Vignette final

https://vimeo.com/147681499

Animatic of 2nd vignette before renders

First animation with animatic test

How to move from here to here?

This part was a real challenge, did i even do it right?

Render tests, opinions?

Timeline for animation

Nov 18: Key frames of second vignette  and 2D backgrounds laid out

Week of Thanksgiving: Inbetween fixing and adding details, animate 2D textures and seconds of 2D animation (balloons)

Dec 3rd: clean up animation and start renders

Dec 10th: final render

Rigged character, ready to animate

 

3D Model and textures

Inspiration for the face

Porcelain dolls!!! because this can become creepier and creepier

3D Models

Here's my first attempt of modelling her body, no head yet, legs stuck together

Testing rig

This is my first test with a rough lowpoly model. I really like the results and I will continue modelling and testing.

I also did another test for the whole body, including feet stuck together using a simple rig. I think it doesnt look bad

While the curve and Ik Spline handler didnt work as good with the whole body. Maybe i'll just keep it for the arms. Apparently, with enough joings i can make a cool twist. i just think i need to make the legs longer.

Final Animatic with 3 vignettes and sound

Rigging test: tentacles for arms and legs

I had to find a proper way for rigging my character before I started modelling, since it has such a special body shape and positions. I thought I would have to model her in the initial position but that makes it difficult to predict if that model will be able to change to the next pose. I found a tutorial on rigging tentacles, and it uses several things including a rig but also curves and since my idea is to move my character in a very elastic way, this might be just what I need. I did a quick test on Maya and I am happy with the result (above)

Here's the tutorial, if anyone else is interested

https://vimeo.com/98771212

Sound test 2

I added more sounds and music for the desired effect, this is closer to my final animatic. I will make the beginning a little longer and add a few more muffled breathing sounds. I will also start modeling in 3D.

First sound test

Animatic 3 vignettes together

I also corrected the first two animatics 

Vignette 3 stoyboard and animatic

Animatic Vignette 2

Here's the first version of the animatic for vignette 2

Storyboard 2 revised

Second vignette defined and revised in this storyboard, this one is the shortest of the three but also probably the hardest because of the different positions. I have to study the character very well before modelling to be able to create the shapes, or maybe even model more than one.

Animatic 1 and storyboard revised

Here's my revised Storyboard for the first vignette, as well as the first version of the animatic, with no sound. I definitely need the sound to calculate exact times.

SB 2

Storyboard vignette 1 changes

Character rigging change

As also discussed in class, I realised this character can't be rigged like any other biped, even if it's basically a human form. Because she has to be design to be twisted. I did some test with a very well rigged character (free for educational purposes) and it didn't work very well. That's why I decided that instead of a whole character, I'll make her in pieces, which will make it easier to  manipulate. And I'm thinking already on curves and constraints I can use for it. I'll make a character sheet with all the positions I want to achieve so that I can plan for them.

Here's a render of the failed normal rigged character.

A change in the story

After feedback in class and giving it a thought, I decided to change my storylines a little to take the element of surprise which was limiting me and introducing the piñata in the first vignette.
The first scene will be a party (everything in 2D) with sounds of children and laughs in the background, which will be the setting for entering the piñata. That way, I will explore the feelings and ridiculous of the situation. The rest of the first two vignettes will be the same.
In the last vignette though, my character will struggle to keep herself together. Literally. She will start falling into pieces (again, literally) and she will end up all scrambled inside. Burst of light will come from the hitting and the ending will remain as the piñata breaking, for which I will again relay on sound.

To make myself more clear, I started some concept art to define the feeling and look, as well as the colors. I still think it's best to keep the character a little cartoonish, and I don't mind if it becomes a little comical, because it would still be some kind of dark humor.

Storyboard 1

Storyboard for the first vignette, following the storyline described in an earlier post.

 I do have a question for you guys: when I was drawing I noticed the visuals are very womb-like and that was unintentional but it might be another interesting theme to explore. I just don't want to get people confused, what do you think?

Character sheets

Character emotion sheet, first drafts

Detailed story lines

I decided to choose the "trapped in a piñata" idea, (name yet to be defined) and divide it in 3 vignettes.

The 3 parts will consist of the following:

1. Where am I? How did I get here?

2. What's happening? How do I get out of here?

3. There's a light, there's hope. I know where I am now.

Here's a detail description of each vignette:

Part 1

Darkness. Eerie sounds, the darkness is composed by lines coming from all directions, covering everything, making the world pitch black. A pair of eyes open, scared.

