New puppet and updated backdrop

I took some better pictures of Craig and updated my puppet with the new head. I'm much, much happier with how this looks. It's a lot cleaner now! I'm hoping to find a way to get the eyebrows neatly onto a separate layer so I can animate some better facial expressions. Cutting the eyebrow out is no problem — it's repairing the skin underneath that's proving tricky...

I also tweaked the background some more, adding a few more posters to make it a little less bare. I'm not sure I like it — seems a bit cluttered — but it's got a bit more flavour to it now. The poster on the far left was a happy accident — it just so happened to contain Craig's most used word! There was one that said "Hello, how are you?" in a multitude of different languages but it was really badly designed. I may make one of my own and put it there instead. Then at least I've still got his quote in there if the chat bubble doesn't work out.

Paris scene — French couple

For the Paris scene I needed to somehow create a stereotypical French couple embracing. I was really dreading having to do this and have admittedly been putting it off for a while, as I hadn't a clue how I was going to do it! I ended up using similar techniques to how I created my Craig puppet and simply stitched together a bunch of photographs from Google.


I started with an image of a couple of ballroom dancers as the pose was quite similar to the sort of thing I wanted.

I began with this:

(I love this — it's so hilariously awful)

And finished with this:

I lost count of how many pictures I robbed off Google to put this together. The hands on the woman are really shoddy but they're probably going to be hidden behind the window frame so it hopefully shouldn't matter too much. I may go back and tweak them a bit — they're really bothering me!

I'm not totally done with this yet — still got a fair bit of tweaking to do, mainly on the woman. The hair and coat are bothering me and she just feels incomplete somehow. I'm not sure about the colours either.

I think it's the face as well — it's had virtually no editing to it. I think it's because the man is so ridiculously stereotypical whereas she's fairly ordinary, so it looks a little out of place. Maybe I'll darken her hair, give her ridiculously pale skin and bright red lips and a huge pair of sunglasses. For some reason French women are harder to caricature!

(What is it with me and French people?!...)

Vector ferris wheel

I found this one on Google, but again it was really low quality. I blew it up by about 200% (look at the lovely JPEG artifacts!) and started to trace over it — this gives me the benefit of separating each part into layers for me to animate!

It's really quick and pretty shoddy but I figured since it's going to be in the distance, much like the cows, it shouldn't matter too much. It was a really simple pen tool job to which I simply applied stroke paths of varying thicknesses. The wheel itself is on the bottom layer, the carts are on another layer and the weird girder thing is on the top layer. This will allow me to parent the carts to the wheel and mimic the rotation as it spins.

I didn't notice at first but I think the image of the ferris wheel that I used is actually a stock image — whoops. I honestly wasn't aware — I nabbed it off another website which had taken the thumbnail from a stock image resource. Serves me right for not checking my sources!

I'm a bit concerned now and I probably shouldn't use it in my final film, however seeing as I've gone to the trouble of resampling the image I think it'll be alright to use it just for this one test? I'll probably just have to re-do it from scratch for use in the final animation.

After Effects 'Window Pain' scene test 1

 

Had a bit of fun and threw together a quick mockup of one of the scenes. It's very rough and by no means the final draft but it gave me a good idea of how the puppets and backdrops will work together.

The scene was very simply created by nesting the composition containing the walk cycle within the composition containing the backdrop. I then added keyframes on the position element of the walk cycle to have him walk across the screen. I need to figure out how to get the puppet to to stop moving once he reaches the end of the window!

Though the walk cycle is very rough and needs a lot of fixing, I actually quite like the sort of stomping effect it has as he leaves the room! It has its own charm to it.

It was a good, quick test to have done as it's really given me an idea of how After Effects works in terms of scene building. Once the pieces are all there, it's surprisingly easy to put something together!

After Effects walk cycle V3

Again keeping the keyframe spacing consistent and working with just one ground level for both feet. I also tried to make it a little less robotic by making the head bob up and down. I tried to keep the feet steady on the ground to improve the impression of weight as he walks. The front foot slips below the ground level on the "up" position which I really need to fix — looks a bit floaty. I also tried to drag the feet a bit and make them flop around to make them a little more lively. It's still iffy, but it's getting there! I think I probably need more space between each keyframe as it seems a little too quick.

Not terribly happy with the rear arm. It's pretty choppy but for some reason I found it difficult to animate accurately... then again it's been something I struggle with in any walk cycle! Perhaps because it's a direct copy of the front arm so it doesn't quite match up to the rest of the body when positioned behind. I probably need to completely re-make it.

The frame spacing might be a little too uniform. People's legs aren't exactly timed like this — some pick up their feet slower and drop them more quickly or vice versa. I might even try getting Craig to walk around a bit for me and try to replicate how he actually walks with the puppet!

After Effects walk cycle V2

 

I adjusted the spacing so that there were 4 frames between each keyframe. The limbs are now in sync and everything moves evenly! It's still very robotic and lacking in anything even vaguely resembling personality but I think the mechanics are there. 

Having two floor levels — one for each foot — is really over complicating things. It's hard to animate the legs smoothly and I find myself getting confused as to which foot should land where. I think I'm going to make both feet level and just use one ground line to help keep things simple.

After Effects walk cycle V1

Experimenting some more with After Effects and its animation capabilities. I tried to make a walk cycle using my the second technique Jon showed us. I split my puppet into layers for each body part — e.g. sleeve, forearm, body, thigh, shin — and rounded out the tops of each limb to allow for smooth rotation. I adjusted the anchor points for each limb, placing them roughly where the joint would be, so that they rotated semi-realistically.

