Cutout animation evaluation

Cutout animation attempt 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 learn the benefits of tools such as the Fill>Content Aware tool which is incredibly versatile in regards to manipulating photos and generating new content.

End of Year 1 Evaluation

End of Year Evaluation

Having completed my first year at Newcastle College doing an FdA in Animation and Illustration I have done several modules to help further my development in many forms of media.

Joining the course a few weeks into the first module, I learnt the 12 basic principles of animation introduced through Disney’s book the illusion of life. I had previously come across these techniques while researching animation techniques myself, although I think actually having the time to practice these techniques, even briefly, helped me understand the way 2D animation works.

Shortly after this project, I was set a task to produce a loop for the LoopdeLoop website’s brief of Hallucination. Feeling behind on work and missing information from the first few weeks, I asked other class members for help learning about things such as walk cycles and the hallucination project which helped significantly with my design process.  To begin with I spent a lot of time storyboarding ideas on one piece of paper as this method of planning helped me visualise how the animation would move without having to commit to other methods which I did not yet know. Despite the overall speed of this method, many of my ideas contained excessive frames for little movement and demanded more detail although most designs were not aesthetically pleasing and would not make sense on their own visually and required annotation.

While I was creating the animation I felt pressed for time and the actual style and feel of the animation is significantly lacking as I didn’t do any research into particular animation styles or artists. By not researching artists or the techniques previously, the animation is quite sketchy and in the time available I could have created something significantly more stylised.

The next module was how to approach the sequential imaging side of animation and helped me to understand a lot about how the original idea will be changed significantly in these stages. The idea I originally wanted to pursue ended up being rejected in favour of another idea after I created rough storyboards, helping me to realise all the flaws in my concept. During this phase I also learnt how to use Adobe Illustrator to a greater advantage compared to previous experiences. During my free time I also experimented with Illustrator more and it has since become one of my favoured creative tools.

This module I felt went well and I was happy with the assets I produced for the storyboards and the process itself moving from concept to script, through a character design stage and then creating the storyboards. If I was doing this project again for a company, I would produce a few variations of scenes in the storyboard so that peer review can decide which scenes best help represent the idea to help create the most concrete representation of my idea.

The next project I participated in was the production of a short animation displaying my attempts at pseudo 3D animation (a technique replicating traditional cut-out animation in a 3D software) in Maxon Cinema 4D. While I enjoyed the conceptual stages and the experience of using new software, the style of animation did not particularly interest me and I feel that my ideas were overly ambitious to try and improve my enjoyment of the module.

Whilst creating the animation, I encountered numerous problems not only with the software at home but also at college effectively crippling my workflow and halting all of my progress. Initially I tried to work around the problem but the progress that was made was of poor quality and deterred me from the work significantly. Eventually I managed to locate a solution to the problem but this a day or two before the deadline and I effectively failed at this project.

From this experience I learnt that I should research in advance the software and trial it myself so that any of these issue could be resolved in a less important time. On the positive side I learnt about many useful tools and settings such as cartoon shaders in Cinema 4D that will help shape several future ideas and the excessive repetition has made me familiar with the software and how I like to work in it.

Throughout the course, I believe that this stage was the hardest but has helped me consider my workflow in a more critical light forcing me to become more organised in regards to work layout in software, folder management and time management. Despite this improvement, in my free time I hope to create a more rigid work pattern, maybe creating a premade template for my research and development work or set stages on how I will approach the production in the future.

Following this project, I started work on modelling and rigging a character in Cinema 4D. Following my newfound organisational methods for this software, I found the production and basic rigging of the character surprisingly simple only struggling with complex sections such as the foot roll sliders which were produced using the Xpresso Tag which I had researched before I had started 3D modelling.

Overall, I have found the year highly education and enjoyable helping me consider my future a lot more. Next year I intend on working heavily with 3D software as the versatility of the medium and its frequent occurrence in the art world makes me sure that it will still be used and evolve through the years I will hopefully be functioning in the industry. One of the things I have enjoyed the most about the course was the way I was taken out of my comfort zone and learnt to experience software at my own pace depending on what I was interested in and what was I wanted to make relevant to my project. As I progressed through the year I made huge changes to the way that I approach organisation and eventually I hope to be able to balance work projects with recreational projects and free time. 

