Larva CG Bros
Little Things 2004 Daniel Greaves Tandem Films Entertainment(sound effect and character actions can make animation narrative interesting)
Piper a Joy Story
Pixar Short Films #7 For the Birds 2000 Ralph Eggleston
Lifted-Pixar Gary Ridestrow
Topic
Since my shooting equipments are not quite good and space for shooting is limited, I turned to search animation references online.
For the basic body mechanic exercise, I choose to make a throwing-ball animation. I searched for footage and finally used this one:
Following with tutor’s guidence, I choose a model called Ray as my character animation trainning asset. Ray’s body is fit, his arm and legs are long enough to represent a good body movements.
Ray’s rigging is quite complicated. Therefore, I used Mel script to make several simple plugins to help me select these controls. I also set up image planes and import my footage inside maya, which helps me to make poses.
I did roughly blocking of the main actions of (every 8 frame) and spent more time to optimize my poses. I tried to make the throwing action looks more powerful and make sure that body mechanics of the character is correct. I think this blocking may still have some little problems so I will keep adjusting this animation when I am free.
I trying to add breakdowns, smooth the graphic editor to check the animation. I realized that the left knee and his head has a little bit shaking (especially the left knee)when the character’s body comes back after he threw the ball. I tried to figure out the reason but the shaking still remains.
What’s more, it looks a little bit unnatural when the body comes back after throwing the ball (upper body, especially spine and shoulder). I still need to check each controler later.
The film that I would like to talk about is:
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on James Ellroy’s 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series.
The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
Unlike traditional drama films, there are three protagonists in this film: Wendell White, Jack Vincennes and Edmund Exley.
Wendell White was borned in an unhappy family, his mother was beaten to death by his drunk father, which made him obsess with punishing men who abuse women. White is quite strong and has become a detective for years. He is hot-tempered, but also smart.
Edmund Exley is a new detective. His father used to be the detective lieutenant in LAPD and was killed by an unknown assailant whom Exley secretly nicknamed “Rollo Tomasi”. Ed, despite his thirst for justice, is not without his demons. He is a political animal, smart and brave.
Jack Vincennes is a narcotics detective who moonlights as a technical advisor on Badge of Honor, a TV police drama series. Sid Hudgens, publisher of the Hush-Hush tabloid magazine, tips Vincennes on celebrity criminal activity so that he can make high-profile arrests for Sid’s publication.
The story started with a background of the 1950s Los Angeles, where gangs and drugs were rampant. LAPD vanished the reality and people never knows the dark side of LA.
After that, Wendell White, one of the main character, punched and punished a man who hurt his wife on Christmas Eve. He then met a woman at a bar and was attracted by her beauty.
At the sametime, Jack Vincennes, with the help of the publisher of Hush-Hush tabloid magazine Sid Hudgens, arrested an actor for taking drugs. Edmund Exley, however, was on his duty in police office that night.
Then a police office accident happened, which caused the resignment of White’s partner Stensland. Jack Vincennes was removed from Narcotics to Vice and Edmund Exley, who testified the whole accident, was raised to detective lieutenant of LAPD.
After the restruction in LAPD, a robbery and multiple homicide happened at the Nite Owl coffee shop. Stensland was one of the victims. Exley took the case and started searching.
Exley and Vincennes arrest three African-American felons for the crime. Exley questions these African-American felons and find a girl that they kidnapped before.
At the same time, White find an advanced prostitution organization and met with one of prostitute Lynn Bracken, who is also the woman that White saw in the bar. He also save the kidnapped girl.
Three African-American felons later escape from police custody and are killed by Exley in a shootout. Exley becomes a hero and the crime fighter in LA. Vincennes then gets back to the show as the technical advisor. White helps precinct captain Dudley Smith punish criminals and falls in love with Lynn Bracken.
Although the Nite Owl case appears solved, Exley and White investigate further, discovering evidence of corruption all around them.
Hudgens involves Vincennes in setting up a homosexual tryst between struggling actor Matt Reynolds and District Attorney Ellis Loew, intending to create a lucrative scandal. After Reynolds is found murdered, a guilt-ridden Vincennes joins Exley’s investigation to find the killer.
Vincennes finds out that all the victims and crimes are related to LAPD precinct captain Dudley Smith. Vinecennes pays a visit to Smith and is shooted by him. Vinecennes dies after murmuring “Rollo Tomasi”, the fictional character that Exley told him.
The next day, Exley’s suspicions are aroused when Smith asks him who “Rollo Tomasi” is. He searched more information and realized that Smith is the true murder. Smith then enraged White to kill Exley, trying to let them kill each other.
At the police station, White and Exley fight, but stop when both realize that Smith is corrupt. They then search more evidence and are sured that LAPD has existential crisis.
Smith lures Exley and White into an ambush. After the gunfight Smith is injoured and suggests Exley to hide the truth. Exley refuses his suggestion and then kills Smith before police arrives.
At the police station, Exley explains what he, Vincennes and White learned about Smith’s corruption. The LAPD decides to protect their image by saying Smith died a hero in the shootout, while awarding Exley a second medal for bravery. Outside city hall, Exley says goodbye to Lynn and White before watching them drive off to Lynn’s home in Arizona.
Frankly, characters in L.A Confidential are quite complicated and can not be easily analyzed with the 8 Kinds of Archetypes of Hero Characters principle. Therefore, I tend to analyze these characters based on what they did and then match they jobs in this film.
Edmund Exley:
A Hero character but also a Shapeshifter, a Mentor. He is ambitious and fulls of justice. He uses his actions to prove that he is a good detective, which even affects Jack Vincennes and Wendell White’s personalities. With the help of Vincennes and White, he finally finds out the truth.
Wendell White:
Also a Hero character but more like a Threshold guardian or a Sidekicks character. He is more powerful than Exley, helping Exley find the truth.
Jack Vincennes:
A great Sidekicks character. He is an old fox in LAPD and has his own secret. He finally moved by Exlley and feels responsible to help bring justice to his city.
Dudley Smith:
A Shadow character, bad cop. Smart, dangerous, secretive.
Sid Hudgens:
Not easy to define this character, more like a Trickster.
Lynn Bracken:
Sidekicks, helping Bud and his stuck-up colleague Ed Exley solve a crime that goes deep into the heart of L.A.’s underbelly. She is smart and has independent personality.
Wendell White: borned in unhappy family- raised by his uncle and their family- became a detective in LAPD, solved several cases with his partner Stensland- live alone in LA
Edmund Exley: borned in a simple family- like reading books and learning-talked with his father quite often, admired his father but dislike his job, which is dangerous- his father died in accident, the willing of finding the murder drives him to become a sergeant in LAPD- under his father’s fame, Exley trys his best to catch up with his father
Jack Vincennes: used to be an young active detective who is passionate with catching crinimals and solving cases- after years he realizes that LAPD is a political area, there is no justice at all- feels depressed and becomes fish in troubled waters
Kurt Vonnegut
the hero’s journey
Characters type
P.S. a film does not really requires 8 or more characters but must cover all these jobs that the 8 kinds of archetypes mentioned
Animation promotes a broader definition of a character than other media formats through the re-interpreting human form.
character movement should convey the necessary action pertinent the narrative but the attitude, emotion or mood.
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.
All characters in this scene wear goggles, which shows that they are doing experiments.
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.
Warm soft light covers the whole scene, which makes the scene calm.
Character A and B stand together behind a desk, which shows that they are partners, so do other two characters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A medium shot
Eye level shot
The character is at the middle of camera, walking on a street which has old buildings on both sides.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
the element of Mise-en-scene
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)
can be used to achieve a variety of effects:
color- cultural meaning/ emotional (red: luck(eastern) blood, alert)
Low key Lighting:
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
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
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.
9 types of shots:
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
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.
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.
Below is the animation, shoted by 2 cameras.
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:
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.
Below are my six poses. Rendered with Arnold:
Playing Football Pose:
Jumping Pose:
Punching Pose:
Sitting Pose:
Fear Pose:
Happy Pose:
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.
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.
Generally, people can influence or persuade audiences in the following areas:
Media platforms that have potential to influence or persuade an audience:
Some messages which are used in moving image:
Some main topics of politics in film and media:
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:
Some important elements for Good poses and gestures:
Spine and fluidity:
