Note: This timespan includes roughly 7-12 days of light work spaced out over the holiday period, rather than a continuous week of heavy work.
Blocked
Over the holidays, I let myself breathe a little bit, seeing my project less as a 9-5 job and more of a fun way to channel my energy when I had nothing else to do. I was excited to start blocking, and got the first three seconds done in one sitting.
I began noticing as I worked that the arm motion looked a little bit janky. The left arm seems to jolt quickly and unnaturally on its way down.
As I continued on I kept running into this problem, where the hands and arms seem to be moving faster than would be natural, distracting the viewer from the emotion in her gestures and the inflection of her speech. This technically is something that can be addressed in the splining stage, but I felt that issues like this are such a big deal that I don’t want to go on animating without first understanding what the problem is and how to address it.
I tried deleting unnecessary keyframes- by unnecessary I mean frames that don’t need to be keyed; the arm would be in that spot without the key- but that didn’t do the trick. So, with trepidation, I decided to try completely deleting gestures that were less important, ones that didn’t contribute to the key pose and were causing it to look unnatural, even though I did do them in real life for my reference. I found that, though I considered this method controversial (amongst myself), the effect was much better. Below you can see the difference caused by deleting a pose in which she outstretches her arms in front of her on the way down. When I allow the arms to come down naturally instead of making that gesture, it gives the second key pose (hands to the side of her head, fingers splayed facing out) and third key pose (fists clenched by herwaist) more time and meaning. Although I sacrificed a gesture, these first three seconds of work are some of my strongest in the scene.
Difference in deleting a gesture
I continued on in this way, completing about 3 seconds per day, and deleting gestures that I found to look unnatural.
6 seconds- I later decided this squat was too pronounced and softened it a bit
At the end of each 3 second day, I added facial expressions. I found that part to be quite easy and enjoyable, and realized that only one expression change per 2-3 seconds should be the maximum. Even though my character is meant to appear hysterical, this really is enough to do the trick without being over the top.
When I finished blocking, I threw Janine into the scene I had constructed last week.
I kept in the area lights that I’d used before introducing her to the scene, and found that they provided a nice spotlight in a dark, eerie space. The interior of the mansion was originally quite bright and yellow, and, being an artist, I spend some time fiddling with the composition and adding shadow mattes to bright areas to create a nice dramatic color and light balance. My goal was to provide an ominous aura without teetering on scary, whilst simultaneously isolating Janine’s movement as the focus of attention in a relatively busy background.
I like that the stairs are framed and reflected, as it gives Janine a nice spotlight while drawing attention to the blood, amplified by her red shirt and lips. Again, not sure if that’s too grotesque for some viewers, but I personally like it.
Here’s the block. Feeling positive about it overall, but I can see already a couple fixes that need to be made. I can spot a foot phasing through the floor, and she still feels a little jolty. The work I did in removing distracting gestures was not an overall joltiness fix, just an effort to take care of the basics. I have high hopes for this.
My next step, before splining, is to add in what I call “extras”. These are the characters that will shush Janine. I plan to have the camera whip around to them right after the close-up, giving some exposition and drawing curiosity back into the narrative as well as putting some essential lightheartedness back into the atmosphere with nonthreatening, colorful characters and more party debris.
Well, turns out I was wrong to think of these characters as extras, because as I dressed them up for the occasion, so to speak, I actually found myself instilling personality into them and imagining their place in the story. As I posed them I liked them even more, and now they’re as near and dear to my heart as Janine. I’m very excited to animate them first thing tomorrow.
I had the idea straight away to use audio from the 1985 black comedy Clue, which if you haven’t seen it, is based on the board game Clue (or Cluedo depending on where you’re from), so you can probably guess the basic plot.
In the specific audio segment I chose, a motorist had just knocked on the door asking to use the telephone, and the butler instinctively locked him in the room in order to prevent him from exploring the house and stumbling upon the crime scene that the characters are trying desperately to solve so that they themselves can avoid the mysterious murderer as well as being implicated. Miss Scarlett and Professor Plum are debating whether it would be more suspicious to leave him locked up or ask him to get out of the house. Abruptly, Mrs. Peacock stands up and begins screaming hysterically, “Oh, who cares, that guy doesn’t matter! Let him stay locked up for another half an hour! The police will be here by then and there are two dead bodies in the study!” She is then shushed by everyone else.
This moment is actually very funny in the movie, not only because Mrs. Peacock looks like this-
-but also because of the actress’s incredible campy performance, shrieking and waving her arms wildly. Despite how funny the movie is, though, I of course can’t expect that to come through with just this one audio segment, but that’s not why I chose it. I chose it firstly because it’s intriguing, and secondly it’s very expressive, allowing me to make the most of an over-the-top, dynamic scene that’ll stand out as a performance animation.
I recorded my reference footage, acting out the audio as dramatically as I could, differently every time to compare. I felt inspired to break a wine glass for effect.
Then I split my reference footage into frames in Photoshop, intending to refer to every third image to help me get a good idea of what the pose should look like. I originally planned to delete the ones that are in between keyframes, but decided ultimately to leave them as a guide if I end up needing it.
Next I went into GarageBand and tried to get the audio a little bit clearer, since it’s from an older movie. I succeeded, although the difference is not remarkable.
Then I started looking around for a good rig to use. This was actually trickier than I thought, despite the number of rigs available to us. My specifications were that the rig must be a female human character, ideally older looking to match the audio, more cartoonish rather than hyper-realistic (as I plan my animation to be very stylized) and one obviously with a good control system. There were very few rigs I found that fit all of these criteria. Ultimately I decided on Luna, which I downloaded from Gumroad.
