Category: Design for Animation, Narrative Structures and Film Language

What is hair?

Hair is the mass of thin structures on the head of a person, according to the Cambridge dictionary. Of course, everyone knows what hair is, we all have it and it’s part of who we are or who we think we are and it also tells something about ourselves and the moment we are in.

In multiple cultures across the world hair has different meanings and beliefs, like samurai soldiers that would cut the hair if they were defeated or the native american people who believed that hair was sacred and significant to who we are as an individual and if we look at our society, in the present day we can see that hair is still a form of expression. We might not need to cut our hair when we are defeated but a lot of people change their hair as a way to express themselves, about who they are and what they stand for.

What does hair say about you?

It’s not like we can look at someone and know them by their hair style but people take an idea of what you might be like because of some stereotyped definition our society has on a certain hair style. It gives personality to someone and self-esteem, strength even or the opposite, it can make you feel bad about yourself and ashamed. Women rely on hair a lot, it is usually longer than man’s hair so they take more time to take care of it, but for both it is important as it is so close to the face. When someone goes to a mirror to check how they look the first things are face and hair, only then we look at the rest, the head is the first thing someone sees when greeting someone.

Hair in Animation

In movies, we can see that villains usually have crazy, bulky, expressive hair that makes up for their intentions and personality, or an adventurous character has a thick wavy or curly hair, flowy, or an innocent and naïve character has a blonde straight hair very shiny and pretty.

One of the most difficult things to animate is hair, for decades Pixar struggled with it, but it didn’t stop them for sure!

In the animation movie Monsters Inc. (2001) we can see that boo has pigtails, but the director Pete Docter wanted Boo to have long hair, but that would be so hard that they ended up giving her pig tails as it was easier to animate. If we think of Boo with lon hair she stops having that curiosity feel and look that the pigtails give her.

Hair is still a very new thing and still has a long way to go. If we look at history of animation, the first Pixar movies didn’t have a lot of human characters and the ones it had didn’t have much air time, didn’t really show the full body and every human had short hair but, with the evolution of technology things started to change.

The first animated feature entirely populated by humans was Incredibles (2004) where the director Brad Bird insisted on the long hair previously wanted for Boo on Violet, her signature hair is part of her character and took a team fully dedicated to it 6 months to render. Her hair is straight and as it covers part of her face gives her that shy look and the ability to hide with it, but half way to the production of the movie the team didn’t really know if it was possible to fully give life to Violet. In the end they just created different hair styles to be used in different situations and changed it accordingly.

After years improving their methods, the next challenge would be Tangled (2010), to animate more than 20 meters of hair and give it weight, while it could never behave like in real life, such long hair would be a nightmare to walk or move with it. The solution for Rapunzel’s hair was to mix simulation and rigging where animators had a lot of controls to animate but also have the simulation to make it more believable. This was the first time that hair acted like a limb in which animators had controls to blend in animation and simulation.

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Brave (2012) came along, Merida’s character key feature is her hair and how wild it is, once again, it is part of her character the red curly hair that refuses to do what the rules want and directly represents Merida’s personality and wild spirit.

This was a whole new level of difficulty, not only long but curly hair, where the hair has to be stiff to maintain the curl but also be soft in it is movement. This process made them create a new technique called “core curve and points”, where the curve is the necklace chain and the points, including the springs, are the beads and allow Merida’s hair to move along her character.

Four years later, the movie Moana (2016) where Moana’s hair is extremely flowy and loose, she has an adventurous and stubborn personality, if no one goes with her she will go alone, she is fearless and her hair says that about her. This time Pixar animators wanted to have Moana touch and play with her hair as she is a teenager and would add a lot to her character so this time artists upgraded the software used for Rapunzel’s hair for an initial groom and developed a new software named quicksilver along with xGen as a new system to control the hair.

All these characters had to be created in a unique way and software was developed specifically just for them – this is how Pixar evolves and continues to exceed our expectations in every movie they make, their tools and team always go beyond what is possible at the moment.

How is hair in animation created?

