The Sound

I was recently contacted by Breanna Barden, the Design Editor for The Sound, an award winning high school newspaper in Gig Harbor, Washington. Not a publication I'm overly familiar with, but you have to embrace these random internet meetings sometimes. She was doing a story on how graphics are used to bring superheroes to life and wanted to ask me a few questions about Hellboy 2.

Here's the article as it appeared in the February 11th issue of the newspaper.



Congratulations Breanna, it was a pleasure to be involved in your project.

New Lightbox

Recently I've had a strong desire to go to back to doing some traditional, drawn animation, it's something I haven't done since Art College but always enjoyed. So I've bought a second-hand animation lightbox, hopefully this will help me with the animation I do at work as well as improve my drawing skills, which have been severely neglected over the last 8 years.



If they're not too embarrassing, I'll post the results here soon.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole

I'm currently at Animal Logic in Australia, back where I animated on Happy Feet. I'm now working on their next animated feature The Guardians of Ga'Hoole.

Clym's Walk

Clym Smith, an animation student at Ravensbourne college asked me to critique a walk he has done -




Excuse the pause at the end of the movie, that was accidentally added by me.

It is a good start and there are some nice poses in there. My first impression was that it was perhaps a bit fast, and maybe it needs to be inbetweened to make it feel a more natural speed.

As I watched it a few more times, a pose jumped out at me as looking a little odd. This one -





In this pose, the character is too off-balance and looks like he's falling over. It doesn't quite fit in the walk, and it makes the character feel as if he's tripping on something.

It also stands out in this composite of the walk. We can see the head is generally moving forward at a constant speed until this frame, when it suddenly shifts further forward and overlaps the next drawing.

So Clym, that would be the main thing I'd fix along with the speed. But I also thought I'd go through the other drawings and suggest some subtle ways to exaggerate the poses and movement you have.

As I've shown below, the up and down motion you have on the character is quite even. I would be tempted to push this into more of a bouncing ball motion.




Let's start by looking at the first pose in this sequence; the contact position. One thing I noticed is that his body is in a very neutral pose, it would liven the action up if this was altered, and we had a stronger change of shape occurring.




We can see this by drawing a line following the spine, this is our 'line of action'. At the moment the line is straight.



By simply pushing the line of action, and therefore the body, into a slight curve we create a stronger more interesting pose.



So, this is how I would alter the contact position. By adding a more dynamic line of action and also raising the body up. I've also straightened the rear leg to better follow the flow of the spine.



In the next pose, your 'down' or 'squash', I have pushed the line of action the other way. This will give us a change of shape when we play the animation which will add extra life to the walk. I have taken it to quite an extreme here, you may want to be more subtle.

I have also lowered the pose and changed the rear leg. In your drawing it felt as if the leg had shrunk a bit.



In the next pose, the crossover, I have kept some of the curve of the previous pose in the body. I have also changed the lifted foot slightly as I felt it had slightly too much drag in your drawing.

I haven't shown it here, but it would also be a good idea to show part of the hand or the elbow protruding outside the figure's silhouette. At the moment the arm is contained in the shape of the body which means we lose it in motion.



The next pose is the one we mentioned earlier. I pushed his lifted leg further forward, and flattened the toes of his rear foot to look like they are still in contact with the ground. I also changed the angle of his body, so it looks less like he is tripping up.



We then arrive at the opposite contact pose, which I have altered in the same way as the first.



Here is a composite of all my drawings over your original ones. As you can see the heads now have more of a constant motion forward.




While the character's vertical motion forms a bouncing ball curve.

One last thing I think would help the animation. In this drawing you have the arm straight with the wrist dragging as it moves forward, which is good. But you could create a very fluid motion if you then bend the joints the other way as the arm swings back. I have indicated in red a rough approximation of the shape that you might want.

This is called 'breaking joints', Richard Williams describes it very well in his book, The Animators Survival Kit.

And that's it. As I said before, the walk is working well and these are just small changes to add to what you've already got. Hope it has made sense!

Good luck and all the best,

Brendan

Batpod tests

Happy New Year!

As The Dark Knight is now available on DVD I can now show you the pre-production tests I created of the Batpod. They had made a practical version but because of the huge wheels, the movement was very limited, especially in it's ability to turn. It became obvious that a computer generated version would be able to achieve much more dynamic movement.

This is the first test I created to show how flexible it could be. The idea is that the mechanism is gyroscopic, keeping the wheels flat to the ground while the rider leans into the turns.


Batpod 1 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

The next test I made was intended to show other aspects of the Batpod's movement. The jump shows how the machine's suspension might absorb impact. The next part shows how the batpod might recoil from the cannons firing, and the last part shows how the bike could lower to avoid an obstacle.


Batpod 2 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.


This last animation is of something the director was keen to see work visually. He wanted the bike to drive up a wall, then it's body to twist round to land, ready to drive off in the opposite direction. This idea made it into the film.



Batpod 3 from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

I enjoyed making these animations, and it was also a rare opportunity for me to do the rigging.

In the final version the Batpod's movement was toned down a lot from these initial tests. It looks much stiffer than how I envisioned it, which makes sense as it matches more closely up to the practical Batpod.

