Week Two: September 3rd-9th
In week two, classes centered on motion capture, take recorder, facial mocap, and IK retargeting. I kept track of class notes in Google Docs, watched classes but did not follow along in Unreal, which was a better way to go this time around. Any time I didn't understand a concept, I asked my question in Slack and saved the thread to track the answer. Guest speakers were especially helpful to me when they shared tips on animating in engine. I also made an Animation Fellowship YouTube playlist for all the helpful tutorials, inspirations, and reference that I encountered on the platform.
On the shot-side, I collected my assets and began animating. I thought it would be a good fit to animate straight-ahead since that's how real stop-motion animators do it, but I encountered some problems. My puppet character was the BungeeMan asset from the Unreal marketplace and its native rig started to show issues with space-switching. Thankfully my teammates Leo Beall and Raship Trikha had also noticed this, and Leo converted it to the Control Rig, which worked correctly. Eventually I switched to pose-to-pose, which saved me lots of time. I considered motion capture for my human character with my teammate Brandon Caulley, who had a mocap suit at home, but I did a pass of rough keyframing for the human animator character and it went pretty quickly.
Importantly, I made and remade an animatic for my shot until it contained all the beats I wanted and got the best feedback possible. This animatic-centered workflow served me well with the previous fellowship, so I relied on it again. It allows for quick iterating to create a real-time edit full of clear visuals and timing in order to get the most feedback on its appeal. Only once I was sure the shot was as ambitious, clear and impressive was I ready to jump head-first into animating in Unreal. The shot ended up being the maximum fifteen seconds so I was concerned about having enough time. It became clear that my shot made sense to start our sequence, which allowed me to completely control how it started.
In week two, classes centered on motion capture, take recorder, facial mocap, and IK retargeting. I kept track of class notes in Google Docs, watched classes but did not follow along in Unreal, which was a better way to go this time around. Any time I didn't understand a concept, I asked my question in Slack and saved the thread to track the answer. Guest speakers were especially helpful to me when they shared tips on animating in engine. I also made an Animation Fellowship YouTube playlist for all the helpful tutorials, inspirations, and reference that I encountered on the platform.
On the shot-side, I collected my assets and began animating. I thought it would be a good fit to animate straight-ahead since that's how real stop-motion animators do it, but I encountered some problems. My puppet character was the BungeeMan asset from the Unreal marketplace and its native rig started to show issues with space-switching. Thankfully my teammates Leo Beall and Raship Trikha had also noticed this, and Leo converted it to the Control Rig, which worked correctly. Eventually I switched to pose-to-pose, which saved me lots of time. I considered motion capture for my human character with my teammate Brandon Caulley, who had a mocap suit at home, but I did a pass of rough keyframing for the human animator character and it went pretty quickly.
Importantly, I made and remade an animatic for my shot until it contained all the beats I wanted and got the best feedback possible. This animatic-centered workflow served me well with the previous fellowship, so I relied on it again. It allows for quick iterating to create a real-time edit full of clear visuals and timing in order to get the most feedback on its appeal. Only once I was sure the shot was as ambitious, clear and impressive was I ready to jump head-first into animating in Unreal. The shot ended up being the maximum fifteen seconds so I was concerned about having enough time. It became clear that my shot made sense to start our sequence, which allowed me to completely control how it started.
Animatic Progression (1m 20s)
Weeklies Presentation
On Friday it was showtime. Sir screened our rough reel as a whole, and I was relieved to see so many positive comments. I was clearly on the right track thanks to all the feedback I'd received from my team and other select fellows I had shared my concept with.
Afterwards I did a very quick presentation for my shot. I had learned from two fellowships that you do NOT want to take a long and laborious amount of time presenting your work (that's what this blog is for! :), it should hopefully just speak for itself. I requested as much feedback as possible from the group and got more enthusiasm and helpful options to consider, from camera notes to performance ideas to asset improvements like a white glove.
The PureRef pitch deck I presented to the entire fellowship in Weeklies.
