The sound was a missing part and I wish I had got the time to get it properly edited, it wa snot possible for this delivery but it will definitely be edited in the future for a showreel.
I was quite happy with the final result, even though the light was not how i wanted it to be, but it showed the development of my skills throughout the academic year and for that I am proud.
While polishing the last shot, when I could not tak it anymore I would do some other stuff needed for the project, such as textures, I was thinking of having none but that idea changed fast. It looks quite bad.
I found some good textures on polyhaven, what they have is limited but it had trees, ground and rocks, exactly what I needed. I did not find a good one for the cactus, so that is a non textured asset in my project. I wanted to have a displacement on the ground, a dry one, but it ended up being too much and I’m not an expert on textures and lights, it is definitely something I will invest my time in the future.
Textures:
hdri:
Also found on hdri haven, this is the only light source on the scene.
I did some research on how to apply the maps to the assets and tweaked some paramenters, like the raptors skin, ground, rocks specular values as everything was a bit too shinny.
Render
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on with the render farm and vm ware machines as it is way too slow, I could not open deadline window on one of the computers and the one that worked was super slow and kept crashing. Also I had a bunch of erros when rendering as the frames kept overwriting each other, so I had to do batch by batch.
Rendering is also a part of the project that takes a lot of time and so many obstacles can appear at this point, animation, rendering, lights, cameras, all these have to work together, final re touch is very time consuming.
When executing the first render tests in my computer, I remembered that I have ACES installed on my laptop, so the color spectrum is a bit wider, so when rendering on the render farm it looked like a night shot on some ocasions. I changed the lights accordingly.
The next and final part of this project is the final video editing and audio editing, although audio is still not a certain thing, as time is short and audio is a time consuming task
Before beginning to animate I usually make a camera sequencer playblast this is the last one made, as the next will not have all the right shots as they are on different scenes.
camera sequencer playblast:
Finally, the last shot, also an important one as both characters are in scene, I tried to erally push my skills on those two shots. I had also planned to have one final shot just from the seagull but the result was not the expected so I decided to finish with the main shot after the raptor runs away.
This shot was indeed a hard one, it included a last bit from the previous shot, which by my mistake suffered a lot of alterations as the blocking did change a lot. So it became an issue when rendering, as the lighting set up was made when all the shots were already polished. This also happened with shot 3 as it took so long, even if these were not the longest shots in the animation, they had specific movements that looked wierd if not animated properly, some still do, but it was helpfull to have a seperate scene where I didn’t have to worry to mess up the rest of the animation.
blocking:
The raptor was a tough character to understand, I ended up enjoying the seagull much more regarding animation, also it is easier to understand and of course is an animal present in real life so it always more familiar the aspects and characteristics to have in to consideration.
polishing:
The shot that follows is simple, a steady cam on the floor, where the seagull is in full frame and the raptor grabs her.
Blocking;
There was nothing really hard about this shot, other than figuring out how the hand should grab him, even if it doens’t look natural, it was the solution
The next shot was a tricky one, as I chose to do a birds eye cam when the seagull is shaken by the raptor, I don’t usually do this sort of angle nor really like it, these are for very specific shots but in this case I do believe it was agood idea as no other angle mae it look good, it is indeed a strange position.
Blocking:
Not only the shot but the animation was a bit of a risk but I really wanted to do this bit, so at first I tried to use AnimSnap plug in for MAYA but for some reason instead of parenting the control with the character to the hand root it connected only the neck control and bit of mesh, breaking the rig everytime. After fighting with this, I gave up and animated by hand. Let be honest, it wasn’t that many keys but it would have definitely helped having the plug in.
Anyway, the first part was the arms, I know it should have been the spine but it was making too much of a fuss regarding movement on that weird camera angle, so, just arms and seagull. This is the final result:
I like the way it looks, although the hand that is grabbing the seagull is making an awkward movement as I’m sure a raptors hand wouldn’t move that way, but I’m also sure it wouldn’t shake a seagul, so I think we can let this one go too.
The next shot is, in my opinion, the most important of this short animation, as it is the establishing shot where both characters can be seen and of course, the impact of both. It had major changes made while polishing, the blocking of animation was quite poor, I’ll have to admit as the project changes were so last minute.
Blocking:
Here, both characters were polished, the raptor still needed a lot of animation on the arms as I didn’t give it much attention before, now they were important for some overlapping action.
