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The birth of a short animation |
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Written by Sajjad Amjad
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Monday, 13 March 2006 |
Sajjad Amjad, who is currently in a Masters program for Animation & Interactive media, shares his thoughts about how to approach the difficult task of producing an animated short
For the beginner, this article aims to describe the work flow involved
in the production of a small home grown personal animation (2-5 minutes
long, may be smaller). It means that you don't have a massive render
farm at your disposal, you're either a student of animation, a hobbyist
or a professional trying to add something new to your ageing portfolio
in your free time. Production methods vary according to the time and
resources available. I'm going to assume you're an individual working
on a home PC. Its important to note that the work flow is considerably
different for a project which involves more than an individual. In the
case of a production team roles need to be strictly defined and
production is done in parallel (which is usually not possible in an
individual project, unless you're an alien with two brains and 7
limbs). So now that we're primed to stun the world... switch off the PC
and grab a paper and pencil. Yes, the traditional tools! If you
maintain a paperless existence, power up the word processor (although a
paper and pencil is still highly recommended).
And then there was...
The idea. Everything evolves from an idea. You may have the technical
skills to pull-off something worthy of a high budget Hollywood block
buster (we have quite a pool of talent right here at CGX), but the best
effects and techniques fall flat on their face if the story doesn't
engage the audience, remember The Hulk? Yes of course you liked The
Hulk, you were amazed by the CGI, your friends told you his face had
enough bones to sink the titanic, they used dynamic textures which
reacted to water particles etc., ever care to look at it's box office
performance? Final Fantasy was hyped as the best ever CG production at
the time and yes it was, to me and you, we saw the technical aspects
and were spellbound, but it bombed at the box office. On the other hand
look at The Blair Witch Project, a low budget production which raked in
millions.
What most CG artists don't realize is that it's not their technical
prowess that the audience will be observing but the characters in the
story and how they evolve and interact with each other and their
surroundings. Keep in mind that I'm talking about the average Joe.
Obviously, if you intend to screen something at SIGGRAPH then it better
be technically breathtaking. At the end though, you want to tell a
story, and not how you can pull off different effects (although that
has it's own advantages). So the first thing you need to decide is who
your intended audience is.
Is the piece you're making intended for studios who might hire you? or
is it something for your personal portfolio, a little project on the
side? Studios look for particular things. In these situations you would
want to tailor your demo reel for very specific positions. If you're
strength is lighting, just show that. Don't ruin everything by plugging
in sluggish animations which a 5 year-old could tear asunder.
Collaborate with other people, use their strengths to promote your own.
At the end of the day you and your collaborators both come out strong,
it also shows that you can work in teams, which is a requirement in any
production pipeline. Since I'm going to be discussing the process of
producing an animation, I will discuss the production of a short
animated story.
Remember that a less than spectacular production may be forgiven if the
story captivates the audience e.g. The Blair Witch Project. But a bad
story has no memorability e.g. The Hulk. What you want is for people to
be able to remember your work. Unless you have the resources to make
something as visually immersive as the destruction sequence in The Day
After Tomorrow or the initial battle sequence in Star Wars: Revenge of
the Sith, you want to stick with a good story. Since we're producing a
small animation say 2-5 minutes, keep the story simple. You don't want
something which Tom Clancy would be proud of, you don't want to spend a
year researching the causes and effects within your story. There are
heaps of resources which will give you a crash course in writing an
engaging story (Google will set you free) I realize that you're a CG
artist, you're itching to fire up your 3D application and let it rip. A
little time spent on pre-production now will save you lots of time
later. So how do you write an engaging script?
Read a lot. Draw upon your own experiences, everyone has gone through
something which was interesting, something worth telling. It may not be
ideal to turn it into an animation but anything is a start. Work out as
many ideas as you can. They might be disconnected but that's all right.
The intention is to let the creative juices flow. Once again, read book
which specifically target the art of story telling, its one thing that
man has been doing since we descended from the trees (I (currently)
subscribe to the Darwinian school of thought). From personal experience
I can say that all ideas can be improved drastically, this is specially
true as a varied audience reads it and provides feedback. When you're
writing a story, put all your energy into it. Think very hard about
each story. Write it out, show it around, think how it may be improved
and then tear it up. Its hard but your next idea will be a lot more
interesting. I would suggest spending as much time on the script as
possible. For a personal project of mine, for which I had lots of time
(lucky me), I spent a few weeks going through various ideas, I actually
wrote out ideas for 12 completely different stories. Of those, I put 5
into proper script form. Then I chose 3 which appealed to me the most.
