Author: Weiheng Kong

I struggle a lot in Fatberg projects, but I use lots of ways to make references and they help me solve most of the problems.

First, I came across some difficulties in hand movement shot. The camera is under the hand and the hand flip to throw out a paper ball.

At the start, I drew it follow my imagination how a hand flip in this angle and it was pretty hard for me because I barely saw a hand flipping in this angle in my daily life. Then I thought of a way, why not take a photo of my own hand. So then I did it, made some photos of my own hands.

With all of those refences I made, I finally made it out and did the animation smoothly. So make a photo of yourself is a great way because character animation has a lot to do with body. Here is the effect.

Then, School arranged an acting class for me, I performed a lot in the class and the teacher record all of my performance related to my projects.

With the help of all those video, I felt more confident when I did the following animation and in the end, I finished all of my work smoothly.

Collaboration work

I was very excited about this collaboration with second year student, Ben. So after the list published, we got in contact soon.

He showed me his work and it was really amazing and a interesting. There is a characters inside, he also is in the phrase of modeling and rigging. So he let me help him with the modeling and rigging of his character. After I accomplish the modeling and rigging, he can group the hand with his body easily.

However, he asked me to use c4d to do his work, I have never used it before and it is a good opportunity for me to learn this c4d.

To begin with, I needed to do the modeling of the hand, he then gave me some video of how to do it. I took them for reference and then try to do the modeling by myself.

It is quite hard though, the problem I met was, after I finished the rough model, the hand was not smooth, and however I adjusted every point, it was still not smooth enough. Thus, I used another software I was familiar with to help me smooth the hand, Zbrush.

After modeling, I came to a completely strange area, rigging. It was quite hard for me actually, The first problem I came across was the axis. Basically, all of the axis Z of parent joint should point to the child joint and all of the rotation of joint should be zero. I spent a lot of time on it, finally, after I viewed tons of tutorial videos, I found one way was that, there was a option named align in the command list. I just needed to select all of the coordinates, and click on that button, then every axis was on its direction.

After I finished the weight painting, I tried to set some animation systems, like the fist, bend of hand, bend of thumb, so that animator doesn’t need to adjust every joint one by one, if they want to let the hand become fist, they just needed to adjust the option of fist that I set, which was quite time-efficient! But only after I tried to do some animation, I found the drawback of my modeling, rigging! My finger was not fat enough and actually the bone of the thumb was not at the right position! So I needed to back to the first step, which means the weight I drew on every finger would be redo!

It was quite a nice experience for me, I learned how to do modeling and rigging in the cinema 4D, and also Ben gave me a lot of advice on both. I also collected some experience from mistakes I made, Every step in 3D modeling and rigging was important. I should check every step as careful as possible, in case after I done all, I should get back to fix something, which may cause some repeated work.

Today, I took a Life-Drawing Class. After the class, I showed my work to Vanessa in order to ask for some advice. Happily, she said my work got a great progress.

Then I asked her some question about perspective because I always find it difficult in perspective. She showed me a lot of examples and drew some examples for me. In the end, she said there will be a course about perspective next Monday.

In Monday, Vanessa taught us a lot about perspective. There was five principles of perspective and I drew and found some examples by my own.

• Diminution

• Foreshortening

• Convergence

• Atmospheric Perspective

• Overlapping

Today, I took the course of storytelling and it was such a nice experience for me because I always got problems in storytelling. I really enjoyed this class because Professor Robert made every single point easy to understand and he was really humorous.

I learned two structures of story:

Structure1. First with happy story, but then so much troubles come out and has a great ending in the end.

I found one example fitting this structure: Short film <BAO>

• The Baozi, a kind of Chinese food mother make, become a baby Baozi with life and baby Baozi go through a great lifetime with Mother.

• Baozi starts to do what he likes, but mother thinks those activities dangerous and forbid Baozi to take part in. So Baozi is not happy as before and begin to bicker with mother.

• Baozi gets a girlfriend and wants to live with the girlfriend. Mother is not willing to let Baozi go and she eat it.

• Everything is a dream and Baozi actually is mother’s son and now he comes back and says sorry to mother with a happy ending.

Structure2. First with difficulties, then the characters solve all of the problems and has a bad or great ending in the end.

I found one example fitting this structure: Short film<Piper>

• Piper’s mom wants piper to find food by itself rather than waiting to be fed. So small piper needs to find piper and come across lots of troubles.

• Piper’s become wet during its finding for food.

• Piper find its own way to look for food.

• Piper can feed itself easily right now.

• First class

No “Bean” Structure, No stress line to underline the important part, no volume line, kind of flat.

With some “bean” structure inside. But the line is still flat without important point. Kind of hard to control my line, which cause the body was kind of fat and disproportion.

Know how to stress the important part with thick line. But the line overall was a little disconnected and not smooth.

A bit better though, still difficult to control the line. Good to see there were some volume line, but they were kind of stiff.

Worse, but the line was much more relaxed. Some old error appeared again: no stress line, no volume line.

Line became more confident, which was happy to see. Could add more stress line and volume line.

Some volume line in the thigh, could also add them to more places. Kind of not continuous around the pelvis.

Great progress, every line is relaxed and some natural volume line with some thick line to stress the important part.

• Lip Synch recorded

I firstly have look at lots of fantastic movie to choose one for my lip synch. Then I choose one footage from The Truman Show.

It is one of my favorite movies, I then research his expression and mouth shape carefully and do my work.

This is the first version, when I show it to professor, I get a couple of valuable feedback including the movement of the body is too strange and the last motion of head is not suitable. Plus, the eyeball of this character drift to nowhere, it should always locked on the audience. So I modify it and accomplish my next version.

From this work, I now understand some extra unnecessary movement of body will actually distract my audience and confuse them. So Now I know I should focus on the major movement and reduce some extra movement to improve my work. Also, It is very important to design the eyesight of your character, it is the key to convey the mood. So carefully design the movement of eyeball. Do not let it drift always, and make it focus on the audience most of the time.

• Lip Synch Given

It was kind of hard for me to do the lip synch first, so I recorded a video of myself to say this word and then follow this clip as the reference to do the lip animation.

Then the do the animation became quite easy though, I haven’t noticed the problem that my performance was a little exaggerate.

Then I show this to teacher and get some feedback. The unnecessary movement was too much and some gestures were quite weird. Ok, then I knew my feeling to the performance got something wrong. So I performed again and found the better feeling.

From this assignment, I found how to perform actually was pretty critique to animator, with better performance, animator would have better work in the end.

Hi, I come back! Today, I want to review the <Bear Story>, one of my favorite short animation!

Bear Story (Spanish: Historia de un oso) is a 2014 Chilean animated short film directed by Gabriel Osorio Vargas. The screenplay was co-written with Daniel Castro and the film was produced by Pato Escala Pierart. The story is inspired by the director’s grandfather, Leopoldo Osorio, who, after the Chilean coup d’état, was imprisoned for two years and then forced to live in exile for the duration of the dictatorship.[1][2] The film was a critical success, winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards. It is the first Chilean winner of an Academy Award and the first Latin American animation to win and/or get nominated for an Oscar.<From Wikipedia>

Beginning:

• A mechanical bear appears in the center of the screen, it is in a kind of mechanical diorama made by a bear living in the real world.

Development:

• The bear went to the street and work there, he makes living for showing people mechanical diorama. A small bear pays for watching his diorama.

• Another story begin, an Animal Troupe set in the town and people inside caught the bear into the troupe so that the bear apart to his family.

• People whips the bear to train him and force him to perform in the troupe.

• One day he finds a way out and run to his town.

Ending:

• Finally, Bear finds his family, and the baby bear leave happily.

Curve:

It is a very sad animation short film. People always make use of animal for money, which is so evil because animal also has their own family. Even though mechanical bear find his family in the story, but I think the bear in the reality hasn’t because his house is totally empty.

This short film actually use the way of flashback to tell the story, which I think it is a great way to make audience touched. From this story, I hope in the future, people can give up this way of entertainment in animal troupe.

I was really fascinating by traveling, so I spent some time on trip in the UK. During the trip, I deliberately took more photo to explore some composition. I thought it might be good for my animation work in the future. Here is some photo that I took.

Today I watched a quite fantastic short animation film<Bao> from Disney. The director is Zhimao Shi, who is an American Chinese Director and <Bao> win the Academy Award for Animated Short Film! This is the link: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV197411V7bR?from=search&seid=14067864851546850110&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0

Beginning

• Grandmom eat Baozi, but Baozi actually is alive, his a baby Baozi.

Development

• Baozi and Grandmom get along with each other well.

• Baozi is interested in football, but Grandma doesn’t allow. Thus, Bao zi is unhappy.

• Baozi dosen’t like the limitation and hang out with friends.

• Baozi backs with his girlfriend and wants to marry with her and leave grandma. Finally Grandma eat it.

Ending

• It is a dream, her son then come back and they build up relationship agian.

Audience mood curve:

It is quite a excellent movie. Especially at the beginning, when grandma makes Baozi, the form of it is quite difficult in term of technique. And the whole film use way of metaphor, the baby bao zi actually is son of grandma in reality. This story tell us parents should not set so many limitation on their children.

<Feast>, made by Disney, won the 87th of Academy Award for Animated Short Film. The camera is trained on dog to talk about this story of its male master. This is the link: Festin Corto Animado de Disney Completo – YouTube

Beginning:

• Man finds a dog in the street and bring it home.

Development:

• They get along well.

• One day, man meet a woman and then they live together.

• However, man’s girlfriend is a vegetarian and really cares about the health, so they all need to eat vegetable every day including the dog.

• One day, man and his girlfriend break up, so the man back to the unhealthy state.

Ending:

• However, one day, the dog find man still miss woman, so he help him find the woman and the couple get well again. In the end, the couple marry and have a nice life.

Audience mood Curve:

This is a film mainly showing the excellent technique effect with production in 3D, but using excellent 2D style. The story is complete and warm, Man helped dog before and dog help him back by helping him find the girl back.