Bird Flight Masterclass - Clip 2

I've posted another clip from my Bird Flight Animation Masterclass. In this one I show how "Successive Breaking of Joints" bring fluidity to a bid's wing during the wingbeat. 

Find the full lecture on Gumroad: https://brendanbody.gumroad.com/l/zrzbdz 

Bird Flight Masterclass - Clip 1

Here’s an excerpt from my bird flight animation masterclass where I talk about one of the things, to me, that help make the movement of the wings during flight more convincing.

Bird Flight Animation Masterclass

I've compiled a lecture covering some my observations and ideas about bird flight into a 'masterclass' and it's available on Gumroad at https://brendanbody.gumroad.com/l/zrzbdz.

I'm very happy with how it's been received, the lecture has been online for less than a week and currently holds consistent 5-star reviews. 

Camera Blocking Class

Here’s how I used to explain camera blocking to students. I showed them this step-keyed animation scene staged in different ways. Often students, would present their scenes in a neutral way, often with poor composition and flat staging. Perhaps something like this -

Flat, Static, poorly-framed Camera Blocking



'Soap Opera' Camera Blocking
Here's the same animation but presented as a wide establishing shot, then a series of over-the-shoulders. It’s basic but works a lot better than before. The characters look more appealing in 3/4, we can read their expressions better & we know who to focus on at different points.



If we look at the camera placement you can see that the camera stays the same side of the characters. There is an invisible line between the characters called an axis of action and, to avoid confusion, we keep the camera on the same side of this line.



Cross The Line
Here I have the camera on the wrong side of the line. The characters now face the same way over the two shots which feels odd. I was always frustrated this ‘wrong’ version wasn't as jarring as I’d hoped. I think because we have the table and other character to orient ourselves.



Refined Camera Blocking
From our basic example we can start to plus it, enhancing the story with subtle changes. Here the shots gradually get tighter during the sequence ending up with singles on the two characters. This gives the middle part of the scene more intensity.



Further Refinement
We can take these ideas further, in this version I've also added dollies to the shots where the boy puts his head on his hands - emphasising his dreamy reverie. I use a stronger up shot on the girl as she stands and shoot the boy in a down shot, which gives her a greater feeling of dominance.

Sign Opening Shot
It’s interesting to experiment with the establishing shot, it can have a big affect on the sequence. Here, starting with a shot on the café sign emphasises the location.



Point Of View Opening Shot
Here I start with a close up on the boy character and add a point of view shot as he looks to the girl, now the audience are encouraged to see him as the protagonist in the scene. Their empathy for him will be stronger, giving his emotions and eventual rejection more weight.

Main Gaits for a Horse and Panther

I did these quite a while ago for an iAnimate creature introduction, part of me would like to redo them to fix all the mistakes but unfortunately I don't have the time right now, so I'm just posting them as they are. Maybe this is helpful to some animators starting out with quadrupeds.

Trex Scene

To learn a bit of Arnold, I did a quick render of a Tyrannosaurus scene I demonstrate in my iAnimate Creature Workshop. I also added some sound effects from https://freesound.org/



This is a video of the class, edited down to some highlights but will hopefully still give you some insight into my approach and process for a scene like this.



Since the animation was pretty simple, I thought the shot would benefit from some extra creatures. I hoped these would add some interest and a greater sense of life to the final result. Here I've highlighted these animations - a flying pterosaur and some small scavenging dinosaurs based upon compsognathus.

Intro to Creature Animation Course

I created a quick series of videos for iAnimate and thought it might be helpful to post them in order here -

Episode 1 = Intro
Episode 2 = Principles
Episode 3 = Anatomy
Episode 4 = Walk
Episode 5 = Trot
Episode 6 = Gallop
Episode 7 = Canter
Episode 8 = Polish

Weight Theory

Creature Animation workshop 3 - Lecture: Scale from iAnimate on Vimeo.

Here is a little animation experiment I conducted as part of my iAnimate fantasy creature workshop to demonstrate how I think about adding scale and weight to characters and creatures.

Walk Cycle Creation Time-lapse

This is a recording of my process for animating a walk cycle in Autodesk Maya. I created the video as a tutorial for the animation students of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. At this point in the course the students have already created a walk cycle using 2D, drawn animation so I aim to show a process that follows on from their traditional training. However, I hope this video will also be helpful to other animation students or anyone that is interested in learning more about the computer animation process.



There are quite a lot of pauses, extra camera rotations and general mouse waving as I was talking as I was animating. 

