In the final previs I added provisional sounds and music that will be mastered in the last steps.
I have also tried to add an actual character to the scene to see how it will look together:
The other problem that I am excited to look into is the process of making gathering of fireflies. In the previs it looks like this:
But for the final animation I will try to make it look like this:
Does gender representation in the industry influence animation?
Abstract:
Over the years gender representation in animated films has significantly increased. Not only female characters started to appear in the lead roles but their characteristics have also evolved from the basic social stereotypes. The change towards equality has been also seen in the industry itself. This paper will study if there is a direct relationship between gender representation in the industry and on screen.
Literature review:
The following literature review is going to be divided into three parts. The first part will cover the topic of the underrepresentation of females in the industry and its improvement over time, the second part covers the increase of female representation in animated films and the last part will discover a connection between gender representation in the industry and on screen.
Jobs in the animation industry have been gender-segregated from the start. The creative departments in most studios were handled by men, while women were limited to the drawing and painting department, where the work was mostly uncreative (Furniss, 2000). Over time women started to take more job positions, however inequality still exists. From 2014-2018, the gender ratio of males to females across head positions was 8.5 to 1 (Smith, Choueiti, Pieper, Clark, 2019). A bigger gender gap is in such roles as directors, writers, and producers (Smith, Choueiti, Choi, Pieper, 2019). Even though gender inequality in the industry is still on a high level, the number of women working on films and taking top positions have significantly increased.
From the early animation films, women were represented in a very stereotypical way with exaggerated features and primary as a side character. Although, in the modern time only 20 (17%) of the 120 top animated features from 2007-2018 had a female lead or co lead (Smith, Choueiti, Choi, Pieper, 2019), the female representation in animated films as well as the number of female leads have increased.
The last part of the paper will combine two previous paragraphs to understand if there is a connection between increase of women taking positions in the industry and female representation on screen. The presence or absence of the connection will be reinforced by two statistics: one of them will show top animation films with female leads and/or better female representation and the percentage of women working on these films, and the other will illustrate top animation films with male leads and the percentage of women working on them.
The main purpose of the paper is to find out if gender representation in the industry influences gender representation in the animation films. If so, this paper will prove that gender equality and more diverse representation will benefit the industry and is a right way to move forward.
Bibliography:
Smith, S.L., Choueiti, M., Choi, A., & Pieper, K. (2019). ‘Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Gender, Race/Ethnicity, & Age of Directors Across the Top Films From 2007-2018,’ USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from: http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inclusion-in-the-directors-chair-2019.pdf
Smith, S.L., Choueiti, M., Pieper, K. & Clark, H. (2019). Increasing Inclusion in Animation. Investigating Opportunities, Challenges, and the Classroom to the C-Suite Pipeline,’ USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from: https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-animation-201906.pdf
Furniss, M. (2000). ‘“Color and Line” in Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics,’ London: John Libbey. Rev. edition: 71-74.
In the class we learned about face capturing:
In the collaboration project I continued working on the scanning machine animation. Although we had some changes.
Instead of the previous model of the scanning machine we decided to use a different one:
We decided to put the animation in the middle on the scene to be visible for a viewer.
I have worked on improving the animation and make is as believable as possible:
This week I have worked on other shots to make them look better. I cleared some movement of the character and improved timing of the shots.
For the shot 2 I decided to give more space for the lip movement: when a firefly sits on the face of the character, it irritates the lip and eventually it will make the character wake up and sit down.
Here is the timing before:
And after:
The same change happened to the Scene 3 – I added more time for the character to look around and at themselves.
In the Scene 4 I added more time in the end of the scene.
In the Scene 8 I added the camera focus change. However, it gives a strange stroke to the background while playblasting. It doesn’t occur in the actual render.
When rendered:
I have also added another final scene – a detail on the character.
Abstract:
Over the years gender representation in animated films has significantly increased. Not only female characters started to appear in the lead roles but their characteristics have also evolved from the basic social stereotypes. The change towards equality has been also seen in the industry itself. This paper will study if there is a direct relationship between gender representation in the industry and on screen.
