Quickpose thumbs

I'm really disatisfied with my ability to convey a pose in a short amount of time so i can plan animations accordingly. so I started todays festivities inspired by these drawings.

I think they are pretty amazing at getting across both pose, weighting and movement and they would be fairly quick to do! So Inspired by them i used the quickpose tool to help practise getting the motion and posing down.

I started simple using the method they use in the image above and which i feel worked well at getting the pose across. I then worked into them a little afterwards which would help with refining key poses. I still need to work on facial expressions as they are tricky to thumbnail but at least I think this way I'll get some better planning for my animations.

HeavyBox Update

I've blocked out the heavy box animation a little further adding a small element of performance in. Hopefully this can progress to a point where I'm happy for it to be in my showreel.

Fox Jump Feedback/Professional contacts

Just a short one really

I've been getting some interesting suggestions on the 11 second club forum for ways of helping to improve its flow. They're suggesting animating two bouncing balls to mimic the front and back of the foxes body, this should help with the spacing between the two and help with the flow. It never occurred to me that was something I could be doing to help inform my animation but it's a great idea. It's almost like a stage of blocking before actual blocking.


As well as sending off another email to Mike concerning content of showreels I'll also be meeting with a few of the artists including the lead artist of Tag games this evening to help me understand how animators work in a smaller company. It should be pretty useful and as it's in person that means it's going to mean a lot of note taking and a write up later this evening hopefully before I've forgotten what my notes mean.

Displaying weight and force

So one of the exercises mentioned in the email with Mike Pang was to do work with characters carrying heavy boxes in order to help display the sense of weight the character has. So I've started to work on an example of that. I'm using a free rig that I'm fond of and have started by working out a few thumbnails (as suggested by the 2D animator on the 11 second club) for the action. I have it planned out but its all sketches on rough bits of paper.. I'll try and upload them later for reference. Anyway I haven't spent much time on it. Started to block out the timing and movement. I think I'm a little weak on timing and could probably use recording reference a little more often.

Fox Jump progress / Professional contact

I posted up that I had submitted my fox jumping animation to the 11 second club for scrutiny and feedback which has been going pretty well. There's a lot of worry surrounding putting work up for feedback on forums as often there are people who will criticize without offering suggestions on how to improve. My experience so far has been a good one. I've received quite a few helpful observations and suggestions and have recently uploaded a second iteration seen below:

Main Feedback followed from these two users

User: J.K Riki - 2D animation but always applicable 
"I think you've got some really nice aspects of the jump so far. Some poses, like the compressed one at the height of the jump, really work well. One of the trouble spots is the it's feeling a bit stiff, which might be because of the model you're using, I don't know. 

Did you plan out the animation in thumbnails? I find that that helps a lot (though full disclosure, I do 2D animation) and it might assist in keeping things a little more fluid here. I did some visual brainstorming of some of the keys on paper:



I'd ignore the final landing pose, it's not very good and I'd need to go back and redo it, but again this is just "visual thinking" and thumbnails are great because you can do them in 20 seconds and don't feel bad if you have to throw one out. Or all of them out, ha ha.

Anyway, what I noticed in the thumbnails I did is that getting the fox's legs extended in the places it needs to be (as he's pushing into the air, and as he's prepping to land) really adds a good flow for the audience's eyes so they can be ready for what's coming. I also think a bit more squash/weight is going to help a lot on the landing, because it feels too floaty at the moment.

You may also want to watch the arc on the fox's head. Something to try would be to isolate JUST his head and see where it moves in the cycle, because I think you'll find it kind of jumps/jiggles all over the place. If you can get that smoother, and then have the body follow, it should all even out nicely. 

Hope that helps! It's a great start you've got going on, just a few tweaks will really polish it up. "

User: Waseqazi 

"Great start! Watch the big pop in the first few frames on the front half of his body. Adding some more drag to the head as he rears back and then shoots up would also help to show the lead of the hips. His tail could use a lot more overlap as he reaches the apex of the jump, right now it stays the same until he starts coming down.

Watch for right at the end when his paws hit the ground, his root stays stuck in the same position for two frames. Try to squash that down a lot more. The more you have him reach with the front paws on the downward part, like in J.K. Riki's drawings, the more organic it will feel, same with dragging the head back a bit more on the down.

Finally, I'd add a few more frames at the end of the loop to allow his head and head to overlap downwards before it starts over. Right now he pops back into going up without having the momentum from the head and tail to end."

I've also had my first reply from an Industry professional. I sent off a request to Media Molecule creators of little big planet and tearaway to see if any of their animators would mind talking to me and answering a few of my questions, they got back to me quickly with an animator named Mike Pang who was nice enough to take time to answer some questions.

