Subtlety in the Face

In 3d animation, every detail can be seen. It is those small details that add a layer of complexity to our work and I wanted to talk a little about what interests me when I am trying to get that in my work. First off, not every scene calls for the smallest facial twitch. Sometimes many scene are basic and money spent on tiny details is lost. It is in those close ups that you want to add the proper amount of detail. I remember being an animator on a bugs life. John Lassiter wanted us to look at a film clip of two different eyes blinks on flick. One was a standard eye blink. It looked much like a camera shutter opening and closing. Not much ease out, the timing was the same and in general, when seen at such high rez, looked mechanical. The next example was a shot Mark Oftedahl did. The blinks he did were beautifully timed. The sides dragged , the shapes changes. They were perfectly polished and looked fleshy. Nowadays, this type of stuff is much more in the main stream of high end 3d feature animation, but back then it really opened our eyes (no pun intended). So what is in effect left in the realm of facial animation? Where can we push too? What improvements can we make? I think some of the answers lie in subtle animation. Yes, we work in a medium of exaggeration, but also one that lets us layer in detail. Of course, some of the examples I want to give are from the world of live action. Lets do a little action analysis of some of these clips…

First, lets just look at some of the “controls” our face has…

Interesting clip…. That one made the rounds in the department…

This next clip from “There Will Be Blood” Shows a lot of facial details that really add to the acting and intensity of Daniel Day Lewis’s performance. Its the stuff he does between his lines that draws you in. How he pushes his lips up, the changes and micro expression. Its a great movie to watch for acting as well as everything else.

That’s all for now. Look for some more stuff coming soon.

-Andrew

more on texture…

Here’s a scene from the Robert Altman film, The Player. I had been thinking about this post for a while and after reading Gordon’s latest I thought this would be a perfect extension of his point, but more related to dialogue as opposed to pantomime.

the-player

Watch Grant (the British dude) pitch part of his movie idea to Tim Robbins, a studio executive. Robbins’ performance is equally as interesting for all the subtext going on but I won’t spoil that for you. Here we’ll examine the texture of Grant’s performance in his body acting while he’s talking. Normally I wouldn’t advise hitting beats so “on-the-nose” as he does, as it tends to flatten a performance: why illustrate with the body exactly the words the character is saying? And certainly if all he had done was hit the obvious poses, the scene would be boring, or even worse, annoying. I want to talk not about the poses he hits, but what he does in between them that makes this scene so entertaining.

Take, for example, the first close up scene of Grant as he explains the car accident investigation. An animator would find it very easy and tempting to skip right from the “brakes have been tampered with” to the pose for “murder.” But Grant makes it interesting and convincing by doing a hilarious anticipation before the line. I broke the beat down into the five keys I’d pose for his action:

1) “brakes have been tampered with”

2) eyes close, head up

3) head down, hands up

4) hands hit down: “it’s”

5) head up to look at Tim Robbins: “murder”

(You’ll probably note that he actually hits a slightly different pose for “murder” before arriving and holding at the one I picked.)

Now he’s not just illustrating the line, he’s added a whole new urgency to it, and subtext that reads “no if’s, and’s or but’s, it’s murder!” And he’s broken up the action by having his hands follow his head as a second accent. He’s also acting within poses very economically; long holds with subtle texturizing movements. He’s covered all the principles! This whole scene is chock full of such juiciness (including preceding lines I cut for time). Look at the antic for the running action or the dramatic pause before “there’s not a dry eye…” And these are extreme examples; in animation even a two frame eye antic *before* your body antic can help show thought process and make a scene more entertaining. Bottom line: characters thinking = believability. Believability = entertainment.

Look for places to do this in your work!

-trav

Air Guitarist

I was listening to some music the other day that made me want to play the air guitar and air drums to it. A thought came to me regarding the timing of the drum beats and how I pretended to follow along to the music. The fun part of pretending to be the drummer or guitarist for whatever piece of music you are listening to is how much you exaggerate what you are doing. When a big guitar solo comes on, you invent new ways to deal with this instrument. One handed playing, playing with the whammy bar, behind the back, doing Pete Townsend type moves and so on. Its no different with animation. Its how you do the scene and what type of interesting performance you create which makes it interesting. Its also what comes before and after the big moments. You could say this is the texture of the scene. This can be the part when the guy from the video tosses his guitar in the air. For the animator, it can be the mannerism they do during a quite part of the scene. It may be a facial mannerism like a lip twitch or a gesture. The point is, it adds to the character. Whenever I have been in dailies and seen something great, I always think… “Why didn’t I think of that?” With the air guitarist, a lot of the talent is from the gut. Some people have it and others it takes more effort to come up with a performance worth watching. The great thing about animation is that we can plan. Planning will really help with the idea, even if its for a few hours before you animate. Its worth it.

In essence, A good performance has many ingredients that make it interesting to watch. Animation is no different. All the things we learn about in school such as anticipation, staging, timing, etc etc… are ingredients to bake the perfect animation cake. Its not necessarily the ingredients, but more how the cake is baked….

-Andrew

Why the muppets are such great inspiration for Animation

Lately I’ve been watching alot of Sesame Street. I have a one year old. She loves it. In terms of acting, the characters on the show can act better than most real actors. You always know what they are feeling and they dont even have faces that change (except of course the mouth) Its amazing how believable the performances are. The characters all have specific ways of moving. Alot of that is based on the characters up and down movement or what we call TZ (translation in Z) or Y if you work in Maya… If these characters had animation controls, there might be about 20. Its just goes to show you that it does not take a heavily rigged character to get acting ideas across. I always love hte head acting on the characters. The angle of the head can really tell you alot about how the character is feeling. Take a look some of the clips here

http://video.sesameworkshop.org/

Watch how grovers acting style is well contrasted with the other character. Also take note of how he moves.

Kermits acting is awesome. Its interesting to watch how his head accents the lines of dialogue. As far as staging goes, its is very clear who you should be looking at. The characters play very well off each other. Cookie moster also has funny interesting mouth movements. In general, this clip shows two great puppeteers at work, Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

This one is just great becasue you get to see bert go through different attitudes. Its also nice to see him with another real person and understand the difference between the two.

A Great Animation Resource

Carlos Baena just updated his website and it has loads of great animation resources…

Check it out

Carlos Website