Wei's Animation Blog

Framestore time!

2011-10-31T22:38:00.000Z

I start my animation internship at Framestore today! I'm working in VFX department which is really exciting for me because I love films. Here's to a new experience in the film industry and I hope to learn loads from the amazing animators here!

Some Personal Work

2011-10-17T22:41:00.000+01:00

For the last 6 weeks I've been working on and off on a personal project. It's a trailer parody for Valve's newest game - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which is coming out in 2012.

I would like to thank everyone who collaborated with me on this project:

Jonas B. Ingebretsen for Music and Sound Design - This is my first project where I've had the opportunity to have a music specifically composed to fit to my animation, as well as excellent sound design to push the standard sounds into something so much more professional sounding. Something that's quite new for me :)

Fernando Zamora for Voice Acting - Fernando, in case you didn't know was also the voice actor for my short film, Self-Conflict. He voiced the narrator and also the character voices and screams in the animation. Some of those character screams still make me laugh.

Aran Saunders for Additional Animation - Aran volunteered to animate a few shots for me and he did very well (maybe too well?) at adapting to the style to fit the rest of my animations.

And I did pretty much everything else! Overall, I am very pleased to have worked with these guys and very grateful to them for helping out.

Some work from Cubic Motion

2011-09-28T17:39:00.000+01:00

I can finally post about some of my work at Cubic Motion since it's now released as samples for the website.

This here is an example of capture-driven animation:
This type of animation specifically requires strict adherence to the video reference capturing every subtlety made by the actor. A lot more time consuming to clean up and get right. I was responsible for the animation and lighting.

This one shows the capture-driven animation being transferred to a stylized character rig (Morpheus rig by Josh Burton):

A fellow animator started the facial animation and I finished it off, cleaned and polished the rest, including the body animation. I was also responsible for the character customization and lighting setup.

Driver: San Francisco is out now!

2011-09-02T10:15:00.001+01:00

Check it out guys! This is the game I worked on while I was at Ubisoft Reflections from 2009-2010. It was great to be a part of the animation team and I learned a lot from everyone.

The game is out today (in the UK). If you've played it, let me know what you think!

P.S. This is also my first credited game! :D

Obs: Comfort Zones

2011-08-28T14:20:00.000+01:00

What do you do when you can't figure out what your character should be doing in a scene? Well, the most important thing is knowing what the character's objective is. Everyone knows that.

But let's explore something more global, something that affects us in all scenarios and pretty much all the time. Today's observation is about comfort zones. This is something that should be considered on-top-of our character's objectives. Take for example, our character wants to eat some pie but there are spikey obstacles in the way. Our character won't be running across it to get to the pie if it's going to hurt him or cause him discomfort. Ok, that's quite an extreme case but this can be really effective if used in more subtle ways.

In the biological sense, our body is always finding ways to use the least amount of energy possible and to be as comfortable as possible. Say you're at home and sat down watching TV. A few minutes later, you'll find that your body is completely slumped. And if you get any lazier, you'd fall asleep. Biologically this makes sense because we need to conserve energy for when we need it - in the case of danger. Similar reasons to why our heart beats faster when we're afraid, to make sure our body is ready to flee or fight. So the next time you're animating a character doing an action, it's useful to think about how "comfortable" they are. It helps add that bit of realism to your piece doing things that people naturally do.

We also move in reaction to our comfort zones. When someone we don't know or don't like moves too close to us, we move away. This is best observed at the bus stop. When there are few people at the bus stop and you're stood on one side of the bus stop and another person comes up right next to you, chances are you'll feel very uncomfortable. The funny thing is that your comfort zone is adaptable depending on the situation. If the bus stop was packed with a lot of people, and you are sandwiched between others, it becomes acceptable because everyone else is in a similar situation.

The more we understand about what makes us or our characters comfortable or uncomfortable will help make our character's interaction with others in the scene a lot more believable. So the next time you make your animation poses, ask yourself if it looks comfortable in etiher a) as a normal balanced pose or b) comfortable in the situation.

Apart from the main objective that our characters are going through, do remember that there are also a lot of subconscious things that our bodies will do naturally to support our actions. The more we observe the nonverbal clues of body language, the more we can accurately display genuine actions for our characters. I used to believe secondary action is something you add to your animation for extra awesome sauce. It's not. It's something you consider before-hand and apply consciously throughout your animation for all the right reasons.

First Class Honours!

2011-07-15T22:58:00.000+01:00

I just received my degree results from my University today.

I got a Bachelor Of Arts in Digital Character Animation With First Class Honours! Can't be more pleased about this. It's time to celebrate with some sushi.

Anim Test: Bucky

2011-07-11T00:13:00.003+01:00

Found this Buck Kid rig and decided to have a play with him. Just an animation test done in 2 hours.

Obs: Blinks

2011-06-16T23:29:00.000+01:00

Have you ever spoken to someone about something and for some strange reason, you are able to tell when he/she starts getting confused/don't-have-any-idea-what-you-are-talking-about? Apart from the obvious confused look on their faces, and their stillness in their body language and/or pause in their activities, notice that they will also stare at you blankly. By this I mean they will stop blinking. Weird isn't it?

There are a lot of reasons why and when we blink but I think this one is quite interesting in it's own right and I'd like to talk a little about it. Seems blinking is also an activity linked with absorbing information. To me it's the nodding of the eyes. When you're listening to someone and you are in agreement, you tend to nod at them... and blink too! I know this seems odd, but try it for yourself. An example is when I am in a lecture hall and listening to a very informative and interesting lecture, I would catch myself blinking a lot. I mean a lot uncontrollably.

I believe the same is true when you stop agreeing. This is why it's quite shocking how we are able to tell when someone is lost while trying to explain something to them. It's easy to tell because we notice a change in behaviour or a break in a pattern. While the listener understands what you are talking about, they will often be blinking, nodding, etc and suddenly as they get confused, our brains are able to detect that change in behaviour, a different action performed out of the normal, even as subtle as fewer eye blinks. Try it and see for yourself!

Started work at Cubic Motion

2011-06-06T22:14:00.000+01:00

Today was my first day working at Cubic Motion. It was great. Lovely place, people and atmosphere. And already a lot of work to be done. I think I'll be very busy the next few months! Wish I could talk about the exciting projects I'm going to be working on but it's top secret.

That's all for now!

Obs: You look at what you want

2011-05-31T19:41:00.002+01:00

Observation: You look at what you want. For the most part, this is very true - where your eyes are looking will determine what is currently in focus or of interest. You can pick up many things from looking at people in the train station, bus stops, etc. Most people who travel alone like their own space and mind their own business. Many will resolve to mp3 players with headphones plugged in or reading books. These people tend to have their eyes down and away, often signifying their desire to not be disturbed and left in their own little worlds.

Then there are others who are without any media distractions, travelling alone with nothing to do. Observe them. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at where they are looking. If their eyes are constantly scanning the room, their brains are active, they are receptive to their surroundings and are alert. Perhaps hoping to meet the gaze of another interested individual. Generally, if you're looking around you or at people, you're opening yourself up for conversation and subconsciously inviting friendly talk. If your gaze is down and away, it's the eye language equivalent of "leave me alone". Of course these are all variable depending on the situation but I'm just talking about general observations here.

As I was travelling in the train one day, I caught myself becoming a victim to this observation. I'm usually either reading, scanning people, reading them or when I'm tired, look away in a corner and try to fall asleep. What was unusual in this instance was that I needed to use the toilet. First thing I did was try to identify where the nearest toilet was without getting up. It was at the end of the corridor. Next I determined whether or not it was vacant without getting up so I studied the light switch above it. I couldn't really tell if it meant vacant or not.

What I did notice was 2 other ladies sat uncomfortably near the toilet with quirky movements. It told me they were waiting for the toilet. Soon I realized I was no longer doing the things I would normally do, lie in a corner or falling asleep. I was constantly checking for the toilet to be available, scanning the area, seeing if the ladies had already had their turn. So much so that my body had tilted itself to a unusual position, my head leaning to the side giving me full vision of the situation in front of me. This got me thinking. Would I have been in this position if I hadn't needed to use the bathroom? No. It was an uncomfortable position, with my head tilted to one side and heck why would I be staring at the aisle in front of me for? At which point, I got a little subconscious because I thought the ladies in front caught my eye and they must be thinking the same thing, "this guy needs the loo". Hah!

Naturally I tried to fake it and look away returning to a more comfortable position. But it was difficult to go back to doing something more casual when you really needed the bathroom. I soon found myself back to the original leaning position, with my eyes on the toilet scenario.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and suddenly their eye darts to something behind you and eventhough he/she is still talking, you know they are now focussing on something else? More often than not, you'd be so intrigued by what has intrigued them that you too will turn and see for yourself. Our eyes can be so revealing sometimes.

This ends my observation for "You look at what you want". Your eye looks are directly connected to your brain and will look at what you are currently interested in. So I guess this is why we look at people's faces when talking to them (mostly eyes) to read them because it is shocking what you can find out with their gaze and direction.

Watery eyes part 2

2011-05-25T23:40:00.001+01:00

Ok, I wrote the last post in a bit of a hurry and have had some time to reflect on it since.

I think I'll format these observation posts in a more meaningful manner next time, starting with my main point and then elaborating on it based on my experience.

Here we go!

General observation: Some elements of emotional state can come from the design/look of the character and does not always rely on the animation itself.

Specific observation: Watery eyes/redness is a powerful tool that can be used to make your character appear sad/in-tears.

As an animator, I've always had to rely on my animation skills to push the emotional state of the character and to find ways of making him connect with audiences through movement. The truth is, this skill - as valuable as it is to an animator can only be taken so far. The fact is there are also a lot of contributing factors that can help make the character/scene more convincing.

Take shot layout and camera movement for example, the primary factor of how we connect to an audience is surprisingly overlooked by many animators. A well placed camera and/or controlled movement can have more of an impact than you think. A slow zoom into a character often helps the audience connect to the character better, often used when the character is in deep thought for example. The animation could be the best in the world and incredibly subtle perhaps, but if the camera is in a full body shot or a long shot; the effect is completely changed.

Colour design and theory will also add to how we feel about the characters/scene. The scary thing is how our brains pick up these clues so unconsciously that we take them for granted. This is certainly an area I would like to explore further when possible.

Following the colour design, lighting also plays an important part. Having a character very well lit or not can mean so much in ways I can't even describe. There are many examples out there of how good lighting affects the mood and atmosphere that you can probably look up.

Character design helps tell us who these characters are that we are animating. With just a generic default character rig, it tells us hardly anything. Why is this important? Surely a well animated character can shine without fancy designs. That may be true but again, as I mentioned above, there is only so much you can do with animation. These are plusses, bonuses, add-ons, icing on the cake, if you will to not only make your animation stand out but more importantly help the audience connect better with your animated character. A good design will immediately establish a good understanding of your character before he is even moving. Is he a cowboy? Is he a waiter?

The generic rig tells you very little about the character

Customized rigs tell you more about the character and their personality

I suppose the goal of every shot is to immediately tell the audience the story, the scenario and what's happening in just the scene layout/designs itself. That way, when the audience watches the animation, they spend less time figuring out who these characters are, where they are, what time it is, etc and spend more time concentrating on what's important - what's actually happening in the scene.

Ok, I appear to be drifting off topic now. OH yes, back to my main point, the watery eyes and the impact! I guess this new found discovery made me realize a new factor that can contribute to the performance!

I'm not actually sure what category this will fall in to be honest, maybe under character design? It's just additional things we can do to make the performances more convincing. In 3D, with good rigs, we can often use squash/stretch, rotations, translations and even scale to deliver our performances. Now that I've discovered this watery eye concept and how much it affects the character's looks, it really got me thinking just how much more of these little details I've missed out.

I know this isn't anything mind-blowing or new in 2D, because I've seen many great examples of 2D animation where they include a ton of details but a lot of which are only possible due to the nature of the art form. 2D is great because you can make anything happen, a transforming character, deformations, eye pops, explosions and what not all limited to just your imagination. With 3D however, it is a lot more work to get those results and as such 3D characters tend to have that rigidness.

Can you think of other examples of what we can do to push the characters designs further apart from maybe changing the colours of the eyes?

Watery eyes

2011-05-25T08:35:00.001+01:00

So I only just got up a few minutes ago, and as my eyes got a little watery from the morning wake, instead of wiping it off with my hands, I squeezed my lids shut. When I opened them (while in front of the mirror), and as my eyes and its surrounding areas become moist, it almost becomes inevitable that I had to blink a lot more and it stung a little. I do like to act in front of the mirror sometimes, and in this case, I pretended to shed a tear or be sad.... what I found was shocking. It took such little effort to sell this emotion when you have watery eyes!

When your eyes are watery, it seems you'd naturally blink more anyways and that adds even more to the whole sad/insecure emotional state. I tried a couple of different things like smiling and wiping a tear and the result was spectacular. It was all on-top of the in-tears emotional look which I could not hide regardless. Seems the watery eye look is just that powerful. As much as I tried hiding it, it just appeared as if I WAS consciously trying to conceal it but still appearing sad.

I think I'll try this again in future to see what more I can get from this!

Jobs and Summer plans

2011-05-23T20:40:00.006+01:00

I will be working as an animator at Cubic Motion in Manchester, UK from June to October 2011. Then I'll be starting my animation internship at Framestore in London, from November onwards.

I have also officially finished with my final year at Teesside University studying BA Digital Character Animation. Over the last 4 years of education (including placement year), I have been very active in improving my skills and practicing. Often so much so to the expense of my social life which is a little sad. It has however paid off with jobs and fantastic opportunities :). I want to take it a bit easier this summer and make up for lost time. Go out a bit more, enjoy the sun, meet new friends, spend less time in front of the computer for a change!

Of course this doesn't mean I'll stop learning or being productive - no no. If and when I do have the time, I would like to return to the basics of animation and start nailing those animation principles down to the core to strengthen my basics. I have been tackling a lot of advanced acting and performance related animation recently and as much as I love doing those, I feel I've been neglecting my basics a little bit. So you can expect some mini animation exercises and tests in future. I'm also keen on tackling some creature animations in preparation to my time at Framestore.

Quite recently I've joined Linkedin - click to see my profile and add me if you know me!

I'll try and post a bit more as well. I have many animation questions, theories and observations that I've been meaning to post about. Until next time, keep your heads up and happy animating!

CCA Animation Complete!

2011-04-25T12:24:00.002+01:00

Watch in 720p HD
Watch in 1080p Full HD

Above is my completed animation for my Creative Character Animation module at Teesside University. The cool thing is it only took me about a week! You can follow the development blog for this here. Big props to Josh Burton for the amazing Morpheus Rig! Love the facial controls on this one, very extensive!

I'm going to Framestore!

2011-04-18T22:31:00.003+01:00

This news is actually about 3 weeks old... but all this time I was waiting for the University to update their website with some sort of video or news or something, but hey... they sure are taking their sweet time. Long story short, I won the Animation and VFX Award at Expotees on 6th April 2011 and won myself a 6 month animation internship at Framestore, in London!

I had to hand-in my trophy for my name to be carved on it so am still waiting for it to come back to me... which is kinda why I delayed this post for so long. I wanted to post it with some pictures of the trophy and certificate. But it's been so long so I thought what the heck... people ought to know!

Yeah! So I am super excited about this opportunity and cannot wait to start. There are some pretty amazing animators over there!

CCA Blog

2011-04-18T22:15:00.001+01:00

As part of my Creative Character Animation (CCA) modules at University, I have to create a development blog and record my progression. So hey, if you're interested in seeing how I get a shot done from blocking to final, go check it out!

The exercise is to animate a lip-sync piece to a pre-recorded sound clip. This animation I'm working on now is actually rather interesting. Why? Because if you thought my short film was subtle, then this one is even more so! It almost seems like I'm getting into even smaller details with every new animation and underplaying everything. Could just be I really like the subtle details and find it challenging...

But hey, I'd like to try for more extreme cartoony styles sometime in the summer to flex my animation muscles in a different direction for a change.

Self-CONFLICT Released!

2011-03-28T01:50:00.006+01:00

Hey guys,

My short film is finally done - go check it out and tell me what you think! I will post more THE MAKING OF stuff in future so please bare with me.

AAH! I'm so excited about the release :)

Here's a bunch of people I'd like to thank:

Matt Seligman - my good friend who's pulled through with me on this project with the modelling and texturing side of things. Looks great man, and thanks for working with me on this.

Fernando Zamora - the voice actor legend. Thanks for putting up with all my re-recording requests and under such short notice. Your flexibility and availability is much appreciated.

Tim Bolland, Albin Nilsen, Martin Davies and Ben Klimmek for render advice and post-production tips.

Penny Holton, my project supervisor.

Everyone at the Teesside Animation and Games Society (TAG) at Teesside Uni for watching and giving me weekly feedbacks.

Everyone at Animex Festival who I had the chance to speak to and got constructive feedback from.

And of course all of my friends who have supported me and kept me sane. Ha ha.

Self-CONFLICT Promotional Still

2011-03-21T22:58:00.004Z

Promotional Still for my short film Self-CONFLICT. Coming very soon

FYP Animation done!

2011-03-18T11:38:00.001Z

8 months of hard work and my short film is finally coming to a close. I can't express how excited I am about this. The animation portion is finally declared done. I just need to spend a day or two finalizing the lighting and camera animations and then it's off to render. Post-production is expected to take a week or so.

Will post images and posters nearer to the time of release. Awesome!

FYP Update

2011-02-20T00:56:00.000Z

It's been a while since the last update. My short film is going great! It's been about 6 months since I properly started this project and I've been working on it non-stop, practically full time. The animation is mostly there now, I'm just doing all sorts of tweaks here and there to finesse the details and adding the final touches. I'd say it's about 85% complete by this stage, I want to spend a good 15% of the time to really clean up and polish the hell out of this piece to really push it to the next level. That means about another month of animation tweaking, I know it sounds crazy but I am a true believer of doing the best I can and love nothing more than a wonderful polish.

From what I gather, most students get to around this point of 80% complete and call it finished mostly due to lack of time and possibly even being sick of the animation by this point. No one really spends quality time cleaning and polishing their animations these days!

It's at this animation stage where tweaking to get better animation is also incredibly satisfying and rewarding that really boosts motivation! Yeah, this is me being motivated to keep going! Go go go :)

You can expect a finished render near the end of March and if I'm still not done by that time, you can start sending your hate mails.

A Systematic Approach

2011-02-16T00:10:00.000Z

There are many times during animation where I'd get frustrated and exhausted by the complexity of the scene or character, when the animation just isn't looking right or when there is just too much going on for me to handle. Often when this occurs, and I still continue animating, I'd quickly burn myself out and end up animating blindly and hoping for amazing results. More often than not, it ends up with poor animation, possibly adding keys all over the place, making the organisation a lot worse than before and just plain messy/bad animation. Did I mention you'd also burn out really quickly? So it's a lose-lose situation, things just get worse if you go on like this.

Things start becoming incredibly complex when you start worrying about too many things. For example, I'm trying to do animation tweaks to my character and I have a few many things to watch out for:- 1. Entire body animation and how it affects movement, checking which parts lead and which follow, 2. Needing to add keys for moving holds in between 3. Comparing current animation to video reference 4. Worried about translation and rotation axis on the hips and how it affects the position of the arms. And that is just one shot, as I move on to the next shot, new problems arise and I may be focussing on different things like facial animation and needing to re-pose some key poses that aren't working as well. When all that comes into play, trouble is at hand and my brain goes into panic with all the information it has to manage in real-time. And if you're working on a full scene with many shots continuously like I am, you can see just how complex and varied the tweaks and considerations are going to be like as you go through it.

The solution to this mess is in the workflow I believe. If you approach the scene systematically, or in smaller parts/chunks, it becomes a lot less to worry about, a lot easier to handle and is also a lot more rewarding and motivating when you get that small chunk done. The task no longer feels like infinity miles away when you meet smaller deadlines and go at it step by step - you can see the progress being made and it keeps you SANE and saves your motivation from drowning.

You can approach the animation in a few ways, but the key is doing it ONE STEP AT A TIME. I can either split my scene up into shots and work on them on a shot-by-shot basis and crossing them out one at a time or I can approach it in smaller passes. By passes I mean focussing on one object/idea at a time throughout the whole scene. For example, I can do a hips controller pass whereby I look into the graph editor and clean up all my curves for translation and rotation. Or I can attack my tweaks one problem at a time, if I need to repose some keys, then I should work on those first before attacking the moving holds. Basically work on one idea at a time and tweak them in passes so it's a lot more organised. That way you don't forget what you're animating and you apply the same amount of effort and care into your work and have consistent animation.

Did that make much sense?

The Right Approach

2010-12-12T00:57:00.003Z

In this post, I'd like to talk about how I approach animation and how it's changed over the years. I'll start off with some history of how I got into animation and some of my insights.

My History in Learning Animation

As a kid, I never knew what animation really was. When I saw cartoons on TV, I'd never think much of it as a medium, but more so for the entertainment value that I got out of it - as I would with any other medium such as live action. So back then, I had no clue what animation was or how it was done.

At age 11, I was introduced to Macromedia Flash (Now Adobe) by my brother. We had just seen some Counter Strike Flash animations on a Flash Website called Newgrounds.com. I instantly fell in love with the animation software, Flash as it gave me the freedom to create my own animations - my own visions, my perspective of the world for the rest of the world to enjoy. From then on, I began my first step into learning animation. I would watch lots of Flash animations on the web and as much I could try to decipher the animation techniques used and apply them to my own. Back then there weren't many Flash tutorials or animation resources (not that I was aware of anyway!), so I self-taught myself everything.

I made my first Flash animation ever at age 11 and it took me roughly a month. It was the proudest thing I've ever done. It felt great that after all the hard work, I could show everyone a movie I've made.

A couple years later, I've made successful Counter-Strike Flash animations viewed by millions of people worldwide. They won several awards on newgrounds.com and I started getting fan mails daily. Things were looking good for me. With each new animation, I would constantly look for new ways to improve my skills as a film-maker and an animator.

After finishing high-school, I had to make a career decision. I wasn't sure if I could even make a living from just animating. I ended up doing a Law course at University. After my first year, I realised just how much I loved animation and how much I didn't want to do Law.

My parents weren't sure about my decision to do animation at the time, but in time they became supportive of my decision. As a result, I had to work extra hard to prove to them that animation was really the course for me and I wasn't just going to change my course again. Backed up with my personal love and passion for animation, I made a vow to myself that I will be the best I can be. I will strive to learn as much as I can about animation and I was ready to ask a million questions and constantly bug lecturers about any problems or issues that I may have.

Then first year of University started and I was doing animation! This was where everything was blown out of proportion. A whole new meaning came to the term animation and a whole new world was open to me, with the introduction of the animation principles and 3D softwares. I was blown away by how much I did not know. I spent all year studying and getting used to this new world.

Second year of University started and I was told about work placements and how hard it was to get one. I really wanted a placement as I believe it was the best way to learn animation. I felt University teachings just weren't practical enough to prepare us for industry work. Yet again, I worked very hard throughout my 2nd year. I won the VIS Awards for best Character Animation category in 2009 and secured myself a one year work placement at Ubisoft Reflections.

Statistically, I was the only student in my course to get a placement doing actual animation work. Times were tough...

For my placement year, I did a lot of work with mo-cap and full facial animation. And boom! Everything I thought I knew about animation was yet again blown out of proportion. I was finally beginning to understand movement and how the body really moves.

And now in my final year at University, I feel different. I was still studying animation, but from a completely different perspective. I was no longer animating "blindly", praying that it will all work out in the end. I feel like a lot of the lecture topics are becoming irrelevant if not, repeating things I already knew. I would approach animation in a completely different way to every student in my class. I could see the difference. And eventually I figured it out.

Approaching Animation

It's all down to how we approach animation that makes us better/worse animators.

When I was in my first and 2nd year at University, I was learning animation primarily from The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It was my bible. It wasn't just a handbook for me, it was my reference. And that is exactly where I went wrong.

While I absolutely love and respect all the information in that book, I wanted to clarify where I was going wrong with it. The book is great for traditional 2D animations that strives to get as much life into the characters that we create. While that may be our goal, I must admit it probably was not the best approach in learning and understanding animation.

Why? Because it's like trying to learn how to run before you can walk. Cartoony animation is a style. And stylistic animation is a caricature of real movement. What I'm trying to say is, if we don't even know how our body moves in reality, how can we understand why/what we're doing in stylistic animation?

Studying mo-cap gave me a fresh perspective on this. All the tricks and tips given by Richard Williams in the book were stylised to teach you how to get more life into your characters. However, it also meant he would break some rules to do so. In fact, he even says in his book that the pros break the rules all the time. Here is where it hit me - I didn't even know the rules in the first place. I thought I did, in fact, a lot of people think they do.

If you don't know the rules, then how can you break them?

That is exactly what I mean by animating blindly. When we first start learning about animation, we're told about so many tips and tricks that we're just doing them for the sake of it. We're taught about perspective, composition, staging, line of action, silhouette, breaking of joints, etc but most of the time we're doing it just because the pros say to do it. The question we must ask ourselves is WHY. That to me was the biggest epiphany in my understanding of animation. As soon as I understood why I was doing what I was doing and for good reason, I was able to animate 10x better.

Animation is about understanding. The more you understand what you are animating, the better it will be. All of my problems I had with animation before, such as jerky motions, poor body mechanics and mediocre facial animation was all down to LACK OF UNDERSTANDING. So what have I done differently to fix those problems? I studied mo-cap data. I studied how a human body can physically move. I studied anatomy, I studied the bone structure of a biped character and looked carefully at how the joints are constructed and what kind of movement that allowed. I re-visited the Animators Survival Kit again, and over time, I learnt how every animation principle is applied to the animation of characters. I was beginning to understand why I was applying squash and stetch. Why I was applying overlapping action to certain limbs. Why I was applying arcs and line of action to the poses and animation. Everything just started "clicking" into place. I was no longer animating blindly. I was no longer overdoing exaggeration of poses for the wrong reasons. I was now animating with a purpose. I was now animating with a clear goal/intention in mind and applied the necessary principles AS and WHEN needed.

For facial animation, I read up on Gary Faigin's "Complete guide to facial expressions" and that blew my mind. Understanding how the facial muscles work is crucial to generating believable facial performances. You wouldn't bend your knees to impossible angles if you knew it wasn't physically possible to do that with a human character. Similarly, you wouldn't pull certain muscles in your face if it wasn't either a) physically impossible or b) inappropriate to the emotion you are trying to convey. Yet again, understanding is KEY.

I totally believe that you should not move the controller (of any body part) UNLESS you fully understand WHY you are moving it. If you are moving it for the sake of generating movement and avoiding stiffness, then you're doing it wrong. Same thing with offsetting keys, I remember getting critiques like "just offset your arms/body/head keys until it looks right". Come to think of it now, that is not how you should be doing it at all. Our bodies move in very systematic fashion depending on many factors. Mostly it's driven by emotion. So if a character is angry, he might lead with his shoulders as he turns. You don't just offset keys blindly till it "looks" right. You should've done your research before hand, find out which body parts lead first and which parts follow because every little detail can convey a completely different feel. By offsetting the wrong keys, it could make an angry turn look like a reluctant turn. Small details, but important nonetheless.

I am still learning about this stuff and my approach may change from time to time, but I thought I'd share this. Feel free to start some discussions in the comments.

T-Rex Walk Animation

2010-11-25T22:01:00.005Z

After working on my Final Year Project for so long, I felt I needed a break so I can come back to it with "fresh eyes". And seeing as I may need to have some creature animation for my showreel if I'm going to make it as a Character Animator in the visual effects industry, I thought I might as well start practising.

And so I went on creativecrash.com to find a nice rig for any creature and I really liked this rig by Joel Anderson and decided to give it a go. It's a great t-rex rig with great stretchy IK controls that allows for flexible bones.

My usual workflow is to do a lot of planning and referencing before I even begin animating. But since I'm on my "break", I thought I'd just give it a full blast of what I've got. So this is the result of just animating with the animation principles in mind, and hardly any consideration to how a 2 legged dinosaur would move. Animation took about 3-4 hours.

Click here to view in HD

I was quite pleased with the result and found a few handy principles reinforced.

Balance - When one body part goes one way, other body parts will move the other way to counter-act and keep the entire body balanced.

Sine Wave - Reinforcing the balance principle, what I found gave me a happy surprise. By the time the body parts are animated from head to tail, I've found that the entire motion if seen from the top view is a nice sine wave. Just like a snake!

Weight - Heavy creatures spend more time on the ground than in the air. To enhance the sense of weight, I've deliberately slammed his feet to the ground on the contact position in just 1 frame. If you look carefully, you will also notice that the feet are displaced slightly in both translation and rotation to emphasize the weight distribution.

Overlapping Action - Most applicable to the tail swaying. I realize the tail animation could be polished a lot more.

Analysis

A good animator understands all the animation principles and applies them to everything they animate, be it human characters, cartoons, creatures or even text animations. Sure, but how do you get from good to great?

I strongly believe the difference here would be the level of understanding of the creature/rig that is being animated. I think this t-rex animation is good. But for it to be great, it has to have that level of realism. And the only way to achieve that is to have good reference and understanding of the t-rex anatomy and locomotion.

I first need to study how the bone structures in the t-rex works (different skeletal structures allow for different types of movements) and then find the closest reference I can for it. Although its impossible to find a real t-rex to reference nowadays, I can always look at the closest animals their body structures resemble and go from there.

Once I fully understand how that works to my fullest advantage, and combined with the application of the animation principles, I will no longer be animating as "blindly" as I was when I was just moving bones around without a full understanding of the range-of-motion of a creature like the t-rex.

From there on, I can then start applying an emotional/objective based animation to my t-rex and go from a standard t-rex to a say, "hungry t-rex" or "aggressive t-rex". Nonetheless, basics must come first. It's useless if I try to animate an angry t-rex before I even understand how a t-rex can truly move.

I'll be revisiting this t-rex in the future to create a more polished and showreel deserving slot.

FYP Work in Progress

2010-11-22T22:48:00.000Z

Here's a work-in-progress render of my Final Year Project animation so far. I'm currently at the blocking stage and if I keep to my schedule, the short film will be done by February 2011!

A little update

2010-10-21T23:13:00.000+01:00

University has started and I've changed from BA Computer Animation to BA Digital Character Animation. The work experience at Ubisoft Reflections was fantastic and I've learnt more than I could've imagined and am forever grateful to the good folks there for taking me under their wing.

So I've been busy working on my Final Year Project which is a 1 minute short film focussing on quality character animation. The project currently stands at about 30% complete, all pre-production are more or less ready and I just need the final audio before I can move on to the fun bit - ANIMATION! The reason for the lack of updates with pictures, renders or playblasts is because I'm contemplating submitting this piece to Animation Festivals. And correct me if I'm wrong, any published materials of my piece can't be available online until after the festivals have ended.

To be on the safe side, I'm only showing my work in progress to my peers in "offline" mode, so to speak. My personal deadline for this piece is Feb 1st 2011, just in time for Animex!

Motivational speak for the day:
Mark Walsh (of Pixar) once told me to never look back and that your new animations will always be better than going back to fix your previous. Can't agree more :)

FYP - Animation test 1

2010-08-24T09:12:00.003+01:00

An animation test for my Final Year Project. The character is modified from a Norman Rig and is by no means final and subject to change. Animation took about 3 hours.

This exercise is mainly to get used to animating in Maya and with the Norman rig.

Click here to view in HD

Walt Disney Animation Notes

2010-07-02T14:14:00.002+01:00

Some really insightful notes by Walt Disney for training an animator. It's amazing that Walt himself is so passionate about animation being the entrepreneur that he is. It is no wonder Disney animation excelled so much :).

Source: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/how-to-train-animator-by-walt-disney.html

DRIVER SAN FRANCISCO at E3

2010-06-19T14:54:00.001+01:00

DRIVER SAN FRANCISCO is the game we've been working on at Ubisoft Reflections and it's finally announced at E3. So here are some videos about it!

Teaser Trailer

The CG Trailer

E3 Conference

Timing and Spacing in Animation

2010-05-06T22:35:00.002+01:00

GIVE MEANING TO MOVEMENT: TIMING & SPACING IN ANIMATION EXPLAINED! WEBINAR

Really great stuff taught by Pixar animators! Adding texture to timing is definitely something I can add/consider in my future works. Really great info, thanks to Aaron Hartline and Victor Navone!

Notes on Change

2010-05-03T01:25:00.002+01:00

What makes a story interesting? No one goes to watch a romantic movie to see two lovebirds love each other so much for 1.5 hours. No one goes to watch an action film where battle goes on the whole time. Well, maybe some do but it certainly won't hold our attention for long.

The fact is we are want to see CHANGE whether we know it or not. We want to see the two lovebirds break up over some crazy ordeal and hook up with others while secretly wanting to get back together BECAUSE it makes it 10 times more satisfying when they finally do get back together. We want to see how our hero loses the biggest battle of his life only to realise he has to get stronger to win. We want to see the glorious montage of him training hard and finally achieving his goal in the end. We all like to think that if we work hard at it, we will achieve our goals and succeed. :)

I'd just like to share my thoughts on how CHANGE is important in story and in animation. I just watched Gran Torino (2008), and it was all about change. It appears that the bigger the change, the larger the impact it has on the audience. In the film, we see how a grumpy old man change to a selfless and caring person. We see the transformation of a young boy change to a real man. These changes in character development throughout the film really speaks out to me as an audience. We feel for these characters and we root for these changes, we want them to succeed the more we empathise with them.

The next time you watch a movie or read a story, look for these changes, not just in characters, but in the pacing of the film too. If there are fast paced action sequences going on all the time, the feeling of speed or in fact "awesomeness" will be lost. What you will notice is that in a lot of films, the build-up to the big action scenes are in fact what makes it all the more satisfying when the moment finally comes.

Good films usually draw you into the main characters so much that you love what they do and who they are. So much in fact that you don't want anything bad to happen to them. But we all know something bad IS going to happen to them. The more we love them, the more reason there is to change that. Why do you think lots of films have your beloved characters killed?

Now how does this apply to animation? I believe the same contrast or change can be applied to animation. If we contrast the poses we use from time to time, say for example a character that hardly uses his arms to gesture to suddenly do a wild action, we would create a much larger interest when he finally does do it.

The same can be applied with timing and spacing. If a character moves about at a constant speed and does everything at the same speed, we would soon lose interest and get bored. A snappy cartoony character who bounces and zips around all the time and who does it too often - would soon lose its appeal as it becomes too common.

Contrast is also a form of change. Let's say we have our 2 main characters and they both look more or less the same and behave in the same manner. They may have an exciting dialogue and setup but chances are, when the audience refers to any of the characters, it won't be very distinct or have left a big impression. In comparison, if you contrasted both characters well enough, say the blue character is big, fat and not very bright and the red character being smart, well dressed and tall; you'd be doing yourself and the audience a giant favour. It would be a lot easier to identify with either character, not just in their design but also in their personality. Probably the last thing you want is for both characters to appear generic and be referred to as a unit (together). Unless of course that is your objective, like a bunch of security guards in the background, etc.

Go go go!

2010-05-01T22:58:00.002+01:00

A really bad drawing of me motivating myself!

It's time to push forward! I need to come up with a good short story for my final year project next year at University and they don't come easy! I plan it to focus solely on good storytelling and animation, with the best quality in mind. That means the story has to be short and as concise as can be, ideally less than a minute long.

Pre-production is important to me and I want to make sure I spend the time well. Also, I think I'll be working with Maya for this project instead of XSI. Mainly because there are a ton more resources and free rigs out there for Maya than there are for XSI. I currently have my eye on the Norman rig, as it is the most customizable and adaptive rig I've found.

I will have some difficulty transferring from the XSI software to Maya, but I'm sure with time I'll get used to the interface and learn to use the tools.

Blog Update

2010-04-29T19:07:00.002+01:00

Blogspot has decided to terminate FTP hosting from May 1st onwards. One solution they provided was to switch hosts to their Google hosting in order to keep my blog on my personal domain. I already have great hosting though with over 150gb bandwidth and all the webspace I'll need, so no I won't change hosts just to keep my domain! Luckily all my animation files and videos have always been hosted on my server so those links should remain intact :).

What this means:
This blog is no longer hosted on my server, but by blogspot.com. Therefore it's previous web address of http://wxyong.com/blog no longer exists and is now http://wxyong.blogspot.com. So please update your links to the new address. I'm tempted to move to another blog host that has a better system, but it seems a bit of a hassle at the moment, but any recommendations would be nice.

Walk Rendered

2010-04-22T23:23:00.002+01:00

Click here to view in HD

Here's the walk rendered! Might use this clip for my showreel when I have enough content to update it :).

Optimus walk cycle 2!

2010-04-20T22:26:00.004+01:00

Looking back at the previous 2 animations I've done with the Optimus rig made me realise how bad the animations were, haha. I really needed to do it more justice, so here's a new and improved walkcycle. Spent about 3 days on this (with the well needed polish time that the other animations didn't get).

Click here to view in HD

The main focus of this was to work out the body mechanics of a walk, especially on the hips as I feel it can make or break a walk with all the weight shifting going on. The secondary objective was to give it character, to make it unique and stand out as not just another robot. Thus the attempt to give him a slight limp/asymmetry in his movement.

One of the largest limitation of this rig that I have found is that his knees are so high up his leg that it makes it incredibly difficult to just lift his foot. I did what I could...

How to train your dragon

2010-04-15T21:04:00.002+01:00

I just watched How to train your dragon in IMAX 3D with the animators from work and have to say I am very impressed. This movie is by far Dreamwork's best, not only are the character animation beautifully stunning but the story that holds it all together works for the most part fluidly. As with any story, there are a lot of areas where it can get too cliche and predictable, but I'm happy to say that this isn't the case here. I suspect the story guys at DW must have worked and re-worked this to get it this good.

Character animation was one of the best, if not the best I've seen. The best characters were Hiccup and his father; they felt so believable consistently throughout the movie. The acting and performance was incredible to say the least. Really excellent work.

Special effects were really great too as is the music. Overall, everything holds together very well in this solid piece of animation that is both moving and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Rating: 9.8/10

Review: Transform animation

2010-04-07T20:52:00.000+01:00

It usually takes a few days or sometimes even weeks until you can view your own animations with a pair of "fresh eyes". What I'd like to do from now on is to review my animations and write notes on it.

Ok! So let's review my most recent transform animation.

-Transform sequence needs to be faster.
-More than one body part can be animated at any one time to create a better sense of gizmo movement.
-An overall body thrust/movement can help drive the motion of the entire animation (such as a jump). It comes down to the same principle that everything starts from the hips.
-Moving holds could be better with some polish time.
-Jump motion feels a little floaty, need to watch the spacing more carefully.
-Relaxed arm could use a little more polish.

If there is anything else I've missed out, please feel free to comment!

Optimus Transform animation!

2010-04-02T23:44:00.003+01:00

This one took me more or less 2 days and was great fun to do! It's one of those "impulse" animations where I just go with the flow and animate straight ahead. Part of the reason would be because I don't even know how to set a KEY-ALL button on the character set in Maya to even attempt the pose-to-pose method.

Click here to view in HD

Optimus walk cycle!

2010-03-31T00:40:00.000+01:00

I realise I havn't been updating for a long time. So here's a little animation. Just installed Maya a few hours ago, and found this really awesome Optimus mini rig and could not resist just animating it asap. I've never even used Maya before so it took a bit of trial and error to learn how to keyframe, but here's a little walkcycle for an hour and a halfs work.

There are a ton of other polishes I could do, like fingers, more subtle rotations in body parts, etc and not to mention this is only just a vanilla walk and none that really shows character. But heck, it was fun, and was a great exercise to get me into Maya!

Animex Week

2010-02-14T17:58:00.005Z

Last week I attended the Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games (8-12 feb). What an awesome week that was! It had one of the greatest lineup of speakers this year: James Baxter (Dreamworks), Andrew Schmidt (Pixar), Michael Defeo (Blue Sky) and Ed Hooks, to only name a few!

The speakers talked about their latest projects and provided great insight into the industry. Perhaps the best of it all was the networking event. All the pros stacked into one room, where they are open for discussions, answering questions and providing feedback. What more can you ask for? I made the most out of it, spoke to most of the speakers, and got feedback on my animations. The kind of immediate feedback from the pros is a rare opportunity indeed and I have learned so much from them and now have a good insight of how I can progress forwards and push my animations to the next level.

Listed below are my key points of improvement in my future projects:

1. Staging
-Camera placement is important to how well a sillhoute reads
-Keep head/facial within the frame of your shots

2. Less is more
-Find more natural poses
-Avoid over exaggerated poses that aren't motivated.
-Subtlety is key

3. Style
- Explore a more definite style of animation
- Is it cartoony or realistic?

4. Shoulders / Body structure
- Shoulders can be very expressive.
- Explore how the human body is constructed to find how it can move.

Other areas I am keen on exploring:

5. Study body anatomy and rigging
- Should improve my understanding of how each body part can move in relation to each other.

6. Study physics
- A scientific approach to understanding force and how things move in real life

7. More basic animation training
- For a more solid foundation in the mechanics of movement
- After all, the most complex animations is a combination of solid understanding of the basics.

So there you go, a lot to learn with so little time!

Production process of "Good day" animation

2010-01-17T18:48:00.003Z

For anyone who is interested, here is the production process/workflow of my recent animation, Good day. It is a compilation of my day-to-day progress in the making of this animation, from day 1 - 31. As you can see, it has gone through a lot of changes - from ideas to poses to timing. A lot of timing...

Click here to watch / download [27.8 mb]

11 Second Club Entry

2009-12-31T02:46:00.005Z

Let me begin by saying:

Animation is friggin' hard!

Ok, now that's out the way... I've been working my ass off for the whole December month on this animation for the 11 second club competition. This month has been quite a roller coaster ride. Some days I would be super motivated and love my animation and the progression. Other days, I would feel incredibly bummed out as I watch this animation for the millionth time and nothing seems to work.

Here's the animation:

Watch in 720p HD!

Read on below for more interesting stuff:

Towards the end of the month, my computer even started to fail on me. It would crash at Windows and it would take me 10 tries for it to successfully reboot again. I was really panicking then, and everyone had gone home for xmas and no one was around to help. After several text messages and investigation, I found the problem. Apparently, it had been my power supply and I got that fixed asap, but in the course of action, I accidentally disconnected my new harddisk drive. Luckily, my XSI scene files are on my main hdd and I could continue animating. I have however lost all my movies, music and games, and my main animation folder where I store all my video references and clips. Basically I lost all my entertainment gear - which in a way made me slightly more productive. As for video references, I just whooped out my camera and filmed more, so no problems there.

Oh yes, and another problem I had was with RSI. Using the mouse for such a long period of time, with the added scrubbing back and forth has really hurt my fingers. I had to use my left hand for a day or two until it healed. Then I realized I had a spare Wacom lying around and used that instead, and it did wonders! It took me a while to get used to, but it's pretty neat for scrubbing.

I'm not sure if any other animator out there has done this before, but I've thought of this brilliant plan where I would save a playblast of my animation every single day till I finish and then compile it together into a "Making Of". Firstly, it's very cool to watch progression, I know I do! Secondly, it helps me visualise and structure my animation performance better; I can now go back and analyse which areas I could improve on or how quickly I could complete certain tasks. This will allow me to plan out my future workflow better! Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, most of my playblast videos are stored on my other hdd, and it will be a while before I can get that working again. I'll post my compilation video up when it's ready so stay tuned!

So yeah, I'm so glad this is finally done. Wish me luck for the competition and I hope you like it!

Tom and Jerry

2009-12-08T23:30:00.001Z

I've been watching quite a lot of these CLASSICS lately. Tom and Jerry!

My oh my, you don't see much of these classical 2D stuff much anymore. It's all pushing towards realism nowadays... So why do 2D animations seem to ooze with life and appeal way more than 3D animations? I believe it's because of the flexibility in the drawings that the classical animators have learned to exaggerate and break the principles. It's simply amazing watching Tom and Jerry, the amount of squash and stretch is used just on about everything! Whenever the characters contact with another object, the animators would squeeze as much life as they could into the interacted object. I've not seen a hat or a doll stretch as much as that in 3D before!

Oh and the timing on these cartoons are spot on too, I love how they over-exaggerate everything and delay their response times. It never seems to get old. Exaggeration is used to the extreme in Tom and Jerry. The result is that the staging and clarity is CRYSTAL CLEAR. There is much to learn from these classics :).

Spline Doctors

2009-11-23T21:05:00.000Z

I have always wondered what it was like to be at Pixar Animation Studios. So when I first discovered splinedoctors, and tuned in to listen to the podcasts, I was dumbfounded about as much as when I first discovered the Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. My insides screamed, "TREASURE!!!" and I'm sure I'm not the only one grateful for all the interviews and podcasts on there with the team at Pixar.

Each of the interviews are a lecture in itself with priceless information, priceless I tell ya! And I am continually blown away with all the discussions and I've only just gone through a few of the early podcasts. One of the greatest things about it is how informal all the interviews are and how you can FEEL the passion and sincerity of the answers.

The resources for animation is vast on the internet, simply incredible.

Ed Hooks!

2009-11-23T20:43:00.001Z

I've ordered a copy of "Acting for animators" by Ed Hooks today.

I've actually read the book about 2 years ago and even met Ed twice during his workshops at Animex, in the last 2 years. He's a really great guy - I remember seeing him in one of his talks and I thought to myself, "He looks like the happiest man alive".

I've recently finished studying "The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression" by Gary Faigin. Now I say "study" instead of read because I found that by reading something, you skim through the facts and remember the points that stick out the most; while all the filler materials may be skipped. On the other hand, when you study something, you focus. You turn off the music in the background and stop all your activities and just sit down and prepare your brain to absorb information. I believe it makes a lot of difference.

I say this because I'll admit to only have read through Acting for Animators 2 years back and haven't properly absorbed the information as much as I allowed myself to. This time I'll work my way through the book and do it justice!

Layout fixed! (Hopefully)

2009-11-22T23:46:00.000Z

Thanks to my good friend Matt, I was finally able to fix the header layout. It turns out I do need help in the end!

Anyways, I've got more posts coming up and will be posting them soon.

Layout needs tweaking

2009-11-21T13:39:00.000Z

I've been told by a coder friend that there are some javascript issues screwing up the entire page and that the layout is broken in IE8. It seems that the original blog template I started with was a little messy.

I've also been trying to get the header buttons/images to work, as you can see there is some overlapping going on. I'll look more into fixing this soon!

Blog layout and website

2009-11-17T23:24:00.000Z

It's taken me a while to customise my blog from blogspot.com to this site. I'm no expert at html or coding; but I feel pretty good for being able to customise it this much on my own. I even designed and built this site from scratch, which was actually my first time without assistance!

Yup... so that's me done with being impressed with myself. Haha.

Let me know if there are any problems or requests for the site, thanks!

Weight shift test

2009-11-17T23:11:00.000Z

Another recent animation test. This time I'm focusing on the hips and feet in the action of weight shifting. I'm also exploring the cushioning of my key frames to get smooth motions.

Eye test animation

2009-11-17T22:59:00.004Z

Here is an eye test animation I did a few days ago. What started off as a cartoony "surprised" take eventually molded itself into this.

This took about an hour and a bit.

First Post!

2009-11-17T22:56:00.000Z

Hello there!

My new portfolio site is finally up and running! For the record, this website came online last week; but I’ve only just managed to get the blog up today.

I intend to use this blog as a means of posting up my test animations, and works in progress and also to blabber about my animation findings and what not. Hopefully someone would find them interesting!