The human head has around 100.000 hair strands, it would be impossible to animate so many hairs or rig them, so it needs to be simulated and rigged in some situations it is still time

consuming and takes a full team dedicated to it. There are multiple ways to create hair in animation tools like nHair, xGen, shaveandahaircut, ornatrix, among others, these often include both rigging and simulation, as hair is something that cannot be animated by hand.

So, what is a simulation?

A simulation is a mathematical coding, performed by a computer, designed to predict the behaviour and the outcome of a real world or physical system – it basically copies what happens in the real world. With hair it needs physics and maths to programme on a computer and obtain the desired results depending on the type of hair that is being animated.

Long hair was first simulated with violet’s signature hair but the most troubling problem was in Tangled with Rapunzel’s twenty-meter hair, in which the hair was rigged and simulated. Long hair is so hard to animate due to the number of things that have to be put in to consideration as hair needs to react to environment, colliding with the character and with itself. Rapunzel had the need for an extremely long hair so it had to be rigged, as a whole, and animated by hand in shots where the hair had to do unrealistic things such as grabbing a door handle. But simulation always has to help, animating a rig can be time consuming and it is not practical so with simulation it is possible to animate gravity, density, acceleration, velocity and force real life based.

As for curly hair is a bit different as it behaves like a spring so the simulation had to be made through a mathematical algorithm called Hooke’s Law. It states the force needed to extend or compress a spring, sometimes also used in long hair.

F – spring force

k – spring constant

x – spring stretch or compression

This didn’t work at first when Pixar was simulating Merida from Brave as her hair was too loose and would go crazy when the character did sudden movements, so they decided to create a spring core inside the spring as a way to keep the stiffness of curly hair but also it’s natural and loose look.

After long and curly hair comes the grooming and combing the hair, like Elsa’s character from Frozen (2010) and Frozen II (2013) where she has a long braided to which Disney created a software called Tonic that allows artists to model and sculpt the hair as they need through layering systems along with simulation to allow hair to interact with wind and water.

One really important thing are clumps of hair and fur it is needed for a reslistic randon distribution of hair. The Voronoi Diagram, in mathemathics it represents a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. The result of this is something like right side image and creates a patern found in nature, such as the wings of a fly, or a giraffe’s hair patern, leaves, elefant skin. This allows artists to have a real life based mathematical system to distribute hair on a surface or even have it dirty or clumped.

Conclusion

Hair is part of one’s culture and has weight on individual identity, as technology is evolving so fast and each time it looks better and better, hair is becoming a part of storytelling and character “enhancer” due to it’s flexibility to change appearance it can be used to build and give personality to a character as well as reality.

In animation hair is trully a hard thing to do and every time artists encounter more challenges and problems to solve which always ends with them developing a new software to meet their wishes.

The audience needs to connect and be able to relate to the character even through culture or a hair style or even the meaning of that hair style. Teenage years is where we see how important hair is, those are the years when one needs to find himself and hair is, again, a way of expression and change. A good story is the one that actually makes the audience enter it and forget everything else for a moment, the more realistic it is the character the most relatable it can be, now more and more hair is a growing concept that still has a lot to accomplish.

Presentation

There is so much one can talk about that is really hard to decide, I came to this course with the intention of trully learning animation and character movement but, one thing that I always admired was Hair.

Personally, I was never someone who would care much about my hair, it never looked bad and I never really did nothing unlike most girls, until teenagehood struck and my world changed and as soon as I felt good about that change and who I was, I leaned on hair. It’s weird, but it is a huge part of someone’s identity. For me it changed everything, I was a very unsure and misunderstood person, so I did what everyone always hoped I never did – I had dreadlocks made in my full head. Not as a way to go against anyone, but as a way to do something I wanted for so long and was affraid of, because of what would people think about, what would they say… As a teenager, that ussually matters, but that identity crisis made me realise that other people’s thoughts will never help me, in any way, reach my goals or even discover who I am, and what that meant to me.

