Here we go with unit 02 - the Phone Booth Animation! Unit 01 was an in depth look into all relevant areas to set the scene for the module and build initial understanding which was really good, however, looking at this module I definitely think I planned too much for the animation sequence at the end of the last one! This unit takes a deep dive into body language with posing focusing on the phone booth conversation that was explored in the first unit too. The difference here is that I am focusing on the full production pipeline and development of these poses into an animation rather than the static poses.
In the previous unit I’d received feedback on my staging and in particular the characters eyes from A. Williams (2024, pers. comm., 3rd June). I reflected on this in the previous unit, however, the highlights were that breaking the fourth wall tends to look very odd (Williams, 2018) and unnatural and it is better to have the character look at something that is slightly off to the side. This can be done using reference objects that are positioned off camera and locking the eye controller to these (Williams, 2024). This also means the consideration of camera placement is extremely important as in my previous animation the character was acting towards the camera rather than something slightly offscreen. I’d spent a lot of time on the first unit already so I felt it would be better to implement this feedback on the next unit.
Project Management
I was now able to do a little more forward planning to help visualise my workload because more of the module was available on the Canvas virtual learning environment. Below shows my Trello board that plans out the tasks I am working on and tasks I still have left to do. I have left the Unit 01 blog task for this week in the interest of favoring practical work whilst at home and blog work when I am commuting, however, at this point in time the blog wasn’t complete. I also left the short animation task open as this might be something I return to as it lacked a lot of polish, however, in the mean time it was more important to move on and improve my skills through the upcoming animation tasks.
This tasks was focusing on the production of a short animation sequence rather than multiple exercises so the pipeline was fairly standard. I’d already watched the lecturers, made notes and reviewed the units tasks so this made it a lot easier to plan time and track progress. I potentially might split out the blog tasks again depending on the progress I am making to help visualise progress further by completing tasks and splitting larger tasks into smaller multiple tasks. This is due to my prioritisation of tasks due to my time available. Time is still incredibly challenging due to being unable to drive, needing to work around public transport, do physio exercises, attend physio appointments, my job and social life (albeit limited). Therefore trying to maximise my time whilst commuting to work on my blog and prioritising practical work at home is one way of clawing some time back.
Body Language and Mime/Pantomime Driven Animation Reflection
When thinking of animation that is driven almost solely by acting and lacks dialogue to convey emotion the first animation that comes to mind is Pixar's Day and Night animated short - featured below (Pixar
Day & Night Short Film 2010, 2022). In this sequence we have two competing characters trying to show whether day time or night time is better through a series of actions. The whole animation is a constant change in emotions as the characters learn to work together. I really like how it starts as a competition but evolves to them both appreciating each others world. The range of activities they explore show a change in emotion throughout with lots of action and reaction between the two characters.
The whole animation is a really strong showcase of pose to pose animation to reflect what the characters are feeling. This is something I really need to explore - particularly perfecting the moving hold. For example in the beginning the character moves from an exaggerated sleeping position to a yawn that holds for a few seconds with some slight animation to show stretching. This is a beautiful asymmetrical pose with the characters arms offset but body stretched out. Posing is extremely clear throughout and is staged in a way that presents these poses clearly with strong silhouettes. Another strong example of posing and emotion is the difference in the character walk cycles at 1:45 where one character bounces along happily and the other stomps forward in a clearly angry pose. All conveyed through the body language.
The animation does make strong use of facial expressions to support the posing and body language to convey the emotions the characters portray. These are equally exaggerated and readable in their posing as the body is. This is seen clearly at 3:30 where one character is happy and proud to show the other character something who is looking with curiosity. The eyes are wide and the mouth is open showing positive vibes. A similarly positive expression is shown by the day character at 3:52 followed by a more heroic pose and facial expression at 3:54. The facial expressions and posing work exceptionally well to clearly communicate the character's emotions and feeling and the pose to pose nature of the animation shows a snappy and easily readable animation.
In the below scene from Hercules (Hercules (1997) - Hercules Saves Megara [UHD], 2022) we can see how actions and the lack of dialogue lead to an emotionally impactful scene. A lot of this is caused by the cuts between the 3 core environments; Hercules rushing to Meg as fast as he can, the three witches preparing to cut her life thread and then where Meg is located. Here we see Meg squirming and is clearly in pain which creates tension and a clear goal for our hero. The witches are slowly preparing the life thread and clearly presenting this to the audience. This part is extremely slow and provides hope the Hercules might reach her. Finally we have Hercules going all out showing determination and really stretching his abilities to try and reach her. All three scenes contrast each other exceptionally well and the quick cuts between all three scenes build a great amount of tension that pulls at the audiences heart strings.
