Resources from the industry and interacting with other professionals.
If anything good came from the quarantine, it’s that a lot of people have turned their attention to online sharing and teaching. It is due to this small silver lining that I was able to attend Saturday morning Quill sessions, online directing and storyboarding webinars and so much more! There is no substitute for learning from people directly and being able to ask questions.
♦ by Paul Barragan F, April Competition Winner!:
http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/april19/winner
The magic effect on the devil character as he swirls upwards. Reference for my baba character as she uses magic to teleport herself.
♦ by Madalin Truica, April Competition Winner!
http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/april18/winner
The way the character leans in while talking with a slight camera truck in. Reference for my boy character when he captures the baba sprite.
♦ by Watcharatep Dokmai, February Competition Winner!
http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/february18/winner
Blogs full of useful tips:
♦ http://www.timrudder.com/animationmentor/
♦ http://animationanomaly.com/
♦ http://www.animatedspirit.com/
♦ https://www.cartoonbrew.com/
♦ http://www.ricardoayasta.com/
♦ https://theanimatedfilmindustry.com/
♦ Below is a short collection of walk cycles I looked at to help create my female character’s walk cycle. The characters here, just like mine, have short legs and big heads.
♦ To break down my walk cycle even further, I consulted the blog Jacob Romeo Animation which contains a wide range of high quality walk cycles and the individual poses behind them.
♦ I found some of the animations in the reel below to be very endearing. I love how some of the characters move during dialogue and I may take inspiration from it.
♦ I loved how the forest shots were framed in the short animation “Water Lily” below. The final product creates a wonderfully alive atmosphere. Same goes with “Ori and The Blind Forest”! The character silhouettes and overall composition of the game levels are excellent.
♦ Magic Effects Reference
♦ One of the best references I found not only for animation but for designing as well, were found on the blog “Living Lines Library“. I found great resources under “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” and “Princess Mononoke“.
♦ This analysis of the animated movie “Paddington” deconstructs the main character’s journey through acting. The way the characters interact with each other always reflects Paddington’s inner development and I believe this is something I should keep in mind when animating my characters in order to achieve believability.
Mode useful acting references and deconstructions can be found on this page of Onanimation.
♦ The video below discusses the importance of how a character moves on screen and how that affects the story and emotional weight of the scene. Considering how static some of my scenes are, I will look to create subtle movement that feels and alive.
♦ In my project, the boy is the main character and focus during the first segment. He introduces us to the fantasy world he lives in, similar to the “Megamind” introduction, and it is through him that we establish what normality is relation to his environment.
We are meant to perceive him as slightly evil or manic and to achieve this type of presence, I looked for inspiration in various animation villains. From the beginning I wanted his introduction to the forest sprite to be shown from a low angle and I found the perfect reference shot for it in “Shrek Forever After” :
♦ Cruella de Vil as seen in the video above is determined, spoiled and forceful and communicates quite a lot of it through hand gestures. It is an attitude that I wish to recreate in my boy character in the first part of the animation.
♦ Random Note: I found this wonderfully wild looking 3D hair with realistic movement. Reference here: “Jam” by Dash
♦ To help me understand dialogue shots better, I looked at other movies and animations. I found great inspiration in the movie “Hotel Transylvania” and the cut scenes from the remake of “Final Fantasy VII”. In “Hotel Transylvania” dialogues often show the characters in profile, meeting in the middle of the shot. I believe it is done so because the shading is relatively flat for a 3D movie and the stylised characters have amazing silhouettes. Another thing I noticed is that some characters are often kept in held poses when they are not the focus in the scene. This seems to be done intentionally, as it contributes to building the humour and contrast with the wide, usually comedic movements that preced and follow the static moments.
♦ Another great resource I found that helped me during the animation process was this page filled with facial expressions!
Example:
Available at: http://reference.pictures/Expressions/
From there, I went on to the ArtStation page of the model where I found even more resources. The page features landscape references, character poses, light references and much more.
Available at: https://www.artstation.com/noahbradley/store
♦ Planning my project for this year proved to be a massive task, given that each time I achieved a goal, I’d want to push it further. That aside, I consider some details to be very important to the story, so I’ve looked for ways to get it all across in elegant ways.
Ere Santo’s animation. – I came across this animation on LinkedIn and loved the facial expressions so much, I saved it as reference for my animation polishing stage.
The importance of introducing characters correctly became very clear while working on the animatic for this project.
Below is a short playlist I put together of videos that helped me plan my character introductions.
Here is an idea I was working with at the beginning of the project. I wanted to highlight the fairytale nature of my narrative by creating my title sequence and introduction in the format of a story book. Below are a few examples I created in Photoshop. I ended up not using these images as I decided to take a less obvious approach. I also didn’t think the story really needed this type of introduction, as it was clear to every viewer that it is a story in the style of old children’s books.
To help me organise my animatic scenes and plan my animation, it was important to know what I was trying to achieve through this project. For that, I had to be able to boil down the description to a few words that would sum it up without losing the project’s charm. I find Chris Do’s advice on anything creative to be extremely useful and I have been following his Youtube talks and tutorials for years, always learning something important. The video above gave me great insight into the way I should be presenting my animation and overall his channel taught me how to approach the creative field as a professional.
The video below presents how shots were set up in the movie “Drive” and the logic behind them. It was interesting to learn how camera moves and framing were used to foreshadow the relationship between characters and help tell their story. Given that my project has two main characters, I found this particularly useful in helping me build my shots.
In the article “Cinematography for 3D animators” published on “Creative Blog”, 3 rules are being stressed on;
Considering the nature of my project, I looked at how established editors and filmmakers present memories, dreams and other surreal situations. Below is a great breakdown of Satoshi Kon’s editing style.
In the article “Planning Animation Cinematography and Shot Structure to
Communicate Theme and Mood” written by Kevin Kennedy and Robert E. Mercer, we can see how the different aspects of cinematography can affect the final result. Kennedy and Mercer discuss lighting, colour, camera placement, framing, shot structure. The authors go on to talk about automating cinematography techniques and that remains the focus of their paper. As automation is not one of my interests at the moment, it was the mention of “themes” that caught my eye:
“Often a director will use a certain colour symbol for the ongoing theme of a film.”
Given that the theme of conflict between tradition and modernisation is such a big part of my project, I plan to implement this technique to emphasise the struggle. My focus will be on using green tonalities in both environment and characters to tell the story of their world’s decay.
On the blog “On Animation” we can see another great tip to consider when constructing the cinematography of a film or animation:
“When animating to dialogue, we often just cut to whoever is speaking. Instead of doing this, you should make sure the camera is cutting to what’s most important, regardless of who is talking.”
Video essayist Jacob T. Swinney has an extensive collection of insightful videos on various film techniques. They can be accessed on his Vimeo profile here or on his personal website here. A few of his videos focus on analysing the first and last frames of movies from different genres which I found particularly interesting given their significance to the plot.
“The Art of Frozen” by Charles Solomon
Henry suggestions:
Consider the BFG interaction with environment. Traveling wisp maybe?
Relation with other objects that we are familiar with. Look at shots of Dobby (“Harry Potter”), Golum (“Lord of the Rings”). “Rise of the Guardians” bedroom scenes.
Think about the dollhouse effect.
https://www.sophia.org/tutorials/design-in-art-scale-and-proportion
5 Filmmaking Techniques the Coen Brothers Use for Dialog Scenes
It’s worth noting that the light and magic effects in “Onward” not only add to the emotional weight of the story but also helps clarify the characters’ internal journey to the audience. This, paired with well planned camera blurs, make even absurd elements of fantasy seem compellingly real.
Another thing that caught my eye was how the relationship between the two brothers was portrayed through cinematography. Even though they embark on the same journey together, we as the audience never question who the main character is in the story. I aim to incorporate similar techniques in my project to emphasise that what starts off as a story about a child ends up actually being the story of the forest spirit.
To add the kind of polish and liveliness I’ve seen in other animated movies, I made it a point to add compelling light to my scenes. In order to maximise my efficiency and meet the deadline, I decided to add some of the effects in post. This way, I don’t add more unnecessary render time. I found a couple of free light effect videos, but the most useful resource for this has been Pixabay.
The video above helped me understand how to finesse my shots through subtle techniques and avoid going overboard with camera angles.
Having researched ways to make my project look good, I thought it would be wise to also look into why some animated movies are considered failures to know what to avoid.
I loved watching some of the animations in the playlist below! My favourite one that I even took some inspiration from was “Life in Transition” by John R. Dilworth. The visuals reminded me of “Courage the Cowardly Dog” and the animation felt surreal.
Probably one of the first resources I found and looked at when designing my animatic, was The Art of Cinematography. The website is organised in types of shots, framing, time of day, etc and presents truly inspiring shots.
I am considering adding mist clouds at my female character’s feet.
I also considered working with Marvelous Designer for the character’s clothes but ultimately found it easier to just hard surface model them as I didn’t have complex designs. However, I am noting that Aneta V has an amazing Marvelous Designer to Maya pipeline walkthrough which can be accessed on her blog here.
I have followed many of her tutorials in the past years and learned a great deal of useful tips from those resources.
Vlada Monakhova‘s blog has a good collection of silhouettes and character unique designs which I looked at in the process of designing my own. I think they stand out beautifully and would recommend anyone to have a look at her work!
Ruxandra Gp Animation Blog 