Client & Competition

Client work I did for the Student Led Staff Awards (SLSA) at Ravensbourne University London,

and Animation for the 11 Second Club's March Challenge.

DISCLAIMER: All images and names in the animation presented here are stock images, and untrue depictions of real staff members and candidates. This is to protect the privacy and identities of individuals who were candidates or involved in the project. Names have been generalised or collected under a team to reflect this as well.

In May 2023, I did client work for the first "Student Led Staff Awards" for the Student Union at Ravensbourne University, London. This was an event where staff would be presented awards based on nominations and voting from the Ravensbourne Student Body and a committee comprised of students. Since this was the first potentially annual event the Student Union was doing, so I had free reign of the animation (within reason) and agency in what the final product would be. I was present for the award ceremony on 16th May 2023.

I did receive requirements on how the information should be presented:

there would be announcers explaining the awards, so adding in explanatory audio was not a want;
The dress code was identified as “Smart Dress” and the event organisers kept emphasising the awards aspect of the event akin to the Oscars and other such big and fancy shows, so the animation would need to reflect that; and,
The organisers also emphasised certain colours they would require to match the events theme (green, gold, black) so the colours would have to match that.

After reviewing on certain scheduling adjustments and time constraints on both my end and the client’s end, I would have 7 working days to make the animation from layout pass to finished product. Since I didn't have a proper laptop with software requirements, I used the Ravensbourne computer labs. The final animations were scheduled to be sent to committee member for the background music.

Modelling and Layout

A key element I wanted to play with was the mystery of the victors while emphasising the joy of all nominees, winners and guests alike. I initially decided to experiment with the colour first, showing the ideas in my head and getting feedback later on. So I did a rough layout pass with some colour in Maya, since my drawings aren’t as effective at communicating the ideas and I needed quick understanding and feedback.

I imagined a star moving across the screen, capturing the audience’s attention before moving forward to a number of cards. The number of cards are dependent on the number of contestants, but for clarity I placed three cards. They would flip to showcase the nominees one by one and hold, before flipping back and rapidly flipping side to side in an effort to confuse the audience on which nominee would be winning. Then finally, the side card would move away and reveal the winner on a spinning card, holding on it. I

communicated the layout pass to the organising committee and they were relatively happy with it, so I decided to move forward with modelling. I did a colour test for the cards using the SLSA logo and the theme's colours in ProCreate, and a model of the star in Maya. The reception for the black card with gold outline and the multicolour star was received positively and approved.

WhatsApp Image 2023-05-10 at 7.59.06 AM.jpeg

During this process, I wanted to further communicate the energy of the Star. In my research of shooting stars and comets, I realised an aspect to add was the Coma and Dust tail. By modelling a sphere and cone around each other and duplicating, it was a simple solution which added a whole new layer to the final product. I planned on rigging the star and the dust tail for more engaging animation, but I quickly realised if I did so it would delay me from reaching my targetted deadlines.

Previsualisation & Animation

Once the assets were confirmed, I worked on the previs passes. I began by using image planes of the cards while I was waiting to receive the images of the winners. The first pass focused on the actual look of the animation while completing the modelling and texturing in parallel. While not finalised, it would be better to use the final version of the assets to understand technical difficulties that may occur for the final product.

I recognised certain issues in the first pass almost immediately:

The star was too slow and too long, causing me (as the artist) to feel bored. So why wouldn't my audience feel the same?
The sliding through the various cards was a cause for concern, since it sped through too fast for the audience to read the contestants.
I planned for the cards to come closer to the screen and hold on the SLSA logo for a moment. However the quick movement and translation of the cards to the screen was slightly nauseating, as if watching a movie with 3D glasses.

Similar to many fancy award shows, like the Oscars, it would be important to to show images, names, and departments of the nominees and winners. Using Polygon standard surface would not allow for the complexity, so I led myself to exploring UVs. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the card texture for the nominees (black with gold outlines) and the winners (gold with black outlines) as seen in the video on the left below. For the candidates UVs, I used Adobe Photoshop with the candidate images and text as presented in the image below on the right.