So, for my research I got to a point where it made sense to try out hair and learn about it. I had an idea of a “movie of my own”, something I wrote in my college years and the main thing of that story was it’s main character and his dreadlocks. He would use them like a spider man web, but the dreadlocks would have some sort of life or will… Like an octopus. Never ever in my life I saw an animation movie character with dreadlocks and with that much importance in hair. The thing about this “movie” is that I always imagined it in a certain way, and now, more than ever I’m certain it is impossible to do an animation movie on my own. I wanted to model the character and hair, rig it, paint it, animate it, do the environments, everything! … it’s impossible, I have to be realistic and face it. So, now I face the difficulty… Where can I find a dreadlocked character to animate…? no one has one. That won’t stop me for sure.

Right now the main focus is to just talk about it, look at my options and what has been made with it. On the Pixar studios website, in the publications tab there are a few articles about hair explored in Tangled and in Moana, the hair in these movies is just more perfect than real life it’s extremelly appealing and I believe that gives so much to a character, like to a real person, hair is 50% of what you see in yourself, the rest is the face. When you check in a mirror how you look, the first thing you’ll want good is the head part, hair and face, only then you look at the rest. No one will check how they look by checking their knees first..

Also I believe, with the technology evolving so fast, hair will become something with a lot more to say. When talking about our research topic in class, Luke suggested a few tools in MAYA:

• nHair
• XGen
• shaveandahaircut

And to search about rigging vs simulating hair, as of course, if I want accurate movements in hair I will certainly have to rig it and perhaps mix that technique with simulating hair, like in Tangled where they used both to animate hair that long and good looking.

This topic begins with character growth, a character must start with a problem deep within and in the end the audience expects the character to actually grow, even if he didn’t accomplish his goal there needs to be an improvement and change throughout the course of action that he goes through.

Weakness

The concept of weakness is the main focus, as it is the best way to experience change and growth. As humans, when we are born we are the weakest animal, most animals when born immediatly start walking, or eating or actually doing something for their survival. A baby horse as soon as it’s out of his mother’s womb starts walking and running. They need it or they die. But as humans we are born extremelly vulnerable and need a lot of help, as well as a looooooot of time to grow. The result of that growth is to be less vulnerable and weak, less sensible maybe.

There are two types of weakness:

• Psycological – is a weakness that only affects the hero and no one else
• Moral – is a weakness that imorrally affects the characters surrounding the hero

A psycological weakness can evolve to be also a moral weakness, the two combined are what makes up for good character development.

A good story, a well developed story needs to meet a few topics:

• Make me care!
• Don’t give the answer to the audience, make them believe they are getting to a solution, when in fact, as a story teller, you are doing it for them
• Can you evoque wonder?
• Story telling is made of guidelines, not hard, strict rules

In this task we were asked to chose three movies that we enjoyed and break them down for story and character development, analyse how the main characters evolve, how the characters drive the story and to identify it’s similarities.

How to train your dragon

This is one of my favourite movies of all time, in the village of Berk in a remote island live vikings who are ofter attacked by dragons, who steal their food, burn the village and endanger people’s lives. They hunt the dragons and fight them off and that makes them stronger and proud of being viking, but Hiccup, the son of the village chief is a very awkward kid and too sensible, not strong enough to fight the dragons, so he uses his other abilities to build mechanical devices to help him do what he cannot do with his very little strength. His projects ussually backfire.

One day, in one of the dragon attacks in the village, Hiccup uses one of those devices to shoot down a Night Fury – one of the most dangerous and rarest dragons, there was very little information about him. So Hiccup shoots him down but no one believes him, so he searches for him on his own and finds him still tied with his net and is uncapable to kill the dragon, so he releases him.

His father Stoik is determined to find the dragons nest and enrrols Hiccup in a dragon fighting class where there are other kids including the girl he has a crush on, Astrid. Later on, Hiccup returns to the place where he found the dragon and finds him there, he couldn’t fly as the net had tore of part of his tail fin. Hiccup and the dragon become closer and he names him Toothless because of his retractable teeth and as he felt bad for hurting him he designs a prosthetic tail fin which allows the dragon to fly when he rides him, controling the prosthetic.