My email:

"Hi Mike!

First of all thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me, I know you must be busy so I really appreciate it, I've tried to narrow down what I'm asking because I'm not wanting to overwhelm you with questions but I have so many it's been difficult to choose!

Firstly a bit of a general background of where you came from would be useful, how and why you got into making games?

What do you do day to day?

How involved in other aspects of development are you?

Could you give me an example of the pipeline you use?

Any interesting plugins or tools that are particularly handy?

How do you keep up to date with cutting edge techniques?

What do you like to do to help practice your skills? Any exercises you'd recommend?

I'm currently trying to get my work out there a little more, posting it on the 11 second club to gain feedback and refine my existing skills, are there any other ways of gaining feedback and getting my work more visible?

And a slightly more personal question, how do you know you're good enough to apply? I keep feeling like if I apply with work that isn't good enough it will harm my efforts to find work later on when I've improved.

I look forward to hearing from you and if there's anything else you think would be good to add as general advice that would be great, maybe things that are common mistakes to avoid? As I said I have plenty more questions but I don't want to overwhelm you.

Thank you again!

Robin"

His response:

"Hi Robin,

 

Good to hear from you. I always try to make time for students as I remember how valuable it is to speak to someone from the industry when I was studying. So hope I can help in some way.

 

I originally studied traditional animation back in 2001-2004 at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth (I think it's called something else now) back then there weren't many CG courses and if there were they were technical and I didn't have the maths brain to do it. 

 

I graduated in 2004, 2D animation was dying out and not many jobs were out there, I kind of fell into games as EA at the time were doing a graduate scheme. I was one of the lucky hand picked few that managed to get a position. Starting as a concept artist but then I moved over to the animation side after 3 months where they taught me how to use Maya, from then on that's where I met a lot of talented animators and learnt from them as well. So i've been in the games industry for about 10 years now, working at a few companies and tried my hands in feature film as well. But Media Molecule is where I am now and really enjoying it. 

 

Day to day job varies at different companies. Time at EA, once moved over to animation I was solely doing animation, MPC (Moving Picture Company) was the same. At Mm as they're a creative bunch they like there staff to be versatile so as we're in the infancy of the project i'm on currently my job currently evolves around pre-visualation on the animation side and playing around with all aspects of animation with environments to particles. 

 

My involvement in other aspects of development is dependent on how much you like to contribute everyone at Mm has a voice which is great. A lot of the big companies from my experience tends to prefer you to stick with your specialism. You can e-mail out suggestions but not sure how much is taken on board. 

 

The pipeline is pretty much the same in most places. You get a technical guy who'll rig up and set up scripts for you to run the rig. Once you've finished with your animation there's easy tools for you to export your animation into the game. In film it's the same instead you export your animation curves and it's off to the lighting/rendering guys. 

 

A lot of the tools and plugins are in house so can't really share them. Don't worry though you're not missing out it's to help the exporting. A lot of the tools tend to be rig dependent anyway and the free rigs you get online are pretty much similar to the ones in games, but less complicated like the facial rigs for instance. 

 

I tend to keep an eye on most feature animations, the odd indie animations and I love the stuff that comes out of the French animation school Gobelin. The 11 second club is good and I like the critiques that they attach to the winners that's always useful to watch. 

 

At the time when I was looking for a job in film I suppose you practice and cater your reel towards more performance and creature animations trying to create them as realistic as possible. For games it's good to practice your walks and run cycles. The classic box lifting and maybe an acting piece. These all demonstrate your skill as an animator, your understanding of timing, weight and creative ideas. The other animator at Mm is currently doing an online course in the evenings as it's based in US time http://ianimate.net doing the workshop 4 concentrating on close up Facial acting and lip sync. So it can vary. 

 

As for getting your work out there what you're doing is great, I personally haven't done that before but from others I see them posting on Vimeo it has a nice stats page of who's been watching you. Blogs and forums maybe? If you like you can always send me a link to your work. 

 

As for knowing whether you're good enough, you should look online check out other peoples reels and compare yours to them. Hopefully your tutors and people around you are honest enough to give you an opinion as well. Applying to job can never harm your efforts. If you didn't get a chance for an interview maybe ask for some feedback. It's good to get a blog and keep it updated with new animation tests. It shows that you're passionate and that you're continually improving. Keep the reel at under 2 minutes and have your good stuff first and end on a high!

