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.

Children. They're All Little Bastards Really.

Not a big entry this time, but I wanted to show a couple line test/end result comparisons from a scene that actually features very little by way of animation. This is the sequence in which the Creepy Kid has brought the Duck home and is in the process of stitching it back together. One of the shots has already been discussed in a previous post with those that remain featuring far less extreme animation.

The first appearance of the Kid in the scene is simply his rising into view.

When offscreen, sound effects will imply his rustling about. To punctuate his emerging from beneath the table we see and hear lightning from outside (fairly crucial to establish its presence as later in the scene it strikes the dead Duck through an open window).

The tricky thing with this shot was getting the secondary motion of his head settling into place right. With the accompanying flashes of lightning I feel it's more or less there.
Here's another shot featuring the same backdrop and composition. All that really occurs is the Kid, having been called to dinner, contemplating the Duck before he decides to leave any further taxidermy until later.

This is done entirely through facial expression, one of my favourite things to animate as I have documented previously.
Here's how it looks with the backdrop (and to show the compositional arrangement with the Duck silhouette).

One more to end on, and my favourite of the three. In this shot the Kid, having supped, returns to his room to find that the reanimated in absentia Duck has buggered off.

This makes for a nice reaction take, and some facial expressions I'm really happy with that convey the Kid's subsequent fear and bewilderment.

With some post-effects (and eventually a soundtrack) the overall shot nicely caps off the scene.

The character of the Creepy Kid is probably the least explored of the ensemble. He has no dialogue and little screen-time, but the audience should hopefully pick up bits and pieces from the glimpses of his behaviour and the environment in which he dwells. My intention was for the viewer to know enough about the character to know they don't want to know any more. Y'know?
Actually, I don't know. I'm starting to smell the potential for a Creepy Kid spinoff. Yep, tons of mileage there...

Trailer Trash

Well, I've cemented my fate. There's no backing-out now - my film has a trailer and I'm gonna have to follow up on it.
As I mentioned previously, the full-time students on my MA showcased their finished films today, and with their permission I hope to link to them if at some point they go online. Frankly I'm in awe of several of the films produced - the bar has been dramatically raised compared to the output of prior year-groups' and it's going to be no small feat producing a film of my own that amounts to the same level of quality.
The best thing is that there isn't one film that's remotely similar to another. The range of genres, methods and styles is huge. To have gotten the chance to study (and, in some cases, work) with this particular group has been a real privilege.
Well, nobody likes an asskiss so I'll just get on with showing the trailer:

Face Time

Best I can tell, faces seem to do 90% of the acting when it comes to animation. Now, there's a good chance I may have just let slip a revealing nugget of naivety by saying that - possibly more learned and scholarly animators would opine that I'm completely wrong. As I'm still taking baby steps when it comes to this animation malarky I'll stand by that for now.
In real life, faces are generally one of the most interesting things to observe. I've inevitably been attracted to women who have been facially interesting rather than what television shows and magazines deem to be attractive. Conventionally 'beautiful' women seem, bizarrely, kinda boring to me - everything's all there, in the right place, no effort required. True physical beauty to me lies in a face that can be explored, imbibed, appreciated in its own right. Until they tell you to stop staring, or reach for the mace.


I get why they're 'hot', it's just hard to muster up any enthusiasm...


...now these faces are full of character, which to me is 1000 times more endearing.

To draw an analogy, think of popular music. You hear a song on the radio, it's been composed to meet all the requirements of 'good' music, and its appeal lasts just long enough for you to buy the single, after which you quickly realise it's horseshit. Hence the financial success of Britney. Now think of some of your favourite songs, the ones quite personal to you that you can listen to a billion times over and never get bored. When you first heard these I'd imagine they didn't instantly gratify you, and that your fondness for them is a consequence of having them grow on you over time. The shared factor is substance, the key ingredient to staying power.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, fair enough. I'm not sure many people's brains are wired the same way as mine. Kinda works out for me as I'm a tubby fucker so I have a better chance with the weird-looking gals anyway.
A great cartoonist and animator Eddie Fitzgerald wrote on his blog about his own fascination for observing and studying faces in the context of what defines 'ugly' - I'd recommend it as a read.

Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner!: How many ugly girls are out there?

When thinking in terms of cartoons, I've similarly found that the most visually appealing faces are the ones which allow for more expression. Combined with good voice acting, this is what can really allow you to suspend your disbelief and invest yourself in the plight of a character whose existence comes down to just a series of drawings. Chuck Jones nailed this, as has John Kricfalusi - in fact, any animator worth his or her salt can pull this off well.
Me, well, I'm still learning. I find there's often some ambiguity about which emotions I'm trying to convey when doing facial acting, but it's gradually improving. Looking at the concept art, the early Duck design was completely devoid of expression, and as such a more typical 'zombie'. The more I developed the script and, subsequently, the storyboard, I wanted the character to have...well, character. With some modification of the design (chiefly through clearing up his remaining eye) I worked out a way to make him more expressive. Looking at stills from the film as it comes together I think the progress is encouraging.


There's not really much you can glean from this blank expression.


Hopefully with these you get a better idea of what mood or thought process is being conveyed.

