Putting my ball through it's paces, Step 1

My ball was in extreme need of exercise. It had been loafing around, you see, and needed a good workout. So this week we get to see just what this little ball can do! I got an obstacle course to be used with the assignment, and the first job was to PLAN the animation! So, here's how that went:

Lots of sketching, lots of notes, tried to break it down and get a good feel for the timing and spacing of the animation. Went pretty well, I thought.

Quick note on Week 6...

Well! Week 5 has come and gone. Welcome to week 6! And to ring in the new week, we've been given a tail! Goody! Our balls now have a furry-like tail that is meant to help us address the newest principle of animation, "overlapping action". I'm glad to see this addition because I had started to get a little discouraged by all of the purely physics-based animations. I understand we're building up skills, and so simplicity and focus helps to do that, but it's not really animation. Animation to me is acting, finding a character within the puppet and expressing that physically. Even just walking around or jumping or whatever, there's unique expression, and unique body movement that really give it life and believability. To this point, we're not doing that for the most part, so it was good to see we get a new element of the character to play with that can hopefully be used expressively. So here we go! Week 6, animating with a tail!

Week 4 Pose: Dismissal

This week, Warren assigned us an optional pose, this time focusing on a "transitive verb", which he has found to be an easier type of pose to work out, because the nature of a transitive is that it is the expression of an action carried from a subject to an object or more plainly, something one charcter does to another. So this week, it was "dismissal" there were a number of examples he gave, one of which was a boss firing a worker in anger. I tried a little different approach. I've been trying to break out of my normal male-dominated poses, and try to slip into something less comfortable. I've been trying poses that really make me get into the character to understand it better. What's the story behind this pose, do you think?

Two Balls Different Weight

Week 4 and we've gradutated to TWO balls. Yea, I know, but I'm trying to lay off the vulgarities. That's right, basketballs are behind us, now we get to show some character. Just a little though. Actually, it's not really character per se, more like weight and density. See, one ball has to be quite a bit lighter than the other...or...is it one has to be quite a bit heavier...well, what ever, you get the idea. One is, say, the density, weight and size of a basketball, while the other, the density, weight and size of a bowling ball. They must bounce, they must come to a stop. Well, I heard this, and all kinds of scenarios came to me, ways to make the balls play off each other, bouncing all over the place...then I realized I have one week. And the point is not the go crazy with this new skill, it's to hone it. So hone I will! I'm a honin' like the DICKENS, BABY!

Here's the final passed in for my assignment for the week...

Click to see two balls bouncing with different weight.

Headin' to Siggraph...

IT'S OFFICIAL! Got the company confirmation today, I'll be heading to Siggraph! The down side: THERE'S TOO MUCH! Look at the scheduel, just for Sunday!

Sunday, 31 July:
8:30 am - 12:15 pm - Anyone Can Make Quality Animated Films!
(The Eight Basic Steps to Success) Hall A
Whether the film is one minute or one hour, there are simple basic steps to producing any animated film. This course explains how anyone with a little talent can apply industry-standard techniques to create polished, professional, commercial animated films. All the basic techniques, from developing the initial concept to compositing the final release print, are summarized and discussed. Comprehensive handouts guide attendees through the process.

1:15-3:15pm - Keynote Address: George Lucas

1:45 - 5:30 pm "Madagascar:" Bringing a New Visual Style to the Screen
Hall A
New insights into the creative and technical thought processes required to evolve a new look for a CG movie. Highlights include how moving away from stylized realism required rethinking the creative process, development methods, and technologies, plus a comparison of the approaches that worked with approaches that did not.

BOFs:
10 - noon Sunday
Animation Mentor Gathering
Los Angeles Convention Center
Room 511C

12:30 - 4:30pm Sunday
CG CHAR @ SIGGRAPH Event
Westin Bonaventure Hotel
Catalina Ballroom

And that's just the courses, keynote and BOFs. The convention itself isn't even addressed, or the viewings of yet-to-be-released animated shorts and features, new technology showcases...Sheesh! I need to clone myself FAST!

Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy...

Sara (my Wife) told me about mid-week this week, after my latest epiphony regarding my bouncing ball that I was obsessed. What? No. Not obsessed. Fascinated. I like that word much better. I started the week by making a quickie Flash-based ball bounce, frame to frame with squash and stretch and everything. It was a great learning experience, but it bounced like crap. I then did a lot of reading, took a look at some other people's bouncing balls, made a video of my own, bounced balls anywhere I found them (including my daughter's daycare, where there are an abundance of balls for the bouncing as long as you don't mind being stared at reproachfully by 2 year olds), and watched the AM videos. The epiphony came when I had unsuccessfully animated a few balls, and then I realized I had been going about it all wrong! The clue was in the planning video all along! Layered action! They talk about three approaches to animating. Layered, pose to pose and straight ahead. I didn't really get layered 'til I realized how I could use it in my ball animation! I'd basically been trying to work in pose to pose, keying everything each keyframe, working action across the screen. No, no no! As my daughter is unfortunately learning to say. That totally limited how much tweaking I could do! All wrong! So, I went back to the ole drawing board. Keyed just the movement left to right. Then I keyed just the hit points. Then I keyed just the top of the arc. After doing all that, I was able to tweak the movement, arcs, add or subtract breakdown keys...it opened up the whole thing in the graph editor! Bingo! So, without further adue, my first somewhat successful (or at least a good learning experience) bouncing ball! Remeber, it's supposed to be a basketball.

