Me by Marlo Meekins

A little while ago Marlo Meekins was offering to do caricatures in return for donations to help her get to a Caricature Convention in Japan. I took her up on the offer and this is result.



I'm a big fan of her work and find her style both mercilessly unique and very funny. If you're not aware of her blog you can visit it here.

Emanuele's shots

Fellow Double Negative animator Emanuele Pavarotti has some great comparison reels on vimeo. Amazingly, I haven't seen them posted anywhere else so I'd thought I'd give them a plug here.

They show cycles and playblasts of his animation followed by the fully rendered shots from VFX projects. They give a very interesting insight to how some shots were put together, also the quality of the animation is brilliant.

Night at the Museum 2



The Wolfman



The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian



And the bizzarre 'Pigmy Puff' from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince



More of his work can be found on his website here.

New Showreel

The same old stuff in a slightly different order!




There is also a higher quality quicktime version here.

Anim Dailies

This was posted on the On Animation Blog but I thought I'd also mention it.



Anim Dailies is an online animation review site created by Alfonso Sicilia, Suart Ellis, Andrea Castognoli, Brad Silby and Nathan McConnel. You can submit your reel or piece of animation and receive constructive feedback on your work from friendly professional animators.

I'm fortunate enough to know and have worked with these guys and would heartily recommend utilizing this site. They are exceedingly talented and experienced animators so if you're looking to further you animation skills, I wouldn't pass up this great opportunity to receive a free critique from a top animator.

Find them here.

John Carter Trailer

Here's the first trailer for John Carter, the film I'm currently working on. There isn't any of my work in it, in fact they seem to be keeping almost all of the great work being done here at Double Negative under wraps for now ... I guess that's why it's called a teaser.

A Week in Crunch Part 4

This post follows on from part one, two and three of the story, if you would like to read them first they can be found here - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Saturday Morning (hours worked = 88.5)
Submission - [V06]
6:14PM 02-Jul-10
brendanb
EL 03/07: What can we do in the time that we have?  I would prefer to spend the time to hit the Rough notes, otherwise at least getting some more OS hip shifts on Soren (that would translate/overlap up through his torso, and the snake) as he stumbles through his footfalls a bit with the surprise of the impact and the mere fact that the snake is here.  We just feel too locked on our mark here, so I am looking for anything to make the moment play more real at Soren's core.  Also, need to continue to refine overlap on the snake relative to Soren, and snake lip sync.  Soren can still have a bit more incredulous default facial, with occasional smile coming in, weight it still more toward incredulous (eyes wide, mouth agape) particularly toward the end.  Copying previous notes just to track them: EL 02/07: Let's get one more pass before Rough, refine snake sync, and crank incredulous where you can, esp, with Soren's broken up, shuddering, gasping breathing.  Make sure this breathing comes from his core and that the rhythm does not get too even.  (time-wise, focus on the end.)  The look to cam still plays odd, too defined in and out, too present (almost plays like embarrassment)  Try breaking it up in steps, and spread it out longer, perhaps use body rots more in the turn as well, but trailing one step behind the head... and counter animate the snake head position back in world-space to keep the same read/ focus on her as he shifts around underneath.  Also, still need more wide-eyed, jaw dropped incredulous on Soren's look to the others.

My heart sank as I saw the large amount of text next to my shot. His opening statement suggested he wasn't really happy with it, that he was just looking to for improvement in the time left and had given up on getting the shot he really wanted. I had just one day left to work on the shot. Realistically I couldn't change it very much in that time. Had I made a disastrous mess of the shot? And the snake sync note again, I'd gone through it and it looked pretty dead on in terms of timing, what was going on? Was it possible I had the wrong audio in my shot? This had happened a few times on the project, an update gets missed along the way and someone has to redo animation due to them having the wrong audio. Had I just spent 7 days animating to the wrong dialogue?

My old camera had a slight drift on it which had subconsciously given the illusion of Soren moving around more. The new one was more locked and I could see it made him look very still. My co-ordinator arranged for me to do an upload to him at lunchtime so he could see where I was at and prioritise what should be worked on. I grabbed the translate null and Soren and tried to find places where it felt appropriate to move him. This was tricky as he had to end up in the same place so that Mrs P's position would stay the same at the end of shot. So every time I moved him forward, I had to find an opportunity to move him the same distance backward. I had got the note to make him incredulous again, I clearly still wasn't getting this right. So I decided to be brave and push it as far as I could, and just have his mouth wide open for most of the shot, I also exaggerated the head shake I had in there and submitted again.

