes are all ways to remind me of my thoughts about the scene. I've done a few scenes now and I tend to mostly do notes as planning with the occasional sketch or two. (see planning sheet above for as an example)
Every frame is unique and importan in the sense that I wont have the opportunity to go back and adjust it. This demands all animation senses to be on high alert for every frame, which is what I am learning the most from these days. It is also exhausting and at times it is very tempting to capture a frame even though it isn't spot on and I only kind of know how my arc for the right ear is going to be like! This is where professionalism, stubborness and self-discipline plays in and I find that it can be a real challenge to work on a scene for two to four hours without loosing concentration. Luckily our time schedule allows breaks when we need them. They are very needed to get a high quality result, I think. And this is what we want!

Stop motion animation stands to as an amazing challenge that will leave its marks on the way I animate. It's hands on and trial and error with immediate failure or success! And during it all you find some great friends in the puppets.

Banquet Scene

Here's a linetest of the latest scene I've done for the fabulous film 'Forest'! It's so great to finally get to animate the main character of the film and implement all the small traits Tobias's given him.

I'd like to write a bit about the approach I take on a scene like this. So in the post above you can read about my work flow and planning in a stop motion scene. Now I haven't been doing this for a very long time, but I am finding it very insightful to try and would like to share the thoughts I have on it. So if you dare, check out my next post! And if you already read it while reading this, because you don't check my blog often enough, well go read it again and leave a question, comment or a hearty hello!

Straight-Ahead Break

I took a 30mins break from the scene I am currently doing for the bachelor film 'The Lumberjack' and did this small facial piece.
I am going to put a big fat 'WHAT!' in it.
I have a lot of small things, especially facial animation, that I would like to test and this seems like a really fun way to do it. Not too much planning, just going on my gut feel. Here is the clip.

Wolf Animation

This scene is the second one I've done with the big wolf for the bachelor film 'Forest'. In this scene we cut to the wolf in mid air jumping over a fence. As it lands it starts a low sneak towards screen left. I have animated the actions only on the 'y' axis and in composite the animation will be dragged along the 'x' axis. We chose to do it this way to save space in the greenscreen room.

Enjoy

Animation tests on Forest

Finally I got the go to start touching the puppets for the Bachelor project 'Forest'. I have spend the last two days trying out stop motion animation for the first time and I am loving it!
Already now I can feel that a lot of practical knowledge about animation can be gained through this very hands-on method of animating. There aren't room for shaky hands or clumpsy feet or friends and ctrl-z is non-existing!
Here are two small test scenes I did with the main character of the story, enjoy! I know I did!

One week of 1st pass animation

This is how the scene looks at the moment. There are still a few things I want to get more into, but in general it communicates the mood and feeling I set out to depict.
It has been very interesting to try out this new approach and I think that I have taken a really big step in the right direction.
I will ellaborate more on the work methods I used and the thoughts and choices made.
Please feel free to leave a comment with ideas, critique, praise or questions. Hope you enjoy it.

Sketching / thumbnailing

I've spend around a day sketching the characters now, getting into drawing them, coming up with the actions of the scene, the diferent beats and trying to build up poses that would give me the opportunity to reach my goals for the assignment.
As I wrote in the previous post, Mike Nguyen and Alex Williams are both at the school at the moment and I have meetings with them both tomorow about my thumbnails and plan for the scene. Should be very interesting to hear what they have to say to my doodles.
The sketching phase isnt over yet at all, but I thought I share with you the first raw drawings I've done that fits the acting and action I want to animate.
Please feel free to comment with suggestions, questions, critique or praise as always.

New scene: Old Couple

The hairdresser scene has been put away for now, the scene for Tod Polson has been finished and send with him to Thailand and I am not ready to take on a new assignment finally!

For a long time I have wanted to animate the two characters I am going to spend my next weeks alongside. I have both Alex Williams, who is now our Animation Supervisor, and Mike Nguyen, who is teaching the first years, to overlook the early stages of my scene. Can't be much better than that really.

I spend about two and half hours talking to Mike the other day and he had a lot of great things to share. I will write a post about my conversation with him soon.

