Week 1
George introduced us to the module where he told us that this term would be more story oriented and would involve pre visualization of a shot. He told us that this term would be less critiquing on animation assignments and more of creating a 3D storyboard idea of sorts.
In this class he explained about Mise-en-scene, rule of thirds and golden ratio. I leant that all these terms contributed to camera positioning for a shot in a film.
Rule of thirds is basically a guideline that helps with visual composition of a shot. It places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open.
Mise-En-Scene means the arrangement of the shot. This could include props, scenery, characters etc. which could be on the set of a film. In the image below the scene from Batman is clear enough that it is a fight scene inside a jell cell and it is between the main protagonist and the villain.
Golden ratio is actually a mathematical term where the ratio is 1:0.618:1. That means splitting the picture into three unequal sections and then using those lines to compose the shot. As the image below suggests, the smooth curve is important when setting up a shot and everything should flow well. This can be used hand in hand with the rule of thirds to compose a shot.
He also talked us through establishing the world as it is very important to first set the scene and then create the characters. Questions like where the scene is taking place, what time period and type of environment all mattered when taking into consideration the world we wanted to choose for our scene. For this week, all of us had to come up with 3 ideas to show George and he would approve. We needed to show him a storyboard in the form of sketches or images. I had never done this before, so I was super interested to find out what to do. I did not have any idea in my mind and I found it very difficult to generate an idea from scratch.
Week 2
George told us about world building in this class. It is the process of constructing a world, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Questions like, What time period, Where is your story taking place, What types of animals live, What event lead up to your story etc. are required to be thought about. History, Ecology and Geography are three key aspects here. After the scene/world is set, it is important to create appropriate sets and props to push the readability of the shot.
He checked our storyboarding and gave us feedback based on how the story could progress and stuff we could add on to it.
My First Idea: My first idea was about a wannabe race car driver who wants to prove his coach wrong. It involved the racer completing a very hard obstacle to impress the coach, and for me it had to be the Hot wheels themed Loop that I had played with as a kid.
My Second Idea: My second idea involved a spy getting caught by a bodyguard in an office building stealing some encrypted documents from a hard disk on the computer. It would involve parkour on top of buildings.
My Third Idea: My third idea was a chase sequence between a thief and the cops, where the thief is running out of a museum with a diamond. There would be a speedy car chase involved where the thief escapes the cop cars.
He chose my first and third idea(two out of three ideas) we had and we had to submit an assignment for next week. The task was to come up with a mood board for both ideas and then also create basic blockouts in Maya for the same. Again, I had never done a mood board before and was very confused about how to go about it, because to me it just looked like a collage of random images. I needed to research what an ideal mood board looked like.
Week 3
In this class George told us how to tell stories through the camera. He took a demo class in Maya where he showed us how to set up a basic scene and then animation of the camera to showcase the world, especially establishing a shot. We saw a few videos for reference and then he started critiquing.
He told me to improve my blocking a bit to have a more up close and personal approach. I realized that in order to properly capture the essence of the scene, you have to be close to the objects to feel what is going on. He liked my mood boards though, especially for my loop idea, so I’m thinking of going ahead with that one. I am super passionate about this idea, because like I said earlier, Hot wheels has been one of my favorite toy cars since I was a kid and to work on something related to cars and racing would be amazing! For next week, we had to set up a fully done pre viz shot of one of our ideas that we would potentially go ahead with. And it was obvious I wanted to proceed with my first idea.
I worked on the first idea a bit and got a bit better at blocking out and visualizing how I wanted my scene to look. I think I’m in a better position to start pre viz for this idea now.
Week 4
In this class George told us how important the main character or the protagonist of the film really is. He showed us a few intro shots in which it could clearly be seen that the main character was given more importance. It could be said that these scenes were the establishing shot of the main character. I also noticed how in most stories, the entire film revolves around the main character and how he goes through the conflict and resolution by himself or with others’ help.
He gave me a lot of crit for my previz shots, mainly the camera motion. I began to understand that still camera shots are better as compared to zoom in shots most of the time, unless the scene requires it. George also gave me tips on the speed of the cars on the racetrack and to include more shots of the characters inside the classroom scene.
For next week, we had to polish these shots a bit better and incorporate the feedback that he mentioned. Also, we had to come with a main character for our scene and any additional side characters we wanted to include.
