Saturday 1 May 2010

BREAK DOWN- HOW I DID SHOT 50, Cap'n Breadbeards Bullet Time jump


This will be a little step by step guide to how i construct a shot.

It's not going to be perfect, as no two shots are alike, but this will be a pretty accurate way for me to work each time.

Often i will have drawn out on paper what the motion will be, i often have some music in the background, usually rock as it keeps the blood pumping, especially for an action sequence. But musically i keep it appropriate, you wouldn't want Nickleback or disturbed playing when your doing an emotionally tender scene, so in this case i have the soundtrack from pirates of the Caribbean playing to keep my head in the mind set of adventure and action yet humorous and fun.




I have read in the richard williams book never listen to music as you animate as its impossible to remember all the little things, you need to be sharp, and i respect that point of view and indorse it to a degree. When I was working at blunt film for the summer, i was animating a scene in 2D for the Ad we were doing at the time, and I had Scarface playing in the top right corner. Brent, my boss grilled me for playing video while working in a professional environment. True i was definitely at fault and it was a pretty daft blunder, but i felt i needed someone to sort of remind me to always keep sharp, not to fall victim to complacency, always assume it will be more difficult than it is, and you will be ready for anything. So I'm glad Brent had a go at me that day, and he did it in the gentlest but firmest way an amateur could want. So I learned to not lean too much on music to generate the energy to keep animating, the will has to be self perpetuated, because you want to reach the end, and for it to be the best it can be. It all comes with self control, self discipline.



Anyway, onto the here and now:


Here I will show you a break down of shot 50, as its one of those challenges i am learning as i go, and here is how i go about doingthe shot.

First step, i draw out what i think the scene will look like , in this case i have the animatic of the shot, so the pace is already there.



although this is only a block out of how the captain ends up there, it does show how he is supposed to land and how he took off, so i did a little sketch of this in motion, how it may end up looking:

here i drew the captain fy through the air ninja style to make the most of the slow motion effect, i may make the captain look a little less agile in the finished shot, but this helps me get an idea of the drama and the sense of movement.

Here i did blockouts in maya 2010.
these are the steps, there is a camera move, so i get the camera where it needs to be in the scene,
animate that moviing along, looking up at the moment the captain reaches the peak of his jumping ark.

then i add the ship and match the pace of the camera movement and make sure it stays in shot.

next i will add in the Guards motor trolly, get that at the right place in shot and keep the pace going with the ship.

next i will animate the wheels bouncing, once they are bobbing along nicely, i stretch the key frames out on the timeline, as this is obviously slow motion.:



this is the clip with the car sitting part bobbing up n down now too, doesn't quite look like slow mo though, hmm..




added the guard animation in




added in some of his reactions to the captain jumping in the air, is kinda tricky to get the look of slow motion, just have to stretch out the key frames to get that sort of look




this is a pretty rough looking attempt at animating Max in place of the Captain. i have been told by Tom Wright from third year that the models leg's aren't ready, so i decided to block out using max. i started with the pelves and the torso, i need to keep work on the legs as they goof a bit. this shot is probably my most difficult out of all of the shots i have. will be best to spend the most amount of time on this one.



Here I use the B breadbeard model and start putting him in the correct possitions as he arks over head, this is tricky and requires lots of tweeking before I can start adding on the details.



same bit of animation for a different angle, just showing the ark he is making, need to straighten it out so it looks natural.



some updates, adding in some of the limb movement





more recent update, still work to do on it.

Here is the final animation, Looks alot better, there's room for imporvement, but i don't have anymore time I can spend on it.

Pirates of the Produce Aisle_ Shot 50_AlexBax Second year work from alexander Bax on Vimeo.



I DID HAVE A GO AT RENDERING, I rendered out afew frames, but only a little white shape appeared where Walker's head was, and it rentered out as several layers, I didn't know enough about the third years render settings to render it out in good quality so for now the previews will have to do, I will get hold of a copy of Pirates of the Produce Aisle once its all completed.

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