Month: November 2020

What is it?

It is when culture is represented by visual images, still or moving. This area of study does not care specifically for aesthetics but for cultural meanings and ideas that can be illustrated in various ways. For example, someone with certain habits and ways can represent an entire culture or community just by the way that person acts or thinks.

In my opinion, visual culture is everywhere, the examples are endless. In film it is important to say something about someone or something without nothing being said at all, the idea of what that person represents is there even before that person talks. I began watching the series “the Crown” and just the main character, the queen has tons of characteristics and all of her background is a symbol of a certain culture, era, monarchy and background. Ofcourse, she does not need to have a crown in her head to know that she is queen, the way she talks, moves even deals with situations is something representative of her history and what she symbolizes.

Visual Metaphor

Also known as Analogical Juxtaposition, it is an idea, feeling or history represented by an object. For example, in the movie “The curious case of benjamin button” by James cameron, right at the beggining, as soon as the father of benjamin sees him, he runs away and abandones the baby in a care home. The baby represents death instead of a new life as the mother dies giving birth to the child.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is the look and feel of a scene or image having the intention to make people feel confortable or unconfortable, like in horror movies in which the intention is to make the audience unconfortable or feel scared.

For example, the movie “Parasite” by Bong Joon-ho, represents the extremes of chinese society and how a very poor family enters their world by undignified actions. The house of the poor family is very dirty, doesn’t have much light and you can notice the dust in the air in the beams of light from the window and the house of the rich people is always clean, has a lot of space and light, it is organized – all this is part of the aesthetics of a film.

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I don’t even have to say which house belongs to which family. This tells a story before anything else happens and it is extremelly important to make the audience feel the movie, like they are in it.

Color

Color is what makes the mood of a movie, if it is happy, scary, dramatic, romantic and so on. It can even indicate the change/evolution of a character throughout the movie, his intentions and dreams. There are numerous color techniques used in movies, but some directors make color part of their language and almost like their signature, like Wes Anderson in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” where the color palette is among, yellows, oranges, reds, browns – all the colors are very vivid and warm that indicates energy and perspicacity of the main character – Mr. Fox.

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Rhythm

Rhythm is given by a group of things, like focal length, angle, movement, set dressing, the color, costumes, everything… It is aligned with the mise en scene meaning, it is part of it and everything else in front of the camera, the way the story tells itself.

For example, in class it was shown to us a very good example from the movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel” by Wes Anderson, when the character zero is interviewed by M. Gustave the scene starts outside and he does the interview while walking large steps and doesn’t really accept anything zero is saying, not really carying about anyone else other than himself and all that he as to do.

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Conclusion

All these categories above mentioned are part of visual culture and are one of the most important aspects in movie making as they tell the story before a word is said. To us animators it is also something we have to know, if we are telling the story with the character and the space around it we have to know what other parts of a scene are talking too. We have to work together with the environment as it makes part of how a character moves and reacts to the world around it. As animators we give life and personality to things that most environments help build.

What are contraints and what to we use them for?

Constraints are a special type of controller that can help us, animators to connect an object or something to a target, something that will follow the animation of another animated thing. Parents can be used to control an object’s position, rotation, scale and direction through a binding relationship with another object.

For example, if i want to animate someone walking with a wallet I can constrain the wallet to the model’s hand and it will follow the position and rotation of the hand. There are a few types of constraints:

Point constraint – constraints the objects position to a target but it does not follow rotation or scale.

Orient constraint – Constraints the object to the rotation of another object

Parent constraint – constrains position to the other object and the constrained object cannot change it’s position individually, it always snaps back to the position of the object to which it is constrained to.

Scale constraint – Constraints scale to another object

Aim constraint – Constrains an objects orientation to another object.

In this class we talked about contraints and were given an assignment in which we had to make a walk cycle with a prop using a contraint, we had the option to add a prop to the previous walk cycle with ballie from animation mentor that only has legs, or we could make a new walk cycle with a full body model.

I choose to make a new walk cycle, to push myself a bit further and added a skate to Franklins hand, he has a very nerd look, he looks like my history teacher from the 7th grade, never saw him with a skate and decided to try. Again, it is my first time adding props to a model, the only thing I did before was a path constraint with a car following a path.

How can they help us animate?

This is a very usefull tool that allows the animator to be able to attach something to another object, automating its animation process and saving time to animators that don’t have to animate individually the object following the hand of a humanoid model, for example.

Parenting vs. Parent Constraint

When parenting an object to another this object will be following the other object’s movement, scale and rotation, but if we want to move the child and modify it we can. When parent constraining an object to another object, it will be copying its position, scale and rotation too but the object does not make part of the other one. An object’s movement can also be constrained by the average position of multiple objects.

In outliner, when parenting, the child will go into the parent becoming part of an hierarchy and in parent constraint the object remains independent and only has a parent constraint node attached to it.

