Past Project Evaluation - Cutout Style Animation in Cinema 4D part 2

Cutout Style Animation in Cinema 4D

Once I had a vague idea about how I intended to produce the animation, I started to produce assets for my animation. Looking back, due to being unfamiliar with the software and technique, my workflow and most of the project changed when it came to this stage in the module. 

Production

Having decided on the styles which will influence my animation, I decided to attempt some of the techniques I had seen before fully committing to the animation.

Initially I chose to create a photomontage image of Angela Merkel, A main character in my animation. To gather the photos needed for each body part I chose to use the Google search option for sorting images by colour.

I chose the colour red as it appeared that there were more images for that colour.

I then compiled the photos in Adobe Photoshop and used the selection tools to cut out the parts of the images I wanted. I used varying selection tools like the magic wand tool and the standard lasso tool on various parts of the image so that I might be able to decide which method I would prefer to use for the end product.

After this test I decided that the polygonal lasso tool was the method I preferred as the clean, blunt lines made the image look as if it had been created in a traditional style. To further compliment this I used various effects such as the Oil Paint filter to give the image a more stylized look however this worked better on some images more than others.

Due to the success with the photomontage style in still images, I decided to mock up a basic animation to see how the technique would look in motion. To do this I created a basic image of a dog smoking so I could see how the style would affect the arms and their mobility. To animate this I used the timeline feature in Photoshop and created individual frames where I segmented one of the arms so that the forearm could be moved independently to the rest of the arm.

After this brief test, I realized that the some segments (for instance on the legs) would appear on the other side of where some joints were creating a more dramatic cut out look.

Above: The Fill tool technique I used demonstrated

When segmenting the imagery, often there were gaps in the imagery, for instance if the arm in this image was removed, there is a blank space behind which would be visible in some movements of the arm.

To correct this I used the Edit>Fill Tool and the Content Aware selection method which fills the selected area with materials from the content around it quickly filling in gaps in a way which is much less obvious that colouring in and much quicker than the healing brush tools.

After these tests I decided to begin asset creation, segmenting full length characters in Photoshop so that when they are imported into Cinema 4D no further editing on assets will be needed unless I have extra time and decide to add extra features to the animation.

During the production of assets, a black silhouette in the same shape as the object is required so that an alpha channel can be made in Cinema 4D. Rather than wasting time colouring and creating alpha channel imagery by hand, I chose to add a black colour overlay in layer style section of each layer. This creates an identical black silhouette and can be toggled making it ideal for quick alpha channel creation.

After creating a variety of assets for the animation, I went into Cinema 4D to begin creation on my first storyboarded scene, A man walking down a corridor.

The technique I used for the cut out style was to create textures for the assets with alpha channels and apply them to planes in the 3D environment. This way, the planes almost act in a similar way to cutout animation done with cardboard or paper. The further enhance this similarity and for ease of animation, I used the enable axis tool to change the centre of rotation on the objects. By changing the center of rotation to where the joint would be, the plane reacts in a similar way.

After this I created a null object, which would serve as a main object in which I could place the others. For creating my character I placed the plane for the hips and the torso as all other objects could be placed inside them so that everything remains together. I repeated this process for the arms (Hand>Forearm>Arm) which I placed inside the torso and for the legs (Toe>Shoe>Shin>Thigh) which I placed inside the hips. By having the torso and the hips separate, movement around the waist is easier to produce and there is less of a stiff look to the character’s animation.

The process for animation the parts works off a keyframe system and each object requires its own keyframes. The camera also works off a keyframe system but different cameras such as tracking cameras can also be used. I decided to stick to the normal camera to keep a cleaner look and to keep the sidebar organized so as not to confuse myself.

After doing this on the full figure I decided to start animating a walk cycle. However everytime I rendered or viewed in render view mode black boxes were appearing around all of the characters objects. Through trial and error I eventually found out that every time there was 2 arms or 2 legs in a scene, the objects would all black box unless one of the 2 was removed.

To work around this I simplified the animations and had the legs out of shot. After intense research I discovered that the issue was caused to the ray depth level being too low and fixed the problem by upping the level number until the problem stopped.

Scene by Scene Commentary

Scene 1

After solving this problem, I set about animating a walk cycle for the man. However after I had finished creating the walk cycle, I noticed a slight flaw when the walk cycle looped and this resulted in the character hovering along for a few frames of the scene. Due to time constraints I decided I would not have time to completely redo the walk cycle and looked for a method in which to make this flaw less obvious.

To fix this, I had the characters movement along the x axis slower in the faulty part to reduce the foot sliding. To stop this slower movement looking too strange I made the camera movement mimic the characters movement along the x axis.

Due to this error I decided I would try to add more secondary animation to the scene and added the painting in the background which has eyes following the man walking. To do this I just allowed a gap for the eyes in the alpha channel of the painting and had the two eyes appear just behind, making them easy to move and making the process less obvious in the final render.

