Acting analysis part 2

Trying out another analysis

Like last time this is totally my own analysis. I have not spoken to the animator, nor do I own any of the material. This is purely done for learning purposes.

This is one of my favorite shots from Tangled.
The animation in there is just packed with great poses, interesting timing and fantastic sense of weight.

I chose this shot, because it works particularly well.
It’s simplicity is amazing, but what is does for the film really valuable.

Shot_Animated

It portrays Mother Gothel, as the beautiful, dangerous and sinister person she is. I think it really captured the essence of the character.
People always tell you to find a pose that works, and act “within” it, and I think they did so really well in this shot. I tried to take the shot and break it into beats, and I found three major poses.
That is all it takes. Three, really strong, good poses. Obviously a lot of stuff happens within those three, but they are the foundation. And particularly, because she is such a sinister and calculative person, keeping her still and reduces her pose-changes to the minimum, suits her very well.

Shot_Beats

The concept of “occupying screen space” is very much at play here. The idea is, that you find you major story telling poses (golden poses). They should be as few as possible, and it is important they are very different, both in silhouette and the screen space they occupy.
If we take a look at the beats from this shot, we see this is very much true here.

He is a version with all the major beats and keys. Though we see, that these keys are well enough to define the beats of the body, it isn’t quite enough to explain the acting in general. Mainly because most of it, happens under just one body pose.

Shot_Keys

So here I’ve tried to spot out all the keys I’d say was enough to move into breakdowns.
From here on, it should be a matter of figuring out spacing, and how to move in and out of keys.
Which isn’t really my focus with this bit of exercise. 

Shot_All_Keys

I am really in awe of how skilled these animators are. The readability and seeming simplicity of the acting is fantastic. I find the concept of golden poses, the minimal amount of poses possible, very interesting. I tend to always want to gesture with the arms and hit every accent. But as we can see here, it is not necessary at all, and we must thrive to find the simple, clear way of acting out the shot.
 

The simpler acting, the better it tends to read.

There is a good chance, you might not agree at all with my "analysis" and that is perfectly fine. It might be totally off :D But it makes good sense to me, and I'm learning a lot by doing these posts.

Hopefully it was a bit interesting

Cheers

 

On directing friends and what to bring to animation

So since September I’ve been directing a short film at the school.
All in all we are ten people on the project, and I am credited as director (and I came with the original idea).

http://porcelainmovie.blogspot.com/

It’s weird to be suddenly put in a position of power, which it is no matter how you want to angle it.
I have no background to make me any more qualified to direct than anybody else in the group, and to from one day to the next, be in the position of leader towards your classmates is very challenging indeed.

What makes it even more challenging is the fact, that I have never done anything of this kind, more than anybody else in the team, but still I have to know what I’m doing, or at least know what to do if I don’t.

The big thing I take from this experience so far is communication – communication towards other people in the team, as well as communication on a story level, which leads me to animation.

When it all comes down, animation is what I want to do for a living, not directing, and I constantly try to make connections to animation, when lingering about all this direction things that is going on atm.
I’ve spend the last months on story construction, story boarding and lately 3d layout. All of this has one clear theme to it: Visually communicating an idea!
Basically the same as animation, am I right?
All of the animation principals, all twelve of them, or however you have on your own list (Which I highly encourage you to make!) all aids you – the animator – in one thing: communicating and idea, an emotion, a story point.

So what is it exactly I feel I’ve taken away so far, which can translate into animation, one curious soul might ask? Well, I _think_ it is this:
Whatever you do, every single pose, every single frame will communicate something to the audience.
But it goes beyond that. The way you choose to frame your character in the shot. The environment around it, how the chair is angled towards the table, how the window frames the character – it all communicates something.
Now the thing is, if you have so many things communicating something it can very easily clutter the message – and what is worse than just cluttering the message, is if you are not aware of all these messages being communicated, there is a big chance some of them might even communicate the opposite of what you want, causing mixed messages… uhhhh the horror!

So being aware that everything you put on screen says something to the audience, is a very good starting place. It might sound daunting, but think about the fact, that if you are able to turn it all on your side, you no longer just have the gestures of your character to tell a story, but framing, color, sound, light, appearance (hat, wig, glasses, whatever) and environment.
That is a lot of players on the same team!

I think will be it for now. Enough brain fart to let out at once. Hope it was somewhat interesting though.
I find it helpful to put words onto things like this.

Cheers!

Animation Analysis

Analysis of Bernie shot from “The Incredibles”.

The Incredibles is one of my favorite Pixar movies for a few reasons. The story is superb first and foremost.
Second, characters are really appealing and interesting – all across the board, the main characters as well as the secondary and even tertiary. Probably the best one to me is the school teacher Bernie.

He really resonates with me, for whatever reason. I really get the guy, I see how he got into the teaching, a once widely respected job, spreading knowledge and wisdom to the future generations, but instead he enters a world where young kids have only disrespect towards the teachers, and particularly this guy Dash irritates him. He is just perfectly portrayed in my view.
Because of that, I also find his shots perfectly executed. So therefor I have decided to take one of my favorites and break it down into Golden Poses, Keys and Keys+breaks (first pass).
I claim absolutely no copyrights for any of this, nor that any of the following true in any sense. This is my personal analysis of the shot, and I haven’t got the smallest clue if any of it is actually true. I did it to help myself but thought I might as well share it if anybody would happen to come by and find it interesting.
The shot belongs to Pixar/Disney– I guess :)

Alright, here we go!






