comedy notes

The physical comedian's childishness emerges first of all in his difficulties with objects - constant battles with objects - simple, domestic objects (e.g. soap keeps flying out of hand).

In these battles he is bound to be inept, for funny - he must constantly make mistakes, and constantly be susceptible to accidents.

Although clumsy and inept, he is very tenacious - he keeps on doing things long after the point where the normal person would have given up (e.g. after breaking a coffee cup, he puts the coffee powder, milk and sugar in his mouth, drinks in water, gurgles and swallows the mixture).

Uncivilized = amusement; does not understand social conventions, or incapable of following them. Disregards conventions, morality, legality - no consideration for others.

endings for monster city.

Monster City Premise
Father monster teaching junior how to be the biggest baddest, meanest monster in the city. Father is the ultimate destroyer, son seems interested only in ____________.

• Juggling
• Making music
• building
• landscaping
• chasing butterflies
• Singing
• Dancing

Ending:

1. Child builds structures that creates a domino effect effectively destroying city to Father's amazement.
   
2. Father is afraid of rodents which spill forth from the city's destruction. Child's singing ability or musical talent charms the rodents away and Father realizes he overlooks the talent his child has.
3. Child is a clumsy juggler that ends up destroying the city in a much chaotic manner to Father's approval.

Reframing

Thematic Compass: Mapping pre-conception onto others.

Subthemes: Overachieving parents, manipulative children, self centredness , selfishness, expectations

Low-level story: Parent Vs. Child in a domestic concept

Other possibilities of re framing:

(Qns considered: maturity reversal of parent and child, Live-action vs. Animation, Narrative, to the point.)

Sports training: Over enthusiastic parent yelling at the side lines (think Mr . Incredible and Dash at the sports day) The pushing results in a tragedy (child gets maimed for life)

Medevial: Father expects his child to perform feats of valour, swordplay, archery, etc, Child just wants to study boring books. Child saves the life of his father at the end.

Monster Wrecking City: Father monster teaching Junior the ropes, Junior just wants to do something nice (like making music with power cables). Father Insists. Junior ends up saving daddy's life as well as the city.)

Caveman: Teaching son useful skills like hunting and making fire etc. Son just wants to tinker with rocks and twigs, ends up inventing the wheel and benefits mankind.
--a similar idea I had was a tribal geomancer father and son.. the father insists on reading divination signs, while the son introduces... the internet =P

Assassin: Father teaching child the ropes of being a hired killer. Child is interested in cooking (something contrasting). How do they reconcile their differences.

LEON, The professional : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/plotsummary

Samurai: old samurai watches with pride as his son returns from education in the western countries. He expects the son to serve a great daimyo, but he wants to "serve the people" - build the future Tokyo; his values of independence and democratic thoughts is now considered disloyalty to the expecting father, who is enraged. but in the end the son acknowledges that "you are still my father", and disregarding their differences they still reconcile.

Corporation: dad is a middle-aged middle-management guy. He boasts proudly abt his company, his success and all to his kid. Unknown to him, his kid actually owns the MNC that he works in...

While you were at ICA :)

Why we watch movies:

Overcoming obstacles

Rituals Community

Narratve Questions? Puzzle

Narrative Closure - relief

Sharing emotions

Faith and Belief

Mastery - Voyeurism

Comedy

Learning

Escape

Excitement

Omniscient POV

Punishment / Justice

Fulfill fantasy

Musical / Beat support

Watching things Blow up

Chase / Violence

Role models

Empathy

Unexpected Expectations

Therefore as movie makers we have to satisfy certain qualities on this list :)

WHAT WE MUST DO :)

Clarity

Suprising

High Stakes

Goal Driven

Emotional

Action gets to point

Appealing characters

Show how it feels.

As Miyazaki would say " Stay true to what you want to say. What do you want to say? "

BIG NO-NOS :( "reasons of epic failure"

Confuse

predictable

off tangent

unfocused

unappealing

Holes in causality

Abstract motivations

the Selfishness of Parent and Child

Role reversal of the parent versus child.

A social commentary about the overbearing hope and pressure that a child has to bear because of the wishes of the parent.

The PARENT is a grotesque overgrown man with the thinking of a kid ; the KID is a calm, collected, rational-thinking child.

The PARENT throws tantrum, bawls, like a kid to get the KID to do a piano recital, while the KID is playing video games.

The KID is firm about his decision not to perform the piano play.

When the PARENT threatens him with a cane (he uses the cane not in a abusive context, that much HAS TO be clear, his line of thinking is of a child that hits and punches the parent because that is an action of leverage rather than causing physical harm and pain.) -- and breaks his video game at the height of tantrum, the KID is forced to move to the piano, but he merely hits some random notes randomly.

