Week: 22 – 28 November

As the camera tracking phase finished last week, I began animating the characters. I planned to spend 2 weeks for the animation, which is to complete all the basic character movements (walk, run, jump and turning direction) in the first week and integrate the characters into the tracked footages during the second week.

Six-legged with Insect Anatomy

In my current state with the thesis, I already found and understand the basic movement patterns of six-legged insect. There are 2 popular patterns used by most insects which are ‘tripod gait’ that always has 3 feet on the ground during the normal walking, and ‘bipod gait’ for higher movement speed especially running, which always has 2 feet on the ground for every cycle. This tripod and bipod gaits are also applied when the insect turning their body to another direction.

So with this knowledge, I animated the crab character first.

Crab walk cycle

Crab run cycle

Crab turning body animation

Crab jumping

Six-legged with Horse Anatomy

In my thesis, unlike the crab, I still haven’t really have a solid finding for the movement patterns of six-legged creature with horse anatomy. But I think it’s okay to proceed with the animation at this point because it can also help my finding for my thesis as I’m further experimenting during the animation process.

For the animation, I used several references from the real quadruped horse since the animation behaviour and patterns would be very similar. I also found and used the short clip of Avatar’s ‘behind the scene’ that features some snippets of the creation and animation of the six-legged Direhorse from the film.

Horse walk cycle

Horse run cycle

Week: 15 – 21 November

As early as this week, I started working on the camera tracking phase for the selected footages that has been confirmed last week. I have made the final cut for each shot and exported them for the next process in Blender, so I will only need to solve the camera movement for the exact duration and frames only. I planned to have all the footages to be tracked by the end this week so I can focus on the animation and post-production during the remaining 3 weeks before the dateline.

The camera tracking went smoothly as I already learned and experimented the process quite heavily during my personal project and indie film project in term 3.

Term 3 Indie Film Project (Camera Tracking):
https://kamil.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/06/06/indie-film-camera-tracking/

Term 3 Personal Project (Camera Tracking) :
https://kamil.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/05/02/personal-project-rough-designs-practices/
https://kamil.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/06/06/personal-project-camera-tracking/

I chose to begin with the last shot (shot 10) first as I considered this as a benchmark shot for my animation. It has a long camera panning with multiple objects movement when compared to the other shots. I want to get this shot finish first, so in a worst case scenario if I suddenly don’t have enough time to complete all shots, I will go all out with for this shot only with all animation in it. But of course this is just the thinking only as I want to have all the shots in my final animation.

About couple of hours later, I managed to get the satisfactory result for shot 10. The process was quite smooth and I’m very happy with the track.

I then proceed to track the other shots. The processes are almost similar to the shot 10 and below are the results.

Week: 8 – 14 November

I went to the university this week to record all the footages that I’ve planned in the storyboard last week. I actually don’t have any proper shooting equipment to get high quality visual. I only used the same iPhone 6s for most of the shots like I did for my previous personal project in Term 3. This time I also use the old Galaxy Camera for several closeup shots since this camera can do optical zoom up to 21x. I recorded multiple version of footages for each shot as backup.

The exterior scene especially last shot is probably the hardest to shoot since I can’t control the crowds. I have to get the perfect timing and position of the crossing pedestrians and vehicles on the road that happened spontaneously. I need a shot with not too many people, with good placement, direction and empty spaces among crowds for me to place 3 or 4 characters walking together with them. I also don’t want any moving vehicle that obstruct the view and attention for the crab character that will wave his hand to the camera towards the end of the shot. The shot will be panning slowly from left to right, so I need to capture the moment during the shot duration of traffic stop at the crossing. After multiple attempts, I finally got 2 to 3 shots that I think usable for the last scene.

The interior scene on the other were fairly easy to shoot because there are always time where not many people walking around in the building. The major problem with interior scenes is the lighting. There are many areas in the building that have a relatively dim lights so it caused a lot of noise on the footages as the camera try to increase the ISO to brighten the shots. The worse shot is the stair scene since the area was very dark. So I will remove the shot from the final video.

There are also shots that I changed from the original plan especially the classroom and library scenes as I can’t find suitable areas and angle for the shots. Most rooms were a bit crowded and equipped with students when I was there, plus the empty classes I found does not have a very good lighting either. So I ended up with hallway shots only.

When I got home, I quickly transfered all the recording into my computer to check on a larger screen if the footages are usable for my project. Upon checking I found the footages are not as good as I hope, but I think I can still use it, so I don’t plan for re-shoot. 

I then made the footage selection and cut using Final Cut Pro. There will be 10 shots with 9 of them will require CGI treatments (camera tracking and animation). I exported each individual shot that has been confirmed for camera tracking phase which will begin next week.

Week: 1 – 7 November

After several changes to the story idea, I finally decided to make a short animation with commercial style for my FMP. I’m interested with the idea of University’s ‘Enrol Now!’ ad for new student intake. I was thinking to do a parody commercial where UAL opens new courses to six-legged creatures instead of human. The final animation would feature several six-legged creatures as students moving around in UAL’s building and areas, so the animation would still have my original FMP idea to have 3d character animation on a real footage that demonstrates six-legged movement patterns.

I look around the internet to find some university commercial as references. I found that there are variety of styles; some are short or too long, some are using real videos, motion graphic, music only or using voice to promote their university. I think it would be interesting to use voice as well in my animation with parody funny sentences, but at this moment, I’ll go with music only and probably add the voice later if I think it’s suitable. Below are only some of the many university ads that I found interesting.

In my own version of commercial / animation, I planned to have different versions of six-legged creatures doing the walking, running, jumping and turning body animation in different areas around the UAL building such as in class, library and hallway. I was thinking to have a great ending shot with a full front view of the university building from across the street, where multiple characters crossing the road towards the university before the UAL logo appears at the end of the commercial / animation.