Click here to view.

I know, it's not sexy or fancy or anything. But I feel like it works. That's good enough for now.

Not my best pose week...

I'd have to say I literally "dropped the ball" this week when it comes to the sketches and pose. This week we're supposed to do sketches and a "Stu" pose, the theme being "excitement". Well, I was plowing along working through my bouncing ball so much, I don't feel like I really gave the pose it's proper time. Here's the sketch...

Icky, I know. All I can say is, I was working with a particular theme. I tried really hard to NOT be cliche. No Toyota leaps in the air, no fist pumping...then I went ahead and did a jump in the air and a...fist...uhm...pump...

But in my defense, I decided to go with a scenario, as suggested by our mentor, Warren. "Write a paragraph about your character." Warren said, "Who is the character? Why is the character excited? What's the character's personality?" There's more, that's just a loose quote. So, my paragraph went something like this:

"Somewhat effeminate runner, pompous and arrogant even though he never wins. Gets excited when the crowds cheer him on (even though they cheer everyone on, he's sure it special, just for him) so he throws them kisses as he runs by to show his affection."

Then I posed this:

Well, the good news is, Warren has lots to pick apart and I can do a revision for next week.

Let's Get Physics-al!

Bouncing balls. Wow. To tell you the truth, I thought I had a good grasp on the concept. How hard can it be? It's...a...bouncing...frickin'...ball. Give me a break. Well faithful readers? The animator-to-be has a lot to learn indeed. I watched video others made of actual bouncing balls. I made video of my own bouncing ball. In the process, I done bounced a ball myself. I've been bouncing balls all my LIFE! Richard Williams had some great reading. The lectures and AM videos had great stuff. So why was it so HARD?! I'll tell you. It's hard because it's simple. The simplicity, the sheer maddening, common, everyday, see-it-in-my-sleep nature of a bouncing ball means that you could take a half blind, hundred year old lady who's been living in a cave since birth and SHE'LL tell you if it's working or not! Why? It's physics. It's weight, gravity, force, energy...and we all know it, even if we don't know it. Problem is, it's got to make sense when you view it. Ok, maybe it doesn't have to be perfect, but darn close. It has to "read" as a bouncing ball. The path of motion, the amount of energy on the rebound, the spin, the arcs...not to mention is it a superball? Is it a basketball? Is it a cannon ball? On grass? On concrete? On a trampoline? Is it windy? Rainy? Is there a slope? Stairs? Objects that it has to bounce off of? That's why the bouncing ball, in all it's infinite "simplicity" is a great subject to start animating with. It teaches you that not all that looks easy is. That you should pay attention to the details and really think it out. Most importantly, it teaches you to plan, plan, plan. Be prepared and know what you want to do. There will be plenty of challenges, preparation is your strongest defender.

Week 3 Early Bounce Test

Update - July 6, 05

Feedback: Wow. And I thought I'd done a good job. Thanks to all who contributed, I realized I have a lot of work to do. First off, I should just start over. No, that's fine. I actually did this version to get an early idea about where to go from here, so that's good. Some things to keep in mind, however:

1. I need to dump the sns 'til I've nailed the bounce.
2. Since we're animating a basketball, litle or no sns will return.
3. A basketball (well-inflated) will have much less energy loss than I've given this ball, so the height of the bounces will be higher and more numerous.
4. Make a technically space version. I need to play with the spacing to determine if I think the spacing distribution on the upward movement should be equal to that of the downward movement, or if that makes it too mechanical.
5. Make a Richard Williams inspired rigid bounce version.

Ok, I'm off!

Original post:

So here's an early flash-based test, it's half-size to fit this frame (320 x 240) but I think it works to convey what I'm after. I have the ball entering from the left and it's supposed to have a minimal amount of squash and stretch and resolve after the bounce with a little back-spin. What do you think?

Note: To see a larger version, click on this link.

