Month: October 2021

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Week_04: Mise-en-Scène Analysis & Summary

Mise-en-Scène Analysis

Part01:

  • Settings & Props

This scene is filled with chemical elemements and science photos, which shows the audience that it is a chemistry experiment class. Through these settings people can realize that characters are all students.

  • Costume, Hair & Make Up

All characters in this scene wear goggles, which shows that they are doing experiments.

  • Facial Expressions & Body Language

Character A(first male fox) is focusing on the experiment. However, his partner, character B(first female fox), looks inattentive and keeps looking at her right side, which shows that something on the right side attracts her. Character D(beaver) has more body language, which makes this character look more naughty.

  • Lighting and Colour

Warm soft light covers the whole scene, which makes the scene calm.

  • Positioning of characters/objects within the frame

Character A and B stand together behind a desk, which shows that they are partners, so do other two characters.

  • What role does the shot choice (Cinematography) play in the scene.

The first shot shows the scene location(laboratory). The second shot, which is a medium shot, faces charactor A and B, which shows that their status are equal.

Then the camera moves to the right to show other two characters. After the explosion, camera becomes a more emotional medium close-up shot and focuses on character B and C, which shows that their relationship becomes closer.

Finally camera turns back to medium shot and focuses on character A and B, making the shot becomes calm again.

Part02:

  • Can you describe the mise-en-scene in this picture? How are the characters placed in the frame?

Mise-en-scene: Two charactors, one male and one female, lying on a bed in a room . Their wearing and hairstyle shows that the male is much older than the female. A pair of slippers is on the carpet. The light in the room is warm and blurry.

The props, like bed and slippers, for example, show that these two characters are at a hotel. The slippers show that only one people lives in this room, one of them must be a stranger. The bed is clean and neat and bed throw has not been removed, which shows that this is their first night.

Characters are placed in the middle of the long shot. They look a little nervous and tired. It seems that they are thinking of something.  The woman crosses her arms in forn of her chest, which show that she is at a loss.

The warm soft light makes the atmosphere ambiguous.

Part03:

  • Can you describe the relationship between the characters?

Rebecca is the new hostess and Mrs. Danvers is the housekeeper. It seems that the relationship between Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers is a little awkward. They are not quite familiar with each other. Mrs. Danvers looks not quite enthusiastic, which makes Rebecca feels scared and uncomfortable.

  • How do we know what the relationship is?
  • Can you describe how the mise-en-scene works together to tell us what the relationship is?

From their costumes and hair style, we can find out that Rebecca is the hostess and Mrs. Danvers is her housekeeper. What’s more, Mrs. Danvers has a poker face and a calm voice, which shows that she is not quite interested in Rebecca. It is obviously that Rebecca feels afraid of Mrs. Danvers, because her actions are quite nervous and unnatural. The camera also shows their relationships. Mrs. Danvers is at a higher level compared with Rebecca and the camera, which gives the audience a great sense of oppression. Most of the light is facing Rebecca and only a small part of light illuminates Mrs. Danvers’ face, which shows that their relationship is not quite peaceful.

Part04:

  • Can you describe the mise-en-scene in this picture?

Props: the character is surrounded by low-rise buildings, telephone poles and people who wear robes and scarf with dense beard. All these props show that she is at somewhere in Egypt or Iran.

Costume: the girl wears a red scarf on her head and a green/yellow clothes, and carried a bag on her back. Her costume is quite different with other people, which shows that she is quite special.

Facial expression: the girl looking around on the street, looks quite nervous and worried.

Light: natural warm light, which shows that the girl is outside.

Color: The main color of this scene is red, brown and yellow. The scene uses a lot of unbright colors and the only bright color is the girl’s red scarf, which seperates the girl with other people and shows her speciality.

  • What type of shot is it?

A medium shot

  • What is the camera angle?

Eye level shot

  • Where is the character located in the frame?

The character is at the middle of camera, walking on a street which has old buildings on both sides.

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Week_04: Walk Cycle & Emotional walking

Research:

Walk animation is an important part of 3d animation practice. Walk animation can be veriable depending on the characters emotions, jobs and other elements, and it is the fundation of character running, sitting and other related animations. Therefore, the practice of walk animation should follows the whole life of an animator.

For 2d animation, the walk cycles can be separated into four basic stages: Forward Contact Point, Recoil, Back Contact Point, and High Point. This method can also be applied into 3D area. In 3d walk animation, 4 key poses are required:

In a normal walk cycle animation a character takes two steps in 1 second (24 frames). But the first and the last step hook up into the same pose so that it can be looped again and again.

It is important that each part of character should be active to make the character walking lively. The highest point of the character should also be a fluent curve (more like a sin/cos curve), the weight point of the body should keeping up and down/shift to right or left during the whole animation to keep balance and energy.

Challenge 6 (Part 1): Walk Cycle Blocking & Emotional walking

Following with the timing and key poses guidance, I made a rough blocking walk cycle.

In this part, adjusting key poses to avoid knee popping is quite important.

  • Rough-blocking walk cycle:
Rough-blocking walk cycle
Wireframe version
  • Emotional walk:

I animated a walking alien warrior. He whips out his weapons and then walks quickly towards his enemy. I tried to make him looks angry. His upbody leans quite forward and maintains sharp vigilance.

Angry Warrior

Challenge 6 Part 2: Walk Cycle Splining & Clean Up

After roughly blocked the walking animation, I added body squash & stretch, cleaned the graph editor and made a moving forward walking cycle. I used copy and paste to drive my character moving forward and used locators to check whether cahracter’s feet are located in the right positions.

I then added lights, cameras and ground to better demonstrate this animation. Below is the version01 of my walking cycle:

Walking cycle
Side View

Alan told me that the sense of weight is not enough, which means the body movement should be more apparent. Therefore, I exaggerate and adjust the body movements on Y axis (world Y). I also add some squash and stretch on character’s legs to avoid knees’ popping when character moving forward.

Below is the final result:

Walking cycle
Side View
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Week_04: Notes

Mise-en-scene

the element of Mise-en-scene

  • settings & props
  • costume, hair & make up
  • facial expressions & body language
  • lighting and color
  • positioning of characters/objects within the frame

Settings and props:

Settings & locations plays an important part in film and animation

sets built from scratch or a great deal of time

Props: Toy Story, The Godfather (the empty chair in the scene means that the godfather has been assassined)

Costume, hair & make-up:

  • act as an instant indicator to us of character’s personality, status and job.
  • Examples: 101 Dalmatians, Barry Lydon

Facial expressions & body language:

  • Facial expressions provide clear indicator of how sb is feeling
  • Body language indicate how someone is feeling towards another character/ reflect state of their relationships

Positioning of characters & objects in a frame

  • positioning in a frame can draw our attention to an important char/obj
  • an animator can use positioning to indicate relationships between peoples

Lighting & color

can be used to achieve a variety of effects:

  • highlight important char / obj in a frame
  • make char look mysterious by shading
  • reflect mental states / hidden emotions

color- cultural meaning/ emotional (red: luck(eastern) blood, alert)

Low key Lighting:

  • created by using only key & back lights
  • produces sharp contrasts of light

High Contrast Lighting:

Examples: Street of Crocodiles, Citizen Kane

High Key Lighting:

more filler lights are used. lighting is natural and realistic to eyes

Example: The barber of

Natural lighting:

Examples: Alice, Paperman, The French Connection, The Hunger Games

Color and film:

Examples: Cries and Whispers, Amelie, The Secret of Kells, The Revenant(cold color, color contrasts, cooler or warmer)

films have color plate to control the proportion, contrasts, etc

DOP:

The distance from the near to the farthest

Deep Focus: both close and distant planes are shown in sharps focus, which allows film makers emphasize a char/ object which is far away from cam.

Shots:

9 types of shots:

  • Extreme close-up: The Incredibles, The Hunger Games(more psycologically shot, more honest)
  • Close-up: Bug Bunny, The Hunger Games, American Honey
  • Medium close-up: This Art Club Has a Problem!, The Third Man
  • Medium Shot: There will be good
  • Long Shot: Wall-E
  • Extreme Long Shot
  • A one-shot
  • A two-shot
  • A group shot
  • High Angle Shot
  • Low Angle Shot

POV

Moving Shots:

  • Pan shot
  • Tilt shot
  • Traveling shot (Dolly shot)
  • Crane shot

Animation art and cinema

from outset animation was destined to be multi-cultural, multi functional medium fulled medium fueled by technological change.

Hollywood the avant garde

1913 Raoul barre a painter and invented the peg system providing a universal registration system

1915 saw the introduction of cel, clear acetate that could be drawn on without having to redraw the background in every frame

Art Element Vocabulary

  • line
  • shape: the feeling of the out fit of obj in 2d perspective
  • form: the feeling of the volume of obj in 3d perspective
  • color
  • volume
  • space
  • texture

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Week_03: Ball & Tail Animation Challenge

This week I used a ball & tail model to animate a “jump up stairs” animation.

I firstly made a simple step-to-step jumping forward animation. Then I moved some stairs to the left and others to the right. I adjust the main body movements of that character so that it will turn its body before jumping to another stair.

Make simple jump first

I paid more attention to the tail movements. The tail should not only move upward or downward but also turn right or turn left when the character is in the air. After blocking the basic tail animation I then modified curves in graphic editor and added some overlapping to it.

Body movement and tail movement

Below is the animation, shoted by 2 cameras.

View01
View02

Problems: From my perspective, I think the tail animation between stair1 and stair2 may has some problem. That part of animation is still not quite fluent. What’s more, I think the body-turning movement is not quite natural, which I am still looking for methods to solve.

I then talked with Alan and he think the final part of the animation has some problem. For example, body should turn its direction after it hits the ground, not just turning in the air. What’s more, the tail should stop much slower, which can be more real.

I adjust the body part and using exaggerate tools to extend the time of tail-stopping part.

Here is the final result:

View01
View02

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Week_03: Solid Posing Challenge

I used Bony Character Rig to pose 6 poses, which including playing football, jumping, punching action poses and sitting, fear and happy drama poses.

I firstly searched human poses on the internet. After selected poses that I am satisfied with, I then analysed the anatomy of these poses. I paid more attention to the rotation of clavicle, hip, waist and the center of gravity.

The secong part is building poses. When I creating action poses, I tend to move the center of gravity away from main body, which can help people feeling the weight of actions. When I creating drama poses, however, I paid more attention to the balance among different parts of the body and make use of body gestures to show charactor’s emotion status.

After making the prototype of poses I then spent more time to polish them. I adjusted these poses again and again to get proper silhouettes, which are quite essential for the level of appearance of poses. I also made some small objects like football and sofa, putting them in proper positions to make character’s actions clearer than before.

Then comes to the lighting part. I used an Ai dome light and three Ai area lights to illuminate my scenes.

lighting & Staging

Below are my six poses. Rendered with Arnold:

Action Poses/References:

Playing Football Pose:

Playing Football Pose
Reference

Jumping Pose:

Jumping Pose
Reference

Punching Pose:

Punching Pose
Reference

Drama Poses/References:

Sitting Pose:

Sitting Pose
Reference

Fear Pose:

Fear Pose
Reference

Happy Pose:

Happy Pose
Reference
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Week_03: Notes & Summary

Politics in film and media:

In this week’s lessons we learned how politics affect audience through different kinds of media. From advertising to games, politics almost exist everywhere. People use slogans and values implantations to guide audience’s wills and actions. Ironically, audience seldom realizes these political implantations.

Film and Television can be the most important traditional political medias. As for films, some films is aims to send political messages, which clearly covers political ideas in its narrative and theme. In China, films which talk about patriotism gradually becomes familiar these years. Some films even covers several hot topics in China like anti-corruption， China’s rising, etc. For me, such kind of films are acceptable because every country has its own policial films, which is quite normal. Also, government has right to propagate their ideology to public to maintain social stability.

Some films spread political ideas in a more clever way, which is showing political purpose by hiding their ideas inside fantastic stories. For example, Avatar, which discusses the meaningless of invasion wars and may reflect the history of massacre of indians. Another feature film Memories of Murder, directed by Bong Joon-ho, which is loosely based on the true story of Korea’s first confirmed serial murders, discusses about the dark period of South Korea in 1980s and accuses the government of incompetence.

Memories of Murder

Game is also a good media to send political ideas, especially to young people. FPS games like Call of Duty and Battlefield series always send people the massage that American army is saving the world. They tend to sugar up the international image of American armies and mention the justice of holding wars. This kind of works may even increase peoples curiousity of modern war and weapons, which encourage young people’s passion on joining in army.

Such wide impact of politics on media may rises a question: Can politics be removed from media? Hardly not. Politics are just part of media. People have to show their statements when they are using mediato to tell something, which will inevitably lead to personal politics. However, the way of telling political ideas is quite important. People don’t like preaching or forced implanations. How to make them feel empathtic about these ideas is the key of implanting politics in media.

As for me, I keep possitive attitude to political implantations. Political implantations through media is a double-edged swords. A good story telling with some proper political ideas can make the plot more easy to accept and welcome. However, too much political statements in media like film or games will just ruin these works and make people uncomfortable.

As an audience, knowing what is real or fake and what is something that others want us to see is quite important. Keep calm and critical thinking can help people get rid of political influences. Do not feel afraid of politics in media because it has already become more and more common.

Notes:

Politics and Persuasion in Entertainment:

Generally, people can influence or persuade audiences in the following areas:

  • Social media
  • Broadcast News and events
  • Film and Animation
  • Television

Media platforms that have potential to influence or persuade an audience:

  • Broadcasts
  • Print Media
  • Mainstream Film and Animation
  • Independent film and animation
  • Games
  • Podcasts
  • Social media / internet profile

Some messages which are used in moving image:

  • Subliminal or masked content
  • Overt / Propagandist intentions
  • Persuasive / commercial targets
  • Documentary / Investigative
  • Independent / Personal struggle, observation or experience

Some main topics of politics in film and media:

  • Political persuasion
  • Commercial persuasion
  • Race
  • Gender
  • Equality
  • Disability
  • Ethics

Animation and Documentary:

Animated Documentarys:

Neighbours (1952 film) (Anti-war Film)

Tower (Kevin Maitland, 2016)

The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay 1918)

Fight for the Dardanelles (1915)

Prelude to War (1942)

A Is For Autism (1992)

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

As the creative treatment of actuality (1933)

Chicago 10 (Brett Morgen, 2007)

Montage of Heck (Brett Morgan, 2016)

Taxonomy of Animated Documentary:

  • has been recorded or created frame by frame
  • is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator
  • has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics

Gesture and Pose:

Some important elements for Good poses and gestures:

  • Better proportion of body parts
  • Bigger eyes and ears

Spine and fluidity:

  • charactors spine should maintain it’s fluidity
  • the shape of spine should be curves
  • the shape of spine should help charactor balance their bodies
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Week_02: Summary

Week two courses focused on 3D animation fundamental theory and practice. From the 12 principles of animation to bouncing ball animation training, my fundation was totally restrenthed. I researched some tips of 12 principles of animation and then took several notes, which helped me to memorize these knowledge. What’s more, based on what I learned on courses, I managed to design and make a bouncing ball obstacle course.

Frankly, practice is the best way to learn. During the practice, some of my weakness emerged. For example, my timing and spacing is not good enough to demostrate a realistic free fall. I remade the animation, paid more attention to my shortage and finally solved the problem.

I also did some research on bouncing ball and realized how important it is in animation training. Bouncing ball, which is one of the most important fundamental practices for 3d animation, is a good way to learn timing and spacing. By making bouncing ball animation we can learn how timing and spacing works, and why it’s so vital to our animations. Not only are we learning how to animate realistic movements in a ball, but it’s teaching us how other objects or even animals and people should move. Bouncing ball is almost every animation’s fundation. When we animate human walking, the movement of hip is exactly the same way that a ball bounces on the ground because if we track the trace of hips we can find out that it is the same way that a ball travels. Therefore, the practice of bouncing ball is much more important than we think. No matter how complex an animation is, the basic of it is just the bouncing ball theory.

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Week_02: Bouncing Ball Obstacle Course

I chose the third rig and built a obstacle course and animated a bouncing ball navigating its way through it.

Before starting to make this animation, I designed the obstacle first. I wanted the ball acts more like a charactor and can intereact with the environment around it. I decided to let the ball jump from buttom to the top, then go through a slide, fall off to the ground, hit the seesaw and finally stop on the ground.

Then I started to build the scene based on my design. I build some staggered stairs so that the ball can jump from oneside to another. I also added some cubes on the seesaw so when the ball hit that seesaw, these cubes will be throwed out and hit other objects.

Then comes to the animation part. I animated the ball based on what I learned this week. Adjusting timing and spacing took me a lot of time to get a fine result. What’s more, I put a lot of effort to make the scene follow physics rules. For example, the left cube on seesaw will be throwed out just after the seesaw becomes vertical to the ground. I also followed squash and stretch rules to make the ball looks softer. Several anticipations were added to make the ball humanic. When the ball recieves a bigger force or it decides to jump to a further target, it will take more time and “energy” to squeeze.

Finally, I added some lights to make the scene looks more three-dimentional and clearer. I used three area lights and a directional light to illuminate the environment. I also adjusted my side camera a bit to get a better result.

Here is the playblast:

Reflection：I think the timing and spacing of this animation can still be improved and adjusted a little bit. The design of obstacle and the reaction between ball and environment can be more real and interesting.

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Week_02: Bouncing Ball with Travel

Based on what I learned from this week’s courses, I chose the third rig to make a bouncing ball animation, here is the playblast:

Reflection：I think the timing and spacing of this animation can still be improved and adjusted a little bit. Maybe I make it better sometime.

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Week_02: Good & Bad Animations

Good Animations

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell is a 1995 anime neo-noir cyberpunk thriller film. Apart from the story, Ghost in the Shell is still a good animation.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

The stagging of Ghost in the Shell is great, animators used a film standard staging in this production. Animators used close-up to show charactors facial expressions and their mental statement. They also used great composition to show the distance between different charactors and depth of scenes.

By obeying the follow through & overlapping and timing principles, the actions in this film are quite realistic. For example, when protagonist through a bomb to the robot, her arm followed with her elbow and her hand followed with her arm. It also used less frames to draw that action to emphasis the energy of that action. What’s more, protagonist’s body move forward a bit when her hand quickly moved backwards, which “help” her to hold the balance. Also, to make a human-like action, animators used less squash and stretch and paid more attention on the physics in animation (force response).

Before the action (with anticipations, not show in this picture)
After (quick timing and follow through actions)

Good example of follow through & overlapping, environment response and secondary actions:

before
after

Spongebob Squarepants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwyRxK0htpI&ab_channel=SpongeBobSquarePantsOfficial

Spongebob Squarepants is also a good animation with impressive charactor design and interesting actions.

The best part of Spongebob Squarepants is its charactors. Animators used different colors and simple shapes to design these charactors, make them look quite appealing. The proportion of charactors are great, too. With big head and thin, long arms and legs, charactors can show their facial expressions clearly. These charactors, like Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star, are so unique that people can memorize them just at a glance.

Animators also exaggerate charactors’ facial expressions to make them more funny and emotional. Same as some Disney animations, the physics in this cartoon are also quite ridiculous, which gives charactors more choices to do actions.

interesting facial expression
another one

Bad Animations

Detective Conan is one of my favourate Japanese animations. However, because of the changing of animators every year, the quality of this animation are quite uneven. Some of its episodes show bad proportion of charactors and wired facial expressions, for example:

the proportion of this female charactor is quite wired

Sometimes there is some strange distortion of charactors’ face, like:

the design of charactors are not appealing

The animation of Overlord is terrible, too. The bodies of soldiers look mechanical when they are running and fighting. Also, the physics in this animation looks hilarious, people almost fly to the sky after they were punched by enermy. To solve these problems, animators should follow arc, overlapping and follow through principles to make actions more realistic and interesting. The physics should be improved, too. Charactors should have more realistic reactions to the environment and forces.