 

I'll try and round this e-mail off now. If you're applying for games it's good to have all those animation test as mentioned before, walks and run cycles etc. It seems like a lot of companies are asking for mo-cap knowledge but if you know the principals of animations this won't be difficult to learn. Spend time on your reel and polish you animation. If you're doing a performance piece get lots of reference act it out and plan your shot. It's so important to get these early stages right as it'll save you a lot of time in the long run and you don't stray off with different ideas. 

 

Sorry this e-mail is quite lengthy, but I hope I've managed to help out in some way. Here's my blog, unfortunately I haven't had the time to update it for some time but it gives a general example.

 

http://mikepangshowreel.blogspot.co.uk

 

As mentioned before feel free to send in your examples of work or upload it to somewhere on youtube or Vimeo so I can see.

 

All the best, 

 

Mike"

I intend to take him up on the opportunity to email him for feedback but as he's busy I don't want to make it too regular.

13-02-14 Quick Poses

Weakest: 4, Having two to draw put me off massively

Strongest: 7, I think the lines make the model seem like shed be able to balance and also shows tension in the legs.

Defining the role - Other internet sources

I know there are better ways about finding out about roles but I am in the process of setting up visits to Tag Games and Denki to talk more about what their animators do day to day, whats expected of them, what knowledge is most valued etc, but I think that by looking at how places on the internet define roles I'll be able to figure out suitable questions to add to my growing list of personal queries (I'll come to the new additions to that list later in the post)

Link: 
http://education-portal.com/articles/How_to_Become_a_Video_Game_Animator_Career_Guide.html

In this first link it goes into more detail about some aspects of requirements than skillset. I think its best to see this more as a rough average of what happens rather than the rule as there are always exceptions.

• Generally Game animators have a bachelor's degree in one of the following areas - art, computer graphics, animation, illustration. (source for this one is actually career builder.com and Gamasutra.com job postings(July 2012))
• Experience for mid to advanced level jobs generally require 2-4 years of experience (most likely referring to industry experience)
• Key skills are listed as Artistic ability, creativity, technical proficiency, ability to work as part of a team (This last one comes up regularly probably due to the need to collaborate with other disciplines in order to come to a compromise between visual performance and gameplay)
• Program knowledge of maya, studio max, photoshop, illustrator, flash, final cut pro and after effects are commonly sort after.
• Technically it can be required to have used graphics tablets

General Tips:

•  Only use your best work in your showreel keeping it short with the most eye catching stuff first to help attract attention.
• In industry experience is very valuable (This is added to by the information recieved during a visit from Ubisoft to the university, they also prize entrepreneurship and showing you are prepared to reach beyond your job description in the pursuit of excellence)
• They encourage keeping up to date with technical knowledge reading papers and possibly attending conferences this also goes for processes and pipelines too. (Siggraph is a good event for this also Animex in the UK)

Applying for an animation job within games - (gamasutra 2012)
link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176374/How_to_get_a_job_as_an_animator_in_games.php

Naming conventions! Name the files you send with your name and then the item name, no spaces.
e.g RobinGriffiths_CoverLetter.pdf
Unless they ask for something specific or it's in an email format in which case you make sure the subject line is correct.

Cover letter contents: "Generally speaking, it should be short, flattering (to the company or project), confident (without being cocky), and highlight what you bring to the company/project."

contact Info needs to be easy to find and maintain a design continuity throughout the resume, pick a couple of the key skills mentioned and then try to demonstrate how well you meet those. Try to get a sense of your personality and motivation across. Spell check and proof read it before sending, name it correctly and make sure it is no longer than a page in length.

Defining the Role - Skillset

Skillset defines a game animators (they seem to refer to 3D animation throughout this article as opposed to 2D) role in the following way:

Link: http://www.skillset.org/games/careers/article_4731_1.asp

"Animators in the games industry are responsible for the portrayal of movement and behavior. Most often this is applied to give life to game characters and creatures, but sometimes animations are also applied to other elements such as objects, scenery, vegetation and environmental effects."
While this is true, the role "Character Animator" does exist which I would expect would limit the role to just characters.

A key point to note is according to skillset Animators in the games industry are usually permanently employed as opposed to a project by project basis that can happen in other sectors.


Animators are not responsible for the design or modelling of the assets used within games however depending on the size of the company they may be expected to rig the character in order to achieve the motions they require. the animator will be responsible for designing the motion of the character and so may need to work closely with the modeler in order to have appropriate topology.


Animators are required to work in a slightly different manner to animators in other sectors of the entertainment industry. They will need to produce an extensive and reusable library of animations for each character while working within the limitations of the technology. Unlike film animation the performance of the character comes secondary to the interactive quality needed. animators may be required to work with limited key frames in order to keep the movements quick so not to aggravate the player. The more efficient technically the animation is produced the better it will run in engine and also makes it less likely to cause performance drops. 


