The Replacement Fillers

It's crunch time.
I'm hurtling toward the hand-in deadline and sacrifices will need to be made. I equate the feeling with the scenes in so many action films, where those fleeing from peril by plane or helicopter are forced to jettison extra weight if they are to have any chance of escape.
Ironically, by removing certain shots from the animatic, I'm finding myself having to create new animation. Ultimately it still adds up to less work, but I need some filler visuals to bridge the gaps created when certain sequences are removed.

This series of shots is pretty dispensible, as it doesn't really further the story. However, it furthers the action as they walk from one location to another, so when the sequence is omitted I'm left with a jarring change of background from one shot to the next.

As they can't magically leap from the doorway to the liquor cabinet, I've remedied the continuity issue by creating an unstoryboarded cutaway shot:

This actually benefits the film, even in its brevity. Firstly it establishes the Duck's bedroom, which we otherwise wouldn't see until the penultimate scene where there's some potential for confusion. Also, by having the Duck hear the Hunter and Prospective Lay arrive, it helps sell his entrance a few shots later. Incidentally, the barely-readable book title is 'The Secret', a fad (read: BS) self-help book that gets mentioned on the radio a lot. I thought it'd be funny to have the Duck reading it.

These storyboarded shots were conceived as fully-animated lip-sync sequences, where the Hunter enthusiastically sings while opening the bottle of wine. What I've had to opt for as a time-saving alternative are two brief shots with no dialogue.

These actually work fine, and my delivery of the song fell a little flat anyway. There was also a potential licensing issue as it was to the tune of 'For He's A Jolly Good Fellow'.
The remaining scenes that are being considered for the chop don't require replacement shots, and may help the pacing of the film by their absence. It'd be nice to have the time to produce the whole film as originally storyboarded, but the fact of the matter is I've bitten off more than I can chew. The average length of this type of student film is between three and seven minutes. My animatic runs at twenty, and with my planned cuts it'll wind up at about seventeen. I've been keeping this on the down-low as my course leader would probably have conniptions if he knew what I was trying to achieve.
I'm not trying to prove a point - a long film doesn't guarantee a good film. Oftentimes it can mean just the opposite. I just really believe that the story jusitifies the length. At this point I have an accumulative 14 minutes of footage finished, and the remaining shots use fairly limited animation. I know I can do this, but more cuts will doubtless be made.
Man, it's like Sophie's Choice up in here.

The Jo Show - Part 2

It may be a bi-product of the stress of long hours I’m having to work in this last stretch, or possibly the anxiety of how well my film will be received come the deadline (4th June…fucking hell that’s close) but I’m feeling strangely melancholy with the absence of Jo, my wingman (or wingwoman...wing-gal?) for this project. Having lost her to the world of gainful employment, where her labours are actually exchanged with currency, for the most part I’m having to slog through the finishing touches on my own. It’s usually been that way when it comes to these types of projects - when producing music I find that the best work is done once the other musicians have left me alone with their contributions to work with. It’s not an ego thing (pinky swear), I’d just assumed that it’d have to be an interminable process to observe. I also get overly-focused and I worry that I come off as curt and irritable as a consequence.
Having Jo, as well as the film’s other helping hands (who I’ll later devote a separate entry to) as a presence has not only been a boone in terms of easing time and labour concerns, but I have also felt myself to be more driven and creative. Despite the stress, which would be inevitable with any MA, the production of this film has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life to date.
Last month I posted up some line tests that Jo worked on for the Prospective Lay character. She has since made the effort to clean these up herself which again saved me loads of time, and I'm consequently ahead of my production schedule. Interestingly, there's a distinctly different style about the character when Jo works on the full animation shots. The emphasis is more on movement than detail, which is another trick I need to get comfortable with. When the shots runs together I'd wager that nobody would pick up on the difference.

A limited-animation drawing of the Prospective Lay that I drew (left), next to a still from one of Jo's full-animation scenes (right). If you look closely you can see that Jo is more economic with the character detail, letting the movement of the animation speak for itself.

Here are the main shots from the earlier post, now inked-in and coloured.


In the above shots the character's acting is timed to the Duck's dialogue. When both characters are on screen with the audio it plays really well. The same applies to the shot below, where the Hunter and Prospective Lay's body acting interacts fairly smoothly:

Overall my little outsourcing experiment paid off, and for the eight-gajillionth time I'm very grateful for Jo's assistance. I had hoped that she would be able to do more animation between now and the deadline, but as her schedule is getting busy with real work it's not looking like that'll get to happen. But I'm glad she was able to contribute these shots and make her own little mark on the film.

The Trying Labour of Coffee & Conversation

Many things fascinate me about the animation process, not least of which are the challenges that present themselves without warning. Shots that seem simple can turn out to be overwhelmingly complicated, and shots I dread can in turn be surprisingly easy to execute.
The last few days have been dominated by a case of the former instance, with a series of shots that feature the Hunter and Duck simply chatting at the kitchen table. I would never have predicted that this would be one of the most complex processes in the entire film, second at this point only to the nightmare of rotoscoping those tracking shots.
This is a consequence of an accumulation of little embellishments which are vital on one hand (I didn’t want the two of them to simply sit and stare motionless at one another - this is animation after all) and a tremendous memory drain - the computer’s and my own - on the other.

