Zhang's blog

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Facial muscle detail

When the mouth is speaking, the facial muscles also change with the mouth shape and expression.

Pay particular attention to the area around the eyes, around the mouth and on the cheeks.

This week

What I have done

Complete the lip animation as well as the spline, matching the lip sync to the body face. Note the direction of the facial muscles.

Make the sound to match the animation.

Next week

Will do

Spline has been slightly modified and submitted for assignment.

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Shelter

Modify the animation, create lighting, and test the rendering. and start rendering the completed clip.

This week

What I have done

This week I tweaked the animation and shots in sections and combined them after the changes to see the results.
And to light the final render and test the visuals.

• Animation

Based on the previous version of the animation, I made a second adjustment to add some detail
Slowed down many of the fast shots and tweaked the animation to add some moving holds.

For example:

1. the movements during the quarrel are adjusted, the animation becomes smoother and more complete, and the duration becomes longer.
2. doors opening slower to add a sense of mystery.
3. outdoor shots are added.
4. when the boy is disappointed he leans back on the chair and his body sinks down a little, the duration becomes longer.
5. when the boy laughs, he does a moving hold, the duration becomes longer.

• Light

Hitting figure lights, eye lights, face lights, silhouette lights, etc. to achieve the best visual effect possible.

Generally objects will have three main lights, face light, background light and silhouette light. Characters will need further eye light.
Depending on the specific scene, the light will become more.

Learn the basics of lighting in maya with this video tutorial.

1）Ambient light was tested to select the most suitable light. A silhouette light and a face light were added to the characters to prevent them from being invisible in the dark.

2）Added an eye light for the boy to look more defined. And a blueish face light was added underneath, as the display in front is blue.

3）Added a blue outline light to the robot too, as the display is blue.
And added a face light so that the robot doesn’t become too dark from the top light and the darkness outside.

【Extra】
In the class, the teacher talked about the use of light, which I think is also very practical, so I will record it here.

It uses maya’s own light as well as the renderer to create the effect of light leakage.

*Members

Tang & Yuhan：animation finish

Next week

Will do

Small adjustments to details may be made while rendering.

The renders and respective edits will be completed by next Monday or Tuesday at the latest, leaving some time for total compositing and sound.

Assignment due on Thursday.

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Points to note about mouth animations:

Complex words can be broken down into a few simple pronunciations, or if this is too difficult to do you can look for a similarly mouthed pronunciation instead.

Think about intonation, whether to go up or down.

Now we have gone into spline and started cleaning up our body mechanics, its now time to layer in the mouth and jaw to the dialogue.

This week

What I have done

Re-shoot the reference video based on feedback and complete the blocking of limbs and expression animations.

In both versions, the character enters the scene with his hands up or down happily. The character is proud to say that he is a “New Age Philosophy major”.

I chose the character to enter the frame with his hands up and slightly folded up as he says “I’M ART”. Then in the next sentence turn around proudly and pose.

Body blocking：

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZDk0NmQ4Y2I1/?offlineMode=1#/18155763/18834092/f_0

Face blocking：

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZDk0NmQ4Y2I1/?offlineMode=1#/18156092/18834425/f_0

Next week

Will do

The mouth animation is completed and the spline is finished, matching the mouth animation to the body face.

Note the direction of the facial muscles.

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Shelter

Complete the remaining animations

This week

What I have done

Finish animating the remaining shots and make changes

Animated footage test

Put all the shots together first and watch them

1. found some shots a bit fast, like the part where they look at each other in the spaceship, the boy’s surprise, etc.

2. Add some moving holds

For example, when the boy is shocked, add some body rhythm

And when the boy smiles, the facial muscles when maintaining the smile.

The problem I am having:
As the camera movement is already k done, if I were to simply increase the duration of some shots and make changes to the animation. Then the shots and the animation are bound to mismatch.
The problem also occurs when adjusting the curve to pan backwards.

My solution:
Split out the shots that need to be modified and do them separately in a separate maya file. When editing later on, just merge them together.
This will make for a lot of files, but as long as they are named and arranged in order there will be no problems.