The absence of dialogue here allows the audience to focus on the actions themselves and locks us into waiting to see how the events will pan out. Meg is clearly built up to be a main character therefore losing her is going to be a shock for the audience. The pacing is incredibly fast to reflect the tense situation. We have contrast between the slow careful movements of the witches and the fast, determined ones of Hercules to further draw us into this emotional scene. The final element of this is the tense music that supports the action we are seeing on seen to reinforce the concepts I have already explored. This tends to be the role of non-diegetic sound in films so that we can connect with the emotional elements of the scene fairly subconsciously.
Finally an animation completely devoid of dialogue is the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner animations (Looney Tunes Classic | Greased | Boomerang, 2017). Here we have a simple concept of the Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner with the Road runner always evading capture leading to comical failure of the Coyote - often resulting in unfavorable scenarios. The posing of the Road Runner is always cocky and mocking the Coyote who often shows exaggerated poses of determination. Poses and facial expressions are always exaggerated making good use of squash and stretch to reinforce these poses further. What is really interesting is that we always expect the Coyote to fail but the animators often break and repair the laws of physics to really mess with the Coyote. This means that we see the determination and confusion of the Coyote in many different ways. Similar concepts are seen in Tom and Jerry.
Initial Research
I thought that a good place to start would be to watch some live action reference of people on the phone. This was actually a little harder than I thought as most modern phone conversations are on the phone and not in a traditional phone box. Despite this the actions and body language should be the same. I wanted to look for some older comedy sketches that were often exaggerated and very reflective of pantomime style animation, therefore I felt these would be good reference. The main idea here was to expose my self to some actions that could inspire my ideas and then drive more specific research linked to my idea.
I came across the below video (Hyacinth Gets Prank Called by Your Favorite Characters | BritBox, 2020) of 'Keeping Up Appearances' showing Hyacinth answering the phone. Hyacinth is incredibly animated and I love the posing and movements she goes throughout the phone conversations. When she picks up there are some beautifully arced motions as she tilts between poses and putting emphasis on particular words. I also the facial expressions she transitions and blends through across the phone - always starting with happy and positive and often moving to annoyance or confusion. I felt this could inspire my animation showing a change from one emotion to another as the person receives news on the phone.
I also looked into the film 'Phone Booth', shown in the video below (Phone Booth (2002) - You're Going to Learn to Obey Me, 2020), as this entire film is centered around this singular location with somebody on a phone. The expressions and posing of the character change throughout the film which can be seen in this scene. It starts with a fairly careless attitude that becomes more and more serious and worried as the caller receives news. His behavior and posing is more open to begin with and becomes more closed as the call progresses. This again shows a change in behavior and body language as the scene develops - showing a reaction through their actions to what is being said.
Concept and Ideas
Now that I had the idea of a change in emotion I wanted to scribble down a few ideas for what that could be - shown in the image below. I grouped the ideas into a core emotion and considered how it could unfold. I didn't want the animation to be too long so that I could execute an animation that was manageable in scope.
I like the idea of someone getting a call that seems to be going really well until it completely isn’t and flips. This could be a spam call that starts off sounding favorable until the person realises it’s a scam which completely flips their emotions. The motions of the character would become happier and happier with increasingly larger positive motions and poses before being annoyed and slamming the phone down in anger and looking annoyed.
I see this as the character starting off fairly neutral, possibly slightly slumped in the phone booth. Then their poses would become more positive and happy after the caller delivers their positive sentences. I see there being 2/3 positive increases with the last one being very extreme. Then there being an angry slam of the phone down when they realise it isn’t as good as it could have been. Finally ending on an annoyed look away from the phone box, possibly into an angry arm fold.
Now that I have a starting point I will explore some research to find some similar behaviours that will then inform my acting. Through acting out the idea I will be able to assess what works and what doesn't and potentially evolve or tweak the idea from here. I’m really keen to get the contrast between the slow increases in happiness and the large happy pose as well as the large happy pose to the angry pose.
