Specialist Study 2- Part 7 Re-acting and further research

So with the Ncloth sorted out, I then began re-acting the new audio which I was told to animate instead. Only this time, I would be acting out with the idea of picking up a cloth in the scene.

I didn't focus on shooting multiple angles this time, as I just wanted to get the performance right and from there I would figure out the strongest key poses and I would then think of an appropriate camera angle.

I had tried acting a couple of times before and though sometimes I had spoke the dialogue, I was told to instead mime the actions as some of the movements wasn't well translated and all over the place. 

During filming and finding the strongest poses for my character animation, I had recently been watching a couple of films every week and some were good some wasn't up to scratch. But the main thing was the fact that I was able to figure out some of the camera angles which I wanted for my animation. 

I kind of loved this film " Dark skies" to be honest, I know that it wasn't the greatest film out there, but it was very entertaining. Particularly with this type of film, where it's kind of a horror, thriller genre the camera really holds onto the character for a few more seconds so that we as an audience can feel the tension of the shots.

Dark Skies

 Side effects wasn't the best film I had seen, even though the reviews had been praising it quite a lot. I think the reason why it wasn't such a great film was the fact that I had watched a few Tv series that had a similar storyline to it and I just felt that the film didn't bring anything original.

The only good bit was when the film was focused on the character below where it had certain camera angles which made it feel as this character wasn't in the right mind.

Side Effects

 A film which I had finally crossed off for my films to see "Memento". Great film and I really felt that the camera angles which they used was perfectly executed throughout the film.

Memento

Editing Video Logs (Vlogs)

As much as all of the films that I had watched I think the most helpful thing to me in figuring out the camera angles, was when I was shooting my video logs for the last few months of Uni. So, when I edit all of the videos together I have a sense or feel of how long I should focus on the shot, or whether or not if this is absolutely necessary, does it show the life of uni that I want or is it too much. Just the fact that this was a practical hands on approach really made me understand about camera angles even more. 

Specialist Study 2- Part 6 Ncloth

I had to open my mouth from when I was showing my animatic. My tutor then told me to animate something which I thought I could get away with and something that I never done so before. I was told to animate the cloth for the character for when he picks up the robe.

Ncloth, no?

This was something I had encountered before, but I had used another software at the time, when I was messing around with it last year. But, to animate a cloth with a character, that's another thing. I then was lucky enough to have been given a few Ncloth tutorials by my tutor. This helped a-lot and I was then able to learn in theory about how the Ncloth system works.

I then took everything which I had learnt from the ncloth tutorials and applied as much as I could to the scene of my character. The image below shows a block, which would act as a passive collider and that would allow the nlcoth to stay on it. The block would then be the child of the nurb curves of the wrist which would act as the parent. So in theory, wherever the n nurbs wrist move, the block will move with it, as so will the ncloth. Therefore the ncloth will be animated through the ndynamics.

Even though the ncloth hasn't fallen off yet, as the arm was going up and down, there was another problem. The block will be visible and will be shaped out from the ncloth, when really it should be a hand shape. I'm not that great at modelling so I then thought, why not make the whole body as a passive collider. My PC should be able to handle the calculations....

It did, but for some odd reason the ncloth would not fall down onto the rest of the body. 

Confused on what I was seeing on screen I then rotated the character to see whether or not if I would get the same results (problem), turns out it's still there. I then later figured out that the N Nurbs which controls the animation for the character, is to blame, as it's also turned into a passive collider. 

I then thought about deleting these N Nurbs controls, but I then later found out that this would cause the following image below to occur. 

I'll figure it out

So with many tests with the Ncloth, I had just decided for the meantime to use the block method for now and that I would figure something out on this problem.

Specialist Study 2- Part 5 Acting and Animatic Feedback

I then began acting out to the dialogue from which I had recorded from one of my friend. This was a very time consuming process as I had to think about the way the character performance will be captured but also conveyed to the kind of shots which I will choose later on.

