Rendering

I have been working on offsetting some of the movements of both characters so that things don't move at the same time. For example, in a turn, the hip would move, then the chest, then the neck and head. I think this makes the movement of the characters look more natural. Below is the animation after offsetting the head and chest of both characters in places:




I think this does look a lot smoother than the previous version that I posted. The offsetting has had the biggest impact on the doctor. It has allowed the head to keep moving after the chest has already stopped. This creates follow through which gives the illusion of weight to a movement which in turn makes the animation look more natural.

Now that I am happy with the movement of the characters, the next stage is to add the materials to the scene. Similar to the other scenes, the set is very simple so that it does not get noticed over the animation. Below is the final movie with all of the materials and lighting done:




As I said before, I have kept the materials very simple so that the audience don't concentrate on anything other than the animation. I have used a different colour for each character so that there is a difference between the two. I have used a neutral colour for the patient and quite a bold colour for the doctor, this is just to emphasise that the doctor is the dominant character in the scene.

The lighting is also very simple. I have used one main light above the characters to cast the shadows and two other point lights to make sure that the dark areas on the characters are not too dark.

I have also fixed the head drift for the patient character at the beginning and half way through the scene. I think this has really tightened up the animation of the patient as his movements look realistic all the way through now.

I am really happy with the outcome of this piece. I think the animation of both characters is of a pretty good standard and it is clear to the audience what each of the characters is feeling all the way through the piece.

However, one area that I would have worked on a lot more if I had a biit more time is the hands of both of the characters hands. Theye are in pretty much the same poses all the way through the animation. It works ok because the doctor is holding objects and the patient is resting on the bed but I think some more variety in hand positions would have taken the level of the animation up a gear.

Expression

The next stage of the process is to add in the characters eyelid and eyebrow movements. As I said before, this is very important in giving a soul to a character. It also lets the audience know what the character is feeling in a particular situation or moment. If the expression is correct, the audience will be able to realate to the way the character is feeling.

The movie below shows the brow and lid movements added in to the piece:




I am really happy with how this has turned out at this point. You get a much better idea of what the reactions of both characters are to eachother and the situation. We already had a good idea before with the characters body language but, in my opinion, there is nothing more effective in portraying emotions than the eyes of the character.

There are a few areas that may need to be exaggerated a bit more to add a little more emotion. I think the patient at the end of the scene, when he says "NO!" to the doctor, could look more aggressive. I will have a look and see if it looks any better because I think that the character would be in more of a state of shock rather than anything else.

Lip Sync

I have been working on the lip sync for both characters and the movie below shows the result of that work:




As you can see, both characters have a bit more life now that they are actually talking. I am pretty happy with the way that the mouth movements look. However, I may make changes to add more expression after I add the expression in the eyes. The characters expression is one of the most important parts of giving the character a soul. It shows the audience that it is not just a puppet, but a real thinking, breathing person (even if they do look a bit odd at times).

I have also added the movement of the eyes at this stage. This is very important because there need to be eye contact between the 2 characters to show that they are interacting with eachother. I also thought that it would be very useful to do it before I animated the eyelids and eyebrows because you can see where the eyes are changing direction and therefore you can judge where blinks need to go.

Changes

Before starting the facial animation, I spent some time making the changes that I talked about in the previous post. The movie below shows these changes:




I think that this reworked start to the animation works very well. On the down side, there are still a lot of drifty movements during the animation, particularly with te patient character. There are also a few parts where the doctor and the patient are stood absolutely still. This is ok if there characters were robots but people never stay still even if they are standing or sitting in the same position. Their chest may be moving from breathing for example.

The movie below shows some of these issues being dealt with:




At this stage, I have tidied up a lot of the animation in terms of the parts where they are stood still and where they are drifting. The main change is that the patient now reacts to the doctor at the end. When he shouts, the patient moves back away from him. I think that this is working much better now but, as the movie below shows, I have polished the animation a bit more before starting the facial animation:




Again, there is not a significant change but there is much more weight in the movement of the doctor now. This is due to adding frames in that make the body follow though when he takes a step or bounces on his toes. I have also added in frames before the more exaggerated movements so that there is some anticipation.

I will keep tweaking the movement of both characters but the next part of the process is to put in the lip sync for the characters.