Research
I found this video clip (ksi yes yes yes no no no meme 1/100 Series 1 book 1 chapter 1, 2023) of the YouTuber KSI who appears to have something going very well at the beginning and then flipping to be not going so well at the end. This is a little more exaggerated all round from what I want, however, the change in emotion is interesting. The downside is that the 'yes' and 'no' vocals are really carrying this and I want to execute the animation without dialogue. Similarly the yes and no poses are fairly similar in actions, however, there are subtle differences with the yes's being more leant backwards and the no's being more downward and negative.
The video below (𝘠𝘦𝘴...Yes...𝗬𝗘𝗦!!!, 2024) is a clip from Spongebob Squarepants and shows the increasing happiness which I wanted to achieve in my animation. I really like how the poses increase and become more and more exaggerated as the information is processed. Each action is bigger than the last in terms of body language and facial expression which is really interesting to see. I would definitely like to incorporate this increasing happiness and exaggeration into my own poses, however, I'd need to act this out to gain stronger body mechanics reference rather than looking at this animated bean character.
I wanted to revisit Snow White and Seven Dwarfs in the video clip below (Snow White | Meeting The Seven Dwarfs | Disney Princess #ADVERT, 2019) from a pure study of how character's reflect their personalities in their actions. In this scene the Dwarfs are introducing themselves and clearly reflecting their personalities in their actions. Grumpy has very closed and angry body language with facial expressions of annoyance, often making short sharp motions. Happy is in complete contrast to this with swift, often and positive motions. I like the subtleties in some of the other dwarfs, for example, how bashful acts incredibly shy through fiddling with this beard as a secondary action. This is a great example of how a character's personality affects their emotions and conveys through to the body language as all the dwarfs are introducing themselves but in completely different ways that ooze appeal.
I came across this incredibly short clip (Receiving Good News, 2015) of someone receiving good news and presenting a short victory fist pump. I really love how this simple action conveys so much emotion - we can clearly tell that something is going well for this lady! The facial expressions further support this, however, without them the action should read the same. I feel this is a simple mannerism that I could incorporate into my animation to help show increasing levels of happiness.
I then thought I'd explore comedians behaviours as these are often extremely animated. Whilst they are dialogue driven they are also trying often over-gesturing and over exaggerating their body actions and facial expressions to drive home their key points. This is similar to pantomime as comedians are often on stage playing to thousands of people therefore they need to exaggerate their actions so that they are clear and back up what they are saying. Jay Larson's sketch here (Jay Larson's Wrong Number Prank | CONAN on TBS, 2013) is linked to a phone conversation where tensions are running high and he almost works in a pose to pose fashion as he pops between exaggerated poses. I particularly like how the poses exaggerate over time and tensions ride higher as they become more and more exaggerated. The poses aren't directly relatable to my concept but the manner in which they are executed is. This lead me to a deeper search into comedians to see if I could find something closer to the emotions in my concept.
I found the below clip (I'm Great On The Phone - Bottom - BBC, 2009) showing Rick Mayall from the tv series 'Bottom' who also presents a strong animated performance featuring a phone conversation. I really love how he explores hypothetically answering the phone to different scenarios and situations and how he reacts to these. Similar to Jay Larson he works very pose to pose to represent his emotions - each clearly different to the last. Again not quite right for my particular concept, however, it is starting to head in the right direction.
Next I came across the below video (The Sketch Show Lee Phones a Sex Line, 2009) that explores Lee Mack engaging with a phone conversation. In this clip there is the increasing happiness and hopefulness as the character hears positive conversation but then also contrasting annoyance, which is something I was aiming for. The actions here are less animated and exaggerated than the previous two, however, you can see the difference between the increasing positive body language that is more open and stretched out compared to the angry/annoyed posing that is more close and sharper as the phone is hung up. This also shows a distinct change in facial expression from hopeful to annoyed too. Hopeful expressions are similar to the body language with the positive facial expressions being more open and stretched and annoyed facial expressions much more squashed.
I then remembered a scene from a Michael McIntyre sketch where he discussed someone becoming increasingly excited when they knew the locations there were discussing. It took a while but I found the clip (Compilation Of Michael's Best Jokes About Public Transport | Michael McIntyre, 2019), shown below, in the first 30 seconds. I love how the actions and body language become bigger and bigger throughout the stages of the sketch - this is exactly what I want to achieve with a happy, happier and ecstatic poses across the conversation ending on a contrasting annoyance. I felt this reference was really good as the head, body and arm motion increase in size each size - something that I should incorporate into my acting.
06/06/24
Now that I'd slept on the idea I wasn't completely convinced that I'd nailed it. I had reference that explored positive actions, however, not as much showing negative annoyed ones that I felt were as useable. I thought I'd explore a little more research to see if I could find anything that was a little more angry or potentially something that went from positive to negative - a little closer than the first KSI video I explored.
I started looking into TV series and sketches with John Cleese in because he is an extremely animated actor. I thought I'd start with 'Fawlty Towers' because it is likely to have phone sketches due to the hotel environment and the Basil Fawlty character tends to flip flop between 'fake-nice' and angry. I came across the below scene (Fawlty Towers - Basil on the phone to Sibyl - "I was just doing it, you stupid woman!", 2015) that shows the character going from bored to increasingly angry. I love how jerky the actions become and how aggressive the poses are. I also love how he will hold an anticipation pose before punching arms and body down into the more aggressive poses which is definitely something I could incorporate.
Next I came across the below video (Hello Norwich University 3, 2011) showing John Cleese starting very positive and then becoming extremely annoyed and slamming the phone down. This is very exaggerated and goes on from some time, but I love again how he hangs the phone in the air in anticipation before slamming the phone down. I could absolutely borrow elements from this to inform my slam phone slam down to conclude my animation.
I'd now explored a broad array of reference that I can use to inform my acting to help develop my acting. Its rare to find exact reference of what you have so I'm hoping to take inspiration from all the videos to inform how I convey my idea. I am then hoping to evolve the idea based on reflections of my different takes based on what is working and what isn't!
Acting and Reference Capture
I captured a lot of reference and my idea definitely evolved over time. I'm going to add some short comments and reflections to each one to show my thinking on the fly to show how I was adapting my takes based on my reflections to refine the idea. I tried to position the camera in a side on perspective this time to implement the feedback I received from the previous animation.
Initial Acting
The below video was my first take. I felt the story wasn't really working at this point and the posing weren't reading what I wanted them to. I also didn't hang up the phone which wasn't part of the plan!
This next take improves on the pick up and putting down of the phone. I like how the character isn't looking at the phone as they pick it up - almost acting as a secondary action. The poses are a little more readable this time, however, the first happy pose I don't think it readable enough - the silhouette is a little boring. The starting pose is a little static too and I wondered if I could improve the boredom at the start I was trying to convey.
This next take improves all round - I introduced a foot tap and look around that I feel works particularly well to convey boredom. I also have that same absent minded picking up of the phone - almost assuming the call will be equally as boring as whatever is happening currently. I like how the poses increase in happiness but I don't feel the change in emotion at the end is working well as I don't know if it reads as well without the dialogue.
In this next take I tried exaggerating the tilt on the boredom pose which works quite well, however, I am hiding the face a little more which would make this less readable. I'm also tilting my pose positions a little more to try and take inspiration from the pose to pose acting of Rick Mayall and Jay Larson that I analysed earlier. I tried a slightly different annoyance pose at the end by starting off going into a happier pose but flipping to annoyance mid transition. Again I felt like this wasn't reading as well as it could and perhaps this element of the concept could be evolved.
I tried one last time, incorporating all the elements that I evolved and improved from the previous takes but this time adding a phone slam down in anger rather than a sigh, similar to the John Cleese reference, to see if this would improve the storytelling concept. However, I felt similar to previous takes and I think I should evolve the idea.
Evolution of Concept
Instead of becoming annoyed for the last pose I thought I'd instead try getting happier and happier with each pose - incorporating the Spongebob Square Pants and Michael McIntyre references. This first new take felt good as I tried to increase the happiness with each pose. I quite liked the hopping on the spot with joy, however, felt like this would be time consuming to animate. This was good for a first pass on the third happy pose but I thought I'd try some other ideas too.
In this next take I explore the fist bump in victory idea - similar to the woman on the laptop reference that I shared earlier. I feel this reads really well and I like the concept a lot more than the previous takes that end on annoyance. I also feel this pose will be simpler to execute compared to the jumping on the spot happy moving pose. Whilst I feel I am on the right lines I don't think this reference quite nails the poses yet so I am going to explore some more takes to perfect this concept now that it has evolved.