Luna seemed perfect, but as soon as I started trying it out I noticed that her unique looking facial controls were annoyingly visible in every render. Every single one of them had all of its render stats turned on so I had to go through and uncheck all of them.
I created the wine glass, which I’m very proud of, and I was so excited with my ability to make glass that I also gave her glasses, in order to make her appear a little bit older. I then gave her a hair texture with a little bit of gray.
I slid her glasses onto her face, taking care to adjust them as needed so that the mesh would appear realistic with her hair. I added a parent constraint to the top head control and the glasses and got them to move around just fine.
Then I found myself an environment. I knew that I obviously didn’t have to remake Clue, but this specific audio requires the speaker to be a) inside a large older house that would have a “study”, and b) speaking to a group of people who are c) trying to cover up a murder. And so I did loosely base my setting on it. I chose the Victorian Manor and added bottles and cans littering the floor to give the impression that a party may mysteriously have gotten out of hand. Then I added the debris and blood in the background to correlate to the audio and catch the viewer’s interest. Although I’m proud of this blood splatter effect, I’m a little nervous that it’s slightly too grotesque and will give the shot an unpleasant energy that may put off some viewers. But the time for deciding yes or no on the blood is after I’ve finished the actual animation.
I decided that I would do the lip sync before any of the rest of the work, because looking at the face straight on and unmoving when I work on it usually ends in a better result for me. It allows me to get a better idea of how well it’s working.
However, as I started working with Luna, I had a hard time even getting past the second key frame. I couldn’t figure out why, but the mesh would move unpredictably without being keyed and certain keyframes would change when I touched that control again later on, even if I didn’t set another keyframe. For example, I’d key the mouth to be slightly open, and then a few frames later it would completely unhinge itself when I touched another control, and then stay that way when I deleted the new key or hit undo. I tried keying the entire rig each time I made even the slightest adjustment but the same thing was happening regardless. I opened up the completely untouched Luna I’d downloaded and her facial controls were also janky. And so I decided not to waste more time trying to force Luna to work. It would be better not to even start with her and get my work done on a more reliable rig.
And so I went to Janine.
For purely aesthetic reasons I didn’t like the Janine rig, and that’s why I didn’t choose it in the first place. I feel that this character is not only ugly but almost fringing on amateurish. Pointy helmet hair, super shiny solid color blinn all over, barely distinguishable lips, absolutely no nostrils of any kind, really just a seriously terrible nose. She looks like an N64 Majora’s Mask NPC. On her web page she clearly has been given a new texture and significant facial work, because when downloaded as is and rendered she looks just like a shiny haunted doll. Not only did I personally think she was unimpressive, but I felt like any work that I made with her would look would clash with the semi-realistic scene I’ve built.
That being said, Janine has wonderful facial controls. She is by Truong CG Artist so I really didn’t expect less than perfection in her rigging system. Therefore, I wanted to reserve my judgement of her appearance as much as possible because she has the controls that’ll help me succeed in animating this project, and that’s what’s most important. Janine is going to be my buddy over the next several weeks so it’s not my place to criticize her appearance.
I started trying out my phonemes with her and, although it’s not like Frankline’s phoneme system, it really is the next best thing. She’s got a separate jaw and chin control, guides for the corners of the mouth, full top lip and bottom lip controls as well as all the separate points on each lip, a control that just moves the whole mouth up and down, cheeks that move along with the jaw, a full set of tongue controls, and several different deformation controls for the mesh around the mouth, not to mention the lip stretch, squeeze, and pucker controls in the channel box editor. And so I decided that it was time to get to work with Janine.
The phonemes with Janine took longer than Franklin. The audio itself is almost four times as long, and I do have to shape each mouth pose myself. By the time I was done I’d completely burned myself out for the day, but I’m happy with the results and feel ready to proceed to the rest of the animation.
But being burned out from animation didn’t mean I was going to take the rest of the day off. I decided to use that time to give Janine a makeover, which I was going to end up doing sooner or later. I had a lot of fun with it. I’m not entirely confident yet in the Maya 3D texture brush, so what I did is I went into her texture files and I opened her skin document up in Photoshop. I composited HD skin textures onto it and I spent a while hand painting her eyes, lips, nose, and cheeks to give them some lifelike color. For her arms and legs I merely uploaded the same skin texture without hand painting. I composited an HD scan of green human eyes onto the eye texture file. For the hair, I wasn’t surprised to find that the mesh was editable, but I didn’t want to change it so much that the controls wouldn’t work, so I just made it a little bit less angular and helmet-like and I gave it a brown texture (which I also used for the eyebrows). I turned down the shine on every blinn shader. I didn’t edit the mesh of the clothes but gave them texture as well, keeping them similar but making the fabric look like something one might wear to a party in a mansion.
Now she looks less like a haunted doll and more like a suspicious, upper class party guest. I’m proudest of the nose.
The phonemes exercise was my cup of tea. Although I’ve had some light practice with lip sync before, I’ve never had the experience of getting to work with a phoneme rigging system, and it was wonderful to be able to breeze through it like that. The speech itself only took me about an hour to complete. I found the below diagram extremely useful in helping me get a feel for which consonants have a similar shape.
Diagram I utilized heavily.
I also spent a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror speaking along with the words, checking back every few minutes like I was painting a self portrait.
I psyched myself out a little bit though, wondering if the mouth sounds I was making were natural or if I was trying to fit the shapes that I knew how to make. The rig did not have an option for “R”, and I watched myself say “longer”, making that “er” shape over and over before realizing that it didn’t matter anyway; the speaker is British and I am American and so I can’t necessarily rely on myself as a reference in that specific instance- the rig would not actually be making the “R” pose if it is to be accurate to the audio (this small complication gave me a lot of sympathy toward anyone doing a lip sync for a language that they do not speak or may not be their first language). Regardless, if I had needed the “R” I would’ve just used the “T/D” pose and gone in manually to tweak it a bit, or in the case of the Franklin rig I could’ve added a little bit of the “O” in there.
