Thursday, February 17, 2011

Research: Body Language & Personality

Sadness - "Charlie Brown Moments"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oabcM9SOF-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_exermAXkU



This video shows what is referred to by the creatures as Charlie Brown moments. It has several characters in the same pose, showing a very sad pose. This can be seen by the peoples heads in a very low, submissive position, and their arms straight down by their sides. There is also the speed at which they're walking, quite slowly and metronomic. This would be an easy emotion and pose for Ursus to have, as it does not rely on facial expression.

Happiness - Skipping Along

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1APPc0xX1o



This video shows a somewhat comical approach on the emotion of happiness. It is greatly exaggerated and shows the person skipping along happily without a care in the world. Again, this is something very useful for Ursus, as this is how I plan on having him enter the scene, before he picks up the honeys scent.

Sneaking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bUDUP8zMEU



Here is a video of a man sneaking around, again humorously, so it is exaggerated. A more idea example of this would have been to have the man hands out in front of him to which is more commonly seen within animations and cartoons. This would be a good movement type for when Ursus is trying to sneak into the camp site to get the honey pot.

Edit: On a slightly unrelated note, I have come up with a title for the animation. The full Latin name for a Grizzly Bear is 'Ursus Arctos Horribilis'. Seeing as the entire animation is based on Ursus trying to get something to eat, I decided that it might be apt to call the animation Ursus Arctor Hungrilis. I thought that this has quite a nice ring to it and would fit into some of the other pun based titles that cartoons seem to enjoy using.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Animation Storyboard

Here is my storyboard for my story.





My idea is as follows.

Ursus is walking through the forest when he smells something delicious. He then realises that there is some smoke coming from a nearby camp site. Ursus finds his bearnoculars and looks into the camp site, seeing some delicious honey. He also sees a sign saying rangers shoot bears on sight.

Ursus adopts a clever disguise, a picnic basket with a whole in the front, to sneak into the camp site undetected. He grabs the honey, but how will he get back over the fence? He sees a pole on the floor and decides to pole volt over the fence to freedom. This doesn't go entirely to plan and he loses the honey. Not having time to be saddened by the turn of events, the pot of honey suddenly lands on his head.

I am confident that I will be able to get the gist of my story across to the audience within 60 seconds, but it may mean having to cut down on certain areas.

Ursus Amendments

Having shown my model to Richard and discussing with him my concerns of flexibility with the original model of Ursus, I have made some amendments at Richards suggestion that I think make him more flexible and refined.



Here is Ursus in his original form. As you can see he is sporting quite a gut on him. Apart from giving him a higher chancer of heart disease, this big belly also got in the way when trying to animate his arms. I have an idea for him to hold a pole at one point in my animation, so the fact that it was impossible to manoeuvre his arms around his waist meant that I needed put him on a strict diet. Richard also suggest that I made Ursus more toned and masculine looking, so I took this advise and gave him a more cartoon like "triangle" shaped physique, much like that of Mr Incredible. (Mr Incredibear anyone?)



This is Ursus in his new, manly state. Note the now very tiny legs, and this seems to make the character even more humours. I don't have any plans for Ursuses legs to play a huge role in the animation and coming across of emotion, I plan to do most of this with hand movements and ear and brow positioning, so it is not a big loss on this front either.




Here is another version of Ursus which I am not quite sure about. It has some prominent pectoral muscles which are meant to show that he is a strong, male bear, althought I am unsure at this time whether I have made him too masculine now, so I may opt to keep the second version of Ursus.

I am very happy with how he is looking at this time, so I will move onto boning and skinning my model so that he is ready to animate. Once this is done I will post my storyboard and explain the premise of my narration.

Modelling Character

Here is the design process I took when modelling my 3D character, whom I am now tempted to name Ursus (The Latin name for bear.). I began by creating a 6 sided cylinder, to create a very basic torso for Ursus.



Once I had this, I was able to use the vert selection tool to pull out each of the verts to give the torso a better shape.



This made be the basis of the model so that I could easily extrude limbs out from the sides and bottom.



With a turbo smooth modifier, I already had a basic, but quite appealing shape for my bear character.


Using the connect tool, I made 2 edges along the legs, and extruded out the resulting polygon to make feet for Ursus. Here is what it looks like with turbo smooth.



Creating a cone with 4 sides gave me a very basic claw for Ursuses feet.



By using the soft selection tool, I rotated the top verts on the claw to make them curved. I then duplicated them and attached them to his feet. I also made a basic head out of a cube, and extruded out a simple snout.




Capping a box onto the end of Ursuses arm allowed me to make a hand. The fingers where created by using the connect tool to create the edges in which the fingers would be extruded out from.



Here is the hand with turbo smooth. This is the part of the model I dislike most at the moment, and will probably improve upon as I progress with character refining.



Next, I went about finishing the basic head I had created. Using the inset tool, I made two rectangles on the top of the head, these where extruded outwards and then had gaps inset into the front to form the bears ear. A low brow was extruded out of the front of the box to give the head more depth. An extra ring of edges was connected onto the snout as to give it a better shape.



Here is the outcome with turbo smooth, that I think works extremely well.



Lastly I placed two small spheres to form little eyes for Ursus, and made a small cylinder with a bevel on the front to make a button nose.



And there you have it, Ursus in his initial state, although I am sure I will make revisions to him so that he is the most flexible and emotional bear he can be.


