This week we needed to do a vanilla walk cycle in stepped animation.
While studying various references, I created a sketch that could help me to understand the key poses of the movement:
A first try of blocking in Maya:
After a feedback:
With the help of a shape editor, we customized a face and gave it expressions. At first, I created a model of my liking, slightly changing facial features, but in the end I decided to give it a little more character by adding horns and red skin texture.
With the help of the Blend Shape editor and sculpting tools, we were able to create different expressions:
A is for Atom (1953) is a short animated documentary film directed by Carl Urbano. It was created for promotional reasons and therefore was sponsored by General Electric Company (GE).
The film explains the nature of an atom and how it can produce atomic energy that can be used to benefit the humanity. Although the film elucidate on the positive aspects of the nuclear power, as it can produce energy used for electricity, it also touches the other side of the atomic energy – nuclear weapons and radioactive materials.
As the film has clearly an educational purpose, explaining a complicated topic to a wider audience, it can be classified as a documentary. Nevertheless, we can apply a Honess Roes’ ‘Taxonomy for documentary’ material to question the definition.
First of all, the animated film was not recorded, instead it was created frame by frame. Then, it explains the aspects of a real world we live in and how the research topic resonates with it. The last but not least, the film was presented as a documentary by its producers.
Stating everything above, A is for Atom (1953) can be classified as a documentary film.
For this week we had to study various poses. I decided to use as a reference one of the elements from a vogue dance – a dip:
While the reference does look good already, in the animation it can look different. In the sketches I polished the posed and emphasized attention of the detail of the hand:
The final pose in Maya:
I also added a camera movement to show it from different angles:
This exercise helped us to understand the basics of weight shifting.
First try:
An animation after the feedback:
For a final animation I added a camera movement to show the step from more than one angle:
By creating a simple man using the cube polygon primitive, we understand the basics of rigging – how to create controllers, joints and IK handles that were used for the legs for the weight shifting. We also created NURBS primitives and attached them to the body with the help of parent constrain. NURBS primitives are used to select and adjust objects we need.
Later, we had to create a pose with our Box Man.
Sea child is an 8-minute hand-painted animation. It does have a narrative, nevertheless, I still consider this animation as a conceptual abstraction.
The narrative of the story is simple: a young girl on the verge of becoming a woman follows a group of men in the streets to find her mother. Abstraction comes in the representation of her nightmares and the symbolism of the eel fish.
This animation can be defined under the genre of drama. The combination of animation techniques and chosen theme creates a very dark mood and leaves a long-lasting impression.
The animation shows a male-dominant world where all generations of women are serving and pleasuring them. From a young age, girls are besieged by men that are trying to make them do whatever men want. A symbolic eel fish represents the idea of womanhood. It is killed and served to men and fed to a young girl so she can become the same.
The animation was hand painted with mostly black and red ink. Only in a scene of a city were added colours to make it look vivid. Kim, the director and animator, said about the technique, “I really liked the texture and the way it looked. It felt very analogue as the ink stayed on the wooden boards no matter how hard I tried to remove it. The trail of what had happened before keeps a sense of the time that was put into and it felt right for the story”. (Munday, R., (2016) Experimental about innocence in animation. Available at: https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2016/10/04/sea-child/ Accessed: 27.10.2022) The domination of black colour created a feeling of isolation and anxiety, while drops of red colour represented blood and womanhood. The domination of male characters is shown by their visual enlargement, while a young girl becomes smaller compared to them, or she fully disappears.
The audio in the animation mostly enhances the movement and sounds of the world. There are only three additional songs that are performed by three women there: a young girl, her mother and her grandmother. Each of them has its own motive and represents each generation.
By making a flour sack walk we understood the principles of rigging. We also learned how to improve the rig to become more suitable for the animation by changing hierarchies and constrains.
The final animation of a flour sack with an added Sky Dome light and a slight camera movement:
This exercise helped to understand how anticipation works.
After feedback, I improved the movement of the tail and the ball squashes:
A sketch that helped to create an animation:
To help understand the movement of the tail I watched how squirrels move.
The film Mommy describes a complicated relationship between the mother and her teenage son. This relationship balances between unconditional love and fear, extreme happiness and heartbreaking dramas.
The story arch
To break down the story arch of the film I am going to use a way to describe a story arch as a circle created by Dan Harmon. The circle consists of 8 stages. I will go through each stage with examples from the film Mommy.
The archetypes
Steve is the rebel. He goes against the rules and follows his interests. It was not a choice, but a consequence of all the pain he had to go through and his mental illnesses.
Die is the mother. She does everything she can to save her child. Unfortunately, the circumstances are above her abilities.
Kyla is a tutor. She teaches Steve to be more patient and to deal better not only with his behaviour but also with his studies.
A timeline for the main character starting before the film start
From the film, we know that Diana left school early and did not receive a proper education. She cannot get rid of bad habits, struggles with absent-mindedness, often behaves eccentrically and becomes the initiator of conflicts.
Before the death of Diana’s husband she was probably a housewife that enjoyed her life, loved dressing up and was not completely invested in her son’s life, which resulted in Steve seeking for mother’s love. After the death of the family’s breadwinner, she had to find her own ways to provide for the family. She found a job as a journalist but only because of her romantic relationship with the chief. Steve began to commit small crimes. The mother could not deal with his behaviour and she was forced to turn to the help of special institutions.