Firstly there’s a little bit of leg movement going on. The Hunter nervously jiggles his right leg (a mannerism inherited directly from my good self) while the Duck nonchalantly swings his remaining leg over the side of the chair. For this animation I need two independent cycles that go at different speeds.

Another perpetual loop is the tiny background detail of the clock pendulum swinging. This needs to be timed specifically to the ticking sound effect that will be eventually thrown into the sound mix.

Then there’s my old nemesis, the rain layer. I was certain that I was forever through with the dreaded memory-sapping rain effect, but I’d forgotten the frickin’ kitchen window. Each time we cut to this wide shot there’s a different batch of character animation going on. A few wing and arm movements can be recycled but in sticking to the storyboard I’ve created lots of minutae that the audience probably won’t even register.

On top of all this there’s the lovely task of lip sync, which makes the overall layer count come to…well, take a look for yourself:Animation is generally a harsh medium - there’s a lot of in for not a great deal of out - but when you wind up with a great piece of footage it’s all worth it. When it takes the same (or more) effort to achieve something that is visually banal (albeit necessary) it burns a little more.

These are times when I grow concerned about both keeping to my production schedule as well as maintaining a high level of interest in the project as a whole. Peaks and valleys, I suppose.

Backgrounds Part 6 - Remnants & Debris

When I did the last batch of backgrounds back in November I wasn't sure if there would be any more left to do. As it turns out I've decided to persevere with including the proposed final scene and give the film a nice comedic ending rather than a maudlin cliffhanger. The last scene takes place at the site of the Hunter's former cabin, now a large mound of rubble.




The last background is a segment from a far larger drawing, as the final shot pulls back to reveal the entire pile. On top of all the other plentiful reasons to kiss her arse, props have to go to my faithful assistant Jo for inking in every one of those fucking rocks:

And here's the full colour version:

As well as the new backgrounds for this particular scene, I've found that to better suit certain shots elsewhere in the film a number of new and adapted backgrounds have been required. Here's the very last smattering to go out on:

Seasonal Affective Disorder

While I would never admit to being afflicted by a condition whose acronym was S.A.D. (being, y'know, a grown-up with a modicum of self-respect) I can't deny that the weather will affect my mood, although almost always positively. Any time I get a nice sun/cool-breeze combo my spirits will be high as a consequence. Bad weather doesn't have the same effect - I think that living in the UK one's entire life builds up an immunity to any blues that rain or grey skies might cultivate in a person hailing from sunnier climes. Being a British citizen and getting your arse drenched on a regular basis just goes hand in hand. What does bum me out however is bad weather of a different variety - whenever it rains in 'House Guest' my heart sinks. One explanation would see me feign an artsy-fartsy sense of empathy for my fictitious characters. The real reason is that rain takes fucking forever to render out.
The rendering process is when you export all the comped layers, effects, animations and (sometimes) sound as a single movie file. This flattens all the layers and reduces a scene to simply a series of still images, so it's vital that the After Effects documents and all accompanying source files are held onto if things need changes or corrections later on. I recently spotted a recurring error in a number of rendered shots where the background seemed at odds with the character animation. Once I had worked out my mistake I needed to re-render all the shots which misused this background and replace it with the proper one.
This is a very easy task in After Effects, I can simply take out one background and drop in another without redoing any animation. The bitch of it is that in all the shots there is a foreground layer of rainfall. So a sequence of shots that should take a handful of minutes to render now takes about three quarters of an hour.
This is a consequence of applying a combination of gaussian and motion blurs to the rain layer, as well as looping a downward motion path. While it would reduce the rendering time a great deal by simply applying the blur effects to the source file in Photoshop, I've found that each shot needs a specific set of parameters that vary from one to another, so I can only really do it in After Effects to get the precise desired result. I'm pissing and moaning about it because, well, I like to piss and moan. It's in the Mitchell blood. Plus I'm in the latter stages of producing a scene in which the Duck and Hunter meet for the first time on a stormy night.That means a shitload of rain.
The good part is that when I'm done with these shots I'll never have to use this cursed rain layer again!
Sunnier times, they are a-comin'...

The Jo Show

I think to spare her either vomiting or just getting properly creeped out, I'll do my best to restrain myself from heaping more sycophantic praise on my main assistant animator Jo. It needs to be said however that having her take the reigns for the character animation of the Prospective Lay (who I now wish had a better name) could not have been a better decision. My plan as I outlined it previously was to ensure the character had her own personality and style of movement to distinguish her from the uncouth Hunter and Duck duo. Looking at the line tests Jo came up with while I was out of the country there is a level of fluidity and attention to detail that is able to break through the murky webcam resolution. My concern when I left was that by concentrating her attentions on sequences that lasted only a few seconds at a time there might have been a temptation to over-animate. This turned out not to be the case, as she also demonstrates a fundamental instinct for keeping it all reigned in. Here are a few tests to show what I mean:

I must've tried this cycle six times and never came up with anything usable. The main hurdle at which I would stumble was getting the bounce on the boobs right. My follow-through would either be off or the secondary motion would be too minimal to register. Worst would be the issue of too much bounce which came off as gratuitous.