Finally I picked the one I thought I was technically competent to do.
Don't let outrageous ideas steer you away from a story, always put it
down on paper. You might not be skilled to do something yet or you may
not have enough time on your hands, but it may be possible a year or
two down the line. An engaging story will be engaging today and
tomorrow. Whatever you end up writing, yourself and a high percentage
of the people you show it to (make sure they fit in the target
audience) should like it. Always ask for feedback and take all kinds of
criticism positively. Yes, its your story to tell, but it would be fun
if a whole lot of other people enjoyed it too. If you feel that writing
is not your forte, then write your story as you see it in your head,
put it down in point form. Write it down in any way where it would make
sense to another person.
As you are writing remember that unlike writing for print where the
reader is at liberty to visualize what has been written, an animation
gives you complete control over what the viewer sees. Whereas something
may look good on paper, it might not translate as well into moving
pictures. Visualizing what you want the viewers to see as you write
will help ensure that the story is visually engaging. Now that you have
a story, you need to finalize it and lock it. Locking is essential at
all points during the production process to stay on track. You may have
the most amazing idea 2 weeks into production of how the story could be
improved, but making changes during production will just lengthen the
time you spend on the production. Time, as we all know is a luxury few
of us have. Finalizing the script also includes thinking of the camera
shots that you would use. This process is pretty short if you have been
visualizing your story during the writing stage. Its best to have a
fair idea of cinematography; different kinds of shots and lighting
elicit different kinds of emotions in people. For example, a shot where
your subjects face is lit from below traditionally evokes a sense of
foreboding and horror, the reason of course being that as humans we
just aren't used to someones face being lit like that, sunlight falls
from above (as does room lighting). Deciding the shots is critical when
making a 3D animation specially because it will save you lots of time
later. Imagine if your story includes a part where a character is
walking through a deserted marketplace. Depending on the angle of your
shots, you might be able to get away by just making the façade of the
shops. If on the other hand you want to take a distant high shot angled
down, you would have to make the roofs as well. Always keep in mind
that animation is an illusion, if it looks good to the eye, it's good
enough. If the market place has a fountain which is never close to the
camera or which is never the focus of the action then it's pointless to
make it into a 200k polygon model. Things after a certain distance can
be very simple indeed. Unless you're making an animation about the life
of a termite, it's best to use textures to put cracks in furniture, add
detail only if that detail will be focused upon. A lot of artists get
involved with the nitty-gritties and waste time on details which will
never be visible to the audience or which may be easily dealt with by
using a texture. Imagine if a shot calls for targeting a walking
character from the waist up. In the production stage this means that
you don't need to animate the legs movement, just bobbing the body and
swinging the arms will do the trick. Once again, time spent on
pre-production saves more time during production. Once you have the
shots in your mind, put them to paper, write down as much detail as you
want. Details like what the camera is framing, what's in the
foreground, background, how does the focus shift etc. go a long way in
helping out later. A trained mind when reading the script should be
able to visualize what the camera is looking at. Making all the
creative decisions at this juncture will immensely alleviate the stress
in the production stage. If most of the creative and production related
details are sorted out now, you can then focus a lot more on the
quality of the final production.
When the story has been put in a script form and the shots have been
added. Lock the script. As before, this means that no matter what
happens, the script will not be changed. You may alter the shots a bit
to improve the effect, but the story has now been etched in stone.
The next step is to make a storyboard. For the uninitiated: A
storyboard resembles a comic book, each frame of a storyboard defines a
key shot as art accompanied by short descriptive text. A storyboard
will help you to visualize your final animation. It will illustrate to
you how the shots flow. If after making the storyboard you realize that
something is not working, go back to the script and change it. BUT ITS
LOCKED! Change it anyway. We are not always able to visualize things as
we write. So sometimes, although what we write may look perfect, the
actual visualization might not make the cut. Since the final media will
be screen, not print, we have to make changes to the script. After the
requisite changes have been made, go back to the storyboard and finish
it up. The storyboard should include all frames which have key shots
(zoom, pan, dolly, roll, yada yada). You will most probably end up with
15-30 frames per minute, this for a regular animation, not a furiously
paced martial arts story. The storyboard will also enable you to look
clearly at the camera angles you've chosen. If the angles change too
drastically, it's best to change them. The viewers eyes should be
focused on the action, and a change in shot shouldn't require the
viewer to look towards another area of the screen. Imagine you're
shooting a car chase. In one shot the car leaves the frame from the
right edge. In the next shot, ensure that the car emerges from the
right edge. If the next shot captures the car entering from the left
edge, the viewer has to reorient his spatial continuity. Ideally the
action should flow from one point on the screen to another. Keep in
mind that where as this story is crystal clear in your head, the
general audience will be assimilating only what they see on screen.
