"Ebon: chapter 2, scene 4" - anime-style two-minute short

[luckbat]

Well, after many tests and experiments, it's time to consolidate my WIPs into a single thread and begin plowing forward.

 

The two-minute short I'm working on is a single scene from a feature-length screenplay (called Ebon) I finished a little over a year ago. With animation in mind, I segmented the screenplay into 13 seven-minute chapters, and have been working on character designs and storyboards on and off since then.

 

I plan to turn chapter 1 of 13 into a long-term project, but since I have no animation experience, I decided to choose a single scene to focus my energies on before I attempt something on a larger scale. I picked chapter 2, scene 4 for several reasons. First, because it's the first encounter between the two main characters of the piece, so it's easy to follow. Second, because it has a nice balance between dialog, acting and action--there's a little of everything.

 

According to my storyboards, this is the first shot of the film. It's only five seconds, with no sound, and doesn't do much beyond establish the location (a public bathroom) and mood (gloomy). But you gotta start somewhere.

 

 

As I continue to work on the short, I'll be posting my progress and updates here.

faucets.mp4

[Dearmad]

Very cool. Interesting sense of framing, I like it. Going to use some DOF in the final renders? Is that even possible in toon render?

 

The burgeoning water drop made me poised to listen for the drop.

[pixelmech]

Heyyy Mike I was wondering when we would begin to see some of this. That shot looks good, you've whetted my appetite! Give me more

[luckbat]

Going to use some DOF in the final renders? Is that even possible in toon render?

 

Well, technically the faucets are "scenery," and therefore don't get the toon rendering treatment, but I'm pretty sure Hash lets you do DOF and toon at the same time.

 

As far as this shot is concerned, though, you could either go with a rack-focus or a tracking shot, but probably not both. I may elect to use a rack-focus in shot 6. Stay tuned.

 

Edit: Just wanted to clarify something. In this shot, the important faucet is the far one, since that's the one the character is using. So it has to be in focus. The near faucet has a neat-o droplet effect and takes up most of the frame, so it has to be in focus, too. Hence, DOF isn't really an option here.

[Snich]

Looks cool so far! As for DOF have you considered having the near faucet be in focus with the background fuzzy, then as the camera tracks, shift the focus to the far faucet with the foreground fuzzy? That could affect the impact of the camera move. Especially with the sounds in place, we'd hear the running water the whole time but only see the burgeoning droplet at first. Just a thought. Nice work!

[luckbat]

As for DOF have you considered having the near faucet be in focus with the background fuzzy, then as the camera tracks, shift the focus to the far faucet with the foreground fuzzy? That could affect the impact of the camera move.

Right. This type of shifting focus is often called a "rack focus." In this case, the viewer's attention is being shifted by the camera movement, rather than the focus. I felt that using the camera movement and a rack focus would have had too much impact--the cinematography equivalent of OMG! LOOK OVER THERE! A FAUCET!

[Snich]

Yes you're right. Then you'd have to add an orchestra blast to make everyone jump out of their seats... too much for the very beginning of the movie.

[luckbat]

This update is so lackluster that the only reason I'm even including it is that I spent most of the last four days on it, and I gotta have something to show for it.

 

This represents shots 2 and 3, although I'm weighing the idea of cutting shot 1 and making shot 2 be the opening shot--I'll have to see how it goes.

 

Just for fun, I went with a soft, airbrush-y style instead of my usual anime toon look. (It sorta reminds me of old issues of Heavy Metal.) I'm still committed to the 3d celshading, it's just that the toon renderer is such a massive slowdown that it makes doing test renders a real chore. This airbrush style, by contrast, renders out at about 5 seconds per frame.

 

 

Problems abound with these two shots, not the least of which is that the framing on both is drab and lifeless. They looked fine in the storyboards, but in motion, these are not dynamic shots. The animation in both is amateurishly floaty, and thanks to my poor CP weighting, the thumb moves like a sack of potatoes. Like I said, I normally wouldn't even upload crap like this, but WIP means WIP, for better or for worse.

Shots_2and3.mp4

[amarillospider]

Hey Mike

 

The airbrush look is interesting. I like the blood spilling down the hand also (how'd you do that)

 

I agree that the long back shot isn't very exciting. The thumb doesn't look that bad, but it's true that thumbs are super hard to deal with rigging.