These are the ones I picked as the Golden Poses.
Bernie walks in, expresses his case, expecting the Principal sitting next to him, to support him, as well as getting an apology from the Mother (Helen) and Dash sitting in front of him.
When Dash responds inappropriately he snaps and breaks his composure.

These 7 Golden Poses/Storytelling Poses defines the major acting choices for the shot.
He walks in, adjusts his glasses, reacts to Dash’s respond, accuses him aggressively, then gets back to a more composed but still determined poses.

The poses are all very clear and works really well together. He has a rather large head so facial is very important here as well, mainly the eyes/eyebrows which is used intelligently to underline his emotion.
Also the shoulders and chest is used nicely, being secure and determined in body language in the first three poses, then he breaks out in accusation and as he re-enters his initial poses again, he is tenser, shoulders are higher and chest is more sunken back, less self-confident.



The next set of keys is added to further define the movement.
Personally I find this stage very difficult because it is so easy to wash out the strength and simplicity there often lies in well-crafted Golden Poses.
This extra set of keys is also very helpful in fleshing out his characteristics in his movement pattern.

By that I mean, when he points towards Dash for instance, he could have gone forward both fast and slowly, both would probably work but be very different. By deciding to have him come forward so quickly after Dash’s response it tells the audience that he reacts instantly and from his heart.
It also helps define the movement within the golden poses.
There is a lot of dialogue that happens between the second and third Golden Poses, and this acting has to be addressed somehow. The animator chose to have him go down a bit and “Openly mocks” and the back up again on “Class”. This I didn’t find to be a part of the Story telling keys because it is part of the subset of movements that happens and are important to get the emotion and movement across believable, but it still works within a bigger set of keys, the Golden Poses, those which defines the broadest stroke to use a painting term.



This is the most fleshed out version I have included today.
This set of poses includes (I my mind) Golden Poses, Key Poses and a first set of Breakdowns.
These breakdowns are mainly used to define how to get from one pose to the next.
It doesn’t add much new to the shot in terms of story, but it is still probably the hardest part of a shot like this (I find).
Its purpose is to define the movement and in that define his emotion.
Technically it is crucial as well as it informs the computer how to inbetween the keys, so it doesn’t just do a straight linear move.
Also they are used to define leads such as in frame 4, where the upper body moves forward the most, then at frame 10 the hip as caught up.

It also defines eases like in frame 50, where the head is posed a lot closer to the previous frame than the next, making it move slowly out and fast into the next. This gives weight and implies there is a force behind the movement that has to accelerate.

Another very important role for the breakdowns is to define arc.
In reality the human joints rotate around each other, driven by muscles. This creates an arc to any movement you do, since rotating something from a fixed point will always make the end move in an arc. In a lot of animation rigs you can define movement by translating (moving) things around. This doesn’t automatically create the arc, which gives it a very linear and robotic look.

When you want to make dynamic movements, arcs are KEY!
An example of such and arc is frame 10 (key) frame 15 (breakdown) and 22 (key).
Instead of moving the hand in a straight line from 10-22 to reach his glasses, the animator moves the hand out, from his head.
This gave it a nice arc, plus it helped clearify the pose as it allowed a nice negative space between the body and the arm/hand, giving it a clear silhouette.
That is it from me.

Below is the clip in real time, found on you tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5u4vSxqbLs

I have no idea if my frame counts are accurate or not, they probably aren’t, as they have been through youtube, cut up in photoshop and stitched together in premiere, just to be uploaded at vimeo in a totally different frame rate probably. But this is more and analysis on acting and poses, keys and breakdowns, more than timing.
Again, I claim no rights to the shot creation, nor that any of the above is true in any sense.
I know I got a whole lot out of studying this piece of perfect animation, and I hope you get a little bit out of it as well.
If anybody happens to read this and want to add a point or two, agree or disagree, feel free to write a comment!

Christoffer

Porcelain

So we finished up at Tumblehead. A great place to spend the summer. Got to do everything from modeling to shadig/lighting, rigging, animation and compositing. All great fun.

Last monday (the 29th) I pitched two short film ideas to the school and my fellow students. All in all I think we were around 60 people listening.
It was quite nerveracking, but also a relief because it ment the end of months of prep work.
After a bunch of selection processes involving both the school and the students, 6 final projects were chosen, among those one of mine!

So for the next year I will be directing a short film with a crew of nine people behind me.
That will surely be a major challenge, both in terms of management and artistic ambitions.


The story takes place in a small danish coast town in the late 1800th and plays with the superstition and believes at the time.















More info will follow later, plus a designated blog for the short film.

Cheers

Morten Korch

We had a character design class, and the first assignment was about clear shapes and easily read silhuettes.
For this we made a silhuette film in just four hours, from brainstorming to final product.
It was loads of fun, and I'm really thinking about doing that again in a more serious manner.

Here it is, created with Carmen Hannibal and Mikkel Mainz

Dus med Morten Korch from Christoffer Andersen on Vimeo.

Storyboard week

This week we were taught storyboarding by Tod Polson

This is a storyboard for a fictional commercial, created with Stine Frandsen:




Created in one day.

animatic for fictional commercial from Stine Agerskov Frandsen on Vimeo.