The focus of this assignment for me is to create a more believable and emotional performance as well as have the characters interact in such a way that the viewer clearly feels that these characters are filled with life. I will try a more straight-ahead'ish method to reach this goal. Mike is stopping by my workspace tomorow to talk about thumbnails to animation. Cant wait to hear him out on this.

For now, thumbnailing and imagining funny situations is the focus. Here is a drawing of the characters who will star in the scene

Escape of the Gingerbread Man

I just had the great honor of animating a small scene for our pre-production supervisor, Tod Polsons. It is for his upcoming short film 'Escape of the Gingerbreadman'.

The animation is done and I will post it when Tod feels that the time is right to start showing clips from the film.

The scene is still to undergo a few changes color-wise and a few things will happen in composite as well. I wanted to show the same still-frame from the scene in and without color. I am still amazed how powerful an effect the colors are to animated characters. The shape, form and volume are so clearly defined all of a sudden. Of course it is there in the line work as well, but when it gets mass it really changes.

Here's a link to 'Escape of the Gingerbreadman' : http://www.rungingerrun.blogspot.com/

Thanks Tod for letting me help out.

Hairdresser scene at its end

This is where I will leave this scene. I'll try and get it critiqued from some of the teachers I've had during the past years and hopefully get some good feedback.
The scene served its purpose very well and I feel a level of animation that is to my satisfaction..for now!
Next up is some illustration work for a classmates bachelor film. I will also be doing a scene for Tod Polsons short film *Escape of the gingerbread man* sometime soon. So some exciting assignments ahead.
Please feel free to leave a comment with critique or praise here on the blog. Until next post...

A Walk a day: Longlegged Man

So, second walk complete. I didnt want to copy/paste anymore so he only makes it half-way to the other side.
The character walk and design comes from a sketch I did this weekend. (See sketch-page in post further down the blog)

A Walk a day: Hatman

My hairdresser dialogue scene is almost done. It's been an entensive assignment and I felt that I this week needed something to diverte my attention. The Hairdresser scene will work as a step between the technical aspects of animation and a more performance minded way for me to approach a scene. Therefor I want to do a walk every day this week. This will leave me with nearly no time to plan or get caught up in too technical matters. It's straight-ahead and about extracting a character in a simple and clear manner. I did this one yeasterday and I have almost finished the one for today. It's work very well for me at the moment to have something more loose to take on when I need a break from the heavy dialogue scene. Hope you enjoy the walk.

Train-trip Sketching

I was trapped in a train for two times three and a half hour this weekend. I decided to let some of the impressions made on the way get to me. All these sketches represent the people I met and observed. Yes indeed, it was a peculiar journey!

Headshake Overview

I did this overview of the headshake from the scene. Match it up with the planning sheet I posted if you are interested in the process of going from timechart to actual drawing. I am quite pleased with the flow of the mouth shapes in this part of the scene so that was just another reason to post this overview. Enjoy.

Here is the scene as it looks right now. Most of what is needed from now on is filling in drawings without killing the pace of it all. It'll hopefully be done at the end of tomorrow.

Adding the lip-sync

Adding the lip-sync from Frederik Villumsen on Vimeo.

It is time to start getting the mouthshapes on the keydrawings witht the accents. It is far from easy and it will take a few passes for me to get it right I think. I wanted to do a small part of it almost fully to get myself on the right track before starting to 'ruin' all my keys with unusable mouths. So I started from the beginning. Lot os things to keep in mind with this! Mood, wide-to-narrow, open closed! I think the art in this is to be able to make it believable with the least effort possbile, while supporting the mood and thoughts of the character. Here is what I have for now for the first bit.

Headshake Planning

From fr91 to fr111 I want a headshake. *I just like to think she, she...* is the dialogue for this bit and I think that a headshake would support his subtext very well. (see post about subtext further down on the page)
I will animate it from profile to 3/4 and it will be on 4s. A headshake on 4s means that he will shake his head 3 times in 1second, 25fr. I find it helpful to think this way when planning a headshake.
As you can see from the time charts I did, I am going to ease out from every key. Next week I will do a test to see the diference in doing the same headshake, but with ease ins instead. For this assignment I find that this is the best choice since it will help the lip-sync better along.
Check out the key drawings and timing of this in the video a few posts below to see how it works.

