Mustashio

This blog is for the documentation of my DIG120: Animation and Special Effects Compositing course.

[gekkochou]

My relationship with my cat. <3

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Final Video

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Project Reflection

What a whirlwind journey this has been! Although this project has not turned out how I expected it too, I gave it my best shot and I’m pretty satisfied with the end result. I never did get the hang of using After Effects but I think my Photoshop improvisation looks okay. I’m still so surprised I managed to finish this. I’ve learnt a lot about timing, movement, anatomy, colour and music but the most valuable lesson I’ve learnt is using all these elements to enhance a final production. I never knew how much physics is required in animation until finishing this project!!! However the trickiest part was marrying the music up to the images being played. Initially I was also going to animate a reflection of the dog in the water too, however, the dog is a ghost, therefore it wouldn’t have a reflection, since it isn’t actually there. If I was to re-do this project I would definitely manage my time better and refine the animation to crisp perfection.  A big Thank you to my tutor, Andrew, for encouraging me not to give up on this idea. I’m so glad I went through with it!

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Photoshop Smoke Effect

There are many methods out there for creating digital smoke. I stumbled upon this particualr method while trying to get a soft water effect. I adjusted it a ...

I’ve decided to use this method instead of the smoke effect made in After Effects.

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I didn’t know how to convert this to a youtube file, so here is a screenshot of my experimentation - It moves nicely! :)

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Problem Solving Feedback

Hi Natasha, I'm glad you've brought your technical difficulties to my attention. Given that you received an exceptionally high score for your first assignment, I did strongly feel that you were in a good position to follow through with this project. However, if it's mainly technical related problems, I can give you as much help as you need. When it comes to importing animation sequences, most of the time you want to import them into Flash or AE as a PNG sequence (with transparency). GIFs should always be avoided unless it's strictly for the web. I know what you mean also by Flash being a bit clunky to draw in - I've experienced this as well. However, it also depends on the line style you're wanting to achieve and sometimes Flash can be a great tool for this. I don't want to overwhelm you with more references, but you may just want to have a quick look at the Making of Ernest and Celestine - a French/American production that was animated entirely in Flash. There's a few clips of the animatic and line tests as well. You'll see it's actually very loose and fluid, where the animators have purposely broken up the lines that blends well with the sketched/watercolour background:https://vimeo.com/89121480 You're storyboard is actually pretty strong as well so I would encourage you to assemble an animatic without puting too much stress on yourself. Remember the animatic doesn't need to be articulately animated. It just needs to show the rough movement and timing of characters and objects of each shot with accompanying audio. If you look at the Ernest & Celestine video, you'll see that most of the animatic animation is simply motion tweened using one frame or drawing - and you can choose to do this either in Flash or AE. Because you're going down the path of 2d animation, the amount of actual compositing should be fairly minimal for your project. So you might find that some of the lectures might be irrelevant in your case. You can still composite your animation in Flash, but After Effects tends to handle larger file sized sequences so it's still recommended to use AE. AE in general just gives you much better control, especially if you just need to simply tweak colours/levels for instance. With the actual animation itself, remember you don't have to animate every single frame. Animating on 2's is the average rate but even then you can hold certain drawings for a certain number of frames - so again this might also relieve some of the pressure. Another thing you could try is to actually film yourself or a friend playing the role of the girl so that you've actually got film footage to work from and you may even choose to rotoscope parts of it rather than meticulously animate everything traditionally. I was also having a look at your blog post regarding the 'Willow Tree' video and I was curious as to how you might approach the animation of the long stems of leaves. If you've yet to give it some thought, I would recommend avoiding traditional keyframe animation for this. Instead what you could do is draw one stem isolated on a transparent background, import that into AE, apply the puppet warp tool (3 pins should be enough) and then create multiple instances of that object. Then it would be a matter of keyframing the puppet pins for each stem. I'm mainly referring to the shot where we see the dog poking through the stems of the tree. Watercolour paintings are also allowed so long as you reference them. Also may I make a suggestion to change a couple of your storyboard panels? In shot 10 where we see the girl about to throw the ball, I would actually omit this shot altogether. It actually makes little sense to be seeing her from that angle when she's right up against the tree making it awkward from the camera's position. So I would simply have the girl throw the ball in the previous side-on shot and the dog jumps and runs out of frame to the left. Also I feel as though you don't need shot #5, where we have an over the shoulder shot of the dog looking at the girl - it actually feels a bit disconnected and redundant. You could simply cut from the dog emerging through the stems to the girl looking up instead. I hope I've given you plenty of good advice and technical tips to go on Natasha. As mentioned, your first priority is to compile a good animatic to get a feel or your overall project. If you require any further clarification on any of this, please don't hesitate to keep in touch. I would love to see this project come to fruition! Kind regards, Andrew Taylor

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Updated project plan

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More Refinement Notes

-Look at slowing down the beginning of the animation to emphasis emotions. -Experiment with willow branch techniques in After-Effects. -Experiment with water reflection techniques (either in After-Effects or Flash) -Experiment with smokey techniques in After-Effects. -I will have to alter my music last as I am still unsure of the timing of the animation.

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More Feedback

Hi Natasha, That animatic is looking excellent! Make sure you post this on your blog as well. I love how you've roughly keyed in the animation of the dog - it's very well animated! The overall style is also coming together very well indeed and I can see the project coming together nicely. You could probably slow down the first few shots of the girl sitting underneath the tree and the dog approaching her. I felt this was a bit too quick so you spare a bit more time setting the scene and mood here. Also I would have the dog looking happy and then cutting to the girl looking happily surprised and chuckling. There is no set minimum duration for this project but 14 seconds is certainly fine, although given my suggestions above you could tease those shots out a bit longer. I find that when I'm animating my own projects, inevitably the animation or the shot usually ends up being longer than you originally think it is - particularly for more emotional and contemplative scenes. Also take note that you'll need to include some type of reflection for the dog as it runs across the stream. You can easily achieve this either in Flash or AE by simply duplicating and flipping the original animation and making it darker and adjusting the colour. You may even want to have a look for any quick tips for applying water-colour like effects to the reflection so that it blends more with the background. Keep going with it Natasha. This is looking great! You have some excellent drawing and animation skills as well!:) Kind regards, Andrew Taylor

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Altered a couple of the scenes. I think this timeline works better.... Music still doesn’t play for what ever reason???

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Draft Composition .... I don’t know why the sound won’t work in my MP4 conversion...

[sebastienleboeuf]

Really bad but it’s moving ! ahah 

If anyone know a good website for learning the basics i’m interested :) 

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I like this water splash effect.

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[my cg scrapbook 2012] willow tree from lilioart on Vimeo.

Done in After Effects. Love the soft movement... 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifCQYRF_c3k)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoNFREV6oXY) Smokey technique made in After Effects!

[lizoniapso2]

GuiltyGearXrd’s Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D

Alright, I must prefix that I am terrible at fighting games and not really a player of them, but I always loved the visual elements and animation in games like Guilty Gear and Blazblue. If you love animation but are not into fighting games, let me inform you that the latest Guilty Gear  Xrd Sign game on PS4 and PS3 did something incredible.  

They morphed 3D character models into 2D looking sprites, and animated them to look like 2D animation. Every character you see in the video below is a 3D character model. 

They  did this because if they were to just simply make another 2D sprite fighting game, then GG will not look that different from their other franchise, Blazblue. 

And as a fighting game, getting the animation to look exactly like 2D is not only a visual treat, but crucial to the fighting game mechanics. Expert level players rely on knowing a characters moves sets through its frame by frame animation in order to know when to counter, block, cancel and attack. If the developers messed up the animation, the game would have not functioned at all.

The video that is at the top of this post is a conference talk on how the studio achieved such amazing visual results. If you are an animator, be it a 2D or 3D animator, the conference video is amazing to watch. 

This game in a way reminded me of the Disney Short Paperman, a animated short film that blended 2D and 3D animation together to create a new visua style.

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Finalizing my storyboard! I’m overjoyed that I’ve managed to fit the story into 30 seconds! I have also decided to move the close up frame of the dog with his leaf wig AFTER she giggles - This way the scenes will flow smoother with the music.