Riders on the Storm

Yesterday saw episode 4 of "Wobble Box", the Flip/HuHa animated sketch show I do some bits and pieces for go live. Here it is:

I did the animation for the final skit, "Discharge", which was a lot of fun to design. It's a little unfortunate that there wasn't a budget for some proper full animation as I would've loved to go proper Kricfalusian on it.

I'd planned to animate the 'money shot', so to speak, but was urged not to for whatever reason, possibly some YouTube content rule. Maybe by actually showing it it would've been overkill and taken some of the impact away from it, but here's what I'd had in mind:

The other segment I worked on was "23 Hour News", which was good timing as I've been watching a lot of "Powerpuff Girls" of late (as men do) so I was in the right headspace for some city-destroying monsters:

The highlight of this was getting to do the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Again, the budget was small but I came up with a pretty effective cheat, drawing on Eadweard Muybridge's photos of horses in motion:

Muybridge photography: The CliffsNotes of the animation world

Using these for reference I rigged up a rough horse drawing using the After Effects puppet tool. This works a little differently than boning in CG programs or other 2D applications, essentially placing joints on each still drawing of the horse's legs (which occupy their own layer). If placed correctly they can be moved and animated with some approximation to real life. This motion test shows what I came up with - you can tell there were some cartooney liberties taken but it has more or less the desired effect:

Then, using the rough sketch for reference I came to the really fun bit, coming up with detailed drawings of each demonic horse to match their respective horsemen. Then it's just a matter of applying the rigged animation to each design:

Fully composited with separate motion paths and timeline placement, it makes for a nice little payoff visual:

 Something tells me this won't win me much by way of appreciation from the Brony community.

Quickies

In my continued effort to keep the holiday season alive ('cause I just don't know when to let go) I'm happy to say there's another 2011 screening for "The Naughty List", this time at the 6th Athens Animfest. It's really nice to find this out as my second film "Ground Running" screened at the 4th edition back in '09. It's being shown as part of the Tributes 2011 Panorama section, haven't worked out the date/time just yet but check out their website and Facebook page for more info.
On another note I've finished the first of several supplemental showreels, these are spun off from my main showreel which kind of lumps all the animation stuff together. The idea being that I can submit tighter, more theme-specific reels when certain job applications call for it. Plan is to have one each for character animation, digital animation, motion graphics and VFX work, which will give me an excuse to create some new content in all those areas. In the meantime here's the first version of the character animation showreel (which features the first looks at some in-the-works projects such as Alpaca Gals and Erica):
Any thoughts always appreciated, especially if you can somehow use the opportunity to tell me how handsome and sympathetic a fella I am. Not sure how that would work exactly, but roll with it.

I'm not going blind. Which is nice...

I visited the eye hospital this week and was finally given the name of a visual condition I've experienced for the last four years or so. It's a type of entoptic phenomenon and is apparently quite common. I'd venture to dispute that, as in four years no doctor has ever been able to give me an explanation until this week (and I'm pretty sure the guy I saw only knew because he experiences it himself). Essentially I can see the billions of blood vessels traveling through my eyeballs when looking at brightly-lit areas, like the sky during the day or a computer monitor turned all the way up. It's one of several inner-eye visuals I am aware of, including the always creepy Purkinje Tree and vitreous floaters. Generally these aren't noticeable, or at worst nothing that sunglasses can't take the edge off. On overcast days, though, they all combine and it can be a bit like walking around in a shook-up snow-globe. 'Rosebud', yo.
The reason I'm babbling about this all is that I was initially misdiagnosed as having a degenerative condition of the optic nerve that would have led to blindness by my thirties. I never really bought into this as the symptoms didn't quite match up, but it's still a huge relief to get confirmation that what I have is, in itself, harmless. Sometimes you don't acknowledge just how much things can gnaw at you until you don't have to worry about them anymore.
So, with my vision intact (knock wood next month's Glaucoma test will be clear) I'm able to carry on boring the world with more blog entries and animation-ey crap.
Here are some follow-up sketches for the retro-style music video I'm working on, including the earlier character designs put together with textures. It really makes a lot of difference in terms of creating a faux-cutout look:


To end with, here's a quickie After Effects test to see how the Photoshop characters might work in a moving environment with visual effects. For this test the motion is very random and not indicative of the way things will look in the end, but with more attention to detail in that regard I think that there's some promise.
Hopefully you haven't clawed your eyes out.

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.

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 Ol' Compin' Grounds

Well, it's all coming gradually together. I've slogged through the arduous labour of scripwriting, trudged through the septic waters of storyboarding, lapped up the murky mildew of layouts and background design, scratched at the itchy scabbiness of the colouring process and after all those questionable metaphors I'm now able to comp it all together! Well, not all, but a fair old chunk at least.
This process takes all the required elements and layers them, using the same principles of traditional cel animation. To prepare a sequence, first of all the layers need to be prepared in Photoshop. This way I can establish which elements of the eventual animated image will remain inanimate, and give each animation layer a name and number for ease of reference. This makes it that much easier to simply bring in the layer you want for the frame you're working on when it comes to the actual animation process. Said process takes place using After Effects, which is also an Adobe application and is consequently hugely compatible with Photoshop. Once the .psd file is imported into the new comp, most scenes are made up of the following:
Background - this obviously just sits in the...background...looking pretty and such.
Background animation - occasionally elements of the background move, such as flapping curtains, rainfall, moving clouds etc. Usually this animation will be comped together with the still background image before any character animation begins to avoid clutter, with the exception of certain shots; for example, if someone is standing in the rain then the rainfall layer needs to appear in front of the character, and so it remains separate.
Character(s) - for a large number of shots I'm using limited animation, in the style of those mass-produced Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as The Flinstones or Yogi Bear. In these shots there will inevitably be elements of the character that stay as one still image, ordinarily the torso.
Character animation - these are, as you can probably guess, the other elements of the character that actually move, such as lip-sync, facial expressions/head movement, arm/leg movement, walk-cycles blah blah blah.
Lighting/colour correction - this will usually be an effects layer that, when appropriate, strengthens or mutes the overall colour scheme so that the characters stand out sufficiently from the backgrounds. Lighting effects (for the sake of atmosphere) can also be added in Photoshop and then reimported into After Effects.
So with the process cackhandedly explained, I can show you the fruits of my toil! The animation itself is going to be constantly tweaked (for the better, one hopes) until the film is done and so I've decided to instead show off some stills of the comp results, comparing them to the storyboard visuals. Indulge that voyeur in you and have a cheeky peek:



Why, simply delectable, I'm sure you'll agree. Maybe sometime soon I'll be able to show some of the little buggers in motion.