Since the Star animation occurs separate from the cards animation, I made them in two separate Maya scenes. For the Shooting Star, I did some animation shots until it looked good. The issue I was experiencing was that it was too slow, so instead I used "Interpret Footage" with a 48 fps for the image sequence in Adobe After Effects and it worked incredibly; so it became the final footage. I wanted to convey the spacial motif, so I created a space background with many small sphere polygons scattered. This was an effective idea, but the number of spheres I had in the scene became very hard for the computer to process (as seen in the video below).

The cards combining together was an unintentional decision, but a surprising one nonetheless. It felt as though the hand was being hidden; unaware of which card would be thrown out. It also made me think about presenting the logo at the centre to really emphasise the staff awards and make it memorable. I did want to visually distinguish the Winner from the nominees, so I did another UV Layout with inversing the colour alternation; being gold with black edges instead. It would be pulled out. When setting the animation, the Logo was barely in the pass but I felt like emphasising that so I did. The cards were moving too slow, so similar to the Shooting Star, I interpreted the footage to 20fps in After Effects.

Presentation & Sound

For the final delivery, I sent the files to the music artist who would create background audio for the animation. The hosts and I were problem solving how to present the animation, when I suggested we put it in a powerpoint to alternate between the categories and the animation. This was agreed upon, so I uploaded the animations (without audio for now) to the presentation and a committee member would put the award criteria and text.

On the day of the awards ceremony, it was revealed there was a miscommunication between the main organisers and the musician and the audio files were not ready. We attempted to problem solve, so based on my previous experience with audio for animation, I went to Pixabay and found a royalty free song that worked well: "Winning Elevation" by Hot Dope. I chose royalty free music in case Ravensbourne or the Student Union would like to spread the animation across their social medias

Winning ElevationHot_Dope

00:00 / 02:02

Audience Reaction

I was fairly nervous about my animation in terms of its effectiveness. In the schedule I was able to accomplish the work, but the audience reaction is very important to understand if the work is effective or not. I was expecting the audience to be accommodating to the animation in a nonchalant way. The audience seemed to be in awe of the animation, which surprised me. I heard a variety of "ooh"s and "whoaa"s, as many of the audience could feel the energy of the star in combination with the music. After the first award, the audience became so excited for the reveal they started banging on the tables in a drum roll. Although I was initially concerned it would be interpreted as repetitive, it seemed to do the opposite and excite the audience more.

Evaluation

Overall, the work was accomplished in a timely manner and effective. There were certain things I could improve on if I could do it again.

I would change the number of cards on screen based on the number of candidates per award. When I had more than 4 candidates, I used three cards and repurposed the flip each time. This confused the audience since it was unclear if there were more candidates or if the initial three presented were the only ones.
We did not do a test run until the day of the ceremony, so when I helped test the projection, I realised the stage lights were causing the stars in the background to not be visible. This made me aware of how presenting animation for an event differs from a screening room and to understand how to be more efficient with my work.

Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out and my clients were satisfied with the final animation.

Since my Client work was in May 2023, I felt to practice my animation skills I would take part in the 11 Second Club competition in March 2024. The competition would be based on an audio from Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency, which I did see a long time ago so I am familiar with the characters. The 11 Second Club had certain rules and guidelines to follow:

Copyrighted rigs and/or character designs will not be allowed in entries unless the entrant has the right to use the rig and/or design. The "Azary" and "Ashrafi" rigs are specifically NOT allowed.
Don't edit the sound file (beyond adding silence before/after if needed - please try to keep the extra time to a minimum, winning eCritiques will not include added time)
Don't put your name or contact info anywhere on the actual video (this makes voting unfair).
Don't try to upload files more than 10MB (the server will automatically reject it).
Don't use anything overtly offensive (this is not the place for crude sexual humor, extremely violent imagery, or intolerance towards any culture/religion/gender/etc.) This is also not the place for political statements of any kind.
Do have fun! :)

March 2024 Competition11 Second Club

00:00 / 00:10

TRANSCRIPT

Voice 1: How did you get in here?

Voice 2: The window, obviously. Do you attack everyone who comes in here? Seems like a weird thing to do, but live and let live.

Voice 1: You can't just break into my apartment.

Voice 2: Well clearly I can. I mean, I just did.

Voice 1: I'll call the police.