In this take I am working on anticipation before actions to ensure that they are clear. I've also done a little work on the framing of the shot to try and include my full body - I almost achieve this, however, a wide angle lens would be better to give me more room on the top and bottom of the screen. I'm trying to animate very pose to pose here too which I feel is working well, however, I am struggling a little with the silhouettes due to the limited motion in my arm and will need to push the poses a little more when animating.
This next take I'm experimenting with exaggeration of poses a little further throughout to review how readable they are. I think I'm probably pushing it a little too far here and will need to balance it to ensure that each pose is bigger than the last. I also lose my balance a little at the end showing that my foot positions are not as strong as they could be for this action.
In this next shot I'm experimenting with holding the end pose a little more and seeing how far I can push this. The silhouette isn't great but this is mainly linked to my limited movement. The balance is a little off again so I wanted to reshoot again until I had this series of motions slicker.
I experimented with both arms shooting out for the end pose in a very theatrical way to see how this looked. I liked the idea of both arms moving to improve the last pose, however, I don't think shooting it out like this worked very well to convey the victory style emotion I was aiming for in this shot.
In this next take I experimented with almost a double fist bump with the arms in the final victory pose, opposes to shooting the phone arm straight out. I felt like this was a lot stronger and conveyed the emotion I wanted. I didn't think the pose's silhouette was quite there yet as it wasn't as appealing as it could be from this angle so I would try to tweak this in the next take.
Final Reference
The below video shows the final reference that I feel is good enough for me to move forward. The end pose is a lot more readable than the previous take and includes a lot of asymmetry to help make the pose interesting. The poses become bigger over time and work in a pose to pose fashion with anticipation leading into the next pose which feels nice and punchy. I like the subtle rocking and transfer of weight at the beginning and the head looking down to convey unfocussed boredom that then contrasts into the increasingly happy poses. I didn't really do anything with the phone at the end, however, I could raise the character's hand to the head again as if rejoining the phone conversation after the victory celebration.
I'm also really happy that this reference supports the feedback I received in unit 01 (Williams, 2024, pers. comm., 3rd June) to ensure that the character isn't acting to the camera - I tried to forget it was there and just go through the sequence with my actions. The issue with my Unit 01 animation was that my reference was acted to the camera therefore my animation had this issue. This reference has rectified that issue therefore this aspect of my animation should also be improved.
Overall, I really love how I've used research to inspire my acting and how I've used this to inform and adapt my actions to lead to well planned out actions. If I had gone with my first reference it wouldn't have been as strong as it is now, which really shows the power of this phase of the animation pipeline.
Reference Analysis
Now that I had reference I felt strong enough to use I wanted to analyse the timing, key poses, breakdowns etc. to support my initial blocking in Maya. This first video is simply my reference converted into 24 fps so that it is on the same frame rate as my animation - enabling me to pick out the key poses on the correct frames.
Next I have sketched over the poses I feel to be key poses in red and then breakdown in-betweens are in green. I've clearly noted the frame numbers to make the blocking process even easier in Maya. The sketching essentially picks out the silhouettes I will use and enable me to use a combination of the reference, the sketch and my own creative license to create the key poses. I find this process a lot easier than thumbnailing, however, I recognise it does make me quite reliant on live action reference. In the future I should explore a combination of the two to really help create a stylised and high quality animation.
Lastly I ran an export of my sketches in isolation to get a feel for the motion without the distractions of the footage moving. This helps me understand how the animation might be constructed and how it might feel once played back. It also helps me understand whether I have picked out enough key poses for the motion to make sense - in this situation I feel it works particularly well and I feel the emotion is carrying through to the pose sketches. This is another factor that helps me determine the success of my acting which I feel in this case is good!
Key Poses
I really enjoyed the pose study in Unit 01 and thought it would be good to include some static poses for the key poses in my animation. Its a lot easier to perfect a static pose so I spent some time taking snaps of the key stages and emotions shown below :
Bored Pose :
Slight Happy Shocked Pose :
Happy Pose :
Happy Victory Anticipation Pose :
Victory Pose :
These poses worked well and allowed me to focus on perfecting the pose devoid of the motion and transition between poses. These will support me further when posing my character in addition to my study of reference and my research. In a way this is similar to thumbnailing the poses as I'm working on the actual posing of the body rather than the full animation and motion.
