Doppelgangers aren't real

Hello! My name is Victor and I'm a fourth year animation student at Sheridan. I'm posting articles whilst I make my thesis film as I go through production on "Doppelganger" Check out the latest work in progress here: https://vimeo.com/198022454

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Sc03: The Introduction

This is quite an early scene I started on, and I was obsessed with the hand flick. As I animated, I thought it would be great to have him pull out the lollipop and have him “smoke”, so ideally in after effects I add smoke around him. Although I like what I did before, everytime I would see the full leica, I kept noticing the hand flick taking attention away from his face. Stephen Barnes suggested a less intense flick (also fix the silhouette of the lollipop), and Blair Kitchen suggested he slowly pushes the hat up with the lollipop to reveal the eyes. 

The hat flick idea I got from this piece https://vimeo.com/41472183 but in the end, since hes calm and smooth, his character should reflect that, so I went with the slow movement.

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bhGhost

This is a good script by Brian Horgan. While the ghosting tool is his most popular download, but I tend to use his tracker feature which attaches a small polygon to a rig control and allows ghosting so you can check the spacing. Really solid and lightweight.

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Sc40: Doppelgangers Aren’t Real

This shot was very difficult in terms of the technical hurdles. Mainly since I did the walk first, with the intention of doing a simpler shot. As a result, I had to force a blend as he turned. After some review, I decided, cinematically, the long take was more fitting for the genre, and felt more natural.

The intention of the shot is that we will see/hear the boy and principal arguing in the room, and as we pull out, we reveal the true villain of the story, the boy’s evil twin listening just outside the room. He walks away like the grand mastermind of it all, just before pulling the alarm, one last time.

Technical Challenges

There were some technical hurdles here, and this is where scene setup was important. First was deciding where to put the world, as this affects the animation massively. Turning in CG is a bit of a problem, and after several attempts, I found I had more control when I kept +Z pointing down the hall.

Not only that, leaning him against the wall means checking for collisions, the primary one being his hat. Hopefully the shadows will hide any hat collisions. As for an acting beat on the step, I think I’d like to mimic a smirk, such as Nick Wilde or this Dark Knight scene

Drawover

The hardest part, artistically, was getting appeal from both the walk, and the turn. The key beats were as follows:

Camera shows Principal and Kid arguing through frosted glass

Camera reveals the evil twin with a juicebox in hand

Throws Juicebox on the ground (littering)

Snickers, smiles, smirks

As he turns and walks away, we’ll see a GREEN lollipop (the same one the principal used as evidence)

Walks to the end of the (smoky) hall

Pulls the alarm

Blair once again helped with a drawover, and said a lingering lollipop is a lot more readable. The rest of the challenge became blending into the walk cycle. I’m satisfied with how it looks, but perhaps the limitations of the rig, or for whatever reason I couldn’t get a convincing forward lean without having the villian look old and frail.

Probably the hardest or second hardest shot, but the camera work was also quite a bit of a challenge. I think the key was making sure the rotations and translates go together, instead of isolated. I recommend JoshCam, this shot is the only one that uses the rig.

What I Learned

Do the animation start to finish, doing something to connect with, in this case the walk cycle was fairly brutal 

I spent a lot of time in previs with a “dummy” walk and frankly that was all scrapped anyway so I wasted time doing camera animation

I thought it was gonna be a good idea to do the walk frame by frame, and that would have been a disaster. I did do a few steps but 500+ frames of that, hell no.

Originally had the world at the side of the wall, making it hard to determine the characters middle, this was a mistake. Point the +Z axis to the main direction of movement.

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Sc39: Cmon, kid

Blocked out this scene a little while ago, might change his expression to more “Are you serious”, perhaps like those skeptical memes I see floating around. As for the book animation, the boards had him place the book on top of the other stack, but it felt a bit too busy and I think we might lose the expression and watch the big body move instead.

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My Workspace

I wanted to talk a bit about my workspace that I tend to have open when I animate, and a bit about my shortcuts. I will do a post a bit later on workflow for a typical scene.

Windows

I tend to keep my workspace clean, and having a secondary display is a must. On my secondary I keep my reference file in an orthogonal view on Viewport 2.0 so it can go frame by frame. I put all my other viewports into High Quality Viewport as it will playback much faster and so I don’t have to playblast as much. I keep my shotcam open at all times, as well as the graph editor, for really pesky fixes. Things like grabbing many controls, or using a bit of math in the value text box in the graph editor helps me see what I’m doing. I also blocked in stepped, so I can see the “curve” of the graph as the values change and I can see smooth transitions.