Walk Cycle

One of the last things I did this term at Duncan of Jordanstone was give a Maya animation workshop, where I showed how to go about creating a basic walk cycle. I won't go into too much detail here, but will just show my approach to it. The following technique can be applied to many different walk cycles. Usually I would add more character or emotion to a walk, but for simplicity I've made a neutral male cycle.

I think it's important to start with some reference, ideally some live-action footage. Ordinarily I'd go through the footage, try to exaggerate the traits that make the cycle unique, but here I'm going to be making a reasonably faithful copy. The reference I'll be using is from a Muybridge book.

I start by creating one pose, this one -



Apologies for the quality of the scan, hopefully you can still see the image. This is normally called the contact position which is a good one to start with. The legs are at an extreme and also the body is at an important stage of transition - it has accelerated down into this position and from this pose, as the foot catches it's weight, it will start to decelerate.



If we now look at the balance in the pose, you can see that the body mass is reasonably centred, with a similar amount of the body on both sides of the red line. The hips are perhaps slightly further over the contacting (left) foot, were as the chest is lagging behind the action, with slightly more of it on the standing foot.



Now looking in detail at the pose, there are some important things to note; firstly, the contacting leg is straight. In the rear view picture you can see the hips have rotated round with the leg, and also tipped, so the hip's lowest corner is over the contacting leg. The chest counters the hip's rotations in both axises, and the opposite arm (to the leg) is in a forward position. Note that the legs are not vertical, they angle in slightly. There is also a change in angle from the leg to the foot too. In the profile picture we can see the chest and hips have rotated in opposite directions to arch the back.



Now we can create this pose in the computer. I am using a very nice free rig off the internet called Max. He has created by Peter Starostin and James Hunt and is available to download here



I like to use traditional animation charts so I can see were my keys and breakdowns are. I have now put my contact pose at frame 1, and the same pose at my last frame (43), therefore I can now be sure the walk will cycle seamlessly. This pose can still be edited, but you must be sure to copy any changes onto both frames. The next step is to create an exact opposite of your contact pose and place it in the middle of your cycle (22). Feet should be as accurate an opposite as possible to avoid foot slip later, while chest and arm positions can be slightly different. This will help make your cycle feel organic.

* When playblasting or rendering your cycle, adjust your time-line so you don't include both contact poses (i.e. frames 1-42).



Next comes the cross-over or passing position, so called because it is the point were the feet pass each other.






If we look at the balance of this pose, you can see the weight has shifted onto the standing leg, more of the body is on the left side of the red line.





If we look at it in more detail you can see that the hips have rotated to a more neutral position. However, one side has fallen as the foot has lifted, the lowest side is over the lifted foot, the chest once again counters this rotation. Other things to observe are that the standing leg is straight and therefore the body is higher than it was at the contact position. The lifted foot when viewed from front on is not straight to camera, there are subtle changes in angle from the upper leg to the lower leg, and again from the lower leg to the foot. The hands are at almost the same position but note their poses suggest drag to their direction, either moving forward or going backwards. In the side view you can also see the hips and chest are rotated so the back is not as arched as it was in the contact pose.




Now you can create this pose and it's opposite, then put it into your animation halfway between the contact poses.



The chart now looks like what we see pictured above.

With our key poses applied, our character is essentially walking, although rather crudely. All we need to do now is to add some breakdowns to help the sincerity of the animation.




The first breakdowns I like to add are the highest and lowest points of the body - seen here in these two pictures from our Muybridge reference. We can see that the standing leg is stretched up in the first picture and then, in the second picture, the landing leg is bent as it catches the weight of the body. It is worth noting that the left arm is higher and further forward than in our contact position. It is also worth noting that in the second picture the rear leg is still in contact with the ground. In a walk there is a moment when both legs are simultaneously in contact with the ground.



I've made a close up composite of the head in the two pictures to make the vertical motion clearer. As you can see the thicker white line is level with the bottom of the man's nose in the first picture were it is level with his brow in the second.




Here are my up and down breakdowns. Again, I create opposites of them.




And this shows where I have applied them to my animation. I have put my 'up' positions roughly half-way between my crossover and contact poses, but my 'down' breakdown is just a couple of frames after the contact keyframe. This is to give the animation a sense of weight and also serves to create a change in the timing.



Next I like to create a sense of follow-through in the body. By offsetting the down of the body with the down of the chest, head translation and head rotation. Much like I talked about in the bouncing ball lecture.

http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/bb_lecture/walk_05.mov

So, two frames after the hips lowest point, I've put the down position of the chest. Then two frames later, the head's lowest point (in translation - called 'neck' here) then 1 frame later, the lowest point in the head's rotation.



Walk cycle produced for animation workshop from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

And here is the walk cycle I created. I've tweaked some of the curves a little in the graph editor, and also cleaned up the arcs of the feet and hands. I would usually polish this further but I have left it quite rough to show the result of just following this simple formula.

Tooth Fairy

As Hellboy 2 was released on DVD yesterday, I'm now allowed to show you some of my work from it.

Here is a early animation test of a Tooth Fairy from the film. They were tricky things to animate, We wanted them to move as both insects and quadrupeds. We also wanted to achieve a sense of menace and intensity in their movement. After many attempts I produced this stop-start motion led by the creature's head. Lead animator Gwilym Morris very kindly called it "the Rosetta Stone of Tooth Fairy animation".



Tooth Fairy test animation from Brendan Body on Vimeo.


More from the film to come soon!