Choosing Rigs

I was really intruiged by this idea of a character 'breaking in' and the casualness of Voice 2, as if entering someone's apartment is a given for them. I immediately drifted towards more morbid humour with this idea of the character of 'Death' entering in. Since Death comes for all, it's a given that he would be able to break in, while Voice 1 is denying his call to death. So I chose the Uncle Death rig from the Agora.community website (rigged by Rorigo Lopez) for Voice 2. For Voice 1, I decided to go with the Kaju rig since the denial to the death is a very warrior mentality, and the Kaju rig fits the combatant and stylisation aspect I'm interested in. Kaju rig is from Stevan Iverson on Gumroad.

Lipsyncing

I started with jaw bounce for both to give basic movement of lips which I can develop further in blocking. It was really interesting how the Uncle Death rig doesn't have additional mouth movements other than jaw bounce since the rig is far more skeletal and with less skin than Kaju, which has more controls for facial movement.

Reference Footage

After this, I moved on to recording reference footage. I used the Pen Tool in After Effects to visuallly merge different aspects of reference footage I took.

For the Death character, I really liked one for the first line of dialogue, but was split on two interpretations on the second line. The first interpretation turns aggressive, as if Death is ready to fight and know he will win. The second interpretation is more casual, as if Death already knows he's won and is taking his time, because there is no defeating death. I ended up going with the second dialogue, since it felt like it fit the sequence more. As for Kaju, I liked one specific reference I did, but also enjoyed a step forward interpretation during the second line so I incorporated both into my footage.

Layout Pass

When I attempted to create the base layout of my animation, I realised my reference has a slight tilt where I look forward, then up. This is an issue since Kaju rig is comparatively smaller than Death rig. I needed to have an apartment environment to fit the context, so I found one. I realised a way to fix this would be to put Kaju on the dining table so he is about the same eye-level as Death while still maintaining his size. I was looking for similar framing to my reference with Death on the right Kaju on the left.

UnReal Engine Preparations

During the competition, I was introduced to tutorials for UnReal Engine and Cell Materials for rendering. I thought it might be good to experiment with it to make my visuals more appealing for the competition. So I tested the house and characters by importing them to UnReal Engine 5.2 and applying a CellMaterial layer to the PostProcess Volume. I had issues with the polgons since the models of the environments and the rigs brought up an error of a face having 3 or 5 vertices instead of 4, but with the multicut tool, I was able to rework the mesh and make it game ready for UnReal Engine.

With Cell Material Shader

Without Cell Material Shader

Staging / Cameras

I started by doing a staging test in Maya for cameras. I initially planned on doing five cameras to show the switch in power between each line, but instead I narrowed down to four cameras and three cuts with POV, OTS and wide shot. Using simple and static cameras was ideal since it would force the audience/viewer to focus on the animation instead of distracted by movement.

Blocking - Golden Poses

I then moved on to Blocking. I divide blocking into four stages: Golden Poses, Key Poses, Breakdowns, Blocking+. I started with the first stage (Golden Poses) by focusing on the central poses which tell the story based on my reference footage. I parent constrained the sycthe to the chest control and then posed the arms around it. A playblast of the golden poses with the staging cameras can be seen on the left.

Blocking - Key Poses

Stage 2 of Blocking is the Key poses, the major poses which form the foundation of the movement in the shot. When I was doing this, I realised I had an issue with the parent constrains of the scythe for Shot 4, but resolved that quickly. I had to rerecord my reference for the last shot after experimenting with staging, so I added that to Reference Footage.

Blocking - Breakdowns

Stage 3 of Blocking is Breakdowns. Here I developed the poses between each key pose to get the proper "flow" of the movement. This involved polishing key poses, developing details for the movement (such as the hand movement), and readjusting the weapons used by both characters. This helped me develop timing and focus on the subtler details and movement of both characters based on my reference footage.

Blocking - Blocking+

The final stage of Blocking is Blocking+. This stage focuses on cleanup of the previous stages, arcs, and any additional animation I hadn't done yet, such as Kaju's tail or ears. This stage focused on facial animation and lipsync. Since I did the jaw bounce earlier in the process, I had foundation to work on. The UncleDeath rig doesn't have any additional mouth controls since its face is only a skull, so I attempted some mouth rotations to give more personality to the facial expressions.