I made each layer a parent of its corresponding lower body parts so that when, for example, I rotated the thigh, the rest of the leg would follow.

Just by playing around and rotating each limb I can see where I need to make alterations to my puppet. There's a little excess on the thigh layer that pokes out when I rotate the shin so I need to trim that down a bit.

I'm quite pleased with the way the arm rotates. It works fairly nicely so luckily I don't need to make any alterations there.

Slightly stupidly I forgot to make a rear arm for the puppet. I simply duplicated the front arm and flipped the sleeve/forearm and tucked it underneath the body layer. It's not brilliant but for all intents and purposes, it works!

The foot layer needs rounding out a the top so that it doesn't suddenly cut off whenever I rotate it. In an attempt to give the puppet some depth I made his rear leg slightly smaller and higher up, so I placed a couple of guides on the canvas to help designate both ground levels for each foot.

For a first attempt it didn't come out too badly. It's a little robotic and I think the bounce might be too much, but it works. Somehow I managed to completely screw up the keyframe placement/spacing so that the timing is all over the place. One step is much quicker than the other as a result. Fortunately I've discovered the glory that is the "move forward/backward one frame" shortcut (Cmd + right/left arrow) so next time I will be able to ensure the keyframes are evenly spaced.

After Effects' auto-inbetweening isn't terribly accurate — it doesn't know that I'm trying to animate a walk cycle, so it simply takes the most straightforward path from one keyframe to another. This results in the puppet floating all over the place as he walks. I was slightly able to rectify this by manually adjusting the rotation and position of the body/feet to help keep it anchored to the floor but it's still not terribly accurate. I need to see if there's a way to keep the feet anchored to the floor?

Nonetheless I'm much more comfortable with this way of working. It allows much more control over the movement than the puppet pin does. With a little time and patience I think I can get a walk cycle that looks halfway decent!

More puppets and pin tests

Did a little more work on my character puppets. I've attempted to clean up the poor quality image on the front-facing head, but I think it's a lost cause. I mirrored the eye and cleaned up the whites a little bit which I definitely think helped but I reckon it's better just to get some new pictures. Something closer up (in better lighting conditions and a decent camera) with bigger eyes in order to help show expression would be good. Ideally I'd like to be able to take the eyebrows and have them on a separate layer so they'll be easier to animate. Perhaps I could even erase them and draw them back in?

Also made a rear facing puppet which I feel looks a bit shoddy. I'm fairly happy with the body, I think it's just the heads on all of the puppets that are bothering me. I'm seeing Craig again this week so hopefully I'll be able to get some better pictures for the head...

I wanted to see how well the puppets worked with the puppet tool and decided to just play around and see what happens. It came out horrendously. I kind of wanted to see if I could do a curtain-closing-type action, but the arm movement is too slow (easily fixed by adjusting keyframes) and the hands need to be changed as well, so they look like they're actually grasping the curtains. I need to try and work out how to replace them with a new image.

Granted, I didn't spend very much time on it, but the puppet tool is just so heinously difficult to work with. I'm doubtful that I'll really be able to put it to any use. I really can't get to grips with the way it works — the movement is very limited. Ideally I'd like to use it just for the legs to  give them a sort of 'rubber hose' effect like in the British Gas adverts, but it'd be pretty pointless seeing as you don't see my character's legs for half of it. I think it would just be easier to split my puppet into layers and animate them manually, using anchor points and rotation keyframes. Still, I won't discard the idea completely and I'll certainly keep playing around with it.

Update on character puppets

Had a go at the hands; very heavily British Gas inspired but I think they work!

I'm not quite sure about the side puppet. Something about it looks off to me — I think it's the head and neck. Actually, something about the head on both puppets bothers me. I think it just looks a little out-of place with the relatively illustrative-style body. I need to find a way to preserve its photographic-ness (is that even a word?) whilst keeping it fitting with the style of the body. I'm utterly clueless though.

Still... progress!

Finalised character design

Working on my final puppets for the animation. I looked a little more closely at the British Gas TV adverts to better give me an idea on how to construct the body. I took a lot of new photos of Craig (against a white wall to make it easier to cut them out) and simply drew out some simplified body shapes using Photoshop's pen tool. I copied sections of his clothing and skin and pasted them into the shapes in order to give the clothes and arms a bit of texture.

I think the legs are quite plain looking, but unfortunately in the images the trousers and shoes came out very dark with no obvious texture, so I may have to pilfer some stock images in order to rectify that. I may try making them more of a dark grey as opposed to pitch black.

I'm quite pleased with how the puppets are looking so far. I still have some minor adjustments to make, such as lighting and shadows (especially on the shirt's collar), but otherwise I think I'm mostly there. I'm not entirely sure how to go about making the hands yet. I've been playing around with them but I can't seem to get anything that looks quite right.

I'm a little concerned about the image quality, especially on the face. My camera isn't particularly high resolution and I didn't think to turn the flash on so some of the pictures are a little grainy. I don't think it's too noticeable, especially when the puppets are scaled down to screen resolution, but I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to clean them up in Photoshop a little bit. Failing that I may have to re-shoot some of the images under better lighting conditions, or using a better camera.

Quick 'n' dirty puppet tests

Knocked together a couple of very quick and rough puppet test ideas. Going for something of an Angela Anaconda vibe. I'm not too keen — not quite sure what but something just bothers me. I think it's because at this stage I still don't really know what I'm aiming for in terms of character design. Its difficult to do anything satisfactory when you lack a clear idea of what you want.

At least I'll have something to practice with in tomorrow's lesson, though. Maybe seeing things in motion will give me some ideas.