Author: Wendy Wang Wang

This week starts with fixing the rest of the blocking issue happening in my scene:

• The camera should always move after characters move

• When my male character falls onto the ground, his lower body shouldn’t twist at all

• When my male character gets up, I have changed the camera angle to make the animation more fluent by hiding the difficult weigh shift

• I have make the shoulders and arms of the male more straight when he tries to apologize

After I have fixed most blocking poses, I start adding in between to my poses and splitting the scene into numerous files by matching the shot number. I studied from the technician Shihong of how to build up animation layer and so I can make my working pipeline much clear.

Beside, as I am considering the time limitation, I have started editing the showreel for this unit to show my behind the scene file and experimentations. I hope they will be helpful to support my progression in the future.

My texts for the audio:

After splining the animation, my focus of each shot is becoming condensing and refining the movements by getting rid of the unnecessary keys. I will be keep doing it for the following week and run another render test in Unreal Engine 5 to make sure the project can be completed properly.

Based upon the feedback I received from the lecturer and the technician, this week I am focusing on condensing my animation, changing camera angles and fixing more blocking poses.

Here is my current updated version:

To save my time, I have edited down the walking cycle at the beginning of the story and started with a long shot showing the male character waiting in the park by reading his watch.

When my female character is showing up, I switched the camera into a mid shot for focusing on her upper body movement, and her facial expression.

When they start walking, I adjusted the position of the camera, and put them closer to my characters for delivering a better atmosphere between this couple.

I adjusted the position of the camera when the male character falls down and so build up a better composition.

Poses side, I stop my male character bending too much when he just falls over the ground where most joints should be stiff based upon the painfulness. I remove the female character from the shot as there need to be more space for him to perform.

When the female pulls her underwear out from from pocket, I relied more on the IK of her controller instead of the FK. And more references were being taken during the class.

Turning poses are being updated with new reference shot during the class with Shihong:

Due to the shape of Male’s cloth is looking so swollen, I have adjusted it by using the sculpture tool on my referred models in Maya.

In the imaginary scene, I have edited out the shot below and cut directly into the underwear kiss, which is the climax of this story.

I have added more poses when she turns her body to make the shot more fluently.

I stop her from changing position in the last shot to make it less confusing and more clear.

After I receive the feedback from the lecturer this week, I notice my next step is to fix key poses with more knowledge in the following days. And I will be listed materials which inspired me, my notes, and how I start with the imaginative scene.

I got no further ideas beside my recorded reference videos, so, I think it’s a good time to review my shots, camera movements and character poses (examples of fix given by Ting below).

From this filr Ting has shared me, here are my notes:

• Each pose should have clear silhouette with a clear outline
• No confusing shapes or overlaps
• Poses are made to express the emotion
• Move prop into a less crowded area when it is on the foreground
• Line of Action
• S, or C shaped curves run through body during the movement
• Un-balanced pose can happen in a dynamic movement.
• Asymmetry is important to poses
• Exaggeration (especially hands, head, torso) helps audiences to lead pose and emotion much clear, it reflects character’s personalities as well.

This video has emphasized the importance of a clear and dynamic pose within different scenarios, also it has mentioned the website ‘Royalty-Free Stock Photos, Creative Images & Vectors | News, Fashion, and Entertainment imagery – Getty Images‘ for gathering free video references online for study and learn.

Torso normally doesn’t bend, but the lower back and the neck do, mid torso is super straight

the shoulder is a floating joint, only connecting to the sternoclavicular joint. As we raise our arm, we raise up our shoulder; the clavicle needs to get involved (otherwise it is wrong).

Pushing poses should include my clavicles, similarly to the pulling back poses. Pushing a pose means knowing limitations of the anatomy that can be pushed, and making it believable.

FK Arms: We cannot move our hand in without our shoulder internally or externally rotating. We cannot pivot from the elbow as our elbow only goes up and down.

My progression of this week by fixing a few key poses and arms animation:

New references of this week:

In this week while I was waiting for the feedback from the lecturer of my progression of the animation work, I am meanwhile fix the texture of my characters and my sets.

For my characters, I adjusted the roughness of their clothes to make them looking less reflective in an unreasonable way, I built up the substance surface shader in unreal engine to make their skin become more transparent by absorbing the light.

Here is the tutorial I have watched to build up the character skin shader, to make it adjustable, I created material instance in Unreal Engine 5 to be playing around.

Beside in the imaginative scene, I have added niagaram particles to emphasize its dream like feeling, and below is the tutorial I have studied through the learning process:

And here is my result:

In the first week of the final term, we have arranged the presentation to report the progression of our work over the summer holiday, and here is my PowerPoint below:

Since the holiday started, I have concentrated on finishing the character models and the set models in Zbrush &Maya, I retopologied models exported from Zbrush and assigned them flat UVs.

Due to the efficiency and the requirement of finishing a draft render version in September within the unit, I have started with a relatively simple pipeline by referring every file into my animation file. In case if I have enough time on October, I can polish and replace any of these models in the render software Unreal Engine 5.

Meanwhile, I set up scenes in Unreal Engine 5, which is matching to what’s happening in Maya, and every naked animation file is ready to be replaced by an updated one anytime to build up the convenience.

Beside, over the summer to make my animation working from blocking, a few references have been shot and edited with my supportive friends, and most of the poses are referring to the clip. As the previs was finished within the second term of the course, hence I was following the same camera movements for this final major project:

Before the feedback has been given by the lecturer I am currently focusing on the material/texture fix of my scene, as I want to emphasize movements of my character I try to keep the background colour pure and low-saturated. Which follows the principle of my case studies shown in the power-point and emphasize the emotion I want to deliver at the same time:

To consider, future weeks are still busy on polishing the animation work, I will be keep learning and improving my skills through the journey. And the video below is my recent draft render version, with my previs and the reference.