While you need the accompanying dialogue to fully appreciate the movement here, there is a lot going on that demonstrates a real flair for body language and acting. I especially like the childlike way she waves.

This is another shot that I took several stabs at that never felt right to me (in fact, one clunky version made it into the trailer for a few frames). The accusatory point always lacked something or other when animated as a single movement. Here Jo has resolved that issue by lifting the arm pre-emptively.

In this shot I gave her free reign to animate the character being visibly bashful. The animation is timed to the dialogue for the shot, where the Duck puts the moves on her.
These really met my expectations and even went a little beyond them. I feel more of Jo's input would be beneficial, not just to my film but in terms of my personal understanding of animation processes. The animation BA that Jo graduated from taught her a lot more about the fundamentals, while my MA kinda leaves you to work it out on you own. If I can pick up more bits and pieces of animation technique I could make the film a great deal more visually interesting.

Face Time & Skinless People! Mostly Skinless People...

Here's another entry being written on a plane to be eventually transcribed once I'm settled on terra firma. I'm leaving the US today, the very evening as it cruelly turns out that Maria Bamford, one of my favourite women in the world is going to be in New York. All in all though I couldn't have asked for a better first experience of the city, and by a miraculous feat of willpower I was able to stick to the work hours in the hotel room and am still on schedule. I can't say I was able to stick to a diet that suggested any modicum of self-respect, there being about a billion Dunkin' Donuts scattered around the island. But screw it, something had to give.

This morning before I headed on down to Newark airport I decided to crowbar in one last jaunt down at the seaport and see the current exhibition being held there. While the supposed intent of 'Bodies' is to document the more urgent functions of all our lovely gooey inside-bits - along with the numerous ways each organ can get messed-up and kill you - my fascination stemmed less from an eagerness to learn than a childhood awe of the visceral...viscera...and such. I recall vividly how alarming yet strangely compelling the visual of a skinless body was when leafing through one of the most potentially-traumatising pop-up books a six-year-old child could receive:

"The Human Body" Produced by Intervisual Communications, Inc. Published by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1983

Years later, perhaps my favourite movie as a pre-adolescent was Clive Barker's Hellraiser, which featured a typical love-triangle premise - the wife, the cuckold and the brother-in-law - with a typically Barkerian twist of making the latter party a reanimated, skinless zombie.

Hellraiser: I know what you're thinking. Those oversized star earrings really are horrifying...

In it's first* sequel Hellbound one scene which carried particular resonance depicted a morbidly obsessed doctor at a loss for words as to a similarly revived woman's appearance. "Strange?" She offers, "Surreal? Nightmarish?"

At twelve I found all terms to be apt, so in seeing an exhibit of genuine (if preserved to the point of resembling sculptures constructed of wax and smoked meat) flayed cadavers at twenty-four, I found this morbid curiosity reignited. I have been meaning to take up life-drawing as by all accounts it is an ideal and essential supplemental skill to have as an animator. But beyond nudity, the full glory of human anatomy and weight could surely be studied to a greater and more beneficial degree with these as subjects? If it's common practice I have never encountered it, though procuring the corpses would be tricky...
This entry has so far been a little detached from 'House Guest', although it's strangely coincidental that the focus of the last week's work has been on a scene in which the zombified Hunter is in a not dissimilar state of excoriation. In the spirit of the previous 'Face Time' posts, albeit with a slightly macabre twist, here are some pencil tests for the final scene's expression changes.

In fairness my cartoonist license allowed for tenuous (at best) fidelity to actual human anatomy. Or, come to think of it, duck anatomy for that matter:

*They ended up making eight Hellraisers in the end. I'm not kidding. Each godawful straight-to-DVD sequel crushes my precious childhood affection for the original anew.

"Monkeyjammin' til the jam is through..."

This morning I was able to slap together some pencil tests at my sister's apartment here in the city, using a nice little freeware application called MonkeyJam. It doesn't boast much but the price is right and it's ideal for these types of tests.
As I've been doing all my work in the hotel room without access to my beloved Photoshop or After Effects I hadn't had a chance to test any sequences once they were done, which is usually the way I prefer to do it as I can then work out whatever corrections need to be made on the fly.
A part of me was dreading the way these would turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised. As the shots didn't include anything too complex the only visual problems can easily be amended during cleanup or by replacing the odd frame.

Here the zombified Hunter loses his rag with the Duck, who responds in kind.

The above test is my favourite of this particular bunch. After several scene's worth of bitching and moaning the Hunter's jaw finally dislocates, to the Duck's visible delight:

I've edited these next two shots together to check the continuity is okay:
This is for the penultimate shot in which the Duck laughs until his brittle neck snaps from the movement. Good times.
It's been an ideal change of scenery to be out of Bristol the last week-and-a-half or so, but I'm starting to itch for my real studio again. Good timing I suppose, as I'm leaving tomorrow.
Well, better shove as much crap as I can steal into my suitcase while I have the time.