Character Creation

After doing research into popular characters such as the ones seen on my mood board, I have decided that the best course of action for this comedy short is going to be an animal, acting as a human, much like the rabbit from my initial research.

The character will have a very disproportioned biped body, helping add to the comedy factor of the animation. At this point in time, I am thinking that my character will be a bear, I haven't decided on a name yet, but seeing as soon as I thought of the character Yogi Bear 3D was announced, Yogi is out of the question.

As for the characters face, I will be using very little real facial features, and well be relying more on brow structure and ear movement for facial expression rather than going the easy route for a realistic humanoid face.



Here is my initial sketch of the character, I am quite happy with this as a basic idea, but as I come to create him in a 3D environment I expect I will have to make revisions based on his animation limitations and other, unforeseen problems.

Expression Research #3 - Moodboard

Here is a mood board showing several characters that I plan to take inspiration from for my own character. I will be thinking about body shape and size, as well as expressions, moods and personalities.




The next phase of the design process is for me to come up with an initial character design.

Expression Research #2 - Body

Expression through body language can be as important as facial expression when done correctly - especially if the character in question is lacking a face!

With the characters I have looked at so far, we can see that they all have a wide array of expressions conveying big, over exaggerated emotions. As mentioned before, we as humans pick up on these very easily and relate them to ourselves.

Looking at the characters I have already reviewed, we can see see how body language is easily used.



Here is the rabbit, taking up what I would describe as an embarrassed pose. This is quintessentially a feminine pose, but works well with the comedy factor this animation has, a good thing to keep in mind as I am working to a very similar brief. Something else that is interesting is how well this works even with the massive proportion differences to a human body that the rabbit has. If we outline the main features of this pose, we can look into them in more detail.



In this VERY basic outline, we can see how some simple movements can create this feeling of emotion and expression that is easy to understand. The first biggest thing I notice is how the rabbits left leg is bent and he is standing on his tip toes. This seems very important to this expression, and I don't think it would be such a clear expression without this. This goes for the rabbits right hand as well. It is very stereotypical to this pose and makes it clear.

Apart from the standard, human like limbs, the rabbit obviously also has a big pair of ears atop his head, as you can see from my outline image, these are also used in this pose, these are flopped down on top of the rabbits head, to give what I would describe as a deflated impression on how he is feeling. The use of ears like this seem like something good to remember when creating my character.

This research has shown me how expression through body language is not regulated to realistic human anatomy, and how a character such as the rabbit is able to function normally with very big arms and tiny legs, something that I may touch on in my own character design as it seems to fit in well with the comedy aspect of the brief.

Expression Research #1 - Face

Taking into account the research I have done so far with Wall-E, Geri, and the Giant Rabbit, there are some clear connections between how these characters are given emotion and expression on their faces. On the characters that have mouths, being Geri and the Rabbit, there is obviously an added level of expression as human beings have the ability to relate to this facial feature with ease - it is a biological function.



That being said, I have found it fascinating that characters without mouths, in this case Wall-e, can still show very clear emotions with some simple movements.



Here we can see Wall-E being sad/remorseful just by the rotation of his binocular eyes. The way the edge of the binoculars move emulates how eyebrows are normally drawn in cartoons. With Wall-E, I feel that the viewers of the character rely heavily on pareidolia.

Pareidolia is a misperception hard coded into all human beings, making them see faces - more specifically human faces - in objects where they are not present.

I am very fond of using this somewhat errored human subconscious within my character as it seems to be used quite a lot in children's animations.

Here are a few examples where pareidolia is used, partially or totally.

The Brave Little Toaster - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc5D6qxAGpo
American Express Advertisement - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m56F4EKN9hg
OOglies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7JQiY_uqVk

When I come to designing my character, I will take all of this research into account and decided which way will be the best way to go in conjunction to other areas of the characters design.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Research

Here is some research I carried out to inspire my character and story design. The most interesting aspect of this module to me is that the character can portray to the audience what it is feeling without the need for it to make any sound what so ever. The mediums in which it does this are body language, hand signals and facial expressions.

Geri's Game (Pixar Short Film)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7dcbIKvlw

In this video, we can see a good example of the aforementioned on a character you'd normally associate with speech, a human. Geri does use some sound in this piece, but only to aid the visuals, rather than visuals aiding sound such as speech does. This video shows more of an emphasis on strong use of fingers and hands. I will take this into account when modelling my character and will make sure that it has fully functioning hands that can be manipulated realistically.

Big Buck Bunny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk

This animation uses a lot of posture and appendage based (in this case the ears) movement to depict the emotion of the character. Again, notice the large hands that make signs and movements very clearly. Even with the massive disproportion of the character, the fact that he has tiny legs and huge arms, body language that humans would use is still clearly understandable. The use of the characters large brow is also very interesting and I will be taking this into account when creating my character.

Wall-E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYoiXtfebzU

Wall-e is a very interesting character due to the fact that he has no facial features, really no real face at all, but is still able to portray emotion with clever use of the metal around his eyes. This is a really inspiring piece of character design, showing that it is possible to portray emotion with a very basic set of features.

After doing this research I have decided that I would like to take some inspiration from all of the above. I like how the brow of the character can create expressions in its own right by position alone. The use of hands has been very clear to me as one of the most important aspects of expression, sometimes by itself or in conjunction with other limbs. I will be keeping all of these ideas in mind when I design my character.