The PARENT is enraged, finally raises his cane high, preparing to hit.

The KID stretches out his hand, asking for money. The PARENT finally gives in, pays the KID, and END.

As credits roll, we hear perfect piano being played.

The child has more leverage and more knowledgeable than the parents because they in a sense, are hoping to live through the children, leaving the child to becaome more manipulative than they are...

===

The PARENT hits the KID with cane -- he uses the cane not in a abusive context, that much HAS TO be clear, his line of thinking is of a child that hits and punches the parent because that is an action of leverage rather than causing physical harm and pain -- and the KID defends himself with toys, things that he grabs from the floor, to a point that his demeanour is finally broken: he is wounded, vulnerable, he is only a child.

The PARENT realises this, that his noble intention of "educating" his KID had backfired, and his cane freezes in mid-air. END.

Scenarios for the Run

Son gets a phone call that,

Grandma is dying...

Son runs back home all the way from far far away to see her the last time.

Only to find that grandma is dying...to have a cup of tea / specs / something relatively insignificant.


-- tells *also* of the small insignificant gestures for our loved ones that we are normally complacent of doing, but is suddenly magnified because of the gravity of the situation. Are we still

willing to do these small little things in the normal times, when we are not faced by grave circumstances like death? Then we are no longer taking things for granted.

=====

Old doctor runs through a hoard of obstacles to reach a dying patient.

-- where the presence of an authoritative character is more important than the item he holds.

=====

Village guy and his house in the way of urbanization.

He runs to salvage his object of comfort, while the city builds itself around him, and he tries to avoid.

=====

Baker's mistake of making a cake puffing unstoppably. He has to run to a grocery store to get some powder to stop the cake from destroying the entire town...

=====

Running to catch a baseball for a winning game...

swaggering walk

all single poses in stepped mode, no offset keys.



notes:
1. camera MUST NOT change. when I animated I only care about the camera.

2. because I animated mostly in silhouette, the rendered geometry might have problem because I don't really know where the details go or will look like, especially when breaking joints.

3. will be good if character setup has the option to hide the limbs.

some 3D wisdom

Keith Lango on Thumbnails

There's some thought that your thumbs need to be locked down tight. That may or may not be true. I find it's good to not get too
attached to my thumbs, but to use thumb sketching as a stage of exploration. I'm not looking to define my animation exactly just yet.
What I am looking to do is explore different poses and different pose combinations. It's alot quicker to explore things in pencil
than on the box. But I came up as a CGI animator. I have no notions about the computer being an inferior animation tool.
So while I'll explore on paper, I also allow myself freedom to not settle on things until I get to the computer.
I think the computer can be a valid place for structured, focused exploration. It is, afterall, only a very expensive pencil.
Animators who don't feel comfy on the box may disagree. That's OK. God still loves you and I'm trying my best to. :o)

An interesting practice in some 2d animation circles is to work through your thumbs, and then put the thumbs away
in a drawer and never refer to them again. The main thinking behind this is to keep yourself from becoming a slave of your thumbs,
cutting off those serendipitous gems that arise when the juices are flowing while you're hip deep in the performance.
It's this kind of thinking that I tend to follow when doing my thumbs. Thumbs are great servants, but hard masters.


====================


Common CG Pitfalls by Jeremy Cantor

1) Fearing the technology

Cause: We fear what we don’t understand. Fearing a computer, or believing it is more powerful than it really is comes from not having a fundamental understanding of how a computer works.

Solution: Learn enough about the computer so that you understand its strengths and limitations. Remember that the computer is not a magical device. It can’t think. It just runs programs. It can’t do anything a person can’t do; it can just do things faster. It is only a tool. A very sophisticated pencil. Assuming the user has learned how to speak the computer’s language, the user is the master of the tool, not the other way around.


2) Motion is too robotic…linear.

Cause: Letting the computer simply write linear f-Curves that have no slow-in or slow-out.

Solution: Understand how f-Curves translate into motion. Learn & apply the fundamental principles of animation. Manually insert additional ease-in/ease-out keyframes when appropriate.

(My earliest computer animations were done with software that created linear keyframes and did not have an f-Curve editor. I could not tweak the slope of the curves to create ease-in & ease-out. I had to rely on the application of traditional animation principles and create additional keys to achieve such results.)


3) …or the opposite: Motion is too spliney…watery….”computery”

Cause: Allowing computer to do too much “unsupervised” work. CG software usually creates smooth f-Curves automatically when you set keyframes. “Watery” motion comes from just leaving f-Curves in their default spline shapes. This is why rubber is the easiest thing to animate in CG. Spline f-Curves result in rubbery motion by default.

