Rounding up Week 3

Week 3 is done and dusted. Things are going pretty swell so far. It is really amazing to me how helpful everyone on and off campus has been. I've never felt this kind of camaraderie before in my education, nor have I ever been this excited to actually learn. I just want to soak in the knowledge of my talented peers, mentors and all the extra learning material. I wish my entire past education had been this engaging.

First off here is the final 'excitement' Stu pose:

He hasn't changed much from the work in progress I uploaded last week. After some critiques I pushed his knee forward to get that sense of forward pressure and rotated his fists so they didn't appear orthogonal. One lesson from this week: Always good to be able to see some perspective of the figure throughout, rather than having them appear 2D and flat to the screen.

Next up, our first animation assignment for the quarter. The good ol' bouncing ball. For those wondering 'Why are you paying thousands of dollars to learn how to animate balls?', here is a handy TED-Ed talk that summarises the necessary animation principles that are spacing and timing:

So with all that out of the way. Ball bounce #1:


ball bounce 01 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Ray seemed pleased with it. Just need to do a revision of it with more of a roll back before it settles.

Kentucky Route Zero is Dreamy

It's not often that a game has confused me so much that it's made me want to play more, or at the very least made me not want to quit in puzzled frustration. I read somewhere playing KRZ is like having a dream re-told to you by a loved one: You're either immediately intrigued by the haphazard string of developments and their possible meaning, or you eventually realise you're utterly bored of their nonsensical drivel. I find the most interesting dreams often start off grounded and comprehensible before carefully growing in layered perplexity. This is precisely what KRZ evokes and so it's difficult to pinpoint why I spent 2.5 hours playing through it's ultimately bewildering 2 acts. 

I'm not too fond of the term 'non-game', but for lack of a better one I'll use it here. KRZ is not so much mechanically driven by a set of rules and goals, as it is by self expression. Yes, there are objectives. You of course must reach point A to get to B in order to get to C (and during one area in Act 2, every other jumbled combination of that rings true). Most interactions involve either looking at things or choosing dialogue options, which are superbly written and therefore rightly act as the catalyst for want of more play as the plot unravels.

Dialogue is not always the engineer of the game's progression, more often: it allows you to act as co-director as you narrate what transpires on-screen. In one scene you are introduced to a new character as she is speaking on the phone. You choose the responses for her after each inaudible bark on the other side of the phone. Depending on how you choose to respond the call can either be made out to be an understanding conversation with a loved one or a curt exchange between two frustrated people, or anywhere in-between. Another example at the very start: you are always in the company of a dog wearing a straw hat, when queried about this dog by another you choose via dialogue what your relationship with the dog is. It all sounds a little frivolous, but your responses undeniably shape how you perceive and interact with these characters through the rest of the game.

There's no way you can die either, which I suppose is another dream-like pillar of the game. You are always in control. More like a lucid dream then, that inevitably keeps unfurling as you dive deeper. Unfortunately it does end though. There are still 3 acts to go and there's been no word from the developers for a year.

Going on about it seems pointless. KRZ is something that just is. It's quite abstract and unlike anything I've played with before. It stupefying, for all the right reasons. As for whatever those reasons may be exactly, I'm not so sure. If you can, just play it.

Week 3 - Excitement

Week 3's assignments will involve our first ball bounce, but I'll start it off with a pose. This week's pose is based around the theme 'excitement'. Funnily enough google imaging for 'excitement'/'excitement pose' results in many previous AM student's work. Needless to say, it was pretty damn hard to think up original/unique poses that hadn't been done before. This week I'm trying to simplify my thumb-nailing style to get my ideas on paper quickly. Both mentor and myself noted that last week's sketches probably took more effort than they were worth.

For now, I've chosen the bottom right pose. I wanted to tackle the theme without resorting to a gleeful fist-airborne fist pump. Here's a first attempt at it (no doubt will need tweaking):

Here is a previous attempt at another pose, which I may choose instead. It feels more 'exciting' I 'spose but I do like the above pose's clear line of action better.