 

My unsolicitated suggestions

 

See my quickly photoshop edited versions of your storyboard. Still have your establishing shot, but maybe pull back after a bit and the hands come into the sink. Then straight to the hand shot. Then the face shot. Then your shots 2, 5,6,7,8 can all be taken care of in one. Start with just the big empty long room shot to establish empty bathroom. Use sound fx of door knob and door closing, I don't think you need to cut back for his head turn, and then have her looming in from screen right.

 

 

As for the hand motion. The left hand is fine animation wise. An easier animation I might suggest would be to have the right hand fingers in the relaxed part curl, squeeze the meat below the right pinky with the left thumb (like in your thumbnail), flex the fingers open, let go with left hand and relax fingers, then the blood drips. (animation/rigging wise just have to go from part open to all open and back.) Otherwise a second suggestion would be to just have substitute hands and smartskin/muscle animate them to look good for this shot only.

 

Keep going

 

-Alonso

[pixelmech]

You really nailed the look of the bathroom. Is that an animated decal for the blood? Thumb is hard, but looks fairly good - the whole hand looks good considering how hard that is to do! The airbrush look seems pretty cool.

 

Tom

[Flog]

How do you do the airbrush style?

 

what settings do you use?

[luckbat]

See my quickly photoshop edited versions of your storyboard. Still have your establishing shot, but maybe pull back after a bit and the hands come into the sink.

You're right about the hands. Rather than pulling back, I'm just going to have the hands enter the right edge of the camera frame, thus motivating the cut.

 

Then straight to the hand shot. Then the face shot. Then your shots 2, 5,6,7,8 can all be taken care of in one. Start with just the big empty long room shot to establish empty bathroom. Use sound fx of door knob and door closing, I don't think you need to cut back for his head turn, and then have her looming in from screen right.

Visually, your sequence works fine (although I find it's a bit awkward to open a scene with three consecutive closeups before establishing the location). But I chose my sequence based more on dramatic impact. If I'd taken the time to do proper storyboards, here's the information you'd be working with:

 

SHOT 1: Officer Terrence Monk begins to wash the wound on his hand.

SHOT 2: He's alone in the police-station bathroom.

SHOT 3: The wound won't stop bleeding.

SHOT 4,5: As Monk scrutinizes the strange mark on his palm, he hears a rustling noise behind him. We, the audience, see a figure enter the bathroom through the far window.

SHOT 6. The figure locks the door from the inside with a loud 'click.'

SHOT 7: Monk slowly turns around. The figure is revealed to be the spooky young woman who carved up his hand last night.

SHOT 8. She begins to advance towards him.

 

So, while the exact order of cuts is flexible, I definitely need to establish the emptiness of the bathroom using a wide shot right at the beginning. It sets the atmosphere and also sets up the 'reveal' of Ebon's unconventional extrance.

 

Is that an animated decal for the blood?

Yup. It was probably overkill, but I used a particle generator (Apple Motion) to create the blood streams, and rendered to a sequence of targas. The decal still needs a lot of work, but for now it gets the job done.

 

How do you do the airbrush style? What settings do you use?

I actually did a bit of compositing in post, but basically if you set the ambience on your model to 100% and then combine that with a faint toon line, it doesn't look half bad.

[amarillospider]

Have you read the composition notes from Brad Bird over on www.animationmeat.com ? He's always going on about using more interesting angles to make shots more interesting. You might try having a higher camera looking down on the bathroom, instead of the long straight across view.

 

I'm sure you'll find a good solution.

 

-Alonso

[luckbat]

Thanks for that Brad Bird link, Alonso. I wasn't familiar with that one.

 

Camera positioning is an art, no doubt about it. The trick is in the balance; if you use "interesting" camera angles for every shot, they lose their impact.

[luckbat]

Okay, I've calmed down a little.

 

It dawned on me that what was really bothering me about the backgrounds wasn't so much the framing as the colors. Because I used only white lights in my choreography, the whole room looks washed out and dull. Although this was a perfect opportunity to brush up on my lighting skills, in the end I decided that, since I'm trying to emulate the look of hand-painted backdrops from cel animation, it would be better to spruce up my backgrounds in a 2D environment. Hence, these new contrast- and color-adjusted images.

 

I've also improved the thumb somewhat and altered the toon lighting to yield harsher shadows (still needs work). But this newly assembled 3-shot sequence only confirms my earlier suspicions: shots 1 and 2 just don't cut well together. I know it's been suggested that I go from the side view of the sinks to the overhead view of the hands, but honestly I just don't see how I can animate someone rinsing his hands. How could I possibly animate the splashing water? I can barely even visualize it in my head.