Solution: Don’t trust the computer to make properly shaped f-Curves. Study how f-Curves translate into movement & manipulate their shapes/slopes accordingly.


4) Characters not displaying a proper sense of weight

Cause: Not understanding the basic principles of timing, slow-in/slow-out, squash/stretch, gravity, etc.

Solution: Don’t let f-Curves just remain in in their default shape after keyframes have been set. The slope of your curves translates to how the forces are acting upon your animated objects. If an object is falling, for instance, make sure your Y-translation curves are accelerating (gravity does not apply itself as a constant force, rather it causes objects to accelerate as they fall). Understand the differences in how characters of varying mass will move. It takes more energy to initiate, stop or reverse the motion of a heavy object or character than it does to do such to a light object or character. Think of the difference in the force it requires to set a bowling ball in motion as opposed to that which is required to initiate the motion of a balloon. And similarly, the force it takes to slow, stop or reverse the motion of such objects.


5) Characters seem off balance.

Cause: Not paying attention to the proper location of character’s center of gravity. Simple physics: A static object’s center of gravity must be directly above or below the point (or average of the points) of suspension, otherwise the object will fall. When a biped character lifts one leg, he must shift his center of gravity over the supporting foot in order to maintain balance. (Variations to this rule apply when the object is in motion, however).

Solution: Pay attention to general physics of center-of-gravity. Study posing and the concept of contraposto. Use yourself as a guide. Study the shifting location of your center of gravity when you transfer your weight from one foot to the other. When you walk. When you run. When you hang from your hands. Etc.


6) Isolated body part movement. Lack of overlap.

Cause: Because it is so easy to animate individual body parts separately in CG, there is a tendency to create movement where separate body parts don’t seem to be working together, or where one part comes to a complete stop before another part begins moving (no overlap). Such inorganic motion also, of course, results from not learning and understanding basic animation principles.

Solution: Study and understand the fundamental principles of animation. Don’t allow all of your keys to remain lined up on the same frames (unless there is a deliberate reason to do so). Work locally but think globally. Always remember that even when you’re focusing on a single limb, it is connected to the rest of the body and all of the parts need to work together, not individually.

7) Twinning (unnatural motion symmetry)

Cause: Twinning is when opposite body parts move as exact mirrors of one another. When the left arm motion starts and stops on exactly the same frames as the right arm. This is usually not desired for natural looking animation (although there are certainly times when it is appropriate) This happens when the animator gets lazy and animates multiple body parts simultaneously, or simply copies/mirrors motion from one limb to another & then leaving the resulting twinned motion as is.

Solution: To avoid twinning, after simultaneously animating multiple body parts or copying/mirroring motion, be sure to go in and add keyframe offsets or other naturalistic variations to the movement.


8) Repetitive or metronomic movement

Cause: Relying too much on the computer’s ability to copy and paste motion. Leaving cycles as is.

Solution: As always, remember that you control the computer, not the other way around. Don’t just blindly copy or cycle movement. Each step in a walk will often be (at least) slightly different from the one before it. Add some naturalistic variation and imperfections (unless of course, repetitive, robotic motion is the desired effect).


9) Squash/Stretch used on inappropriate objects (ie Bowling Balls)

Cause: Learning but not truly understanding the fundamental principles of animation.

Solution: Apply an artistic eye and understand when it is appropriate to apply squash & stretch & when it is not. It is certainly okay to add squash & stretch to a bowling ball, but only if doing so is the result of an aesthetic choice to deliberately bend the rules. It is not acceptable to do such if it is the result of simply applying the fundamental animation principles blindly. It is not enough to simply memorize the principles of animation. You must truly understand them so you can apply them appropriately (or deliberately ignore them if the animation at hand calls for such disobedience in order to most effectively tell your story.)


10) Volume changing when Sqashing/Stretching

Cause: Squashing & stretching an object in CG is a 2 step process. You must scale the object in one axis then oppositely scale it appropriately in the other axes. Neglecting this second step causes the object to appear to shrink when squashing & grow when stretching. Volume changing during squash/stretch is also the result of not truly learning & understanding this fundamental animation principle.

Solution: Learn & understand this principle & don’t forget the second step of scaling in the other axes.


