This unit was centred around creating a cartoon 'take' or a reaction shot! This analyses core key poses that are part of the cartoon reaction and applies them to a short scenario. Essentially meaning that the core poses will progress through similar stages but the start and end will be different and the appeal of the character will affect how they are key poses are constructed. In this unit I wanted to go back to basics again to really try to practises the feedback I've been given. For the previous two units I definitely think I took on a little bit too much so in this unit I was excited to explore a more simple rig to explore the concepts of the cartoon 'take' shot. I wanted to work on my pose to pose skills and focus on creating high quality animation with a simpler rig.
Project Management
I do love organising my workload and in particular visualising it. All course content has been released on the virtual learning environment now, which has enabled me to quickly review the core tasks and plan tasks over time. I've mentioned in previous blog posts but my time is extremely precious at the moment with my teaching job, freelance work, masters work and my recovery programme due to my injury. To top this all off I have a planned vacation meaning I will lose some time due to being unavailable. However, I also have some time off my teaching role across July and August meaning I will be able to do double the amount of work in this period so all in all it will balance.
I've created a simple production schedule across the module content to show when tasks needs to be done in relation to my time. This helped me see that it will be manageable, however, I'm not going to have a lot of down time! It also means that I will be able to easily see if I am behind or on track. Currently I am on track, however, the weeks commencing 24th June to the week commencing 13th of July are going to be particularly challenging. My goal is to complete the units up to 10 before I go on holiday and then focus on the 11 Seconds Club challenge when I return. I will have a full week to dedicate to this with no other distractions which should be achievable.
Its all going to be tight, however, it should slot in! I've translated these onto my Trello board too which enables me to visually see tasks in my backlog, upcoming, in progress and complete in a traditional Kanban style. I've also attached completion dates to these too so that the same information is in both places and I can tick these off as I go, especially as Trello is the main place that I go to manage my workload.
Rig Acquisition
I am planning on using the Monty Rig ((Rajadorai, 2007) for this animation as part of my back to basics approach and to keep this exercise extremely focused. I want to implement the feedback from the previous unit and practice my pose to pose workflow in addition to experimenting with the core theory of this exercise. Working with a simpler character will mean less controls meaning that I can spend more time posing the character and perfecting these poses in addition to practicing my timing to try and make it less floaty.
Idea Development
I understood the core concept of the 'take' as a reaction animation, however, the important thing here was to provide context to the animation so that the character is reacting to something. I quickly came up with an idea that I thought would work well for this animation that gave me clear direction. The concept for the idea was :
The character (Wearing a chef hat) would chomp on a piece of food on a table or counter surface.
The character would chew the food.
The character would be shocked at the taste of the food and realise they did not like it.
The character leaps backwards in disgust. (This is where the 'take' would happen)
The character spits the food out.
The character settles.
This was slightly inspired by some of the discussion of examples linked to facial expressions in previous units, however, I think it would work well for this scenario to help me give context to the animation. I was keen to dive into posing right away and practise my posing - particularly with a simpler character rig. Next I wanted to explore some research to inspire the idea to ensure that even though it was a simple action it was well inspired and grounded in reality.
Research
I'd done some extensive research on previous modules and I wanted to be a little more focused with this animation. When thinking of food critics, and animated ones at that, I instantly thought of Gordon Ramsey. I came across the below video (Chefs Spit Out Their Own Food | Kitchen Nightmares, 2019) which shows an array of taste testing and reactions which I felt was useful for my idea. Gordon Ramsey is incredibly animated, particularly his facial expressions. Despite the Monty rig being more simplified I could take a lot of inspiration from the way he transitions between poses when showing disgust.
Next I found the below video (4 Grossest Foods Taste Test, 2018) that explored two people eating disgusting food and reacting to it. This was an incredibly useful video as it showed exaggerated reactions of food that was unbearable being inside people. I really like the jerking reactions as they try to hold the food down but ultimately spit it out. They often snap into their poses as they try to keep the food down which I would like to incorporate into my animation. I want to have a quick jerk reaction before the more conscious jump back for the 'take' action and then spitting it out.
I gathered the thumbnails from the lecture series and supporting blog from Williams, A. (2019). Although these are someone else's thumbnails they help break down the key poses as part of the theory for this action. Having this as a starting point to build the core foundation for this action. I could then layer in my ideas and own creative flair to execute the animation. I'm keen to build a strong knowledge base through these exercises that I will later be able to apply to more complex animations in the future.
I admire the work of Tex Avery - in particular the exaggerated reactions, example shown below (Knudde, 2024), that really push the boundaries of what is possible. These frames are often only on screen for a short amount of time to really exaggerate and stress these reactions. I'd love to include a similarly exaggerate pose as the character realises the food does not taste good. This is similar to the video above (4 Grossest Foods Taste Test, 2018) where the people are jerking about trying to hold the food down - I'd like to make this pose the exaggerated one - right before the take and reaction of spitting the food out!
I experimented with some reference capture by acting out the animation to help understand the viability of the concept and check that the sequence would work. I shot this a few times and the video below is my best attempt that I felt was most useful. In this animation I kept my arms behind my back so that my acting was closer to the character rig I would be using - essentially my legs would be the legs of the character and my torso would be the head.