Scene 2

After trying to follow the storyboard directly I attemped the second storyboard frame in Cinema 4D but the perspective I kept ending up with was not desirable and highlighted flaws in consistency and postioning so I chose to skip to the scene of the man knocking on the door. To fix the sudden jump of scenes in post-production I plan on having a fade to black from scene 1 to scene 2.

Scene 3

At this point in the production I decided to re arrange some of the scenes due to cutting back the length of the animation after realizing the time it would take.

So instead of having Angela Merkel snort the line after the man was in the room, I decided to have the man walk in on her snorting, cutting the time back significantly so that the animation could be completed.

This scene was simple to animate but required something else to keep it interesting if I did not have time to add the other people dancing into the scene. To compensate for this, I had a dramatic camera zoom out similar to a dolly zoom, generally used in horror films. To change the expressions and objects visible in the second part of the scene, I key framed display tags with the visibility settings on 100% for the objects that were visible and 0% on the objects that weren’t. To prevent changes in the opacity, I make sure that the display tag 1 frame before the change was the same as the display tag on the previous face to prevent transitioning opacities.

Scene 4 

Due to the limitations of cutout animation, I could not find a method which would recreate a foot sticking to carpet so I instead decided on showing a side profile of the man walking over to the desk. In the editing when all the footage is compiled, I will overlay sounds which will give the impression that the carpet is sticky without the viewer actually seeing the carpet move.

Scene 5

This scene has been changed to a different perspective for the same reason as scene 4. Originally I think I could have taken several photos of the hand rolling a joint and created a low frames per second animation in Photoshop where I could edit in the marijuana. The next step I would have taken would have been to create either a moving texture in Cinema 4D or to somehow edit the rolling animation into the scene in Adobe After Effects. Being unable to take photos from a first person perspective, I intended on browsing YouTube for footage which I could screenshot key frames from and produce the animation that way.

Scene 6, 7 and 8

The most noticeable part of the 6th storyboard frame is the smoke, which I could not find a way to create easily in Cinema 4D without using Pyrocluster, a method which I am unsure how to do without risking damaging the animation.

For the following scenes I created a basic dance sequence for Merkel which I intend to make longer once the rest of the basic scenes are completed. Hopefully towards the end of the animation I will have a technique to use for making the room appear smoky and also have dynamic lighting that enhances the strangeness of the situation. Another reason the Merkel dance is so simple is that I intend to find a way to create duplicate overlays which I can then have at a lower transparency moving around the original image. This will give the illusion that the Man character is losing consciousness and create a more psychedelic feel similar to that of the cut out artists I researched. The final scene will end as the Man slides down the wall and fades out to black giving the impression that the viewer has passed out along with the Man.

Evaluation

Having now completed the animation there are a lot of things which I would change due to poor organizational skills and conflicting work. Primarily, the main thing I would change about the finished product is the addition of sound. Due to many of the scenes in my animation being changed and condensed based around the potential use of sound, the lack of it creates a strange experience where the story is not obvious and animations do not work as well in silence.

If I was to redo this animation I would make sure that the process of building scenes had more structure so that the set has more consistency to the floor plans created in Adobe Illustrator. The creation of scenes although editable could be better as I had envisioned the animation moving along with music but I did not know how to time movements properly and could not locate music which would be fitting to the scene.

The final change I would make would be to add a lot more detail to the scenes such as additional characters which could help enhance the scene or keep the animation consistent with the script. Overall however I am happy with the process taken to create the assets for moving characters by segmenting them. Despite taking a lot of the time allocated, the segmented characters proved to be versatile and reusable as well as staying true to the cut out style’s I was emulating. One thing which I would add to the assets would be a large oversized head consisting of faces showing different expressions. This is shown to some extent in scene 3 with the Angela Merkel character changing expression as she snorts the note up her nose. A criticism of this scene is that despite using display tags to control the visibility, the changes between the first expression and the second expression still the show semitransparent transitioning frames. If I was to redo this scene, I would research a better method for making objects appear and disappear.

Overall I feel that the animation could have been a lot better than it was and I put this down to having poor organizational skills and not sticking to the guides I created. I also feel that the guides would have been better if I had revised the technique I was planning on using in Cinema 4D before writing them.

Apart from this the main thing which prevented workflow was the strange problem my animations had with ray depth in the render setting which took a significant amount of time to diagnose and fix the problem however now this will not hinder future animations.

On top of learning how to fix the ray depth problem, I also learnt various effective methods of creating alpha channels and textures which I am sure will help me with my digital work in the future. By using the photomontage technique that I did to create the assets, I have learnt the benefits of tools such as the Fill>Content Aware tool which is incredibly versatile in regards to manipulating photos and generating new content.