Character Design Evaluation

Character Design Evaluation

Now that I have created the turnarounds for my character I have time to be retrospective about my work. I feel that the creation of my work in this module has been sub-par and I believe this is down to rushing my work and misunderstanding the brief due to this. However in a positive way I believe I have increased my adaptability under stress and despite being unorganised I have advanced significantly since the last module.

In regards to the character building work and pre production work I am happy with the level of detail I attained writing the script and also planning out the visuals of the animation. If I were to re do this I would consider focussing on this aspect even more as I feel like this is one of the stronger points of my work and if I improved further I could develop this skill into something which overall would help not only my animation production but also my time management which still manages to hinder me despite my marginal success.

With the skills learnt producing the character turnarounds I had already experienced these techniques and in hindsight I would have liked to tackle different techniques that will force me to try more new things. This confusion was brought about when I was trying to create accurate turnarounds that were consistent. As much as I know consistency is key in animation the visualisation for my characters was very different in my head. To even consider producing turnarounds in the way I knew I had to reconstruct my character and I have ended up producing a character I am not satisfied with and changing my idea on my whole concept.

This being said I have learnt how to organise my work better so if I were working in a group it would be easily readable and make the production process easier as a whole. With the animation being constructed using photos I also learnt several Photoshop skills that are applicable in image manipulation rather than construction, a skill that broadens my prospects in potential jobs due to its vast use in creative industries. 

Alternative Techniques Evaluation

Alternative Techniques Evaluation

Having experimented with various techniques and aesthetics I have come to several realisations about the animation I was originally going to pursue.

First of all I have changed my mind on the photomontage style aesthetic as I feel that the use of photos was time consuming and limited my progression in art styles, which I feel I need more work. Rather than practising techniques that allowed me to have more creative expression I spent most of the time searching for the correct imagery to use in my animation. This problem could probably have been remedied easily by photographing my own assets but this is still limited to the equipment I have available and the things available to photograph.

Despite the negativity towards the technique I still feel that I have learnt valuable lessons about photomontage creation and using Adobe After Effects to create basic animations. Due to its interface and layout After Effects does not appeal to me and I think I would only use it for cut out animations, compiling footage and more corporate animations.

Since doing the Cinema 4D refresher I have re-familiarised myself with working in a 3D environment. Experimenting with this software recently has allowed me to realise its capabilities in emulating 2D visual effects. This can either be by creating scenes in a 3D environment and using them as reference in 2D software so that the proportions and perspective are correct or merely applying correct textures and making the 3D image appear 2D.

My new experiences with using stop motion animation techniques have proven very useful and have interested me greatly. Given the opportunity I would like to familiarise myself with these skills more in the future. Using the time lapse to create the cigarette rolling pixilation animation has helped me realise that using techniques such as this one can apply to 3D and 2D animation in a similar way to how the principles of animation (squash and stretch etc.) apply to other forms of animations. In the pixilation animation the translatable skill was the removal of in between frames helping to create a jerkier movement.

Overall this module has been an eye opening experience on how my workflow should change when working with new techniques and how my style of animation should change according to the medium I am using. I feel like this module has been one of my most organised in regards to producing work to a deadline and achieving personal goals, allowing me to create and work on other projects simultaneously as I follow working to a brief. By experimenting with new techniques I now have a much broader range of tools and by having these options I think that formulating ideas will be far less limited in scope helping me evolve to task which I had previously considered incredibly difficult.

Low Poly Wolf Evaluation

Low Poly Wolf Evaluation

Throughout this module I have had a variety of successes and failures all contributing to my learning process as a whole. To begin with I envisioned my idea as a psychedelic mixed media animation, encompassing both 2D and 3D elements. I was heavily inspired from music videos and animations I had found online and found the metamorphosis techniques used admirable. Pre conceptualisation I had considered creating a 2D animation that showcased a variety of metamorphoses based around a natural psychedelic theme.

With my work process it is not uncommon to have a very large quantity of storyboards and scripts. For most people they are unreadable as for me they serve a purpose similar to thinking out loud or brainstorming. As I was trying a more practical method rather than my usual experimental practices I decided that I would only use 1 basic storyboard and use Cinema 4D as the experimental notepad for potential animation ideas. Doing this (although slightly inhibiting my creative flow) allowed me to quickly familiarise myself with the software and let me know which tools I had not used before. Not only did this help me discover the unknown but it also helped me document the process in a more organised way.

