Hello guys and girls and chaps and chappettes, been smashing away at the chase scene. Andy suggested adding some slight rotation/wobble to the body to give it a little more life — similar to what we had in the original animatic! It took a while to figure it out but I finally managed to come up with something:
Version 20
No head or anything as yet, as I wanted to ensure the body was looking good without any distractions... I think it's getting there, most definitely, and adding the wobble really does improve the whole thing.
The next challenge was the head. I asked Andy for some advice on what it should be doing and he suggested having it slightly follow the orientation of the body but delay it slightly, by just a few frames — so that as it rotates one way the head is just slightly lagging behind. It's quite tricky to accomplish in such a short amount of frames but I'm going to keep playing around with it.
We spent a fairly frustrating afternoon trying to figure out exactly what the head should be doing — we tried about a million different things but only a few of them seemed weren't too painful to look at. We've still not reached a decision on the head so I'm posting up a few of the ones we came up with so you guys can examine them in your own time and see if you can come up with any ideas...
Version 21
In this first version there was no rotation or anything applied to the head — simply an up/down forward/backward sort of bobbing going on. I thought it might be an idea to try and get an idea of the vertical movement before worrying too much about any rotations and such — proving to be trickier than I thought. It's quite difficult to figure out how the head should be moving in this scene. In an ordinary walk cycle a bird's head is kept mostly still, mostly level, until the body moves ahead and the head thrusts to catch up as the bird steps down. This is quite tricky to achieve in this sort of cycle... obviously the movement of the legs is a little different, and it's hard to figure out whether the head would stay level or should be pushed up/down by the body. Here we've just got it opposing the body — travelling downwards as the body rises and then moving upwards as the body drops (effectively keeping it level). The head bobs forward as the body is at the highest point. I'm not sure if it really makes any sense? Perhaps it will look better if we can figure out the rotation?
Version 22
This one's pretty much the opposite of the above version — the head bobs forward and moves down as the feet go down, more like in a conventional bird walk cycle. I think it looks, er... really weird though. Doesn't seem to work. At all.
Version 23
Here, on version 22, I've tried applying Andy's suggestion (with a slight alteration) — I copied the rotation of the body but rather than shifting it to the right, I simply reversed the rotation of the head. Unfortunately I don't know if the exact rotation will work with the head — it gives it this weird sort of round and round motion. Just looks a bit peculiar.
I don't know. I think the problem, as we identified earlier, is that the head is a little too... mechanical. The body, legs and feet are all moving continuously in quite a rapid, frantic motion and in contrast the head is quite controlled and steady. It's just difficult trying to figure out exactly what to do with it.
It's a tricky one, to be sure. If you guys have any suggestions or ideas of your own please let me know! :]
Showing posts with label Scene 11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scene 11. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Scene 11 V17 — V19
Just a quick update on the crow's running cycle! :]
I was messing around with the previous wings and I was really, really struggling to get them to work — even spreading them further outwards still looked really awkward and the movement just wasn't working. (I've got a couple of examples of the other things I tried; will update this post with them later when Vimeo finally finishes processing them)
I can't really pinpoint exactly what was awkward about it, I think it was just the angle of the wings (so mostly my fault, the way I'd drawn them). The whole thing just looked off balance and the movement, I think, was very mechanical. The angle of the wings sort of made sense if they were straight up in the air but spreading them further apart
I was talking to Sam and we were both in agreement that it was going to be very, very difficult to make it work — he then suggested that I try something similar to what I'd done with the crow's front flight cycle, just having them flap up and down (or forward and back) as if she was trying to fly away.
The beauty was that I didn't even have to draw yet another wing — I could just use the one from the front flight cycle. As Sam said, it was ready for me, so why not just use it?!
I decided not to colour the wing or anything at this point, I just pinned it to the crow's body, stuck some puppet pins in it and animated it on the fly just to see whether it would work.