BB: have tried to loosen him up a bit, moving him back and forth to address the "locked on our mark" note, weighted expression toward open mouthed default. Hoping to spend rest of day pushing chest and snake overlap. Not sure what to do about snake sync note, Andrew and I went through it yesterday and I made some adjustments, looks pretty tight to me now. Which bit is the problem? Is it possible you have different audio?




Lunchtime Saturday 3rd July

Sumission - [V07]
1:17PM 03-Jul-10
brendanb wip rough

EL 03/07: Great progress!  Sorry Brendan to clarify, the snake lip sync felt a bit steppy and off-model for Mrs. P's normal asymmetry…run it past Christian S and see if he has any pointers.  Do your work today and submit Arbs for Rough approval.

Wow. My quick fixes had been enough, to lift the curse off the shot, I could now see that Soren's mouth being open affected it greatly, he now felt genuinely shocked at the Mrs P being there and his spluttering and trying to speak was working better. My crude translating around was working better than I had thought it would and made Soren feel more looser and more natural.

I fixed Mrs P's mouth shapes in a clean-up pass and that was it- the shot was done! I want to be clear that I don't think this shot is a masterpiece, when I look at it now it seems obvious to me that the shot was done quickly and has been kept relatively simple. If I had had longer I might have attempted a more dynamic and exaggerated stumble on Soren, and not keep him so side-on throughout the shot but I think for how quickly it was done it's reasonably successful. It was quite a roller coaster ride to get it out in a week. I was pleased that I had turned it around to something the animation director was happy with.

Here's the final rendered version -



And here's a progression reel of the shot so you can see how it evolved -



It's funny looking back now, at the time I felt I had to make some pretty big changes to the shot but in fact the physicality of the shot changed little from my initial sketches and first block to the final version. The intent and energy of the characters was lacking in my initial approach but this was something that was layered over the top of the action.

It's also strange to look back and remember how upset I was when I thought it was going badly. It was an intense week and the tiredness I was feeling at the time certainly was a factor but also, as an animator you have to invest a lot of yourself into your job. It's almost impossible to detach yourself from your work and put it out of your mind, or resign yourself to producing an unsatisfactory shot. Animation is a consuming occupation which can contribute to your life in positive and negative ways. After all, the fact that we care so deeply about our work is the main motivation behind working such long hours.


Thanks for reading. A huge thank you to my sister Frith for acting as editor for these posts and also to Eric Leighton who very kindly allowed me to use his notes.

I would also like to thank Spungella and On Animation for recommending this story on their blogs.

A Week in Crunch Part 3

This post follows on from part one and two of the story, if you would like to read them first, they can be found here - Part 1, Part 2

Wednesday Morning (Hours worked = 48.5)
 
Submission - [V04]
9:27PM 30-Jun-10
brendanb

EL 01/07:Yep, carry on… the breathing should make a BIG difference on Soren's emotional state, act out big, broken and shuddering incredulous breaths and see how they drive your core, so the snake would be going along for the ride on some of the hits of his reactionary breathing body movement.  Also, make sure the look to cam in your dead spot is a bit more incredulous, currently it's a tad on the goofy side.  Soren should still be breathing at the end which would carry over into the next shot.

Cool. Looking all good I thought. Ok, so he wants the breathing to be more accentuated, that was a bit more than I was thinking but it was achievable. Looks like he’s happy with everything overall, I can start to lock things down. So I added some breathing and tied down the animation and I finished splining everything out, I felt pretty happy. I had three days left of just refining and polishing what I already had, I might even finish this shot early! 

I felt I could relax a little and start to enjoy the process of animation. I always love finding places to incorporate the more traditional principals of animation to my shots even if they are in a relatively realistic style and one idea I was looking forward to playing around with was using Mr's P's body to go from straight shapes to curves. Going from a straight to a curve is always desirable in animation, it adds life and visual interest to the shot. However, there is often very little opportunity to use the idea as literally (especially in naturalistic animation) as when you have a character's body that can be simplified into a single line of action.


A straight line held for a long time would not look particularly natural for a snake so I only used it briefly, holding for just a couple of frames at high energy moments. I saw two suitable occasions - one when Mrs P. jumps toward Soren and another on Mrs P's "snatched" accent; moments that would benefit from extra energy and impact.



