This week we have been learning about character mouth shapes and the need to fill in a few expressions to make our animation move, and I have chosen a clip from the film ‘Truman’s World’ as a reference.
When the character is speaking, in different tones, attention should be paid to the impact of the mandible and the orbicularis oris muscle. Pick out the heavier tones to portray when animating, or the obvious pauses. The effect of language on mouth animation
In the case of English, the mouth shapes are grouped according to the phoneme (phoneme) required and when animating the mouth shape, the corresponding mouth shape is selected according to the pronunciation and then drawn.
English is a language that is used with rhythm. In addition to mobilising the lips, teeth and tongue as a basis for pronunciation between different sounds, real words are pronounced heavily and imaginary words are pronounced weakly, producing a lighter or heavier rhythm.
The alliteration technique allows words to be pronounced next to each other in a cluster, with pronunciation within the cluster full of glide, and then pronunciation emphasis or weakness depending on context, character and mood.
Body Mechanics Planning
Week 7：Weekly Assignments-Blocking Reference Video
1.0 Reference Video
Actually, for me, doing the layout in 2D first would make it easier for me to spot problems. I picked a reference video of crouching, tumbling and shooting because I thought it would help me to notice the centre of gravity of the character when moving, and the stagnation when tumbling through the air, and the rhythm of the character when moving.
2.0 2D sketch-find key pose
3.0 3D Animation Blocking
Feedback
This week I showed the video to George and he was very patient and helped me with a lot of the movements, I really appreciate it, I also realised that the inertia of the character when spinning in the air tends to carry the limbs and deflect them, this is also a problem that I overlooked
In week 8, this session focused on understanding the methodology, abstract, introduction, and summary. Nigel Mairs professor, provided us with some references and notes on reporting. During the class, the students asked for many details about the paper, and In the process of finding information, I created an outline of my dissertation to help me sort out my thoughts.
As I had no experience studying overseas, the report format was slightly different from the format of the dissertation I had written before. I asked Dr Nigel Mairs two points I was confused about before the class.
The first was about using diagrams in the report and the dissertation, and the second was about the methodology and the percentage of words in the report. Nigel Mairs professor answered it all very clearly and kindly for me.
In this session we will meet in groups to discuss topics, exchange knowledge, share resources and approaches.resources and approaches.
In the first few weeks, when putting together my literature review, I looked up some literature in Google scholar that could help me search for the scope of keywords and organize my thoughts.
I hesitated in identifying keywords until I went on a small search for connections between animated documentaries and other fields, and this material helped me a lot in going for the pulse of the thesis, and my main points gradually became clear
In week 7, I continued to explore the keywords identified last week. I wanted to talk about the values and effects, the prospects and potential of the field of animated documentaries.
As an animation student, I often face several problems in the animation production process, such as the complexity of the people involved and the long lead times. For animation production, the cost of creation and the revenue is an issue we must face. After sharing my views with other majors in this group exchange session, I realized that economics is a vast topic, and this part is too broad to be a sub-part of my subject. So I will not be exploring this area as a significant part of my subject.
Secondly, I realized that my knowledge of philosophy is lacking through the exchange with classmates from different countries, and I need to continue to spend much time improving my reading skills and knowledge. This exchange allowed me to hear about many exciting topics in other fields.
The authenticity of a documentary is ‘deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality’
Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paraphrased Paragraph
Honess Roe (2013, Animated Documentary) argues that images can reproduce social reality realistically and objectively, and the existence of the documentary image can prove the authenticity of a documentary.
This week we learned how to control a character’s face by adding IK joins to maintain bones and making the model more silky and flexible when moving. We must be careful to understand the hierarchy of bones; these skills are the basis for everything in the animation process.
First, we need to create six joints to control the movement of the skin, and the bones can control the chin area once they are bound and colored.
We need to be careful to understand the hierarchy of bones. For example, the jawbone controls the jaw area of the lips, which is the third joint, and the sixth joint influences the head.
I modified the model a bit and changed it to a more handsome Asian, Nick was doing Europeans in class, and I chose to change it to an Asian because the arch of the eyebrow is lower in Asia and the facial structure is different so that you can see the difference better.You can see that we can easily control the opening and closing of the mouth through the skeleton.The bones most affect the white areas, and the opposite is true for the black areas. For example, if we need to adjust the part of the chin, we can use a different brush to change the area where the skin is most affected by the bone.
I tried to modify the model given by my teacher because I thought that by modifying it to a slim old man, instead it would be easier to see where the muscles were going, help me understand the mouth animation better, and bind the character’s facial expressions with great fun!
walk cycle
reference：
This week we have animated the character walking, a very basic set of movements that we will often use in our animations. Walking can express a person’s mood, happy or sad, light or slow.
Breaking down walk cycles and how weight is distributed.
We don’t get weight by a smooth level movement.
