The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
Some more concept and visual development work for next year’s Pixar Brave has been shown to the public at Disney D23 last week.
I would have liked to see some Lord Macintosh designs just to finish the model I started a while back 🙁 The Wise woman is looking really cool.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky52jv5b-mY[/youtube]
Related post:
Brave concept art and teaser
If you couldn’t make it to Disney’s D23 event last week in Anaheim, here is a 1h30 recording of a panel with the Pixar Creative Team
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6t-VvTCgfc[/youtube]
You can find more articles on the Pixar Times blog
Via Pixar Times
Lip sync scared me for a long time but this was due to my lack of experience more than the actual job of animating lips and expressions to the audio.
For a while, I thought doing lip sync meant to choose a sequence of premade phonems and blend them more or less successfully as led to think by the Preston Blair animation book. To be fair, this is pretty much what you are supposed to do in most TV series but the result will always look very approximative and of low quality which is fine when your audience is preschool.
A good lip sync for feature animation should instead be done by focusing on other elements like the following:
1- open and close of the jaw
2- narrowing and widening of the mouth corners
3- asymmetry of the mouth (Mouth Left/Right, Rotation should blend shapes can help greatly for that)
4- lips roll
5- mouth Up/Down attribute to anticipate plosive sounds and create more contrast
6- lips translation, mainly drag for plosive phonemes such as Bb/Mm/Pp
7- appealing mouth corner arcs
8- good interaction of the tongue with the teeth and jaw
9- drag, overlap, rotation and translation of the jaw
A good rig such as the freely available Norman or Morpheus, despite the collapsing geometry for specific closed mouth shapes, should allow you to handle those criteria.
To illustrate this, here is a video I extracted from the Toy Story3 trailer and animated by Victor Navone. I added on-screen notes and a graphical representation of the audio waveform so you can compare the timing of the audio to the mouth shapes. (thanks Chris Cantero for the animation credits).
To read all the notes, save the video on your hard drive and play it frame by frame. Microsoft Windows users should play the video with KMPlayer to get the audio feedback while step framing.
I think one or two frames are missing for the bottom lip roll overlap but this should make it a very good start to your lip sync learning.
As a side note, the final shot has been slightly altered in the theatrical release with Buzz holding Jessee’s left hand rather than her right, I would be interested to know what the reasoning was behind that decision. They are obviously going for a tighter shot so we can focus on Jessee’s reaction but I don’t like her new pose much as her arm gets in the way and is buried in her silhouette. Here is a screenshot from Victor’s Toy Story 3 showreel.
I hope you like it, I have a James Baxter pencil test coming up next.
Related posts:
Norman FK world aligned spine
World orient head and shoulders
What is AAU
KM Player best video player ever!
Keith Lango Zootrigger setup
The same way it is important for a modeler to understand part of the rigging process, a rigger should also get a grasp of the animation workflow.
So how can you become a rigger that animators are happy to work with.
Well you can obviously start with a good attitude. Ask for feedback from the animators and be willing to discard that crazy automated function you created but animators find unusable.
Read rigging books and dvds, post on forums, check other rigs and even students showreels, talk to people. Personally I have learnt rigging through several dvds and those should be compulsory if you want to be a good rigger so here they are:
Jason Schleifer “Maya Fast animation rigs”. The DVD is well over 5 years old and only 1h20 but still is a must for someone who want to be liked by his peers.
Jason Schleifer “Animator Friendly Rigging”. That set will take few hours to go through but expose the most important concepts.
Fahrenheit DVDs. I actually started with those which was really hardcore but that was a very good experience.
Jason Osipa “Stop starring, facial modeling and animation done right”. A third edition just came out and I should probably get that one too. Jason goes in length about facial rigging and you should definitely spend some time understanding what he is talking about.
So you have ordered them all? okay while waiting for them I want to mention few things that irritate me when I use a new rig.
1. Slow rigs.
If your rigs are very slow, make sure it is not because you are using expressions where you could use nodes.
Create a low poly or proxy version the animators can work with otherwise.
1.Weired and default rotation axis.
Head and torso should have the Y rotation carry all the other axis, X should be carrying Z and Z the last one. Basically, the rotation order should be something like ZXY but certainly not the default XYZ (remember, you read the axis order starting from the end)
Jason Schleifer pays special attention to the rotation orders in his DVDs so take notes when watching them.
2. GUIs
Well, not everybody will agree with me but ….. I can’t stand GUIs. Maya viewport is so poorly designed that I can’ t see the point of adding an other window cluttering my screen real estate even more.
I will share with you one of my latest setup very soon. It is a rig where instead of hitting the usual nurbs controls, you select an invisible polygon encompassing the surface of the limb. Keith Lango posted a similar setup a while ago using Zootrigger,, myself I just parent constraint the Nurbs control or the joint to an invisible proxy box instead.
[update]GUI are not so bad when they are truely necessary. To drive complex or additive blend shapes for examples (ala Jason Osipa joystick) but certainly not for selecting the lower or upper arm.
3. IF/FK switches WITH no-pop
It is obvious that animators need IK and FK for legs and hands but you should also consider a script that would allow the animators to switch very easily from IK to FK and reverse without going back to the T pose
4. Elbow and Knee lock. The animators should be able to lock an elbow to a table
5. Scaling! The rig should be scalable!!!!
6. World orient head, spine, arms. I want them all or I want to be able to set this up using constraints
7. Bend bow and noddle arms. I am liking this more and more and should certainly investigate into that
8. cluttered vieworts. Nurbs controls don’t need to cover the entire model, make it clean and simple, if possible, make it invisible (cf GUI)
9. non consistency in the boolean channel control. 0 should mean no and 1 should mean yes. ie Shoulder parent 0 should mean that the IK hand is not parented to the shoulder. You could actually do the opposite, but as long as it it consistent throughout the rig.
10. Set me free. Animators are artists and they might want to break an elbow or pull fingers to stylise the motion so don’ restrain them to what is anatomically possible unless you want them to come up with really stiff animation.
Alright, that’s it for now and as a treat for reading such a long post, check out some really cool rigging showreels and making of
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/15396945[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3265412[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5344666[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11648356[/vimeo]
Related posts:
Kaelou
ESMA
World orient Head and shoulder
Norman World Align spine
Alright, that should be enough for today. I will come back to this post an other day.
Have fun rigging!
In the next few days I will be adding some content to that post but in the meantime, check out those two great illustrations on how to direct your audience and compose your “pictures” for a better readability.
Disney/Pixar - Cars
Disney/Pixar - Incredibles
I was busy collecting some references for my shortfilm today and found some really good Disney links.
Animation Background. As the name implies, you will find a large collection of old classic Disney shorts/features and also more recent backgrounds. It is so cool to finally be able to take a close look at those beautiful watercolours.
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com
The Art of Disney Animation
http://artofdisney.canalblog.com
That one is mainly in french but you will find a lot of artwork from the house of the mouse, among them a larger collection of colour scripts from Toy Story 3 than was had been available in the past.
and 2 more links that have been around for a while but a lot of people don’t know about.
The Pixar blog
http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/
Upcoming Pixar
http://pixarplanet.com/blog/
oops I was about to forget a great resources if you intend to do some research on old Disney short films
The encyclopedia of Disney Animation shorts. A great website if you want to track a Disney director or artist.
http://www.disneyshorts.org/sitemap.html
By the way, does anyone know who was the main character designer on Jungle Book, Sword in the stone, 101 dalmatians, Robin Hood and other features sharing the same angular look? With my colleague Karim we are not able to agree on this. I am aware Milt Kahl reluctantly became character designer but I am pretty sure he was only drawing in that very characteristicstyle. For some reason Ken Anderson keeps coming back to me but I can’t find any information about it. Any idea?
Related post:
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream
I came across some Dice Tsutsumi‘s Toy Story3 color script thumbnail this week end and was blown away by his understanding of colours and lighting!!!! As rought as they are, all the information is there for the lighters to start their work. Amazing stuff. This guy is a rendering engine equipped with all the radiosity features you can dream of!
Check out the subtle nuances in the shadows, the reflected light under the chin of Buzz and Woody, the contrast between cold and warm hues.
This made me want to go back to oil painting and experiment with those things on Monday. This is only my third painting so please forgive the basic technique. I am pretty much self taught. I spent most of the time on the right shoulder, trying to get the highlight and reflected light. The model kept moving so I wasn’t able to do much work on the legs. Really enjoyable!
Related post:
Lines and colors
Sorry for the lack of update but I just came back from a great trip in beautiful Slovakia. I love Europe.
So, the results are in :
Well with the amount of work I set myself to, I didn’t expect to win but man…. to not even be featured!!! That really sucks! (Syndrome’s voice). I know my entry is not finished but still….. was it about the branding or the fact that it doesn’t …. well… that it doesn’t cycle 🙂 ? ahah yes that could be the reason.
Tyler Kakac’s disco walk was really funny and highly polished despite being a bit off topic. Disco in the early 70s? It is more like late 70s to me. Anyway he is my winner amongst all the other entries, lot of character in that cycle. Check out his showreel (not Apple handset friendly at all, remember, Flash blows up your batteries so you are not allowed to use it on your expensive device) http://tylerkakac.com/
It is nice to see Eleonor, a friend AMer, win third place with a not so customized Bishop rig. Congrat girl!
The winner is a really cool cycle too. I would have voted that one second though. He also has a nice reel! http://www.drewwiney.com/
Ah and here is the entry I sent by the way. It would have benefited from 2 more days of work but it was really difficult to find more time for it and I was really looking forward to my first holidays in 6 month.
I hope you like it and have a look at the related posts if you are interested in watching thought process, layout, blocking and changes. I won’t spend more time on it though, I have more important shots to finish. Time to get back to my short film!!!
Related posts:
Pervers Pepere – Spline 01
The walk challenge – a contest – Blocking
The walk challenge – a contest – Thought process
Here is where I am today. Only spent one hour on this. The weather was way too nice to stay home today.
I mainly worked on the windows and some detailing work. I added some basic colours and did a quick mental ray rendering just for giggles, nothing too elaborate.
The shingles will be modelled at the latest stage, I still have a major issue with the roof proportions to solve. Don Shank blueprints are very useful but the final model seems a bit different.
Click on the pic for bigger version
and here is the timelapse, 6 hours of work in 12 minutes.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11983854[/vimeo]
Related post:
Fredricksen house part 01
I just found that great showreel from Stefan Schumacher, a Swiss AAU graduate
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11009073[/vimeo]
Really, really nice stuff. What really stands out is the guy’s use of secondary action. Those character don’t only deliver their lines, they belong to a story, they are alive.
I would also recommend you to check out all the links from his links page.
http://schumacherstefan.com/?page_id=28
It’s amazing how different Norman can look in those reels…
Related post:
What is AAU?
Uta Hagen acting class and DVD