Another idea I was keen to incorporate involved the lip sync of the Mrs Plithiver. Lip sync is another great place in animation to experiment, I find that the character's mouth shapes must be accurate in terms of timing and the shapes must be clear, but due to something called the McGurk Effect liberties can occasionally be taken with which shapes you use.

Miriam Margolyes - The voice of Mrs Plithier

I really liked the way the actress, Miriam Margolyes, had read the part of Mrs Plithier. She had subtlety implied not only the age of the character but also added some accentuation to the 's's and 'th's of words. This gave it a nice snake-like quality which was something I wanted to emphasise.



Snakes flick their tongues out to taste the air and I wanted to incorporate this to Mrs P's character but instead of having her doing it arbitrarily I looked for places in her speech. I had started to play around with the idea in a previous shot and had found that it would occasionally work if applied to 'th' sounds even though Miriam's tongue was not visible during the reading of the line.

Shot sound file -



If you listen you can hear the nice accentuated 's' sounds as well as the 'th's in 'then' and 'this'.


Close up showing tongue flick on 'this'.

I would also have to remove the way Mrs P's body was sliding around on Soren. I'd found no other way to do this but by eye; line up one of Mrs P's stripes with a point on Soren and laboriously key every frame, using the translation of a control at the u-turn on the far side of Soren's body. However, I would leave this job to last.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday working into the animation then submitted this version with the following comments.

BB: All splined! also added breathing and changed look to camera. To come - remove sliding around in Mrs P's body. Push Soren's breathing at end of shot more. Other general refinements.



Friday Morning (Hours worked = 64)

Sumission - [V05]
9:06PM 01-Jul-10
brendanb

EL 02/07: Let's get one more pass before Rough [animation approval], refine snake sync, and crank incredulous where you can, esp, with Soren's broken up, shuddering, gasping breathing.  Make sure this breathing comes from his core and that the rhythm does not get too even.  (time-wise, focus on the end.)  The look to cam still plays odd, too defined in and out, too present (almost plays like embarrassment)  Try breaking it up in steps, and spread it out longer, perhaps use body rots more in the turn as well, but trailing one step behind the head... and counter animate the snake head position back in world-space to keep the same read/ focus on her as he shifts around underneath.  Also, still need more wide-eyed, jaw dropped incredulous on Soren's look to the others.

Ok. I was hoping to have rough animation approval and that's a little more amendments than I was expecting. As I read the notes I was weighing up how long each thing would take ... snake lip sync ... hmm .. an hour or two ... more broken up breaths ... tricky ... maybe a couple of hours ... change look to camera ... an hour maybe ... then I read the part that made the blood drain from my face.... turning Soren's body toward camera! ... Uh oh ... counter animating the snake. This was bad. This was making a big change that wouldn't really work with how I had set the shot up. Turning Soren's body would expose the mess that was on the other side of him, and trying to keep the same performance in Mrs P, while counter animating her against Soren's body turn was a big job. Don't get me wrong, I thought the idea was cool. If I had the time it would have made the shot far more interesting to have Soren turn around more, but I was worried about time - I only had two days left to work on it and I still had a lot of work in terms of refining what I already had and to try and meet these other notes. I spent until lunch on this but it wasn't working out, the turn didn't look natural and I was loosing the readability of Mrs P's performance. There was some pops appearing and other unwanted movement coming out of her counter animation. I felt I had to give up. I hate not meeting the notes I'm given, I felt awful but with such a tight deadline and no room for movement I felt I had no choice. I spent the rest of the day addressing the other notes. I then got a new camera from the lensing department at 5.00pm and I submitted the following animation with these apologetic notes -

BB: new camera, spent a few hours trying to rotate Soren's body and counter Mrs P. but in vain, sorry, would need a couple of days for this. Broke up the head turn to hopefully feel more natural and changed expression. Tweaked Mrs P's lip sync, tried to push breathing a bit more, pushed jaw dropped expression to others at start.



I had just one day left on the shot, if Eric didn't like this new version, there would be little time for me to remedy it. I was now feeling extremely run down which meant my emotions were heightened, at times I felt hopeless and upset that I seemed to be failing at this task, all the worse as it seemed to be going so well just a few days earlier.

Part 4