My Finished Animation Demo Reel

Here's the link to my finished demo reel:

James Ensor Animation Demo Reel 2013 on Vimeo

Sound and Editing

Now that I had rendered all my animations out from After Effects, I could then edit my reel together. To do this, I exported all my animations as TIFF sequences from After Effects and then reimported them into Premiere. I found it quite difficult to edit my animations together as I knew that when it came to putting sound into my reel, it would change the pace of everything. To get over this problem, I went over to YouTube and found some pieces of music I thought would work quite well with my animation style and, most importantly, what's on screen.

For my quick demo reel edit a few days ago, I used one of Randy Newman's most well known pieces of music; the Monsters, Inc. theme. I decided to first use this music for my show reel because it's catchy and has a happy vibe to it which I felt (at the time) would work well with what I had done so far at the time of making the quick edit. At the time of putting it in the reel halfway through production, it seemed to work but when I used it in my final reel edit this morning, it just didn't work at all.

Now I had to find new music to use in my reel. As well as this, I thought about finding other sounds that could play in the background of my reel. I thought up of the following:

- "Shh!" (for when Norman turns to the audience and does the "shh" gesture)
- Dinosaur roar (T - Rex)
- Pharaoh scream (same one I used for my Norman film as well as the accompanying DJ vinyl scratch to break up the music)
- "Sigh" (for the robot lip sync just before he says his line)
- The dialogue used for the robot lip sync

In the end I didn't include any of the above as I knew it just wouldn't work with music. I decided to keep with just the music.

Music:

Disney Pixar's 2001 "Monsters, Inc." Theme by Randy Newman

The animations I made for my reel just didn't suit the style of the above music so I went to find something that would compliment my reel, not distract.

Add caption

Gorillaz' 19/2000 (Instrumental version) from their 2001 "Gorillaz" album

I liked how the beat of the music worked well in time with my animations although it didn't feel quite right so I went to find other Gorillaz instrumentals.

Gorillaz' Rhinestone Eyes (Instrumental version) from their 2010 "Plastic beach" album

In the end I decided on this instrumental as the beat worked almost perfectly in time with my reel. A lot of the animations work well with the beat but a few don't quite fit. I don't feel that it distracts the audience at all so I have decided to keep with this one.

I also mocked up an end credits title card too but I've decided to leave it out because when thinking ahead in the near future when applying for jobs and intern ships, I don't think employers will be really interested in what software I used to produce my demo reel. I think that if an prospective employer were really interested in my work and wanted to invite me for an interview, they would then have the opportunity to ask such questions.

Post Production

Now that I have finished all my animations and they're rendered out from Maya, I can now go into the post-production phase of my demo reel. For this, I am going to use After Effects. I've been thinking of what effects I can apply to my animations to improve the overall look and feel to them. I have to be careful which how much I do though as I don't want the audience to get distracted by the effects so they don't notice the animations.

I've decided to apply very minimal effects to my work - just some lens blur to create a motion blur effect with the camera as well as optical lens flares. I could have set up my cameras in Maya to do these for me, so I wouldn't have to do them in post, but it both increases rendering time and I wouldn't have a lot of control over the lens flares.

Because I applied effects to only some of the animations, I could go straight into importing the other animations I didn't apply effects to straight into Premiere.

Final Touches - Making My Reel Professional

I have been testing out different fonts and colours for my titles at the beginning and end of my demo reel. I have decided to make my titles in Maya because not only do I think they look more professional than 2D, it emphasises my favour towards CG rather than 2D animation.

I downloaded free fonts from dafont.com and used the text tool in Maya to create the words in CG. I then extruded the letters to emphasise the 3D look of them.

First font - although clear enough, the style doesn't suite the reel I have in my head at the moment

 

Second font - although more stylised, it isn't as clear as the one above and is too 'sci-fi' for my reel

Third font - I like the font because it's both clear and suits the animation style I have gone for in my reel. I also tested out colours but these are too dark for my reel.