I finished the phoneme work wanting to do more with Franklin, I couldn’t just leave it like that, like some kind of unnerving robotic rap battle.
Playblast of the finished phoneme work.
And so I gave Franklin some movement. Despite intending to film from the torso up, I animated the hips and legs, as I’m coming to realize is absolutely essential for believable motion. I actually animated every single piece of the rig, albeit minimally, as it’s only a 70 frame animation I only meant to give Franklin a little added emphasis to his words. I decided for whatever reason to make his body language just a little bit untrustworthy.
So much more satisfying to watch.
Satisfied with my work, I spent a long, long time adding in an environment and festive sweater for absolutely no reason other than my own enjoyment of the project. And I did certainly enjoy the project very much. Looking forward to working on phonemes more in my performance animation project!
His cheerful sweater says “trust me” but his body language says “I know something you don’t”.
Polishing the gymnast was not necessarily difficult, nor did it take nearly as long as almost any of the other animation exercises I have done thus far in the term. mainly came down to fixing errors pointed out during our feedback session and smoothing out the graph editor through the means of tracking my motion curves.
The first matter of business was to go through my feedback and fix every incorrect pose according to suggestion. Rather than list my process with every single one of these, I’ve included a thoroughly documented example of the a hip motion curve I was advised to fix, in order to give you a good idea of my procedure throughout the fixing stage.
Here is a screenshot of given feedback indicating the way in which I should fix said motion curve of the hip movement.
Hips fix feedback
Observe the below image on the left, and you’ll see that my original motion curve was a jolty, up-and-down movement. On the right is my adjustment to the hip motion curve, and as you can see it is already much better- the body leans into that upward movement more and comes back down more gradually and gracefully as well. The curve now resembles more of a soft peak.
Hip adjustment
I’ve also included for your reference the way in which I did this. Keeping in mind our ball-bounce exercise and the arc principle, I’ve taken that peak and prolonged the time in which the gymnast hangs in the air, while shortening her liftoff and landing. I also deleted any keyframes which I deemed unnecessary and instead altered the graph editor to resemble the curve as it was with said keys, making sure to check back often to certify that I didn’t accidentally make a serious mistake.
Hip adjustment graph
After making sure that I was happy with the new way in which the hips moved during that specific jump, I went through the entire hip animation and repeated the process- motion tracking, smoothing, and editing the curve on the graph editor. Below is a look at the hip movement during my blocking pass:
Hip movement during blocking pass (before fixes)
And here is the remarkable difference visible in the polish pass:
Hip movement polish pass
Just the hip movement alone did so much to add realism and gracefulness to the gymnast’s movement, making her feel less jolty and robotic and more human, more dependent on gravity. I do think that specific mini-jump I smoothed out first is my best work; I feel that it gives her a lot more weight, which is hard to do when the character is completing such impressive acrobatic stunts.
Pleased with my work on the hip motion curve, after having fixed all of the issues mentioned in our feedback session, I went in and edited the motion curve on each limb. I focused on smoothness and weight. Of course, with the hip motion curve already done, a lot of the joltiness had already been resolved, as the limb position is so dependent on the hip movement in mid-air flight. Here’s an example of my work with the motion trail on her foot. Below is the motion curve during my blocking pass:
Motion trail before (foot)
-and during my polish pass:
Motion trail after (foot)
Here’s a playblast of my finished work polishing the gymnast’s performance. Note the fluidity and more realistic body movement.
In conclusion, I would like to say that my work on the gymnast was my best yet. It was a very good idea for me to work with a character who wears minimal clothing, as it helped me advance my understanding of body mechanics considerably. It was also beneficial for me to use a hyperrealistic rig as I think that it helped me pinpoint unnatural moments. Not only was the blocking incredibly easier with my more proficient knowledge of rig mechanisms, but the polish pass was fun and painless now that I’m more comfortable with the graph editor. I feel that I now have a sharper eye for detail and know what to look out for. Although I may not have an innate understanding of what the body position would necessarily look like at all times, I’m able to spot a mistake when I see one and correct it independently. This work is so far the highlight of what will be my demo reel, and I’m confident in its representation of my skills. This work is a far cry from my early hard hours of frustration producing convoluted, messy attempts. As I said before, if you had told me that I had made this a month ago I wouldn’t have believed you, so great is my progress, but I now must add that the unbelievability is softened now that I’ve stared at my work what feels like hundreds of times.
I spent some time browsing the available rigs in the UAL asset library when considering my ideas for this project. Though the Hulk would’ve been fun, I decided the gymnast was a better option for a couple reasons; the first being that a small and agile body would be both a challenge and great practice for me to maneuver in precise, acrobatic positions, the second being that the minimal, tight clothes would allow me to better learn what I’m doing without the distraction of attempting fabric animation or preventing object phasing. Now, as with any typical young American, Simone Biles comes to mind immediately whenever gymnastics are mentioned. I allowed myself to spend some time watching her performances during the 2016 Rio Olympics before coming to the decision to use her floor performance in the 2018 World Championships. The clip below is actually probably the least impressive part of her routine, but I thought that more jumps and less triple backflips would not only be easier for me but also help me learn more about weight.
Reference Footage
Once I’d selected my clip, I spent the entire first work day and part of the second sketching out a storyboard. I ended it at her final pose, but intended to allow the video several more frames afterward as a “cool down”, where I let the body adjust to its position and practice smaller, realistic, subconscious movements.