*Members

Tang & Yuhan: Animation

Next week

Will do

Next week we will continue to tweak some details and do some lighting. Hitting figure lights, eye lights, face lights, silhouette lights, etc. to achieve the best visual effect possible.

No more meetings, you will bring your documents and computer to school every day when you come to class, and if you have any problems, you will make changes straight away.

Timetable:
All done by the end of next week, so we can render the finished shots first. Adjustments can be made as you render to save time.
Renders will be completed by the following Monday, leaving some time for editing and sound.

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Emotional animation

The key is to bring the psychological activity to the audience through the expressions of the characters and to create a sense of living presence.

Start by breaking down the shot to be produced into small chunks to see what is happening in that shot, clarify how the character is reacting to those events and find out if there are other events that change the character’s mood.
Generally speaking, there are not a large number of mood changes in a single shot animation; there are usually one or two mood changes to deal with. So, start with the main mood of the shot and then see if there is a mood change and what the changed mood is.
Next you can create the blocking of expressions to match the limb animation that was created last week.

Animation tutorial: Comparative analysis of eyes and eyebrows in expression animation-Link：

【【转载】 动画教程：表情动画中眼睛眉毛的对比分析 – 动画师Mike Safianoff 【生肉】】 https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Co4y1J71T/?share_source=copy_web

Ignore the mouthing first and finish animating the rest of the expressions. This will help us animate more quickly, as well as get a feel for the characters.

This week

What I have done

I modified the blcoking and finished the expression animation.

Feedback:
The original film clip shows him happy and proud, but I’ve redesigned it so that it’s best to keep him happy.
Link to the original film clip:

Shorten the lines, for time reasons just the first two sentences will do. “I’m ART! New Age Philosophy major.”

Next week

Will do

Re-shoot the reference video based on feedback and complete the blocking of limbs and expression animations.

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Shelter

This week we completed the integration of the matching files and each person started working on their own part of the animation.
Based on the filmed video we split into 3 sections and each person picked one to complete the animation.

• Red part: Yuhan
• Blue part: Tang
• Green part: Jiaruo

This week

What I have done

This week I have been working on spaceship effects such as the tail flames and exhaust fan animations and have completed a small initial animation.

At the same time, the lighting of the pipes was adjusted to match the spaceship and reflect a high-tech feel.

• Exhaust fan

Use expressions to accomplish an animation that rotates all the way around. Enter an expression in the direction of its rotation to achieve the effect of constant motion.

• Tail Flame Production

Use a cylinder to simulate the tail flame, adjust the size of the bottom of the cylinder and delete the bottom surface. Because the tail flame is generally large at the front and small at the back, adjust the points randomly to create a sense of irregularity out of the fire.

Using the principle that black is transparent and white is opaque, and using gradient colours to simulate flames.

• The lighting of the pipes

Contrast. The adjustment of the pipe light by adding face light, changing the original warm light to a cooler one
and increase the light inside the pipe to ensure that every section is bright.

• Animation

When creating the animation, I encountered many problems with the model.
Perhaps the scene size was too large and many objects had problems when zoomed in nearly 20 times.
For example, the displays and handles inside the ship appear and disappear when the ship is in motion. The bars on the front windows of the ship also block the view.
The robot bindings would suddenly appear to separate the body from the controller.

Solution:
Some minor changes were made to the ship model to remove the glass. The robot was also modified in the reference file.

*Members

Tang：Make her own part of the animation

Yuhan：Make her own part of the animation

Next week

Will do

Conference feedback

Resolved the problems encountered and will continue to complete the animation next week.

Schedule:
Work on it this week and next week to get the animation part finished through.
Rendering will start next weekend through Monday, editing on Tuesday and Wednesday, and submission on Thursday.

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

When animating, ignore the face and focus on the limbs, then focus on the eyes and eyebrows when the limbs are fine, then the mouth, and finally the muscles of the face that change according to the mouth.

This week

What I have done

This week the first version of the blocking was completed based on the reference video.

I wanted to show that I was angry at first and then proud to conceited.
I wanted the character to start off by saying “I’m art.” with excitement or with anger. But since I had already done the laughing aspect in the first animation, I wanted to make the second animation a bit different and I chose to be angry.
So I was very angry at the beginning of my performance.

