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.

SWOT/SMART Targets 27th April

Having worked on primarily past projects over the past week I am now left with a few larger projects to tackle. However, the reason that these projects have been left until later is due to my lack of understanding as many of these tasks confuse me.
On top of my confusion, the majority of my course (including lecturers) is absent on a school trip and I have few points of reference to use as examples.

Targets

• Finish last few blog posts, maybe add more depending on free time
• Design a Creative CV
• Locate and compile earlier work for touching up
• Create animations for competitions to use in my portfolio

Strengths

• Blog at standard for a passing grade
• Examples of creative CV's online
• A pre existing list of competitions to animate for

Weaknesses

• No lecturer support
• The deadline is approaching quickly and I am unsure if my work is to standard
• Still not happy with past animations

Opportunities

• Opportunity to create animations which are enjoyable and also relevant to my university course
• The chance to learn how to make a professional looking CV for the creative industry
• Being able to finish the blog forever and never have to update it ever again

Threats

• Without any feedback and with the deadline which decides my future approaching, my level of stress has risen significantly
• I dislike all of my past work intensely and I am unsure if it is of a standard which will allow me to pass the course

SWOT/SMART Targets 20th April

This week I have found out in more detail, work I should have been doing over the easter holidays. I had not known about this work earlier due to absence and this has put my back significantly.
The bulk of the work to do is to update my blog (which has been neglected for the most part), to create a Creative CV and to polish up past work and assemble it into a show reel.

Targets

• Add posts to the blog until it is of a passable standard
• Design a Creative CV
• Locate and compile earlier work for touching up
• Write an evaluation for the year

Strengths

• Majority of blog work completed earlier in the year
• Pre existing work for show reel
• 
  

Weaknesses

• 2D assets will not be able to be completed and will not feature in the final animation
• Sound assets could be more complex however this is not essential 
• No written evaluation exists for the Trippy Animation

Opportunities

• The potential for this animation to be sent to festivals, be used as free footage for the general public in galleries or on YouTube
• Opportunity to learn more about using Adobe After Effects to edit together footage

Threats

• Time. I am currently ill and might be working several nights this week, this significantly hinders the amount of time I have to edit and could jeopardise the end product
• There has been a large amount of changes made since the original conceptualisation of this animation and with many of the original ideas not featuring, this animation might be deemed a failure to peers

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 - Modelling a Character for a Walk Cycle

Having created character turnarounds in Adobe Illustrator I decided to begin modelling my character to rig and animate. Unfortunately, due to my characters head being an umbrella I had not considered a top view and was unable to use this as reference.

To use the turnarounds as useful guides, I selected the right viewport and selection configure in the option menu. Within the configure menu I selected the Back menu and loaded in the side view image I had created. Following this I selected the front viewport and repeated the same process with the front view image.

To ensure the images were lined up correctly, I then created a null object which I used a base to add reference points. However, due to the accuracy caused by drawing in Illustrator the images were positioned correctly.

If by some chance my reference imagery was not aligned, I would change the numerical data in the Offset X and Offset Y boxes so that the front image was aligned with the side image.

Now that the guides for my model were successfully in place I added a cube to the project which I shrunk down to the size of the toes of the characters foot using the scale tool. Now with the cube in place correctly I made the cube an editable object, allowing me much more freedom to manipulate its shape and attributes.

From this stage I entered point mode, a setting which changed the visable object so that all the corners have points which can be used for manipulation. Then using the direct selection tool and the move tool (ensuring that only the select visible points box is unchecked) I selected the points and adjusted them so that the edges of the cube followed the guidelines of the image to some extent.

It found that it was a good idea at this point to switch to the front viewpoint and ensure the points are aligned with the image in that view as well before the model became more complicated.

Once the first object had been moulded, rather than create multiple objects creating a slower, less efficient model, I chose to extrude the object.

