Acting Essentials

Watched this great video by AnimSchool on acting tips to keep in mind whilst planning out and animating a shot.

Main Points

• Acting is reacting. Acting is doing - have an achievable goal

Thinking tends to lead to conlcusion. Emotion tends to lead to action.

• The character needs an objective. Who are they and what do they want?

• A character will play an action until an obstruction makes them play differently

• Scene is a negotiation/conflict. A character pursuing a goal but on object is in the way. e.g. - Person vs Person

      Person vs Situation/environment

      Person vs Self

• Acting is real life heightened - the character feels more than you do

• Scene starts in the middle. Adrenaline moment (a moment in the character's life they'll remember)

• Power centre (the focus of the body e.g. high, low, nose, hips)

• Comedy - extremes

e.g.  An unusual person in a normal situation

        A normal person in  an unusual situation

        Drama is normal. Comedy in drama heightened

• Simplicity

       Illustrate the idea clearly

       Make it obvious to the audience

Make sure to have a look at Ed Hooks advice on acting for animators too. Incredibly insightful information. 

Boy Racer - The Finished (almost) Film

The final-ish version of our 2nd year student film: Boy Racer

BOYRACER from Daniel Ridley on Vimeo.

We had a tonne of fun making this film over the course of the past few months. It's amazing how much we have learnt and also how much more we have left to learn!!

We're currently making some edit changes as well as tightening up some lighting, rendering and comping.

Thanks to:

 Dan Ridley

James Richardson

also:

Toby Winter-Perreau (Sculpting)

Philip Aldous (Composer)

Early Score Tests for Boy Racer

The past couple of weeks we've been continuing to make small edits to our film in order to really tighten up some sequences. We have also been in contact with a 3rd year composer here at Hertfordshire, Philip Aldous, who has created a very nice early piece of music for our film.



Intro Latest from James Richardson on Vimeo.

Once the animation is fully blocked in Philip will be able to refine the music to the exact beats that are shown on screen.

Boy Racer Pre-Vis

We're at a stage now where we're fairly happy with the previs. Below is the 10th edit of our film in the maya. 

We tightened up a few edits and added a few shots to make the film clearer. One of the bigger changes was swapping a pothole for a fallen tree. The shots following up to the crash hold the tension a bit more now too.

Life Drawing Christmas 2014

A collection of life drawing's made over 10 weeks in the run up to Christmas last year. Drawn mostly with conte pencils and brush pens over periods of around 5-20 minutes!

Initial Storyboard Tumbnails

After the screenplay for the film was written I drew out the story very quickly on post-it notes. Upon seeing the film visually it was clear which parts of the story weren't working properly.

Thumbnails serve as a very rough way to visualise the film. They aren't as polished as final storyboards but the important idea is that they communicate what is happening in the story.

After discussing these initial thumbnails with other coursemates and lecturers we made several changes to the story. Act 1 was shortened considerably so that we could make the downhill scenes as interesting as possible without making the film too long. It also helped pacing of the film too. After these changes a live-action version of the animation was filmed and edited together.

Boy Racer - Short Film

Since the new term has begun at Uni we have been busy creating our film currently titled 'Boy Racer'. This short 2 minute film will make up the bulk of the work for semester B.

Concept

An audacious young boy wants to imitate his Formula 1 idol by racing his home built Formula 1 car down the hill outside.

The story was initially based on an idea of a boy pretending to be an astronaut by racing his sledge down the stairs at home. The idea was then refined through back and forth with the lecturers and team members to the concept above. We committed about a month to working out the story. Story is hard!!

The film will be set during 1975, a golden era for Formula 1 where James Hunt and Niki Lauda were battling for the title.

Character Design

Whilst designing Philip, the main character, I wanted to keep in mind his personality traits to help form the design. He's ambitious for his age of about 9, spritely, full of energy and somewhat foolhardy.

Initial shape exploration

Refining

Final turnaround (colours to be finalised)

Exploring some emotion

 Some potential poses for the film

More updates to come!