Link：https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZDk0NmQ4Y2I1/?offlineMode=1#/18003766/18677257/f_0

Next week

Will do

While modifying the blocking, add the character’s face animation, ignoring the mouth animation for now, and finish animating the eyebrows and eyes.

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Shelter

This week we completed last week’s assignment and worked together to complete the reference video shoot and consolidate the completed resources.

This week

What I have done

This week I finished painting the remaining parts of the weights and tested the characters to tie the bones without error, demonstrating the use of the controller.
Booked a green screen classroom for filming and took on the role of a robot to portray it.

• Painting weight

Problems: When painting the outermost armour it sometimes moves one side and the other side of the suit follows. Some times it was a problem with the position of the shoulder, other times it was the stomach piece.
I ended up looking for the problem layer by layer and mirror copying the weights to make sure it was error free.

• Test controllers

Testing the controllers to check model bindings and skinning effects. A video of the use of the controllers was recorded and made available to the group to show them which controllers to use to adjust the movement and expression of the characters.

Problem: When I finished tying the eye I found that when I adjusted the eye, the eye would come out of the socket because it was too large and had multiple layers of crystals.
The solution I gave was:
Control the eye muscles at the same time and move them together and the result is ok. And don’t rotate the eye too much.

• Book a classroom

Book a green screen classroom for filming in a larger venue to facilitate the interpretation.

• Filming

I played the role of the robot. I needed to stop the little boy from going out into the rundown world, and when I couldn’t stop the boy from going out and getting slapped away, I chose to go into the ship with him anyway still trying to stop it.
I would be on the sidelines angry at him for not listening to me when he was shocked to see the truth.
Eventually accompanying the boy on his journey to a new planet to explore.

*Members

Tang: 1. moon glow 2. tree 3. shooting video clips
Yuhan: Making a manipulative board

Completing the storyboard filming reference together

Next week

Will do

Conference feedback

Integration document at the end of this week.

Contents of the document:

1. 5.28 On Sunday, the documents were consolidated. Tang’ll send you the link on Monday morning. (integration file)
2. two characters: wilson, jerry-M314, (Jiaruo)
3. airship, indoor scene. Put the airship in the room and then give it to me. The pipes (with a door) are placed outside the room and connected. (Yuhan) Play the group well. (The pipe has a door and the pipe is connected outside the room.)
4. Tree, outside (Tang)

Timetable: 5.27 (today)

1. Plan: 2 weeks left to do animation. We are 18 days away from 6.14 (18 days), rendering + compositing + sound effects (four days) Render farm, three people together in class Render: jiaruo, sound effects: tang linsey. Compositing, (jiaruoand tang), each person to copy to the school computer after the animation is finished. Plan to finish rendering on the 12th.
2. K animation camera parameters: set 1920 1080 size. 6.09th (must finish k!!!) Meet on Friday. 10 days as a unit, after k, preview sent to the group, modify the comments and then change a version (minor changes), aim to finish k in 14 days.
3. Next meeting: 6.04 (next week, Sunday), k finish a version, meeting.

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Approaching Lip sync

Lip synchronization of this recording with animation will give the impression that an animated character is speaking.

Points to note about mouth animations:

1. Complex words can be broken down into a few simple pronunciations, or if this is too difficult to do you can look for a similarly mouthed pronunciation instead.
2. Think about intonation, whether to go up or down.

This week

What I have done

This week the spline was revised based on feedback, adjusting some details of the poses, including hands, shoulders, head and feet, and the position and speed of the final fall.

Try to keep the feet still while laughing so that the movement is not distracted.

This week starts a new animation about Lip sync.

Find a suitable line from the film and film a reference video.
Be careful not to copy the original film action.

I wanted to choose a more dramatic line to make up for the fact that my first animation wasn’t so over-the-top.
I think my first animation, which was more disciplined, maybe didn’t have as much dramatic impact?

My choice is.