Eye Pass

The eyes will be an important part of the scene so I wanted to give them the time a day they deserve. After I got my acting beats down, while acting it out myself, I started to think about the flow of the eyes. Where should there be blinks? Where should they be open and closed? All this planning is saving me the pain of erasing faces, eyes and nicely drawn but wrong mouthshapes from my keys. It is pretty simple and doesn't take a lot of time or effort to do. I am very pleased with the results I am getting with this aproach and can only recommend you try it.

Acting Pass

This is my pass on the acting and action. I wrote down the dialogue first and then started to act out the scene with the soundclip rolling in the background. I was looking at my very first pass on this, the brainstorm sheet, to make sure I follow up on the original ideas I had. I am trying to keep this planning simple and precise and note only the really important things. Fx are the eyes an important part of this scene, but I felt it would take a lot of extra energy to think about that at the same time. I will go through the eyes in the post above.

On the sheet shown here, I have all I need to key out the scene with help from my thumbnails. Fx I can see that my acting had me put down the vase as he says 'you'. I then look at my x-sheet and simply number it so the keydrawing is ready to be part of the string of drawings. I find that this way of doing it gives me the peace I need to get all the things in the scene I want, and that on the right time as well. In previous scenes I have done, I've always found myself changing a lot of the timing around throughout the process and it is far from optimal. Breaking things up in passes feels right for me and it seems to work as well. I can only recommend that you aproach your scenes as simple as you need it as you can. It can remove a lot of stress.

First pass on the animation

So, I've got all these key drawings that reflect the flow of the motion I want, but I am yet to see if my timing is worth anything. All my key drawings have been numbered with the frame number according to how I acted it out as well as matched to the dialogue. I haven't done any video reference of myself this time, so everything is on gut-feel. Though video reference can be really awesome I am not too comfortable using it. I can act out my scenes, but a lot comes from my imagination and I feel I put a lid on myself when having a video clip with myself doing the scene. One of the main points of this assignment was to get better at the planning stages. Thumbnailing, acting out the scene, listening to the track a gazilion times, all the things that supposebly give you the peace of mind to focus on the actual animation of the scene, when you hit that stage. And I've got to say it's been worth it. I've been through the process a lot of times the past two years, but it has never come together for me like it has in this assignment. In the posts above, I will go through my process in detail, both for you, the reader, and for myself. But check out the timing of the scene.

Keys

These are most of the keys I've done so far. I like to put them up like this if I feel like I am loosing the overview. In this case I felt that the volume of the hairdresser was falling a bit off and I that's really not something I want to get myself into at this stage,..or any other stage for that matter! It is really crucial for me that my first keys are consistent and strongly constructed so that I can start to relax more and get a good flow with drawings I feel confident about.
I want to key out more drawings than I usually do for this scene so that I can keep my poses alive and work in them instead of coming back to almost identical drawings, which I easily do if I don't plan well, I find. So for this scene I've planne well and I am doing a good deal of keydrawings around my golden poses..this cannot go wrong!

Pose Arc

Pose arcs are something I like to do for myself. It gives me a small break to reflect over the poses I am to begin working with. It doesn't require any creative thinking, so instead, I can begin letting my imagination take off and note some ideas while I am making this sheet.

Beat 4

Beat 4 is where we get to see the real hairdresser. He is sad and vulnerable and especially his eyes should show this. He stops his hairdressing business, which will support the sadness in him. For the first time in the scene his subtext matchess his actual dialogue.
The last bit here will call for subtlety and I am looking forward to see if I can pull it off. I want the audience to really feel for the guy in this last part and I think it will be a big challenge.

Beat 3

Third beat should maintain his stiffness and that he is thinking about something not so pleasent. The diference between beat2 and beat3 is that in this beat, he isn't 'offended' anymore. He knows how the situation was and he finds comfort in the fact that he knows better. Actionwise he gets back to business and starts to coam the hair of the customer.
For this beat I have planned a headshake for him to shake the stiffness off. I will post the specifics on this later on. Also the coaming has been planned fairly accurate and I'll post about that as well.