The prickly lines move away to reveal quick glimpses of feet, hands, and different body parts intertwined and twisted in weird angles, there's a distant sound of children laughing. Inside a sphere, there's a girl trapped in an impossible position unable to move or to fit properly. She slowly tries to move, she looks clueless. Fast cuts to a place outside, too fast to understand what they are, like a television disrupted signal. She slowly triest to shift positions and when she manages to move, she does it very quickly and ends up in another awkward position, still twisted within the confined space. When she moves, the sphere oscillates a little bit and then she stops moving. Another distant sound of happiness, maybe a nursery rhyme or an ice cream truck song, faded and unintelligible. Her face constricts as she slowly realises she's trapped. End of part 1

Part 2 

Opening sequence of darkness and lines repeats. Darkness turns into a close up of her pupil. A drop of sweat falls from her face. She's still in the sphere, still trapped. She moves and it oscillates again, she stops. She desperately tries to move again and the sphere moves faster. She stops again but her breathing intensifies. Music gets faster and the sphere starts moving by itself while she's scared, she doesn't know what's happening. Quick cuts, and the movement is faster, there's loud bangs as the sphere appears to be hit from the outside, she's desperately trying to get out but she can't. She starts screaming and the darkness of her mouth darkens everything again. End of part 2

Part 3.

Same opening sequence but now the white letters of the title fill the space and become a small circle of light on top of her. She's beaten, hurt and not moving anymore. Her face is sad and tired. She looks up at the small hole that also produces a ray of light inside the sphere. She squirts her eyes, the distant laughs are louder now. She slowly manages to approach the hole and tries to look outside. From the outside of the sphere, her eye is trying to look with all the sudden light hurting her. She realises where she is. It's a piñata, hanging from a tree. The eye looks terrified now. Everything goes black. and we hear something break and then a thud. End or part 3

Vignette ideas and sketches 1

This year, students are encouraged to explore animation for the depiction of subjective experience. The topic of the fall 2015/ spring 2016 semester is Animating the Con/Unconscious. Students will watch and analyze animations that lie outside of mainstream production processes and that seek to avoid formulaic representations of human experiences. Similarly, students are encouraged to create works that reflect the richness -- and subjective nature -- of human experiences, personal or otherwise.  

Related key words are: consciousness, unconsciousness, subjective experience, desire, fantasy, autobiography, psychoanalysis, et al. 

This will be the first time I use a personal theme in animation, and I'm excited because from the moment I read the assignment I knew what I wanted to talk about: Anxiety

Anxiety is one of those human experiences that aren't very pleasant not just to experience but also to talk about, and a very frustrating one too because even when you identify you are suffering from it and you rationalise the situation that's producing you anxiety, you still can't escape it. And even if it's just mental it leads to many other diseases. I know this because although I've coped with pressure, work and personal problems very well before, the last year I had lots of problems with anxiety that I couldn't understand and that took me a while to overcome. It was difficult but I also realised it's a very interesting theme that I can explore very well. 

Disclaimer: I worked on these problems and my anxiety is much better now, the experiences I describe though, can be a little intense and bleak. Don't worry about me. I'm fine now. Most of these come from my journal too.

First I made a list of things that make me anxious:

• Distance <-- more about this later
• Cultural Shocks
• Loneliness
• Uncertainty
• Vulnerability <---
• Helplessness <---

When I looked at the list I also realised that some of these feelings ARE a consequence of anxiety, so it becomes a vicious circle. Then, I found an old entry in my journal about a dream that I had and that I thought was a good idea but never really used it until now. And with that as a starting point, I chose three of these triggers for anxiety for my vignettes. I will now describe each, in the order that I thought about them, which is also the order in which they are more clear to me.

1. Helplessness.

Like I said before, once upon a time, even before I had anxiety problems, I had a dream. And in that dream I was trapped inside a piñata. It sounds funny and random but it was actually terrifying. 

First it was dark and I knew I was trapped in a place where I couldn't move. Whenever I moved, I felt like i oscillated and it made me feel sick. I was scared and I couldn't breathe. Just remembering the dream makes me remember THAT'S EXACTLY HOW ANXIETY ATTACKS FELT.

Later in the dream, I started to feel like someone was kicking me. And pain, actual physical pain. But at the same time I could see a light, a small hole over me. I try to reach it but I'm very tangled inside and the pain and oscillations get stronger. I finally manage to look through the hole, and by looking outside, in my dram logic, I realise I am inside a Piñata. The ridicule of the situation adds to the feeling of helplessness. And eventually the piñata breaks. This is where the dream ends.

When I think of the visuals for this, I'm not sure if i want the viewer to feel the anxiety or to watch a character experiencing it, and connect with her. Probably the second one. I want to use 3D for the character and 2D for the environment, the darkness etc. Here are some sketches and visuals that inspire me as I think of this idea. I'm still not sure how I would end it though.

2. Distance

This part is the most personal of all, but it's also the less scary one. Let me elaborate:

I've been in a couple of distance relationships, but at the moment I'm experiencing one that's stronger than the rest and that we've learned to manage and live with it. But distance has always been there and it can be very hard. Some of you maybe know what I mean, specially if you are here and left loved ones at home. The hardest part is how lonely it can be, because no matter how futuristic our times are, with video calls and telephones and 24hr chatting, the distance is still there. There's always the frustration of not being able to touch, but still have strong feelings. Many people through history have had distance relationships, I'm sure, but it seems like it's even harder now that technology can give you the false idea of closeness so easily, it's a modern sentiment.

I want to explore that frustration with an abstract piece, with figures getting very close but never touch. I still don't know how exactly though, but I have a few visual ideas. I also want to write a poem for this, a poem that's mostly made out of gibberish, somehow still talking about this. Why? Because all the information we get, and all the communication sometimes is reduced to gibberish, and also because I love the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Finally, I will read this poem, and ask my significant other to read it too, and overlap both of them, editing the animation based on the sounds. This needs work.

3. Vulnerability

*Disclaimer two, this part can be a little disturbing. 

And finally, the last one. I want to go back to a theme that annoys me and causes insecurity, self awareness, anger and of course, anxiety: the feeling of vulnerability in the street. As many of you must know, Mexico is not very safe right now. Specially where I'm from, there are things that are normal to me like being always alert, never go out alone after certain hours, never drive by myself, keeping two wallets, etc. But being a woman, these vulnerable feeling is multiplied because of the powerlessness of being able to defend myself in many of the terrible situations that we have to face. I have to say that out of luck and being careful, I have never been through something serious myself, but I have close friends who have been mugged or even kidnapped, and we have all heard gunshots in the street and seen people dead. 

But there is something that has bothered me for the longest time, and that I experienced not only in Mexico but everywhere in the world that I have been, including New York: Catcalls. According to google to catcall is to "make a whistle, shout, or comment of a sexual nature to a woman passing by" It doesn't sound very menacing, but if you are a woman, and according to StopStreetHarassment.org , 90% of the women just here in the US have experienced some sort of catcall or harassment while walking in the street. From whistles, to comments and sometimes even groping, this issue like I said has bothered me for a long time. In 2014 I had enough, I was tired of it, I had to do something, but I didn't even know what or where to start.

I started by talking to people about it, I realised all of my female friends found it annoying, made them feel vulnerable and scared that it would lead to something more aggressive. Some of my male friends agreed that it was terrible and they never did it, but some others didn't understand why it bothered me so much. Why I didn't just take the "compliment"

I started a project for my senior year in college, it was an ethics class. I conducted a few surveys locally and did research. I left a space open for comments and for whoever wanted to share their experience, and I was overwhelmed with the results. It was even worse that I thought and it didn't even matter what age you were, or how you looked, it was happening to everyone. But the worst part is that everybody hated it but we all kind of accepted it, with resignation. I presented my results to my class, suggesting that the first step towards changing this was accepting it was happening and it was a problem. Some of my (male) classmates laughed at me during the presentation. Some of my female classmates approached me after and told me some of their own experiences, and how they had never thought there was a way to fight it. I think this can arise a lot of conversation and I'm excited to have it.

Now, back to the animation, I know it won't change the world but it's a very personal thing that I need to put out there somehow. The problem is that it's been tried to be made before with videos , campaigns and animations, so I'm not sure yet of my approach. I know I want it to be 3D and to take some of the bleakness I want to make it a comedy. Might start with something as basic as a girl walking. This needs work but I believe it can turn into something solid.

Well, I know this was a long post, but I would like to know what you guys think of my ideas, proposals, etc. And I really hope I didn't depress you. I'm a very happy and bubbly person most of the time, but I feel like this is a great opportunity to go deeper and talk about themes that mean a lot to me. Thanks for reading.

Introduction

Hello World!

My name is Magali but most people call me Maggie. I'm a digital artist and animator from Mexico, small city you've never heard of, and I'm excited for this class and the projects that we'll work on.

I love working in teams so I'm really looking forward to collaborate and learn from each other.

To check some of the stuff that I've worked on you can go to my portfolio at:

magalireyes.com

and 

maggiereyes.blogspot.mx