Out of Tune - Project on London National Gallery Website

Ah yes, after our showing at the National Gallery, all the students final projects have been uploaded onto the National gallery website, with a short synopsis of the piece.

Heres the link, showing all the students work

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/transcriptions/animation/default.htm

and to my film specifically:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/transcriptions/animation/outoftune/default.htm

Cool, so this is the last post on this Blog, please visit my main blog :
http://sneakyanimation.blogspot.com/
for future posts

Out of Tune - part 7

I think this may be the final Product
Extra sounds for the shaking tree, and a few static frames cut out, also a bit lighter.

Out of Tune - Part 6 (Render for Assessment)

This is the file I finished producing 2 hours before my assesment. It's not actually rendered with lights, it has just been playblasted

Out of Tune - Part 5 (Animation Progress)

here is a quick bad quality render of my animation progess, this was produced one week before the dead line. I ended up changing quite a few things, especially near the end, just after shaking the tree

Out of Tune - Part 4

We all showed our work in progess to a class of critics last week, and I seemed to get a few mixed reactions. Some people loved everything the way it was, which is great. They had to use thier imagination a bit, because it was'nt finished, and the coconuts and teddy bear dropping out of the tree were basically, well, non-existant.

One thing did worry me though. that was the fact that natasha from the Complicite Theater group did not realise I was trying to use one of the principles they had taught us, to show the levels of frustration. It got me thinking that, allthough the main characters reaction towards the bird changes, there wasn't much sign of his own body language and mannerism changing. So I thought of a few ways to show this.

have him hold his head
have him grind his teeth / move his jaw side to side
tap the guitar nervously, maybe hit the guitar later
clench his fist more often
a long blink
a fast breath

Good ole mariano had a cool idea, which was perfect, and kinda shows irritation: the characters head-appendage-thingy (thinga-magody/ whatcha-ma-callit) falls forward as he thinks to himself, then he pushes it back in position with his hand, like someone fixing their hair.

I've incorporated several of these ideas between his reactions, and it seems to be closer to what I wanted in the first place. Some WIP shots soon. cool, laterz guys n Gals!

Out of Tune - Part 3

Here is my latest version of the project, blocked out the main poses, and explored some texture colour schemes, before I break the Maya file up into different shots, to focus on the animation.

Out of Tune - Part 2

Wally's Facial Rig

Here is a facial test for Wally



Acting

Here you can witness my terrible acting skills, this is the reference I've used for my blocking stage. The cool thing about rehearsing the performance is that it becomes an extension of yourself. You really get alot closer to every movement, annd it forces you to iron out performance issues before being affected by the technical difficulties that 3d entails



Blocking Stage

Ok, this is how far I am blocking out the main poses. I havent finished this yet, I need to get more reference footage for the last few shots..... But it's cool to see it coming together

Out of Tune - Part 1

Ok, So I decided to find a new story but utilising Wally and the Parrot in
some way. I also wanted to somehow keep the 'levels of agitation' that I had in
'The Present'. A Theatre group called Complicite had been helping us develop levels of emotion through time, and they are also part of this National Gallery Project, so I really wanted to use some of their ideas in my story.

The Idea

I liked the idea of incorporating music, or a musical instrument at least. And then I saw this painting while surfing their awesome website :
The Scale of Love

I like the idea of two characters interacting under a tree.
How about still using the Parrot as a source of irritation? Keep the whole event outside, one environment. maybe Wally wants to be alone but the parrot keeps bothering him. Or even better, Wally is trying to play guitar peacfully and Polly keeps interrupting.


The Animatic

SO this is the Animatic I ended up with, after alot of playing around with the timing and sound. And no, it's not me playing guitar, they are some cool royalty free guitar sounds purchased from Computer Music magazine.:



The Parrot in the previous Animatic idea was kinda alien, but I really liked the simple parrot designs that were more stylised, and without a thingy on his head, it seemed to take emphesis away from his huge beak so it had to go. Here are some of the References I used. The pencil drawing is Claudia k's impression...which sent me in the right direction, I see now.





Wally is pretty much the same guy.



3D Modelling

Cool, the fun bit, here are examples of the working prototype models with rigging, for Wally & Polly

3D Wally




I put alot of attention on Wally's facial controls, as I wanted to focus on emotional thought processes and facial acting on this project. So there are two layers of control, Blendshapes with left and right blending, and then clusters on the cheeks and nose, so that I can tweak those as neccessary. i learnt alot here, in fact, I was really tempted to go back and start all over, using the new techniques I had learnt along the way. But I dont think I have time, so I've make do with what I have........ or will I?

3D Polly


This is the blueprint I used to model polly


Polly's rig is relativly simple, though I'm looking into adding squash and stretch funtionality for his Torso






Props

Here is the Guitar and Chair I designed


The Environment

I know that I dont want realistic looking trees, I want someting more stylised, Like polly is, in a way. Also, I'm hoping to use slightly more abstract stylised textures too, like watercoluor painting type, scanned in, or just a few filters in Photoshop first.



Here are some of the References I used, I plan on utilising these further in the modelling and texturing stages.

The Present

Ahh, well this idea made it all the way to Animatic stage.

The inspiration is a painting called 'The Present'

The Present

They say a picture tells a thousand words. This painting suggests many things i think. But this woman does not look to happy about her gift. Wow, the possibilities of a story adaption are endless. I liked the idea of a lonely guy finding a gift, which ends up making an irritating sound, to such a point that its wrapped up and thown back out

While discussing the idea with Claudia K, One of my good friends, I suddenly realised it would be even funnier if this guy thought he was rid of the annoying gift, but his pet parrot had picked up the noise, and when he returns home, he hears his parrot mimick the noise.
I also wanted this to all be in an alien environment, I didnt want to adhere to realism, which I sometimes find myself doing. So I decided he would be an alien, his parrot would be an Astro-Parrot (?) and the trees and stuff would be stylised.

The Sketches

Main Character - Wally

Astro Parrot

And not forgetting:



The Story Beats

I wanted to clearly know where the beats of the story changed, so I wrote down all the emotional changes







The Animatic

I felt the annoying sound was the pivotal part of the story, so I spent quite a few hours on that. here is the First Animatic:



The Animatic - Take 2

It turns out my annoying sound was actually too annoying for one of my lecturers to bare, tee hee. Knowing this, I was a bit concerned, especially if our stuff ends up being played in the National Gallery (over and over).
So I tried to create a more subtle sound without loosing the feel. I was also told to add more drawings for the character entering and leaving certain scenes.




This is when I began to realise that the majority of the film was spent walking from one place to another, and also that I had two whole environments to design...... doubt overwhelmed me, especially when it occured to me that the more memorable a story is , the more chance someone would watch it again, and in this case, I would be lucky if anyone would actually endure this more than once.
So I began looking at ways of using my characters, but in a different scenario, perhaps a different painting would inspire something?

More Ideas

1) Apocalypse Ho-Down
I always wanted to do a musical piece with animation, and thought it would be cool to do in on a serious subject, like a really cool piece I saw in the Monkey Dust TV series once, where all the fighting works in time to music. Many of the paintings in the national gallery are religiously motivated

The Sketches




2) Girl dancing with the Univerese in her Hands

Also a musical piece, but with dancing, the inspiration was from the painting 'A Little Girl'

A Little Girl

Not a particularly nice painting, but the idea is intriguing. I liked the idea of an innocent girl, unknowly creating something so spectacular and powerful as she plays around and dances

The Sketches


Disadvantages

I was concerned I may spend too much time working on visual effects, I wanted sparkles to appear wherever the girl moved the sphere in here hands, as she danced