I can’t even begin to explain how important is a good rig, us, animators work with it, it is almost the same as having a good computer, without a good one everything you do on it will take much more time and effort. A good rig is just as essential, it is what allows us to make different poses and key them for animation. So, if we ever have to work with a bad one we should just fix it or ask for it to be fixed, the goal here is to try to always work with good ones.

If a rig is slow, the joints break, you can’t scale it, it’s not intuitive or for some reason you can’t find the controls and quickly get the hang of it, well then, that is a bad rig.

I don’t think I ever worked with a bad rig, when I was taking my bachelors we never really touched rigs, my first contact with it was when I was making my portfolio and downloaded stewart from animation mentor, which, in my opinion is a good one. The controls are all where they should be, it was very easy to use – and I had never worked with one, so for a first time I believe I chose a good one. Ofcourse animation mentor has very good material and professionals so I went there with the objective of having a good tool to work with as a first time.

Last week we had an assignment in which we had to make a full body animation, and I chose Franklin, which I like, is a diferent model, his posture is diferent than what I’ve worked with so I tried it. I find Stewart much easier to work with, but this one is more complex as it has face controls and his posture is diferent, it is understandable that I find this one more dificult to work with.

A question brought up in class and a very important one, since the beggining the media have a very high impact on how people think, percieve things and create opinions about certain subjects. So, how can they reach us?

These are examples for each media format, in how politics affects it.

Games

Gamers tend to hate it when politics have an important role in their favorite game, although if there isn’t enough political influence the games end up being left in the shadow or called “games for cowards” like far cry 5 who was heavily criticized for it. I just started by seaching videos on youtube about politics in video games and most of the videos in the list were how much gamers hate it when politics becomes part of the game experience.

Although it is hated by most it is also important to actually have an ideology behind the story of a game, I do not consider myself a gamer but I play assassin’s creed odyssey and it is all about politics. The narrative is placed in greece, the place where politics was thought and “made” and even if I don’t agree with some ideology it is trully just a game, it will not make me want to go outside and kill people just because i want their sword or there is a bounty on their heads. But, some people don’t have the right education or background to percieve things as I do, so it is important to be aware of how much do politics or ideas weight in the players mind calculating worst and best case scenario.

Ofcourse, this is my personal experience and there are a lot more games with much different ideologies than the ones i just refered, like mortal combat. This game is highly controversial because of the amount of violence and has been criticized over the years, also because technology is better and better and it is more realistic than ever. It is literally showing kids how to kill people, commiting murder. It is even funny to think about it.

Also, sons of anarchy game, for example, has a pretty strong political and ideological ideas, including the advertising of violence. The main character Jax mentions that everyone in california can carry a knife as long as their not more than 6 inches long and that it is part of the motard culture.

TV

Since the beggining the medium that was trusted and had the biggest coverage over news and what was happening in the world were the print media, the journals that sometimes even had two editions per day. It was the format that used to reach more people, but, when tv appeared the popularity of the paper news vanished. The TV just does the work for you, whoever wants to be a bit more informed about whats happening in the world (right now) just needs to watch any news channel for 20 minutes and you’re good to go.

The thing is, tv does not have a lot of time to tell the story so it only covers the most important topics of it. If someone really wants to know the details of a story the papers are a much better way because it is a matter of space, not a matter of time.

Ofcourse, today, if I wanted to know more about a certain subject I would probably just jump to the internet and type in what i want to know. A curious thing is – these story that I’m looking forward to hear more about was probably realeased and written by a newspaper company, like “the washington post” or the “Times” Magazine. These companies still have a very strong impact on the public. They are like the magnets for information, if for example, a politician wants something released to the public just go to one of those newspaper companies and make up your story for them to write.

TV is based on what the common people and minorities will consume. The people who probably wont go looking for more detail of a story because that minute on tv was enough for them to know and trust that information even though sometimes is not the real story.

Cinema

Cinema is also a good way to discretly (or not) mention a subject and work from there. For example womans rights, there are many biographic and historic movies that are obviously about it and make the viewer understand a certain point of view.

The suffragettes – a movie about the suffragette movement when women did not have the right to vote nor equal rights (still don’t but we are getting there!) , iron lady – about margaret tarcher the first prime minister of the united kingdom and her fight in a mans world in a mans time and hidden figures – a movie about the women that helped launch the appolo 11 mission and made possible the trip to the moon. Three characters in the shadows of men that were also a big part of it and never mentioned.

Now more than ever, movies have a strong political and ideological messages to target viewers and most of them use characters to be the ones in the shoes of who is being mistreated or left behind just because of how they look or where they came from or even their sexual orientation. And the oposite can occur, the movies can use characters who give the public an idea of being a certain way just to attract audience from those specific groups, like “gaybating” when there is a character that apparently is gay but turns out to not be just to attract the LGBT community.

And again, just like in games some tv series and movies advertise too much violence, like Game of Thrones in which the good and the bad guys kill people with an amount of violence that is not usually displayed in tv.