XROMM and Biomechanics Studies Benefit Animators

Some of the latest research occurring in biomechanics could be of great benefit to animation - especially VFX where recreations of creatures is often focused around being as realistic as possible.

I had the great honour of visiting the Royal Veterinary College last week and a piece of imaging technology that caught my eye was the XXROMM machine - a camera that films x-ray images. It has some limitations, only shooting a confined area means it's only able to capture small animals in full. However the images of these animals are very illuminating.

Here is a partridge scrambling up an incline under X-ray (XROMM)



As I've mentioned before, birds' wing bones are often hard to locate (due to the feathers) so to get a clear look at them is very insightful. It's also interesting to see and try to understand how their legs work too - the first joint (femur) is often hidden and, although the overall leg construction is similar to mammal quadruped hind limbs, it does not adhere to the same constrained linkage - which often keeps the femur and foot more or less parallel to each other.

I hope to write more about how bird legs work as well as how and why they evolved soon. But I digress. I was particularly intrigued by the implication of the advanced use of these machines -  by using twos XROMMs at different vantage points it is possible to 3D track animal bones as they move.

The study mentioned in the video above looked into the mobility of two different suborders of turtles  - those with their hips fused to their shells (Pleurodira) and turtles' who's hips are free to move (Cryptodira).

Cryptodira

Pleurodira

As you can see, the study quite conclusively shows that the turtles who's hips are free to move, use this ability to increase the range of movement from their hind limbs and therefore have a much better walking performance. Which is interesting in itself, but for me, the ability to watch how bones work in an animal while they move is truly fascinating. The article can be found here.

As 3D animators working with an animation rig we are generally trying to animate from the bones outward - the muscles, skin and fur usually being added by other departments. So the idea that we may be able to finally see what these bones are up to in real creatures under all that soft tissue could mean a much greater understanding of animal locomotion and an advancement in terms of realism in their movements.

A library of XXROMM movies can be found here.

Flight Page Update

I've just completed a quick update on my bird flight page - now the videos should play in all browsers. I received a few emails saying they were broken, technically there was nothing wrong with the movie files but unfortunately that type of embedded quicktime has fallen out of favour with most browsers. I could still get them to work on safari and internet explorer but on chrome and firefox they were bust. So now they're embedded from vimeo. However, if you want the movie files to study and step through, as animators are want to do, you can download the quicktimes from the vimeo page.

Just in case you don't know where the download button is on vimeo

Favours and Inbetweens, feel the difference.

A short video made for an animation class to demonstrate the difference between a direct inbetween and an inbetween favouring a pose in a two frame move. All the eye darts take two frames. The ones before the blink are direct inbetweens, the ones after favour the first pose. The favours not only appear smoother but have more life to them too.

iAnimate Lecture

Hello. Here's a little excerpt from the lecture I gave for the online animation school iAnimate earlier this year. I talk about birds.

Guardians Flight

Today I thought I’d talk a little more about the flight design in Legend of the Guardians as I feel this was one of my main areas of influence on the film. Let's start by looking at the flight cycle I created for the character of Soren.



The style of the film was quite realistic so I attempted to create movement that was true to nature. However, I've not sought to copy a barn owl's flight. Barn owls wings are very stiff so I looked at the flight of other birds of prey, like eagles to make Soren's flight a little more dynamic and powerful. I've also tried to make sure it works from all angles so that it can be used as a starting point in any type of shot. The amount of vertical motion is less than you find in nature, this is because many of the flying shots were close-ups or mid shots where the characters were talking so, for this reason the vertical motion has been toned down. In a wide shot the ups and downs needed to be exaggerated. As the hero, Soren's flight cycle is fairly standard, you'd probably call it the 'vanilla' of flight cycles, a quirkier character would have a more distinctive flight.

However, this monotonous and rigid cycle is obviously not how you'd want any real bird to fly but once this cycle has been created, it's fairly straight forward to get something more organic -



This is an early test I did for the character of Nyra taking a similar cycle to the Soren one above. In this animation I've broken up the cycle by adding glides, I've also found opportunities to bank the body. I've done it quite severely here to give the impression she is honing in on some fast moving and erratic prey. As you can see we can start to get something quite naturalistic by just doing this. The head, however remains locked, maybe a little too much, this test was left quite rough, if I were to work into it further I'd probably loosen up the head a little, add further asymmetry to the wings as well as break the tail away from the body and add some flutter to the ends of the feathers.




