Final Animation Evaluation

My animation for this module is now finished and has a running time of 1 minute 30 seconds. Various animation techniques have been used to achieve the effects. The secondary character, the Seagull, was a basic model built with the box modelling technique. After being given a materials, a bone structure was built to fit inside the model. This allowed me to use keyframing to move different parts of the character through rotation, particularly the beak, neck and tail feathers. With this, I could make the character squawk and twitch in the background while the main character animated in the foreground.

The antagonist of the piece, Crabs, was built out of multiple pieces. By having different objects making up the body and limbs, it allowed better attachment to the rig. The crab CAT object was used as the rig and the different objects that make up the character were controlled by selecting each element and applying weight.

The eyes were moved using a look-at constraint. Using my research shown earlier in this blog, an important thing I learnt was to have the characters constantly focus on anything whether it was on or off screen. I feel that I achieved this in the final animation. Crabs also made use of the morpher modifier with the 9 base expressions I found in my research. I think that the different combinations these expressions provided made the main character have an emotive face that conveyed his intentions effectively.

If I had more time, I would have worked on blending scenes together more effectively. In the final piece, there are a lot of separate renderings used for relatively short scenes. I could have animated more action into longer renderings, but it was faster to do it this way. For example, when Crabs spots the bacon and the camera pulls back, a new scene plays after a cross-fade showing him holding the bait instead of him walking over and taking a hold of it.While this does allow for more camera angles to be used, it does break up the action a little more than I would prefer.

Still going...

Since I haven't done a sizeable blog entry recently, here is a token screenshot of me getting on with some animating.

This shows the fully rigged 'Crabs' character picking up the tophat. A look-at constraint has been used to guide the eyes around throughout the animation including this scene.

All of the techniques I have used in the animation should be covered under previous blog posts. These include but are not limited to;

Keyframe animation of pupils by increasing the sphere's hemisphere, bones in the Seagull, eyes using the look-at constraint and various scene objects e.g. the top hat.
Character Animation Toolkit techniques such as binding 'Crabs' to a dummy helper and giving it a path constraint to follow a line across the scene, making the walking motion.
Basic camera movements.

Just over half the scenes are fully rendered now and placed in a Premiere Pro project file, so I'm confident this will be done with soon, with plenty of time left for tweaking if my other module's workload allows.

Re-rigging Crabs

With the morphers complete for the main character, I needed to re-rig him in the same scene. This also gave me an opportunity to make a better rig.

This time, instead of using envelopes on the skin modifier, I used 'paint weights' instead. This allows individual vertices or elements to be applied to each bone. Since my character was built with separate shapes for each bone this was a good find.

The image below shows how much better the new version is. On the character's right hand side is the new technique which shows almost perfect skinning. The other side is from the envelopes and clearly shows how much it warps the mesh even though the envelopes were carefully sized.

On the skin modifier, I selected 'edit envelopes' and ticked 'select elements'. An appropriate bone was selected, then the element was clicked which lit up all of the required vertices only. I increased 'Abs. Effect' to 1.0 which gave the bone full control over that part of the mesh.

By creating a line and a 'dummy' helper, the crab can follow a path with CAT's pre-made movements. However, I am having problems with this. The body follows fine, but the mesh legs stay rigid to the body while the actual rig's legs are walking properly. Until I get over this problem, I can't work on any scenes that require walking.

Rigging the Seagull

Instead of using the character animation toolkit, it will be easier to just rig the seagull with a simple set of bones. The character isn't in the animation very much and he doesn't have any complex movements.

 The bones form the rough shape of the bird.

They are the aligned inside the mesh of the seagull. The model is given the skin modifier, and the bone structure is assigned there. After editing the envelopes, the seagull model can be moved. The legs and beak move fairly well, but there is a bit of deformation when moving the neck around.

The seagull is a minor secondary character in the animation with little to do, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The facial animation is going to be centred around the crab character.

Character Profile 2

This is the character profile for my second character, the bird.

Name: 'Sea Gullington III'
Personality: Mr. Gullington is rich, thrifty, intelligent and a philanthropist.
Appearance: He is a common seagull with not-so-common accessories in his top-hat and monocle.
Occupation: The chairman of a successful chain of hotels.
Affiliations: His loyal employees.
Goal: To leave a large inheritance to his young.
Home: The biggest nest on the southern coast of England.
Allies: All of the rich and elite birds in England.
Enemies: None, but he does have 'competition' in his business rivals.
Likes: Dressing to impress and going fishing.
Dislikes: The owners of his rival hotel chain.
Skills: Making money.
Weakness: Income tax.
Powers & Abilities: He can fly.
Weapons: His powerful connections.
Fate: To be the unwitting victim of a mugging.
Quote: "Never spend your money before you have earned it."

