MoTR Production Update: Week 10

1rregularcharlie
May 20
5 min read

Ahoy! The tests are done and we're back onto ROUGH ANIMATION!

Charlie's inner child so happy to be back to doing what she enjoys most. Makin' cartoons.

Yeppers! We're back onto rough animation, burning through the roughs for the 2nd Short and a surprisingly brisk pace. Learning a lot as we go with the lessons already learned held firmly in mind.

Let's break it down!

Current Status:

General:

So, like I said I would do last week, I initially spent the last week focusing on doing more tests just to be sure the solutions I discussed, regarding the spacial movement issues, could be resolved.

To make a long story short, I believe I've managed to discover a solution to that problem but as always, I fully expect something unexpected to crop up and cause issues in the future.

With that done, I moved back onto animating the 3rd shot for the 2nd short. I've managed to make a fair amount of progress on that front and expect it to complete by next week's update. :)

Now then! Time for some more details.

The Spacial Movement issue:

So, the immediate issue I wanted to tackle and make sure we had a rough idea of a solution for was the issue of measuring 2D animation accurately in 3D space.

By which I mean, if we animate a character running or walking we need a way to accurately make their footsteps move the character through 3D space without having the character slide around.

An example of characters sliding through a shot, and it looking... terrible.

I brought up several possible solutions to this issue in last week's update, some more involved than others. I decided to do a very rough test of the least labour-intensive option I bought up. Using the Blender Storyboard addon I essentially created a short animation of a character taking a step and placing that in the 3D environment. Using the keypoints I moved that animation keeping the step in the correct place.

The results were rough, but seemed to work.

The last part of it was to export those drawings as separate frames that could be imported into another program with accurate timing. This was pretty easy as it turns out. I simply had to copy the test drawings and isolate them. Then I remove the keypoints returning them all to a short bit of animation simply walking in place. Then I exported that as a video and hey presto we can import that into any animation program and animate over the top of it.

Once that animation is done it's as simple as reintroducing the animation to the 3D scene and importing the keypoints that were already created for the test onto the animation. Thus, the animation should accurately snap to the correct position and move through the 3D environment with minimal drift (probably would need a small amount of adjustment).

What this means is that in really involved shots or shots where we witness the characters moving around a 3D environment (as in, we can see their feet) we will need to pose the characters taking those steps in the boarding/blocking process. It leans more heavily on the boarding and posing/blocking part of the pipeline but should prevent headaches further on.

I didn't take this test all the way through, but I did do enough that I am confident in this as a solution.

I always struggle to remain focused on test and work done on shots that won't ultimately be used. So, with the tests largely done I moved back onto rough animation.

Shockingly accurate.

Rough Animation:

Layering:

I began working on the 3rd shot of the 2nd short and purposely set up the file and the layers there within to be easier to export isolated from one another and preemptively laid out in such a way to have accurate distance from one another and the camera as it should have within Blender.

The picture on the left is Hawkins from the camera's POV. The picture on the right is from the Perspective window in ToonBoom Harmony.

Layering has become an essential part of animating in this series and will take up a significant portion of the animation guide. Which I will be working on after completing the rough animation of this shot.

Hawkins Animation:

For the animation itself, I've mentally separated out the shot just to tackle the animation in chunks. The animation between Hawkins and Carbo, and the calm part (the chatting) and the more energetic part (Hawkins catches something). I've been focusing on Hawkins during the calm part of the shot.

Check it out:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/dc34e4_105f2fa5e2d84cb2b92c475ea1e42191/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Some rough animation of Hawkins fishing off the edge of the ship. Carbo can be heard, but there's no rough animation for Carbo yet.

I'm pretty happy with how this animation is coming out. I'm trying to have Hawkins animation be generally more subdued than that of Carbo.

Lip Sync:

It's strange. Over the years in this industry I've heard many animators lamenter the process of lipsyncing animation, but I actually quite enjoy it. I just like seeing the characters actually saying the words. Gives me a rush. :D

Narratively, Hawkins is a Human. Whilst all the other Members of The Revelry are not. In fact, they're Spirits. Because of that I'm trying to bring across that difference of nature, in part, through Hawkins animation. This is most obvious in the lip sync. Whilst I have a natural leaning towards what I call "over expression" (big mouths, exaggerated movements), Hawkins mouth and movements tend to have a lot less stretch and squish.

Obviously Hawkins' design is still quite "cartoony" but that comes down more to the style of the series. :P

Hawkins' Freckles:

Initially I had Hawkins' freckles move with their jaw but with Hawkins' eyelids moveing to create expressions it did feel a bit... off.

For the moment I've deleted the freckles in the rough animation to add them back in later to their own dedicated layer. Debating if it's best to have the freckles locked to a certain distance from the bottom of the eyes or just generally to the jaw. Myself and Natka will decide on what we like best and will produce fewer issues in the future. After all it's a minor detail to the overall design and could be easily overlooked.

The Coming Week:

1rregularCharlie:

So, obviously my focus this coming week is to finish this rough animation. Then take that animation into Blender, make sure it all layers out properly, and render it, yadda yadda.

Then I gotta move onto FINALLY creating the MoTR Animation Guide. Been a long time coming. :P

After that, probably finish doing all the rough animation for the 2nd short. Hopefully bringing in others to help with that work. Or the other shorts.