 

So, I'm still leaning towards making shot 2 the opening shot of the short. Maybe there's a way I can still use the "faucets" shot somehow, I dunno.

 

 

P.S. Is this movie file viewable for you folks? I decided to try Apple's new h.264 compressor, but I don't know how compatible it is...

 

Edit: Looks like it's not viewable for a majority of users. I've added a Sorenson version a few posts down from this one.

Shots_123.mp4

[artisticlicense]

Liked the work so far, but I am not able to view the movie. I don't even get asked to download the new CODEC from QuickTime. Maybe it's something I'm doing?

[Rodney]

Sorry Mike. Not viewable here.

[pixelmech]

I'm able to view it with QT7 on the PC. Looks good, but the hand coming in the water is a bit too fast - you almost miss it, and the effect of it is minimal.

[luckbat]

Yikes! So much for h.264's market penetration.

 

Sorry about that, folks. Sorenson it is...

Shots_123.mov

[luckbat]

Looks good, but the hand coming in the water is a bit too fast - you almost miss it, and the effect of it is minimal.

Yeah. I think it would've worked fine if I'd cut to a close-up, but jumping to a wide shot like that causes the hand to "disappear," from a visual standpoint.

 

Oo, you just gave me a great idea, though. Stay tuned.

[luckbat]

Well, there are some setbacks that no amount of backups can cure.

 

I was nearly done compositing a new sequence, but while viewing it, I noticed some rigging glitches in the wrists. So, I popped open the model and started reworking the constraints. I managed to improve the wrists, but in doing so, I noticed a very glaring mistake: my TSM-1 rig was installed improperly. The roll handles on the shoulders and arms were pointing forwards instead of backwards like they're supposed to.

 

Unfortunately, I knew what would happen if I fixed the rig. All the keyframes from the shoulders on down would be ruined. But I saw no alternative. I flipped the offending bones and re-generated the rig. When I opened my choreography, sure enough, my character's arms were twisted up like licorice.

 

Here's what I came up with in an effort to recover my lost keyframes:

 

1. I took my now-unusable choreography and exported it as an action.

 

2. I brought the action into the project, along with a copy of the rigged model from before I repaired the arm bones.

 

3. I took the old model, colored it yellow, and set its transparency to 50%, so I'd be able to tell the two apart.

 

4. I dropped the exported choreography onto the old model. Since both choreographies were identical, the two models occupied the same spot. The only different was that the old model moved its arms correctly, while the newly repaired model flailed about crazily.

 

5. Now that I had a "guide," I set about moving the hands and arms of my new model so that they matched the hands and arms of the old model. Yes, bone by bone, keyframe by keyframe.

 

6. I shared my sad story on the internet, in case anyone else ever encounters a similar problem.

 

The good news is, I'm mostly done adjusting all the keyframes. The bad news is, I now need to re-render all my footage, so no new clips tonight.

 

They're coming, though. I'm rendering the backgrounds as I write this.

[luckbat]

I'm not worthy!

 

Animator Shao Guee, of Haruwo fame, dropped me an e-mail with some friendly tips on getting that anime-style look. And when Shao Guee gives advice, he puts his money where his mouth is: check out this elaborate demo video, with meticulously labeled "before" and "after" screens. Note the masking off of the wall areas, the subtle flicker of the fluorescent lights, and the added sparkle of the tap water. The man goes all out.

 

He's right, of course. The greenish bloom he's added to the skin tones, in particular, really drives home the sickly "bathroom of the damned" atmosphere I'm going for.

 

Stuff like this really makes my day. Thanks, Shao Guee!

 

SG_overlay_demo.mov

[Mr. Jaqe]

I must say, I really like that lighteffect! It may be a TAD much, but it's close to the closest one can ever get to perfect... Shao Guee must be a great man, with an Mount Everest-sized talent. It really spiced it up a lot and gave it a mood.

 

Keep up the work!

[luckbat]

Another week, another update. Though I must say that I'm hitting some limits with these animatics. For one thing, the complex lighting--especially the volumetrics--and high-res textures I'm using guarantee painfully long render times. It looks like I'm gonna have to switch to some sort of low-res preview rendering from now on, because I'm almost spending as much time rendering as I am animating. Not cool.

 

In any case, here's the latest animatic. I've begun to depart from my storyboards quite a bit at this point. Shot 2 is nowhere to be found, and Shot 1 has been re-framed yet again. Shot 3 has been re-lit, and things really start moving with Shot 4, which formed the basis of my "Mood Shot" contest entry.