Week 5
In this class George mainly gave us feedback about the critique he had given us last week. He told me my still camera shots improved, but I needed to fix the timing of my shots. He also told me to stick to the 180 rule and not to move the camera around too much. We also got to show him our characters.
Name: Vert Wheeler
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Origins: middle class family, no siblings, parents don’t support him racing, so he wants to prove to them that he can. He is an amateur driver who can do well if he practices hard. He is enrolled in a racing academy with a head coach who is very experienced and has seen it all.
Name: Roy Mcallister
Age: 43
Gender: Male
As far as my main character is concerned, he told me to go ahead with it, but to come up with a proper biography of the character. Especially, how he was before the scene and once the scene finishes, how he is portrayed or whether he changes as a person. I also needed to start adding rigs into my scene to start picturing how things would look to scale and to get a feel of how the film would come out. He also gave us a cool demo of the hulk smash animation that I had requested for! I carefully analyzed the workflow George used to create the entire animation which mainly involved polishing the characters arms and wrists and also the cool effects of the smash.
On working over the weekend, I got the story for before and after, regarding my main character.
Before: Before attempting to do the loop, he is not taken seriously in class, he’s a backbencher when compared to the other students who are more attentive. The coach sees him that way too, although he knows he has potential. Vert is laid-back and thinks he can do everything, but it’s all in his head, he’s never done anything to prove it practically.
After: After completing the loop successfully, he has a lot more confidence. He gets an entry ticket to a prestigious racing league. The other students respect him and the toppers get jealous of him. The coach is amazed and takes him seriously. Vert himself realizes his true potential, and now he’s ready to take on more difficult challenges. Now it is more of doing and less talking.
Week 6
In George’s class, he gave us feedback for our pre viz shots. Everybody seemed to have progressed with their camera shots and everyone started putting more emphasis into the environment and the rigs that they wanted to use in the scene. For me it was taking a while to properly animate my car around the track, as the car kept glitching at certain angles, especially when it went upside down. I needed to focus on the environment around the track as well, as I wanted the scene to take place in a canyon-like environment. I also wanted to start placing characters in the scene, especially the main guy and his coach after looking at the others. My main feedback from George was the timing, spacing and duration of the shots. He gave me movie references and told me to rip off a few scenes that related to my shot. He also told me the key to my film would be transitioning between each shot and doing it the right way. Here’s what I had so far with respect to the pre viz.
Week 7
In George’s class he gave us feedback for our ongoing previz’s. For me it was majorly getting the camera to follow the car correctly and to also position the establishing shot correctly. My homework was to rewatch Baby Driver properly and to get a few insights on how the camera transitions worked in the film, especially in the chase sequences. I also finally understood how to properly constrain an object as I was having problems with the character and car earlier. George gave me a small demo on how to do it properly and I think for next week, I’ll finally be able to get the car to move on the track properly and also make the character sit in the car and the camera following the car. George gave me a few tips on how to go about it. I’m looking forward to implementing them and I hope the car and the character move in the way I want them to. He also told me to add a bit of realism to the track and to do that I had to add supports and rods at the sides of the loop, to show how rigid and strong the loop was. He also gave us a cool demo from a scene from Matrix where the main character dodges a bunch of bullets. Here’s my progress of my pre viz as compared to last week.
Week 8
In George’s class I was better prepared this time as I had finally decided to manually keyframe the car without constraining it to the track. I was also able to constrain the cameras and the main character to the car properly, so that they moved along with the car. Although I wasn’t able to finish the entire previz, I was able to show some shots of the car going through the loop to George and he said I was headed in the right direction. He gave me a few tips on how I could start and end the scene. He also gave me a few pointers on adjusting the speed and timing of a few shots as the car still looked like it was moving a bit slow in a few shots. Next week we were supposed to fully finish our previz so that George could critique it once before vacation started.
The above image shows how I was finally able t0 constrain the car and driver together. I felt really proud of this shot because I could finally seeing something visually as it was always in my head up until now. It felt good making the driver sit in the car, and when I animated the car moving, the driver was moving along with it, just like how it would in real life!
Week 9
As this was the last class for George, I put in my best effort to finally get a full version of my previz and I thought it was a good first draft. I was able to get both my scenes in including the racing academy shot and the classroom shot. George was happy with my progress as my previz was finally looking whole now and the story was coming together. He had a few suggestions for me regarding a few additional camera angles that I could implement, but apart from that he said I could take this into my Final Major Project Submission. I was super happy to hear this, because I really wanted to stick to this and get a decent output by the end of it to put on my portfolio. George said we could work on further edits and we could get feedback from him over the vacation, so I’ll work on a few things. I also want to try adding audio to my previz to get a sense of how long it would take and how hard it would be to find car audio sounds without background noise.