I shall put it to a vote I think!

Week 2 Pose Revision

After getting some really helpful feedback from other students I made a few changes to Stu. Here's the old pose:

And here's the new pose:

The bent arm is brought closer to the body which feels much more natural and enhanced the silhouette. The shoulders are on a sharper angle and the body and arm are closer together, which I think enhance the idea that all the weight is really on his arm. It's amazing how simply having the thumb appear over and to the side of the box makes the pose read that much better. His right foot is rotated a little more to the right so his entire foot is a little more visible.

We'll see what mentor Ray says about it soon, perhaps there are even more great changes I could make that I'm oblivious to.

Week 2 - Posing & Principles

This Thursday's Q&A was all about the 12 principles of animation, the original 'rules' the old Disney animators swore by and that every animator still swears by today. Some examples for the plebes: Squash and Stretch (the change of volume in reaction to force, e.g the squash of a ball as it makes full contact with the ground before it bounces back up and returns to form); Anticipation (the action before the action, e.g the pulling back before the punch); and Arcs (almost everything moves in an arc, arcs are visually pleasing!). Not all rules necessarily apply to every scene, nor do the principles have to be followed to the T. But you have to know the rules in order to break the rules (effectively).

The assignment this week was to go out and observe people in interesting poses and draw them. Then we pick our favourite sketch and use our trusty 'Stu' rig to pose it in 3D. However a 43 degree heatwave doesn't make this an easy task, so I sketched poses off of references instead. Here are the results:

I realise my sketches are far more detailed than they have to be. I actually find it hard to simplify and hold back the detail. Preferably I'd like to be sketching out twice or three times as many poses in less time with very simplistic, but effective gesture drawings. It is the gesture of the figure that is most important, so I will try to experiment with quicker drawing styles in the coming weeks.

The final rendered pose: (I went a little overboard while messing with mental ray renderer.)

I'm hoping it effectively communicates Stu's emotion. It's slightly different to the sketch to give him a more 'bored' look. I referenced myself for this pose and could really feel the strain on the pushed out hip so I pushed it out as far as possible while still trying to maintain the character's balance and line of action.

Meet and Greet - and One Day...

Meet & Greet

Today's Q&A was strictly social, but it was good times. We met our mentor, learnt more about what to expect, about his history and we all talked about what inspired us to want to become Animators. Talking to strangers across the world via webcam will definitely take some getting used to though.

So the real work will start next week. In the mean time, for periods when the blog gets quiet, I'll make a post entitled 'One Day...' where I'll link to another animator's show reel or work that really inspires me.

I thought it'd make sense to start off with the person who helped re-animate (eh eh) my interests in the art. He's Animation Director at Ubisoft Toronto and has worked on the original Assassin's Creed and most recently Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Here's his 2010 reel.



Kristjan Zadziuk - Animation Showreel 2010 from Kristjan Zadziuk on Vimeo.

The Beginning

"I hear of tons of people say they want to get into animation, but in fairness there is nothing stopping anyone that wants it."

For some reason it took 9 years and this stupidly simple statement an Ubisoft animation director told me to get my arse into gear. Animation has always been in my periphery (ever since I was 14 and did a talk about it at school), but through the years I've dabbled in other interests, losing sight of what once was.

I'll be starting a year long fundamentals class @ Animation Mentor in the next couple of days. My mentor this term will be Ray Chase, an animator who's worked on Jimmy Neutron, Ninja Turtles and Ice Age to name only a few titles. 

This blog has been around for awhile, but it will be updated regularly from now on. I'll be updating it with projects and things I've learnt during my time at AM and beyond. The aim is to document my processes from planning, to blocking to final. Any other written pieces about games or other art tidbits will be making appearances too.

To start off this journey, below are a couple of very short, basic animations tests. A ball bounce and a one legged hop. (Even simple stuff like this takes a scary amount of time to complete).  It'll be interesting to see how these compare to the material i'll be producing over the next 12 weeks in my animation basics class.

OneLegHop from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

BallBounce from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

For now, adios.