Real World Animation (Rat)
The second week of experimental animation looked at animating against a video backdrop from the real world. We used our phones to capture video footage which would serve as the environment for an imagined character to interact with. Additional requirements were to demonstrate the animation principle 'squash and stretch' and to have the animation loop at the end.
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I set off around the campus and soon left the grounds of the university, looking for inspiration. Although I had ideas in mind already on receiving the brief, I thought the best approach would be to respond to something I would find, rather than trying to find the perfect footage to fit my preconceived ideas.
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On my wandering outside the university, I filmed several unused clips, thinking any one of my ideas could end up being my final choice. Here's a selection of those overlooked ideas. Coming up with the core idea is probably my favourite part of any creative process so I'm enjoying keeping a record of it. Besides, there's always the outside chance I might revisit one of them...
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I liked the compositions of these first three shots, from on and around campus. I soon realised that any background people would interfere with the seamless loop of a finished video. For shot 1, I thought it would be nice to see a giant character bouncing through the back of the scene, as if an everyday occurence. For shot 2, I thought the perspective of the railing could offer an interesting action, with something moving towards camera and diving off. Shot 3 again gave a wide enough view to imagine a giant bouncy character but the people walking into the distance would have been too distracting in a loop.
Shot 4: I almost went with this option, showing a character bouncing along, into the bin. The reason I didn't choose many of these shots is simply because the shot wasn't consistently stable enough. I did love the brightness of the sunny day though, as I could imagine several scenarios of changing the lighting/shadows of my character accordingly.
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Shot 5: A public ping-pong table. I thought I could have a ping-pong ball character bouncing itself over the net somehow, though it would make more sense if something was batting it.
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Shot 6: The side of this building seemed like the perfect blank canvas. I imagined a plump dragon flying and crashing into the side of it, then sliding down behind the wall.
Following that idea, I thought a simpler version would to have a bird splat into the side of something. First, shot 7 of the back side of a bus shelter, which would have been a clean vertical plane. Shots 8-10 were alternatives, imagining the bird flying into a tree trunk.
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The ideas I had in mind before going searching are represented here. Both were handheld moving shots. First, shot 11, looping on a closed door, opening to an empty corridor (and a bouncing character), then I closed the door again. Getting a seamless loop seemed unlikely. Also, the automatic exposure on my phone made the shot less impressive, as I pictured the start and end on an almost black darkness.
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Shot 12: The same idea here, just starting and ending on a look at the sun through a window. Again, I mistakenly thought I would get an extreme overexposure to help the blend for the loop at the end, but my phone automatically adjusted.
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I liked the notion of some sort of bouncing monster being spotted and yet nonchalantly turned away from.
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Shot 13: The shot I went with. I liked the simplicity and ordinariness of the lowly setting. Also, I walk by this exact spot every day I come into university, and I always get a kick out of giving my everyday surroundings a fresh meaning. Immediately I could picture some sort of creature climbing out of the top hole of the traffic cone. I was able to rest my phone on top of another cone, making it stable enough yet not dead still, as to leave an extra sense of life.
The Rat
Here's a look at my sketchbook, as I figured how what my character would be. Usually I would take a bit of time to consider this, but the nature of the day pushed us to pick a shot and design a character in very little time. I would be animating as soon as possible so I just had to go with something.
My initial sketches were of an imp-like creature. Some sort of gremlin, implying a secret world hidden almost in plain sight. I then thought of expressing this with a mouse, or rat. I preferred the challenge of doing something more naturalistic. Also I considered my imp sketches too similar in style to the cartooning style of the animator 'Hombre McSteez', whose animations were shown to us earlier in the day.
Throughout the course, I am having to go with my initial ideas and see them through to a completed outcome in very little time. I am both frustrated by this and grateful to be forced to produce more finished work. It's often not my best work, but I'm learning how much is possible with just a few days of dedicated attention.
The rat needed to have enough bounce to it to show squash and stretch, so there's a certain roundness to the body. The final design choice was to have the rat patterned the same as the 'no waiting' sign on the traffic cone. I knew I needed to make it stand out against the background, so at first I was going to go with white, but the strangeness of this pattern was more appealing to me. As there's a loop in the animation, I thought there could be an odd logic to another rat spawning from the same specific cone, with the audience left to wonder exactly why.
Animating the sequence...
We were asked to use TVPaint to animate over our video clips, given our familiarity with the program from the animation skills module. I'm feeling much more comfortable with it now, after some difficulty early on in the course. It's also becoming more natural to just start adding key frames and approximating the timing of my actions, like a quick animatic.
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I sketched out my shot in white line, against the dark background, and I'm enjoying the sketching of movement in rough terms. I feel like I'm learning to let go of any perfect individual frame and draw the animation as a whole, concentrating mostly on the fluidity of actions. Clearly I have loads to learn, but I'm figuring out a lot from my mistakes as I go.
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Below is the animation in colour at an incomplete stage.
The main challenges in the action concerned the following:
-the struggle to climb out of the cone
-the timing and arc of the jump
-the squash on impact
-getting up and running off
I will need to revisit the animation later in the trimester, as there is an intensive workload from all modules. I intend to refine the animation, with all frames in place and smoother movement.
Resuming work
I'm coming back to the animation at the end of the trimester, which is a challenge in itself. I struggle to get into the same flow as when I'm first working on something. Often I feel like the best thing would be to start again, particularly since my experience has grown significantly in the last several weeks. Nevertheless, I needed to just tweak the shot with the time available so I added a few in-betweens where necessary and importantly integrated sound with the clip.
Something I remain uncertain of is when to animate on ones (25 frames per second) or twos (12.5 frames per second). Since the rat's movement are very quick, it usually seems right to use ones, but I enjoy the energy of twos. I kept mixing and testing the difference and still I'm in a process of trial and error.
I'm still learning but it's always frustrating when it doesn't come together easily. It's difficult to have perspective on the final product here as there's more I can see to fix. Ideally I would have made sure the animation doesn't float above the slightly shaky footage by aligning the frames with the exact pixels of the background, to create that real illusion of integrated action. I started this process but it felt nearly impossible to perfectly align the right pixels on such a subtly shaking piece of footage.