In order to organise my work in a more effective way, I took a screenshot of every key stage in the production and pasted all of the screenshots in Adobe Photoshop. The screenshots automatically form their own layer so I can see the production process I used and also have screenshots to use as production data for the development file.

I realised that rather that use 2D animation, I could have a much greater level of success using Cinema 4D as my confidence in my 2D abilities is currently limited at best.  By choosing to use 3D instead of 2D animation I had to approach character movement in a very different way. This would allow me to learn and experiment with a variety of deformers and effects in Cinema 4D I wouldn’t conventionally use in character creation.

Aware of my 3D skills and the lack of experience with realism, I decided to adapt my concept into a highly stylised method that ended up being the low polygon art style. After choosing low polygon work I wanted to ensure that there was a level of consistent style through assets, basic but not so basic that it would hinder many animation and transformation concepts.

Despite my lack of active experimentation with art styles in the module I decided that although a more minimal aesthetic would appear more striking, the animation process in Cinema 4D would be uninformative and extremely limited.

With a severe lack of polygons, all complicated metamorphosis movements would be impossible to animate smoothly and instead would look as if little work had gone into the production.

In order for my this module to have been a personal success I would have had to advance my skills as a 3D artist, have refined my concept to production technique, have created a better understanding of utilising motion and also have a better understanding of constructing and composing environments.

By using investigational methods to create my animations, often I had to try new workflows and processes in order to work around complications to get the animation desired. Throughout my module guide there are several instances of this such as subdividing objects to work around the idea of a dynamic IK or modelling a lantern from reference using splines.

Having come up with a simple treatment for most of the models in my animation, I feel my 3D modelling skills have improved significantly. At this point I feel like I have an intermediate knowledge of character rigging and modelling and by possessing knowledge of both skills, I have bettered my skills in each skill respectively.

Though my idea evolved and become more streamlined, In the time plan I allocated I have managed to produce most vital assets and feel like I know more about various software’s, their functionality and my skill level with that software.

I also feel that I have found a way to use my naturally experimental and explorative nature in the production of assets and to create tangible evidence of my efforts.

Focusing mainly on the aspects of animation production I was good at, I neglected more practical elements such as the interconnectivity between objects and how they interacted together in their respective scenes. For example I created a variety of reactive water techniques but failed to consider how I would introduce them to the scene and if they would blend in with the rest of the environment.

Despite having an overwhelming positive view on my learning experience, there are still some aspects I feel I have neglected throughout the production namely, the written work.

Although sticking to my timetable relatively faithfully I frequently missed developmental documentation that towards the end of the module cost me animation time and subsequently made me lose compositional practice I greatly wanted from this module. Although extremely happy with the transformation and metamorphosis animations used, I feel that in the time allocated I should have spend less time on asset production and focused more on the animation side of the project.

In hindsight I noticed that when faced with a prolonged problem, such as the issues when rigging the wolf, I tended to turn my attention to something else rather than maintain a level of consistent productivity. The longer I delayed the production of that asset, I more I forgot about the intricacies such as certain aspects of the rig which required extra attention. Eventually this procrastination built up to form a psychological barricade making me reluctant to solve the problem at hand, even when the issue is something as important as the wolf character was in my animation

Often when faced with reoccurring problems or when curious about how others have approached a similar technique, I conducted research online. Rather than following a tutorial directly or trying to figure out something on my own, I viewed several videos on a similar tutorial or on the tools used in the production process.

In doing so, I developed an understanding of the technique rather than mindlessly copying somebody elses work. Often the best information I found on how to use certain tools or about their functionality was from video tutorials as often the forums were saturated with professional users and it was difficult to make sense through all the industry language.

With a confusing method such as creating reactive water ripples from an emitter or with Xpresso tags, often it helped to be able to directly see everything which allowed it to work, including the settings on each individual aspect on the animation. With the websites solely dedicated to Cinema 4D, often users would post files with their attempts to solve a problem with the files open to download and studying these files contributed significantly to my 3D skills acquisition.

With my modelling experience being an overall success, In the future I think I will attempt more complex models perhaps using some sort of sculpting tool to add new levels of detail. Now with access to RealFlow, I am eager to encorporate more fluid simulation into my work potentially on a larger scale such as the creation of a stormy sea.

Even though to some extent my metamorphosis animation idea has been completed, I am still curious to see how my production process would differ creating a 2D animation. With the past modules I have been mainly focussed on 3D animation as it is the style which I feel I am the most skilled in but in the future I would like to create animation in a variety of media such as stop motion or 2D. The idea of stop motion is particularly fascinating as the animation process is significantly more visceral and dynamic than computer based work.