 

I don't know where else to post this, so I'll just come out and say it here: winning the Animation Contest was weird. First, because I didn't really think mine was the best entry of the bunch (I didn't vote for it), and second, because it's a bit intimidating joining the Fellows. Suddenly you're allowed to sit at the big kids' table, only they all know each other, and you're just some guy. It's like transferring to a new high school in the middle of the year. I always thought winning a Hash contest would be cool, but instead it's just... awkward.

 

Anyway, I spent this past weekend developing yet another set of controls for Ebon's cloak bones, so she can now part the flaps of the cloak with her arms. Which is important, since she does a fair amount of pointing and grabbing in this short. You'll see some of that in the next update.

 

latest_animatic.avi

[luckbat]

I made myself sick this weekend. Physically, I mean. Headache, sore throat, stomach problems. I let my frustrations get the better of me, and for all the wrong reasons.

 

After finishing another shot of my animation on Thursday, I hit a brick wall when I tried to render it. For reasons unknown, frames 828 through 860 could not be rendered. They'd lock up the machine, and I'd have to force quit. I spent all day Friday trying other ways to get those frames to render, but nothing worked. It wouldn't prevent me from working on the animation itself, but I wouldn't be able to see what I was doing.

 

Then the Anzovins' TSM2 for Mac was released, and I thought I'd at least have a something new to play with while I figured out a way around my problem. But it soon became apparent that TSM2 had some glitches in it as well. I was going to have to wait for a fix.

 

What I should have done would have been to step away from the computer, enjoy the sunny weather, see a movie, call a friend. Instead, I redoubled my efforts to render those missing frames. I wasted all of Saturday cursing and crashing, aborting renders and deleting keyframes.

 

Sunday I woke up sick. Disgusted, I ended up taking screengrabs of the missing frames straight out of the application window, and compositing them into the animation separately. Which looks awful, for obvious reasons.

 

It took me a few hours to figure out how I let my frustrations get the better of me. I wasn't really stressing about 32 unrenderable frames or an imperfect rigging too. No, the reason I pushed myself too hard this weekend can be summed up in four words: "One second per day."

 

Believe it or not, ever since I started this thread I've been working pretty much seven days a week on the "Ebon" WIP. About five hours a day, on average. And yet no matter how many hours I put in, I can't seem to break the one second per day mark. After two weeks, I had about 15 seconds of animation. After a month, I had about 30. Now it's been six weeks, and I've got 38 seconds to show for it. Which is actually less than one second per day.

 

Now, seven seconds a week is actually not all that bad, by some standards. But that's not the point. At one second a day, my two-minute animation will take four months. Four months of working seven days a week! It also means that a half-hour animation would, at my current rate of speed, require me to work every single day for five years before it was done. Realizing that is what really made me sick this weekend. I tried so hard not to let my seconds-per-day count drop below 1, but the end, it did.

 

What's the big deal about a silly number, you may ask? It's a matter of perspective. I can't keep doing this if it takes half a decade to do half an hour of animation. That's just too slow to be worth it. Even one extra second per day would make a huge difference. That means you could do a 24-minute short in two years. That suddenly sounds a lot better. At five seconds per day, you could make your own feature film in three years. That's pretty darn good. But one second per day is not.

 

Anyway.

 

The 'W' in WIP doesn't stand for "whining," it stands for "work." So here's my latest 38-second extravaganza, complete with the 32-frame glitch in all its glory. (Yes, I submitted a report.) Clearly I over-storyboarded this sucker, because shots #5 and #7 join their colleague #2 on the cutting-room floor.

 

All you folks who wanted a better look at Ebon, here's your chance.

 

 

Just so you know, there is supposed to be dialog in this piece, but since I haven't done any lipsync/expressions yet, all I have is gesturing. Rest assured I will be adding sound to this, someday.

 

Download Ebon: Shots 1 through 5

[Mr. Jaqe]

Before the flick: "Oh boy! OH boy! OH BOY!! I'm gona like this! I just know it! OH BOY!!"

 

After the flick: "I knew I was right..."

 

Since you mentioned the glitch, there's no point pointing it out(yet I wrote about it). Only one iff: You might wanna add some camera-movement when Ebon points'n stuff, maybe slow down and lenghten the path(in lack of a better word) the camera moves along from the big guys face, 'till it stops. <---hope you understand what I'm trying to say. I'm no mivie-expert, but it may look better(if you havn't already tried it, and it didn't ).

 

Awsome flick you got there!

[Paul Forwood]

Luckbat, I feel your pain.