Advertising

Advertising is the main financial support of many media like tv broadcast and journalism, so these tend to not report stories that criticize in any way their bussiness partners. As well as, a news channel will never report something bad about themselves, that is just basic, no one does that. The best example of politics in advertising is also facebook, that lives of advertising.

Ofcourse adds need to be watched and consumed by the public so they tend to be always looking for the best media format to play it and eventually end up supporting one political side or opinion.

For example in the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise, ray ban made a product placement in the movie and for a long time the ray ban sunglasses model used in the movie was something that was associated with the U.S Navy, and the movie itself also increased the recruitment rate for the U.S Navy. The best advertising for something is really the movies, because the audience thinks it’s cool and wants to experience the same thing as the main character.

Online Streaming

With websites like youtube, come a lot of people who make their living of online streaming like youtubers, gameres and their game plays and those sorts of things, and these also have a strong political influence. Youtubers are people and have their own opinion and their not restricted to what they can or cannot say like tv broadcast or the news, these people can actually say whatever they want and their followers and viewers (who apparently agree with that youtuber) will support their ideas and who knows? help them do something about it.

Not to talk about the fact that youtube itself also lives of advertising, which is highly political. That said, youtube is one of the media sources with most restrictions depending on the country we’re in, its rules vary from place to place depending on its political rules.

Facebook is forbiden in china, and in europe and america is something everyone has, even our grandparents.

Conclusion

Politics affect media in every way possible, now more than ever. Starting with the fact that in some countries some movies cannot be displayed or certain game is not available because of who made it or it’s political ideas. Including every other media source, tv broadcast, streaming, advertising, even books.

It is also scary to think about this, it is proof that everything we see is manipulated and made specifically to make you think in a certain way or have a certain opinion without it actually being true. Every bit of information can be misleading or not true and if we’re not aware we might end up believing something completly wrong or defending a cause for the wrong reasons.

This week we talked about matchmove and rotomation and what impact does that have on us, animators….

So… what is Matchmove?

Matchmove, also known as motion tracking, is the way to incorporate 3D data into live footage matching position, scale and orientation, like the bridge between those two in order to be possible to animate things in real world footage. The virtual camera has to move exactly like the one in the footage to ensure that everything we see in the movie can be captured by the 3D software and make it editable. The process of matching the movement of the camera with the one in 3D software is called matchmoving. The 3D software that performs the matchmove uses a tracking algorithm to find points in the footage that are already there (on a character or object) or through the contrast the software finds points to determine the distance of some objects, creating a 3D dimension in a 2D footage.

Camera knowledge is very important (focal length and angle of view) for all this to work, the camera is the viewer, it needs to see everything properly, we can never forget, the camera is also a character!

Matchmove is used in movies and television and even live broadcasts, for example in basketball games some of the advertising that is on the floor is not really there, it is generated by computer, whether in 2D or 3D.

I found this video and believe it is a good example of matchmoving:

When in 2D, matchmoving only tracks 2D space and it doesn’t really care about camera movement or distortion.

But, when in 3D everything is possible for that footage, the tracking software creates dots in space to allow the camera to have a 3D notion of space.

Nowadays with all the technology, directors of movies like the avengers can preview how the shot of a scene will look like before going into post-production. Ofcourse it’s not exactly how it will be in the end of post-production but it will give a pretty good idea of it.

Rotomation!!

The first time I heard about it was in class, I never really though how did they match the movements of the 3D elements into the actors, the chroma key ofcourse, is the main ingredient but I was totally in the dark on this subject.

Well, rotomation is the name of that! It is the process of animating a 3D element on top of the tracked motion (matchmove) frame by frame to match an actors movement or an object in live action plate. For this to be possible the camera has to really match the footage, or else the work will never look good or finished. This is a technique that comes with a good matchmove requirement.

These two are a new thing in the industry, not much people know how to do it or what it is. My main focus is animated movies but I find this technique trully interesting and… who knows? But I wouldn’t mind learning it and eventually work on it in the future.

In my view, the work of animators in an industry that is creating movies with amazing 3D content and VFX techniques is really focused on these two techniques that work together. Matchmove is focused on the camera, that is also a character and needs a good animation like everything else and rotomation is animation on top of real life footage and it is a door for a world of possibilities in the cinema and games industry. I see these two as a bridge between the real and unreal 3D world that still has so much to be discovered and done.

A render is the process of generating an image, wether it is a photorealistic one or not, from a 3D or 2D model using a computer software. It can generate a group of images from each frame of an animation to create a video and moving image. It is a process that requires a long time to perform and good equipment, it is the way to produce a final image.

A playblast is something similiar but does not have the benefict of the good quality, it is maily used to preview the work that is being done in the animation software, but it is much faster at making the video, so it is a very usefull tool for animators to preview their work before rendering it.

So, both have qualities and flaws, and each is used for different porpuses even if they seem the same. Render is for a final result and good looking images(frames) and playbast is to preview the work while doing it and before achieving a final thing.