I feel like this worked well - particularly the awkward jump backwards because this exaggerates the take shows the character squirming a little. I also like the initial anticipation as I raise up and then arc down to eat the food - this prepares the audience for the action and leads into the next action clearly. I did two 'spit out' actions and in reality I probably only need one because the character can launch the food out of their mouth, however, I do like how one spit might be getting rid of the food and the second one being a palate cleanser. On this spit out I want to get a good amount of impact and punctuation on the spit so that it really adds force to the object.
Resources
The previous two animations I didn't focus heavily on the environment as my attention focused on the acting and body mechanics performance - like a character on stage. However, in this animation sequence I feel that I needed to exaggerate the food aspect of the idea and set the animation in a environment like a kitchen. I also liked the idea that the character was a chef sampling the food so I wanted to add a chef hat to them to reinforce this. The chefs hat was also an opportunity for some secondary action - when the character jumps backwards the hat could bounce off and land again.
For the food the character would eat I modelled my own simple apple. It didn't matter what the food was really as the idea would work the same - whatever it was the character wouldn't like it and spit it out!
I found this beautiful kitchen set by Hanci,
A. (2023) that I thought would work as a great set for this animation and help support story telling elements. This set is very cartoon-like which will fit with the overall similar aesthetic of the character rig (Rajadorai, 2007).
Lastly, I found this great chef's hat by 321Blender
(2021). I really liked the almost mushroom like shape of the hat and thought it would work perfectly with the whole scene due to the stylised cartoon-like aesthetic as well.
This next image shows my setup in Maya with all elements combined together to build the full set. I had to extend the walls and floor slightly on the left hand side - this leaves a bit of blank space, however, I feel this is a minor issue. I wanted to duplicate the cabinet but the mesh setup and organisation of the imported kitchen scene wasn't particularly clean and easy to use so I left it as it was so that I could focus on the animation! Despite this I feel the full scene is working well to set the scene for this food related 'take' animation sequence!
Animation
Now that the scene was set up and camera angles locked in I started the process of blocking out the key poses by using my reference and thumbnails to support my posing. I feel this was a really good start and conveyed my concept clearly on screen. I added a little chomping action using the squash and stretch controllers which I think works really well because it shows the audience an expected action before the exaggerated shocked pose. The shocked pose bounces nicely into the 'take' action as the character reacts and bounces backwards. Lastly we have a anticipation build up and spit out of the food. I'm not completely convinced on the timing here as the character anticipates the spitting action, however, more inbetweens are needed to control this motion.
This next step is really important, particularly for me as I am trying to implement the feedback A. Williams (2024, pers. comm., 10th June) to improve the pose to pose feeling of the animation. I used the 'Tween Machine' addon (Barrett, 2023) again to help control the breakdowns in between the poses. This time I animated on 4's after studying the resources Williams (2020) shared with me, which made this process a lot more manageable because on the previous 'phone booth' animation I moved down to 2's and it became a little unruly to manage.
I feel it is working well, however, I still think that I have work to do in this area. I need to explore holds more to allow the character to snap between poses fluidly with overlapping action so that not all areas of the body arrive at once. Despite this I do feel I am making progress - the initial anticipation pose before the chomp is held well with some very subtle motion so that it isn't completely static. The shocked pose needs to be held a little longer as this is a little floaty. The end anticipation pose before the spit is also a little float and I could have snapped into this quicker and held it for longer.
The hat has some super simple animation on it to act as a secondary action to the main jump back animation. This works super well and was really easy to animate using the 'ZV Parent Master' addon for Maya (Dominici, 2007). I explored a lot of research into animating parent constraints in the previous module when I animated the dog catching the ball, however, this addon made the process ten times easier!
The apple I used a slightly different technique for because I wanted to control the exact position of entry and exit from the character. I simply turned the visibility off at the correct frame; moved the apple to the exit position and then turned the visibility on and animated it's trajectory from there. I could have used the Parent Master addon, however, in this case it was much easier and quicker to do it the way I did.
Next I set the animation to spline to see how effective my methods were. I spent a good chunk of time analysing the curves in the graph editor and making corrections to ensure that actions flowed together well including smoothing particular parts and removing ease in/out for actions like the apple spit out and foot landings. I started to add a little bit of offset to the body controllers and eyes so that these weren't happening in sync which helped make the action a little more natural and appealing too. I ran into an error with the hat parenting incorrectly when I adjusted a pose which made it behave a little odd. I fixed this by completely removing the constraint and then redoing the simple animation, which put everything back into place which was good!
Final Outcome
This final video shows the final outcome. I made some small polish tweaks and also spent improved the apple's animation a little too. I wanted the apple to be fast and shoot offscreen, however, in the previous playblast it was a little too fast so I slowed this down a little by making it hang a little more in the air at the peak of it's arc. I felt like this made it more believable and allowed the apple to register a little more from an audience perspective.