Version 17
And, hopefully... it did! Sam and I both agree that this is already a zillion times better than what we had before — I'm still not sure whether it makes sense but it's definitely an improvement whilst still maintaining some level of continuity. The beauty is the ease at which this can be manipulated — if it looks like the crow's wings are slapping the scarecrow in the face we can just rotate them back a little without screwing up the animation.
Version 18
At this point I coloured and mirrored the wing just to give a better idea of whether or not it was working; I also altered the crow's head bounce at this stage so it was a little smoother. I'm concerned that it possibly looks a bit mechanical now though, so I might continue to mess with it a little and try to liven it up some.
I think that this gives us a better indication of whether or not this will work. I think, at this stage, it's looking like a viable alternative for this scene!
At this point we showed it to Ron who gave us some very helpful critique, saying that the wings were looking fine but suggesting that it looked a bit odd due to the exact mirroring of the feet. They're perfectly symmetrical, which of course nothing in reality is! He suggested that we delay one of the feet by a few frames just to break it up a bit. He also suggested altering the head bob so that it comes forward and backwards in addition to up and down.
Taking into account his suggestions, this is what I came up with...
Version 19
I think that offsetting the feet has made a huge difference and looks much better. It's still got a lot of work, though — the head bobbing, in particular, I will admit was a last-minute rush job that I slapped on there without too much thought so I'm going to look at tweaking that. I think it's a bit mechanical — it moves a little too much in synch with the body when it needs to be sort of held steady for a while before suddenly coming forward/down, so I'll look at messing with the timings of that today.
Now that the feet don't move quite in sync I think it might be an idea to maybe get a little rotation in the body going as well? Kind of similar to what we had in the animatic. I don't know, something about the running looks pretty off to me still but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's just because the scene has nothing else going on — once we get the scarecrow in there it might start to come together a little more!
Oh, and I'm really sorry Sam — I know you're working on getting the scarecrow in there already but don't worry, we can just copy the new crow animation over so nobody has to re-do anything ;]
I was messing around with the previous wings and I was really, really struggling to get them to work — even spreading them further outwards still looked really awkward and the movement just wasn't working. (I've got a couple of examples of the other things I tried; will update this post with them later when Vimeo finally finishes processing them)
I can't really pinpoint exactly what was awkward about it, I think it was just the angle of the wings (so mostly my fault, the way I'd drawn them). The whole thing just looked off balance and the movement, I think, was very mechanical. The angle of the wings sort of made sense if they were straight up in the air but spreading them further apart
I was talking to Sam and we were both in agreement that it was going to be very, very difficult to make it work — he then suggested that I try something similar to what I'd done with the crow's front flight cycle, just having them flap up and down (or forward and back) as if she was trying to fly away.
The beauty was that I didn't even have to draw yet another wing — I could just use the one from the front flight cycle. As Sam said, it was ready for me, so why not just use it?!
I decided not to colour the wing or anything at this point, I just pinned it to the crow's body, stuck some puppet pins in it and animated it on the fly just to see whether it would work.
Version 17
And, hopefully... it did! Sam and I both agree that this is already a zillion times better than what we had before — I'm still not sure whether it makes sense but it's definitely an improvement whilst still maintaining some level of continuity. The beauty is the ease at which this can be manipulated — if it looks like the crow's wings are slapping the scarecrow in the face we can just rotate them back a little without screwing up the animation.
Version 18
At this point I coloured and mirrored the wing just to give a better idea of whether or not it was working; I also altered the crow's head bounce at this stage so it was a little smoother. I'm concerned that it possibly looks a bit mechanical now though, so I might continue to mess with it a little and try to liven it up some.
I think that this gives us a better indication of whether or not this will work. I think, at this stage, it's looking like a viable alternative for this scene!