To do this I changed the object mode from point mode into polygon mode and selected the face to the left of the object. After switching the viewpoint to one where the perspective view is visible (for easier polygon viewing) I selected the Extrude Tool and used this to extend the shape by dragging on the screen nearby the object.

By doing this, the object is extending allowing more editable points and helping to maintain the structural integrity of the mesh.

Following this process, I carried on extruding and aligning until the foot was complete stopping when the object reached where the heel joint should be.

Having rigged the foot into the vague shape I wanted it to be, I decided to use Hypernurbs or subdivision surfaces. Hypernurbs are basically a generator object which subdivides an object and smooths out angular edges when the object it placed inside it, for instance a cube inside a hypernurb would appear to be a sphere.

Above: Without hypernurbs. Right: With hypernurbs.

To achieve a more accurate curvature in lines of the foot, once the foot was placed in the hypernurb I reselected the foot object and used the point tool to adjust the curvature of the lines.

Above: Example of using points to manipulate line curvature

Whilst doing this however, often I selected the hypernurb itself and began to edit. Doing this caused a permanent subdivision which causes significant problems in modelling the rest of the character as picture below.

It is important to try and keep the objects mesh as square as possible as if a triangular mesh is placed in a hypernurb, the subdivision will not work effectively and various problems will occur.

Having repeated this modelling process for one half of the body I began to work out how the joints would work for my character. As they were based vaguely of a mannequin I decided that where a joint would appear I would create a sphere and that hopefully when it came to rigging the sphere would create the illusion of a ball and socket joint for the character.

After modelling the legs, I decided that since this technique had appeared aesthetically pleasing, I would use a more enclosed variation of it for the elbow joint.

Having attempted a basic rig I realised that the enclosed nature of these elbow joints was unrealistic and would physically not be able to rotate enough for a conventional walk cycle. To counter this, I decided to flatten the part of the leg or arm that would be interfering with the natural movement.

To further replicate natural movement, a hierarchy is needed. A hierarchy is the placement of objects inside other objects for instance a hand inside a forearm. Doing this means that every time the forearm is moved, the hand moves with it stopping and pieces of model being lost and helping with the cleanliness of the project.

Having successfully modelled one side of my characters body, I then began creating the other half. Rather than doing this manually and wasting a lot of time, I decided to learn to use the symmetry object. Having learnt about the volatile nature of hypernurbs, I chose to remove the object which was being cloned from the hypernurb before attempting any symmetry.

A symmetry object works in a similar way to a hypernurb in that it affects the object placed inside it in this example a leg.

Despite it appearing on screen, the second leg is not its own object yet. To separate the two objects I selected the symmetry object in the objects menu, right click and select current state to object.

Doing this will create a duplicate of both of the legs where both the legs are edittable as one. Once this is done, I removed the original leg from the symmetry object and simply delete the copy of the original leg using the point mode and the selection tool.

However as the torso/body will need to be one solid object, the approach of using the symmetry tool was different.

Before placing the torso into the symmetry object, I used polygon mode to select and delete the side which would be joining to the other side, making the torso hollow. After this was done I placed the torso inside the symmetry object. Using the move tool along the X axis, I made sure that there was a small gap between the two sides of the torso before selecting current state of object as before with the legs.

With both parts of the body now edittable, I entered point mode and decided to weld the parts together. To begin welding, I selected two opposite points using the direct selection tool (this time with the only select visable elements box checked).

I then chose the weld tool which is located in under the mesh menu, create tools and then select weld. As this is a repetitive process I decided to create an on screen window allowing me to access recently used tools.  I did this by clicking and holding the mouse button over the weld tool logo, dragging the mouse over the dotted line at the top of the menu and releasing.

With the weld tool selected, I hovered the mouse in between the two selected points until a white point appeared in between the two selected points. Clicking this white point causes the two previously selected points to join allowing both sides of the torso to become connected.

After repeating this process all around the torso I had successfully created the whole 3D model I intended to use except for the head. The method I eventually found to create the head consisted mainly of using MoSpline rigs and therefore will be covered in the rigging development guide.