Spangler Studios Blog

Today is Tuesday… Last Friday the commercial spot job at Handcranked finished. We ended up splitting the last shot into two days, which worked out very well. One of the main characters had to fall over in the middle of the shot, so we stopped shooting right before the big moves of the fall started and resumed the next morning. Also in this shot, after the character falls, several surrounding background objects needed to bounce in response to the impact after a short delay, depending on how far away they were. I was using a cut-out animated animatic for timing cues, and got into some difficulties when I tried to follow it too closely. One reason was that I couldn’t match it exactly if I wanted to, because the animatic was made at something like 30 frames per second, and we were shooting at 24 on twos, and I ended up increasing the already too-long delay present in the animatic. Later I was told the animatic was just for suggestion purposes, which I should have been more aware of. I think in the back of my head I knew I was doing something wrong by focusing on the movement of an animatic for detailed timing, and not trusting my own timing. Next time I need to ask specifically what timing cues I need to copy from the animatic and what cues are there that can be ignored or understood as vague suggestion. I’m perturbed by my mistake with this, and the lousy outcome of the timing of part of the most important moment of the spot, so now I’m determined to execute the same bounce-response movement in a test here at home, maybe by having one of my test-puppets with a beak pecking at bits of things on the floor, and the surround bits an react to the impact of the pecking by bouncing.

Another tricky thing about this final shot was that the main character who falls has to fall very quickly, so I had to make a decision about whether or not it was necessary to change over to ones during the fall, even though the look of this animation is supposed to be choppy. But like I said before, the look is choppy, but not plain bad, so I did end up switching to ones, and was glad for it, the fall looked nice. However, when trying to switch back to twos, I did it too early during the part where the characters bounce in response, which was part of the reason for the overly delayed movement. It would have been better to finish off the fast movement with ones, and then switch to twos afterward.

Two more shots finished today, got a good early start so I finished on the early side and was able to get the 8:15pm commuter rail train back to Providence.

On a note completely unrelated to animation, I’ve discovered a great little Thai food place nearby the studio that has provided a welcome change from the usual lunch take-out fare.  I can actually get my preferred rice and veggies (and also coconut sticky rice with mango if I feel like treating myself – which I have two days in a row!)

There was a problem with yesterday’s shot….  One of the characters moves forward too quickly, coming across as overly aggressive.  This was the first shot in which I was animating this particular character, and so wasn’t familiar enough with the character’s overall personality, though if I had been more aware of the simplified personality shown in the animatics, I would have questioned the speed that I had chosen.  Still, how could this have been avoided (for future reference)…  With more detailed discussion with a director before shooting, making sure major actions are clearly understood, and that key characters’ styles of movements are understood.  Determining what details and decisions should or should not be left up to the animator.   Also, making sure that the animation is periodically reviewed by a director while in progress, just in case there are some issues unseen by the animator, and the animator should not hesitate to ask questions about the shot, since it’s easier to change something before the frames are taken!  Proper communication is the key.