Creative Research for Animation

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AG0982A13 Creative Research, Semester 1

Semester 1 Overview;
To choose an area of enquiry that inspires and motivates. The nature and level of enquiry is expected to evolve throughout the course of the academic year in response to critical self-reflection as well as staff and peer feedback.

Semester one emphasises the need for strong process and its correlation to high quality fully realised project outcomes. By the end of semester one I should be able to discuss the position and direction of enquiry and formulate a clear vision statement. This will be based on the emergent logic of my own practice. A large body of work must be developed reflecting extensive practice based enquiry and/or mode of study appropriate to the discipline. The construction, deconstruction and critique of material are required throughout the semester in order to create a well-founded project.

The work should inform and develop my own practice. I should develop knowledge of the context in which my work sits and use this to inform their work and practice.
The chosen subject matter should engage with high level ideas and themes. The questions raised through enquiry should demonstrate a critical awareness of complex and contradictory issues or arguments in the field of study. The work should reflect my position and arguments in relation to these contextual views.

Initial ideas of subject matter;

- Weight in Animation
- Character archetypes and how this affects character design and animation
- Animals/creatures in games; what they bring to a game and how they are animated
-Video Editing
-Painting/Inking/Sculpting (traditional art practices)

Why these ideas came to mind and the potiential vision statement that came to mind

An area that I am greatly interested in is animation and I will be doing a great deal of it this semester. I would like to pursue an animation related topic in my creative research coursework a I believe that it will be a usefull resourse to draw upon whilst working on animation projects in my other modules. I would also like the chance to explore something new in this module that I would be able to use and draw upon in other modules if I wanted to aproach a project at a new angle and with different skills.

Weight in Animation

Weight in animation is something that I would like to explore because it is a key part in making an animation more life like and is to be considered along-side the other key principals of animation. Looking at weight distribution with regards to character shape and how this affects movement will really help me in terms of character design and walk cycles. Partaking in life drawing sessions and analysing relevant animations by various artists my vision statement would be in the form of a show reel that clearly demonstrates how weight distribution affects characters (there may even be scope to analyse animals/creatures and moving objects).

Character Archetypes and how this affects character design and animation

This would involve looking at extreme archetypes, creating my own characters that reflect these archetypes quite dramatically and then creating short animations that portray their archetypes. This would involve extensive research in archetype characters that have already been established and determine what makes them effective as that archetype. Analyse animations of archetype characters focusing on how they move and express themselves; and then use what I will learn in order to animate my own characters.

Animals/Creatures in games; what they bring to a game and how they are animated

As games have developed I have noticed that adding animals in the way of content and environment have become increasingly popular. I would like to research how this has affected certain games in particular - the likes of the Fable series with the companion dog, or the more recent GTA V and 'Chop' the in game pet that can also be interacted with in a mobile application outside of the game. my vision statement for this subject matter would be a presentation of my findings as well as experimental animations involving 3D and 2D creatures - as so far I haven't had the opportunity to try a walk cycle with a creature that has more than two legs.

Video Editing

Creating a video/short film is something that I've been wanting to try for a long time but have never had the opportunity to do so. I would also like to try and implement 2D and 3D elements into the video to showcase as many video editing and animation techniques as possible. My vision statement would be a polished short film that focuses on the technical aspect of filmmaking rather than the narrative side.

Painting/inking/Sculpting (Traditional art practices)

Improving on traditional art practices can only benefit my skills as an artist and will help improve my talents when working on other projects in different modules. Given the opportunity as well as improving my drawing and digital painting skills I would like the chance to work with a variety of new mediums that I haven't had the chance to work with. Oil painting, Inked pieces, sculptures and so on would be showcased as an art exhibition; this would be my vision statement.

Here are a few simple sketches examples of weight distribution on humans (looking at overweight people primarily because when it comes to animating them their movements would be greatly affect by their weight). I quickly noted some examples of characters that have exaggerated weight distribution that I could possibly look into andanaylse.

‘Gru’ from Despicable Me (Universal Pictures, Illumination Entertainment) has a very interesting walk cycle. He has a high center of gravity which helps him be light on his feet - but there are still moments in the film where he plods around with his hands held behind his back (as if he's plotting an evil plan). With such wide shoulders, how he moves is fairly surprising and is quite in tune with his character as visually he's an imposing evil vilan, but when he starts moving you can see the other side to his character - a caring, loveable father figure, bad 'dad' dancing included.

‘Bob’ AKA Mr Incredible from the Disney Pixar 3D animation The Incredibles. Bob isn’t just big, but he’s strong too, and the way he moves needed to portray that. In this video Bob has been sent on his first hero mission after coming out of retirement, so naturally he’s a bit out of shape. They exaggerate this by having Bob put his back out at a very important part of the fight with the machine. The way Bob moves is big and powerful, he’s not as light on his feet as Gru from Despicable Me but their sizes are still fairly similar, maybe with Bob’s center of gravity being more central.