Overall I have found this module to be one of the more informative so far and I feel I have definitely met my personal goal of progressing as a 3D artist with more practical experimentation techniques. Unexpectedly along the way I noticed my organisation skills improving although I feel this was probably more likely to document skills I was passionate about rather than to create portfolio or work reference.

If I were to redo this module I would perform more research into the smaller things such as environment and the interactions between two characters. Ideally I would like to create an animated scene that has a level of life and dynamic interaction in which several things can happen in one scene without anything dramatically changing or any dialogue being exchanged. I have learnt that when I am experimenting with new techniques I should document the failures as well as the successes to compliment my development work and to show that my efforts were not wasted.

End of Year 2 Evaluation

Year Evaluation

The past few years studying my FDa in Animation and Illustration have been enlightening not just for my digital skills but also to help me develop and learn more about myself as a person.

Having already completed one year of the course I decided that this year I would try and take myself out of my comfort zone and try to find a new work process.  Previously on this course and on courses prior, I struggled to meet deadlines due to my messy organisation and poorly managed work flow.

As well as making several lists through each module to help me keep track of work to do, I also make sure to create several backups of each part of my work. Towards the end of 2014 I started experiencing a variety of issues while moving work from home to college and vice versa. Some of the issues which occurred are compatibility issues others were more unexplained but only occurred on the college macs. To adapt to this unfortunate sequence of events I made numerous copies of my work and distributed them across many USBs and hard drives which ultimately has helped me to save gigabytes of work.

From my experience in the first year I noticed that I found it easiest to work in Maxon’s Cinema 4D and to create 3D animations, I believe this was down to practice. Instead of trying to develop my traditional art skills (which were quite deficient) I decided to instead focus on my talents and create most of my animation in this software with the exceptions of software I hadn’t encountered before.

This obviously helped me become more adept with C4D but left me lacking in 2D art skills however if I was to redo this process I feel that even with practise, the result from 2D animation would still be of a reduced quality. Instead I would choose to focus on physical animation (e.g. stop motion, pixilation) as I found making models very enjoyable and always found the stop motion animation process the easiest to understand.

Out of all the C4D animations I produced I feel I was challenged the most by the wolf animation I produced mainly down to the difficult task of rigging a quadruped with a footroll, especially as the model itself was a low polygon object.  Due to this I couldn’t work out how to animate the character and eventually I had to move the wolf in a way which seemed unusual to me resulting in a subpar animation. Despite this tarnishing the animation overall, I feel I exhibited a variety of techniques which showed my knowledge of Cinema 4D and also refined some psychedelic techniques which I will definitely use in the future.

Rather than use complicated methods, I decided to attempt those techniques to further my knowledge and instead rely on more simplistic techniques to achieve a sleeker animation. For example, while trying to think of a way for the wolf to enter the scene,  instead of following my original plan and having it appear in reverse (like liquid) I instead chose to animate it using a strange paper folding technique I had researched earlier. This not only gave a more interesting aesthetic but also gave me an understanding of the process in full rather than using RealFlow to achieve an animation which would be formed from pure guesswork and luck.

It is from this process of wanting to understand a process completely which has given me the level of skill in C4D I possess now.

The Vice compositing module was one I found quite interesting as I had never attempted to produce commercial work and has no experience with compositing in the past.  Regardless of this, I still think that the Vice module was my most successful. With my newfound work plan I found the workload manageable and required little to no assistance from my peers or lecturers. In fact since I had managed this work so simply, I was completed earlier than ever before and this allowed me to assist my peers in their productions.  Despite compositing not being my primary interest in the creative industry, I still managed to find a way to make it interesting for me and prove that my work plan was an overall success, cementing it to my creative process for the time being.

Following this module, I went back to past work to build up my portfolio and to tie off loose ends with my work. This was a frustrating experience as most of the time once I have finished some work I do not return to it because it is hard to return to the original work flow and I am rarely satisfied with my work.

In this instance, when I returned to my work I found it far easier to work in Cinema 4D and I managed to get the foot roll of an earlier character to work more successfully although it was still at a poor standard due to the character not being designed with C4D in mind. Instead of wasting time on the trivial footroll, I decided to delete the character’s feet and animate it without them. This experience reminded me of how much I enjoy animation and how I have ended up blighting my own work by being over ambitious and aiming for perfect quality models and scenes instead of focussing on the animation.