It may not be much compensation but I think it's looking gorgeous!

[Drakkheim]

well now that you're a fellow, you're allowed to ask for help

 

im sure there are plenty of people who'd be willing to give you a hand, relighting shots, animating a hand or any of those other little things that draw you time away from getting on with the story.

[lafnjack]

Luckbat,

 

Your doing great work. If its any consolation, we're all looking forward to seeing Ebon. Gambate (my romaji sucks)!

 

But I do have a question about 3d workflow that you might be able to answer. Once the models are made, is 3d animation faster than 2d? Would 3d backgrounds with 2d characters be faster? Not hinting at anything, I'm just PERSONALLY curious as I have no real benchmarks and haven't seen what most people say about it. I personally had always assumed that 3d (after the initial model development part) was alot faster (theoretically).

 

Anyway, keep up the amazing work. After all, your stuff inspired me to get back into AMing (FWIW).

 

All my best,

lafnjack

[Guest jandals]

Mike, I love your project! It looks GREAT and following your progress is inspiring. You do wonderful work and I hope you'll keep doing it!

 

Rhett

[vf124]

The 'W' in WIP doesn't stand for "whining," it stands for "work."

 

Very nice work ... the light coming thru the stalls causes her to flash as she walks by ...

 

Really enjoy following the progress of YOUR WIP

[luckbat]

Hey, thanks, you guys. I'm feeling better now; my bug report was confirmed, and the TSM2 glitch was ironed out yesterday morning. I'll try not to let stupid stuff get the better of me like that. Thanks for all the encouragement.

 

Mr. Jaqe wrote:

...maybe slow down and lenghten the path(in lack of a better word) the camera moves along from the big guys face, 'till it stops.

 

Well, I can't really change the camera path, as I framed both ends of that camera move pretty meticulously. I understand what you're saying about the speed of the move, but I don't feel there's any point in doing a "slow reveal" for a shot like this, since we (the viewers) already know that there's someone over there. In a shot like this, the camera POV visually represents the character's "awareness," so the quick camera move should feel like a kind of visual "WTF?" moment.

 

Paul Forwood wrote:

It may not be much compensation but I think it's looking gorgeous!

 

That is compensation, Paul. Thank you.

 

Drakkheim wrote:

...im sure there are plenty of people who'd be willing to give you a hand, relighting shots, animating a hand or any of those other little things that draw you time away from getting on with the story.

 

I hope that's true. I have much bigger plans for this project. But first I have to push myself to finish this short, to prove I can complete a quality project in a reasonable timeframe. Because if I can't do that, why should anyone volunteer to help me?

 

Lafnjack wrote:

...But I do have a question about 3d workflow that you might be able to answer. Once the models are made, is 3d animation faster than 2d? Would 3d backgrounds with 2d characters be faster?

 

Well, I have no hard facts for you, John, just my own opinions. I think most people would agree that an expert 2D animator probably works at about the same speed as an expert 3D animator. If you look at major animation studios, it seems like it takes about the same time to release a 2D feature film as a 3D one--about 3 years from conception to completion. (Well, except for stop-motion. Everyone knows that's way slower.)

 

3D backgrounds with 2D characters? Yikes. That sounds like the worst of both worlds. Sets take way longer to build and light than characters, and you need to build a new set for each location!

 

I can tell you that I only chose Hash A:M as my medium of choice for Ebon after considering many other alternatives. I had been leaning towards Flash originally, based on the impact of projects like Ninjai, Genryu's Blade or Fool Lee. But ultimately I settled on celshaded 3D, as I wanted a range of movement and level of detail that would've been impossible in vector-based 2D. If you consider the shots I've assembled so far, I think you'd agree that Flash just can't match this "look."

 

vf124 wrote:

...the light coming thru the stalls causes her to flash as she walks by ...

 

It's true that volumetrics and the toon shader don't play well together. But in this case, that's actually the unrenderable-frames bug I mentioned in my previous post. I hope it gets fixed soon!

 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go re-rig Ebon with the Setup Machine 2...

[lafnjack]

Thanks VERY much Luckbat! I appreciate the info. I'm looking at Ninjai and Xombie as examples of animation that I'd like to pursue, but the main worry is time. I'd chosen AM as it seemed a speedier workflow. Glad you confirmed!

 

Keep up the excellent work! Your right, you've got an entirely unique and impressive "look" with Ebon.

lafnjack

[entity]

It's true that volumetrics and the toon shader don't play well together. But in this case, that's actually the unrenderable-frames bug I mentioned in my previous post. I hope it gets fixed soon!

