In the third week, I continued with the layout portion of the character animation, incorporating George’s feedback, and made adjustments to the positioning of the arms and creating a better body movement pattern. Additionally, I constructed a simple restroom model, gradually perfecting the entire scene and character movements.
Jiawei's Blog
MA 3D Computer Animation
I began organising all of the literature I had discovered, taking screenshots and saving the theories and ideas that I would use in my paper. Furthermore, this week I began thinking about the titles of the chapters needed for my paper, as well as some of the content that the main chapters should cover. It was critical to ensure the paper’s logical coherence and progression, so I meticulously deliberated on the structure and content of each chapter.
During the week 12 of pre-production, I focused on two important tasks: finishing the storyboard and making a basic animatic for my story.
I went one step further than the storyboard by making an animatic. This simple but useful tool was made up of images from the storyboard that were timed to make a rough timeline of the animation. The animatic was a very important part of getting a feel for the story’s pace and flow.
In the second week, we started working on a crucial step in the animation process, creating the animation layout. This step helps to clearly visualize the animation framework, with a focus on the accuracy and aesthetics of the poses, as well as establishing the basic timing of the character animation. Building on this foundation, I improved the story based on George’s suggestions. The scene features an angry man in the restroom who suddenly stands up because of some issue, furiously pounding the wall. Unexpectedly, he hits the wall too hard, causing it to shatter. Next to him, there’s another man using the toilet, reading a newspaper, who looks bewildered as he gazes at the broken wall.
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Week 12 – About Thesis Proposal
This week, after deciding on a title, I needed to start looking for relevant books and literature. It was critical for me to finalise the framework of my entire paper, which served as the foundation for my writing. Below are some screenshots of literature that I found useful, including books and previous research studies. To proceed with my writing, I must fully understand the authoritative interpretations of the animation performance styles mentioned in my title, as well as Disney’s and Pixar’s insights into these styles.
During the 11 week, I worked on finishing the script and making sure it was strong enough to be the story’s backbone.
Project 02 is a hauntingly beautiful one-minute animation that takes place in a graveyard bathed in dark blues and silvery moonlight.
The animation shows us two ghostly figures: a pink ghost and a blue ghost. The pink ghost sees the blue ghost hiding behind an old tree among the tombstones because it gives off a soft glow. He looks like he’s carrying something. She floats over to him and asks, with a mix of curiosity and kindness, if he wants to play with her in the shadows.
But the blue ghost is full of sadness. His sad voice tells the pink ghost that his biggest dream is to be a sailor and sail the open seas in search of adventure.
Over the course of this week, I went over Nigel’s feedback on the literature review I wrote last semester. Starting with the title of my thesis, the suggestions were extremely helpful. The initial focus was primarily on researching rendering styles and techniques, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of offline and real-time rendering. However, this title was too broad and resulted in a rather dull research topic because the benefits and drawbacks of each are well understood, making it difficult to write an outstanding paper on this subject. Taking the feedback into consideration, I decided to change the focus of my paper by changing the title. I scoured Google Scholar for animation-related articles and eventually changed my title to one about the performance of animated characters. The following are the specifics of my literature search and the final confirmation of my new title.
In week 11, we started learning and practicing a new 3D animation project, focusing on character body mechanics exercises. For the first class, we need to prepare a 3D action reference. You can search online for action references, extract the animations you need, and combine them to create a complete story. Alternatively, you can act as the performer yourself, recording your own performance as a reference.
I recorded a video of myself performing the scene, which tells the story of an angry man who stands up from his chair and furiously pounds the wall. However, he hits the wall with such force that it causes him pain and makes him jump in reaction. Additionally, based on my own reference, I sketched a quick draft of the animation sequence to facilitate the upcoming animation production process.
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In Week 10, the final week of this project and the last chance to get feedback from George, I received comments mainly about the transitions between different shots and their timing. Some of them were too abrupt, not giving the audience enough time to react. For example, in the few shots where the character picks up the potion bottle, I needed to leave some time during the cuts for the audience to understand that the protagonist is going to take the bottle, and then show them taking it away before cutting to the next shot. Additionally, I’ve been preparing for the Week 1 presentation of Project 01 for the new semester. First, I completed all the modifications to my preview animation, and I also added background music to provide a better experience for the viewers of the animation.
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Week 10 – Collaborative Unit
Summary
I am thrilled that this project has been completed successfully. This is the result of the efforts and labor put in by every member of our team. Although there were difficulties and impediments along the way, the outcome is unquestionably satisfying. The final render of the animation still lacks some polish due to time constraints. In the areas that I was responsible for, such as character modelling, texturing, rigging, and animation, there are still numerous detail-related areas that can be enhanced.
The model’s overall appearance and the degree of authenticity of the character design are relatively high. As this production was created in the lowpoly style, however, there are still control issues with the style. Due to the excessively smooth of the characters, when using solid-colored textures, the lack of sufficient reflection angles during rendering caused a lack of detail in the characters, preventing them from reaching the expected level of sophistication. Due to inexperience, the material and texture renderings in the UE4 engine were slightly oversaturated. The overall tone of the characters and scenes deviated due to the omission of layered rendering, a subject that also requires additional study and adjustment.
Regarding rigging, there are few glaring concerns. However, it is essential to take special note to the wireframe’s setting. At the joints, additional rigging lines should be added to make the model’s skin weights appear more natural.
Finally, for the character animation section, this was the aspect where I spent the most time. The actions were based on the 2D layout as a reference, but when creating the 3D animation, some pose adjustments were not aesthetically pleasing, and the transitions between key poses were not natural enough, leading to a lack of overall fluidity in the actions. Although a large part of this is due to time constraints, having a proper animation production process would greatly increase efficiency. Additionally, I underestimated the time it would take to create the animations. I created about 30 seconds of character animations in total, and my initial expectation was to complete them within a week, but it ultimately took more than two weeks to finish them, which undoubtedly delayed the progress of the entire project. This is something I need to pay special attention to in the future, including when making FMP animations.
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Work In Progress Showreel
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