In the class we had an industry talk about creative computing. Important books for the topic:
For the collaboration project we have agreed on dismissing a diary and a poster idea and instead focus on the hand scanner. The animation will consist of a child’s hand being gently placed into the scanner by adult hand. This will be also accompanied with voices to make the idea more clear.
I have finally received models that I can use for the animation. It includes the hands and the scanner:
For the purpose of a better animation I have filmed a reference:
I was able to create a rough animation for this “memory”:
The purpose was to show an emotion only with the hands. The kid is supposed to be afraid since they has never done anything like that before but their parent tried to calm them and gently put their hand on the scanner.
This week I have also made new changes to a few shots.
In the 5th shot I’ve added movement to the bugs as we discussed last week.
First of all, I added a few elements in the 6th scene to make the movement more interesting and natural. I’ve also added a stone in the left bottom for the better composition.
I have also changed rocks in the Scene 7 which gives a bit more interesting composition and shows movement of both the character and bugs as well as it enables to play with the camera focus – at first only bugs will be in focus and then the character.
For the Scene 8 I have added a movement of standing up in order to link it with the scene before. I have added a slight movement of the character.
The last change I did this week was to put the camera closer to the character and the object.
I have finished modelling the whole arm and added a lot of details such as decorative bolts as well as texture for the main material.
This class was about creating a MetaHuman using an Unreal Engine Meta Human software. It helps to create a unique model (including animation) of a highly realistic human.
I also tried to make a model of my classmate Gloria since at the previous class I have made her scan. The result was impressive:
This week we have also visited a Frameless exhibition. It was an incredible immersive experience that have inspired me a lot.
This week we had our regular meeting with our group members. The focus of the meeting was more on the model on the main building and VR effects used for the characters.
We have also discussed that it would be very helpful for the experience as well as for the animations to make ghosts glitching.
Since the models I could use for the animation were still in production, I focused on some ideas for the “memories”.
Specifically I have chosen to work on the ideas for propaganda posters and a diary.
Propaganda posters references I have found:
At first we were thinking of going more towards the communist style as shown in the references, but after a discussion we agreed to have less agitation in the posters.
The animation behind the posters would be to create some movement in the scene and also add voice interactions. An example of the moving image of the poster was taken from the newspapers in the Harry Potter’s world:
The other idea for the “memory” interaction was a diary. To better describe my idea I have added a few references on the diary itself and the way cockroaches would escape after opening it:
This week I have been improving particular previs shots after I received a feedback from George.
First detail to change was to add a movement of a bug after the hand lands on the tree. It will create moving dynamics and look more realistic.
Second improvement was to add more movement in the 6th shot. My animation is very slow-moving and there no much shots to show good body mechanics, for this reason we agreed on adding more obstacles for the character to show a more interesting body movement for the animation.
In this shot I decided to add a bit of movement of the character so it moves together with the camera and looks less still.
The same goes for the next shot. I will be adding more of the camera movement as well as character movement – specifically them going from one direction towards the bush.
In the last shot we agreed that placing a camera closer to the objects of interest will create more intimacy and look visually better in general.
For the robot arm I continued working on the details and textures. For the nice detailed effect I was using a lot of extrusions, bevel and other modelling tools.
Main body structure:
1. Underrepresentation of females in the industry
2. Who can influence the representation on screen?
3. An increase of female leads and female representation in animation in the most popular animations over time
4. Does the increase of females in the industry has a direct relationship to female representation on screen?
Bibliography:
Smith, S.L., Choueiti, M., Choi, A., & Pieper, K. (2019). ‘Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Gender, Race/Ethnicity, & Age of Directors Across the Top Films From 2007-2018,’ USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from: http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inclusion-in-the-directors-chair-2019.pdf
Smith, S.L., Choueiti, M., Pieper, K. & Clark, H. (2019). Increasing Inclusion in Animation. Investigating Opportunities, Challenges, and the Classroom to the C-Suite Pipeline,’ USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from: https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-animation-201906.pdf
Furniss, M. (2000). ‘“Color and Line” in Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics,’ London: John Libbey. Rev. edition: 71-74.