As I mention in my bird flight notes, smaller birds fly differently to bigger birds in a number of ways but importantly below a certain size, birds will abandon a conventional flap/glide pattern and instead flap in short bursts, then pull their wings in completely for a time. This is called a bounding flight pattern and I was keen to use this to accentuate the small size of Gylfie, a tiny Elf owl character in the film.

The following movie shows the original opening to the film which was completed after production on the film. It is available as an extra on the recently released Blue Ray Disc of the film. It shows the ancient and mythical 'Battle of the Ice Claws' - a hostile encounter between the evil Pure Ones and the Guardians. In case your interested, I animated the shot when the two leaders of the armies - Lyse of Keil and Metalbeak first come together.



As well as making different cycles for the different characters of the film we also wanted to show a difference in the overall flight of the good Guardian owls and the evil Pure Ones. The Pure Ones are the villains, hell bent on enslaving the owl kingdom and see themselves as a master race, there were clear parallels between them and human fascist dictatorships and we wanted to reinforce this where ever possible.



The owls in army of Pure Ones are controlled and heavily suppressed and so fly in rigid formations. The shape of their wings is different to, we kept them higher and more angular, almost suggesting the Eagle motifs of the Nazis.



I also referenced frigate birds who have a reputation for robbing other birds and have a menacing wing shape, and hold their bodies low under their bent wings.



To contrast this we wanted the Guardians to have a more natural owl wing shape that was softer and rounder. The guardians also fly in a more broken formation which subtly symbolises their freedom from suppression.



In case anyone hasn't seen it, most of the details of how I approach flight can be found on my bird tutorial page here.

More Subtext ... and Top Gun

After my recent subtext post I came across a couple of humorous references to subtext which I though I'd share and talk about to hopefully help clarify what it is and how it applies to acting for anyone still unsure.

The first clip is from The Trip, a recent BBC comedy series in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play lose versions of themselves. It's a largely improvised sitcom which follows them on a tour of expensive restaurants in the North of England. The two performers are both actors and impressionists and my favourite parts of the programme are thier impressions and analysis of famous actors their varying techniques. At the end of the following clip Steve Coogan points out an acting technique used by Richard Gere.





"Richard Gere does a very interesting technique he does in a lot of his films, not a lot of people pick him up on it. What he does is he'll listen to what someone says and then he'll smile enigmatically. He'll look away into the middle distance as if remembering something from the past, laugh about it and then return to the dialogue."

He then acts this out -


Looking away, smiling enigmatically ...


... then returning to the dialogue.

He also embellishes this further by adding a head shake and a shrug.

"See? The little look. They thought, ooh, there's a little story, a little subtext there we didn't know about. What's going on there? Why did he look over there? What was that memory?"

Although this is a caricature, it's interesting to study and makes it clear how actors use subtext. It is important to note that the action - the look away and smile before the dialogue is not the subtext, but this implies a subtext. Often the subtext of the dialogue is clear but in this instance the subtext is left purposely unclear. This creates a sense of mystery about the character, we feel like he's not letting on what he's thinking, this potentially will tantalise and engage the audience and want them to find out more about the character.

By the way does anyone know of a scene in a film where Richard Gere does this? I would love to find an example.

This next example is a sound file from a comedy show called The Stand by the British comedian Daniel Kitson, here he talks about the lack of subtext in the film Top Gun (caution swearing!).



"My favourite films of that ilk though really is Top Gun and I'll tell you why .... The reason Top Gun's a great film is because the character in Top Gun who's a bit of a loose cannon, who plays by his own rules, who's a law unto himself, he's actually called Maverick. And his enemy who's a bit cold, a bit stand off-ish, not quite human, he's called called Iceman. There's actually a scene where Iceman says to Maverick "I don't like you because you're dangerous", and Maverick goes "Yeah, that's right, I am dangerous". It's almost like the writers decided to make a whole film without any subtext whatsoever."

This is again an exaggeration of what happens in the film but he makes an interesting point to have your characters named after their personality type - 'Maverick' and 'Iceman' and also having them say exactly what they think with no attempt at subtext would make a rather obvious and uninteresting scene.

So after listening to this I decided to try and find the scene on youtube. What I discovered is what the Top Gun script appears to lack in subtext the actors have made up for with their performance. Although I don't think it's the greatest acting, Tom Cruise's delivery of "That's right, Ice Man, I am Dangerous" has a clear subtext.



