Lip Sync for shot 8....on Easter Sunday.....what a funny bunny....
Sunday, 27 March 2016
Ongoing reflective practice, interviews and external examiner feedback
I had some great feedback during my one to one with our external examiner Han Ter Pak and Brendan Body this week.
I can see that it can all feed into and form part of my ongoing reflective practice.
Brendan said he'd been thinking of an idea to incorporate into my final film...... a seed that drops from the flower, that the child offers to the ice people....and that seed, in turn, grows into the flower as seen in the final frames of the film....
As part of our ongoing reflective practice, I've also been reviewing and making a transcript of the interview I held, with Steve Sweeney of Barnardo's Rollercoaster Service in Dundee. They help children deal with bereavement.
This week we are to present our final conference ideas in the lecture theatre; and our conference presentation includes all of our findings and objectives to date. It's been interesting to review my interview notes and to see that the valid points that came from that, can tie in with Brendan's idea and my ongoing ideas...
I am going to do some 3D CGI tests, as part of my practical research methodology, and will experiment with CGI sunlight shining through back lit ice.
I am particularly drawn to the idea of the ice people having a sunlit spot in their forehead and heart, as visual metaphor to represent 'spirit' and an ongoing connection between the bereaved and those that have passed on.
This visual idea will also incorporate the 'four tasks' involved in 'mourning', as noted below in my slide, that Steve Sweeney mentioned during the interview....
I can see that it can all feed into and form part of my ongoing reflective practice.
Brendan said he'd been thinking of an idea to incorporate into my final film...... a seed that drops from the flower, that the child offers to the ice people....and that seed, in turn, grows into the flower as seen in the final frames of the film....
As part of our ongoing reflective practice, I've also been reviewing and making a transcript of the interview I held, with Steve Sweeney of Barnardo's Rollercoaster Service in Dundee. They help children deal with bereavement.
This week we are to present our final conference ideas in the lecture theatre; and our conference presentation includes all of our findings and objectives to date. It's been interesting to review my interview notes and to see that the valid points that came from that, can tie in with Brendan's idea and my ongoing ideas...
I am going to do some 3D CGI tests, as part of my practical research methodology, and will experiment with CGI sunlight shining through back lit ice.
I am particularly drawn to the idea of the ice people having a sunlit spot in their forehead and heart, as visual metaphor to represent 'spirit' and an ongoing connection between the bereaved and those that have passed on.
This visual idea will also incorporate the 'four tasks' involved in 'mourning', as noted below in my slide, that Steve Sweeney mentioned during the interview....
Friday, 25 March 2016
Lip Sync for shots 23, 26 and 27a - Going Live!
Lip Sync for the Baby Sylvanian Family Rabbit...
Great fun today animating the primary animation for the lip sync shapes, and then the secondary animation for the pacifier...
I was able to copy paste the previous key frame for the pacifier and adjust it slightly on all three
X, Y Z axis, using the graph editor and also by eye, to make it jiggle around and move in and out of the rabbit's mouth; independent to the lip sync shapes (Pacifier in Outliner, Perspective view and graph editor circled in yellow above). Key frames are indicated by the red lines, shown on the timeline, along with the green wave file of the audio.
The blend shapes for the mouth lip sync and facial expressions are great...plenty of them and lots of options for animating...
The three following clips took about 45 mins each to animate and lip sync....
Maya, me and the Power Loader!
I expected that changing from using AutoCAD to Maya would be similar to say, driving an automatic car for years and swapping to a manual gearbox...
No.
Welcome to Formula One racing!
And today.....I found that I was actually 'driving' (animating) without thinking about which labyrinth of menus I was in, which interface I should have selected, which drop down menu I happened to find myself in, which attribute channel; lambert; node and hypershade vortex I needed to be in, what layer activation should be on, which general editor tab I needed to be in and which audio import command I should be using....
I must have done some of it automatically and Maya wasn't the threatening, mysterious myriad of complexity that it usually is...
I feel like Sigourney Weaver's character 'Ripley' in Alien, when she climbs into the Power Loader and says to the Alien "Get away from her you b****"!"
Ha! Oh Maya!!