When I shot the reference video, I wanted to show that I was angry at first, and then proud to conceited.
I had a hard time deciding whether to say “I’m art.” when the character is excited or angry. But as I had already done the laughing aspect of the first animation, I wanted to make the second animation a little different and I chose the angry.

Reference video I shot:

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZDk0NmQ4Y2I1/?offlineMode=1#/17790171/18457138/f_0

Next week

Will do

I will make the blocking based on the reference shot, starting with the upper body blocking except for the facial expressions.

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Shelter

This week we named our characters, Wilson for the little boy and Jerry M-314 for the robot.
When I named the little boy at the time, I wanted a name that would reflect that he was a relatively intelligent and thoughtful boy. I thought Wilson sounded more intelligent, so I gave him that name.

We basically finished last week’s task, but some details still need to be tweaked a bit, so we are going to do the file consolidation again next Monday.

This week

What I have done

This week I finished binding the faces and painting most of the weights.
And painted some small flowers and the sky for the scene tree.

• Face rigging

The face rigging is also tied halfway, as with the body, and then symmetrically over.
When rigging the face, follow the direction of the muscles and pay attention to the eye structure.

1) Start by selecting the specific areas of the face and head that will be affected.

2) Then rig step by step.

Rig the eyes and lips and eyebrows first to make sure they are right, then the face and nose.

3) Rig test.

Confirm that the rigging positions are correct and that they all move.

• Painting weights

The head, body, upper inner clothing and lower body costume have been painted.
However, the armour and shoulders need further adjustment. It sometimes moves on one side and the other side of the clothing follows. Have to find out what the problem is.

I had some difficulties when painting the weights. As the material of the clothes is quite thick and heavy, I wanted to give the impression of thickness, but when the limbs bend the clothes touch each other and it is easy for the limbs to look like they are not moving much.

My solution was to make the inner layers and trousers a slightly thinner fabric, but retaining the thickness of the armour, to try and recreate the feeling of the space suit being less mobile.

Solved the problem of trousers weights after rigging at the time.

• Painted some small flowers and the sky for the scene tree

*Members:
Yuhan: Scene + preliminary lighting
Tang: Scene completed

Next week

Will do

Conference feedback

Yuhan: Making the dashboard
Tang: Change the storyboard
Jiaruo: Finish painting the rest of the weights and book the location

• Send all the finished assets to Tang for scene integration.
  Work together on how to shoot the reference video next week.

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Spline

The next step in Blocking is to focus on the overall movement of the body and not worry about posture for a while.

Problems may occur when blocking is adjusted to spline. Key frames may fail to articulate, such as rotation values, and move in an unsatisfactory position. This is when further intermediate frames are needed to transition.

This week

What I have done

Making a spline based on feedback from last week’s blocking changes.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ODFjNTA3YjZi/

Qusetion:

I felt that after I did the spline, the movement of the characters in the animation was a bit weak and had little power.

I don’t know why that is.

Feedback:

1. Tweak some details and remove the content in 198-217 so that the character gets hit directly by the pillow and falls over.
2. Speed up the speed of the fall and the speed of the pillow coming flying to make it more impactful.
3. Remember to keep your head up and your face towards the camera when you laugh.
4. After adjusting the areas that need to be changed, a lot of my problems will be solved.

Next week

Will do

Modify the spline based on feedback and start the next animation.

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Shelter

This week the prep work on the animation continues, based on the progress made at the meeting last Sunday and the feedback.

This week

What I have done

I started the rigging, checked the model and completed the rigging of the body parts. And tested hair binding.

Using the adv plugin for rigging, I hadn’t tied for a long time so I went to some tutorials to recall how to use it.

1）First, I found a human skeletal reference chart and studied the direction of growth of the human skeleton and what key points would be bound.

2）Then I started to rig it step by step.

Adjust the position of the bones, such as the shoulder blades, hips, shoulders, spine, kneecaps, wrists and ankles and other important joints according to the reference chart.

3）Create half of the skeleton first and then generate the other half when it is OK.

After generating the controller, adjust the direction of the controller for the elbows and kneecaps so that they are horizontal and vertical.

This way the character’s arms will stay in the normal direction when moving and will not become inward or outward when walking.