Storyboard
Preparations Continued
I could barely wait to begin animating. But unfortunately, technical difficulties lay ahead. When I opened the project in the UAL Maya Launcher through VMware, I was able to view the texture and assets that come with the rig, but I was met with the annoying difficulty of my Alt button not working. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a Mac or a USA keyboard or a combination of the two, but I was stuck using the onscreen keyboard. After a couple of poses, however, I realized that working that way was simply not sustainable to a productive workflow and switched back to working on the project without VMware, resigning myself to the back-and-forth of downloading my project between the two remote desktops when I wanted to do serious animation work vs when I wanted to render.
mention VMware vs personal mac difficulties (texture vs alt button) and splitting the difference)
As an aside, I did purchase myself a UK Windows keyboard to ease this difficulty. It arrived after I’d already finished all the keyframes for this project, but I’m very excited to make use of it in the future. It makes me feel very cool as I stare at my screen for hours on end.
Day One
After a couple of days of technical difficulties and preparation, I began animating. I found it surprisingly easy compared to my last project, and had finished almost half of the key poses within only five hours, whereas the Knight took me almost four days merely to finish the blocking pass.
Day 1 Playblast
I attribute this to me knowing more about how to work a rig, as well as the lack of distracting clothing. I was able to go into this one with the knowledge of which pieces of the rig to never touch, and so didn’t make the mistake of animating the root control. I also was able to use the knee controls to my own benefit rather than them being a source of stress and confusion. One thing that I will say that has frustrated me a little, though, is that I’m unable to animate her ponytail much without skin folds on the back of the neck behaving oddly, so I wasn’t able to put in as much fun hair movement as I had hoped. I was extremely surprised and happy with my success on this first day, and absolutely couldn’t wait to see this hyperrealistic rig in action, so I transported myself and my project back to VMware to render, out of curiosity. Every time I do this you must imagine me with my project files in a virtual briefcase at the virtual bus stop waiting for the digital 12 to Oxford Circus.
First experimental render, with purple posing backdrop that does not appear in the workspace; I could not find it in the outliner nor figure out how to hide it.
I was beyond delighted with how the rig looked in action, but after many hours of gazing awestruck at my work, I realized that the right arm looks a little bit janky on that second jump. It flaps around bizarrely like a robot getting stuck. I resisted the urge to prolong my work day and made a mental note to resolve it first thing the next morning.
Day Two
Day 2 Playblast
I went into Day Two with more confidence than I ever have on an animation exercise. I fixed that arm joltiness easily by simply taking a peek at the graph editor and deleting keyframes during the jump that were unnecessary (ones that followed a path they would have anyway, or ones whose motion I could recreate by editing the curves). Although I planned to dig more deeply into the graph editor for next week and merely plot out my keyframes for the blocking pass, I did also edit the curves so that the jumps look a little more realistic- when the feet leave the ground the line is linear, and while they are in the air, bending to an athletic point, they’ve got more time to adjust.
Day Three
I finished my keyframes on Day Three. Overall, I still felt very proud of them, but I was very aware of how jolty and floaty some of the jumps look, especially in the final twisting split. I wanted to wait to work on it, though, for academic feedback, so that I didn’t mess up my keyframes trying to work on a polish ahead of time.
I utilized the time at the end as I had originally intended: I was going to add in a closeup where we see the gymnast breathing heavily after the end of her rigorous routine, and a look of nervousness or excited anticipation on her face indicating her confidence in her performance and possible expectancy to be graded. I felt drawn to do a closeup by the realism of this rig; which I had never worked with before.
I am very interested in facial animation such as lip sync and expression, and I although it didn’t exactly fit into the parameters of this project, I wanted to find some way to experiment with it a little.
Day Four
After almost an entire day of playing with cameras, HDRI globes and frame rates, I was able to produce this. I have to admit that despite its flaws, I am beyond overjoyed with it, and if you were to tell me a month ago that this is my work I wouldn’t have believed you at all. I’m especially proud of the breathing at the end. It’s exactly what I had visualized and it came to me very easily. In my opinion, the expression, arm movement, heaving chest, and neck bending look natural and professional. Despite being a body mechanics project, that’s the part I would show off.
That being said, although I was happy with it, I couldn’t get past that joltiness during her twisting split at the end. I’d also come to notice how broken her wrist looks in that final pose. And so despite being just about ready to submit the project the night before, I decided to take one last crack at it in the final day to polish up that twist just a little bit, without letting myself go too far into the polishing end of things.
Day Five
And so I rendered one more time, keeping my eyes out for little things without necessarily committing myself to a polish. I fixed the broken wrist and I tried to simplify some of the joltiness in the twisting split. I did this by once again deleting keyframes that were unnecessary and editing the curves a little bit, as well as keeping an eye on where the knee controllers were at all times. I also spent some time making sure her chest, waist, and neck looked natural and comfortable between poses. I’ve put some work into the fingers and toes, but ultimately I plan to work on those as well as add in more breathing throughout during my polish pass.
…..And here it is. The jump looks better, which was my intention. Overall I think the quality is better. There are still some changes I’d like to make, but that’s what the polish pass is for, and I’m still very happy with my work.
The first film I’m going to talk about in regards to character development driving a story is Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, a clever and oddly hilarious dark comedy about worker’s rights and racial ties in the contemporary structure of capitalism. Bear in mind, this is a radical leftist film. The protagonist is Cassius Green, an impoverished call center worker for RegalView who lives with his activist artist girlfriend. After learning to use his “white voice” on the phone, he rises through the ranks quickly. He shortly thereafter helps his friends form a union, and worries about his career when he’s caught at a protest, but instead he and is promoted to a lofty position with little work to do and a lot of standing around in a suit schmoozing. Until this point Cassius has been a sympathetic character; he stands up for his beliefs, helps his friends, supports his girlfriend and works hard. But in the new position, he realizes that RegalView owns a corporation called WorryFree, which is essentially sugarcoated slave labor (marketed as guaranteed for life housing and food for unpaid work), and suspects that something is off about his sudden promotion, but neither of these are dealbreakers for him.
Cassius is making a lot of money, though, and suddenly his beliefs aren’t as important. He refuses to even take a strong stance against WorryFree, although it makes him uncomfortable, and he is willing to give his uncle some money to prevent him from having to join. He spends his new money on cars, penthouse apartments, and suits. His relationship ends when he stops participating in the union or supporting his girlfriend’s artistic and political endeavors. He becomes a viral internet meme when he crosses the picket line and suffers a brutal head injury from a protestor throwing a soda can into his forehead. At this point, it’s hard for us as an audience to continue liking Cash. He’s deserted not only his moral beliefs but his friends and loved ones because he likes the money and the power he now has. He’s willing to appear on television taking a stance against the union his friends created. He’s become a hypocrite.
The story is entirely driven by Cash’s character development and he plays a pivotal role in moving along the plot line. Cash’s weaknesses fall into Group 2- greed and pride. He’s willing to overlook some things now that they don’t affect him… even if they do affect others that he cares about. This results in harm to the character himself- in the obvious form of a head injury, and it also causes to lose the relationships he has, most importantly, his girlfriend. His weaknesses harm the other characters in that as a previous union co-founder, Cash refusing to advocate for them significantly diminishes their chances of succeeding in their demands.
The climax of the movie is when Cash is invited by the CEO to a party with some other RegalView big shots. Although it’s not spoken out loud, the movie lets us- in the words of Andrew Stanton- put two and two together rather than showing us four, in regards to how uncomfortable Cash is by being the only black person there in the enormous mansion packed with hundreds of people. The camera pans around the crowd many times. The other party guests even pressure him into rapping for them, although he does not know how. They dislike his first rap, an attempt at a rhyming, but go crazy for his second rap, which is just repeating the phrase “n***a sh*t” over and over; the very visibly Caucasian crowd then begins chanting this back to him. We as an audience can see that Cash dislikes this atmosphere and feels like an exhibit, but he still stays at the party and goes with the CEO when he’s invited up to a private room. This is the very last scene in which we see Cash’s weakness overcome his likable character traits.
Cassius now has a private audience with the CEO. He is given cocaine and allows himself to be coerced into snorting some. When he leaves to find the bathroom, the entire movie changes. He finds a monster, half-horse, half-human, chained in the bathroom, begging for help. He does what a smart person would do in today’s day and age and takes a video before confronting the CEO, who explains that all WorryFree workers are being transformed in order to up their productivity. He reveals that the plan all along was to offer Cash one hundred million dollars to undergo the transformation and be a figurehead for the movement to keep the employees in line.
This is the breaking point for Cash, and he reveals the video to the press, appearing on TV shows like I Got the Sh*t Kicked Out of Me, utilizing his continued viral fame for his humiliating injury. Though the video is controversial, it’s hailed as a scientific advancement and a great business strategy. Things at the end of the movie reach the point of a violent revolution against this company, and Cash returns to the side of his friends and girlfriend to fight for his beliefs. He, now a transformed “equisapien” (it was not cocaine earlier), leads the rest of the monstrous hybrids in their revenge.
In Sorry to Bother You, all of the plot is driven by Cassius’ choices as to how important his political beliefs are versus his own financial gain. Ultimately, by turning down a one hundred million dollar deal, he overcomes his weakness at the very height of his possible financial gain. All of the secondary characters rely on him to help pull them out of their own poverty, and he chooses to place the good of society over his own benefit. Similar to what Andrew Stanton was saying, we see Cash’s ugly weaknesses only when he’s tempted to abandoned his morality. He’s “conditionally likable” before his development. Of course, this was definitely intentional in order to show us as an audience how some people’s political opinions may only reflect that which benefits themselves, no matter what their financial situation is.
The LEGO Batman Movie: Selfishness
Maybe if I didn’t have a mother who works for LEGO I wouldn’t have seen as many LEGO movies as a I have. But I’m here to tell you that LEGO movies aren’t actually the childish, soul-sucking toy advertisement you’d expect. If you hadn’t already heard, they’re really funny and well written. I personally believe that The LEGO Batman Movie is the best Batman movie ever made, but that’s controversial. It is a children’s movie, still, so the character development may be a little more heavy handed than in other films.
In The LEGO Batman Movie Batman is depicted in a way that he only had been previously in satire and parodies. His weaknesses are obvious off the bat. He’s arrogant, a little bit stupid, and melodramatic. He refuses to work with others and intentionally isolates himself, much to his own downfall. To keep him likable, though, it is made obvious to us that he only does this because he fears losing anyone he becomes close to, due to his childhood trauma of becoming an orphan.
I won’t get into the entirety of the plot, because most of it is convoluted and involves lots of in-universe terminology established throughout the film that you see in a lot of superhero movies. Suffice it to say, the general summary is that Batman insults the Joker unintentionally by telling him that he is not as important to him as he thinks he is. He has other enemies, too, and the Joker isn’t even his favorite enemy, he likes to “fight around”. The Joker is incredibly heartbroken by Batman’s lack of willingness to commit to a (for the sake of the joke) “monogamous” hero-villain relationship. He decides he must force Batman to see that he is the greatest threat to Gotham City, so that Batman will finally accept him as his number one enemy.
During the course of the Joker’s plan, in which he recruits other villains (many of whom exist outside of the DC Universe, like Voldemort, Sauron, the Daleks, and Abraham Lincoln), Batman grapples with other problems. He accidentally adopts a son, (Dick Grayson, of course), and the new city commissioner (Barbara Gordon, of course) announces that she wants to institute a police force that does not utilize or rely on Batman.
The big turning point in Batman’s character development is towards the end of the movie. After refusing to allow now-Batgirl and now-Robin to help him, he had abandoned them through means of deceit and decided to solve the city’s problems on his own. He has an epiphany while speaking to an omnipotent gatekeeper figure in a sort of prison for villains. She tells him that he is not a villain, but he’s not a hero. This character shows Batman how much he’s hurt all of his friends by rejecting them and lying to them, and he realizes that by refusing to manage his own fear of losing people, he’s done the same thing by being the one to hurt them instead. He reunites with the team and apologizes. They end up “defeating” the Joker simply by Batman admitting that he does hate him and he is his one arch-nemesis.
While the movie is written for kids and the message is a bit more clear, it still doesn’t come off as preachy. Batman is selfish, but we are meant to understand that it is due to his own fear. In this way, despite his unlikable qualities, he remains sympathetic. The weakness manifests psychologically, in that it causes his own loneliness, but it also hurts the other characters. The audience is taught that having our own problems isn’t an excuse for mistreating others.
Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country: Prejudice
If you’re not a Star Trek fan, I won’t make you listen to me explaining all of the intricacies of alien race relations. I will say that Star Trek, since its conception in the late 1960s against the backdrop of both our real life first experiences exploring space and an explosion of civil rights ideology, has always been intended to provide a metaphor for progressive social politics. As an American in the 1960s it would be hard to miss the intentional placement of a black woman as a commanding officer, working alongside prominent Russian and Japanese crewmates. The show featured the first interracial kiss shown on US television. Star Trek made a lot of people angry and a lot of people proud with its loud anti-war themes and its symbolic discussions of morality and respecting culture. In any ethical debate episode, the trio forms in their usual positions: Captain Kirk, asking his two closest advisors for their opinion, looking to choose the option that causes the least casualties and political backlash. Lieutenant Commander Spock, the only non-human working on the starship, always presents the argument for respecting different cultures, discussing human-centric judgement, and reminding the team that the aliens’ way of life is just as valid as the humans’. Dr. “Bones” McCoy is usually of the opinion that the humans are inherently right (especially if their society is more developed) and their lives and values should be placed above others, and presents this argument with a very hostile tone, resorting often to verbal insults and anger in the face of disagreement. Many of the episodes were set up in this way as a clear allegory for race relations in America to initiate discussion and debate.
As good as the 1960s series was, though, it was not always especially well written. The main character was one of the worst written characters conceivable. Kirk is a standard example of a “Mary Sue”. He’s intended to be brave, heroic, clever, selfless and handsome, with absolutely no flaws ever presented to the audience. Sure, he has many flaws, but I believe they’re the result of the show being written poorly, making the audience question his behavior, rather than being an intentional weakness, and every single non-villainous character regards him with extreme respect and adoration. That’s exactly why The Undiscovered Country is so good! We finally get some intentional character weaknesses.
I mentioned Star Trek‘s political allegories before because The Undiscovered Country brings that back into the spotlight. In this last movie featuring the original Star Trek cast, Admiral Kirk is now an old man, but he’s still called into a meeting where he is informed that their longtime enemies, the Klingons, have suffered major destruction to their primary energy source, and are seeking peace with the Federation to save the lives of their civilians. Throughout Kirk’s entire career he battled the hostile Klingon forces and cruel, unfeeling military leaders, and suffered many casualties to his crew as well losing his son. He takes the stance that they refuse to help and allow them to either die or go begging for help elsewhere, as a humiliating punishment. Unfortunately for him, he’s outvoted and elected to speak to the Klingon ambassadors.
The meeting goes poorly, despite Kirk and the ambassadors sharing many common interests, and the Klingon officers notably make a comment about how Starfleet is a very “humans only” club. Everyone gets drunk to cope with the disastrous dinner. Later that night, though, after they’ve gone to bed, the Enterprise fires two torpedoes at the Klingon ship, and two assassins in Starfleet uniforms injure the Klingon ambassador aboard his own ship. Kirk and McCoy attempt to save his life but are unable, and upon being found with his body, are arrested for the attack.
Kirk believes that this is a setup by the Klingons. In court, it’s noted that he has said that he “never has trusted Klingons and will never forgive them”, and this is used as an argument that he killed the ambassador because he did not trust peace negotiation and wanted to enact revenge. Kirk does not deny that these are still his views towards Klingons. They are sentenced to life imprisonment.
The plot unfolds in a way that, similar to LEGO Batman, is unrelated to this paper. We will skip to the revelation that the actual assassin was the protégé of Spock (both Federation-allied Vulcans) and that she and a group that included both Federation and Klingon representatives intended to end the peace talks and sow distrust. The Enterprise is able to prevent the group from assassinating the Federation President, but they do all lose their jobs, as far as we know.
What I love about The Undiscovered Country is that we as an audience had been following Kirk’s adventures for decades, and had “been there” when he witnessed the war crimes of the Klingons, so we kind of understand where he’s coming from. But at the same time as this movie came out, Star Trek: The Next Generation was airing, so any diehard fan (and if you’re watching this movie, you are one) would know that in the future the Klingons do join the Federation and become popular and beloved characters. So when we see the “okay, you’re a racist old man who was in a war that happened a long time ago” attitude that Kirk’s rants are met with, we understand that too.
Because we’ve been led to believe for so long that Kirk can do no wrong, his prejudice against the Klingon race feels more realistic. He’s not necessarily a bad person, he’s just very stubborn and old and has had different experiences than the younger generation. He does learn that he’s wrong by the end of the movie, of course, but once again Star Trek puts us in both perspectives and allows us to understand and sympathize with a person who has a viewpoint that we still know is morally incorrect.
Comparing and Contrasting
Sorry to Bother You is a dark radical leftist comedy, LEGO Batman is a children’s comedy, and Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country is a sci-fi adventure movie. In each of these movies, a sympathetic protagonist must work through their own internal issues to end external backlash. I think these three movies can be put on a scale in regards to how the protagonist addresses his weakness. In Sorry to Bother You, the protagonist knows he’s wrong, can see that he’s hurting others, and does not immediately choose to stop. In LEGO Batman, the protagonist does not know that he’s wrong, can’t see that he’s hurting others, and has to be told to stop, but does choose to as soon as he makes that realization. In The Undiscovered Country, the protagonist thinks that he’s actually helping others, believes that he is right, and, when told to stop, develops an “us vs them” mentality. One could argue that Admiral Kirk is the most morally wrong here, because he is least receptive to even the suggestion of change, but one could also argue that Cassius Green is the most morally wrong, because he actually knows what he’s doing is harmful and still continues for selfish reasons. One could also look at it from the standpoint that both Batman and Kirk are influenced by past trauma whereas Cassius simply makes his poor choices for personal gain. But then again, Cassius’ peer pressure situation is a lot more intense. I think the conclusion we can make here is that as long as your protagonist has a flaw, you’re on the right page. What’s essential is that they are still sympathetic. If you popped in halfway throughout the movie you could say Cassius is a corporate sellout, Batman is a jerk, and Kirk is just a racist. But the redemption is important. We should be proud of the character’s progress without feeling preached to.
Similarly to our last session, I found the first half easy and intuitive. I had retained my basic tracking knowledge and kept up with the face tracking with no problem. I did not run into the deviation error that I had the last time, and was in fact extremely proud of my deviation curve:
I was very excited by how this looks exactly as I believe it should look:
But, similarly to the last session, I once again ended up falling behind, failing to find a solution to my problem, and being unable to continue with the lecture. This happened with about an hour left of the lecture, which was about the same time as last week. This time, I made it up until we were to place the iron man mask object over the face, and it didn’t appear.
All I could see was this. I went back and forth making sure I was in my object group, lineup view, and that 3D models was turned on, but no luck. When I showed Dom my orientation view, he informed me that the points were somehow not actually placed on the mask.
Which made absolutely no sense to me, because they had snapped directly onto the mask when I chose “extract vertices”. All I could think was that the mask had somehow moved and left the points behind, but Dom said it was not likely.
I struggled to delete my points and redo them as fast as I can, hoping not to drop out of the lecture this time as there was undoubtedly a lot more to learn. But when I finally finished redo-ing all of my work, the same thing happened.
Why was it sideways this time? When I had loaded it into orientation view it wasn’t sideways, and when I’d had extracted the vertices it wasn’t sideways. I was completely lost, but the lecture had already moved well past this and once again I was unable to continue. I resigned myself to trying to learn it on my own time later.
Second Attempt
I had been originally convinced that the problem was that when I loaded my mask into 3DE, it appeared to load halfway between the translation arrows, like this:
Mine
But upon re-watching Dom’s video, I can see that his also does this.
Dom’s
This rules out my original theory as to what the problem could be. I watched the process of placing vertexes on the helmet again, copying Dom’s actions second by second, and thought I figured it out-
Maybe I hadn’t clicked out of point group the first time! I got my hopes up, but, crushingly, the same exact thing happened a third time.
Staring at this, though, I can see that the points clearly are on the mask. It just isn’t snapping to the face for whatever reason. I decided to try again one more time. Something I noticed is that in lineup view, the depth of my points appear to be incorrect. I noticed that when I finish tracking the face and calculating but before I add in the iron man helmet, my lineup view looks like this (pretty good):
However, when I add in the helmet and then calculate, my lineup view changes like this:
I don’t understand why my points appear to have changed depth after I applied them to the mask vertices. I try, painfully, once again, and this happens:
All I can possibly hope for at this point is just starting the entire project over.
Starting Over: Day One
One and a Half Hours into Starting Over
For the first day I plan to work until I get to the point where I correct that mistake, and then tomorrow I will work on the section of the lecture that I had missed. I’ve now been following Dom’s actions as closely as possible for an hour and a half and gotten to the end of us tracking the background, as well as putting in our lens and camera information and informing 3DE4 that our camera is fixed. I’m starting to suspect that the reason I was running into my error is because maybe the camera should be marked as fixed for the face too, but we’ll find out. Regardless, this practice is helping me retain a lot of the information that, the first time I did it, was merely me following along and taking Dom’s words at face value; I now feel I’ve gained a higher understanding.
Little bit more than halfway through with the first session- at the hour and a half mark of the lecture.My lineup view also looks a lot better than the last time- just like Dom’s, rather than points everywhere.
Also, this time, I was overjoyed to immediately see a flat plane in my parameter adjustment window the first time I tried, as I had struggled with it during our first tutorial. I’ve uploaded my success this time vs my struggle last time, in that order, below:
My parameter adjustment window this timeMy parameter adjustment window last time.
I completed the three checks Dom mentioned- parameter adjustment, orientation, and lineup, and my work looked correct so far. I’m not sure if I made it to this point correctly the first time, but if I did, I didn’t understand it as I do now. [Addendum before moving ahead: I now realize that my theory as to the cause of the issue cannot be the camera not being fixed as the same camera settings actually serve both/all point groups. That, and the camera group creates a threshold for the camera whereas the object group does not interact with the camera controls at all].
Two and a Half Hours into Starting Over
Voìla. I nearly cried of happiness.