At this point we showed it to Ron who gave us some very helpful critique, saying that the wings were looking fine but suggesting that it looked a bit odd due to the exact mirroring of the feet. They're perfectly symmetrical, which of course nothing in reality is! He suggested that we delay one of the feet by a few frames just to break it up a bit. He also suggested altering the head bob so that it comes forward and backwards in addition to up and down.
Taking into account his suggestions, this is what I came up with...
Version 19
I think that offsetting the feet has made a huge difference and looks much better. It's still got a lot of work, though — the head bobbing, in particular, I will admit was a last-minute rush job that I slapped on there without too much thought so I'm going to look at tweaking that. I think it's a bit mechanical — it moves a little too much in synch with the body when it needs to be sort of held steady for a while before suddenly coming forward/down, so I'll look at messing with the timings of that today.
Now that the feet don't move quite in sync I think it might be an idea to maybe get a little rotation in the body going as well? Kind of similar to what we had in the animatic. I don't know, something about the running looks pretty off to me still but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's just because the scene has nothing else going on — once we get the scarecrow in there it might start to come together a little more!
Oh, and I'm really sorry Sam — I know you're working on getting the scarecrow in there already but don't worry, we can just copy the new crow animation over so nobody has to re-do anything ;]
Monday, 9 April 2012
Scene 11 V6
Hey guys! I've been slogging away over the past week, trying to pump out as many rough blocks of each of my scenes as I possibly can. I'm going to post 'em all individually rather than in one huge post, so they're easier to find later on.
Here's a rough draft of the chase scene so far...
Scene 11
I spent the better part of two days mucking around with those bushes and this is the absolute best I can do (in terms of composition). I'm really sorry, I know it's not exactly what we wanted, but either I'm not clever enough to figure out anything better or there are no other ways of doing it...! This something like my 6th attempt, and I know there are plenty of problems with it — I just thought it would be a good idea to take a break from it for a while...!
I think I need to extend the bushes into the distance a little more so they don't cut off so suddenly, and I should also make them a little smaller on the horizon too.
I tried to at least add a little depth by creating multiple rows of bushes so that they wouldn't appear so flat. At the moment they all move perfectly in time with each other which looks a bit silly, so I'll offset them a little so that the rows at the back move a bit slower or something.
The speed of the ground and the bushes isn't quite synchronised with the crow just yet; I still need to make a lot of speed adjustments, but at least they move relatively seamlessly.
I'm not sure about the crow's run cycle; it took me ages to try and get it looking right and I'm still not totally happy with it. I tried to "animate" it a little more so that it wasn't so choppy and lifeless! I'm not keen on the head — it's a bit static, so maybe I'll try and loosen that up a little more. I think once we get the scarecrow in there though it won't matter so much!
Still... it's a start...! :]
Here's a rough draft of the chase scene so far...
Scene 11
I spent the better part of two days mucking around with those bushes and this is the absolute best I can do (in terms of composition). I'm really sorry, I know it's not exactly what we wanted, but either I'm not clever enough to figure out anything better or there are no other ways of doing it...! This something like my 6th attempt, and I know there are plenty of problems with it — I just thought it would be a good idea to take a break from it for a while...!
I think I need to extend the bushes into the distance a little more so they don't cut off so suddenly, and I should also make them a little smaller on the horizon too.
I tried to at least add a little depth by creating multiple rows of bushes so that they wouldn't appear so flat. At the moment they all move perfectly in time with each other which looks a bit silly, so I'll offset them a little so that the rows at the back move a bit slower or something.
The speed of the ground and the bushes isn't quite synchronised with the crow just yet; I still need to make a lot of speed adjustments, but at least they move relatively seamlessly.
I'm not sure about the crow's run cycle; it took me ages to try and get it looking right and I'm still not totally happy with it. I tried to "animate" it a little more so that it wasn't so choppy and lifeless! I'm not keen on the head — it's a bit static, so maybe I'll try and loosen that up a little more. I think once we get the scarecrow in there though it won't matter so much!
Still... it's a start...! :]
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