Typical Career routes (that apply to me)
Most enter the industry after gaining some proficiency in a computer animation package although a background in practical art, particularly  life drawing skills is considered particularly useful.

"Any animator considering a career in game production should understand the interactive nature of games and also have an overall grasp of all aspects of their discipline, including character modelling, rigging, skinning, kinematics, and basic cinematography."

Essential skills

• knowledge of traditional and computer 2D and 3D animation techniques;
• creativity and imagination;
• knowledge of full motion video (FMV);
• spatial awareness and a feel for movement over time;
• knowledge of constraints;
• ability to work independently and as part of a team;
• organisational skills and the ability to work to deadlines;
• good communication and presentation skills;
• knowledge of the requirements of the relevant Health and Safety legislation and procedures.

"Animators will be required to demonstrate their work through a portfolio and/or show reel. Reels should last about 2-3 minutes and detail the specific contribution the Animator made to the work. Recruiters look for a variety of genres and styles; walk and run cycles, as well as more fully developed sequences; and, perhaps most important, an ability to portray a character’s personality through movement and behaviour."

12-02-14 Quick Poses

I've been finding the poses on pose maniacs to be pretty stiff so I went in search of somewhere else that generate poses to draw. I came across quickposes.com which I'm glad I found because it's been set up by the guy who produced one of my favourite animations:

This is awe inspiring work and never fails to impress me. the poses that are brought up are all photographs of real dancers and as might be obvious are often in the middle of a movement. amazingly fun to draw and I reckon a good place to get to grips with gesture a little better.

Weakest: 11, I dont think this portrays the motion properly
Srongest: 2, I feel the line of action works well here.

Also moved onto the rest of the skeleton later on in the day. I'm starting to understand the structure as a whole before i go into gender differences, it's rough but I think i'm getting somewhere with it. Here are a couple of bits from my notes but it isn't exactly show worthy especially as spellings are an issue.

I did do a single pose yesterday that focused on the muscle groups but I was an idiot and deleted it before saving so... that was stupid. anyway, I've been a little unfocused this morning so I don't think I've managed my best.

Weakest: 7 I was trying something different.. It didn't work too well

Strongest: 9, I find it difficult with straight up and down poses so i think the subtlety in the pose comes across well.

06-02-14 - Expression Ball with Tail

I only spent a short amount of time practicing expression this morning because I spent the rest of the time sorting out/building up the courage to submit my jumping fox for feedback on the 11 second club forums. I've also asked for any tips they can offer when it comes to animating for games. Just hope I get some replies.

Link to Forum post:
http://www.11secondclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=24769

I've also spent some time today animating a ball with a tail. This helps practice weighting and follow through.

06-02-14 - Facial expression

A lot of personality can be displayed in the subtle change sin facial expression, If i want to mimic them properly a firm grasp of what it takes to display an emotion properly is probably advised. I started my session (which turned out to be much longer today than previous sessions) with trying to copy pictures of people and then assess what it was that made them display the emotion they had.

These were the first two I produced but I was disatisfied that I wasn't capturing the subtlety of the expressions and felt this was probably down to a lack of proper anatomy and understanding of the structure of the face. So I started to look at muscle structures, again copying images but after asking for feedback from one of my coursemates it became clear that the bone structure was my real downfall. From then on I've been watching video lectures on the bone structure of the skull in pretty intense detail and while i probably won't remember the exact names of each of the sections described I'm much more likely to remember their structure after being made more aware of them. 

ZBrush Challenge

I think I mentioned in a previous post that a few of us are aiming to do a 2hr zbrush challenge every two weeks. This week our challenge was "Sci Fi Female" with the extra requirement of not using tropes or the hair to sell that it's female and using no reference.

My own personal extra requirement was that it showed an emotion, I knew this would be difficult as i'm still not accustomed to sculpting faces with no expression let along with but I gave it a shot.

Result:

I focused a little too much on making the face female which left little time for the sci fi element but I'm fairly happy. The expression is bland but noticeable I reckon spending a morning session on facial expressions might be of use to help with understanding how the facial muscles contorts.

04-02-14 posemaniacs

Don't feel like I did as well today, tensed up about half way through and couldn't seem to shake it. Today must be a writing day.

However! On the plus side i think my lines are a little cleaner than normal?

Strongest: 1, I think the perspective and shapes are strong and clear compared to the others
weakest: 3, pretty terrible in both proportions and pose.