In addition I tend to have my leica/story reel open too to match composition and acting beats. When I installed Keyframe MP, they had a maya add on that allowed you to sync any video file to your timeline, so I was able to match timing more accurately.

Shelf

I actually have two shelves, one at the top for commonly used Maya Shelf commands, and a lower one which is essentially a color-coded picker.

My shelf at the top are some scripts I’ve have written myself, a rotate, translate and scale reset button, which I use constantly. I have a pick10 and pick30 script that allows me to determine the sensitivity of how close I am to picking a control/handle, having the number very large allows me to be far, and very tiny when I’m somewhat closer in the viewport.

Near the middle I have a “CURVES” button which is specifically written for Malcolm, which toggles the visibility of his minor controls. At the end are the tools I use the most and thats just a mirror picker, which allows me to pick the mirror control without having to search/add to my current selection. Just a quicker way to pick tools.

ATools Animation ToolBar

aTools select sets have changed my life. Its the tool I use the most and the best part is that it will save with your maya files. I tent to use the same controls for most scenes, and I create brow/mouth controls so I can slide around lip sync. Having an ALL button so that I can shift timing has been a huge time saver, and the color coding allows me to group controls for easier selection. The minor increment tool I use from time to time, as well as the Pivot control which is also handy. Atools is a little bit broken in 2016.5, but the tools I do use it for has sped up my workflow.

On top of this I’ve been using Andrew Silke’s hotkeys that he used at Weta Digital, and I’ve gotten used to some commands, such as isolate select, skeleton view, deselect, as well as the new marking menus which allows me to add/show cameras, controls, joints, locators fairly quickly. I’ve created a better next key for maya, thinking about releasing that to the public as I cannot live without it anymore.

TweenMachine

Finally, the only floating tool I have is TweenMachine, its the quickest way to block inbetween poses, its probably the first plugin I’ve ever installed. I don’t need to get into it too much as its such a basic tool, but look into it and install it. You click a button and it mathematically figures out the values for the “inbetween value”. I’ve modified the stylesheet to create bigger buttons.

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Sc38 Pleading the Case

Here in this scene is the ending to the chalkboard gag, he’ll be on a step ladder and the walls will be filled with his writing, “dopplegangers aren’t real”

The shot is quite far so I included a close up, it won’t look like that in the final.

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Sc37: The Newspaper

As the kid fills up the boards, we cut back to the principal reading the newspaper, then subsequently doing long activities, implying hes sticking around for the boy’s detention. The posture reminded me of Seinfeld:

I had to rig this newspaper. And by newspaper, I mean two polygons with bend deformers. Its a short 18 frame scene and it looks okay when I cut it together. Maybe I’ll hold the starting pose another 8 frames.

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Sc24: The Upper Hand Chuckle

The principal just slapped down some crucial evidence, and now has the upper hand. Might cut off the expression change, as he hears the juice slurping from the boy, to encourage the cut to go back to the boy. After this the boy looks at the evidence and sees the truth.

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Sc25: The Final piece of Evidence

Getting close to the final shots, probably the last long dialogue scene in my film. I purposely kept the hands offscreen to avoid any finger animation, and in retrospect I ended up having to animate body movements the audience cannot see, which might have been harder. Hopefully the arm shoulder movement and SFX can be clear enough for the audience to realize what hes doing. I had Blair look it over again to help with some body accents. The other key thing I forgot to focus on was a better silhouette, keeping the paper separate from the body. I added the “hard drink” type of acting which was different from the boards. As for the CG animation I was overanimating the body and kept most of his upper body still with some slightl Y translates and rotates, and let the head & shoulders do most of the accents.

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Sc36: The Chalkboard Gag

I stole this gag right from the simpsons opening song sequence, I admit it right away when I’m accused. 

The gag is as we cut back to the kid, the boards get more and more filled up, implying the passage of time; an idea I got from Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

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Sc23: The Evidence

Still chugging along with this one, probably my longest dialogue scene. I’ve gotten feedback about the boy’s anim and might adjust the pose for the second and third expression changes, more like Surprised > Annoyed > Bored should be the emotional progression.

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Sc33: I want those boards COVERED

Worked on this little scene tonight, just pure reference of myself for this one. It cuts off at “covered” on purpose according to the leica.