Animation
08/06/24
I began by blocking out my poses on stepped curves. I'm heavily using my reference study, video and photo reference to support the development of these poses. I'm focusing on just the key poses with breakdowns to come at the next stage. I feel the posing is working well - my reference is feeding directly into this. Its hard to know when to move on and I honestly think I should have spent a little longer in this phase to develop and tweak the key poses to really use the pose to pose animation principle that I also saw a lot of comedians use in their acting. However, I would also tweak these later on too but I feel that if I spent more time here perhaps it would make the rest of the animation stronger as a whole.
Next I moved on to creating the breakdown poses using the Tween Machine addon (Barrett, 2023) in addition to manual posing. Tween Machine was great at controlling timing and easily creating breakdowns, however, it was also good to edit some breakdowns to improve the transitions from one pose to another - potentially improving the acts in addition to the path of motion. I feel the animation was really starting to develop at this point and I was becoming more confident creating manual animation using stepped curves which was working well. I do feel that I suffer the common challenge of poses looking great when they are stepped and held for longer which then become a bit muddy and floaty when they are splined.
09/06/24
Below shows a shot of my timeline where you can see little markers above certain keyframes. I wanted to manage my timeline better to make it more readable opposed to a mess of red lines. Here I am using red bookmarks to signal a keyframe and green poses to show a breakdown pose. This means that if I edit the timeline or poses I know what type of pose I am editing. Timelines can quickly become messy so I thought this might help early doors when working on perfecting the quality of each pose.
I then continued my process of inbetweening to try and move the full animation to being on 4's which in theory should make the splining process better. Elements of this are working well but there are some elements I really should have addressed a lot sooner now that I look at this with fresh eyes. The initial shocked pose feels a little floaty and isn't as strong as the others. The timing is also starting to get a little too consistent and linear in some places and is stronger when I quickly snap into poses more quickly.
The below playblast shows the animation turning from stepped to spline with some basic graph editor corrections. Whilst elements of this are working well on the whole it does feel very floaty and I think this is cause by too much ease in and ease out through my use of the Tween Machine. In future I think I can be a lot snappier to move from one pose to the next, however, in this animation I hoped that if I explored the curves a little further I could improve some of this snappy-ness.
I spent a lot of time studying the curves of each control on the rig and improving the transitions from one pose to another. This has made quite a lot of improvements and all poses are feeling a lot more snappy and fluid. The shocked pose still isn't working as well as it could, however, I think I should have addressed this sooner - I actually tried to exaggerate it a little further as it was quite subtle but I'm not sure this is really working as a pose all together. Overall the animation has improve drastically from this playblast compared to the previous which is good. I often find creating animations as a rollercoaster of emotions where it goes from initially looking good in the blocking to rubbish in the spline to then improved through the use of the graph editor. This shows that animation requires patience to execute well with the vast number of moving parts to focus on to create good outcomes.
Facial Reference
The next stage was to layer in some facial animation and whilst I had some reference in my previous reference capture I thought it would be good to try and pose my face in the main poses I needed.
Bored :
Shocked :
Happy :
Victory Anticipation :
Victory :
Happy (Relaxed / Neutral) :
Some of these are better than others, however, it was good practice to explore posing my face on its own for reference purposes. I think the happy pose works particularly well and the contrast in squash between the victory anticipation and the the victory itself. The shocked pose looks a little on the sad end rather than happy and the bored pose is closer to sleepy, so these are things I could have reshot.
The below playblast shows the implementation of facial posing throughout the animation to reinforce what is happening. It definitely adds a lot to the performance, however, as the face is quite complex it feels like the face is a character in its own right. I definitely need to explore how I transition between pose to pose with some overlapping action in mind. I'm also suffering from another issue that comes from my reference, because the camera is side on the facial expression is sometimes harder to read. I'm hoping this is something I will improve with over time as I improve my use of pose to pose, capture reference and implementing that into animation. Despite this, I do particularly like the victory facial pose and how this blends into a neutral happy pose at the end because I feel the emotion is really carrying through in the character's body poses and facial expressions.