Finish of polishing raptor:
The seagul was the one with more changes, wings, neck, eyes and so on. Before having 2 characters on scene the raptor was the protagonist, the comic in play, but now the seagull has got the role the polishing needs a bit of a push if I want this to look anything like I planned.
I am extremelly happy with this shot, not only because I believe I was able to express anxiety from the seagulls perspective but because it was done is much less time than I expected, around 4 hours of work!
I wanted to have a shot from the seagulls view of the raptor grabbing her, a distorted view, at first I just wanted the raptor and maybe the beak of the bird, but it did not look well, so the camera was placed on the right side of the character where I got the distorted view and a bit of the limbs from the seagull.
Blocking:
Polish:
The next shot to polish is from the raptor, he will be the first one to hear the sound, this shot is his reaction, its a close up to his face where he starts looking around.
It was only when I got the cameras in place that I noticed how bad and shaky some movements were, this shot was one of them, his neck moves way to much like he is having an anxiety attack witht he sound he just heard.
The neck animation was a bit hard as the controls are not the best, I did made this a different scene as it was changing the animation from other shots. As it can be seen, I have the environment set up in the process of polishing this shot as I needed to do something else other than animate.
I was quite happy with the polish of animation of this shot, the movements are much smother and it makes it calmer.
Environment
For the environment, the idea was a desert, so I found a set of cactus models on turbo squid as well as the tree in the middle of the rocks, it was exactly what I was looking for but it does not have any textures. It would be amazing to have time to take care of those details, but for now the priority is really finish animation and all the rest comes as an extra to the project.
Environment preview:
Assets:
The next shot is from the seagull, when she hears a sound and looks back, stopping for a while and accelarating the flight. Again, this is where the birds short animation from pixar was helpfull as I was not seeing the wings flapping in every quick movement of the bird. The eyes are the main thing to express her fear so my thought was animate the pupil.
After a lot of tweaks, the final polish of this shot:
This is the part where an animator has to show their skills and make their art, it’s all in the detail as they say..
I split this task in four days as I was also writing the thesis paper, which has nothing to do with this project, so it might be a bit harder but t is also good to take my head of animating and focus on another research.
I decided to start by the beggining and not jump from shot to shot, so the walkcycle was first. Yes, a lot of walkcycles have been done before but none on a raptor, I did take a lot of time and he looks to happy to me and i haven’t been able to make him see less happy, I let it pass.
The key to animating the raptor is really the neck which is something I do struggle with as a lot of his personality and reaction comes from it. The tail is also a challenge, it is stiff and cannot move much or else it looks weird, even if it does not get in a lot of shots, I want to improve my skills on it, I will definitely need it.
After a few more tweaks I was happier with the shot and ready to move on to the next: a shot I forgot to include on the first camera sequencer playblast, where the seagull is peacefully flying.
Adding the seagull to the animation was out of my plans but it will be interesting to animate a bird, it is a good rig. I went looking for reference and found a video that helped understand the wings movement.
Also watching the birds short animation from pixar made me see that their root translation of the bird does not need to move everytime the wings flap.
Playblast shot 03:
As some changes were made to the project, blocking had to be re done. In the previous animation I used a sphere as the object that hit the raptor, which was quite helpful as I only had to replace the sphere for the seagull and animate from there. Of course, a lot of controls were now in play so after getting everything in place and in the right timings this is how is looked:
The next thing to do is understand how the story will be told, so the two main paths would be either a single camera and the whole animation would happen there or a set of shots which will help create a narrative and make it a bit more interesting. So after a meeting with Alan to discuss this I decided to do the shot setup.
At first, I was struggling as cameras are something I need to give a bit more time to understand and do it properly, there are so many ways to do it and its quite confusing, but I did sketch a small storyboard that ended up really being just a guiding point as nothing was done as I drew. With this I began doing some shots and organise them with camera sequencer and this was the result:
The timings and some camera movements need to be tweaked, although this is extremelly helpfull as it reduces the amount of work when polishing – the magic of cameras. Also, the last shot is still missing as I can’t seem to decide what is the best angle to end.
Drawing a sketch of the timeline with the frames of each character and which ones where using the same frame count, it’s very messy as it suffered changes along the projetct.
This week I booked a meeting with Alan to discussed my animation and the ball issue as well as get some feedback on it to change whatever is necessary before polishing the animation, where making changes would mean a lot more problems and headaches.
In the meeting alan saw my animation and said some keys could be deleted and some movements were taking too long, as well as ask: “what is his purpose?” – This sure made me anxious but I understood that the goal here was not to change my whole project three weeks before the due date, but to actually understand what is going on there.