The up-and-down position of your masses gives you the feeling of weight.
Flour Bags
This week we tried to make the animation of flour bags. We learned how to edit some joints to control the flour bags and modify the model of the model. When making a flour bag animation, I want to make it more interesting and give the flour bags it personality, using different control curves to imitate an angry, sighing flour bag
This lesson taught us how to control a skeleton to make a flour sack walk.We have joints and IK going on here. We will now try to make some animations with it and get it moving around.
I can see it here on the left-hand side of the outline view, opening up everything in the group’s structure.When animating a walk, make the different joints of the whole body step forward, and as we make a soft fabric, sway and rotate with care in the direction.
In this lesson, Nick taught us how to Create a controller for each joint with a curve and connect it to the model using a simple controller.
Freeze the parts, ensuring their coordinates are 0, as we will be animating the movement later.When freezing the various joints of the body, pay attention to the hierarchy. One will succeed the other in rotation, linking them together.The key to this lesson is understanding the hierarchy of joints, parent, the upper body using curves to bind polygonal objects, and the lower body using bones and polygons to create the parent. Nick shows us the most frequently used binding techniques in animation.
End.
Animating Weight shifts
George’s feedback and sharing some animation tutorials for us
I noticed in the tutorial that it was very helpful to talk about using the time difference between rotation and displacement to create some natural rhythms when the characters were moving, as I had often missed these small details.
Animation, as an audio-visual language art, is often used by creators to express personal outbursts of emotion, social ephemera, and other abstract subjects. Animation can be traced back to the earliest days of cave paintings and was often used to record significant historical events, such as hunting, rituals, and various religious activities. But for the Disney studios, World War II turned the animation factories into barracks, using animation as a weapon. Many government and military administrators understood that film was the best tool to educate, inspire and motivate people.
Categorisation: Animation is an integrated medium of creative expression for film and television. The creation of a good job is often influenced by a variety of historical, economic, and political influences. Historically, the late 1960s saw the outbreak of a second feminist surge, during which the world’s economic landscape changed dramatically. In the early 19th century, faithful women had to be pious, pure, and good at housework, and men morally influenced women through their roles as mothers and wives. In 1964, supported by the law, the student movement broke out. Many young women raised resistance against sexism, while in 1966, the anti-war movement in the United States, where women were mainly limited to providing moral comfort and support to young men, this traditional concept was reflected in a new type of revolutionary situation, where sexual freedom became sexual oppression. In animation history, feminist works have occupied a critical position.
Form and Function: Imagination is at the heart of animation, and these films invariably demonstrate how these female-identified and feminist animators, under the pressure of patriarchal domination, have flourished through a series of political statements and commentaries on public life – all of which have succeeded in animation in particular –to show their creativity.An issue often overlooked in the study of feminist films, media, and practices is animation’s critical capacity and potential. Both are historical markers of women’s individual and political resistance and the current burgeoning, deliberate use of film by female animators as a text of resistance. It makes sense.
The animated film turns the Asparagus into a male head-like vessel, the head sawed open, bright red with sap, and blooming beautifully. From the window, she peers in or views a man’s advances. But when this man disappears, she begins to lose it and debug herself, but how can she not leave her existing life? Asparagus is sex, the essence of a beautiful male form with its phallic stem, pointed style, and purple-green color. But as summer passes, it stretches high and becomes a subtle fern, leaning over the curb in the wind, the essence of femininity like long, tangled hair. It is a beautiful symbol of sexuality. The couch allows for rest and comfort, and she needs to relax a bit, employing sex. She puts on a mask and brings all kinds of temptations to the streets. The windows of the roads are a reflection of the times. I think Susan’s most significant limitation is that the animation lacks a vision of the future of feminism. In the production of the spirit, she favors the depiction of female appearance and the influence of the environment. Still, there is no doubt that this is an excellent experimental animation.
Formal Elements: In the animation, dazzling colors paint beautiful pictures; the motion pictures fluctuate like a vast, surging sea; it excites and delights the eye and the mind. Beautifully animated, with sometimes strangely raunchy visuals and a disturbing soundtrack, this is a strange short film, but it’s still gorgeous and entertaining. I think many moviegoers of experimental animation might immediately dismiss it as less plotted gibberish; however, if you greet the film’s bizarre atmosphere with open arms, you might find a shocking, funny, weird, beautiful, atmospheric, creepy, unique, provocative and fantastical wealth of animation.
Process: as Jung said, “Images are pregnant” There’s something about the ’60s and ’70s in the film – the acid and hallucinogens, the spectacular insight, the trance of being lost and found – and the color. All of Susan’s movies are handmade and shot on 35mm cameras – the slight shaking and layering of the film give the films a psychedelic style. The hand-drawn animation is vibrant and personal. The cackling vibrations of the shadows, the shifting light, and the medium of the film are all part of the look and feel of the film. The quality of the animation and the resolution color is very influential in working. It’s as different as looking at a painting and looking at a reproduction of an image – the quality of the film itself is part of the message.