11) Linear wrist/ankle movement (the “marionette look”)

Cause: A wrist does not move from here to there via translation of the wrist itself, rather, such movement is the result of elbow & shoulder (and clavicle…and back…etc) rotations. Therefore the resulting trajectory of a wrist will tend to follow an arc. A wrist can certainly move in a straight line, but that requires simultaneous compensatory adjustments in the shoulder & elbow joint. Such linear movement does occur in such instances as when throwing a straight punch, but the natural tendency is an arc. When animating limbs with IK, the resulting motion often looks like the character is a marionette with its wrists on puppet strings. This is the result of simply animating the trajectory of the IK handles in straight lines.

Solution: One solution is to animate your character’s limbs with FK, which will result in arc motion by default. However, it is often desirable to use IK, so, when doing so, remember to (usually) make the motion an arc. Simply setting an initial translation keyframe at point A then a destination key at point B will result in a linear trajectory and a “marionette” look. Intermediate keyframes are often required to create an arc trajectory. Linear trajectory is okay, assuming that is the intended result. Just remember that such motion is not the normal tendency of a jointed character.


12) Frozen holds

Cause: In traditional cel animation, it if often desirable to completely freeze a character’s motion for dramatic effect. CG animators can sometimes forget that this is one of the few traditional techniques that does not always translate successfully into 3D. Because of the additional dimensionality, the ultra perfect perspective, texture mapping & super-accurate shadow casting (etc) displayed in a 3D CG scene, the viewer tends to have a “higher” expectation of reality. And since very few real-live characters ever actually freeze completely, when a 3D character does so, it can look unnatural and the action of the scene can die completely.

Solution: Use “moving holds” instead, where your character maintains a small degree of motion. Just enough so that the scene doesn’t entirely stop dead, but not too much or the pose will no longer be a “hold”. Perhaps he continues moving ever-so-slightly along his previous trajectory. Perhaps he takes a breath or scratches his ribs. Some animators will put their character’s central pivot point on a very small figure-eight path, so that he will sway just a little bit.


13) Character motion starts & stops exactly in synch with camera cuts

Cause: When an animated scene is made up of several shots, the simplest screen direction for each complete action (or group of actions) to be perfectly book-ended by a camera cut. This creates a scene that looks as if a director had yelled “action” at the very beginning of each shot (just after the camera had started rolling) and then “stop” just before the end of each shot. This is rarely considered good screen direction, as the camera does not appear to be operated by a human being, rather it has the unnaturally cold, perfect & predictable feel of a computer that always miraculously knows exactly when to cut.

Solution: It is usually more visually appealing when the illusion of a human camera operator is created. A human camera operator will suffer from human error. He will invariably end up following just behind the action on occasion, or sometimes actually anticipating it. Overshooting will occur once in a while. Etc. Maintain some degree of overlap between your animation and the camera cuts. Addition of such real world “imperfections” can help to make your scene feel more natural.


14) Arbitrary poses & motions

Cause: The difference between “animating” a character and simply “moving” a character is that “animation” implies life…and character…and purpose. Because of the power of the computer, it’s very easy and often tempting to simply add more & more to your scene simply because you can.

Solution: Remember that every motion of a thinking character must have a purpose. Movement for movement’s sake doesn’t communicate anything & only contributes to unnecessarily increasing the length of your performance and reducing the clarity of the story being told. Ask yourself what is the reason for each pose & motion in your performance. More is not always better. Most often, “elegant simplicity” is the key to telling your story most effectively. The well known acronym KISS means: “Keep it simple, stupid!”


15) Geometry intersections

Cause: Not paying enough attention to the details of your scene. Since CG involves working with virtual objects that are intangible, there is only visual feedback to inform the user when objects intersect one another. Therefore it is sometimes easy to overlook such errors.

Solution: Pay attention.


16) Relying too much on automated processes

Cause: Expecting the computer to do too much of the work for you. With expressions, constraint systems and various other software “bells & whistles”, it is possible to create a variety of automated motions in your characters, such as automatic lagging ponytail bounces that occur whenever the head moves. Such processes usually look automated. Too perfect. Unnatural.

Solution: You should do the work, not the computer. There are certainly occasions where automated processes are effective time savers, but it is very important to implement controls into your character setups that allow you to override or completely disable such processes. This way, even though certain things are happening automatically, you still have ultimate control over them.


17) Unnatural facial animation – not enough shapes, not animating enough parts of the face

Cause: Using too few morph target shapes and animating too few parts of the face. Unless an extremely simplified style is the desired effect, facial animation usually requires a good number of target shapes and plenty of detail in order to effectively create a natural feel to the motion.

Solution: Make enough morph target shapes. Don’t just animate the mouth and the eyebrows. Add appropriate motion to cheeks, eyes, forehead & even ears. Add some corresponding head movement. Apply squash and stretch.


18) Too much camera movement.