4）

The initial skinning of the body was done using box. Make sure the model is wrapped through and through in the box.

However, due to the model costume, there was a problem with overlap in the leg masking. This is something I can fix until I draw the weights, so put it aside for now and do the face and hair binding.

5)

Hair rigging test:
Once I had created the skeleton and tested the animation I found that it moved buggy due to model issues. and the effect didn’t look as good, so I gave up on binding the hair.

• Members:

Yuhan: Scene mapping modifications

Tang: Scene mapping; and resource integration for scene trees

Next week

Will do

Conference feedback

Yuhan：

1. tunneling, UV and mapping (self-luminous)
2. after all the room stuff is done, integrate the resources and put them in maya to package, (simply a light), area light or parallel light.

Tang：

1. planet mapping, background changed to a black background with a bit of stars.
2. trees (add some small flowers and grass, add some realistic grass and flower details (yellow flowers)) add a little lighting effect and a background mapping of the trees.

Jiaruo：

1. painting the background mapping of the tree, and a small cluster of flowers below the tree
2. rig face and paint weights

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

This week

I have done

Modified the standing pose at the beginning as well as the details of the upper body, the orientation of the face when falling, based on the feedback from last week.
And revised the keyframe pose based on the reference video.

Added some hand and foot animation details, trying to make the animation look more fluid.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ODFjNTA3YjZi/

Blocking is an animation technique in which key poses are created to establish timing and placement of characters and props in a given scene or shot.

Benefits of Blocking:

1. focus on the key poses for the shot
2. easy access to poses for adjustment
3. less costly to modify

Next week

Will do

Revision of blocking again, and completion of blocking to spline.

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Shelter

This week：

Pre-animation work continues this week, based on the progress made at last Sunday’s meeting and feedback.

This week

What I have done?

I went on to complete the model of the tree as well as the textures and did the water effects.

After deciding on the character’s costume, I drew a three-dimensional view of the character.

Tree

1)

I am having a little trouble adding a leaf. Do the leaves need to be moved and how can I do it in a way that recreates the design.
At first I used the software to make the leaves and I always felt that it was strange and didn’t really reproduce the feeling of a large piece of foliage.
Then I had a discussion with my team and I realised that the tree didn’t need to move and the leaves didn’t need to be animated for this shot.
Because of this, if it was more time consuming for the software to do it, then I could just use mapping to create the leaves.
I studied these two YouTube videos to create the leaves through a transparent texture background.

Video:

2)

I processed the suitable leaves in PS, adjusted the colours, shapes.
And made the alpha channel and tga format and put it into maya to match.
Note: you need to crop the leaf shape a bit, as it is mapped to a flat surface when imported.
Adjust the curvature, size and direction when placing the leaves.

3)

Unrolling the trunk UV and drawing the mapping

The final effect:

Progress：

Water effect

4)

The boss system in Maya was used to create the water and adjusted to the appropriate parameters.
Two layers of water were created and adjusted to different coefficients to simulate the effect of water waves colliding with each other.

When I specify the water material, I find that I cannot specify the colour of the water in any way when I use deep water.
Even when changing to a normal material, I couldn’t specify it.
I gave up on specifying the colour of the water directly and added an environment sphere instead. The colour of the water is mapped through the light map.
When compositing to the scene, the light will simply be assigned to the water so that it will not affect other objects.

Progress：

Three-dimensional view of the character

5)

After finalising the details of the character’s costume, I drew a three-dimensional view of the character.

• Members：

Yuhan: texture of the scene
Tang: Detail of the boy’s costume, outdoor scenes

Next week

Will do

Conference feedback

• Jiaruo: character rigging
• Yuhan: texture of scene
• Tang: texture of scene

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

This week：

Feedback:
1. This week’s blocking needs attention to the standing pose at the beginning, adding variation to the upper body pose.
2. And delete the middle section of the leg shot, pay attention to the speed of the pillow flying over and the arc of the fall, and the character falling pose.
3. While falling, the face still needs to face the camera so that more can be done to show.
4. The key frames of the reference video are pointed out and can be referred to when modifying.

