Week 41 - Starting Monday 21st July

Monday 21st July
Started and finished shot004 today.
I used the technique of filming myself act out the shot for use as reference, in the same way I have researched how animators in the industry might use this process to create reference for a shot. Such as this example from animator Jeff Gabor at Blue Sky studios for the film 'Horton Hears a Who' (2008):


Myself acting out this shot:

I also thought it was interesting to see how the shot had progressed from the storyboarding stage, to 3D pre-vis, reference footage and then final animation:

Shot 4 final animation:

Raised the dog's head and features to show his shock at the bird eating his biscuit, then lowered everything again with his eyebrows to convey his disappointment.

Created some blendshapes for the ball for when it deflates and to fit the football in the dog's mouth better, as if his mouth is squashing part of it:

Football blendshapes.

I also decided to zoom the camera in slightly to make the shot more of a close-up:

Camera - old position from animatic.

Camera zoomed in to make shot a close-up so the expressions on the dog's face are the focus of the shot.

Found out today that AfterEffects doesn't use .exr files, which the film was being rendered out as, so advised Kirti to render the film out in tiff format.

Supervisor meeting today:
Received some feedback for my animation in Shot 6, maybe not have as much bounce in the walk as he seems quite heavy footed, maybe try zooming in the camera to cut out his feet?
For the last shot when the leaves go past the screen, is there a reason to it? If not the leaf could fly past the dog and up and past the bird, to connect the two, as they are now friends at the end of the film.

Tuesday 22nd July
Finish tweaking shot006 after feedback from yesturday.
Couldn't zoom the camera in too much to cut his feet out as it also cut the biscuit out. I did zoom the camera in slightly though to frame the shot a bit better.

Previous version with camera further out.

New version with camera zoomed in.

Took some of the bounce off of the hips to help make the walk lighter. I've also removed some of the rotation and not lifting the paws as high to give him a lighter footfall. The tail is also not moving side to side as extreme before:

Had to redo the football and blends in Shot 4 quickly as the UV-map seam was facing right towards the camera which meant the texture didn't look right, so turned it around.

Gave Sheng feedback for Shot 14:
-Bring the bird's wings slowly down when landed, so they aren't static.
-Add subtle animation at the end to keep life in the character going till the shot cuts
-Could curl his body and features in more, he's very sad and hungry at this point, and to help make the audience feel sorry for him, bringing in his body language can help to make him look small.

There have been problems with the renderfarm, something to do with errors about V-ray and Renderman even though we aren't using these settings... Kirti seeked some advice about it and it's maybe something to do with the cameras, so I am importing and setting up new basic cameras for each shot before they go to rendering.

Helped Georgios set up shot 2 for animation, imported the characters into the shot 2 file which has Kirti's dynamics leaves as the human which Georgios is animating interacts with the leaves in the scene as she is raking.

I've taken shot 11 which includes the final human animation in it, to start animating the bird and dog in their tug-of-war.

Wednesday 23rd July
Been working on the animation for Shot 11 today. Had to work out how to parent the characters together so that they both follow the biscuit.

Ended up parenting the biscuit to the dog's mouth control and the bird's beak joint to the biscuit. This means the bird's head goes where the dog's head goes, but I can still move the bird's body around to give bounce to the flight cycle.

Also drew out some thumbnails in my notebook, trying to work out what pose to put the dog in for the tug-of-war:

I've decided to start the dog and bird's animation in a clean scene, to create a cycle animation for the tug-of-war, which I'll then import into shot 11 and key the global control to translate them across the ground. I used the post and pre-infinity curves in the graph editor to create the cycle animation:

Also today helped Kirti with some rendering problems with the characters eyes not looking quite right, too dull and reflective.
Gave Sheng some feedback for Shots 19 and 20 and replaced the bird house in shot 20 with the final model bird house.

Thursday 24th July
Sorting out the character's eyes which had too much reflection... Recommended to Kirti to render out just the eyes with the head as a black hole so that it can be added on top of the composition that has already been rendered:

Too much reflection...

Less reflection...

Even less reflection... which looks better.

Gave Sheng some feedback for shot 8, more force needed in the bird's takeoff - some anticipation? The bird could also enter the frame with a hop step, to help it travel the distance it needs to in the short time. Showed the blog post where I had some reference footage of bird's hop stepping.

Feedback to Georgios for Shot 2 - the human's body could be rotated slightly to help look like her weight is on her right foot, and rotate the toes slightly as if taking on this shift in weight.

Been working on Shot 11 animation. Added in the bird's wings cycle.

Friday 25th July
Finished the cycle animation for Shot 11:

Imported this into the scene. Had to group the characters so that I could rotate them without them all rotating on their own axis and coming apart. Also having to be careful with keying the global control to translate them as the ground is uneven. Working on getting the pacing right.

Fixed camera in Shot 1, 8 and 20 for rendering.

Talked over ideas and plans for the credit sequence with Rebecca who will be working on this, figured out what images and files she will need from our team to do this:

Weekend
Wrote descriptions for Shot 13 and 15, for additional animators for our film, to use as reference:

Shot 13 - Owner bends up into shot, holding the dog in her right arm, and holding the biscuit in her left hand. She gazes off ahead of her (watching the bird fly away to the fence). She is surprised by what she has just seen (a tug of war between the dog, biscuit and bird). The dog is looking in the bird's direction also, eyes focused and mouth glum, he's annoyed at the bird.

Shot 15 - Owner feels sorry for the bird as she now understands he was just hungry as well (Previous shot shows bird looking sad and tummy grumbling). She has a thinking face as she and the dog look at each other, then she looks at the biscuit still thinking. Her head lifts and looks in the bird's direction, she has an idea! Dog looks confused.

Shot 5 - Owner pushes the bin into shot and crouches down to the bin bag at her feet. The camera pans down with her, she is startled to see the dog sitting and staring at her, begging for another biscuit. The dog's eyes are sad and wide and his mouth is sad. Owner reaches into her pocket and throws a biscuit. Dog happily chases after it out of shot.

Extra information I gave out with shot 5:
There probably isn't enough time in the shot for the Owner to turn the bin around, like she does in the animatic, before she crouches down. The bin can just be left facing sideways to the camera when she pushes it into shot.
If it is too difficult to make the dog sit (his back legs are a bit troublesome to put into a sitting position), or go from a sitting to running out of shot, just keep him standing for the shot instead of sitting.