Here are some animated expression changes in line-test and full-colour form:


In this shot, we have two states of expression. Firstly a pained wince as the top of his head is blown off, then his aghast reaction when he realises he's missing a scalp. What I was hoping to depict was not pain (as a zombie I don't think he'd feel it) but rather frustration at his further disfigurement.


A little later on a mounted gun falls from the wall, which the Duck catches. This transition - from confusion as to what has just occurred to sadistic pleasure when he realises he now has the upper hand - is a somewhat amateurish homage to the evil grin typical of Chuck Jones's characters such as Daffy Duck, Wil E. Coyote and The Grinch.


Lastly, this is a quick reaction shot when he registers that the gun he's just attempted to fire isn't loaded. I wanted this to be a mortified combination of panic and embarrassment.
In a way, the shots in which all we see are facial expressions can be the most fun to do. Later on I'll go through some of the human characters in the film - meanwhile I'll sign off with probably my favourite face in the acting world right now.

I actually sat through the 'Wicker Man' remake because she was in it. That's a true fan.

The Gun Show

I think if I were to ever own a gun, it would be a blunderbuss. Mainly because of the name. A great, big, oversized one that I'd mount somewhere so that people visiting my apartment couldn't miss it and would thus be compelled to comment.
"Oh, that?" I'd say with carefully-rehearsed nonchalance, "That's just my blunderbuss." I'd feign indifference while inside I'd be overly-gleeful that I'd had a legitimate excuse to say the word out loud.
These are the small pleasures that seem to genuinely make my day. While giving this some contemplation I made an executive decision to crowbar said firearm into my film. In the storyboard the Hunter and Duck face-off near the end with shotguns, but I figured the Hunter would probably collect different types of gun and, like me, probably just want to have a blunderbuss around so that he could have an excuse to say the word.
That's the great thing about creating characters, they can have whatever personality traits I bestow upon them, for I am their GOD. Here's an example - there's nothing in my film that lets you know that the Hunter has a secret, guilty fondness for Girls Aloud, but he does. How do I know this?
Because I fucking say so and I am his indisputable creator!
That power-trip is another gleeful pleasure. It's frankly astonishing that I'm single.
As the gun is pretty much ornamental, when the Duck tries to fire it he discovers it isn't loaded. Instead he opts to throw it at the Hunter's head. This action is represented in a very short, two-second shot, but one that took a lot of trial and error to get right, so I thought I'd break it down.

Firstly we have the animatic shot, which is just a still from the storyboard with the soundtrack already constructed. We hear the gun being thrown, connecting with the Hunter's head, his own gun going off and then the resulting rumble of debris start to come down from the ceiling. It's a fairly busy two seconds where pretty much every frame is sound-dependent, plus it's an important action that needs to be presented clearly. To start with we have the Duck's action, which comes down to three motions: the throw, the reaction to the Hunter's gun going off, and looking up at the ceiling as it starts to come down. When timed and animated the line test comes out like this:

I'm pretty pleased with the head movement and the slight squash/stretch with the reaction. After fiddling with the timing to get it exactly right the line test can be detailed, inked and coloured to get this:

For the Hunter we carry out the same process, breaking down his movement to three actions as well: about to topple after being hit, getting flung forward when his gun goes off, then cradling his head once he's settles back to his original position. Here's the line test once the timing has been worked out:

And, like before, once I feel happy with the movement, I do the inking and colouring to get this:

There's a bit of cheating going on with this shot. The first and most obvious one is that he (while sporting a thatch that would make Kay Parker seem bereft by comparison) has no actual genitalia to speak of. I figured I'd blur the crotch area for the finished film but throw in a bit of grisly detail because...uh...I'm not sure. There may be some quite deep-rooted issues there.
As far as the actual animation goes, you can probably tell that for a few frames his torso is the same drawing while his head and limbs are fully animated. This was really just to conserve time and labour - if I hadn't done the foolish thing and made him so hairy I probably would've drawn each of those frames separately. I've also employed some cartoonist license with the physical action itself - technically the gun's recoil would fling his body backwards, not forwards. But in a film where the antagonist is a reanimated, talking duck, the laws of physics aren't a primary concern. Mainly it's because this way works better with the way the shot is framed. Here's how the (nearly) finished shot works with the background and additional animation comped together:

This is obviously a funnier visual when viewed in the context of the film rather than as a perpetually-looping, miscoloured, animated GIF. As the animator, though, there's a desire to see everything you produce repeated and repeated until your brain no longer attempts to make sense of what you are looking at. As an audience member, well, there's a good chance that if you closed your eyes to sneeze at the wrong moment all the work in a shot like this would go unacknowledged. Hopefully this film will, when completed, come across as greater than the sum of its parts. That's a phrase, right? I've heard it somewhere.
Uh...how do I end this entry? Um...

BLUNDERBUSS!

Sorry, I panicked.

And here we are again...

