Narrative Sequence

Planning and Brainstorming

The third project that I worked on during my Character Animation for Film and Games Module was the Narrative Sequence - with a beginning, a middle and an end. I started brainstorming ideas for my project and created a storyboard for a short narrative showcasing a character who is taking a walk in a park and is constantly trying to get away from a buzzing fly around him.

Scene: The character attempts to get rid of the fly that is constantly buzzing around him. He tries to swat it away multiple times before attempting to catch it between his hands. The buzzing stops and the character curiously looks at his hands in triumph until suddenly he hears the buzzing again and suddenly moves back.

I shot the reference (Syncsketch file ?https://syncsketch.com/sketch/YzM2ZTNlNGIy/ ) for this scene and discussed it with my professor - who suggested that I add a fall in the end so that the ending was not abrupt. Hence, I used another reference for the banana peel fall from the 50 Ways to Fall (4) 50 Ways to Fall - YouTube (0:16 - 0:18).

The next step was the Reference Analysis. The reference analysis plays a pivotal role in Animation as it helps you understand how the principles of Animation would be applied on the rig once you start working in Maya. I did the draw overs for my reference - marking the key poses, arcs, anticipation, squash and stretch, the shifting of weight, the overlapping action and follow through and the ease ins and outs.

Here are some screengrabs from my Reference Analysis from SyncSketch.

You can view the syncsketch file here

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/YzM2ZTNlNGIy/

Staging and Blocking

For my Third Narrative, I decided to use the Mr Buttons Rig since I had already worked with human character rigs for two projects.

After referencing the Mr Buttons rig in Maya, I set the the arm and leg controllers in FK as they were working best with the rig. I was happy with the controllers on the Mr Buttons rig since my narrative had several twists and turns and my rig catered to that very well. I also used a house fly rig from Sketchfab. I started the basic block out of the character in Stepped mode for my animation and set the key poses according to my reference.

After the block out, I shared the sync sketch files with both Constantinos and Kshitij for feedback and attended the support sessions which, like always had been very helpful during the entire course of the project. There were some areas where I saw the controllers on my rig intersecting with my mesh and I had missed that while animating on ones where the arms on my character were over extended based on the action in my reference. I fixed those areas and created arcs out of the movement of the arms while the character was swatting the fly away.

I worked on creating the overlapping action and follow through for my animation so that the character's arms were moving followed by his torso, waist and hips. I also kept checking the silhouette for the character since his hands were crossing his face which is why I animated the head to make it more visible in silhouettes and set the pose and line of action accordingly. To get a better understanding on how to Animate a Head I took down important notes using the Animschool video

Tips for Animating the Head

https://youtu.be/ucE27c-zgYs

I attended the in betweens for my animation and attended the weekly support sessions for feedback on the progress of my project. I took the notes and incorporated them within my scene to better my animation and started working on the facial expressions of the character. I used the tips for animating eyebrows and the eyes that I had previously used on my character facial performance project with the help of the following videos

How to Animate the Face in 8 Minutes

https://youtu.be/BBJ24kOttTU

Facial Animation in 10 Minutes

https://youtu.be/bMQkeJ1xRfw

In addition to that, I also looked up multiple references for the hair on my character's face and the ears. I used the character sheets by Disney and collected references to understand the movement of animal ears on PureRef. These character sheets were super helpful and I used the same method I used for the animation of the tail as Constantinos recommended - set a keyframe on all the controllers of the tail then deselect each of them and offset it to get smooth curves in the graph editor and a more natural movement for the tail or hair and ears.

It is incredibly important to push poses to add exaggeration in the scene so I made sure that I worked on exaggeration and also make the animation look more alive and dynamic by adding natural breathing within my animation - when the character catches the fly and when he falls on the ground.

I also kept checking my graph editor to smoothen my curves and check in case of any snaps. One thing I focused on in all three of my projects was asymmetry- I knew how monotonous the animation would look if I did not push my poses and created asymmetry in the body and the facial expression. Hence I used one of these images as a guiding tool to create asymmetry using the greater than and less than sign rule to achieve the look I was going for throughout my animation projects.

I animated the mouth, eye and eyebrows using the same technique

I continued working on the animation and viewing it in spline mode using the same method I used before - by dividing the body into manageable chunks and viewing it in Spline and making the tiny fixes that had to be done according to the feedback I received from the support sessions.

While I was working on the fall of my character, I wanted to ensure that the impact is there and the timing and spacing is done right. I simultaneously checked the graph editor to show that the character was losing its balance on one foot and animating the arms on ones to get smear frames. I wanted to show the character still in a balanced position right before the fall to create anticipation. Hence, I created Line of Actions for my character for each poses to get a more impactful fall.

Here are some screengrabs from the animation right before the fall

Overlapping Action and Follow Through was applied during the fall where I got the character to land on its butt first, followed by its torso arms and head and his legs and tail wrapping around his bottom. I took aid from the following videos to apply the principles of animation concepts more efficiently.

Loosening Up Animation with Overlap in Body - Luke Randall

https://youtu.be/CGSRPAWOkLA

Keep Your Animation Fluid with Overlap and Drag

https://youtu.be/eICBiX6ydUE

I worked on the polishing of the animation and reduced the number of keyframes wherever it was not required. I worked on the timing and spacing of the fall of the character more and made sure that it was impactful. In addition to that, I used the head controllers to add squash and stretch in the character when he is surprised by the sudden ambush of the fly as shown in the images below.

I also added the park environment from Animation Methods and placed it into my scene and added the HDRI to my sky dome from Polyhaven. In addition to that, I added the point light, ambient light and changed the colors of the environment to achieve the look I was going for. I used tints and shades of blues and greens in my scene to set a light hearted and playful mood and tone for my narrative.

Overall, I was happy with how my narrative turned out in the end. I do think there is room for improvement because I could see areas where I could make the animation better, such as the arms movements, the head movements - they could be more smooth and fluid. Although this is a project for submission, I will continue to work on it and make it more smooth and fluid.