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Shelter

This week：

This week was spent preparing for PRESENTATION by consolidating everyone’s existing assets. As well as organising the materials needed for the follow up, and assigning what each person should do.

During the holidays members completed further work on the storyboard, refinement of the spaceship materials, robot bindings and the addition of expressions, boy bindings testing, redrawing of the boy’s three views, and scene simulation in 3d.

Holiday

What I’ve done?

During the holiday I briefly mocked up the initial binding of the boy to see if there were any problems with the model and the movement‘s effect.
And redrew the three views of the little boy as well as testing the feel of the scene simulation in 3d.
And added expressions to the robot.

Boy:
Using mixamo Quick Bone Binding and ADV for an effect test.

Testing scene maps to 3d:

Use the depth map as a replacement map in blender to create a 3d effect scene map.

robot：

Presentation:

group work whole

This week & next week

Done & Will do

During the meeting last Sunday, a secondary division of labour took place.
The current distribution of tasks afterwards is:

1. Jiaruo: character clothes design modifications, three view modifications (2d); complete scene of the shelter to match the size of the character and ship; create tree and water models; character’s rigging and painting weights (3d)
2. Tang: character clothing modifications; completion of the tree scene follow-up; desert scene production (3d)
3. Yuhan: modifying the ship; completing the materials for the shelter scene (3d)

Done：

This week I finished modifying the model of the shelter scene, preliminary modifications to the boy’s costume and preliminary modelling of the tree.

The boys’ outfit.
I mainly modified the bottom half of the body, I felt that the original layers of trousers, socks and shoes were a little too redundant.
I changed the trousers towards space trousers and the shoes to look like moon shoes, more in line with what a boy would wear if he was flying to a planet.
The sides of the upper body armour have been thickened to a darker colour to add thickness.
The original decorations on the arms have been changed to darker pockets to match the suit and make it more integral.
Velcro details were added to the cuffs and pockets and stitching were added to the trousers.

I feel that after this revision the figure will be more integrated and thicker than the original. Of course, due to time issues, there were still a lot of details that could have been changed.

I used speed tree to build the trunk of the tree, referring to the scene I designed before, and tried to recreate the original effect.

Members:

Yuhan: scene UV, enter sp for material

Tang: character UV, character material (change)

Will do：

Conference feedback
Next week:

Yuhan: sp make material, follow 2D design, door is a little bit paste
(Tang’s suggestion: matte the material a bit)
(Jiaruo’s suggestion: differentiate the material of the door and the wall)

Jiaruo: 1. Add leaves to the tree model 2. Start rigging

Tang:

1. Modify the dirt on the sleeve
2. Import into maya to see the effect
3. Do the desert scene

Sessions with George

Shelter

Advanced Body Mechanics

Requirements for this semester:

•  Just simple！
• No light and rendering
• No camera animation
• Find a lot of reference to understand ideas
• Just reference, don’t copy concept
• Refer some actions/performances by yourself

After I had listened to the syllabus for the semester, I wanted to create a small animation with a simple but emotionally resonant plot.
My character had to have a certain character and it had to be expressed physically.
Because this week’s animation doesn’t have any language, it has to be a physical story.
It’s very difficult to get the story across in two or three movements.
I have watched some classic pantomimes and found that when there is no sound, the performers make their movements more exaggerated. Often their movements are very wide, using only their own physical movements to show different emotions, plots and stories, so that the audience is focused on their bodies rather than their facial expressions.

For my model I have chosen a wooden doll without five senses because of this, placing the emphasis on the body movements. This is how the importance of body language in expression can be fully reflected.

At the same time the choice of emotion is of paramount importance, as all the action is expressing it.
I chose to express the tragic development of being overly careful, out of so many choices of being happy, lost, angry, sad and so on.
I saw a clip from a variety show in which a member of the group was laughing heartily, but got so carried away that she was not careful. She broke the back of his chair and fell off.

I felt that this scene was full of dramatic effect, that it was a good representation of what was happening without being complicated.
So I used it as a source of inspiration for my second version.
For my first version of the story, I didn’t think too much about it, and the plot followed the reference video.

 link:

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/OTc4MGU4MWYz/

Feedback:

You can make the role a little bit more mean

She was laughing at others, and sat back and forth on the chair laughing.

still laughing

A pillow was thrown and landed directly in her face.

