Polishing Scene (PS)

 

Don't love your scene? Regardless, it can still be improved!

"You can't polish a turd" - unknown

Please refer to FOL for assignment weighting and due date.

Polishing Scene (PS)

    For this assignment, students are required to submit their final scene from the previous semester, and based on instructor/group feedback create a one-page polishing plan and then apply those fixes. Students have one week to refine their work and re-render it in UE. If the final scene is inexplicably lost or unavailable, animation from another assignment can be used with prior instructor approval. 

    The goal is to refresh our understanding of the entire pipeline and focus on fixing the largest issues within the animation. Make sure your revisions would be achievable with approximately 6 hours of work. Perhaps it's improving the silhouette on a weak pose and feathering the change in? Maybe the timing of your scene needs a bit more 'punch'. It could be as simple as smoothing out a few arcs with an extra in-between or two. 

    Students will hand in a movie file of their finished work and an image of their planning notes/doodles

Featured principles: Overlap/Follow Through, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Posing (Solid Drawings)

Hand-in file parameters:
planning notes don't need to be pretty, just functional
  • No .zip files, please
  • 2 items: Movie file + Image of planning
  • Movie type must be .MOV or .MP4
  • Either H.264 or MPEG4 compression
  • 1920 x 1080 resolution  (both image and movie)
  • Movie: rendered from UNREAL
  • File sizes must be less than <250 MB each.
  • Files must be named as follows:
       <Your last name>_<Your first name>_<assignment code>.<file type>
                  eg. 
                            Latour_David_PS.mov and
                            Latour_David_PS.jpg


What I'll be Grading on this assignment:
  • Staging, Tech and Documentation (camera, layout, file naming and format, resolution, submission requirements, rendering and note-keeping)
  • Posing (Silhouette, Balance, Line of Action, Asymmetry, Structure, Flow Lines, Rhythm)
  • Timing and Mass (Ease In/Out, Changes in direction, Offset and Overlap)
  • Polish (Arcs, In-betweens, detail, cycles of revision, organic movement, face, eyes, hands, feet.)
  • Feedback Applied? (Showing work in progress, following direction and effectively making revisions based on feedback)

    Contrary to the adage, the Mythbusters proved that you can polish almost anything. (You can see the breaking of the myth here). Maybe you are already a master of creating Hiraku Dorodango?

    To start off the term, we're going to spend our first week revisiting the Final Animation (FA) assignment and making some finishing touches to ensure it's your best possible work.

    It's important to understand: you can't polish your work if there are underlying issues with key poses, physics and mechanics, timing etc. This means that the first step in polishing is often to go back and solve outstanding issues from earlier in the process.  Maybe you need to re-shoot reference? Sometimes a section of the animation has to be stripped down to the keys and re-timed? Deleting animation is often a part of this process. Make sure your plan is achievable in the time you have. 


Ironic that this image is so rough and unpolished.


My Recommended Animation Workflow and Scene Setup

Best drawing in the world of file referencing

Shoot Reference
Analyze/plan scene
Pawn Animatic/Camera Layout
--------------------------------(Review with director)-----
Key Poses (1st pass)
Breakdowns (1st pass)
Timing (1st pass)
-----------------(Continue? different performance?)-----
2nd pass Keys
2nd pass Breakdowns
2nd pass Timing
-repeat-
------------(As many passes as time/budget allows)-----
In-betweens
Polishing


It's important to understand: you can't polish your work if there are underlying issues with key poses, physics and mechanics, timing etc. This means that the first step in polishing is often to go back and solve outstanding issues from earlier in the process.  Maybe you need to re-shoot reference? Sometimes a section of the animation has to be stripped down to the keys and re-timed? Deleting animation is often a part of this process.

Even if the scene is based on a terrible client idea or the entire movie is crummy and uninspired: a professional must find a way to make it as good as possible. 

There's a special kind of beauty in making something work in spite of itself.

Some useful Links regarding polishing your animation:


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