Looked over the environment Kirti has been working on. A few notes from this were some adjustments to the dustbin models, so that the human can hold onto the bar at the back of the dustbin. The plants and foliage in the garden need to be more random, unevenly spaced and have more variety - this will help tell the story that the human has only recently just moved in / is doing gardening because the garden needs tidying. A fence is needed at the back of the garden and the ones at the front need shortened.
We both had a look at the animatic to work out how far beyond the immediate houses is seen and therefore how many more house models will be need, or what matte paintings will be needed.
I re-saved all the animatic Maya files to not include the environment, made sure the files were as clean as possible for Kirti to use to import into the new environment. This is so Kirti can check the environment layout against the character action in each shot.
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| Deleting environment and optimizing scene |
Caught up with how Georgios is getting on with rigging the dog - discussed blendshapes. I have started to work out what expressions and therefore blendshapes we will need:
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| Thumbnails drawn form looking at the dog's moods throughout the animatic |
Tuesday 3rd June
Looked over the Bird model head Kirti is working on, the main thing discussed was the bird's eyes. Despite using a lattice deformer to squash the eyes slightly which looked good, they may be problematic when rotating and animating them. Therefore the eyes will be completely round like the other characters.
Started to look into what expressions and blendshapes will be needed for the Dog character. Sketched out some expressions for the Dog:
Discovered this animation today called 'Dog and Butterfly' by Wayne Unten. Really like the watercolour-look to this 2D animation, might help as inspiration for the watercolour-look we're going for with our 3D animation:
Dog and Butterfly from Wayne Unten on Vimeo.
It's also reminded me that I wanted to try animating a quick 2D animation of a dog walk cycle, to help me work out and become familiar with dog walk cycles before I animate it in 3D.
Wednesday 4th June
Looking over the bird model, I thought the beak/mouth could be slightly wider in order to help fit the dog biscuit it will eat. Discussed this with Kirti.
Spent part of the morning in the library to find some Aardman books to research the character 'Gromit'. As i'm working out the expressions for our dog character, I was aware that Gromit's expressions are all to do with the eye, brows and ears. I found some different Gromit expressions and then simplified the eyebrow shapes into bean shapes:
I then applied these simplified shapes to some rough sketches of our dog character:
With our dog character, human expressions are added to the dog. From my research last semester, a balance is needed between the human expressions and dog mannerisms. I have been thinking that the human expressions on our dog could mostly be with the eye/brows, as these are the most similar, and have more dog-like expressions with the ears and mouth as these are a very different shape to a human's.
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| Examples of expression in human eyes/brows |
To research real-dog behaviour that I can incorporate into the animation to create a convincing performance, I looked at the silhouettes of dogs during different actions and emotions:
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| Watercolour studies of dog silhouettes |
To research this further I found some interesting articles on the bond between humans and dogs and how we read each other. Thought this might be helpful towards helping to create a believable and convincing character performance.
This article describes the work scientists were looking into, experimenting with how dogs react to sounds compared to humans. They found that we share similar brain structures in the way we handle social clues - which could explain the special bond between humans and dogs, and how we can tell if a dog is looking happy, and vice versa.
This article also looks at the way we communicate across species. The experiment involved people evaluating a dog's expressions as either positive or negative. Even people who had never interacted with dogs before were able to identify which was which.
Looking at the image in the article, it seems the most similar expressions we share are in the eyes, with the slight change in shape of the eyebrow. For our dog character I will therefore be aiming to create as much expression with the eyes as I can, so that the audience can read the dog's emotions clearly. Of course, other body language will contribute to this such as the pose and the ears etc.
Whilst having a browse through the library today, I found a book of the concept art from the film 'Lilo & Stitch':
Thursday 5th June
As we've been trying to look over the animatic to find bits to cut, in order to make the film slightly shorter, I asked scriptwriter Mark Grindle about this during his visit to the studio today.
Both the 2D and 3D animatics were watched and feedback was that the story was already quite tight. However there were a few pieces of advice:
- For shot 6, to make it more clear why between the dog approaching biscuit, then digging a hole for it - have the dog enter the frame, look at biscuit, then the tree, back to biscuit, then search around for bird.
- For shot 11, while the tug of war is going on the background, have the Owner's face more pointed towards the camera, so that it doesn't look as if she is watching them from the corner of her eye. This makes the impact bigger when she does spot the tug of war.
- In shot 14, we don't need to see the bird fly up to the fence as in the previous shot the Owner's gaze has already followed the bird, showing that the bird has already flown up.
- Think about the music soundtrack we want for the film, it would be good to use to embellish the film and accentuate story beats. Maybe have a different instrument for each character?
Friday 6th June
Created a table of expressions for what blendshapes will be needed for Dog character:
A few bits of feedback for the bird model:
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| There were some faces on the inside of the neck feathers which need deleted as they were causing a pinched-look on the smoothed model. |
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| The back of the mouth needs rotated down slightly to look like the throat when the bird's mouth is open. |
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| I think the angle of the bottom beak, from a previous version of the model, may work better for rigging and closing the beak easier. |
- Duplicate the original mesh and create BlendShape on the Duplicates.
- When BlendShapes are ready, shift select them in order, shift select the original mesh last.
- In the Animation Menu: Create Deformers - BlendShape (option box) - Reset Settings - Rename the BlendShape node - Create!
- For the BlendShapes Control window: Window - Animation Editors - BlendShape
I got the first test BlendShape to work, but then came across a problem when I moved the head with the BlendShape still switched on. The head starts moving back to the original position:
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| Select the original head mesh and click the All Inputs menu. |
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| Middle-mouse drag the BlendShape under the SkinCluster to reposition the Deformer. |
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| The head can now be moved by the rig whilst a BlendShape is switched on. |
I started to create a 'blink' BlendShape to test out - as the eyes are quite round from the head, the eyelid ends up intersecting the eyeball...:
Weekend
Filmed my dog, Pippa, in the garden to get some reference footage for walk cycles, running, sniffing, eating and general dog mannerisms. Here are a few of the shots that I got, some of the walk cycles slowed down will be very useful:
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