Looking at various characters and observing how they move got me thinking about their center of gravity and how that affects their movements. In animation (particularly 3D animation) most if not all movements start from the hips and in this video it shows this but obviously focusing on how the weight shifts from one foot to another. This is something I should be considering when blocking out my animations with key poses, working out how the weight is going to shift and where the center of gravity for the character is.

My Initial Experiments and what they've lead me to...

Walk cycles

I started simple with walk cycles, trying to differentiate between difference sized characters and how that effects how they move purely based on their size. I produced three animations with my previous character studies in mind (Despicable Me and the Incredibles), first was just purely to get back into animation and walk cycles after a break from it during the summer. The next animation I made was of a petit character with long slim limbs going through the walk cycle. I tried to put enough detail into the physical form of the character in order to identify mass and weight distribution but no details to make the character itself stand out uniquely. I then created my third animation of a larger character, with a similar amount of detail as the slim character and put it through its walk cycle, this time really thinking about how the weight of its frame would affect the way in which it moves.

Producing two walk cycles that were 'different' in a sense that there was one large character walking and one slim I concluded that I needed much more practice drawing and understanding the physical form in order to progress my research further by looking into what their made of and their body structure to fully understand how they move and why.

In order to take my research further I will conduct more detailed studies of the human anatomy and really work out how everything is connected and how muscle mass/or lack of would affect not just the skeletal form of a body but how everything reacts to movement. In order to show this in my animations more effectively I will consider drawing the cycles not just from a side on perspective but from multiple perspectives. Once I've done this I will be more able to evaluate my personal skills as an animator as well as the principle I'm studying and how effectively my research pays off once the animations are complete.

Jelly experiment

Whilst looking at the form of people and how they move I starting thinking about objects as well, thinking about their shapes and forms and interactions in animations and tv shows. The examples I was thinking of were the likes of flags blowing in the wind (clothing, materials) but also unique forms the likes of jelly. Diving straight in I created an animation to see if I could recreate how a plate of jelly would react once it's been interacted with physically. Focusing on the animation principal- 'follow through and overlapping action' it was all about the movement and warping of the physical form of the jelly in relation to the force being applied to its structure. This experiment was mostly a test to see if I could make the subject matter look like it's supposed to look rather than something unnatural.

I attempted this process twice after presenting and getting feedback from my first attempt in my second class presentation. The second time I used slow motion reference film from YouTube to try and understand the structure of the jelly itself rather than just thinking about the movement, and the results were much more realistic.

Anatomy Studies

Historically the study of the human anatomy was essential to understand for both artists in their understanding of proportion and form, and for its medical value. The information from these studies was vital to the development of medicine. In the Renaissance period the study of anatomy led to ground-breaking discoveries and advancements in the understanding of what makes the human body tick. Documentation of such studies can be seen in Leonardo Di Vinci’s studies via his sketchbooks.

These days there are mountains of resources that are easily accessible via books and the web for anatomical studies. I came across a great website purely for life drawing that I will be using to work on and improve my general drawing skills (proportion, tonal studies, poses, problem areas - hands, feet, faces etc.) which should work well alongside my more in-depth studies of muscle structure and bone size, position and distribution.

Referenced (sketchbook) studies

Non-Referenced (sketchbook) Studies

Non-Referenced (digital) Studies

I started working on my anatomy and life drawing skills using a website called ‘artists.pixelovely.com’. And that provided me with a wide range of source of images of life drawing models in dynamic and situational poses. After gaining a bit more confidence with getting down the shapes on paper I moved into photoshop to see if I could create similarly dynamic and simple poses without using a reference image. This was to see if the life drawing practice was paying off and how much of it was coming more naturally to me.

Photograph and Video referencing...

Whilst creating the first of my object interactions I dove straight into animating, only really taking into consideration the principles of animation, thinking about squash and stretch, follow through and overlapping action to get across an exaggerated movement of wobbly jelly. But once I re-created the animation with a slow-mo video reference next to me as I worked, I managed to achieve something that not only looked more like actual jelly, but I did it in almost halve the time. This made me realise just how important and useful video referencing is to animation.

From my research and my animation tests I concluded that working with a video reference goes a long way to promoting a fluid and life-like animation. I thought on this some more and recalled the DVD extras of Disney Pixar's 'Finding Nemo' where they literally dived to the sea bed to study fish in their natural environments, and learned, not just how they moved, but how they interacted with their surroundings as well, a great resource for an animation based on the lives of fish.

A study of the terrapin turtle

I thought about a subject matter that I could base an in-depth study on and, slightly influenced by Finding Nemo itself- I looked no further than the fish tank in my living room, which contains my two pet terrapin turtles.

I’ve owned them both for well over a year now and I’m pretty sure I know their personalities and routines. So, I am currently focusing on their form and how uniquely they move. Because I own them I have no problems collecting video reference images for my studies, and because they're a fairly common household pet, the resources I can find about their anatomy and natural behaviour on the web is vast.

As a subject matter in terms of portraying weight in animation, whilst studying their movements I can also in focus on how their weight affects their movement in water and on land, as well as being able to actually weigh them on a set of scales if I need.