Mime: IT'S DONE!!

:D



It's done!

I'm going to make a separate page now for this video and ready for the final 11 second club video, as I have done for the previous modules.

Mime: Final feedback

We had a final feedback session today for all of our work for this module (Mime and 11Second).

For the my mime piece, the feedback was mainly move the camera in and down a smidgen and sort out the getting up animation (which actually wasn't intended to be shown, I'd cut that out because a) I didn't want to animate that - being honest! and b) for timing).

But I had a go at animating it but I discovered I would have to move everything on the timeline over to fit it in properly as it still looks light and jumpy - no weight is being shown as it's over way too quickly. You can't even really see the difference:

Test 1


Test 2


I discussed my concerns with Raff, pretty much saying that if I were to animate this properly, I would have to move everything along the timeline and make it all longer, which would mean messing around with the voice acting more. Plus we have a deadline next Monday (30th April) and another animation to do.

We decided it would be best for now to leave it and cut out the getting up, as I had been doing previously. It would have been nice to animate it properly but unfortunately we're too concerned about how much time we have left and the fact we're all still working on the 11 Second Club animation...

The Box

Raff has put together a final render of our Mime animations!



Looking pretty sweet :)

Mime: Final 1

First final test with sound and camera cuts. Also includes the footstep sound recording we did last week! Yay!
Sent this off for feedback from my classmates but I'll be leaving it for the time being to concentrate on the 11 Second Club animation.
If I don't get any major feedback I'll be sending this file to Raff who will be putting our animations together for Tuesday.

Some fall tests.

Needed to speed up the fall in the mime animation as it was a bit too slow. Here are a couple of tests that I've just done after making changes.



Last test was still a bit slow, I thought it could stand to be a couple of frames faster.



Pretty happy with it now, going to leave it here for the time being as Team RRR wants to get this done for tomorrow so we have enough time to put it all together for a final show and tell on Tuesday.

Mimes: Sound Test

Been playing around with fitting the animation to the sound and basically, something has got to go. Either I leave it as it is, cut the beginning so that the sound starts sooner or take out the extra 'A BOX!' line as I can't really fit everything in.

I made a video of options to show Team RRR for their opinions.



Both thought option 3 (take out the extra line) was the best one. So that's what I will do!

Mime: WIP

Work In progress of mime animation in Splines.
Complete with new voice recording and camera cuts.

Timing is way off now and I need to fix that. There are also some bits and pieces I need to fix and then I can move on to Clean Up.

Mime: New Sound Test

Basically, the animation no longer fits the sound recording so I'm going to have to fiddle with the timing. Definitely need to slow down the hand flare thing for the listening pose.

Mysteriously broken wrist.

Sometime while I was blocking in the revised explosion actions, the right wrist broke and animated at an odd angle all the way through the animation. Had to correct every key frame but it's done now.

Clip is without camera cuts and sound because I wanted to show all the things that are happening this time. The camera cut will cut out the awkward animation between lying down position and sitting up position.



James Harris came in yesterday to record our final version of the sound and now I need to adjust the timing of my animation to fit it.

There are also a few things I need to fix such as the end walk off stage. It was rushed so that we could combine our animations for James to see so only the rough timing is down, it still needs breakdowns.

Noticed a couple of freak outs from different limbs of the character, will fix that now.

Also, I need to swap around the part where the character is first defining the box so that the hands define the bottom before the top, rather than the other way round as it is now. Just so that it makes sense and that the mime box doesn't defy gravity. Not even mimes can defy gravity.

WIP Vid for Show and Tell today.

Just a work in progress vid for showing the class today, with camera cuts but no sound. It's only up to explosion because I'm halfway through working on the bits afterward.



Will write later about any feedback.

Ticking Test 4

Another test playblast after previous feedback.



Looking better :)

Moving on to the revision of the explosion now though, will make changes to this later if needed.

Feedback for Ticking Test 3

I showed the classmates the last ticking test for the mime animation and they agreed it needed to be more subtle.

Kristian pointed out that the face would be the selling point of this part of the animation.
The character is currently looking up to the left, imagining what it could be inside the box. He suggested what if the character squints his eyes a bit and perhaps lifted a part of his lip to look like he's really concentrating on what he's listening to.

I really liked this idea so will definitely try it out!

Ticking Test: Feedback and test

Classmates thought hands were the best thing to tick with and that it would look better ticking side to side.

Here's the test to try it out. It's a bit floaty because for some reason, even though I copied and pasted the frames, Maya insists that they're different and should move when I wanted a pause.

Could do with being more subtle and possibly another one squeezed in but we'll see what the classmates think.

Ticking Test

I realised that I completely forgot to sort out the ticking mime.
Having sound was inconsistent with Raf and Rachel's animations so I'm testing ways of miming the ticking so that the sound can be taken out.

The only ideas we've really had are ticking the hands or head. I've done both for testing and am about to post them both on our Masters facebook group for votes.

