Props

Added curtains for the window, made the goblin-couple, shelves for the walls, lamps, flour, and rolling pin.

The wife had some plastic surgery.

I've made the wife more appealing- added hair and some decorations for her dress.

The shots of the star

As I wrote in my previous post I wondered if the first shots of the twinkling star looked alright. Deryck and I had already talked about these shots: as you can see at o:09 sec from my original previz the first shot of the star was a mid-shot/long-shot.



He advised me to make this shot a close-up of the star instead. I agreed with his suggestion, however I wondered how I could move from the star, to the "magic" opening of the book, and then show the gingerbread man. The star twinkle, the book opening and the characters reaction are three different actions that occurs pretty much at the "same" time. I wanted to show this- fluidly and and with clarity for the audience. At first I just added the close-up of the star, and then made a cut to the long shot that jibs down to the book. It was at this point I wrote the previous blog-post asking "how does it look NOW then"?.




I saw that there was something about it that I just did not like- but I was unsure of what it was. The cut between the at 0:09 sec and the following shot felt wrong, and the whole "operation" with moving the camera from the star to the gingerbread man- it just didn't feel right.

Deryck looked at it, and instantly said- "your close up of the star has much space screen- left. Since your character is placed right of the star, then your screen-space should be screen- RIGHT.

Also you should make your jib-down shot have more of a ease in and out- it moves to fast!". These things I hadn't thought about at all. (I guess that experience with a REAL camera would do me some good- and give me a better instinct/feeling for how a camera could/should move in a 3D software like max actually.)

The third advice he gave me was: "when the camera moves down and shows the book opening, don't stop- let it rotate or move back so that the character is also included in the shot".

I thought about what he said- and realized that these suggestions could solve my "problem"- that I wanted the three actions (star, book, characters reaction) to fluidly appear to happen almost at the same time.

I eagerly made the changes- rendered out- and once more showed Deryck the result.
I was still not happy with the cut at 0:09 though.

Untitled from Lisa Hvidsten on Vimeo.

Now Deryck said- "much better, but you know what I think would look really cool?
- If you show the characters first reaction to the star twinkle, BEFORE the mid-shot of the star when camera jibs down. So we discussed this for a little while- and agreed that the natural thing would be for the character to first react to the STAR twinkle, then show that the book opens, and show the characters reaction to this.

It is silly that a thing like this can make a person happy- but I actually felt real happiness and excitement at this point, because I realised that the suggestion that Deryck now had would make the shots like I wanted them to look. I would have fluid motion, clarity of actions, and no jumpy cuts of the star- because a shot of the character would occur in the middle of them. We had successfully solved all the issues with the shots that bothered me. En eureka-feeling really.

It now looks like this:

Untitled from Lisa Hvidsten on Vimeo.

Nice- yeah? :)

SHADING ISSUE:

I've always wanted to experiment with toon shading. When people are asked "which animated film is your favourite?" you get answers like "little mermaid", "The jungle book", "Robin Hood", "Lion King" etc... Probably every one of us get a dreamy look in our eyes when we think about such films.. We all agree that shrek is cool right.. And that toy story rocks.. But do we get that warm feeling in our heart? I know I don't...

When I first dreamed of being an animator, I wanted to do puppet animation actually. My second choice was 2D animation, and 3D actually came third. However- since there was no school I could go to and learn puppet or 2D animation, then I was "stuck" with 3D animation. Well, the point is- I've wanted to experiment with toon shading.. I am sick of all those polished CG renderings.. I am sick of glossiness and caustics, sick of perfection, sick of reality. I do not care how well you rendered out that teapot.. It doesn't make me FEEL anything.

So.. I thought- "I`ll show them- I`ll make my film toon shaded".. Not like flat shading no, "real" toon shading- like you see in old Disney movies. I did some research and learned that the technique they used to paint the scenes in the disney classics is called GUACHE. I studied a lot of shorts on YouTube..

What I also discovered was that ink lines are only included on the objects and characters that are animated.. No ink-lines on backgrounds or static objects. Also, the shading on moving characters and objects is simple. No shadows on them. I felt really excited about my deductions.. And when I found a shader called "guace" I was in heaven. My film was definitely going to look like this.. I started to shade my scene..




The fall from heaven- and back to cg-reality:

One thing that I had not thought about was the fact that a toon shader looks like a toon shader because of the limited amount of how it is affected by lights... SO when I applied toon-shading to the big surfaces- like the kitchen bench and the walls-
I lost the night/Christmas/cosy feeling in the scene. Everything looked FLAT! I am sure that this could be solved in some way- but I did not have the time to experiment it for too long.. I realised that in order to stay on the time-schedule I had to make a choice- either keep the toon shading- and not have contrast in lighting, or have keep the lighting- and not have toon shading.

I chose to "kill my darlings" - the toon shading. I felt that the lighting was important, and that to keep the toon shading would be stubborn of me. To have a "cool" toon- shader in a scene that did not make you feel anything- because everything looks flat would be...wrong.

So back to 3D-shaders it was:






Looks all right- she grumbled.. :)

Hi!

I have been animating for a little while now, but I felt the need for shortening the story a little bit- to get less seconds to animate. I have removed about 12 seconds of animation. Fortunately my story was developed a long time ago, so I really know it well- and feel that the changes I have made doesn't ruin the story. But feel free to disagree, and give feedback if you want to:)

YouTube-LINK

I have removed:

* The part where he sits down beside the dough.

* The part where the character lays down in "his" cookie-cutter.

* The part where he removes the dough from the wife, and the part when he carries her to the oven.

* The part where he decorates the wife with a button.

* Some walking, when man and wife approaches each other at the end..


Also I have added a new shot at 0:25 sec, we look at the character from a low angle.. Also a new pose here..he looks at himself.

Besides any feedback in general, I could use some feedback on the shots of the star.. From 0:09 sec to 12 sec. Does it look OK? Deryck mentioned a close-up of the star would look nice..should it be a closer close up? Is it OK that the camera moves?
I have gone sligthly blind when it comes to the camerawork in my production at this point..looked too much at it I suppose!

PS: the previz you are looking at does not contain any of my "final" animation. I am currently animating in another file. I use the previz-file to test out different things, and implement the changes to my "main" file.

The book!

In my story, the recipe book plays an important role. I want it to open in a "magical" way.. I have found a super-great script for animating page turns: Book rigger
I still need to animate the book itself. I`ll see if I find a good/easy/fast way of doing it. OR I`ll just let the book be open, and just animate the pages that turns (with the script).

I recently discussed the issue of copyright with my teachers. I thought I might just download some pictures to use in my book. The question of copyright, and all the "ifs" since I am a student..made me decide not to download and use images. I made them myself, and this probably didn't steal more time than it would to find images and dealing with copyright. I am not great at drawing- but at least the images are mine:) I write this blog in English to give my teacher Deryck a chance to understand me, however I am not supergood in English.. So if you see any spelling mistakes in my pictures below- please let me know;)

The character

It is a little while since I finished the gingerbreadman- character, however I want to share with you how I made him.

It is almost hard to avoid him looking like gingy from shrek..
I mean, a gingerbreadman is a gingerbreadman. But I have made my own design anyway.

My gingerbreadman looks like this:



The arms and legs are longer than gingys, also I don't have all the decorations that gingy has.

I never liked gingys mouth for some reason; The "circle" that deforms..I just don't like it. But I see that for gingy, who is a
talking character- this is the most natural solution. However- my character will not say anything, so I can design the mouth the way I find most appealing. A simple mouth.

For the face I have made eyes, eyebrows and mouth movable. He is now able to show a range of emotions. The eyebrows can move up and down, sideways and also bend to show both sadness, anger and surprise. The eyes can blink, and also has two basic emotions, happiness and sadness. The mouth can show surprise, sadness, happiness, and calmness. I used morpher. I have little experience with morpher- but after a while I got the hang of it:





For the body I choose to make it as simple as possible, no decorations- except the buttons. I think it looks OK! When I skinned the character
I soon discovered that the topology could be better. At least three edge-loops is required to make elbows and knees to deform nicely. So I had
to update the topology a couple of times before I found just the solution I needed. Now the character has 2 100 polys on the body- and a total of 10 000 polys including the face. It functions well. I really dislike skinning- I must say. The whole process is just..boring and time consuming!



I chose to use the brad- noble skeleton rig. A little while back, I tried the rig- just for fun. And I immediately fell in love with it. I was suddenly able to make good animation, in much shorter time than I am used to. So I chose to use it for rigging my character. To make this "natural"- sized rig fit a 15 cm gingerbread man I had to rescale the rig. I bought brads re-size script. Works like a charm!







The wife is also pretty simple. I consider making some "hair" on her- if I have the time. Her movement is limited, so skinning her was not as hard as for the gingerbread man. I have given her a slightly pin-up ish design. If Marilyn Monroe was a gingerbread-lady I think she would like something like this! However- I did not want to make the design TOO sexy. In the context of the innocent story, I think it would be wrong.