Having something there was a good way for me to interact to the audio

I tried many different angles and kept giving the full performance out of the character as much as possible. The idea that this audio was almost 3 minutes is quite daunting and possibly the reason as to why I found a lot of trouble trying to find the appropriate camera angles. 

Acting it out over and over again

I felt that the above two images was when I more or less nailed the performance and the one which felt very natural. 

This took a while and I reviewed the videos which I had recorded myself acting out. I tried to get pause the video now and again to try and find the strongest key poses which would then be used for my animation. 

I then thought to myself that I should begin blocking out a few scenes from the live video reference which I had done so far. The reason being was that I felt that I wasn't making any progress with my work and that I had been working for too long on the camera angles when I should get the performance right. 

Really like this angle

I had about only got twenty seconds worth of blocked out poses and just rendered them out. The main thing was to get feedback from my tutor and class mates on the work so far, so that I knew whether or not if I was on the right track. 

I then was told that I should stop using the audio which I had recorded from my friend as the tone of the voice wasn't theatrical enough and therefore didn't feel as though the character was there. This is quite unfortunate as I had asked my friend to act out in that particular way. However, this meant that I would use the original audio from the monologue instead. This meant that my animation would be halved, good news for me

Specialist Study 2- Part 4 Further camera angles research

I haven't really kept up blogging here for a while now, as I had decided that it was a really big distraction with my work, plus I never really found the time. Anyway, I have some bad news in terms with this overall project and it was something of a big shock/ descision which I had to make. But, I'll explain all of that as I progress over the next few blogs.

So from the previous post, I was talking about the camera angles which I was looking at. I needed to see from film, and tv shows on how they manage to keep focus on the character but at he same time, continue to always move the story forward.

I again looked further into the camera angles such as the ones below.

This show above is from the Prometheus film, I guess much more of an extra trailer before the film had came out during the time. The camera angle here shows from a very low angle, which really shows that this character has power, knowledge and something to be revered. 

An eyelevel shot, which keeps the audience on a balanced view. 

This shot from the film "Matilda" has a very  high angle, which reflects from an adult view where it then shows how weak the girl looks, how vulnerable she really is due to her age. 

This particular shot is tilted giving a more intense shot towards the audience, something which feels surreal and out of this world. I won't be using this shot. 

The point of view shot above from the Kings Speech, gives the audience the chance to see from the person/ character perspective and we then get a slight of idea of how they feel. In this case, the character is overwhelmed with the task of talking to the people. 

Specialist Study 2- Part 3 Camera angles and Speeches

So with the monologue pretty much decided, I had to try and find the type of camera angles that I could be using for my animation. I don't want to be stuck with just one camera angle and so the next step I took was to research in films or tv series on characters, that may've been in a similar situation as the one I'm animating.

The following videos I'm going to put down below are those I've either searched on Youtube or films that I may've seen before which kind of suits what I'm aiming for.

So by watching most of these over and over again and analysing to why some moments shine for the characters talking, is going to help me choose with what shots I will use.

Thats it for today, I just wanted to try and keep you guys updated, so sorry for the lack of content.

Andycodex 

Specialist Study 2- Part 2 Finding a monologue

Rightio, it has been a while indeed from the last time I have blogged on this website, reasons being is due to the fact I have been taking the pleasure of doing something truly special as part of my new creative projects. This involved filming and editing the last remaining days of my final year at university, which is quite a significant moment in my life at the moment. If you want to check some of, I've embedded a video to below.

Uni Life

Anyway, lets get down to where I last left off, from January blog post. So, I was thinking about animating a monologue, where this will give me the chance to use camera angles to convey the story and emotion of the character, but most importantly, to focus on the character performance much more and the animation principles as well.

I had spoked to a couple of people whom I knew, that could help me, as they were part of a drama course, or that they taught the subject themselves. Anyway, I spoke to a friend of mine "Holly.P" who was a drama teacher. She then had a student who had learnt her monologue and so, all I had to do was record her via video, audio and take notes on her performance.