Hands:


Head:


I don't really know which to go for as both do the job but I've looked at the character so much now that I can't really decide what's better. My head's still a bit lazy from my cold too so that doesn't help.

3rd Set

Gone through another set of 200 frames.
There wasn't a lot to fix here but I added extra keys here and there.



On to the more difficult bit; the explosion. My idea is make it a smaller explosion and not have him thrown off screen as it's too difficult to mime. I have some sketches but no access to a scanner right now so I'll edit this post when uni opens again (closed for Easter Bank Holiday weekend).

**EDIT** Scanned sketches of revised explosion.

Fixing more things.

Fixing the wrist freak out was easier than I thought it was going to be. I thought Maya was going to make it as difficult as possible but no, deleted a breakdown frame, problem fixed. Then keyed another so it actually moved the way I wanted it to. Done. ... Wow, must be getting better at this Maya thing.

Anyway, second lot of 200 frames done. Same as before, fixed some things, killed some children, added some frames where needed.

Fixing things

I went through the first 200 frames of the linear animation, fixing the walk and doing a bit of clean up as I go (which just me deleting frames that are no longer necessary or re-keying some things that have gone weird).

The walk is now about fixed. Won't do any more to it until the splines stage. Looking a lot better now, the feet are slipping about much less and the animation is generally a bit tidier than it was.



I'm going to wait until splines before I go any further with it because it's now about the timing and the slow in slow out principle, both of which would be easier when I can see the f-curves.

Moving onto the next 200 frames though and I have this little problem to fix:



I have no idea why this happens (I think it may be something to do with the way I move the joints while blocking - could be wrong) but this isn't the only time it's happened, there are a few 'spazz-outs' here and there. Should be fixable by deleting and re-keying some of the frames.

Malcolm FK/IK controls.

Basically there is no switch between them as far as I can find out. All the controls are already there on the picker.

However, as you can see on my screen capture above, the hand IK has been left behind... According to the AnimSchool forums, you need to press the 'b' button next to the IK control if you want them to follow the rig. I don't know if they will permanently follow or if you need to click on it every time (forum does not say) but obviously I should have done this from the start. Clicking on the b button now does nothing. The FK2IK and IK2FK switches also do nothing (red error message appears at the bottom of Maya window).

Now that I understand a bit more about what I'm actually looking at, it appears I've been animating the feet and knee vectors in IK and everything else in FK. Admittedly, my understanding of IK/FK is pretty shocking. I don't really know the advantages of animating in either and the only difference I know is that once you key something in IK that control stays where it is in space and is not affected by other controls while FK controls are affected by other controls. I really ought to learn more about it.

Anyway, as far as I can tell so far, this is just untidy and might make some things difficult for me. However, it *should not* be too much of a problem to carry on with the way I've been animating. Should remember this for the next assignment I start though.

Update on mime animation. Walk is just about fixed. Working on the first 200 frames, thoroughly sorting out any problems. I plan to work this way through to the end and then back through it again on splines unless there's a reason it's too early for splines.

Other Resources:
11 Second Club forum

Mime Feedback 03-04-12

Took notes from the feedback from class today:

# Perhaps zoom the camera in slowly to create tension when the bomb is ticking.
# Walk - fix it. Feet are slidy.
# Try ticking the head or hands for ticking effect. Experiment using no sound.
# Explosion needs to be snappier. (I can see a lot of movement that needs to be snappier!)
# Timing. Sort it out.
# Technical issues with FK and IK. Try and sort it out.
# Body too still when moving the box.
# Sound is inconsistant with the others' animations. Try to take out ticking and explosion.

There are a fair few problems created by the Malcolm rig's FK/IK functions. Mainly that I cannot tell what it's on because they don't change at all and there seems to be both of the functions on the control picker. I shall investigate using the power of the internet and AnimSchool Forums.

I'm thinking about revising the explosion action completely because there is no way I can think of the make the movement make any sense. There's no visual explosion so it is hard to see what's flinging the character about and the present anticipation and jump I have now are confusing whether there is even an explosion or not.

My first idea is to have the character bring himself back in a bit after cutting the wire (anticipation) and flinging his arms out to mime the explosion, perhaps windmill them once and then drop to the ground. The camera wil stay where it is and the audience will see the character's feet up in the air from the ground. I'm going to draw it out tonight and try and get some reference tomorrow.

3 in 1s!

Raff's put together our linear animations for feedback from the class tomorrow.



Think it's looking pretty good but there's so much I need to sort out with mine. It feels way to slow in places and it looks like the character snaps from his 'pssssh' pose to starting to define the box. I know there's a couple of rig 'freak outs' in there but hopefully they will be ironed out as I move on to splines where I can see the curves better.

Basically just continuing to work on it.

I don't think I posted the 3 in 1 video for our blocking stage so I'll put that here:





We've also got our second animation of the module to do: a clip provided by the 11 second club competition (April's competition). Not sure what I'm going to do for it yet but I'll be thinking about it and speaking to our tutors on Wednesday.