Week 2 Submission

Additional Note:
Ok, so I had my crit with Warren, and I was really happy to hear I didn't totally blow this assignment out my backside. Truth be told, he seemed to enjoy it, and had some small tweaks, but overall, he seemed happy with it! Yay for me! There were tweaks, as I mentioned:

1. He liked the structure elements under the sketches, I should keep do that as much as possible.
2. Liked that I added the silouette as well as the original sketch.
3. He thought the back shoulder could have been pushed up a little more
4. He thought the forward arm and leg made a similar shape, and it didn't look as interesting. I might be able to open up that negative space more by opening up the forward arm, straightening a little and pushing it up slightly.
5. Noticed the back arm has a bend and my arm doesnot show abend, I might be able to increase the feeling of tension by adding more of a backward bend, just a little.
6. Conclusion: Always push the pose to make interesting, consider negative space and what shapes they're making graphically.

So, with the sketches behind me and the Stu model played with, I set to posing my assignment for the week. The idea was to take a pose from the sketches and use that as inspiration for posing Stu. Ok, sounds easy enough. But it wasn't. It so very much was not. The biggest problem was emotion and appeal. I'm sure that's the case quite a bit of the time, but it was really something I emphasized. I started out, actually, much like I sketch. Get the basics down, find the body lines, work from the core of the pose outward to the finer detail. That worked fine for this (a pose of an exaggerated throw) but I found that posing Stu to the exaggeration in the throw lost something. The exaggeration was lessened because, I think, even I expected more from Stu than from a human, who's limitations are many and clear and obvious. Stu's limitations are less so, and I expect him to communicate something with greater flair and clarity. I'd accept much less from a human. I ended up pushing the pose quite a bit, raising the leg more, twisting his body around to an extreme, throwing the ball arm way behind and above his head...it worked pretty well. Lesson learned: push poses as much as I can, almost to a point where it's way too much and then, maybe, it'll be enough.

Testing Stu

Some of the things we were asked to do with the Stu character this week were related to getting to know the "rig", which can be euqated loosely to a puppet. There are controls at the joints, and usually some custom control built in to help articulate subtle movement within the body. I've found that this rig is pretty darn good, and I didn't really do much breaking of it, unless I went beyond the physical constraints of the character.

Warren had mentioned in our Q&A to pay particular attention to clear line of action, clarity in the pose, meaning that the pose communicates well, even if it were to be viewed as a silouette, and to give the character motivation. Ask ourselves what the story is, the situation. Make it personal add...well...character. So, I started playing this the idea that Stu is testing a body of water. A pool? A pond? Doesn't matter. What does matter is he has to test it with his toes, and he's sure it's going to be cold which he's not looking forward to. The three poses below are chronological from left to right of my attempts to convey Stu's trepidation. After one and two didn't do it well enough, I went outside and had Sara (my Wife) video me trying the same pose, and things jumped out at me immediately. Can you guess what?

Week 2 - Sketch 2

We (my Wife and I) went outside and threw the ball around for Wally (with Emily, our daughter squealing with delight as the dog would shoot off to retrieve the ball). The main purpose was to gather some video reference of a number of throwing motion poses as well as any other interesting poses that might come out of it. The result is below. Special attention, as in the first set, was placed on finding the hip and shoulder lines as well as the basic curves and skeletal structure:

Gently weeping

As I was driving into work today, a fabulous day for driving in, since the traffic is free and clear, or as close as L.A. can get during the morning rush, I heard the Beatles song which may be titled "While my Guitar Gently Weeps". I couldn't help thinking to myself that indeed, his guitar DID gently weep. I was mesmerized for a moment, and then I realized that he was getting emotion from his guitar, an inanimate object, a thing, built by humans out of wood and wire and glue that has no purpose or desire or feeling of it's own, but is infused by it when someone talented and knowledgeable picks it up, caresses it's form with care and love and begins to tell a story in sound. How amazing is that? So amazing, that we believe that the guitar has life and really feels and breaths and cares. When the talented guitar player is done, the guitar is put down and once again is returned to it's lifeless state. Even if someone like myself were to go up and pick it up and try to play, to breath life back into it, I would find it stubborn and difficult to even begin.

So I think that's a reason the Beatles and others are so great. It's that ability to infuse their music and their stories with so much of themselves and translate that to their artistic choices, using all of the potential their medium provides and even inventing new ones when what they have doesn't seem to work. That inventiveness, precision and craft coupled with talent, awareness and desire really push them to produce what becomes unique and powerful songs that touch billions and can change lives. Incredible.

What's even more incredible is that I realized this because those tools and required skills and dedication are very similar those needed to become a great animator. Obviously the medium is different, but as an animator, I'm trying to not only move something from point A to point B, but to provide much more as a story telling device. The expressions, the posture, the motion, timing, and so much more tell a story in some of the most exaggerated and subtle of ways. Understanding that, and understanding how to achieve the right emotional and physical state given the story and the character's motivations within that story are really essential to good animation. Clear, concise, easily translated action, no matter how wild or zany or funny or whatever must communicate well to elicit the audience response we're after our artistic and skilled choices make that happen. I have so much to learn.