Priya acting her monologue

The girl performing was by "Priyasasha. K"and though she had showed spirit and perseverance in her character, from her performance, my tutor, thought that I needed to find someone with a bit more experience on acting, so I can capture the dynamic output and translate that, through the animation.

So, round two, the hunt was still on! Just like with Holly, I then asked my friend "Simon. H", who is currently is his last year at 6th form, in his drama course. Now honestly, I didn't expect much from my friend, (shame on me), but when I had set all the recording equipment up, and was all green....his performance took me by surprise.

Take 1

I really liked the fact that it was from Shakespeare, something I never really had enjoyed during my time at school. But, seeing this from a much more mature and educated point of view, made me realise the potential of what I could animate, with this piece. The only downside was that I had to, borrow equipments again and record this, as I left some of it behind at uni.....

From the first video I recorded, I felt as though the character "Mark Anthony", needed to take a second or so to re-collect himself,to compose his speech a bit more, so that we can understand how his character feels, and soon realise, he's breaking down. So I broke down the script and you can see the difference in personality, from the video above and below. 

So, with a slight positive outlook on deciding what I was going to animate, I recorded another session with my friend Simon, so that I could use his voice for the audio, in the animation. 

Take 2

Now, I had pretty much recorded and got what I needed, I felt that I had to show my tutor with what I had gathered so far. Unfortunately, not good news.....well, not exactly.

Monologue

So, the main problem to which my tutor had found with the audio, was that it was "weak, un-energetic, amateurish". This was my fault, as I wanted this kind of feel, but in the end, it needed to be more theatrical. So my tutor just said to me, just use the audio from the film. In some way, this would relieve the pressure of having to animate a 2 half minute piece down to a minute and a bit. But still, retaining, the theatrical energy and vibe from the audio. 

I'll be updating the rest of the work I have done so far, over the next few days!

Andycodex

Specialist study 2- Part 1 New Project

It's been a while, hoped everyone had a great time for their holidays, and that you stuck to your new years resolution, so far. I haven't had time to animate anything new as I had been doing my dissertation, which was a great joy getting that done in the end. So at the moment, I had a really lazy week, where I've been trying to unwind myself to get ready for my final animation for this year.

I had an idea for my final animation during christmas, as I had some positive feedback from the people I told the story about. Though this is do-able, it's not exactly, ideal for me, to be animating more than one characters when really, I should be focusing on just one character.

So, my next step was to take the advice from my tutors and classmates and try and find a monologue from a film or play, to which and actor or actress would perform to, where I would then animate this. Getting actors and actresses for my reference would be highly beneficial, as they are more professional, and could get into a stronger character.

So far, I still yet to meet one of my friend sessions for his drama studies, as I've asked for his help and his friends to give me a monologue. But, at the moment I finally found a film monologue to which I can work on for the time being. The film is the "Devil Advocate" and the speech is performed by "Al Pacino"-below

Today I have met some drama student that is part of my University, as I was going to ask if any of them could help me with my work. I sat through an hour and a half of the play to which they were rehearsing. It was a really interesting to see how they got into different characters as well as the story they were acting out. I'm a bit disappointed not getting to see the rest of the play, though I think I'm going to try and find some tickets to see it.

Excellent acting

I was going to ask some of them for their help, but it seemed like a bad time to start asking people when they are totally 100% committed in their play. So, I thought it would be best to let them be and find other actors.

Though I haven't got any signifigant work to show at the moment, I had the chance to do some more cinema 4D work and even work on my new year projects which I've been doing. The work below is just a test render of the cinema 4D work, and it's part of the upcoming chinese new year project.

Test render-more to come

My new year project is really simple, but it's really for some personal development in my photography and video editing skills. Some of them is simple as taking a photo per day, take one second footage per day and a very personal one, the last few days of university, as they're only five months left until I finish Uni. So all of these will be very enjoyable to look back on.

So, I'll see you guys next time hopefully with some work to show.