However, upon playback, I discovered I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.
I’ve now resolved my problem of trying to figure out how to make the mask snap on to the face. I am going to allow myself to work on getting that mask looking good, as well as finishing up the tutorial, next time.
Day Two
I reached out for some help, and Luca suggested that I add some more points, which was one of my theories- that there is not enough data during the beginning of the nose-pick for the mask to accurately track. Sure enough, I added just 3 points and it’s already looking better. Instead of the mask ballooning off the face into the atmosphere, it now only jumps a little bit. I will continue to fine tune this until it’s acceptable.
Better and better!
Something that I discovered as I worked was that I did not have to extract every single new point as a vertex on the mask in order to fix the problem. This makes sense, because Dom mentioned that the sum of the object points calculate the general motion of the object, therefore the extra points help the other applied vertices know what to do.
Yay, it’s projected and fitted! I’m ready to move on to the next part! I’m now about to move on to the last hour of the session, which I had not attempted previously.
Three Hours Later
The exporting process gripped my heart in fear with an icy fist. Imagine my joy when I imported my mel script and was greeted with this:
Absolutely beautiful. Breathing as if I’ve run a marathon.
I then spent about two hours just getting the helmet to open, due to technical difficulties (VMware, Maya being slow, moving pivot points, etc) but I made it:
….and then, just because I wanted to, I did this.
….and I also constrained the eyes to the movement of the frontplate because I thought it looked better,
The render went smoothly, other than me briefly forgetting that a skydome must have camera visibility set to zero, and wondering why I couldn’t light both my mask and my image plane at the same time.
But I turned my brain back on and got everything set up. Time to move on to Nuke! On my own projects, I’ve been using Adobe Media Encoder, but it’s about time I learn to use professional grade software.
Well, here it is!! There are still some things I could fix (like making sure the mouth can be seen inside), but I’m still incredibly proud I made it this far. I overcame a lot of issues to get to this point and it’s time to let this be my first finished version of the project. Also, my brain feels exhausted, to the point where I’m not proofreading this, but I will maybe publish an update with some fine tuning. That’s all for now!
I started off Dom’s session with a hot cup of coffee, a breakfast sandwich ready to go, sunlight streaming in, and my brain turned on.
The first half of the day, I followed along decently well. 3D Equalizer was big and scary, but I followed Dom’s instructions to a T and made my way through this new jungle. I was using the PLE software that I had downloaded and installed on my own Mac and had set up over the previous few days. I felt pretty happy with my ability to place and track points, and was optimistic about the whole thing, all the way up until my return from lunch.
Why was my deviation curve so incorrect? I asked Dom and he informed me that I should hide some of the points that were causing the problem, but when I did this, my deviation curved collapsed into an almost entirely straight line- one spike stayed at the beginning and the rest just hit zero. This couldn’t be right. That would mean that it’s not tracking at all. I tried again, and even started over from my last saved file, but ultimately could not figure it out and fell so far behind that I was unable to return to the lecture.
This was extremely discouraging for me. On top of that, the lecture had no audio or (for the first part) visible cursor, which made it very hard to follow. Thankfully, one of my classmates introduced me to a very helpful number of videos which explained most of the very basic tools we went over in a clear, concise series. The first one is embedded below:
Using this as well as the original lecture I was able to start over with the Camden lock footage and make my way through the beginner guidance Dom had gone over.
Home Render using both camerasRender Farm with only one camera to display the foot movement for better critiquing purposes.Render Farm with UAL HDRI Globe Asset- cosmetically most appealing (despite fractioning)My original before any fixes
Notes
When I watched the video detailing the corrections I must make, the audio did not work, but I was able to get the gist of it. My biggest issue with the first attempt was the reason for the “jolty” movement, and also was the cause of my major confusion pertaining to the root controls. I had been frustrated that there were several purple controls that were “tied” to the ground and could not figure out whether my entire animation was incorrect because of it. Turn out, I was right that the controls shouldn’t move, but I made a major mistake in assume that one of them should.
My biggest problem was that I animated the root control and moved individual parts of the spine to match, rather than animating all the forward motion directly from the motion control. This is what gave the knight a “stop motion-y” look and made it much harder on me than it needed to be. If you compare the original with the new version you’ll see that it’s a lot smoother and looks more effortless.
Another thing I focused on is overlap. I dug deeper into the graph editor and made sure that with all motion comes a secondary and tertiary motion, similar to the tailed ball exercise, and the Aang rig we discussed in class. The shoulder swings forward, then the elbow, then the wrist. The base of the spine, then the middle, then the top, then the neck.
My graph editor as I attempted to add overlap to the hip motion.
I completed the motion of the feet and legs first, trying my hardest to make my work indistinguishable from Luke’s first two steps he gave me as an example. Although that’s an extremely lofty goal for me right now, I did okay. A big part of that was making sure that my steps were not too big, and that the forward motion of the body correlated realistically with the body language and a comfortable walking pace. I edited most of my steps to be smaller and smaller. In my original storyboard, I’d drawn quite large steps, in an effort to emphasize the walk style,
-but when translated to animation, these large steps looked like jolty lunges and seemed unrealistic and unbalanced. I finished the foot motion much more conservatively, and, looking back, I decided to go in and add a more cartoony heel and toe roll, to make the steps a little bit less robotic.
I ended up toning this done a little bit, though.
When I went about animating it the second time, I was able to complete my animation within two days, rather than the five it originally took me, not to mention the fact that it looks better. This was a source of immense pride for me. There were a couple little stylistic details I went back and added in at the end just because I liked them, though somewhat toned down, like the enthusiastically respectful flair when the knight bears his shield and brings his fist to his chest as he kneels in front of….. his offscreen commander.