From the color scheme alone, a swath of dazzling pinks and big reds suggest femininity, sensuality, and passion. In the lavishly decorated room, our eyes “follow” a faceless (masked halfway through) heroine on a journey that is iconic and familiar (woman, home, private domain), ending in an eerie, theatrical space. The theater is filmed with a stop-motion public, which is very different from the animated style of the entire film, realistic, realistic. The natural public prefers the unreal. Curtain after curtain, as if always can not be pulled out, masking what is behind. Behind the curtain is a huge figure, a hand, and this hand wants you to see whatever you want to see. He is the manipulator of everything. What does the waterfall mean? The mask in the picture is raw and dull, a rotating hole like an intestine where excrement is released and gets public admiration. The leather bag is like Pandora’s magic box, releasing endless compulsions. Notice the sofa is very eye-catching?
Sex toys correspond to the major companies, respectively, manufacturing goods. The surprise and amazement of the crowd. Leave all this to the people. The woman left, and she took off the mask. She went to the man, and here is a peek-a-boo shot of us spying on her, spying on her with our digital products. The meaning here is that this woman serves this man, and this woman is a general reference; she can already appear in various guises and be Santa Claus, as in the masked cabinet before. She can also be the man. The appearance of the waterfall in her mouth corresponds to the first play of the theater. What is the symbolism? Flowers, meat, whatever it is. Who gets the ultimate pleasure at the end, metal bands, fruit candy, hair dough, and who gets the ultimate pleasure? Susan uses a lot of vivid colors and music to articulate the film’s climax, creating a psychedelic yet elegant cinematic atmosphere.
Ari Folman, David Polonsky,2009.Waltz with Bashir.Israeli
Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary about the war and humanity of the brutal Second World War. The director interweaves layers of animation and authentic images to render the film’s poignant yet moving emotional tone. With the technical support of joint exploration and year-on-year updates, emerging digital media technology and the combination of animation and authentic images add many bright moments to the film, making the characters more complex and bringing the entire story circle to the audience, achieving the most basic principles. The freedom of animation and the flexibility of expression and production adds to the artistic aesthetic of the documentary. And what Nichols, B. says in his book about film and television assumes the destiny of understanding contemporary and old works in the history of society. At the same time, animated documentaries face many controversies. I think the most critical factor is whether to respect authenticity based on objective facts and the creation of animated language.
According to Honess Roes’ ‘Taxonomy for the documentary,’ people will question the disadvantages of animated documentaries, such as the fact that live-action films are much faster and cheaper. But I would counter with two points; the production process of animation avoids the extra expense of renting filming equipment and issuing crew props for documentaries. If one were to make a documentary about war, using a ‘secondary live action’ method of filming to recreate historical war footage to make up for the shortcomings of a historical film would necessarily involve expensive explosives and guns, which would be costly and dangerous. The use of ‘re-enactment’ in the documentary ‘Battle of Britain,’ about the Battle of Britain and Germany in World War II, was far more expensive than the pay-off due to the high upfront investment. Director spent more money on magazines and gunpowder than on the actual war in history. In contrast, the animated documentary on the same subject, Waltzing with Bushehr, cost just over a million dollars. In documentary filming, unpredictable weather conditions, equipment, and costume factors often do not compromise the production process. On the other hand, the animated documentary saves money and reduces the flow of existing resources, speeding up the filming and production process and facilitating the creation of images.
I found that most of the articles focused on whether animated documentaries could convey the essential character of the film in a new form of presentation. However, we often overlook the many social factors. For example, in a documentary film, without authentic historical footage, the filmmakers have recreated history and consulted many sources. However, the viewer questions the authenticity of the images when secondary re-enactments are used. In a highly abstract experimental animation, however, many viewers can glimpse the creator’s experience and creative philosophy through the many different forms of representation. In the case of an animated documentary, if only some animated elements are used, should the film be discussed under the concept of a documentary?
Formal Elements; the narrative character of an animated documentary.In the first half of the film, when I saw the soldiers shooting a young boy to death, it was clear to me that this was no longer the cruelty of war but the unleashing of human nature and selfishness. As the soldiers enter the forest before they can see the boy’s face, the film switches between a group of soldiers and the skinny boy, with the editing tugging at the heartstrings and making you feel the tension of the protagonist. The mission details are also fascinating, with the soldiers’ neatly tailored uniforms and rifles and the boy’s tattered clothes and old gun barrel. A few brief details convey a great deal of information about the film to the audience in a short period. The worldview is effectively and meticulously described and embellished. The film Waltz with Bashir is repeatedly interspersed with repeated depictions of the suffering caused by the war and the beauty of the memories.
