Animation Practice: Anti-Hero and Character Research

Anti-Hero:

Wikipedia defines an Anti-Hero as: "a central character in a story, film, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes."

An example of an Anti-Hero would be Han Solo. Han Solo is a sleazy smuggler, a criminal in the eyes of the Galactic Empire who isn't unused to killing people like Greedo. For the majority of A New Hope, Han Solo isn't driven by a sense of doing the right thing or helping others, but simply payment for transporting Luke. Later in the story he becomes motivated by a desire to do the right thing, while still retaining some of the elements that make him an Anti-Hero.

Han Solo is the perfect contrast to Luke Skywalker, the traditional hero of Star Wars. Luke is driven, self-less and fights because of his sense of justice and desire to do good. Whereas a hero like Luke would help out if possible and avoid conflict or killing, an Anti-Hero like Han Solo would be more interested in how these situations would benefit him.

One of the most notorious Anti-Heros in cinema history is Escape from New York and Escape from L.A protagonist, Snake Plissken. Multiple times throughout both movies Snake witnesses a helpless person being attacked but he does not help, whereas a hero wouldn't waste a minute to consider it. His motivation in both movies is one of survival and self-interest, forced onto an almost suicidal-mission to save the president. While a hero would be doing this for reasons such as saving lives and stopping criminals, Snake's sole reason for this is because if he doesn't complete his mission, a bomb in his neck will detonate, killing him.

In conclusion, an anti-hero is defined as a character who, while a character we would typically want to succeed, has some qualities that would be considered non-heroic or good. A typical expression for the attitude many of these characters would have is 'The End Justifies The Means'

Character background:

Silent, lacking morals and vengeful, no one knows the name of this stoic warrior of the post-apocalyptic wasteland of London. Once a average girl trying to survive in her small settlement, her life was ruined by raiders and bandits attacking the village and taking her and other hostage. The only one to survive after they began torturing and killing her and her fellow villagers, she took her killer's jacket and weapon, roaming the wasteland to kill anyone who with any connections to the raiders who raided her settlement.

Drawing elements heavily from Mad Max and Fallout, two series based in post apocalyptic areas, the character and her environment are based on elements someone would see in those.

Sandy and desaturated colours are common in Mad Max shots

The character takes a lot of survivalist elements from characters in the movies.

The thrown-together and survivalist look of characters from post-apocalyptic media servers as the basic for my character's outfit with some changes made to reflect the character herself, such as her scarf covering her mouth as a way of representing her muteness. The abundance of red also hints to her vengeful nature.

LINK TO MOODBOARD

Progress:

Originally I was going to start working on the character using ZSpheres but later decided I should create a basic, low-poly mesh in Maya instead. ZSpheres are incredibly effective for getting basic proportions and for quickly converting them into a mesh, but for this project I think I will get more control and quicker results once the low-poly mesh is finished. The ZSphere test turned out too masculine and made me decide to try going back to modeling instead.

This is the current progress on the low-poly mesh which is obviously unfinished. Extra care has been put into the topology to make sure it will deform and sculpt properly.

Animation Practice - Character Moodboard

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/TsdjI75z/share

27/01/2017 - VFX Group Discussion

27/01/2017 - VFX Group Discussion

CJ is not present due to personal reasons.

15:40 - Group meeting begins

15:41 - Denise proposes idea and moodboard for 'TLHM_Footage_QT_Preview_4' : Replace the statue with a futuristic device in the first scene.

15:43 - Manuel proposes idea and moodboard for the same video, showing his ideas : Replace the statue in the warehouse scene.

15:45 - Thomas explains that he also had the same ideas for 'TLHM_Footage_QT_Preview_4'. The three members present, Denise, Manuel and Thomas, discuss which elements would work and how they could be achieved. Thomas proposes that, as a character casts a shadow on the statue, we create a low-detail version of that character to cast a shadow on whatever CG model we choose to replace the statue.

15:53 - The group consults Jin and is told their idea is too complex

16:05 - Preview7's shot at 2:00 is considered

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxkkBgxeQMUxQmZRTUlXOExIeEk/view

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Animation Practice Evaluation

Animation Practice Evaluation

For this coursework, we were tasked with animating a scene based on audio from monthly audio contests at the 11 Second Club. At the time of planning, the audio in the monthly contest was from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and this audio was chosen. Unfortunately the final product didn’t turn out as expected. A glaring problem with the animation is the vast difference in animation quality between the two characters on screen. This is a result of rushing the animation due to time constraints and lack of fine tuning of interpolation. The lighting isn’t as good as hoped for as problems were encountered late into lighting and couldn’t resolve them. The final lighting looks very dull compared to what was intended.

If more time was allotted, more time could have been spent making sure the quality of animation is consistent and the lighting interesting.

Lip syncing and animation was one aspect of this project that is inconsistent. As previously mentioned one character’s animation was rushed, however the character on the right is animated more or less exactly as intended. The environment was also rushed due to poor management of time, while a majority of time was spent on animating a single character,  texturing or modeling the environment, and other aspects, were neglected, as a result it relies solely on use of flat colours and Arnold renderer materials. In future projects, time will be managed more efficiently, putting more effort into all aspects of the project, rather than spending too much time on one part. Additions such as bump mapping, more detailed modeling and more interesting lighting would have gone a long way with improving the overall quality and look of the scene.

Another complication in the process was the necessary use of the new Arnold renderer for Maya 2017 which caused numerous issues due to a lack of familiarity and experience, as opposed to Mental Ray, which, due to it shipping with both 3DS Max and Maya for numerous years, has a large amount of resources online for learning. Adjusting to Arnold took quite some time but a lot was learned during the process, allowing for experimentation with many different rendering settings that will be useful for future projects. If given more time, more time would have been spent experimenting with Arnold and seeing what can be done, improving how fast the same results or better could be achieved. Regardless, the experience gained from this project is invaluable and has given the knowledge needed to further experiment with Arnold.

The project was further complicated by render times and underestimating them. Originally the animation was intended to be 60FPS, but upon testing out different render settings, rendering times per frame were reduced from around 6 minutes to 2, Meaning it would take up to 20 hours or more to render the whole animation. Unable to do that due to time constraints, the animation was reduced to 25 frames per second and many render quality settings were lowered to get a complete render in time for the deadline. Depth of Field and Z-Depth were originally planned to be used during this project but since render times were already a problem with the limited time left, they were omitted to focus on allowing enough time to render and upload the animation.

The rendered files were imported into After Effects to be rendered as the final .mp4 file. Unfortunately because of a known bug with the specific version of After Effects used on University computers, rendering the project out was impossible without audio errors and problems.

Ultimately, this project was a learning experience that was held back by time constraints and my own failure to work efficiently in them. If I had been given more time, I’m certain I could easily build upon what I learned during this project and produced a far better animation. I believe future projects will benefit immensely from what I’ve learned during this project, from rendering with Arnold to lighting a scene.

Animation Practice: References

11 Second Club: http://www.11secondclub.com/

"11 Second Club - The Monthly Character Animation Competition". 11secondclub.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

Both characters are Max rigs provided by 11 Second Club on their website and belong to Peter Starostin and James Hunt. Their original website and the rig can be found here:

http://www.bockstyre.com/james/maxformaya/

Animation Practice: 11 Second Club November Animation

The finished animation can be found here:

Animation Practice: Z-Depth

Animation Practice: Z-Depth

Rendering Z-Depth for still renders and animations is a very useful technique. It allows you to save the depth of field data from a camera used in a scene and use it for VFX work in other programs such as Nuke and Adobe After Effects. There are multiple ways of doing it but as I'm exporting my frames as .exr, I can make use of the format's ability to store Z-Depth information.

Rendering Z-Depth is done by turning on depth of field for your render camera and activating the Z-Depth AOV

The main appeal of rendering Z-Depth for use in software other than the 3D package you're using is that you can control depth of field on the fly and animate it easily in a program like After Effects without having to re-render a frame with each change. While 3DS Max or Maya will have to re-render everything just for you to see how different depth of field settings look, the process is simplified and much faster when depth of field is applied to the rendered frames in After Effects or Nuke as it is, put simply, a mask for the blur.

Lower focus distance

Higher focus distance

Just adjusting the focus distance was immensely faster than doing it in Maya.
You can even change options like where the camera is focused to achieve great looking focus movement and blurring. The blur options are very simple yet powerful, and can really improve the workflow of any animation's post-production.