I also worked in dialogue writing for the first time, as George told me it’d be a good idea to do so. I had never done this before again, but I found it pretty easy to come up with them. The main character’s was pretty easy because he resembled my personality, but for the head coach I had to think a bit from his perspective. It was still fun to create new dialogues!
Week 10
I was finally done with my pre viz where I combined both my first shot and the racing loop shot together. I had already animated both shots, so it was pretty easy to compile them together. One thing that I added extra was adding audios and I spent some time finding car audios and character audios to include in the scene. I used AI to generate the dialogue audios and then compiled it along with subtitles to help the viewer understand. I carefully placed the car audios in the scene and used fade in fade out technique to properly time the audios so that it synced properly with the animation. I also added a few sound effects, like nitrous and engine sounds. George ended up seeing my shot and he loved it! Especially with the audios.
I am confident that I want to take this forward into my Final Major Project and I think I’ve done enough research to proceed with the same. I need to decide what software to stick to and which car model to use. I think I’ll be using the same character rigs, because they resemble the personality and appearance that I’m going for.
Week 11
In this class George took us through the intro to Body Mechanics. I had done two animations, one dance in blocking and sitting in a chair, over the vacation and I wanted to show it to him, but he said he’d look at it later. For the lesson, he explained to us the basics of what we had to do for the upcoming week and he introduced us to a new concept called Pantomime, which is sort of like acting without sound. It usually involves theatre performances with music, but with regards to animation, our task was to create a short 10 second animation without any audio and showcasing a character doing something funny. We could do either this or stick to a proper mechanical body mechanics shot that involved for particular motion, but I was interested in the pantomime shot. I went through lots of reference videos like Mr Bean, Charlie Chaplan and Laurel and Hardy. Eventually I ended up watching a lot of meme videos and tried going back in time and seeing what I laughed at the most. And then I finally found a video that I actually fell off the chair laughing.. It was about a goalkeeper called Scott Sterling who keeps getting hit in the face by a football in a penalty shootout. I really wanted to animate this scene, but it would be a bit hard because I had to animate two characters, both the striker and the goalkeeper. But I still took it as a challenge and started with this as my idea.
Week 12
George went through each of our animations and I was the first one who submitted the link! I had done my scene in blocking as requested by him and the moment he saw my shot he told me it was ambititous of me to use two characters instead of one. He continued to tell me that I had to change my camera angle because currently the shot looked like something a CCTV camera would have. So I had to change it to get up close and personal with the goalkeeper. Although he gave me feedback for both characters, we both came to the conclusion that it would be easier for me if I just stuck with the goalkeeper and showed only the ball hitting him multiple times and remove the striker altogether. George was impressed with the poses I had for the goalkeeper though, especially the dives and him falling down, but he told me to add more slides and momentum to his motion.
Week 13
George went through our scenes and he was pretty happy with my progress. I had changed my shot to a more closeup view of my goalkeeper and I added a lot more momentum to his jump and slide. George still gave me feedback on the positioning of his hands and legs and suggested a slightly different ending to my shot. I would incorporate this into my submission for next week and he also told me to switch to spline. I also needed to use the two new techniques he told us in class about last week, blocking plus and stationary holds. I will be polishing my scene by adding peel offs for the feet and better hand positioning. I would also be working on the timing of my shots as we had to submit in spine. George also walked us through a demo of him transitioning an animation shot from blocking into spline. Although the process was repetitive and lengthy, every repetition made the animation more cleaner and it is advised to start with the hip bone and then other parts like hands and legs. Motion trail was a vital aspect of the entire workflow, even the graph editor to some extent.
Week 14
This week we had our first crit for our spline animation. And one of the major flaws in my animation that George noticed immediatly was the timing and spacing of my shots. This is a problem that I ran into with previz earlier in term 2 and it was really frustrating that I made the same mistake again. Although I was getting better at posing the characters, I was finding it a bit hard where to keyframe the animation at the right moments. Anyways, George helped me with this by drawing over my animation and telling me where to improve. Two key areas that I realized I needed to work on where how fast the football was entering and leaving the scene and how quickly the goalkeeper was falling down and getting up after the dive. I needed to put motion trail on for the ball as well, so I could visualize the path and speed of the ball better. The same could be done for the character as well, especially the hips and legs. George was happy with my key poses though, I just needed to work on the timing. Here is what I had submitted for the week.