Tom Cruise snaps into anger at the start of the line, then stops, smiles and pretends to brush down Iceman's uniform - a friendly and familiar gesture. It's open to interpretation but this is how I read the subtext - The initial snap into anger is false, he's testing Iceman, trying to scare him, like jumping out and someone and shouting "Boo!". Then the subtext of the rest of the line is "I'm not going to let you get to me" and again it's interesting to note that the acting choices have little to do with the text - "That's right, Ice Man, I am Dangerous".


Anger at the start of the line ...


... then he stops, smiles and pretends to brush down Iceman's uniform.

Clearly in this scene the two characters are sizing each other up and testing each other's nerve, it's interesting to see that after this line Val Kilmer bites at Maverick - another pretend attack done in the hope of making him flinch. However, the later part of Maverick's line combines the two differing ideas of argumentative and provocative words said in a restrained and disarming way. This definitely shows that Maverick is not going to shy away from confrontation but also that he will not be so easily provoked. This makes the performance more engaging and Maverick a deeper and more interesting character than if he had just snapped and shouted the line at Iceman.

Dapoon's Subtext Question

An animator called Dapoon asked me a question about subtext in animation on this post from a while ago. As my rambling answer expanded beyond the limitations of the comment box I decided to put it here.

Thanks for the question; it took me a while to get to grips with what subtext is to. Subtext is not adding extra actions to your animation but exploring the underlying meaning of spoken words and actions in the hope of creating a deeper performance.

We should always strive to seek and animate the subtext of what the character says and this can be in varying degrees of alignment to what the spoken words are. Sarcasm would be an extreme example; at this point the meaning of what the character is saying is the exact opposite of the words they're speaking. "It's cold in here" = "It's hot in here".

I like this Monty Python sketch where they play around with this subtext. The Drill Sergeant's obviously sarcastic tone and manner belies the fact he seems to be talking totally literally.



You could play this scene with the same text spoken with a literal tone and it would still make sense ... probably wouldn't be very funny though. The humour comes from our perception of what the Sergeant is asking, or not asking - the subtext.

Dapoon suggests a situation - A mother folding sheets, while she asks her son how his day at school was. Let's explore that.

For me an interesting area of subtext to explore would be in the mother's delivery. Let's say her words are simply "How was your day at school?"

She could be just asking in a way that suggests she always asks this and is not really interested, it's almost just a greeting, like a "Hello" in this instance the subtext is there but subtle. Where the subtext becomes more obvious is when she's asking with a hidden agenda to find out more about his day. She could say the same words but be asking -

"Did you get into trouble today?"
"How did you do in the test you had?"
"Did you speak to that girl you like?"

Or if she'd already had a call from the headmaster to tell her that the boy has misbehaved this could form the subtext of the delivery, it could be a rhetorical "How was your day at school?" = "I know what you've done at school"

As you can see the delivery and acting of these lines would be different but the words or text ("How was your day at school?") stay the same.

The folding of the sheets I would call a 'secondary action', this would be both separate from the performance but also linked to it, if she was annoyed at her son she would be folding differently from if she was just absently mindedly doing it while chatting to him.

Hope that helps!

Bird Flight Tutorial

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I've been enjoying some time off and also moving home - from Australia back to Europe. However, I'm going to try and atone for my absence now with something I hope that you will find was worth the wait.



As Guardians is officially released in the US this weekend, I thought I'd share something relevant to the film. I feel my main area of influence in this animated film was in the design of the bird flight. I created many of the hero characters' flight cycles which were then used by the rest of the animation team.



I'd been lucky enough to animate many flying creatures prior to being appointed to Guardians. I therefore had a reasonable understanding of bird flight, so for the benefit of others, I attempted to write down my thoughts and tips on the subject in my spare time.



It quickly expanded into quite a long and detailed document as I sought to further my knowledge by drawing on all the sources I could - from video footage to websites and books on flight and ornithology. The following pages represent the finished document which was shown to all new arrivals on the project to help them quickly get up to speed and avoid the many pitfalls of animating bird flight.

VIEW TUTORIAL HERE

This will probably be most helpful to anyone who is currently animating a bird or other flying creature but hopefully others will find it an interesting insight into how I break down an animal's movement. When animating animals, especially realistic ones it is important to avoid animation clichés and preconceived ideas as to how the animal moves as well as learn from others who have attempted it before you.

The Weight Problem

Probably one of the most consistent comments from leads and animation directors during review is that a character 'needs a little more weight', and frustratingly it's not always easy or obvious how to rectify this. Sometimes it's down to posing and balance but often it's just that the character feels too light as they are moving around.


weight through posing by Wayne Gilbert

How to make things look heavy in animation is something that even experienced animators struggle with. I touched on this subject in my bouncing ball lecture but I think it would be good to go into more detail and really figure out how and why objects feel weighty or not when in movement. In the lecture I showed how to vary weight in the bouncing ball by altering the 'gap' - the distance between the last drawing of the ball falling and the 'squash' frame when it first impacts the ground.



These balls appear to have different weights; the one on the left feels like a ping pong ball, the one in the middle, a tennis ball, and the one on the right feels more like a bowling ball. Why does this work? All I have affectively done is slightly evened out the spacing of the heavy ball and lessen the distance the ball falls, which affectively makes the ball fall slower than the other balls. How does that make something feel heavier? Common sense would tell you that a heavier object would fall faster and accelerate more quickly, surely that is the way to make things look heavier? It seems counter-intuitive to have something you want to feel heavier, fall slower than something lighter.



But as Galileo Galilei famously proved gravity accelerates all objects at the same rate.* He demonstrated that if he dropped dropped a ten-pound weight and a one-pound weight off the Leaning Tower of Pisa they would hit the ground at the same time. Gravity acts on all objects equally despite their size and weight. This gives us quite a headache, is it therefore impossible to make a character seem heavier through gravity? If all objects fall at the same rate how can we make some feel heavier than others?

Maybe we're missing something, lets look at how gravity affects an object falling from different heights.

*Obviously there are other factors to consider the main one being air resistance if you had an object that was very light but had a large surface area, such as a feather then it will obviously fall much slower than a something of greater mass but with less surface area such as a cannon ball, but in a vacuum the ball and feather will fall at the same rate. In animation we are mostly dealing with characters - human or animal which are made of the same stuff - bone, muscle, fat, skin, and will therefore have about the same weight to surface area ratio. We can therefore take Galileo's law to be true - an elephant will fall as fast a mouse.

Ball Tests from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here I'm dropping a ball from 30cm*, 100cm, 200cm and 400cm and on the right of the screen I'm counting how many frames the ball falls for.

The results are as follows -

30cm = 6 frames
100cm = 11 frames
200cm = 16 frames
400cm = 23 frames

* not quite as accurate as I would like because I couldn't see what I was doing too clearly.



Here I have created a composite image of the tests, I've drawn a circle round the ball to help clarify their position. I've also adjusted the images so all the start and ground positions are at the same height on the screen.



If we simplify this further so we can just concentrate on the spacing, we can see the greater the height the ball falls, the more frames or longer it takes but interestingly the more even the spacing becomes.




In fact the spacing only appears very extreme at the start of the first test. Although this extreme spacing occurs at the start of the other drops, it is over such a short distance that it becomes hard to perceive that the ball is moving at all. Also look at how more even the spacing gets the further the ball falls, the spacing at the bottom of the last drop looks almost equidistant - the overall effect is that if the ball is falling from a great height it's motion is more even than if it's falling from a small height.

So we can deduce that the further an object or character falls, the longer this will take but also the more even the spacing will become.



Now, try and apply this information to an animation problem. Let's say we are given a scene to animate were a tyrannosaurus walks across frame.

We want this creature to appear realistic and obviously big and heavy, but we are unable to simply copy it from nature, there is no bipedal creature alive today that is as big as the Tyrannosaurus and therefore nothing we can use as reference.



However, we might look to a large bird from today like this ostrich, and try and scale up it's walk. Let's say we find a piece of reference where an ostrich walks through frame like above. You'll notice that like the ball images, the two creatures appear the same size in their respective shots. Although we know this to be false, it's easy to get sidetracked by the size of something in screen (or 'screen space'). In our computer scenes and on our pieces of paper there is often very little to help us get a good idea about how big something is or how far it's moving. Even though the ostrich and the Tyrannosaurus appear the same size in the two images, we know that the ostrich is 2 meters (6½ ft) tall were as the Tyrannosaurus is double the size at 4 meters (13ft). There is also a huge difference in weight between the two, the ostrich weighs just 45 kg (100lb) were the Tyrannosaurus is around 6.8 metric tons in weight.

To apply our ball information, let's look to the part of the body that falls during the walk cycle - the hips. We could take the range of movement in the ostrich and apply it to our Tyrannosaurus.



Let's say upon studying the ostrich we found that it's vertical hip range was 30cm*, we could then determine the tyrannosaurus' range. But how would we show this extra distance in movement? Well, we can use what we've just learned from the ball, for an object to fall 30cm will take around 6 frames. We know the Tyrannosaurus is double the height of the ostrich and therefore it's vertical hip range would be 60 cm. We know that it would be impossible for the Tyrannosaurus' hips under gravity alone to fall this distance in the same time, and we could probably make quite an accurate guess as to how long it would take to fall this far (8-9 frames) we also know that since the hips are falling further the spacing will appear more even, again we could use our ball images above to apply quite an accurate result.

*I've exaggerated the range in this example for clarity, in reality an ostrich's hip would on raise and fall around 2 inches (5cm).



But why stop here? We could take this further, we could exaggerate these values for the Tyrannosaurus and imply that he's even bigger than he is. If we use a few more frames and make the spacing slightly more even, we will give the effect that the Tyrannosaurs is actually even bigger and HEAVIER than it might actually have been.

And this is really the point I'm trying to make, the animator actually has a great deal of power over the physical world of their character. They can create a false gravity to imply the size - although the audience gets the impression that gravity has stayed the same and the object has got bigger.

We cannot use gravity to make an object seem heavier, instead we must create our own gravity to imply things are bigger and therefore heavier.





If we go back to our bouncing balls again we can see that what we've actually done. By reducing the final gap before the squash, this implies that the ball is bigger. So, by reducing the amount it's falling, we are effectively making it fall slower and by lessening the 'gap' we've evened out the spacing. All these things imply that the ball is bigger (as well as heavier) but further away.


For more confirmation of this theory let's look at something truly massive falling from a great distance - a huge piece of ice falling from the end of a glacier.



The ice in this video is traveling around the same distance in frame as our ball tests, but look how long it takes to fall this far. It looks almost as though it's in slow motion, when in fact, the ice is falling at around the same rate as our ball. As we are further away it seems much slower, and look at the spacing, it's even more even, the ice looks like it's falling at a constant speed, only very slightly accelerating.

But weight is not only a gravitational, vertical issue. As things move horizontally or in any direction around the screen, they can feel light. Often it's our inability to determine actual distance in our shot or 'screen space' that is conspiring to confuse us once again.



Let's look at two animals we might animate. The fastest land animal in the world, the cheetah can run at 60 mph, however the cheetah is still a big animal so we also need to show it's weight.



Let's compare it to a small animal, like the squirrel, which can run only at 20 mph. However, the squirrel is much lighter and if we compare speed for their size - by seeing how long it takes each creature to run it's own body length.





We find that the squirrel for it's size is actually quicker than a cheetah.



Weight is a fine balancing act. Often we want big, heavy things to move fast but we always have to keep in mind that they are big and to show that size (and weight) they have to move slower through shot comparatively than something that we want to appear light.



Also, as we found in our ball test, our acceleration or spacing on a small creature like our squirrel, can be more extreme. Because of it's tiny weight, a squirrel can accelerate to it's top speed very quickly (over just a few frames) which means more exaggerated spacing. Where as a big animal like the cheetah takes longer to reach it's top speed and therefore has more even spacing.



But keep in mind animation is not about recreating reality. We can also play with weight, making some characters feel heavier which can give them a greater presence in a shot and therefore a greater sense of importance.

Yoda is a small yet powerful character. His movement is usually slow and considered which subconsciously tricks the audience into thinking that he's larger and therefore more important. When Yoda jumped around during his light sabre duel in Star Wars : Attack of the Clones his character was made to look light, this destroyed the illusion for many, he suddenly felt weaker and less important at precisely the moment he needed to look strong.

This weight theory is not just about making big characters seem big, it can also be used to give weight and gravitas to small light characters when they need it.

Acting, Breathing and Al Pacino

Breathing is not something we are often conscious of, therefore animating a character breathing during dialogue is easily overlooked. Spending the time studying and adding this to your shot can really create a great sense of believability to your work. In fact, as we'll discover, breathing is something that can be used to drive a performance.

We first should take some time to understand how breathing works and what controls it.



Breathing, as I'm sure you're aware, is the expanding and shrinking of the lungs. This is primarily driven by the diaphragm which contracts, moving down and pulling air into your lungs, then during the exhale the diaphragm relaxes, moving up and expelling the air from our lungs. However, this is not the only force acting on the lungs. There are muscles around the ribs which contract, expanding the rib cage by swinging the ribs up, then on the exhale they expand and the ribs swing down causing the rib cage to get smaller.



I've used a 3d animation package to create a graph which represents how lung volume changes during a typical breath taken when at rest. The air fills quickly at first then slows as it reaches the apex, on the exhale, the air leaves the lungs quickly at first then slows as the lung volume reaches it's lowest point.



However when we speak, our breathing pattern is very different. The air is inhaled as before but is then compressed, the muscles around the ribs and the diaphragm working against each other to condense the air in our lungs to create a positive pressure there. The air is then steadily released as the the dialogue is spoken, then after the line of dialogue is finished, the diaphragm is relaxed. This causes the last of the air to empty quickly from the lungs, then we start to breathe in and the process can begin again.



Of course this is not a one way process, dialogue also affects the lung volume - if the dialogue has a particularly loud accent in it, that will affect the lung volume by creating a sudden drop. I've represented this above in my lung volume graph by showing a drop in the curve. As well as loud accents, often 'w' sounds use greater amounts of air and will also cause the above to happen.

Now we have looked at this in abstract, let's look at an example. I've selected a clip of Al Pacino from the start of the teaser trailer for Ocean's 13. Al Pacino's breathing is often quite apparent in his performances. I suspect this is because he was originally a stage actor and has learned how to use and exaggerate his breathing to help to project his voice. But in this case, I believe he's using it primarily to drive tension into his voice.

Ocean's 13 teaser trailer can be found here

transcript -
"I know people, highly invested in my survival and they are people who really know how to hurt in ways you can't even imagine."

First, let's talk about the performance in general. Al Pacino's character Willy Banks, is a powerful and ruthless casino owner and he has just learned of Danny Ocean's plans to disrupt his business. In this shot, he warns him that there would be violent consequences if Ocean carries out these plans.


"You're joking?"

Al's character is incensed at the idea that anyone would set out to damage his business, although the conversation is conducted in public, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. He's also very clever and doesn't want to reveal that he is affected by this. Al Pacino's performance is very restrained, but it's charged with an intensity which leaves us in no doubt that he is deeply enraged. He keeps his face predominately impartial, at only one point does he let the anger he's feeling creep briefly onto his face - just before he says "really know how to hurt". This is known as a 'microexpression', to do this voluntarily, really shows Al Pacino's acting genius, they naturally occur when someone is trying to conceal or repress an emotion. This one flashes across his face, it is literally only there for one frame, hard to spot when the clip is played at full speed but we read it subconsciously.


Microexpression - incandescent rage

There is a wonderfully subtle texture as well as a change in tempo and tone through the piece. During the first line "I know people" his body is ever so slightly loose and there is a hint of a smile that says "you're joking, aren't you?". Then, as he says "highly invested in my survival...", his body tenses, the speed of his delivery increases and we get that glimpse of anger he's feeling, then at "you can't even imagine" his eyes widen and his speech slows down again to intimidate his opponent by suggesting that he could do something crazy.


"I could do something crazy"

Al Pacino's phonemes, like his performance, have been kept small but he's using his breathing to generate as much tension in his voice as possible as well as project what would otherwise be just a whisper. He's forcing as much air as he can through the narrow exit of his voice box. If you watch his throat you can see it tense as he speaks, then relax as he releases the pressure to breathe in.

Analysis of Al Pacino's Breathing from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here I've animated a representation of his lung volume on the right hand side of the screen. If you would like to step though this video and/or view it at larger size I have placed a quicktime version here

What's interesting is how almost all his movement is initiated or affected by his breathing. You can see his body tensing as he compresses the air before each line of dialogue, then you see his body relax slightly as he inhales. This causes his body to rock backwards a couple of times during this scene. There is only one small body and head movement during "even" that appears to be separate from his breathing.




Here is the animation curve of the bar in the movie above. We can see how the breathing pattern we cited above appears throughout the performance, note the way it varies too. We can also see how the rhythm of his breathing echos the intensity in the performance - at the start during "I know people" his breath is slower, drawing out the exhale in his 'almost laugh', but as his delivery gets more vehement during "highly invested in my survival ... who really know how to hurt" his breathing gets faster, shorter and we find small half-breaths. Then during that intimidating last line, we can see how he slows down again.

So, how can we use this? Well, if you were trying to create a subtle performance and wanted to keep the character still, but not so much that the character 'dies', and obviously we don't want the character just floating around randomly, we could base the character's movements around the breathing and can be sure it will work and add to the performance. Also, if you wanted to create an intensity in your performance you could exaggerate the breathing and seek to show the the tension in the body as the character compresses and holds the air in their lungs as they speak.

Thanks to James Cunliffe who helped me put this post together.

Some Thoughts On Acting Part 2 (capturing honesty)

Finally, here's part 2. This is about honesty in acting, and is primarily a method to employ while filming yourself for animation reference and includes an example of my work and some embarrassing clips of myself. Enjoy.