 This realisation made me think about what I would redo if I were to do the year again and the first thing on my list would be to be less ambitious. Although I am very content with the amount I have learnt I feel like the more work I did, the more written work I had to do. This was very overwhelming and trying to balance so many aspects of my work (sometime multiple modules at once) caused me to be inefficient in my production and yielded both poor animations and also poor written work.

Despite not fully understanding how to achieve better marks for most of my work I think that non academically I have learnt a huge amount. I would say that I am adept in Cinema 4D and that if given a brief I could comfortably create something which resembled what the client wanted. As well as this, towards the end of the year I managed to organise myself far more effectively than ever before and independent work was no longer an issue provided I had managed myself appropriately.

Vice Project Evaluation

Vice Evaluation

Throughout the vice project I attempted numerous techniques which yielded a varying degree of success.

Below I will reflect on how I thought the module went and also show some of the final animated tests. 

Glitchy Ident

The glitchy ident is probably the ident I was happiest with as it isn't overly complicated in production or appearance and is very usable and professional in appearance with the exception of the final Rule Britannia footage which I felt could have been better.

With the production process for this technique there are a lot of changes which can be made easily which can change the result of the technique in a very simple way.

London Eye Ident

The London eye ident was quite successful but wasn't dynamic enough or similar enough to the original concept to be considered a valid choice for the ident. This is why the ident doesn't feature the vice logo or any rule Britannia font. The video above also fails to illustrate some of the work I did to create a more realistic animation (such as the carriages swaying and balancing) as this is an earlier render of my animation and I had failed to realise this upon hand in.

Tyne Bridge Ident

The production of this ident helped me to understand masks a lot better and also made After Effects less intimidating as I understood its function better and comprehended circumstances where it would be useful to me. I feel that the final result of this animation displays an understanding of compositing and masking footage however I did not think the animation adhered to the brief closely enough.

Overall I would say that my organisation throughout this module has been exceptional in comparison to past cases and would say I have learnt a variety of techniques.

Despite not achieving my original concepts I learned to develop and change my ideas depending on circumstance and ability. For example if I had fully committed to creating a miniature set of a street scene I would not have been able to develop my compositing skills in Adobe After Effects, a skill which prior to this module I would be clueless about.

Returning to Cinema 4D I learnt more about how versatile the software is, helping me to develop my digital skills to the level where I can realise potential ideas without the limitations of software knowledge.

If I was to reattempt this module there is very little I would change except perhaps to venture into more manual, traditional forms of animation such as stop motion or pixilation. Ideally, rather than to have created the council house estate in Cinema 4D, I would have liked to use pixilation and After Effects to create a never-ending tunnel of hands placing down houses.

With my current knowledge this technique seems like a very achievable goal however when I entered the module the idea seemed daunting and may have affected my motivation to attempt new methods of animation.

Another aspect of the module which may have inhibited my motivation was the fact that VICE is an established brand and they have certain aspects they want from an animation. Although the brief was vague enough, it is apparent that VICE have a desired style in mind and in the beginning of this module I felt that this limited my creativity as I simply sought to replicate other animations which VICE would appreciate.

Generally I would say that this module and brief has been successful. Although my animations may not meet a high enough level of quality the client would deem acceptable, I have learnt many skills and techniques I am guaranteed to use in future work. 

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.

Past Project Evaluation - Cutout Style Animation in Cinema 4D part 1

Cutout Style Animation in Cinema 4D

In short, the brief that I was given asked for me to create a cut-out style animation (South Park, Terry Gilliam) which is normally created in 2D software or in a style of stop motion, In a 3D software creating a technique known as pseudo 3D. 

As this technique was completely new to me, I decided to research the techniques further and look at key practitioners of cut out animation.

Research

Cutout animation is a very traditional style of animation based around using flat, 2D characters, which could be made of paper, fabric, plastic or card.  To give more mobility to the character puppets, hinges were often used to join different segments of a character. Despite this, the animation style is very limited in movement, which gives it a unique style. Because of cut out animation’s success, it has been emulated digitally to help maintain quality and modernize the animation.

A good example of this would be with South Park as the animations started out as traditional cut outs and then proceeded to become digital as time passed and the show became more popular.

In order to further my knowledge of this style, I decided to conduct further research on both digital and traditional cut out animation.

