Sunday, May 18, 2008

Exercise 7 : The Gear Change I



Introduction:
During an Animation Podcast interview, directing animator James Baxter, who has worked on Belle for Beauty and the Beast, Rafiki in the Lion King, and Quasimodo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, mentioned that in interviewing for an animation job, that he likes to see an emotion shift (Caytin, Baxter). This animated emotion shift, where a character changes very quickly from one emotion to another, is a called a “Gear Change”. Similar to changing gears on bike or an automatic car, a rider shifts to a higher or lower gear to achieve a different speed.

Earlier in the curriculum, we’ve learned in Assignment 2 (The Drink Box/Flour Sac), that emotion can be achieved through speed and the shape of the flow of action. In this assignment, you’ll have a chance to animate a gear change. Your character is displaying one emotion, will react to an event off screen, and will settle into a new emotion. This is one of the most interesting animation assignments, not only is your character going to appear to have life, but you are also creating a small storyline or scene, as this animation has a beginning, middle and an end.

Assignment Description:
Use a free character rig and animate it experiencing two emotions, with a reaction to an off screen even in between the two emotions. This reaction is a “take” or a “pop” and will be an emotion that is between your two main emotions. 



Competencies:
By the end of this exercise, the student should be able to:
  • Pose CG characters in emotive poses.
  • Link these poses through an off screen event by animating a trigger rection.
  • Create a smooth transition between the two poses.
  • Incorporate animation principles of overlapping action and anticipation.
  • Incorporate subtle movements in the animation called moving holds. 


PrePlanning:
Before you begin, it is important that you identify your two emotions. Keep it simple. To start begin with your character being happy, have him wave to someone off screen, and from here, show a contrasting emotion. Emotions that would contrast happy would be sad, happy or angry. It would then appear that the character is happy to see someone and waves, but then realizes that perhaps it’s the wrong person. Below is very important tip suggested from my intereviews 


VIDEO REFERENCE:

An essential habit to get into before animating, especially if you are a beginner, is to shoot video reference for your shot. This is an important pleplanning concept that enables many things to happen to make you better. 
  1. You will have reference to create an emotive pose, it enhances your power of observation, as the camera will record things you might have missed in the portrayal of the emotion.
  2. You’ll be able to see the timing required to animate each pose. 



SKETCH IT OUT:
Once your video reference is created, sketch out the main emotions, and see what you can exaggerate in order to achieve a clear presentation of the emotion. The main purpose of this is to nail the exact pose, gesture, hand and eye positions that make up that particular emotion. This is perhaps the most important part of this assignment, so that you can see and analyze what it is that exists in the character that makes the emotion happen.

CG Process :

Bookending Keyframes:
Once you have done the proper preplanning and you have the exact poses for the scene, you can now begin posing your character on the computer, and you will follow the method explained in the last assignment of bookending your keyframes. Which means that you will set keyframes for a particular pose that are exactly the same, that are placed many frames apart. This is essential because it gives the audience a chance to see the pose that you have studied and analyzed earlier. Refer to your video reference for how long each pose is held.


Adding Moving Holds:
Once your character is holding the emotions, add moving holds to keep the character from staying perfectly still. Things to add that prevent this are eyeblinks, subtle spine and joint rotations. The goal here is to add subtle movement to make the figure less robotic. One could also add overlapping action and anticipation during and after the event trigger.

Let’s say that your character is happy, waves to someone off screen, and then becomes embarrassed, at which point, he sits down and appears to hide in a closed posture. When he gets into this closed posture, you could add overlapping action in the arms and wrist and spine as he gets into the embarrassed position.

The Trigger:
There is another emotion in the assignment that is hidden and that must be addressed. We will use the example of happy to embarrassed scenario we’ve been discussing in this assignment. The “Trigger”, is the emotion that the character expresses at the moment he finds out that the person he is waving to is not who he expected. What could this emotion be? This could be a concerned look, or the character could seem surprised or worried. This happens very quickly and it occurs prior to displaying the second emotion of being embarrassed. In the above animation example, featuring Magritte, the trigger is the actual karate chop to the wooden block. After the trigger occurs here, he switches to a different state of mind. I would too if I had to break a piece of wood 4 feet thick. 

Your scenario should now play like this: The character is happy and waves to someone off screen, when he sees this person, he is surprised that its not who he thinks it is, and then looks embarrassed. So there is actually three emotions that you are going to animate in this assignment. 



Here's an example of an emotion, trigger and secondary emotion.




EVALUATION:
Here are some questions to consider asking yourself to make sure you are on target with this assignment.
  • Are the 3 emotions clear? If not what could we do to make them clear. Consider also the silhouette of the pose. 
  • Are the transitions from the three poses clear?
  • Is each pose held long enough for the viewer to see the emotions and poses?
  • Does the character appear to be reacting to what is happening off screen.
  • Show this animation to someone and see what they think? Can they understand the situation? 
This Gearchange assignment, although seemingly simple, can display so many of your animation skills. It shows off your attention to detail, your preplanning methodologies, your interpretation of video reference, understanding of the pose, gesture, hand positioning, eyes, eyebrows, anticipation, overlapping action and timing. 

Do your best and have fun, and see if you can animate it in a way that not only hits the points I mentioned above, but that amuses you too. Does it make you laugh. When I do this assignment, I make it a point to make it so that it makes me laugh. The project turns out much better that way.