The next playblast shows further development focusing on the finger poses. I've tweaked a lot of the poses for these and offset their animation so that they don't all start and stop at the same point to make it more natural, which I feel is working really well! I've also spent more time in the graph editor to refine the motion further and whilst this does help the animation, I feel I am possibly smoothing too much in places which is making the animation a lot more floaty than it should be. I definitely need to experiment with the Tween Machine further to create more snappy transitions between poses and play around with how I create moving holds. I think revisiting the 'Day and Night' animation would be a good start as the poses snap from one to another very quickly without being jarring.
Final Animation
The below video shows the final animation. In this last animation pass I focused on minor tweaks to arms to soften the first happy shocked pose as I felt like it was too big. This pose has been a problem throughout and it feels the floatiest part of the animation, particularly as the body rotates and twists super smoothly too which looks a little unnatural. I also experimented with the flow on the wrist rotation as it transitions between poses to create more overlapping action. Finally I reviewed the hip rotation and corrected this throughout the animation so that the hips rotated natural based on what the legs were doing. Overall, I felt like the animation was at a good point after lots of refinement and I wanted to get some feedback from Alex Williams to reflect on his thought now that I had explored a complete pipeline of production.
Feedback
The feedback on this animation from A. Williams (2024, pers. comm., 10th June) feedback was as follows : "Yes, good, very nice, just try to make it a bit more pose to pose, with fewer in betweens. Basically, get into your poses quicker, and stay there longer. Live action is always a bit floaty if followed too closely."
As you have seen in my reflections I'm really starting to understand what the animation principle of pose to pose really means. The example by Jamie Floodgate shown on the link shared is a beautiful example of snappy timing that effectively holds on poses and punctuates each pose with power and impact. It also highlights how I'm relying too heavily on reference which is leading my animation to become a little too floaty - I also think I'm smoothing my animation a little too heavily in the graph editor which is removing these holds and making the character move too much when they are supposed to be holding.
The post also discusses the power of thumbnails and I think this is something I need to explore a lot more to plan my animations in addition to acting them out. This will allow me to focus more creatively on posing - free of the constraints of live action. I will then be able to have my timing grounded in real life but take creative liberties to stylise this and make it snappier to improve the overall quality.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel I have made a lot of progress! My animation pipeline of production in improving and I will incorporate the use of thumbnailing more in addition to shooting reference to help improve the creativity of my animation. I feel my outcome was good and achieved what I set out to do and in the future I need to focus on the timing and inbetweening to create snappier transitions between key poses rather than evenly transitioning between them. I feel my weight transfer from foot to foot of my character is good as they appear balanced at all time, which is good as I have struggled with this in the past. I'm also happy that I managed to incorporate Alex's feedback from the previous Unit to prevent breaking of the fourth wall in this animation. Therefore, if I can keep up this positive trend of improving my animation skills I feel I will draw closer to my goals of achieving high quality professional animation. My focus is to keep implementing feedback to result in each animation being stronger than the last - looking at this as a journey rather than a sprint!
Learning Outcomes
Understand pantomime in animation.
Block out pantomime shots, demonstrating an understanding of the critical poses needed.
Create thumbnail sketches for animation to plan and visualise pantomime shots.
Import and utilise 3D Models in Maya.
Demonstrate technical proficiency using Maya’s attach, constraint, and parenting tools.
I feel I have achieved the learning outcomes of this unit, listed above, because I have:
Understood pantomime animation through my study of theory through lecturers and my exploration of relevant research, particularly comedians and sitcom acting to inform my animation outcomes.
I've explored blocking through my refence capture, analysis of reference, photographic reference and using these to inform my key poses. However, I feel I should spend longer review, reflecting on and improving key poses for my next animation to prevent baking in poses that could be stronger.
I've created thumbnail sketches through photographing myself in poses, acting out my concept and analysing these reference using thumbnailing to identify key poses. In the future I should use a mix of traditional thumbnailing and acting to take more creative liberties when planning and producing animation with the focus of making it snappier.
I've not imported any models into this scene, however, I did create my own simple phone model to be used. Instead I focused on the pure character performance.
I've used attach constraints through parenting the phone to the character's hand. I've made clever use of visibility and camera angles to make it look like the character retrieves the phone from a back pocket. I've also experimented with the Parent Master addon that would be useful for picking up and dropping objects, however, this animation concept didn't require that level of complexity so a simple parent constraint was sufficient.
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