Started polishing the body this week. I’ll be out on vacation all of next week, but when I get back I’ll post more as I go along. I’ve made changes for the pose where he pauses and tried to bring out his silhouette more as per your generous suggestions.
I’m finding that splining is pretty time consuming; it’s teaching me a great deal about patience. One of my fears is that I’ll lose the poses and timing as I smooth everything out. Please let me know if I do…or if you see anything that sticks out to you. Thanks!
Now that I have more time to do personal stuff, I wanted to start by doing a one character dialogue test. What I wanted to get out of this is learning a new workflow, try out some new techniques, and of course, keep on improving. 😉 I tend to burden myself with other parts of the creation process (modeling, rigging, etc.) and while it’s good to have knowledge of rigging, I should really focus on animating.
I started out by looking for some interesting dialogue from The Daily .Wav. I found a clip from “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which I admit I’ve never seen in its entirety (my boyfriend totally chewed me out about this.) I really love the volatile tone of voice in the clip and thought it’d be fun to try something with such intensity. Afterwards, I shot some reference and did some planning:
I tried to mimic the blocked/stepped approach to animating in 3D where you set a key on every controller on every keyframe you make. To facilitate this in 3dsMax, I changed the option of “Default In/Out Tangents for New Keys” to stepped. You can find it right below the timeline on the main UI. I also used the “Key Mode Toggle” (which is that pair of arrows next to the right of “Key Filters”) when I needed to jump from pose to pose with my arrow keys.
Working in this fashion so far, I have to say it’s a lot nicer than the PC distracting you with its ‘tweening. It also made me more conscious of posing, which is one of the major things I want to work on within animation. To keep myself in check, I followed Victor Navone’s advice and made sure there was a key at least every 4 frames. Another source of inspiration was looking at Brandon Beckstead’s tightly blocked work.
I’m still a beginner at this, so if you have any crits on the poses or timing, lemme know! I’m focusing more on the body right now; though if you have any suggestions for the eyes, that’d be great to hear too. I’m really enjoying this workflow, and hopefully with more practice it’ll come more naturally. 🙂
Two Worlds: One of five United Airlines commercials
While the Olympics are an exciting and inspirational thing to watch, I am absolutely pleased with the commercials’ offerings in-between. Last night, I caught one of the five United Airlines commercials airing during the Olympics. From paper cut-out and CG, to salt on glass, the art direction for each commercial is imaginative, refreshing, and simply gorgeous. These commercials were produced by BDM, an ad agency based in Minneapolis. Each of these commercials features Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, United’s personal theme.
I was able to find Youtube versions of each, but you should definitely check out the hi-res versions either on their website or via the links provided.
“Sea Orchestra†(60 seconds) – “Sea Orchestra†is a lively and visually rich commercial that introduces United’s new international first and business class cabins. In it, a United airplane crosses the ocean and is serenaded by an orchestra of animated sea creatures that are playing a unique version of Rhapsody in Blue using tubas, violins, French horns and the Indonesian gamelan. The score was created by Shy the Sun, a South Africa-based directing team, which used hand-drawn textures, computer animation characters and photographs of water, reefs and skies.
“Two Worlds” (60 seconds) – “Two Worlds†is a celebration of color and beautiful images that portrays United’s effect on international travelers. In it, a weary business traveler leaves a mundane, monotonous black and white world and enters a fantasy of color, representing United’s new international first and business class service. When he lands, he is once again in a black and white world, but has brought a bit of the magic of the new United experience with him. The commercial combines two different and distinctive animation styles created by directors SSSR, a Norwegian and Japanese team, who was responsible for the monochromatic world that was mostly computer-generated with a hand-crafted feel, and Gaelle Denis, a French director, who was responsible for the colorful fantasy world that uses using live action, computer generation and matte paintings, including textures such as Japanese rice paper.
“Heart†(60-seconds) – “Heart,†United’s new brand ad, portrays the connection between a husband and wife and United’s role in reuniting them. The commercial depicts a woman leaving her husband to fly to Europe for a business presentation. As she says goodbye, she leaves her heart behind as a symbol of her love. The musical score for “Heart†is a piano duet of Rhapsody in Blue performed by Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang, who recently performed Rhapsody in Blue together at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Using stop-motion animation and paper puppetry, California-based director Jamie Caliri and his team, place dimensional cardboard puppets in miniature sets that were shot frame by frame.
“Butterfly” (30 seconds) – “Butterfly†is a fluid, animated commercial with an artistic interpretation of flying in United’s new international first and business class cabins. The spot focuses on United’s 180-degree flat-bed business class seats and comes to life against a violin version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. In this spot, the Polish director Aleksandra Korejwo manipulated colored salt using shed condor bird feathers on a black canvas positioned under a downward-facing camera.
“Moondust” (60 seconds and 30 second) – “Moondust†is a luminous, dreamlike commercial with an artistic interpretation of flying in United’s new international first and business class cabins. The spot focuses on United’s 180-degree, flat-bed business class seats and is animated to a spare, intimate interpretation of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Ishu Patel, an Indian-born and Canadian-based animator, used his world-renowned back-lit technique in which a thin layer of plastic modeling clay is applied to a glass plate that has a 1000-watt light positioned beneath it and an animation camera above it.
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