When working on The Tale of Despereaux, we were encouraged to act our shots out and then to show this reference to the director, Sam Fell, before starting to animate.

As context is important in the following example, I should give you some back story. A rat called Rosscurro has convinced a servant girl, Mig, to abduct a princess named Pea. Roscurro, through a series of events has turned from a hero to a bitter villain, hell bent on punishing someone, specifically the princess, for the ill-treatment he has received. He has told the naive Mig, that if she abducts Pea and locks her in the dungeon, she can become the princess in her place, when in fact this is untrue and he intends to trap both of them in the dungeon.



In this sequence the three characters are walking through the cavernous and deserted dungeons, Rosscurro is on Mig's shoulder and talking into her ear. The terrified Princess, who is bound up and held at knife point by Mig is screaming, and in this shot Roscurro says to Mig, who repeats everything he tells her, "Tell her it's no use, no one can hear her".



Here's one of my first takes, I decided at the start of the shot I would look toward Mig, and that for "tell her it's no use" I would try a dismissive gesture, then look toward the princess for "no one can hear her" while giving a fierce point.

take1

There are many things I didn't like about this performance. Firstly, I'd given myself too much to do in the time I had (a common animation mistake), and I was struggling to fit in both the dismissive gesture and the point. Also, pointing is one of those animation clichés that it's best to try and avoid. This performance was very 'on-the-nose', so I decided to try a different approach.

Shooting this was still a valuable experience, as I could see straight away that those ideas were not going to work well. To animate the performance and discover that, would've taken days, here I was able to see very quickly that this was not as strong as I thought it would be.

take2

This is footage from another take, this time I decided I wouldn't try to plan what I was going to do, I would just switch the camera on try and put myself in the mind frame of the character and see what happened. I also decided to concentrate on the subtext of the dialogue which was "so what, nobody cares" .

When I shot this I thought that I wasn't really doing anything and so this would be uninteresting and unusable, but when I looked back over the footage I was surprised to see I had been doing more than I thought and the performance seemed to work better than the last take. First of all, the action was much simpler - no hand gestures or excess information, but it was stronger for it, my body posture at the end was simple and clear, and seemed to be conveying what the shot was about, bitterness and disinterest. I had turned away from who I was speaking to, this is something I probably wouldn't of planned, it's customary to have your character look to whom they're talking to for clarity, and usually if a character is angry, you'd think that they would stare at the source of their anger. But in this shot, even though he was angry, he wasn't incandescent with rage toward the princess, in fact he was detached and uncaring about her, and her cries for help. Therefore, since he didn't care about either who he was talking to, or about, it made sense that he looked away and clarity wasn't a problem as there was no one else around, a point he was making in the dialogue. I subconsciously, did a little shrug during, "no one can hear her", it was subtle but was something that I could exaggerate in animation. There was also an eye shift around "hear", another thing I did subconsciously but which also made sense for the shot. My facial expression seemed to fit better as well instead of just anger, I had a more specific, surly sneer.

Here is my first, stepped key, block of the shot -

Roscuro Block from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

And here is the finished animation, rendered simply -

Roscuro Final Animation from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

As you can see, apart from the adding of the vertical motion of Mig as she walks along, the shot hardly had any major revisions as it went through animation. I copied my performance, while exaggerating certain things, like the shoulder shrug as well as attitude in body posture. It was one of the most straight forward shots for me to complete on Despereaux, and although far from perfect, I believe it's one of my most successful. Sam Fell actually commented how strong the attitude was in it, which was very satisfying.

If you've ever tried to film yourself for an animation you're planning, and have had preconceived ideas about what you'd like the character to do, you quickly discover how hard acting is, to keep your mind on giving a performance while also concentrating on what your body is doing is extremely tough. I have a great respect for people who can get their bodies and face to do precisely what they want when acting out reference. Jeff Gabor is a great example, his Horton Hears a Who comparison reel is incredible, his ability to act what he wants to animate is very impressive. However, I find this method, even when done well, can lead to the result feeling unnaturally acted, rather than something more honest. Much better, I think to ignore what your body is doing, try and feel what the character is feeling, concentrate on the subtext, and see what happens.

Working on Guardians of Ga'Hoole I'm using this approach a lot, and my lead, James Cunliffe is showing me further techniques, like shooting with the dialogue slowed down or doing a couple of passes, the first one this, sub-conscious, 'honesty' pass then, shooting more reference this time concentrating on the physicality of the performance. Then you can use both to make a very strong piece of animation ... but more about this another time.