I kept the right arm in FK and the left arm in IK. I recently discovered a way to switch spaces of the arms to World or Body, as my AnimPicker isn’t scaling well. Space switching is extremely helpful and I recommend putting that into your rigs if you are developing one, its very handy for animators.

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Sc40 The Big Combo Ending

This scene I haven’t officially started, but I’ve redone the previz, after finding a decent camera rig called JoshCam.

Animating cameras is always a hassle and this rig actually simplified the process. I’ve uploaded audio as well, as the clip is literally a walk cycle, but it’ll feel better when the voices overlay with each other. I had to extend the scene by another 4-5 seconds, as the walk was way too fast.

I also wanted to mimic the ending of The Big Combo, hopefully I can add fog as the villian gets away with his crime, once again.

The ending is lifted from The Silence of the Lambs, even the scratch track is Hannibal’s haunting walk to his next victim.

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Sc35: ALL OF THEM

I worked on  this for about two days, the first of which I scrapped. The camera work was meant to be dramatic and I was keying his arms in IK for some reason and I was counter animating too much. Kept his arms in FK for a lot less clean up later.

References

My references scenes were cloudy, although that pose is more or less a moving hold, which I think I’ll try to mimic, the bent arms aren’t working so well for me.

I also looked at Jafar laughng manically, looks great with the lighting changes

And of course Maximus from Gladiator, where he twists and turns slightly

Lastly, for comic effect I’m going to add thunder SFX and POSSIBLY lightning to mimic this scene from Emperor’s New Groove, its just one pose

Drawover

Keenan Goncalves drew over and made my pose more appealing, specifically with keeping his face more into the frame, was quite helpful.

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Sc22 Frame Render

Here’s a rendered frame of my film. As you can see... I know nothing about lighting. I subscribed to Andrew Silke’s Create3DCharacters.com which has a ton of technical info on a variety of Maya topics in really short video clips. I mean like he’ll discuss a topic for a minute and its very specific so its not a lot to invest time-wise. I’ll do a post on this site later on, as so far I’ve used it heavily for its workflow and modelling techniques, and eventually to rendering and surfacing but its quite useful for only 10$ a month.

I will be rendering this short in Mental Ray, and hopefully have some color shifts during the short.

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Sc 15: The Flashback II

Studies

This scene took quite a bit of time, all due to the fact that I underestimated run cycles. I studied a few scenes, specifically Rabbit of Seville’s run cycles

These cycles are all on 1s, and they have around 4 poses if you go frame by frame. I also looked at Homer Simpson running to the bathroom at the Twin Towers.

Drawover Fixes

My attempt at drawovers is below, and you can see I wanted more bounce/desperation, versus my realistic reference run.

After a few tries, I wasn’t getting anywhere so I showed Blair Kitchen, an animation instructor/story artist extraordinaire. You can really see the difference in the entertainment value, and he pointed out that the Simpson’s run was funny because Homer really had to go, and was bouncing around in one spot, which he incorporated in the drawings. I had to add quite a few frames to let the poses breathe, but I’m happy with the outcome. You need about 8 frames to read an expression, and just having him dance adds to the humor. Keeping his head in generally the same position makes it easier for the audience for follow, even though his legs are going crazy, you can see his face still.

Note: I did have to move the world control a few times, even mid animation to simplifying the graph editor a bit later, based on Allen Osteger’s post, which is aligning your world control to match the general direction of the movement. If you look through my scene, he does a few turns, from landing and running to the bathroom, leaving the bathroom, then turning back in. He’s also constrained to the chair for a while too. Turning directions in CG is a bit of a nightmare.

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Sc15: The Flashback

This is the hardest shot in the film, still blocked out, there’s hardly any finger animation. I’m happy with it, I had to restart the “it wasn’t me” line a few times. The rig is good, but the spine controls I’m really having problems with, constantly fighting it. The back of the eyelids poke through when he does a wide expression so that’s a problem to fix near the end.

When he gets “punched” in the stomach, I wanted that to trigger the expression change, but I like how it is now. For reference, I looked at Tangled, he gets stabbed and his shoulders go up and his upper body rolls forward.

When he says “I really had to go” I tried to match up the expression with Dumb and Dumber, when Harry’s stomach makes noises and he goes from joy to concerned:

Here’s some pose ideas that I was wrestling with.

The shot is getting there!