Unless your purpose is to deliberately push the audience into confusion
its advisable to use the camera so that it permits the viewer to be
standing in the middle of your environment facing the action.
At this time I would like to confess that I can't draw. Sacrilege in
the world of moving pictures! but it's true, I can't draw to save my
life. There might be a few of you who share my quandary. So what do we
do. The idea of a storyboard is to indicate how the action flows and
what the camera is looking at. What does this mean? Simple – stick
figures will do just fine. If you feel that stick figures won't do
justice to your story, pay someone to do make them for you. I do feel
that if you're a creative person you will have absolutely no problem in
looking at a stick figure and visualizing it as a hero with rippling
muscles. Having said all this, it would bode well for you to learn how
to draw. Take life drawing classes, if not that just start sketching
things in your spare time - as with all other things, practice makes
perfect. Also, since the majority of the people in this industry come
from an art background you don't want to be the odd one out. Check out
some 'making of' clips for work done by CG animation studios. All use
hand drawings at some stage, computers only kick in when the production
starts. If you are good at drawing, storyboarding will be lots of fun
and it will give you time to put in concept art for your models. The
storyboard artists for Star Wars episodes 1, 2 and 3 were virtually the
concept artists for the architecture on various planets. The
storyboards were of such high quality that modellers used only those
storyboards as modelling references!
The next stage introduces sound to the process. Previously we looked at
storyboards to see whether the shots worked. Now we will add sound to
our storyboards and more or less lock the timing of the animation. This
is called making the animatic. An animatic is basically a storyboard
with sounds attached, the running time of an animatic should
approximately be the same as your final piece. Before I dig into this
further, allow me to digress.
Unless you're making a completely silent animation (even without
background music), drill it into your head that your audience will
primarily be using TWO of their senses. Visual as well as aural. This
means that sound is as important as the video. Most individual
productions fail to actualize the enormous importance that sound tracks
carry. Sound can add emotion where video will miserably fail. To fully
understand the importance of sound, watch a movie with the volume
turned off and the subtitles switched on, you probably won't be able to
fully immerse yourself in the story. Then watch it normally. Notice the
difference? If you don't have 3 hrs. to waste. Watch a cartoon,
something like Tom & Jerry makes good use of sound. Watch that with
and without sound. Notice how action can be greatly enhanced by the
inclusion of aural feedback. A splat will have more effect when
accompanied with a splat sound. A spring will seem springier when used
with a 'boing' sound. Its quite safe to declare that sound is as
important as the video. A good soundtrack can turn a good production
into a spectacular production. Since we want to maximize the effect on
our audience we must spend a lot of time on the soundtrack. There is a
problem though, like 3D animation, sound production isn't everyones cup
of tea. Quite true, it is therefore imperative to bring someone into
the production at this stage, someone who can help you with sound. You
might be able to record the foley(effects) sounds yourself, but music
composition will require external assistance. It helps to have friends
who are musicians. There is of course no problem if you're a musician
yourself!If you know exactly what kind of music you want to plug-in and
don't have the resources to bring in someone else, look for sounds on
the Internet, there are huge royalty free sounds available, music as
well as foley.
Back to the animatic. Take your storyboard and put it into a video
editing program. Time the frames so that you can see how the pace of
the action varies. This is the part where you decide how long you want
the zoom to be, how fast should the pan be, how long do you want to
hold a shot etc. As you play the animatic imagine the action as it
would happen. If you're going to do character based animation, get a
friend to time you while you do all the actions. Record these sessions
to video, they may prove helpful when you're actually animating the
character during production. If you're doing an animation which will
involve action being synchronized to music, you'll need to have your
animation timing completely figured out. If you can lock the timing at
this point, any sound designer will be able to work from the animatic
and come up with a sound track, this will significantly decrease your
production time. If you've read any literature regarding animation,
they all stress on the idea as well as the timing. In a real world
production involving human actors, a director can have only so much
control over an actor, each actor will bring his own angle into the
character. The animation arena is quite different in that case, you
control when your character blinks, twitches, pauses etc. Timing action
can make all the difference in conveying the feel of the shot. The Road
Runner cartoons employ masterful timing, we the audience can feel Wiley
E. Coyotes pain when before he falls down the cliff, he pauses and with
a helpless expression looks at the camera. It's a good idea to look at
cartoons made by legends like Chuck Jones.