Week 15
This week we had our second crit for our spline animation. Although I had improved a lot with my timing, especially with the goalkeeper, George was not impressed with my football animation. I needed to make it even faster, so that it entered and left the scene like a real football at high speed would, when kicked. I just needed to push the speed of the football as much as possible. Now that I had the timing of the goalkeeper right, I had to add follow through and anticipation movements to the character to make the animation seem smooth. I needed to animate the arms and head in such a way that they lagged behind just a tad bit when compared to the body movement of the character. We also had our project proposal presentation with both George and our course leader Friendred. This presentation was mainly based on what idea we had in mind for Project 2. I have spoken about it in detail in Serra’s blog. But we missed one of our classes with George for this.
Week 16
George gave me a final crit for the spline animation I had done for the pantomime assignment i.e. Body Mechanics shot. But he said I could send the file again and get one last set of final crit for next week. Again it was mainly the football that he said I needed to improve on, even though I made it as fast as I could. He was really happy with the timing and movement of the goalkeeper and told me that if I polished it a bit it would look great. He had a few tips as to how to end the shot, because that needed to be worked on slightly.
We also got introduced into acting and how we were supposed to go about the next task at hand. We were supposed to choose a good audio clip, a good facial rig and then use that to have a 5 second dialogue at max and plan how we wanted out acting shot to look like. I immediately thought about the Marvel Universe and how I could use some of Iron Man’s dialogues for this shot, but then George advised us not to choose audios that we already knew and have seen it being acted out. It would be better if we only heard the audio and then we did the facial expressions and gestures to properly make full use of the assignment and we would get to learn about acting.
These are the three audios that I thought I could use for my acting shot as I thought that all three of them had good intonation in the voices. I also felt that it could be great to animate facial expressions for the same.
The above images shows my plans for all three audios. I was thinking about doing the second audio because it was nice and simple and I could imagine in what environment the character would be telling the audio.
Week 17
George gave us two kinds of feedback on our first ever acting shot. Firstly, he approved the audios each of us chose to act out and then he told us to record a reference immediately for the next day. Secondly, he hated the rig I chose because it was pretty outdated and I had no idea about this when choosing Max for my acting shot. George gave me a few websites where I could search for better updated rigs and he told me to use Link and update the rig so that it looked more like Robin Hood. He also saw my sketches and told me where all I could improve with my posing. I had about 3 audios and storylines for each of them. I ensured that I only heard the audio and not see the video version of it. In the end, George approved the audio which sounded like something from Robin Hood, where the character talks about justice. So, I recorded a few variations of the same audio and was ready for crit the next day.
On showing him the video, he told me what I could do differently with my camera angle and the expressions I chose to do. I needed to act better and put more effort into both my facial expressions and body gestures, to push as much as I could. But, I found this a bit hard to do, as I’ve never acted like this in my life. Regarding the camera angle, I needed to use a slightly tilted angle. For next week, we had to choose a rig and then do basic blocking of the character, mainly the body gestures and a little face expressions. George told us specifically not to do lip sync, as that would be for the week after.
Week 18
I was ready for my crit this week as I had posed out one of the characters in blocking and I re-recorded my reference video. I also added a hat to the character to make him look more like Robin Hood. However, I had issues with the facial rig setup as the controls were very limited and I could only do basic facial expressions. I need to talk to George about this as he had suggested this rig for me to use.
Both the above images show both my progress with my acting shot. The first one is where I have improved the camera angle and I tried the best I could to have the most facial expression I could possibly do. And at the same time I tried to exaggerate my body movements a bit. The second image is my blocking for the Link rig I chose. George was extremely happy with the reference video that I re-recorded and told me that my expressions and body gestures were on point. However, he gave me feedback for the current blocking I had and for the first time he told me that I had exaggerated the animation a bit too much for the hand coming down. I had a few alternates ready to show him, so I was keen about what he would tell me. In the end, he told me to use the new Twig rig that I had instead of the current Link rig, because it had better facial controls. Because we were going to add a bit of facial expressions for next week’s submission, no lip sync yet.
Week 19
In George’s class, he approved my rig and he told me I could submit in spline for next week. He gave me my crit and he told me to improve on my posing as it was a bit exaggerated again. He told me to tone down the movements a bit, especially the body and back, so that it looked more natural. Although this week was about both body and acting, the body didn’t have to have a lot of exaggeration and we had to focus more on the face. I also understood that the eyebrows play an important role in facial expression, and the ends don’t move that much as compared to the rest. Also when closing our eyes for a squint expression, George told me that the pupil must always be visible at all times. Another small thing to take into consideration was the movement of the nose, especially the tip. It needs to move slightly with respect to the lips. For example, with a downward movement, the nose nostrils have to move down a bit. For next week, I needed to do the entire body animation in spline and I could try out lip sync if I had the time for it.
Week 20
As this was the last week for our acting submission, George gave us final crit for the spline animation that all of us submitted. He liked the general body posing of my shot and told me that it was looking better now, but he still had a few inputs as to how the character got introduced into the scene. He suggested that the character can enter the screen from right to left and then the acting shot could start. He also told me to add a sort of a quick step through so that it looked like the character was entering the screen more naturally. He told me to add a bit of follow through and anticipation to polish the animation in spline a bit. The main feedback however was on how I could go about doing lip sync because I had never properly done it before. He drew over my character and advised me how I could go about it. Although this was the last week, George told me that I could submit one last time so that he could critique my lip sync and then I could have the final file ready.
Final Thoughts and Reflection
For Term 2 Pre Viz: I really enjoyed the entire process of creating my pre viz shot from start to finish. I never realized that a process like this existed in the industry, so it was really cool to go through the entire process, step by step every week! I understood the entire workflow i.e. the pipeline of the pre visualization where it began with choosing the world and then the character and then basic blocking and then polishing everything into spline. My favorite part had to be creating the world and the establishing shot, because I was doing everything myself and setting up the cameras to see how cool the shot looked with everything that I had put in there was really awesome. What was even cooler was placing the actual character rigs that I wanted to use and constraining the main guy to the car and watching it race across the track was too good. I also learnt how to constrain a camera to a car and make it follow the vehicle. Along the same lines, I learnt how to constrain a vehicle onto a curve path, in this case it was the track loop, where the car would follow along. Camera transitioning was a huge thing that I was able to get the hang off and I learnt it by looking at lots of movie reference. I found it a bit hard to find proper audios to sync with the car animation and this will be something that I have to put in more research for, especially keeping my Final Major Project in mind.
Here is a link to my pre viz shot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gebLjcJdhhhAISK5zxCf1u5K3KDl_mq0/view?usp=sharing
For Term 3 Body Mechanics: Body mechanics was the major thing that I was looking forward to ever since I joined the course as it was one of the first things I had seen on the course website before joining UAL. I was startled at first when George said we’d be doing a pantomime shot, but then later on I realized that this was body mechanics after all. It’s just that we were doing pantomime as the theme for our body mechanics shot. I really liked the way I started my goalkeeper animation, although it took me a while to settle on one reference to start off with. But once I chose the football sequence, the process was pretty smooth. Doing the fundamentals in term 1 definitely helped me work faster and more efficiently here because I was prepared on what to do and how to go about it. I think we needed one more week for this for the entire polished shot, but we had to get into acting, so I think I will delve on it later on.
Here is a link to my final body mechanics shot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajHEieAMTievpZP0eHpneDA5SorGeV3j/view?usp=sharing
For Term 3 Acting: Of everything that we did this term, acting was definitely the hardest thing that I had to do, especially shooting the reference for my shot. I was always conscious of the camera initially and I just couldn’t perform naturally. But with a lot of retakes, I was able to get more confident in front of the camera and my body moved more naturally with the audio. I was pretty proud of how my reference turned out to look. Animating the character with respect to my reference was also a bit tricky as this was the first time I was properly attempting lip sync and playing around with the facial bones was a task in itself. I was able to do it in the end, but I still think I need a lot of practice in getting the lip sync and the facial expressions right, especially to match the reference video. Again, here too I wish we had more time for this so that I could work on another audio and perform an acting shot for the same.
Here is a link to my final acting shot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1btB1cdD22K2AKk-zqlY5mrHwSJHZYyeo/view?usp=sharing
And finally this is a link to my showreel for the entire term:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17JGL8SHRQNiV5OEzrmjlP3OO2APsbYKC/view?usp=drive_link
If required, this is the link to my FMP proposal: