3rd year submission production

Aliens character Animation

 For the final part of my 3rd year submission I put my current work on hold and began working on something completely new. It was recommended to me that I include a character acting scene involving speech and emotion to show a deeper understanding of character animation.

I decided to grab a sound clip from a movie or TV show and animate my own interpretation of how the characters acted in the scene. The 11 second club is a great example of this kind or work and I quickly decided on a scene from one of my favourite movies, James Cameron's "Aliens". I ripped the sound directly from the movie during the scene involving the drop ship crash and the characters realising they are stuck on planet lv-426.

I placed five characters (Norman Rig) in a simple scene and began blocking out basic poses for each each of them reacting to the dialogue in the scene. I then began working on the entire scene from a wide angle keeping all the characters in shot for the duration. This was so I could show the scene from any angle but it greatly increased my workload and also the stationary camera made it quite boring to watch. My tutors told me to begin thinking about setting up cameras and only capture the action necessary to help sell the scene.

Aliens opening scene

 Adding cameras to the scene really helped with the pacing and also allowed me to have closeups of the facial expressions of the characters bringing more emotion to the scene. It only took a moment but having these cameras brought the scene to life.
  
Bringing it all together 

After I had brought the Aliens scene up to pace with the rest of my work I began trying to tie everything together with a simple aesthetic that would tie all the separate scenes together in single show-reel. Since all of my work is just about the animation i wouldn't be putting any emphasis on textures or scenery to distract the audience. I settled on very simple scenery all in grey and brightly coloured characters to give a strong contrast on what is important. I kept the dinosaur from the Dino rig animation a very light grey as making it a bright colour like the Norman rigs did not look right with its mouth and teeth.

Dino rig

Kick up's

Rappel
 

Step up

 Skating

I will face one major problem when it comes to piecing my show reel together with the fact that the only scene with sound is the Aliens scene. All of the others are completely silent and will need to be accompanied by music. I was hoping to keep switching back and forth between each random scene and the Aliens scene to mix things up a bit but switching back and forth from music to speech will be very off putting. I will have to discuss this with my tutors to see we can come up with a possible solution.