She fell to the ground and pulled the back of the chair straight down.

Maybe the character can be more mean, add some character.

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Shelter

This is a project that our first semester team wanted to complete together, but due to time constraints we were not able to complete it in the first and second semesters. This semester, we finally had the opportunity to continue it.

The parts we completed at that time:
Storyboard, first version of the boy design and model, three scene designs，design and modelling of the shelter interior, spaceship design and modelling, robot modelling uv and materials.

As the production period has dragged on, let me once again introduce you to the members of the group.
There has been a change in our group, from 5 to 3 members. We will be taking on their original parts, as well as redoubling our efforts to finish it.

• number：Jiaruo Zhang, Jiazhuo Tang, Yuhan Lin

First semester

What I have done？

In the first semester I was responsible for the design and painting of the scenery, the design and painting of the robot, the modelling of the robot and the uv materials, and the modelling and uv of the interior of the shelter.
During the holidays I also briefly tested the effect of the base model binding of the boy to see if the movement was reasonable.

This semester

Will do

Due to staff changes, we will be meeting this weekend to discuss and consolidate what assets we currently have and what is still needed. Work will be redistributed to complete the work. If there is time we will also make further changes and adjustments.

Next week I will introduce what I have been doing during the holidays.

The coursework of this semester is very tight and the workload is heavy. Time is a big problem, but the courses are very interesting, and it slowly progresses from the basics.

Sessions with George

In George’s class, we experienced the process from designing a scene to completing a short film’s key shots. It was a very comprehensive experience, and it gave me a new look at the workflow.

In the past, I always finished the 2D design and storyboard and started the 3D animation directly. I didn’t pay attention to the camera and started the K animation directly. I don’t have a clear understanding of the importance of the lens, which causes me to spend a lot of time on rework if I want to modify it later. But according to the process learned in the class, I completed it step by step systematically, which helped me better understand the importance of the camera for 3D animation. It is very important to ponder and determine the lens language in the early stage, which can help save a lot of work in post-production animation and modification.

To summarize my experience:

1. Don’t be limited to the model at the beginning, you can use geometry to build the scene to provide the idea of the story.
2. The shots of the storyboard should be continuous and not too fragmented.
3. Pay attention to agreeing with the character’s position in the camera. Don’t let the person be on the left in the last second and on the right in the next second.
4. The mood board can provide big ideas and inspiration for the whole project, and the collection of materials is also crucial.
5. 3d storyboards are storyboard-based creations, but can be adjusted appropriately. For example, try a large angle or a special angle, because perspective is a problem in hand-painted.
6. In an animation with almost no lines, the body language of the characters is crucial. The performance of actions and expressions is sometimes enough to describe what the story roughly happened.
7. The length of the shot should match the speed of the character’s actions.
8. Adjust the body first, and then detail.

This was a very good experience, which made me pay attention to the importance of camera language and physical performance. A good short film can tell a story without too many words.

Sessions with Nick

Mechanical items have always been an area that I have never touched. Because it has a lot of parts and needs to understand certain principles in order to produce machinery that conforms to scientific principles. I have never dared to try to make a machine, because I can’t grasp its construction.

In the class, Nick led us to complete the production of the robotic arm and let it move. This is a very cool thing! It’s my first time to make a robotic arm, and I have been exposed to many maya advanced rigging, which gave me a deeper understanding of rigging.

And only using the shader ball that comes with maya can also complete very cool material effects. In the past, I used SP to draw textures, and this semester’s course also gave me a better understanding of Maya’s built-in functions. Good results can be achieved without external force.

The mechanical arm is very challenging for me, because it is not just a machine, it must be able to imitate the movements of the human arm, but it must also reflect the mechanical sense. Although the robotic arm I made in the end didn’t show much imagination, I was very satisfied. Because I think it is the most important to learn some principles and skills when making mechanical items for the first time. I believe that if there is a chance to make a machine next time, I will definitely finish it better than this time.