He learns a lot about dragon behavior and finds a way to dominate them without any harm and earns the class respect, but in his final exam he will have to kill a dragon. All his sudden success in the class makes Astrid jealous and suspicious and follows him to the forest and discovers his secret. Hiccup takes Astrid for a ride to show her that dragons are not so dangerous and she reminds him of his final exam. Right after this, Toothless enters some sort of hypnosis and takes them to the dragons nest where they discover that the dragons steal food for a superior and giant dragon called Red Death, who kills them if they don’t bring enough food.

With this discovery, Astrid wants to tell the people what they just found out and that the dragons steal food because their lives are in danger, but Hiccup decides that it is too dangerous for Toothless so they keep it a secret.

The next day, Hiccup has his final exam and tries to dominate the dragon with his abilities and knowledge about dragons but Stoik, Hiccup’s father angers the dragon into attacking, Toothless arrives to protect Hiccup and is captured by the vikings. Accidentally hiccup reveals to his father that Toothless took them to the nest and Stoik disowns him and takes toothless in the main ship to lead them to the nest. Hiccup is devastated and Astrid helps him regain his confidence, which then leads to his search for Hiccup along with the other kids from the class.

The vikings find the nest and break it open, causing the dragons to fly away but also awakening the Red Death that soon attacks the vikings, which they did not expect nor were prepared for. Right after this Hiccup and his friends show up riding the captive dragons of the village and distract Red Death, while Hiccup releases Toothless, almost drowning, but Stoik runs to their rescue, saving them and reconciling with his son. Hiccup and Toothless are able to kill the Red Death by shooting a fireball while he prepares to spit fire, but Hiccup gets injured, losing his lower left leg, when he wakes up, now in the village, Gobber the blacksmith designs him a prothetics and he is admired by everyone in Berk. Astrid kisses him and a new era begins, where dragons live among humans.

Character Breakdown

Hiccup

• In the beggining of the movie he is a very shy kid, doesn’t really trust his abilities and feels that his father looks at him with disapointment, he tries to prove his worth but always ends up failling.
• Hiccup starts evolving with the friendship with toothless and discovers a lot about dragons and that his people are wrong about them
• He aquires the respect of the viking people for suddendly being so good at dominating dragons
• Hiccup is pressured into killing a dragon and make his father proud but his secret is revealed when toothless comes to his rescue – toothless is jailed
• Hiccup is desowned by his father and no one believes him anymore
• Hiccup is devastated but Astrid helps him get his self confidence back and strength to save Toothless and the viking people
• Stoik saves Hiccup and Toothless from drowning
• Father and son make amends
• Toothless saves Hiccup from dying after defeating Red Death
• Hiccup loses his lower leg
• The viking people change their behavior towards dragons and accept them in their daily life – Hiccup has the respect of the people

Who drives the story?

This story is driven by Hiccup, as he begins as someone shy and disregarded, no one really believes him and he is affraid of most things. Trying to prove himself he is able to hit a Night Fury and cannot kill him, so they become friends. He improves his knowledge with dragons and sees them like no one else. When pressured to kill a dragon he tries to prove to everyone they’re not bad and the dragon attacks him, leading toothless to come to his rescue, and eventually jailed by vikings. He looses the people’s respect and is disowned by his father who then takes toothless to lead him to the dragons nest. Hiccup goes after them and almost drowns when saving toothless, his father saves them both and they reconcile.

In the end, they’re able to kill the giant dragon and hiccup loses his lower leg, when he wakes up, everyone had a dragon and had changed their minds about them. A new era begins and dragons and humans live together. Hiccup’s way of viewing the world changed the world around him and he never gave up proving everyone he didn’t have to be the same as everyone else, everyone has a skill and it doesn’t necessarilly mean is better or worse.

Onward

In a world once filled with mystical creatures, technology evolved and those creatures began to find magic obsolete and almost no one practised it anymore. In the city of New Mushroomton, nowadays, live two elf brothers, Ian and Barley Lightfoot, Ian being a very sensitive and shy younger brother and Barley being the confident and impulsive older brother, they live with their mother and their father died shortly after Ian was born. Laurel, their mother has a new boyfriend, a half centaur policeman whom the brothers dislike.

On Ian’s sixteenth birthday, Laurel gives her sons a present that their father left to open on Ian’s birthday: a magical staff, a rare Phoenix gem and a letter with a visitation spell which allowed them to ressurect their father for one day and give them the opportunity to meet him for a full day. Ian succeeds in casting the spell but the gem desintegrates and the spell isn’t finished which results in them having only the lower half of his father’s body.

The brothers go on an adventure to search for another gem to complete the spell on Barley’s van which he called guinevere. When their mother discovers their children went on a dangerous adventure she leaves to look for them.

Ian and Barley visit the Manticore’s tavern, that has become a family restaurant managed by a manticore with the name of Corey, while fighting over a map which lead them there Corey realises how boring her life is and drives the costumers away and accidentally sets the map on fire as well as the restaurant. Ian and Barley are left with one more clue to find the gem, a childrens menu map that points them to the Raven’s Point (a nearby mountain). When Laurel arrives to the restaurant, the children have departed and she befriends Corey which warns Laurel that the brothers search can trigger the awakening of a curse that can only be defeated by her sword, which they steal from a pawn shop.

When arriving at the mountain, Ian and Barley are followed by the police and a group of pixie motards but can luckely get away and follow the lead of ravens point – to follow the direction in which various raven statues point. Colt, Laurel’s boyfriend goes after them, calling reinforcements and when he is almost catching the brothers, Barley sacrifices Guinevere to stall the policeman. While following the ravens path they enter a cave and fight various threats during which Barley reveals to Ian that he refused to say goodbye to their father before he died. On the last obstacle from the cave they appear to be back at Ian’s highschool and he lashes out on Barley, leaving with his father’s lower body.

Ian rereads the list of things he wanted to do with his father and realises that his brother has always been his father figure and returns to make amends with his brother. Barley discovers that the gem they’ve been looking for is in a fountain across the street from the highschool and when he picks it up the curse Corey talked about is activated, a dragon made of pieces from the school and everything around it emerges and tries to recover the gem. The staff Ian needs to fight the dragon is away and he retrieves it though magic from a splint of magic wood stuck in his hand to continue the fight. Corey and Laurel arrive and defeat the dragon with Cprey’s sword , buying Ian time to to cast the visitation spell and fully reform his father’s body, Ian sends Barley to go and say a proper goodbye to his father. Laurel, with the help of Ian is able to kill the dragon and destroy it. When their father dissolves, Barley tells Ian that their father is proud of him and they hug.

Later on, Ian surprises Barley by painting his new van with his new abilities with magic, calling the van “Guinevere the second”. Corey reopens the restaurant now telling stories about past adventures, Corey and Laurel become friends and Ian and Barley develop a better relationship with Colt, who started to chase bad guys with his own foot. The world becomes more aware of magic and it is introduced in the modern society.

Character Breakdown

Ian

• Ian is a very shy and awkward kid who never met his father as he died shortly after he was born
• His brother is the complete oposite from him, enthusiasatic, impulsive and a fanatic for role playing games
• When they recieve the present their father left for when they were both 16 Ian has finally the chance to meet his father and spend one day with him. His hope rises
• He accidentally succeeds in casting the spell but the gem dissolves and his father is only half full
• Ian and Barley go on an adventure to find another gem and have their father back
• They meet Corey who then sends them to ravens point
• Colt arrives to take them home but they are able to run away
• They go through numerous threats and Barley reveals he refused to say goodbye to his father before he died
• They end up at Ian’s highschool and he gets really mad at Barley but soon realises he is the father he never had
• They discover the magic gem and are able to have their whole father back
• Ian sends Barley to say goodbye to their father while Ian holds off the curse
• Barley is the only one to be with his father and tells Ian how proud their father was of him
• Ian is different as he now has an answer he was looking for his whole life – who was he and who was his father – he had it all the whole time

Who drives the story?

This story is driven by Ian and Barley father, Willem, he is the key and purpose thoughout the whole plot. As soon as the brothers discover that they have the chance to meet their father one more time everything evolves around it. Ian having so little confidence in himself and not knowing who he is and Barley having the sour feeling of refusing to say goodbye to his father before he died. In the end, Ian realises that his father figure is his brother and gives up his only chance to meet his father just so Barley could have the chance to say goodbye. He realises the answers he was looking for his whole life were right in front of him – Ian turns to magic after the whole thing and the world starts vewing it not as an obsolete practice, but something that’s part of their culture.

Despicable Me

A supervilain named Gru is extremelly angry when an unknown supervilain steals the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the help of Dr. Nefario, his scientist partner in crime and his minions Gru decides to steal the moon by shrinking it. Ofcourse, this being an expensive procedure Gru requests to The Bank of Evil for a loan, that is immeadiatly denied unless he had the shrinking ray as a guaranty of his success in the mission. When Gru discovers who his rival is, he openly declares “war”.

Gru and the minions steal the shrink ray but are soon surprised by Vector who steals it from them. In an attempt to recover the shrink ray Gru tries to enter Vector’s fort but is unsuccessfull and notices three orfan girls who can enter easily as they are selling cookies. Gru disguises and adopts the girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, planning to use them to infiltrate Vector’s base. The girls are stubborn and Gru strugles to nurture them, as he doesn’t know how to do it.

Eventually, Gru is able to steal back the shrink ray and plans to abandon the girls at a theme park, where instead of abandoning them he starts bonding with them. When Gru contacts The Bank of Evil, mr. Perkins refuses to give him the loan and the girls offer him their little amount of money from their piggy banks, inspired, Gru and the minions start selling some things gru stole over the years and are able to build a spacecraft without the need of any loan. The plan is to steal the moon on the day it is closer to earth which is the same day as the girls ballet recital, but Dr. Nefario, affraid that it would ruin the plan calls the orphanage and the girls are taken back. Mr. Perkins tips of Vector of Gru’s possession of the shrik ray and pressures him to take action.

Gru succeeds in his mission to steal the moon and rushes back to earth to the recital and soon realises that Vector took them captive and wants the moon in exchange for the girls. Gru gives up the moon, but Vector doesn’t fullfill his part of the deal and runs away with the girls and the moon. Meanwhile, Dr. Nefario discovers that the shrink ray has a side effect, the bigger the shrinked object is the faster it goes back to it’s original form. With this, Gru, the minions and Dr. Nefario rescue the girls in the middle of a air trip and soon the moon starts growing and orbits back to it’s place taking vector with it.

Later on, Gru readopts the girls, writting them a bedtime story based on his own experience with them, the girls perform the recital to Gru, Dr. Nefario, the minions and Gru’s mother until a minion changes the music to a modern dance party.

Character Breakdown

Gru

• Gru is a very selfish man and only cares about himself and in being the best vilain that ever lived
• He is very upset that a better vilain stole the Great Pyramid of Giza
• He wants to steal the moon, but needs the shrink ray gun to get the loan from The Bank of Evil
• He cannot enter Vector’s fort and comes up with a plan – to adopt 3 girls who sell cookies, use them to enter the fort and steal the shrink ray
• He disguises and adopts the girls and is able to steal the shrink ray gun
• He has trouble nursing the girls
• The Bank of Evil refuses to loan him the money for his evil plan, and everyone around him wants to help, which inspires him and the minions to gather materials and sell some thing in order to build a spacecraft to go to the moon
• The day he has to steal the moon is the same day of the girls ballet recital and Dr. Nefario sends the girls back to the orphanage to avoid any distractions
• Gru steals the moon and rushes back to earth to the recital
• When he gets there, it had already finished and discovers Vector has them
• He trades the moon for the girls but vector runs away with both
• He discovers the shrink ray is only temporary and the bigger the shrinked object the faster it is to get back to it’s original size, so they go and rescue the girls
• The moon gets back to it’s original size and place and Vector goes with it
• Gru readopts the girls and now reads them bedtime stories created by him

Who drives the story?