Testing colours - I like the colours but I'm not too sure on how much white can be seen

I've moved some of the individual letters around to make it read better

Final titles (with basic lighting)

I want my reel to look as polished as possible so I've been playing around with different textures and lighting for my scenes. I've been careful with how much I've done and how long I've spent playing around with different settings because I don't have the luxury of time and don't want to distract the viewer from the animations themselves.

Here's a run down of what I've done to some of the scenes to make them look as good as possible.

Norman Sneak - the cameras have a default where anything not lit or textured is rendered as matte black. When I first rendered this animation with the default black 'background', it didn't stand out at all and with making Norman's texture really dark, to almost black, I couldn't see much of him except for where my three spot lights highlighted his features during the animation. I decided to change the camera environment colour (the colour at which it renders anything not lit or textured) to almost pure white. I didn't go for pure white since the title almost disappeared. I feel it works well but I might go back and change the colours of the title to make them stand out more.

I decided to render the animations I did for Edward Hudson's film, "Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" with just an Ambient Occlusion pass because I feel it looks really professional. Below are the settings I used for all 6 shots:

(Select everything needed to be rendered > Layer Editor > Render tab > Create New Layer From Selected > Presets > Occlusion)

Samples - 64

Spread - 1

Max. distance - 45

When rendering everything from After Effects and Maya, I was sure to render as TIFF sequences as to not lose quality and then saved each sequence in separate folders.

2D Robot Animation - Compositing

This morning I finished the robot animation and rendered the U.F.O animation from Maya.

 The robot

The U.F.O 

Here's the final edit with both the 2D robot animation and the 3D U.F.O animation composited together

To composite these together, I rendered both the robot and the U.F.O as TIFF sequences, in After Effects and Maya respectively, and then imported them in the timeline together in a separate composition in After Effects. 

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation - Final Thoughts

Today I finished the animation for Ed's film and gave him the Maya file with all six shots. I am happy with the animation I have done and, most importantly, Ed is happy with the animation for his film. I am pleased with what I managed to do with the time I had, as well as restarting my demo reel.

I have done a total of 308 frames which is almost 13 seconds of animation.

Overall, I have enjoyed working on Ed's film. Working in a team has been beneficial, not just for the work I can use in my demo reel, but it was an experience that showed me just how important communication, trust and team work is when working on a project together.

I think the experience I have had working on Ed's film will be similar to that of working in a team in the industry although there will be some differences. I think the teams will be much bigger with more people doing a much wider variety of tasks. I also think it will be more professional in terms of more daily deadlines.

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation Update 3

I finished all the animations for Ed this morning and have just got to finalise everything before I give him the file ready for rendering this afternoon.

Shot 18

Here's one of the reference videos I recorded (for Shot 18)

Shot 21

Shot 22

                                        

"The Trophy" Animation

The story behind this piece of animation is heavily inspired by Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" scene where Indiana is replacing the golden idol with a bag of sand. I looked past what we see on screen and looked into Indiana's thoughts and emotions during this particular scene in the film ... nervousness, being on the edge, wonder, amazement, relief, arrogance, panic, trust, shock, surprise, terror etc.

From this, I decided to set myself another challenge (like the eyes and the cake). This time I wanted to show changes in emotion in as little time as possible. I thought back to Indiana Jones, the amount of emotion that Harrison Ford put into that scene, and how I could make links between two or three emotions, one after the other. I decided to go with:

tiredness > relief > happiness

The story I wanted to go with for this piece of animation is where this robot has been climbing endless stairs for what feels like an eternity. His goal, and the thing that's keeping him going, is the eventual reach and claim of the trophy.

I'm not 100% sure on how to present this story, so I've started with a side view of the robot walking up the stairs.

Walking up stairs (Work In Progress)

I'm having a little trouble with the rig, particularly the legs' IK (they snaps into different positions some times) and the eye lids (the mesh intersects the mesh of the eyes). These are little problems which I'm trying to get around but hopefully they won't be too visible on screen. 

Change of emotion (from tiredness > relief > happiness - also a Work In Progress)

For the trophy model, I decided to duplicate the robot rig, pose him like a statue and change the texture to resemble that of gold. I also decided to add a fire dynamic to the model to make it more God like and to exaggerate the importance and passion for the robot wanting the statue.

Render of the statue prop on fire

Final animation

Maya screenshot showing the scene

I feel this piece of animation could have gone better but I do feel it gets across the character, his emotions and the story. When it comes to editing the reel later, I may leave this piece of animation out if it doesn't fit well with the other animations.

2D Robot Animation - Animation

Importing the robot into After Effects from Photoshop was really easy and because I set up both the Photoshop document and After Effects composition as the same pixel ration (1280 x 720), I didn't lose any image quality.

Photoshop screenshot showing how I organised the body parts on separate layers

After importing to After Effects, I organised the layers and edited the pivot points for each of the body parts. I did this by going to the Pan Behind tool > select the body part > moving the pivot point to where I wanted it to be and then saved the changes by clicking in the Selection tool. After all these were set to how I wanted them, I set the robot in his starting pose.

Now I could start animating the robot. The animation style I adopted for this particular piece was inspired by that seen in the Rayman Origins game ...

12 Principles of Animation Explained with Rayman Origins

After Effects screenshot showing the body parts on their layers with some keys 

I'm happy with how this is turning out and am looking forward to compositing this with the U.F.O animation I have done. I am hoping to finish the robot animation by next week.

2D Robot Animation - Design

I've been thinking about the design of the robot and have decided to use the construction industry as inspiration. I decided to make a moodboard of images related to the vehicles and equipment used in the industry to get me started ...

Construction Vehicles and Equipment Moodboard

After looking through a plethora of images related to the construction industry, I started to sketch some  possible body parts for the robot ...

Robot body part sketches

Next I began thinking about how I will animate the robot and pondered about making the character design similar to that of the redesigned Rayman character from the fairly recent Rayman Origins game. Rayman's body parts are completely separate from each other which allows the animators to create a snappy animation style. Thinking about my own character, when it comes to importing the robot into After Effects, it will be easy to draw the body parts on separate layers in Photoshop and import the document straight into After Effects and finally animate each body part that way.

Robot Concept

Robot clean up in Photoshop

                                     

Robot 'Colour Map'

Robot Colour

Robot Colour (+Dodge and Burn)

Next I have to import these body parts into After Effects and begin animating them.

Venturing Into 2D Animation ...

I'm starting to feel a little trapped in the world of CG so I've decided to go back to trying some 2D animation. I want to advertise myself as an animator, not just a 3D animator. I'm not particularly confident in animating with Adobe Flash or Flipbook to create 2D animation so I've decided to go with Adobe After Effects.

My plan is to design the robot, draw it neatly in Photoshop (as well as colour), export each body part into After Effects and then use the transformation pivots to animate him. I will avoid as much tweening as possible and will use a lot of easing in and out for this animation.

I'm thinking of having a pile of robot body parts on the ground forming a robot and then performing something simple like waving to the audience or doing a hand stand. I really enjoyed compositing 3D and 2D animation together earlier in the term (with the eyes and tongue animations I finished a few weeks ago) so I am considering compositing the U.F.O model I made for the T - Rex animation in with this piece of animation although I am not sure how it would fit in there ...

I'm not too bothered if I don’t complete this piece in time for the deadline because it’s something I can always go back to and improve in the future.

Demo Reel - A Quick Edit

I wanted to see how my demo reel was looking so far so I decided to throw together a quick edit. I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far but I know I can do a lot better. 

T - Rex vs. The U.F.O Animation

Blocked animation (Work in Progress)

I've decided to leave the animation for a moment and start designing and modelling the U.F.O prop that the T-Rex is going to grab in mid air. The model will be simple and the design effective.

U.F.O design concepts

Finished U.F.O model in wireframe mode

Finished model textured

I already know what I want the U.F.O to perform in this scene but I will be watching reference videos for a little inspiration on how it might move throughout both this scene and the 2D robot animation later on ...

Tim Burton's 1996 "Mars Attacks" Title Sequence

Tim Burton's 1996 "Mars Attacks!" U.F.O Destruction Scene

Maya screenshot showing the scene set up

I also found some good reference videos for improving my dinosaur animation ...

Steven Spielberg's 1993 "Jurassic Park" T - Rex reference video

Steven Spielberg's 1997 "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" T - Rex reference video

Brad Silberling's 2009 "Land of the Lost" T - Rex reference video

Robot Lip Sync Animation

I really wanted to include a lip sync piece in my demo reel because not only is lip syncing a very important skill for an animator to have, but it's really enjoyable. I prefer to animate the lips first, then the eyes (and other facial features if necessary, depending on the rig / character) and finally the body.

Lip sync without body movements

Lip sync with blocked out animation (Work in Progress)

I'm enjoying this piece of animation because I can experiment with different poses for the robot during his performance.

Maya screenshot showing the scene set up

Hungry Eyes - Compositing in After Effects

Today I composited the 2D animation (the frames from Photoshop) on top of the 3D animation (a batch render from Maya) in After Effects.

Eyes animation

Tongue animation 

Final composite

I feel this animation has gone well and I'm pleased with the final product. I took a gamble with combining 2D and 3D animation but I think that it's worked well. I may develop this technique of combining forms of animation for my third year film but that is a task for the summer period.

Motion Capture - Trying Something New

After the motion capture talk a few weeks back, Ben and I decided to team up and figure out how we can use motion capture for our work in the future. 

I have been playing around with Motion Builder over the past couple of weeks and have gotten used to the software. We originally set out to use motion capture data to create a piece of animation using characters of our own or from the Internet although we didn't realise how hard it would actually be.

The furthest we got with it was combining a C3D file from the Internet with the standard human character model that comes with MotionBuilder. The Quicktime at the bottom shows our result from this experimentation.

Sean showed us a couple tutorial videos to help us with our task. The links are below ...

MotionBuilder Part 1 - Using Actors & Motion Capture Data

MotionBuilder Part 2 - Using Actors To Dive A Character

These videos were very helpful in our task. Thanks very much to Sean for showing us these videos.

MotionBuilder screenshots

The C3D file we downloaded from the Internet

Combining the C3D file with the standard human character in MotionBuilder

The character has been fully bonded with the motion capture data

QuickTime movie 

We got the C3D file from here:

Beyond Motion Website - Free Motion Capture Data

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation Update 2

I've been working on the animation for Ed's film as well as the animation for my demo reel over the weekend and managed to finish three shots. I've shown them to Ed and he likes what I've done with them so far. I may have to go back and polish them even more to get them just right but for the time being I feel I've done well.

Shot 17

Shot 19

Shot 20

Maya screenshot showing scene set up for Shot 20

The animation for Ed is going pretty well, although I'm finding it a challenge to keep up with both the work for Ed and my own. I'm sticking to the daily deadline's I have set myself though so it's going well so far.

Hungry Eyes Animation - The Tongue

Going back to the hungry eyes animation I started last week, I realised that the animation wasn't clear enough, so I decided to go back to the drawing board and think of how to make this piece of animation clearer for the audience.

I decided to animate a tongue because I knew it's the best way to get across what I want the audience to know the character is feeling - hunger. I also animated a few saliva droplets to exaggerate the characters' hunger.

I also decided to animate the tongue in 2D and composite it with the eyes in post production because I want to try something new and feel the cartoon 2D tongue with the cartoon 3D eyes will compliment each other well.

Rough animation in Photoshop (repeated)

Final animation coloured in Photoshop (repeated)

I think this has worked well but I won't be able to tell if the whole thing works until I composite the eyes and the tongue together in After Effects later on.

Fox Ball Bounce Animation

This piece of animation took me longer to finish than I thought it would. Most of the time spent was on polishing the tail movements, particularly when the character rolls right and left. 

To help me get an idea of how follow through works in animation, I analysed a couple scenes from Disney's "Flubber". I found the following scene particularly helpful ...

Walt Disney's 1997 "Flubber" - "MAMBO!" scene

I also took note how the scene were set up and decided to use similar lighting for my scene. 

Maya screenshot showing rig and spotlight set up

After finalising the animation, I went back into the camera set up and began playing around with how it might react to the character bouncing on the ground. I tried the following approach ...

but in the end I decided that it just doesn't work since the weight of the character bouncing onto at the beginning and off the ground at the end isn't large enough to affect the camera that much. Following this, I decided to leave the camera how I originally set it up. 

Hungry Eyes Animation

I find the best way to improve on anything is to try new things. This is why I set myself a challenge. Going through animationbuffet.com looking for free rigs to download, I came across this really simple rig; a pair of cartoon eyes (and accompanying eyebrows). I immediately starting coming up with performances this guy could do and thought about what if the eyes were the character (not just part of a character). I strongly believe in the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul and using this as a starting point, I began thinking of what this particular pair of eyes could be thinking …

First I came up with a quick model sheet to test out poses and the accompanying emotions

I then decided to use several emotions in my animation - going from tired to surprised, and then being  sneaky and finally to greed. Next I needed a prop or some other indication to back up the emotions above. I thought about having a cake next to the pair of eyes. I decided to draw some concepts before I started modelling a simple cake model ...

Cupcake model in wireframe mode

Cupcake model with simple textures applied (Lamberts and Blinns)

Animation WIP after an hour of getting used to the rig and putting him in key poses

Screenshot in Maya of the Hungry Eyes scene set up

I think this animation is going well and am really enjoying it. I will continue this at a later date and start something new for my reel as I am happy with the animation I have done for this piece.  

Norman Sneak Animation

From looking at animation reels online, I started to feel like there was only one way to make an animation demo reel i.e. title card with the person’s name, contact details etc. After looking through demo reels online and imagining how an employer would see the reels that come in piles at a time, I started to become bored and felt none of the reels I were looking at grabbed my attention straight away. This is why I've decided to start my demo reel a little differently.

I am going straight into animation with a sneak cycle using a Norman rig. I've decided to use Norman since I'm really confident with the rig and know his restrictions and what he can and can't do. I decided to start with a sneak cycle because I want the audience to be engrossed in the reel as soon as they see Norman sneaking in on screen.

I got inspiration for this from one of The Pink Panther cartoons, "Pink Pyjamas" by Blake Edwards which was released in 1964. In this particular episode we see our favourite pink feline sneaking into a house for the night whilst hiding from the owner. One thing that drew me to these cartoons when I were younger was how the music worked really well with what was going on screen, it was almost as though the music was created specifically for that cartoon ...

The Pink Panther - "Pink Pyjamas" - DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, 1964

I started off with a quick storyboard to get an idea of how it will play out ...

Rough Storyboard

After deciding how it will play out, I then started recording reference videos of ,myself performing different sneaks, taking note of how I control my arms and hands. Next I used the Animator's Survival Kit to get a rough idea of how to animate a sneak cycle, especially the legs and hips.

Contact position

Passing position

Blocked animation

When I had finished blocking the animation, I then tweaked the camera so it didn't move so much when Norman hits the words and then I polished the animation even more

Screenshot in Maya showing the Norman Sneak scene set up

Changing the colours of Norman to look like a cat-burglar

Introduction To Motion Capture

Today we got given the chance to take a look at the motion capture suite in the Universities' Sports and Science's department. It was really exciting to actually see a motion capture suite and get a further insight into what it can do. Although we were shown the equipment and the uses that the department has it for, I saw the potential it had for 3D animation in our course. With 3D animation being my specialism, I took great interest in seeing how this fantastic tool is used. Motion capture suites can be used to capture data for the military, medical and sports as well as the entertainment industries.

Case Study: Andy Serkis ...

Serkis makes his living through acting with motion cap. Although best known for his portrayal of Gollum in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and Kong in Jackson's remake of King Kong, he has done the motion capture for chimpanzee Caesar in Rupert Wyatt's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures of TinTin" films.

Peter Jackson's 2003 "The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King" Gollum Performance  

Bringing Gollum to Life - Mini Documentary

How Motion Capture Works ...

An actor is suited up in clothing with tiny polystyrene balls attached to all the major points of the body. These contain reflective markers which are captured by infra-red cameras. The cameras are set up in a large circle around the actor(s) which record the movements. The more markers that are used, the more data is captured although this depends on what the data will be used for, and how much money the studio can use for the motion capture data.

An example of the motion capture suits ...

Even props can be used but these will have to be composited in with the animation later ...

An example of a motion capture studio ...

Advantages ...

- Close to real life results can be obtained from motion capture data which significantly reduces the cost and money spent on animators' although this is bad as it replaces peoples' jobs in the industry

- Once all the equipment is set up, many takes of the same performance can be done until the director is happy with the data captured

- The amount of data captured and the time saved in key framing the same animation contributes towards making production deadlines easier

and Disadvantages ...

- The specific hardware and specialist software is extremely expensive

- Setting up the equipment so there is no chance of magnetic interference and reducing the chances of the tiniest of mistakes takes a very long time 

- Most of today's motion capture equipment will only allow the data to be recorded and then watched by the crew (then decided whether to re-shoot it or not) which extends time recording data before it is pushed along the production pipeline. Only a few systems allow real time viewing alongside recording the data. It is easier to re-shoot rather than manipulate the data for animation later.

- Motion capture can only be used for realistic animation, which is perfect for live action and video games but for film and games that require more exaggerated and stylised animation, it is not so useful e.g. emphasises on anticipation, follow through, secondary action and even manipulating the shape of the character through squash and stretch must be added later

- Mesh intersections will occur if the computer model have different proportions from the motion capture actor e.g. if the model has exaggerated hands in size, when it comes to viewing the model that's been combined with the motion capture data the hands will intersect other parts of the bodies' mesh

"Once Upon A Time In Leningrad" Animation Update

Restarting my demo reel has meant I’ve had to cut down on other areas that will affect my own work. I talked to Ed about my predicament and told him I wouldn’t be able to animate all the shots that he gave me to do. Ed understood what I told him and we came to an agreement about the amount of shots I will animate for him. I am now animating 6 shots instead of the original 24. Although this doesn’t seem much, Ed really appreciates my help and input into his film.

I will post an update in about a week with how I am getting on with the work.

Here's a very quick walk cycle I did with the rig to test him out:

Once Upon A Time In Leningrad Production Plan showing my given shots (17 to 22)

Full 3D animatic

(My six shots take place between 1:03 to 1:16)

Recording Reference Videos for Animation

I've recently discovered that recording reference videos really helps with animating a character. Usually I'm not confident enough to perform in front of a camera but after performing the actions a few times, I did get into it and I found it’s actually pretty fun. 

After taking around ten different videos, I then go through each of them and decide which one conveys the performance best.

Unfortunately I didn't have my DSLR at hand to record the videos in high quality so I had to use the camera on my phone. Although not the best in quality, I did manage to capture the performance pretty well.

When it comes to animating, I will first use Adobe Premiere to scrub through each of the videos and analyse each frame before deciding which ones I can use as the starting point for key frames. After this is done, I will then start animating.