The character is literally walking nowhere, stops and it sort of looks like he is going to cross a street and gets hit by a ball, that just comes from nothing. It makes me laugh about it now, when we get too involved in our own idea and animated we can’t see some major issues with it. Sometimes is even hard to accept what someone else is saying about it. Alan was 100% right, while talking about the project I got to some new ideas that could be put in the animation and give it some purpose.
So, now is time to think where is he? Where is he going? what is happening? What do i want to tell? These are things I should have made clear in the beggining, not in the end of the blocking pass. The truth is, my animation was getting way too long so changes had to be made.
By the end of the meeting I had some ideas to decide, I wanted the raptor to be in the desert and the possibility of a herd coming through his way (a reason to stop) or making something happen, even some creature hitting him.
When analysing what was best for my project I sketched a storyboard, very roughphly just to set some angles and ideas clear. At first, I wanted the bird hitting him instead of the ball, which would make a bit more sense and the herd was actually a pretty good idea but maybe a bit hard to do in the little time I have. A dragon flying over their heads would also be a possibility in which they hug when they look up and see the dragon (that would not be visible on camera) bt then, how would that end?
So, a herd of bison was something exciting but I need to find a way to simplify that bit of animation, a cloud of dust and sound would probably do the trick. I did find some sound clips of bison and need to get some of a bunch of horses or something similiar running to then edit on adobe audition.
After doing the pros and cons of a lot of options, considering time and the goal to have a good animation to show in the end, this is the new script:
Ralph, The Raptor is in search of a smell he picked up when looking for his breakfast in the warm morning of the desert but hears a strong sound of something approaching, stops, sniffs the air and looks around to see if he could pick up something with his great sense of smell. When turning around, a clumsy seagull hits him in the nose. The seagull falls wounded on the floor, the raptor grabs her starts shacking her in frustration.
Suddendly, the sound of a herd is extremelly close, ralph looks at it, throws the seagull on the floor and runs away. The seagull crawls for help on the floor and a herd passes through.
I went looking for a bird or insect in the resource share and free3d, turbosquid, cgtrader and actually found a really cool rig of a seagull.
So, I duplicated the maya project file and deleted almost half of my animation, got the seagull in the place of the ball. I did have some issues with it as I could not scale it up or down, so after trying a lot of things without success I just sized up my scene and problem solved.
Playblast
I tried to use animSnap plug in to parent the seagull to ralphs hand but for some reason it is really only attaching the controll instead of the whole character, breaking the rig. So either i animate frame by frame, which are not that many, or I will try to create a locator, that I will use to parent to his hand without breaking the rig. But honestly, I don’t really know hoe to do that. It is something to still have in consideration and mention in the next FMP meeting.
After making the walkcycle I did the rest of the blocking from the idea described in the previous fmp post, one of the tricky parts was the ball hitting the raptor and having an overlap in his neck, the rig was breaking due to my insisting on the neck in a certain position that would then be wrong in another perspective.
A lot of time was spent in understanding the movements and body mechanics of this creature, I did try to record myself, but then, All movement was too human. I went searching for better reference, like jurassic park – these were the best I found. Understanding the way they move is essencial for a good and clear animation.
Looking for reference when you have a fictional creature is harder as we have to look for a number of animals and creatures who do some of the movement we think it makes sense on that specific character. Maybe these dont make sense either, but looking at how someone else got to a certain animation is also a reference. After reviewing some clips of raptors way too many times it was time to try and do my own.
One of the things I did differently from my previous projects is to focus on the main poses and not so much on the continuity of movements, of course those are also important but can sometimes get in our way, regarding creativity and the ability to make an animation have a more espontaneous look.
The throw of the ball, is a very human movement but the action itself is indeed humanoid, so why not? I got a reference and it guided me in some way:
This is the part where I began paying more attention to poses than movement continuity, as in each frame of this reference image the character is in a completely different position than the previous, making up for something simple and ontuitive as throwing something.
These were my key poses of the throw and I was quite happy with it.
Playblast
This playblast was a development of my idea and it was not fully finished due to the ball issue, I did the animation as if the ball was parented to the hand but then I began questioning how was I going to do the ball loosing the air and getting stuck on his hand, looking at least a bit real. I wasn’t sure so I booked a meeting with alan for next week to discuss the possible solutions.
I am happy with my evolution in animation as this project would have been an impossible task a few months ago.