Using Morpher

Using the facial shapes I found in my research earlier, I can use the morpher modifier to give expression to my main antagonist.

 

Below are the different faces Crabs can pull. These are just the basic faces, but by combining them, moving limbs, moving eyes, eyelids and dilating pupils, a wider range of emotion can be achieved.

Dilated pupils, widened eyes and an 'Ooo' expression is how Crabs will look when we sees something he likes and wants.

By manipulating the FFD boxes, I can give Crabs an angrier expression. This is combined with the 'Anger' mouth shape.

A wince and the 'Yuk' face makes Crabs look disgusted.

The 'FVBPM' face is used in dialogue more than expression. This is the shape the mouth makes with  those letters. Mostly air being pushed through the front, top teeth.

This is the 'Elvis'. I suppose I can make him look confused with this. An unsymmetrical wince helps too.

This is Crabs' neutral face. His eyes will probably be a little wider as he looks a bit too dopey like this.

This is the 'Smile' mouth shape.

This is the 'Frown' mouth shape.

Widened eyes and the 'Big Smile' mouth shape make Crabs look even happier.

Raised lower eyelids and the 'Big Frown' face make him look  upset.

The 'Oh' expression and widened eyes make him look surprised.

All of these models are linked to the original with the morpher modifier.

The army of crabs will all be hidden except the rigged one.

Final Story Details

Now with the changes to my story complete, I feel it appeals to the target demographic more. Children would enjoy the cartoon style and bright colours and instead of being a bit mischievous using bait to get the hat, he is now much more up front and obvious about his villainy by being more physical.

As for the story, it will hopefully go like this:
(All mouth shapes are referred to in the way I found in my research which I have posted earlier on this blog)

• Screen fades in as Crabs is in the centre of the screen. He has a shell on his back and is squeezing out of it. His mouth is clenched and eyes shut tight, showing effort. The shell pops off and his eyes open slightly and mouth relaxes, showing relief. Crabs scuttles to the right as the screen cross fades to the next screen.
• The bird is on the right side of the screen, twitching and squawking.
• Crabs scuttles on from the left with a neutral expression.
• Crabs' eyes lock on to the hat. It is his object of desire, so his eyes widen and pupils dilate. His mouth morphs to the 'OOO' position and he raises his claws to his mouth.
• As the thought of taking the hat crosses his mind, his eyes narrow and has a wide, toothy grin. His eyes will shift quickly side to side in a mischievous way.
• Crabs steps closer to the bird, and his eyes focus on the Seagull's eyes intently. Still narrow eyed, his mouth changes to the 'angry' position and he clicks his raised claws in a form of taunt.
• Crabs mouth changes to the frown position, eyes staying narrow as he quickly scuttles forward and nips at the bird's legs.
• The bird hops off screen in pain and the hat topples from it's head.
• As soon as the bird begins to leave shot, Crab's attention is straight back to the hat. His eyes will follow the hat through the air and to the ground. His mouth will change back to 'OOO' and his eyes widen again.
• Crab's face turns to joy as he finds the hat in his possession. His mouth changes to 'big smile' and his eyes return to neutral.
• He picks up the hat and throws it onto his back. His face changes to a smug expression. Eyes closed and a big closed smile. He scuttles off and the screen fades to black.
• The screen fades back in and crabs has a neutral expression.
• Some bacon on a line come into shot and Crab's expression changes back to 'OOO' with wide eyes and dilated pupils. Crabs LOVES bacon. He raises his claws and clicks them in excitement.
• Eyes slightly widened and mouth changes to a wide toothy grin.
• He grabs the bacon and pulls it towards him.
• The string goes tight as the bacon is a lure from children going crabbing. Crab's eyes go very wide and pupils contract. His mouth changes to 'big frown'.
• His mouth then morphs to anger as his eyes narrow.
• His eyes look the line up and down and head reaches forward and snips it.
• His face changes to a wide, toothy smile while his eyes remain narrow, giving him a menacing look.
• Crabs looks up and rears onto his back legs. He raises his claws in the air and waves them, along with the bacon in a taunt.
• Crabs looks at his bacon with glee. His bottom eyelids will be raised and he will have a smile.
• Finally, he scuttles off screen and fade out.

I intend to make use of various camera angles, particularly close ups to convey the facial animation clearly. However, I will not use extreme close ups as my earlier research made some points as to why that type of shot does not translate well to this style of animation.

All of the models are finished, and the rigging and morphers are nearly there so I think I am on track.