In week 11, I recalibrated some camera movements. I added different natural sounds to each scene, such as wind and water. .
Objective:
Get a full landscape display animation.
Methods:
Clip in After Effect and add natural sounds to the video.
Results:
The reordering of the landscape seems to make the timeline more logical than before. It shows the different landscape of the day from morning to night.
Discussion:
The pond was rendered darker than expected, slightly better after AFTER Effects. Future video rendering in EEVEE rendering engine should pay attention to the color difference between software display attempt and rendering.
Aim: Week 9 exercise is to continue exploring my studio project. I'm focusing on camera movement and light changes this week.
Method: Blender, 3D Animation
Result: I tried some camera movements under different light sources and have made some good progress so far. The pond looks nice in the moonlight.
Discussion: Good camera movement can not be achieved simply by moving. It should be moved and rotated in accordance with mood, good Angle and speed, so as to get some good clips.
This week's focus is on my current iterations in relation to my studio three project. In particular, the punch animation - in which I wished to translate a great deal of force and weight propelled by the body - with that force being channeled by momentum into the shoulder and arm, therefore registering a great deal of force and impact which the audience may “feel” rather than simply see.
The designs guiding this practice were simply the 12 principles of animation - namely stretch and squash, anticipation, follow through, ease in / out etc. I also looked at the animations of street fighter 3: third strike. (these animations are a masterclass in stylistic dynamic animated method)
The difficulty in these particular iterations came from the aforementioned desire to translate weight and force through the body to the shoulder. The solution in this case was to break the body and pull the rib cage and torso forward, with the shoulder and arm following through a frame later, this combined with smear frames and some key holds gave me the desired visual I envisaged.
After consultation there is more iteration to be done on this work, further follow through after the impact of the punch can help further sell the complete movement, and a twist of the wrist on the last frame(s) could loosen up some of the still stiff movement of the arm.
Problem: Producing a high degree of difficulty action shot taking into account momentum, weight and fluidity.
Assumptions:
Too many frames?
Movement is too convoluted? May need to simplify.
Not adjusting frames for speed of action (ease out / inI )
May need to experiment more with holds.
Should the character continue moving to the left constantly? How much should their opposite momentum caused by body movement disrupt that?
How much artistic licence and stylization should contrast with real physics? Where is the happy medium for this?
Examples of iteration/ experimentation
Reflection
Aim : In these examples I was trying to use the animatic to translate the sense of motion through limted sequential art and editing through both timing and camera moves. (camera shake, fast pans etc) My inital spark and intuition for this came from my research of action scenes in animation - both eastern and western. This week in particualr was very inspired by the direction methods in the animatics for the adult swim animated series "Primal"
Method: Some camera use has been synthesised by traditional animation (drawing the images to scale and in time to produce transistions in the same shot (the arm animation being a prime example of this) other examples, such as many attack impact and high energy dialouge scenes have taken advantage of camera scaling and motion blur in after effects. this is a simple and efficient way of mimicking the effect of these scenes without having to result to a more laborious method of potentially animating it frame by frame.
Result: I believe the result is succesfull in translating the sense of speed, style and movement to the animatic, with the timing giving me a vital starting point for basing the key poses and timing of the animation when it comes to future pencil tests.
Discussion: As previously mentioned, the blocked out timing of these simple animatics provided a path for the animation to follow - the goals of the overall project (dynamic animation and camera movement) are prevelant here, and will influence the animation moving forward.