 

You could do the volumetrics as a seperate pass and just flat render the objects in the scene as black objects. Then take the volumetrics pass and add it in later. The render time will be better. Plus you will be able to edit the intensity of the volume lighting later if you wish. Light effects are best done in post anyway, I believe. It depends so heavily on other objects in the scene to make it look good. Just a suggestion of a work around till it's fixed.

 

 

EDIT******

You and Flog and Smudge are so inspirational. There are a lot of talented people here and hope you guys keep it up. Don't be a quitter like me!

 

By the way... Once you work out the kinks in the rendering and modeling and rigging and animating... things will start to go faster for you. I've modelled my main character four times... I'm getter better and faster at it and my rigging has become more refined... it won't take you five years to do a half-hour movie! momentum is on your side!

Edited July 28, 2005 by entity

[luckbat]

Sigh. Twenty days later, fifteen seconds of new content. My ratio is actually falling instead of getting better. (Yeah, okay, the fact that I re-rigged Ebon with the TSM2 skeleton and manually re-keyed most of her existing keyframes was probably also a factor.)

 

My thanks to all the people who posted words of encouragement or sent me fan mail. You drive me onward.

 

 

Five (well, four and a half) new shots today. Here's the deal:

 

Shot 5 - It may look the same as before, but Ebon's sporting a shiny new TSM2 skeleton and a new walk cycle.

 

Shot 6 - Obviously, the blood dripping is supposed to be animated, but I have no idea how I'm going to go about it. Maybe some unholy union of animated decals and additional geometry? I welcome your suggestions. Man, that is one boring-looking shoe.

 

Shot 7 -- Ebon's costume is missing the bandages on the arms, but they'll be added eventually, just so you know. I will say that I was pretty psyched to see the way the light catches her fingertips.

 

Shot 8 - Fun fact: the blurriness of the walls is depth of field, but Ebon was blurred in post. Why are the handles on her umbrellas suddenly yellow? I have no idea. I'll probably make them black in the final costume design. By the way, we should definitely be able to see the back of Monk's head in the mirror over there, but rendering this shot with reflections turned on would take a million jillion years. So I skipped it.

 

Shot 9 - Sucks.

 

As I explained last time, I'm going to be doing lipsync/expressions in a separate pass later on, which is why the characters act like they're talking even though they're not currently talking. Feel free to invent your own dialog. However--and I may regret doing this--those of you dying to know what Ebon is saying in shots 7-9 can check out this ancient lipsync test. Different outfit, same lines.

 

That's all for now. Tune in next month for more shots of people standing around and moving their arms slightly.

shots_5_9.mov

[Guest jandals]

(Yeah, okay, the fact that I re-rigged Ebon with the TSM2 skeleton and manually re-keyed most of her existing keyframes was probably also a factor.)

 

That's slowed me down, too but I'm glad that I've done it.

 

Obviously, the blood dripping is supposed to be animated, but I have no idea how I'm going to go about it.

 

Could you do it with a material effect? If you don't need to show a drop falling to the floor you could just move the ME suddenly in to place and scale it up from something very small to its final size over one or two frames. You could also model the ground-splatters as separate objects (ccokie-cut?) and them do the same thing (quick scaling)

 

I Love these shots! I don't see what you don't like about them... The camera tilt up to his curling fingers is great. And there's already a lot of expression in their poses. And, of course, the environment is wonderful.

 

Excellent!

 

Rhett

[nixie]

Mike,

This is looking great, The Lighting is great, the animation is great, the cinematography is great, Stuff like this isn't supposed to be rushed! I'm sure once you get deeper into this you'l begin ticking off the shots a bit speedier though.

 

Keep it up!

 

Nixie

[Rockmanex]

Ah. Cel shaded stuff...reminds me of the thesis I did a few years ago....I would recommend you do heavy key light composite work..helps to bring out the forms more.

[luckbat]

I would recommend you do heavy key light composite work..helps to bring out the forms more.

I will in the final version. These are just motion tests.

 

If you know of any online examples of what you're describing, I'd be happy to take a look, though. Also check out Shao Guee's suggestions from page 2 in this thread.

[Paul Forwood]

It's great to see that you have managed to jump all the recent hurdles, Mike, and that you will be able to concentrate more on what you want now. Have you tried animating the blood by moving a drip object from inside the hand? If you use two drips you can have it drip off the edge of the hand. Just an idea.

 

Hope to see more here soon.

[luckbat]

Paul, I'm guessing I'll have to use an animated decal on the floor, a static decal on the palm, and additional droplet geometry on the fingers.

 

It pains me to have to do so much work for such a brief shot, but that's how it goes sometimes.

[luckbat]

Well, let's get the venting out of the way first, so we can end this on an up note.

 

GOOD: The Hash team fixed the bug that was preventing me from rendering blended actions.

 

BAD: They only fixed it in v.12, which effectively forced me to purchase the upgrade.

 

GOOD: I have the upgrade now, and the software no longer crashes when I try to render my Ebon character.

 

BAD: The software now crashes when I try to render the other character.

 

Yeah, I'm serious. The new v.12f force-quits before it'll render even a single frame with him in it. I'll submit it as a bug report when I have the time, but man! How infuriating is that? Fortunately, I always render Monk and Ebon in separate passes, so I can use A:M v.11.1 for Monk and A:M v.12 for Ebon, but it still feels like there's some sort of cosmic joke being played on me.

 

Anyway. This was a tough couple of shots, for two reasons. One was the lighting. Toon lighting bears very little resemblance to real lighting, and duplicating it using 3d lights requires nonstop cheating. Case in point: the sunlight in shots 10 and 11. Ebon's close-up in shot 11 has some really nice rim lighting that I think looks really flattering, although it doesn't remotely match the lighting on Monk. (Each character model has its own orbiting "toon light" to allow for full customization of highlights and shadows.) But in order to achieve it, I had to aim Ebon's toon light almost directly at her back, which made the reverse shot (shot 10) look like crap--no shadows at all. So, I had to grit my teeth and add a second orbiting toon light, to be used only for situations like this, when I can't use the same lighting for consecutive camera angles.

 

The big killer, though, was that damn hood. I'd always intended for it to remain in place for the length of the scene, but once Ebon and Monk got right up close to each other, the hood had become a liability. It makes it nearly impossible to position the camera to show Ebon's face, at a point when her facial expressions are crucial. So, as seems to happen nearly every three or four shots, I had to re-rig. This time I added a pose slider allowing the hood to be retracted, and after some further experimentation, I also added a "grasping" bone that allows the right edge of the hood to deform when grabbed. I'm relieved to see that the end result looks pretty decent, considering that the model was never designed to do this.

 

Not much of an improvement to my ratio this time around--18 seconds in 15 days, and a third of that was a walk cycle. Not to mention it took me three days just to render this clip.

 

Griping aside, today's is a significant update for me, as I have finally broken the one-minute mark, and have therefore passed the halfway point on this little project. In principle, anyway. The second half has a lot more movement than the first, and may prove much more difficult to animate. But it looks like I've got around 45 seconds left to go.

 

I'd like to close with a shout out to the A:M toon renderer. When you watch shot 11, check out Ebon's inner ear, nose and lips. Look how the nostril lines become a rounded v-shape as she lowers her head. And how the lower lip line broadens out, then shrinks back to a small curve. That's exactly how you'd draw these things if you were doing this by hand. The lines are clean and smooth (I render them at double resolution), with no artifacts or dropouts. It's just terrific.

 

That's all for now. Stay tuned for next update, in which the characters... well, let's just say the conversation is over.

 

 

Download: Ebon: Shots 10-11

[Zaryin]

Haha, I love that little hair bounce. I think it's looking great so far. Don't really have a crit.

[vf124]

Not much of an improvement to my ratio this time around--18 seconds in 15 days, and a third of that was a walk cycle. Not to mention it took me three days just to render this clip.

 

Mike, it's really a nice work of art ...

[luckbat]

Thanks, vf124, I appreciate that.

 

When I complain about my rate of production, it's not so much that I'm fishing for sympathy. I'm just venting my frustration at watching my dreams slip away.

 

My goal in doing this 2-minute piece was to teach myself the software (and some of the principles of animation) so I could produce a more elaborate 8-9 minute short using the same characters. I've already written the script for that.

 

If I could get my rate to about 3 seconds of finished animation per day, then I could probably put out a 9-minute short with about six months of dedicated work. But at 1 second per day, that same short would take a year and a half, working 7 days a week on top of my day job. And I just don't think I can sustain that.

 

So, that's the reason I bring up "the ratio" so often. It hangs over my every waking moment. If I can't beat it, I'm more or less going to have to throw in the towel.

[nixie]

It looks beautiful, Im really looking forward to this on completion; sorry about your troubles.

 

Nixie

[amarillospider]

Man Mike, I love the look of this thing!!