Around this time you'll definitely want all the foley sounds. Recording
sounds is quite an enjoyable process. Sometimes sounds you want can be
found in places where least expected. Newspapers are known to be very
popular in that area, they can be slapped, tapped, shredded, crunched,
twisted etc. to produce a variety of sounds. Since animation is not
reality we can take many liberties with what we throw out to the
audience. You don't need to wait on a highway to record a car crash,
just go to the nearest dump (garage maybe), collect a pile of metallic
and glass objects and start throwing things at it. Sooner or later
you'll have something quite usable. I can not repeat this enough: Sound
is as important as video, give it lots of time. You now have a timed
sequence of your storyboard, to finish the animatic just plug in all
the sounds that you've recorded. For the sake of completeness, include
a soundtrack similar to the one you would want your sound designer to
make. You now have something which includes all the shots, every action
has been timed, foley sounds have been put in and emotion has been
added via the soundtrack. With a little imagination, by looking at the
animatic, you will have a fair idea of what your final animation will
look like. Run through it and change the timing to your satisfaction.
The animatic will serve as the blueprint for your final production.
It's time for a pat on the back because all the hard work is behind
you.
Pre-production enables you to focus completely on finishing the
animation. At this stage you know exactly what you need to model, and
what parts you need to model (remember the marketplace example). You
know what animations to do and how those animations are to be timed.
Production itself is actually the donkey work. It does involve problem
solving of another sort but most of the creative decisions have been
made, the fun is over, it's now time to fire up the PC and spend
endless hours tweaking vertices, textures, key frames etc.
The trick to sticking to a schedule is making time lines. Production
time lines need to be adhered to very strictly. The reason for this is
simple, depending on what your strength is, you will naturally spend
more time with that aspect of the production. Over-engineering can
starve parts of the production process of your attention. If you're a
good modeller you might spend just that little extra time to get that
little dent in the car just right, of course the fact that the dent
will be visible to the audience for a grand 0.35 seconds in a blurred
state escapes your senses. Allotting time slots to the various
processes will ensure that the correct amount is dedicated for a timely
production. Ideally speaking you should spend more time on your weaker
spots. If your lighting skills are great, do that quickly and ensure
that the texturing is as good as the lighting. Sometimes bad modelling
can be compensated by good texturing, bad texturing can be covered by
good lighting, bad lighting can be fixed in post-production (easily if
you use render passes). If you seem to be fixing things one after the
other you're probably in the wrong line of work. There are very few
people who excel at all aspects of CG production, knowing your own
shortcomings will only help you to dedicate more time to them. Happy
animation.
Thats all for now. Some efficiency increasing observations follow.
There are some things which many CG artists don't take into account.
Part of your production includes the rendering time. Usually at this
time you can do nothing meaningful. Take this into account when you're
drawing up your time lines. Do lots of test renders to figure out an
approximate time that you'll need to dedicate to this process. Things
like HDRI, high anti-aliasing, motion blurring, greatly increase render
times. Learn to use render passes, to my knowledge, all the latest
versions of popular 3D applications have render passes integrated into
the render engine. Do different passes for reflections, specularity,
ambiance, diffusion, this will allow you to rapidly change colours in
post-production. Motion blurring in most cases can usually be done in
post-production using a non-linear editor, try to stay away from motion
blurring in 3D. Baking static shadows into the scene will also
drastically reduce the render time, of course if you have a moving
light source it's just your bad luck. If you have a scene which
involves smoke emission from a distant chimney, don't bother using
particles, put the smoke in during post-production. Take all the
shortcuts that you can, as long as those shortcuts don't disturb the
quality of your production. If you add detail to an object through
modelling, make sure that the lighting catches it, any detail not seen
by the audience is time wasted.
There are some excellent books regarding all that I have mentioned
above, below is a brief list of books that I keep handy (most of my
script writing references focus on humor):
• “Film Directing: Shot by Shot : Visualizing from Concept to Screen” by Steven Katz
• “Inspired 3D Short Film Production” by Jeremy Cantor, Pepe Valencia
• “Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition)” by Jeremy Birn
• “The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and
Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet
Animators” by Richard Williams
• “The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not” by John Vorhaus
• “Comedy Writing Secrets” by Melvin Helitzer
• “How to Write for Animation” by Jeffrey Scott
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