Splining & Cleanup

Splining and Cleanup is a stage I was not looking forward to, since I often struggle with this stage to get that very clean movement in animated programs.

I first playblasted a spline pass with no cleanup (video on the left) to see what controls were having issues with movement. The Major issues I noticed right away were in Shots 2 (with the circular motion in the first half) and Shot 4 (with the left hand grip on the scythe being not connected properly; and, the chest control for Kaju was bending too exaggeratedly into the last pose and needed a more subtler transition.) Following Ollie Trotman's advice at a Creature Workshop he gave at the institution earlier that month: "Start from biggest control to smallest" and "It's okay to delete keys since keys are to get a good foundation; but in splining, movement is more important."

For Death Shot 2, I realised the base of spine and the chest IK controls did not move in the circular arc motion as in my reference. This was an issue with my poses since I posed them to the ShotCam rather than posing the character in a 3D allround view. I was taking a lot of time on this Shot so I worked on it for sometime, then decided to do the other shots and circle back.

I went into Shots and 3, which were fairly simple. The biggest concern was the shoulderpads on Kaju's armour clipping through the body. Easily resolvable with some additional keyframes Then I went to Shot 4, which was a bit tricky since two at once. I realised the Death rig's animation needed more attention so I started there then moved on to Kaju. After both were done, I circled back to Shot 2, and realised the issue was additional keyframes that I could easily delete which made my work look a lot better with far less struggle. I focused on getting the proper arc movement of the scythe like in my reference footage.

Honestly by the end, I was (and still am) really proud of this. Since I often struggle with splining and graph editor, I was surprised by how nicely this was coming along.

Autotangent Splining (No Cleanup)

Polish (Graph Editor Clean Up)

Importing to UnReal Engine Scene

Since I already set up my environment in UnReal Engine, I decided to export my work as Geometry Cache (via Alembic) into UnReal. This was not a requirement for the Competition, but I decided that it may be good way to beautify my work for my ShowReel and the Competition itself.

I reframed the Camera Aperture proportions in Maya to suit UnReal, and did a playblast export to see the difference (video on left). The main issue was that the camera framing was very tight around Shot 2, and Shot 4 lost the cinematography elements so I fixed those in UnReal itself. Since I know Geometry Cache/Alembic requires re-inputting a rig's textures when in UnReal, I tested the animation from a fifth static camera from with the textures (with Toonshader) as seen on the right below.

UnReal Aperture Test in Maya

Alembic Export - Texture & Animation Test

For some reason, the cameras weren't able to be exported due to an issue, so I had to manually redo them all from CineCameraActors. In addition, I felt as though the ToonShader PostProcessVolume was taking away elements from the animation, so I did two renders from all the camera angles in the sequence (one with Toon Shader and one without) and got these two:

Toon Shader

Non-Toon Shader

It was a really big difference! At least to me. Biggest new issue that arrives was that the neck geometry of the Death rig was missing. So when the character leans forward in Shot 2, the audience can see inside his body and have a blue reflective surface (like the walls) peering through it.

As I was finishing the submission, I felt as though the lighting and motion blur took a lot away from the original work done in Maya. such as the blurry aura surrounding Kaju in this whole sequence. I remembered a talk from VFX artist Samir Ansari in 2023 saying "some scene can be too bright, so it takes away from the feeling [of mystery and fear]." Darkness gives a sense of mystery and ominousity, and by having so much light, I removed a lot of the danger the audience infers. This was a good experiment with UnReal, but due to the visual noise I felt would distract the audience I submitted the Maya playblast instead for my final submission.

Overall. I'm really proud of the work I've done for this competition. To the extent where, as of the end of the competition, I think it is potentionally my best performance pieces yet. I do think there's more work to be done for it to be considered industry level, but I do think submitting "good enough" work on time is far more important than tedious perfectionism; as followed by Hank Green's 80% rule.

As of 5th April, my animation resulted in 88th out of 192. While I am disappointed of the result after the hard work and major improvements I made to my workflow, I do believe that is a good sign that I made it to Top 100. I agree it is not perfect, but knowing the level I'm working at is my best is comforting. I'm really excited to do more in the future!

SIDigital Animation