Blocking

At this stage I started to block out the main poses of the characters using reference from the drawings that I had done and also the footage that we got from the sound recordings. The movie below shows the first stage of blocking:




As you can see, at this stage, I have only blocked out the movement of the doctor. With this piece, I have still blocked out the key positions but I have gone straight in to using curves to see if I can get a better idea of how things are flowing. Already I can see that there are certain movements that are not working like the part where he shouts at the end needs more poses because he just stands still for most of it.

The next stage was blocking out the movement of the patient so that I would have a completely blocked out scene.



As you can see, all of the patients moves have been blocked out. However, I think that a couple of the gestures are not clear at this point. At the beginning of the scene, the patient is supposed to be just waking up so I thought that I would have him rubbing his face to show that he is tired. I showed it to various people and everyone said that he looked depressed and this is not what I want as he does not know that his leg is gone yet.

One suggestion that I had was that he should be asleep at the start and the doctor wakes him up. This fits really well with my scene as it says a lot about the doctors character because he isn't paying enough attention to the patient to realise that he is asleep or he just doesn't care. It also makes the fact that the patient hasn't noticed that his leg is missing more plausible. As I have said before, the audience can't relate to a situation if it is not plausible.

I have also added a few extra frames for the doctor at the end of the scene to exaggerate the shouting. I think that there is some evidence of force in his shouting now but it's possibly a bit too over the top.

Breaking down the scene

The next stage is to figure out what the characters are thinking in particular points in the scene. I will first breakdown the patients thoughts and actions in the scene:

• He starts off just waking up as the doctor comes in. For this part he will be feeling tired, he won't know how his procedure has gone and as a result will be fairly relaxed and laid back. Below is an image that portrays the characters mood at this stage:

• Then, when the doctor tells him that his leg has been removed he quickly becomes more alert and looks at his leg to see if it is true or just a mistake.

• When he sees that it is true he focuses his attention on the doctor and tries to tell him that it's a mistake but can't get the words out. He can't believe that this has happened.
  

• When the doctor asks if he is Mr Smith, he leans forward in a slightly aggressive mannor and says "NO!". He is still in shock but is starting to become a bit angry as well and obviously aiming that anger towards the doctor.

Now I will breakdown the thoughts and actions of the doctor in the scene:

• First the doctor is upbeat, putting on his jolly attitude. However he doesn't pay much attention to the patient as he is looking at the chart to tell the patient what has been done. This says a lot for his character as he needs the chart to know who the patient is and what is wrong.

• When the patient says "what?" he doesn't notice that he is puzzled, instead he reinforces that the leg is gone and won't be a bother anymore. He seems very pleased to tell him that it was successfully removed.

• When the patient starts to panic, he finally notices that something is not right and he asks to make sure that he is the right patient. At this moment he is hopeful that this is the right patient and there hasn't been another mistake. He is listening intently for the patients answer.

• When the patient snaps at him he briefly moves back away from the patient. This is because the patient has invaded his personal space very quickly and quite aggressively.

• The penny drops that a mistake has been made. Because of his personality, he doesn't stay with the patient to reassure him or take responsibility, instead he is quick to blame the mix up on the nurse. He totally ignores the patient at this point and aims his anger at the nurse.

At this point I would normally have used a storyboard to plan out my scene but I chose to breakdown the thoughts and actions instead to see if it worked any better for me. I think it has some really good benefits and I would probably use this technique again.

One of the main benefits is that it forces you to breakdown the scene in to beats, i.e. the characters actions and what causes that action. This in turn forces you to think about what the characters mood is and how they would react to a moment. This is very important because to create a believable character performance, you need to animate the characters thoughts rather than just having an action because it's funny or because it goes along with the stereotype for that character. By doing this I hope to create characters that are funny but also easy for the audience to relate to.

Sound Recording

After finalising the script, we then recorded the sound with 2 actors (James and Bill) in the sound studio. First we recorded it using James as the doctor and Bill as the patient. The movie below showed how this turned out:



I really liked this recording but we decided to swap roles and record Bill as the doctor to see if that worked any better :



I liked both recordings a lot. James was very jolly which is the attitude that I want the doctor to have but I feel that Bill's had a bit more character with the reaction at the end, blaming it on the nurse where as James seemed like he was just telling the nurse that there had been a mistake. Using this one would also reinforce that the doctor is the dominant character in the scene and the patient is really just reacting to the doctor at times. I also felt that James played the shocked patient very well, there was a lot of genuine surprise in his voice which I thought was great.

The video that we got from the recording will be very useful as well for the movement of the characters because we can see the moments that they move up and down when they talk along with the expression on their faces when reacting to eachothers comments.