Thursday, 24 March 2016
Panoramic views, if inspiration and life were a colourscript and Game of Thrones Season 5!
So the past couple of date nights have involved dinner in, then pudding and coffee at restaurants we've not been to before, and topped off with Game of Thrones Season 5!
So a few visual images of inspiration that have come from this - all with a backing track of fantastic Ceilidh music on Radio Iplayer, from Dundee last Sunday...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0742m8h
Interesting that if my inspiration were part of a colour script over the past two weeks, it would have a fairly limited range of Ice Blue and Warm Orange....
Colour script link for more info! http://pixar-animation.weebly.com/colour-script.html
The View of Dundee from 'The View' restaurant in Wormit and some interior shots from Avery & Co in Dundee....
the coffee was a work of art itself... I commented on how impressed I was..."years of experience" was the answer!
Game of Thrones - Season 5. Always intrigued by how limited the colour range is, in some of the shots...
So a few visual images of inspiration that have come from this - all with a backing track of fantastic Ceilidh music on Radio Iplayer, from Dundee last Sunday...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0742m8h
Interesting that if my inspiration were part of a colour script over the past two weeks, it would have a fairly limited range of Ice Blue and Warm Orange....
Colour script link for more info! http://pixar-animation.weebly.com/colour-script.html
The View of Dundee from 'The View' restaurant in Wormit and some interior shots from Avery & Co in Dundee....
the coffee was a work of art itself... I commented on how impressed I was..."years of experience" was the answer!
Lip Sync - learning curve!!!!
So UV mapping and now Lip Sync....a new vertical learning 'curve'!!
Maya interface, showing our Pre_Vis camera set up for Shot_23. Baby rabbit in the foreground with irate and provocative trolls in the background!
Yellow circles and arrows indicate timeline, and audio playback options in Maya....
I made a few tests of the lip sync, some worked better than others, but all seemed to be either slow, or not make much sense with the mouth shapes...
Katherine gave me a good tip....'record your mouth making the shapes' and copy that...
Surprisingly my mouth didn't make any of the shapes I thought it would...
This clip is just 23 frames long (we are working on 25 frames per second), so the clip zips past and it's difficult to distinguish the sounds.
I ended up with two basic shapes ('w' and 'oo'), and a final mouth pose that I hope looks defiant!
Here's a few notes I made about the process; that tie in with the image above....
Process to import sound....
Open scene number.
File >
Import audio >
Right click on timeline and select sound >
Select audio from sub menu >
Select playback time as 'real time' >
Select blend shapes (facial expressions and mouth shapes) and set them as key frames, in time with the audio track.
So that it's convincing, it's a good idea to key frame the mouth shape, a few frames before the sound emerges....
I then used the graph editor to snap the animation and remove any Maya smoothing....
Here's the lip sync clip! For shot_23
Maya interface, showing our Pre_Vis camera set up for Shot_23. Baby rabbit in the foreground with irate and provocative trolls in the background!
Yellow circles and arrows indicate timeline, and audio playback options in Maya....
I made a few tests of the lip sync, some worked better than others, but all seemed to be either slow, or not make much sense with the mouth shapes...
Katherine gave me a good tip....'record your mouth making the shapes' and copy that...
Surprisingly my mouth didn't make any of the shapes I thought it would...
This clip is just 23 frames long (we are working on 25 frames per second), so the clip zips past and it's difficult to distinguish the sounds.
I ended up with two basic shapes ('w' and 'oo'), and a final mouth pose that I hope looks defiant!
Here's a few notes I made about the process; that tie in with the image above....
Process to import sound....
Open scene number.
File >
Import audio >
Right click on timeline and select sound >
Select audio from sub menu >
Select playback time as 'real time' >
Select blend shapes (facial expressions and mouth shapes) and set them as key frames, in time with the audio track.
So that it's convincing, it's a good idea to key frame the mouth shape, a few frames before the sound emerges....
I then used the graph editor to snap the animation and remove any Maya smoothing....
Here's the lip sync clip! For shot_23
Sunday, 20 March 2016
Powerpoint presentation slides for Axis
Putting together our Powerpoint presentation before our skype meeting with Axis this Wednesday...
Looking forward to seeing the 3D character turnarounds that Sheila is creating!
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