Cause: Disregarding the notion that just because you can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. CG software gives you complete control over the motion of your camera. You can add all sorts of crazy camera motion that is extremely difficult or downright impossible in the real world. Because of this power, there is often a temptation to overdo it. Too much camera motion can confuse the action and distract the viewer, and in extreme cases, cause dizziness and queasiness. Sometimes it is certainly appropriate for the camera’s motion to have “character” but it shouldn’t steal the action from the scene (unless the camera is being used as the primary storyteller of that particular shot, like in situations where we are “looking through a character’s eyes”. But such staging should be used sparingly).

Solution: Keep cameral motion to a minimum. Study films and notice that cameras usually don’t move all that much. Sometimes big, sweeping camera motions are appropriate. However, just make sure that you are adding such exaggerated camera motion to help tell the story, and not simply because you can.


19) Motion blur turned up too high

Cause: The motion blur button in your CG software package is a fun toy and, much like the ability to animate your camera, there is an initial tendency to play with it too much.

Solution: Remember, motion blur is an effect that is more sensed than seen. With most motions, you can only see the blurring when you freeze-frame. Watch live action films & you’ll notice that you can only really see blurring when there is extremely fast motion happening. If you can see the motion blur during the normal motions of your characters, it is turned up too high.


The bottom line

a) Study and truly understand the fundamental rules of animation before you start breaking them.

b) Don’t rely on the computer to do too much of the work for you. Remember that the computer is just a tool. You are the artist.


====================


One Step At A Time

This tip comes first hand from my mate Brandon Beckstead. This guy has an amazing ability to do the kind of `progressive blocking` that we all dribble over and wish we could do ourselves if only we were that good. I'm talking about the kind of blocking where there is usually a stepped key on every 4th or 2nd frame, and you can see very clearly how the animation will look before going into any kind of curve editing. Were talking subtle finger movements, facial animation, moving holds... all there in stepped.

I asked Brandon how he approached his blocking, and he told me a simple tip that seems so obvious and simple that I can't believe I never thought of it. Basically, when you first start to block a move, forget about timing.

Yep.

When I try and block in stepped, I tend to get confused because of this approach: I block my key poses on the timeLine where I think they should happen ( the core timing ) then I work between them with breakdowns. The problem with this method is that I have to think of two things at once! I have to think of how I get between the poses ( spacing ), and also how long it takes ( timing ).

Brandon recommended the approach where you block your poses on consecutive frames, disregarding any notion of timing at the beginning and concentrating only on your posing, and how the body needs to move to get between those poses. If you need another pose to describe the movement, you just add another breakdown and work in your shapes. I tried this approach last night and I love it!

I found it useful to block my poses every 8 frames, then I have room in between to add poses as as I need them ( note ... there is no relevance to timing here... I`m not thinking about how fast things move over 8 frames - its just an arbitrary amount of space I can fit a few keyframes into ) . At this point, you are not pressing play or scrubbing the timeLine, you're jumping back and forth between your poses using the next and previous hotkeys - only taking notice of how the poses relate.

After you have your basic movement working, you then slide the keys around in the timeLine and concentrate on your timing. Now you're gonna start playblasting and pressing play. There will be tweaks and changes of course, a body part is dragging way too much etc, but the core of your movement is already thought about. This also works very nicely if you keep a key on every body part for every pose you set.

When using this approach with dialogue, I can see that there may be an inevitable stage where you have to pose your character and think about the movement whilst not in direct timing with the audio ( if your posing on regular frames.. how could you possibly match it with the audio at this stage ?) So this will force you to be confident about your acting choices. At this point, its a process of animating a little `blind`, at least until you have the core of your movement figured out. Its then that you start placing the keys where they should be relative to the audio, in the timing stage of this approach.

I find this helps separate two complex parts of animation, timing and spacing, and allows you to tackle one at a time.. which has to be a good thing. Its still recommended to pose out your story telling keys, on their approximate frames, so you can see if your broad idea is working or not - but when you come to figure out the details, the above technique can help.

three legged legs

when looking for some three legged walks, inadvertently bumped into this awesome animation / vfx studio.



though the story for this one is kinda cop-out..



this reminds me abit of Si2..

idea - tugged out of comfort

another idea i had - because i'm going to go back to pandora... sorry, singapore. it's like being tugged out of a comfortable bed, hung on a charsiew-skewer and whisked back to work.. complete with slavedrivers and everything..

theme - the feeling of being tugged out of comfort i.e. when the vacation ends.
perhaps the main character is just wanting to sleep, but he keeps cannot do so, because of things happening ard him that forces him to work.



inspired by this: