Evaluation
This semester, I was tasked with creating a showreel comprising of several sequences which explore how a character can convey moods, thoughts, feelings, emotions and personality through gestures and movement. We were asked to look at how much could be said without words. We learn from a young age to interpret what people are feeling or saying purely through their movements, facial gestures, and posture. For example, If a person is sitting, shoulders hunched over, head bowed, and facial expression blank – this conveys that they are either dead tired, beaten down or sad. If they straighten up, look up in an alert way and tap their feet in an upbeat rhythm – then we understand that they are happy and present now. Some of the suggested performance areas were comedy, slapstick, dance, acrobatics or martial arts. I decided to explore curiosity, dance, comedy, boredom and slapstick.
Once I decided on this, I started designing my character. I started by drawing some character design sketches in my sketchbook. I mostly drew by instinct, channelling the specific feeling I wanted to convey in the character. I took most inspiration for the character’s personality from my innocent and somewhat dim-witted ragdoll cat Muffin. I further developed this innocent yet animalistic personality in my first animation test with a blank armature. My only regret is that I was very busy juggling two different modules at this time, so I could not experiment with and develop the character and their design as deeply as I wanted to.
For the first animation test (and the other five animations I would make later), I didn’t come into many problems filming and animating. I had previously worked with Dragonframe and the Stop Motion iOS app in previous modules, so I had no issue using them. Unfortunately, I had been locked out of my computer for the day, so I improvised with a phone tripod in my bag and the stop motion app to animate instead.
For the head of my character, I was undecided on many of the details of the face for a long time. I knew I wanted a tall, lanky character with a vague animal-like pointed head/snout, but I wasn’t sure on other features such as, in particular, the eyes. I liked the look of the shiny yet black-coloured eyes, yet I didn’t know how they'd be constructed (i.e. if they should be on the head or on stalks etc.). I made several maquettes made of Gallery putty and later plasticine. I experimented with different eye shapes and designs until I was happy with the final horned, pointy, blue-eyed design.
Once I finalised the design, I made a wooden base, sculpted Fimo clay around it, and then fired it in my oven. One issue I had was sculpting the horns; this was frustrating at first, as some of the mass felt bumpy and uneven. I kept smoothing out parts and added more clay in other areas where needed, re-doing several times before satisfied. I'm glad I made the plasticine maquette before moving on to the actual sculpt - this gave a good reference from which to work.used too much pressure at first and chipped the right ear off. Luckily, I was able to reattach it with two-part epoxy glue. In future, I will be more careful when I sand intricate parts of a build like this.
While picking out fabric for the costume, I wasn’t satisfied with the swatches available in the fab lab. I made a shirt from the linin there but didn’t find a suitable fabric for the pants colour-wise. So I got fabrics from other sources. In the end, I sourced some corduroy fabric squares with my own money.
After this, I continued on the costume by making the parts for the shirt. While marking the shirt for cutting and sewing, I used a blue marker. Unfortunately, the ink bled through to the reverse side of the fabric - so I stitched a star shape over this area so it would not be distracting while filming. Next time I will use a fabric pen or chalk.
While sewing the shirt parts together, I used the wheel on the side of the machine manually to sew. Not only because the electric pedal was too sensitive and went way too fast at even the slightest pressure, but also sewing such a small garment meant it was better to use the machines hand wheel rather than the pedal as this gave more control when stitching.
With the sleeves and torso done, I decided to sew the arm holes and shoulder holes together by hand. A sewing mauver such as this would be problematic if attempted on an electric sewing machine. To make sure I didn’t accidentally stitch the hole shut, I put a sculpting tool through the shoulder and arm holes to keep both sides separate.
Making the pants was harder as I worked on them at home and had no school armature on hand to reference. But I had some measurements sent to me via email from a tutor, so I worked off these to make some pants. I later adjusted the measurements on the crotch of the pants, as it was too narrow on the original pattern. If I could go back and make them again, I would make them less skinny and more baggy, as the final pants were a tight fit that was hard to get on the bulky foam armature at first.
I made my first proper performance animation with my fully costumed stop-motion armature on Friday, the 2nd of December. I had previously been busy with other modules and hadn’t dedicated as much time to performance and character. So I hadn’t really planned out what I wanted to do for this first animation. As a result, I somewhat made up the actions as I went along. My idea was to have the puppet go up to their camera and sniff it like a cat. The camera, however, was too far from the table. So I instead had the puppet paw at the lens with its hand. When I go to make another one of these, I will try to draw up a rough storyboard or sketch to work from. I also went overlength slightly. In my install proposal, I outlined how I would make my animations 10 to 15 seconds or so. However, when I showed this animation to my tutor, he said it was fine
There was one moment in the animation where the creature initially puts its paw up and sort of gently scratches at the screen. When I initially animated that part and played it back in dragonframe, I noticed there was a part between the puppet putting its paw up and scratching at the screen where the paw held in place for a second. In my mind, it gave the impression that the creature was pre-meditating on this act of scratching at the screen. Which I thought would be out of character for it. It’s more of an animalistic character, not quite thinking things through before acting. So I deleted this part.
Although not perfect for fully conveying the personality of the character, who I might name Neph, after the biblical creatures the Nephilim, I am proud of this first attempt.
For the second animation, I made a rough storyboard and made it significantly shorter. I made sure from now on, each animation covered something different such as a dance or slapstick scene. I liked how this animation turned out. though, I wish for the last reaction I had, Neph stay in a more splayed-out position rather than making him go upright on his hands.
For the third animation, I made Neph dance. I didn't want to go with a more conventional dance as I felt this would feel rather generic and not feel authentic to Neph's personality. So I decided to reference this spinning dance Gorillas sometimes do as a form of play or expression of happiness. I must say, this is my favourite animation I've done for the project. Not only is the dance itself well animated, especially the twirling part, but I felt it's the first animation to truly capture what I was going for with Neph's personality. Being an animalistic yet naive and free-spirited creature.
For the fourth animation, I planned out an idea where Neph would jump into a box and get stuck in it. For this, I created a specific box for Neph to fit in. For certain sequences, like the part where Neph is under the box, the box wasn't short enough for the legs and hands to show through, so I had to get creative and find objects to place on top of Neph to elevate the box. Such as a pencil sharpener.
This animation was the simplest of all in terms of both animation and content: a slapstick short where the bug from the second animation returns and climbs on top of Neph, and Neph tries to hit it off, only to hit themselves in the face. For this last animation, for the first seconds of Neph wagging their feet back and forth, I decided not to loop the animation like I did with the previous opening "idol" animations, like the hand flapping in the first film or the sort of meditative hand waving in the second. This made the animation look more organic and made loops of the movement less jarring, and I'm proud of how it came out.
Once all these were done, I edited them all together onto a showreel I am overall proud of the work I was able to produce with this module. I learned many valuable skills, such as how to make clothes and heads for a professional stop-motion armature and how to convey personality and emotion through characters. If I did anything differently, I would dedicate more time to experimenting with and fleshing out the Character's personality from the beginning early on. I would also want to move away from the more slapstick gags present in most of the films and focus more on small character moments, like the dance sequence, which I felt was a better representation of my character and their personality.