 

Crit wise, the hood looks wierd to me as it comes off. I think it's because it holds it's form so much, kind of like a shell she's sliding off, whereas real cloth would slide around at different speeds much more. (I hate saying that as I know you've worked very hard on it.) You could try muscle deforming it as she pulls it off, or maybe try the cloth sim. I think that it might be less noticeable from the back, I think it's the lack of sliding over the head that bugs me, so maybe you could just restage it (cut after her hand starts moving it to a back shot for Monk's reaction?)

 

As for production ratio. It seems like your trying to do everything at once: animate, light, render, composite to final image. Maybe you should concentrate on one stage at a time. It seems like you animate a little then find a need for a new rig, maybe if you animated all the way through you could find all your rig problems at once and fix them all at once. It seems like your compounding your problems by fighting rigging problems, animation problems, lighting problems, and rendering problems all at once. Maybe you can streamline it so your only fighting one problem at a time. But maybe you're already doing this.

 

Anyway, that's just my suggestions, feel free to ignore them. This project looks so great I would hate for you to get burned out and abandon it. Good luck!!

 

-Alonso

 

-Alonso

[luckbat]

Crit wise, the hood looks wierd to me as it comes off. I think it's because it holds it's form so much, kind of like a shell she's sliding off, whereas real cloth would slide around at different speeds much more.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. The pose slider makes her hood retract like the canopy of a convertible. I originally thought she might be able to grab the top and pull back, but her giant cartoony head makes that motion look unnatural. Frame-by-frame muscle-mode animation is probably overkill, but I think I've figured out a way to alter the pose slider to make the hood pull-back a little less shell-shaped. I'll add this one to my list of tweaks for the second pass.

 

It seems like you're trying to do everything at once: animate, light, render, composite to final image. Maybe you should concentrate on one stage at a time. [...] It seems like you're compounding your problems by fighting rigging problems, animation problems, lighting problems, and rendering problems all at once. Maybe you can streamline it so you're only fighting one problem at a time.

Hmm. You may be onto something there. Now that I look over this thread, it does seem like I spend an awful lot of time re-rigging and rendering. The cloak, in particular, has caused me no end of troubles. Could my own pipeline be what's really bogging me down? I'm going to have to look into this. Thanks for the insight, Alonso.

[kattkieru]

Heya man,

 

This shot looks *fabulous.* The lack of lipsync is a tad weird, but I assume that's going to be a task for a second pass. The body motion is good.

 

Three crits:

1) Monk's head snaps for a moment -- is she spitting in his face? It's a strange motion without any kind of anicipation or secondary action.

2) Her wrist, in the very first frame of the first shot, looks broken. (I've broken both of mine, one twice, so I know.) I noticed it in the last video you uploaded, but I forgot to post it.

3) The motion is a bit floaty.

 

Now, on the last crit I think I should clarify what I mean by floaty.

 

Watch The Incredibles tonight. The characters move at a pretty normal pace, but even when they're going slowly there's a visible snap from pose to pose. I think it comes from extra passes and adding keyframes to extend spaces between movements. This might be something that'd really benefit this clip, as the motions themselves are great for the most part (Monk's head thing not withstanding), but they feel like they last too long. However, if you speed up the motions they'd look strange, so you'd need to maybe go back with a second pass and add dirt to the keyframe timeline.

 

Does that make any sense?

 

Anyway, how about uploading a full thing of all the clips seamed together now? It's looking really good. Keep it up!

[luckbat]

Monk's head snaps for a moment -- is she spitting in his face? It's a strange motion without any kind of anicipation or secondary action.

Oh, that. He's delivering a (fairly dismissive) line of dialog at that moment. The animation's still a bit rough there, because I was struggling with positioning his head so that it would look correct in both camera angles.

 

Her wrist, in the very first frame of the first shot, looks broken.

Yeah, let's just say wrists aren't exactly my strong suit. The problem is, I'm just trying to convey her hand going from "pointing" to "limp," but when I rotate the wrist much farther, it tends to look like she's catching an invisible fly. I think I need to spend more time studying this one in front of a mirror.

 

Watch The Incredibles tonight. The characters move at a pretty normal pace, but even when they're going slowly there's a visible snap from pose to pose. I think it comes from extra passes and adding keyframes to extend spaces between movements. [...]

 

Does that make any sense?

Not... really. Could you give me an example?

 

Anyway, how about uploading a full thing of all the clips seamed together now?

No prob: Ebon animatic: the first 70 seconds