Thumbnailing Video Reference

So, it's been a while since my last personal animation project but i felt like the time was right to do another one again. It's been tough to find the time alongside work but i'm having a lot of fun! Hopefully it will be finished soon and look half decent. 

I began as per usual by sketching out some ideas and then filming some acting reference. Once I was happy with my performance I blocked out the shot in maya. However, there was a particular part of the scene where my character just felt really off. The performance wasn't as clear as it needed to be. Since I wasn't sure how to approach the issue in maya I began to explore more options through thumbnailing.

The result was the picture below: . 

(the animation reads left to right too)

I thumbnailed an exaggerated version of my reference which really helped my understanding of the mechanics and the performance that I wanted to achieve. Now I could have done this in maya but it would have taken an awful lot longer.

I took these exploratory thumbnails and then re-blocked it into my scene. The result turned out to be a bit too exaggerated but that was okay because it's much easier to tone down an exaggerated animation than ramp one up. Anyway, this thumbnail process is very helpful and I highly recommend it for people to use it in their projects too!!

OVERLAP - I thought i knew...

When it comes to the principles of animation I feel like most people can grasp the concepts behind them pretty easily. After all that's the way objects move in real life. Overlap for example; objects at rest tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to want to stay moving. When an elephant stops walking, his trunk will swing forward and then back again. Simple! Or so i thought...

The other day at work I was trying to animate some tentacles moving around and overlapping. As I was struggling away my friend and colleague sat next to me (Kayn) saw what I was doing and decided to give me an old school Disney lesson in overlap. Which went as follows:


He handed me a sketch which looked like this one below:

He then asked me what would happen to the string if the top were to start moving to the right, as if someone pulled it. I drew this...

WRONG!!! 

Though this felt like the only solution it was in fact incorrect. In my mind I thought "well the end of the string will want to stay at rest but I suppose it will have to move a bit". Well yes that is true but it won't look like the above. It will in fact look like the diagram below: 

The end of the string moves to the left!! My mind blew up a little bit at this point. As the string is pulled it's height shortens causing the end to move up and left. Try this at home now by holding a pencil at one end and moving it right rapidly. The end will drag left first. 

 It also gives us this really wonderful S curve and curve reversal in the end of the string. This S curve appears again if the string were to stop moving too. 

As Kayn corrected my drawing like the one above I could finally understand why my overlapping tentacles weren't looking too hot. Even though i felt like I grasped the concept of overlap, I didn't really understand it. And that's where the difference is. So, time to revisit all the principles and really understand the secret mechanics of them all.

Life Drawing - Framestore Evening Classes

The past couple months Framestore have been running life drawing classes in the evenings. Even after a long day of animation on the computer it's really nice to break out the pens and pencils and draw for a couple of hours. The drawings below are from a session where I just used pen. I did this to just mix things up a bit and force me to commit to my lines. The classes too really helped my animation as it trains the eye to be more analytical and precise when studying movement.

MOVING HOUSE - A short documentary film

In preparation for starting work at Framestore I moved to London along with some of my University housemates. I thought it'd be a cool moment to capture so I made a little documentary short film about it. Hope you enjoy! It's a bit silly...



MOVING HOUSE 2016 - Short Film from James Saunders on Vimeo.

Christian Bale - Dialogue without Dialogue

Whilst watching The Big Short again the other day I was blown away by how good the acting was. One scene in particular really grabbed my attention and got me thinking about acting without dialogue.

It's the scene in which Christian Bale's character Dr. Michael Burry is negotiating a deal with Goldman Sachs in order to short the housing market. 

Have a watch of the entire scene below:





A really good scene, Bale is super interesting to watch. So there is a point in the scene where the camera rests on Bale as he is waiting for the other two to finish negotiating. He isn't listening, just waiting in my opinion. His acting here is so genius i love it! Watch the clip below again which should play at this particular point (2 minutes in):





SO GOOD. By acting the way that he does Bale gives the character depth and dimension. In animation we constantly strive for this kind of unique acting instead of the generic cliched stuff.  So the question is, what exactly is Bale doing that is so interesting and how does he do it?

Let's allow Bale to explain to explain that himself:





Niiiice. So what he's getting at is even though he doesn't have any dialogue on paper, he has dialogue in his head which informs his acting choices which we see on screen. This whole interview is super interesting and worth a watch. I've pulled out some of the quotes below:

"If you're silent in the scene you have an internal converstation that never stops"

"What i'll do sometimes when beginning a film [is] write dialogue for the silence"

"You can convey almost everything you need to convey without saying anything"

Now, with what we've just learnt we can look back at the scene from The Big Short with fresh eyes and try to decipher what Bale's inner dialogue might be...

This is a really simple concept but when done right it really brings the character to life.


Just briefly Michael Caine also talks about this method for listening in a scene (it applies whether someone is listening or not as in Bale's case) too. Again this whole Workshop is worth a watch too:






So, how does all this apply to animation? I think it's especially useful for those quiet scenes where a character may not be doing much . It's tempting to over animate these as a cheap way of trying to keep the audience interested. But by constructing this inner dialogue we have a structure on which to guide the performance. And this in and of itself it makes the character seem much more alive. Which is ultimately what it's all about! Hope this helps :)

Final Year Films at Uni of Herts

Finally getting round to posting my final year Uni films!!

Hope you enjoy them :) 

Far Fetched was the film I worked on with Daniel Ridley and James Richardson. We had tons of fun making it and a very hapy with the result. I think there are definitely some changes that we'd all like to make but under the circumstances I think we did okay. Enjoy"

Far Fetched - Animated Short Film 2016 from James Saunders on Vimeo.

Bertie the Elephant was the other film I had a part in making. I animated 3 shots in total and learnt a lot in the process. Again there's changes i'd like to make but that's the way of the animator!

Bertie The Elephant - A short film by Chris Turner and Zak Boxall from zakboxall on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Drawing again!

Found some time to go back to some life drawing recently (still V. rusty):

Check out Glenn Vilppu for some amazing drawing tips from an absolute master. I learnt 3 super valuable tips from his drawing demo which i'll link below. The tips concern hand movements as one tries to define the form and the gesture of the figure (16mins 30secs into the video) which are:

1. Draw with the flow
2. Go over the surface and around the form
3. Contain the form

By doing this we get a very deliberate 3 dimensional drawing. Here's the vid which I highly recommend watching the whole thing:

Bear in mind there's no rules for life drawing but sometimes tips like these can really help, and of course nothing beats practice! Hope this helps!