South Park

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s highly successful animations are a prime example of how cut out animation has advanced with technology. When the show fiest aired in 1997, the pilot was created using cardboard and paper cutout characters and when it was accepted for TV, the animation was changed to a digital style that replicates the original cutout style. The animation was done in the program PowerAnimator to help maintain the animations art style until the animators chose to upgrade to AutoDesk Maya at the beginning of Season 5.

Terry Gilliam - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Terry Gilliam’s work animating for Monty Python is very influential in the cut out style even the South Park animators have cited Gilliam as an influence in their work. The surrealist styles of the animations mean that there is a vast array of styles to be influenced by and Gilliam’s use of mixed media helped to give more of an idea of which style I wanted to pursue.

Ishu Patel - How Death Came to Earth

This is a 1971 short animation that again uses the strange visual style of cut out animation in a psychedelic, surreal way. The animation is based around an Indian myth and several of Ishu Patel’s animations work around spiritual themes. The use of texture in this animation is especially prevalent adding to the surreal look of the piece.

The Kid Stays in the Picture

The cutout style of animation is used in a far less dramatic way here than other examples and uses the technique to create a sense of depth to still images. The depth and slight movement of the images helps keep the viewers’ attention due to the strange appearance of the animation. The images appear to have been separated into layers and move independently to give this effect, the effect being called the parallax scrolling.

Artists

After I had finished researching a variety of artists and their styles, I found the artists which I thought to be the most relevant to my work and chose to research them further. By doing this, I felt that I might learn new skills applicable to my own work and that by viewing more of the artist’s work that it might help with the creative process of my own work. 

Terry Gilliam

The main thing I liked about Terry Gilliam’s work was the surreal nature of his animations. Surrealism is one of the things I personally believe the cutout style of animation works with the best with. To further compliment this, Gilliam used an array of mixed media assets using everything from old photographs to watercolour paintings.

Despite the strange collection of assets, the animation still moved smoothly and used each asset to give another sense of life to the simulated world. As the majority of his animated career was spent with Monty Python, a lot of his animations work around humour, an aspect I wanted to try to incorporate into my own animation.

Cyriak

Cyriak is another British animator who uses Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to create surreal and pychadelic animations usually featuring celebrities or animals. A lot of Cyriak’s work uses geometry, for example, a cats leg splitting into two legs, then those legs splitting again. By doing this he makes it easy for his animations to escalate quickly and become more surreal. Cyriak’s animation are almost entirely contructed in a photomontage style, either as photos mixed with other assets he has created in photoshop or as video clips mixed together in a similar way.

One of the main things I tried to take from Cyriaks style of animation was the way his animations blend photos and video. For example if a photo asset is unavailable Cyriak creates one from other images. If I was to redo this project, I would like to emulate his use of music and sound as the sound in his animations always seems to be fitting to the visuals.

Animation Script

MAN carrying papers walking down a long dark corridor towards a door. As the MAN reaches the door he closes his eyes and inhales deeply before opening the door. The door opens to a large office room playing loud drum and bass music from huge speakers with several intoxicated people dancing.

MERKEL does not look up from her desk and finished cutting a line of cocaine in the shape of Germany. Just as MERKEL finishes snorting the cocaine she hears a sticky footstep alerting her to the MAN. The MAN extends the papers towards her looking visibly worried and MERKEL snatches them from him. A POLITICIAN finishes a bong on the desk.

MERKEL uses the papers to roll a joint, lights it and blows smoke into the MAN’s face  to his bewilderment and begins dancing wildly. The room begins to fill with smoke and clears to reveal the MAN dancing wildly looking very intoxicated and ill.

Outside the office, a PASSER BY walks past and looks confused about the muffled drum and bass music coming from behind the door. The PASSER BY pauses for a second then shrugs and carries on walking.

The MAN staggers back into a wall, slumping down next to an UNCONSCIOUS MAN and passes out.

The MAN suddenly sits up in bed panting and sweating as if awoken from a bad dream and stares at his door.

The door suddenly bursts open to reveal MERKEL dancing furiously and the room he was previously in.

Illustrator Storyboard and Scene Layout

As the animation only really takes place is two places (the hallway and the office) I created a set layout (left) allowing me to get a better understanding of how the scene will be set in a 3D environment. I think that creating a set layout helped me realise a lot about the production of the animation and made the production of assets and composition in 3D a lot easier.