Conclusion
Overall I feel this animation was successful and particularly so for furthering my journey to improving my understanding of posing and body mechanics as a whole. These exercises are giving me great experience with the animation production pipeline and my skill with using stepped animation and Tween Machine are improving at a good rate. The story of the idea has been well executed and reads well to the audience through the animation with the set and props reinforcing the idea. Timing is generally good and whilst there are some snappy poses I need to experiment with holds and snappy transitions between poses even more. This will help me explore a contrast in timing between actions and ensure that my poses really hit home hard. I need to use overlapping action to ensure that all aspects of the character don't arrive at once and I feel I can use the Tween Machine on specific controls to help delay and speed up particular elements to support this.
20/06/24 - Update to Final Outcome
I just couldn't leave this animation alone! There were two anticipation poses that felt a little floaty and I wanted to improve the how snappy they were as I discussed in my reflections. The first was when the character became 'shocked' and quickly realised the food didn't taste good and the second was the anticipation pose right before the spit out. I've held both poses for longer now so that the transition between the pose to pose movement is much quicker. This feels a lot better as these poses are held for a little longer, with minimal motion, and it helps add better pacing to the animation. In the future I need to avoid the soft blends between poses and quickly get from one to the other. I'm now even happier with this outcome!
Learning Outcomes
Define what a 'take' is in the context of animation and describe its role in conveying a character’s sudden reaction to unexpected events.
Demonstrate the ability to animate a classic 'take' using the Monty rig, applying the principles of timing, exaggeration, and anticipation to create a humorous and expressive reaction.
Exhibit proficiency in manipulating the Monty rig specifically for reaction shots, ensuring that the character's physical responses are visually engaging and effectively communicate the intended emotion.
Develop the skill to use animation techniques such as squash and stretch, pacing, and posture adjustments to enhance a character's reaction's comedic or dramatic effect.
Critically analyse animation 'takes', assessing the effectiveness of the reaction in the context of the scene and overall narrative of the animation piece.
I feel I have achieved the learning outcomes, listed above, because I have :
Defined and explored the concept of a take and given it a contextualised scenario that supports storytelling. In this case I have taken the idea of reacting to an unfavorable taste in the mouth which leads to a reaction and spitting the apple out!
I've used the Monty rig to execute the animation and incorporated the core theory of poses to construct the take. I've explored an array of research to inform my acting which has lead to exaggeration and anticipation throughout my short story sequence which I believe has been well executed. My timing is generally good, however, I still want to push the slickness of my transitions between key poses to further improve my use of pose to pose.
I've used all aspects of the Monty rig including eyes, brows, limbs and squash and stretch controllers to pose and animate the character through the take. I've added the disgust emotion through the chomping animation leading to a spit out animation. I've made Monty stetch out and squash into this pose to add impact in addition to squashing the eyes to help make him look disgusted!
I've experimented with pacing through the use of anticipatory hold poses to prepare the audience for particular actions. These are contrasted to the quick hops backwards in the 'take' action to help add pacing. I still think I can make these snappier in places, however, I will take this reflection forward to the next animation and continue to develop the quality of my outcomes through reflection.
I've critically analysed my work throughout to present my journey over time, breakdown my production and reflect on quality, achievements and areas for development throughout - including this reflection of the learning outcomes! I'm using feedback, reflection and the development of practical work as a tool to drive a continuous cycle of self improvement through iteration over time. I'm challenging my self to improve the quality of each animation as I progress through the module's exercises.
Reference List
321Blender
(2021) Bigthan's Chef Hat, April 18th Sketchfab]. Available at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/bigthans-chef-hat-01492843efdc440c9ed889151a5c2cd5#download
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
4
Grossest Foods Taste Test (2018) YouTube video, added by Good Mythical Morning
[Online]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGSHDpX2_sA (Accessed: 20th
June 2024).
Barrett, J.S. (2023) Tweenmachine, Justin
S Barrett. Available at: https://justinsbarrett.com/tweenmachine/
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
Chefs
Spit Out Their Own Food | Kitchen Nightmares (2019) YouTube video, added by Kitchen
Nightmares [Online]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no3RcCG0mys (Accessed: 20th
June 2024).
Dominici, P. (2007) ZV parent master 1.3, Paolo
Dominici Crunch Time Rigger. Available at:
https://www.paolodominici.com/products/zvparentmaster/ (Accessed: 20 June
2024).
Hanci,
A. (2023) A Low-Poly Modular Kitchen Set, September 27th Sketchfab]. Available
at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/a-low-poly-modular-kitchen-set-3496f5f09fe44b68967715ed04bc1eeb
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
Knudde, K. (2024) Tex Avery, lambiek.net.
Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/a/avery_tex.htm (Accessed: 20
June 2024).
Rajadorai, R. (2007) Monty 1.1.0 for maya,
Monty for Maya - Free Character Rigs Downloads for Maya. Available at:
https://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/monty-for-maya
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
Williams, A. (2019) Animate a ‘take’ reaction
with ‘monty’, Animation Blog. Available at:
https://animationapprentice.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-to-animate-reaction-shot.html
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
Williams, A. (2020) Why animators need snappy
timing, Animation Blog. Available at:
https://animationapprentice.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-animators-need-snappy-timing.html
(Accessed: 20 June 2024).
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