This story is driven by the girls, as everything Gru does from the moment he adopts them is whether to do things against them, as he didn’t like them nor want them, but as soon as Gru started to spend more time with them, they drive the story. Gru starts having a purpose and changes his way with everything around him.

The theory behind story arcs began with Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces and he concluded that there are characteristics of an effective story and they are consistent regardless of race, time, ethinity or background. Dan Harmon simplified that theory and created the story circle, that is divided in 8 stages of the story.

He believes that there are 3 dualities that make it possible to maintain the rhythm of the story:

So, the 8 stages of the story circle are:

1. A character is in a zone of comfort
2. They want something
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Adapt to it
5. Get what they wanted
6. Pay a heavy price for it
7. Then return to their familiar situation
8. Having changed

Types of Characters

• Protagonist or Antagonist
• Dynamic or Static
• Round or Flat

Protagonist – is the main character

Antagonist – is the other main character, usually bad and an immediate threat to the main character (like cinderella evil stepmother)

Dynamic – is a character that grows throughout the story, it’s behavior has an important change of behavior, teaches a lesson.

Static – the opposite of a dynamic character, doesn’t change much and it’s ideas are fixed, like vilans

Round – are well developed characters, they are realistic in emotions, thoughts or even feelings

Flat – the opposite of a round character, a lack of depth in it’s development and personality can be seen, they’re not very important but they’re needed as secondary actions in the background

Breakdown a Story Arc of a movie that we like and enjoyed!

Based on this we had to choose a movie and breakdown it’s story arc and characters, so I chose the movie Avatar by James Cameron. One of my favourite movies of all time, and despite it being released in 2009 it is still a movie that blows my mind away. Every. Single. Time.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

The movie takes place in 2154 and humans had exhausted earth’s natural resources and found an habitable moon orbiting Polyphemus, called Pandora. It’s atmosphere is poisonous to humans and is inhabited by the Na’vi, blue skinned 3 meter humanoids that live in harmony with nature and worship a goddess called Eywa. Humans use Na’vi hybrids called avatars who have the same looks as the human who operates them through a machine that transfers them to the avatar body, making them look exactly like the Na’vi people in order to explore pandora’s biology.

Jake Sully, a former marine who lost his ability to walk in battle, is asked to replace his bother Tommy who died to be an operator of an avatar and finish his bother’s mission. Jake is considered an outsider due to his ignorance to the Na’vi people and pandora and Dr. Grace, the head of the Avatar Program, doesn’t really like him at the beggining but accepts his entrance in the program. On their first mission jake is attacked by an animal and disappears into the deep forest and is recued by Neytiri, a female Na’vi who then takes him to the head of the people and Neytiri is ordered to teach jake and iniciate him to their society.

Jake is promised that when the mission is over he will have his ability to walk again and his lifestyle will improve as a motivation to convince the Na’vi to leave their home so the humans could mine an extremelly profitable mineral who’s richest mines lay under the Hometree (their sacred place and home. When Dr. Grace learns about this she takes Jake and Norm to a hidden place and in the following 3 months Jake falls in love with Neytiri and the Na’vi people, Neytiri and Jake mate and the humans soon discover that he has changed his side of the war. Humans destroy a sacred site and the general orders that the home tree is destroyed.

The general then gives Dr. Grace and Jake an hour to convince the Na’vi to leave the place orelse they’re killed along with the hometree. Jake confesses he entered their society by being a spy and becomes their captive but is then freed by the head of the Na’vi as a cry for help but they are detached from their avatar bodys and imprisoned by humans. The pilot trudy helps them escape and takes them to a hidden place and jake regains the Na’vi trust by connecting his mind to a dragon-like predator and honoured by the pandora people.

During the war between the Na’vi and the humans, the Na’vi gather every clan of pandora to fight with them and soon the rest of the biology of the planet joins them and overwhelms the humans winning the war. In that period the general is able to escape his falling airplane and finds Jake’s avatar unit where his human body was, shoots it and almost kills jake but Neytiri intervenes, killing the general and recuing jake from sofucating.

After winning the war, the hometree was destroyed and the Na’vi suffered a great lost of their people. The humans were expelled from Pandora and the Na’vi try to transfer Jake to his avatar body definitly. The movie ends with Jake opening his eyes.

Story Arc

1. YOU – Jake is a former marine, who was hurt in battle and he lives with the dream of getting is legs back, something possible with the worlds technology but he doesn’t have the resources for it.
2. NEED – his brother dies and he is asked to step into his shoes.
3. GO – wakes up from his 6 year trip to pandora, is introduced to the team, the program and the mission.
4. SEARCH – goes for the first time in a mission to get to know the forest and its environment and biology and gets attacked and lost. Saved by Neytiri he is introduced to the Na’vi and gets their first glimpse of trust and starts learning their habits.
5. FIND – When sent to a remote place to focus on the mission, he gets more and more of the Na’vi trust and starts to really enjoy his time in pandora and with Neytiri. Jake now has their trust and becomes a member of their society. He is pressured to rush the process as the humans want to start mining the product.
6. TAKE – Jake and Neytiri mate and humans realise that his allegiance has changed and want to attack immediatly. Jake and Grace have an hour to convince the Na’vi to relocate. They confess to be spies in the Na’vi society and loose their trust, humans destroy the Hometree and the people are devastated but fight until the end.
7. RETURN – Jake connects with a dragon-like predator and regains the Na’vi trust. With the help of the other clans and all the animals from Pandora they win the war and humans are sent back to Earth. Allowing the habitants from pandora to start over and heal from all that destruction.
8. CHANGE – The Na’vi chooses Jake as their leader and attempt to transfer him to his avatar body definitly and make him part of the clan as one of their own.

Main Character’s Timeline (Jake)

Character Archetypes

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Hero – Jake sully is the hero and engages in a dangerous mission in the most hostile place for humans. As an outsider no one believes he is worthy of the mission but he believes he can do it and does it better than anyone. In the end, despite all his conditions and ignorance of Pandora, he is the one who saves them all and is trully commited to the mission (that mission changes thoughout the movie). He had no use and yet, became the most usefull of them all.

Mentor/Threshold Guardian – Despite her misjudgement of Jake when she meets him, she is the one who trully knows Pandora’s biology and the Na’vi people, being the author of a book about it. She is the head of the Avatar Program and provides all the insight the avatar operators need to be in the field. Other than mentor, I see Dr. Grace as the Threshold Guardian as she is the one trying to protect them and to test everyone for their skills to engage the mission. She tests everyone’s commitment and worth.

Herald – When Jake gets into a fight and is kicked out of a bar, lying on the floor, two men in suits appear and break the news to him – his brother had died in an assault. These men are the entity that propose to him to take on the mission in his brothers shoes.

Shapeshifter – Tsu’tey is the one I believe to be the shapshifter due to his evolution of opinion on Jake since the beggining of the movie. At first he does not like him and believes he does not deserve to be among his people but in the end he respects him and supports him as the new leader of the Na’vi. He even learns with Jake, despite the fact that Jake stole the woman he was supposed to mate with.

Shadow – Colonel Miles Quaritch is the opposite of the hero, Jake Sully. He has to complete the mission despite it’s casualties and is willing to go at any length to get what he wants. At the beggining of the movie he is the one who comands everyone to do their jobs, but he never cared about the Na’vi people and has no remorse for killing them and destroying their sacred places and worships.

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Allies (sidekicks) – Norm and Trudy are the allies, norm as the one who knows what Jake should know about Pandora and the mission itself, and Trudy as the one who gets them out of difficult situations, helps them escape. She is the cool pilot who has an immeadiate good relationship with Jake and helps them until the end.

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.