In the wake of all that giddy rotoscoping wonderment it's now back to business as usual, although at a slightly faster pace. I'm getting between one and four shots completed a day (which averages out at just a few seconds, which is still heartbreakingly slow) and am determined to have the penultimate scene which includes all the complex animation finished by xmas. From what I've been able to determine, the other scenes in the film are far less demanding, so I want to have one scene that really lets me indulge in some different methods and styles to have under my belt for when I am assessed.
Here are a few more stills from said scene to give some indication of how it's all turning out:

Hope you all appreciate the bare flesh. I would like to post some clips soon as the visuals in motion sell the whole thing a lot better. So there's something to look forward to!
And away I go!

Hop, you mangy Anatidae!

In the last post I talked about using limited animation, wherein certain elements of the characters move while others stay the same. For this cycle I'm using full animation, which means that every frame of animation is a completely separate drawing. Starting off with, here's a six-frame hop cycle of the Duck in construction line form:

It's brief but it does what it needs to. This is for a scene in which the Duck pitifully hops away into the night, guilt-tripping the Hunter into offering a place to stay. I wanted the hops to be quick and painful looking.

Then each frame is detailed and tested again, to make sure that the animation still flows with the extra embellishment.

In the future I probably won't add as much detail at this point as I have here.

Next is the cleanup, which sees me trace over the pencil drawings in pen.

So then we colour it all in using Photoshop...

And hey presto!

The only worrying thing is it took me three hours to work this out and get it done. My course leader assures me that my production speed will get faster, which I hope will be the case. If I maintain a working pace of three hours per half-second, I'll be working on this film until 2015.

The cyclical nature of things

As I have brought up previously, this film is going to incorporate both limited animation and full animation. To demonstrate the key differences between the two I'm drawing upon that old animation staple of cycles, those wondrous sequences that can be looped over and over again. In this entry I'm going to talk about two examples of limited animation - what I've marked out as the 'flight cycle'.
Near the end of the film we find out that the Duck is not nearly as lame and crippled as he has made out to be, in fact he's fully capable of taking flight. These sequences are for when he's being chased around the house by the shotgun-toting Hunter.
First of all a layout drawing - essentially a more detailed version of the visual created in the storyboard - is created, upon which the animation is based. This gives an indication of which elements of the character will move and which will remain motionless. Limited animation does this a lot to save the time of having to draw a different image for each frame of animation. Once it is established that the only moving elements of the Duck will be its wings, careful consideration goes into the flapping motion to make it seem (loosely) realistic.
If a bird is flying it'll raise the wings up with a bend at the joint, bringing the rest up as secondary motion, then at a faster speed it will bring them down with the same bend, this time inverted. This is the first test when all the layers are coloured, scanned and comped:

Given that I am animating on twos (12.5 frames per second as opposed to 25) I inadvertently have put too much in-betweening in, so at this stage the movement is too slow. It's easy enough to fix, by dropping the unnecessary frames the cycle will go quicker, and by applying additional movement to the comped animation I can have the Duck be propelled upward slightly when the wings come down, then have him descend a little when they go up.

There is still some tweaking to be done, and with this additional motion perhaps the need for some kick animation on his remaining leg. Intents and purposes we're more or less there.
I want to cover this flying sequence from two angles, so I need to replicate this cycle but viewed from the side. It's fairly easy as I can just use the corresponding frames of the original cycle as a reference. As this is a not-quite-profile shot, it makes sense to first do a line test.

This basically shows how the animation-in-progress looks in construction-line form, so I know whether or not the movement works before I spend too much time adding detail. This is a crucial stage to get right, as you can have a finished drawing look amazing but it'll be rubbish if it doesn't move well. After a successful line test has given me the green light to go ahead, I can add detail, ink and colour to get this:

As you can see I have added some additional facial animation that is independent of the wing cycle, but the main body stays the same drawing throughout.
So, there's some limited animation for you. Next entry I'll move on to the more laborious stuff...

More O' The Same

Just a quickie to throw some more examples of poses your way. These are from the earlier scenes around the time the Duck and Hunter first meet:

The Hunter at home, unaware of the turn his life is about to take. I was thinking of throwing in his arms sticking to the sofa leather a little bit as an extra detail.

An upper-body shot that will probably only warrant some hair movement, next to a set-up for a basic profile-view walk cycle

The first reveal of the Duck, although this level of detail will only be glimpsed for a split-second (lightning illuminates the design which is otherwise in silhouette). I'm a glutton for punishment.

The subsequent reaction shot from the Hunter (note that with this drawing and the previous one I've tried out some dodgy POV perspective work). This is probably the only example of symmetry in body language used in the film.

Two befuddled reaction shots from the Hunter as the Duck's more eloquent side emerges.

A fairly standard Hunter pose alongside a setup sketch for a forthcoming challenge: The Duck's 'hop' cycle.

These profile shots can be used for reference on numerous occasions, chiefly in the 'first meeting' scene when the Duck is seemingly threatening the Hunter with violence of some sort, as well as a later kitchen scene in which the two are arguing over a missing calzone.

As a plethora of poses are piling up persistently (heh) I don't imagine it's worth posting up every last one as it would fully engulf the blog. From this point on I'll stick to highlights or layouts for specifically complex sequences and give the more boring ones a miss. It's how I keep things fresh, yo.
'Til next time...