Scene 7

Animation Procedures:
In this scene, Pigham gets up from hitting his head on the tree, taking a few seconds to regain conciousness. The main problem that I have when it comes to animating, is making a character move without the use of footstep mode. I feel that I am not at that stage where I can confidently animate a character walking fluidly without help. So I was not looking forward to making Pigham get up from the floor and move back to the middle of the path.

Having said that, I think that I managed to pull it off quite successfully. I made him push himself up and then stumble backwards. When people stumble, their movements are all over the place, so I didnt have to worry about making Pigham perfectly walk backwards. Even the part where he spins on one foot kind of works!

In order to get the eyes to move in circles, I just set key frames with them in different positions. I could have used 2 pointers, but I would only have been doing the same thing, only setting the key frames on them rather than the eyes.

Character Personality:
Pigahm has just hit his head quite hard, so understandably, it takes him a little while to fully regain conciousness. As I just mentioned, he stumbles backwards. In order to create this effect, I put a slight spin on the entire biped, as well as individual sections such as the legs. I believe that it creates a convincing effect.

The spinning eyes is also a standard cartoon effect which cearly shows that the character has been hurt and not fully concious. I made sure to give him a blank stare when he snaps out of his confusion in order to convey how he not quite sure what happened.

Camera:
The camera simply follows him from behind to infront of him. I wanted the camera to end up directly infront of him just like the old camera did. This is because I felt that for the very last scene, the camera should follow up exactly where this one ends.

Problems:
As I mentioned above, I had some trouble getting Pigham to get up, but I believe that I successfully pulled it off in the end.

Also, for the final time, I had the bleeding effect problem.

Scene 6

Animation Procedures:
In this scene, Pigham attempts to jump into the tree head first in order to knock the apple down. This scene mainly consisted of editing the biped.

Character Personality:
With the old camera, the audience would have been able to see Pigham jump from one side of the screen to the tree. They would also have been able to see him struggling in the air by waving his arms and legs around and keeping his eye closed. Unfortunately, with the new camera angle, the camera is much closer to the tree. This means that Pigham is only seen literally just before he hits the tree, which reduces the humourous effect of the scene. It still works, I just would have preferred it from the old angle (the reason why the animation was going to be all at one angle was for this particular scene).

When he hits his head on the tree, his eyes fully open and his ears go on end. He also remains completely still, just like some cartoon characters do when they hit their head. Again, reinforcing the cartoony nature of the character, he remains in the same position where he hits his head for a few seconds, before slowly sliding down the tree in the same position. Only as he gets to the bottom of the tree does his body relax.

Camera:
The camera is in the same postition as the previous scene. This is because it increases the dramatic effect of Pigham walking off screen before suddenly reappearing.

Problems:
Once again, I suffered from the bleeding effect. I knew how to fix it, but it just took some time to get him to remain perfectly still between key frames.

Scene 5

Animation Procedures:
In this scene, Pigham jumps on the tree, attempts to climb it but falls down. As he only had to jump once in this scene, I didnt bother using the jump mode. Getting Pigham to fit onto the tree was a bit of a problem, due to his snout poking out so much. I avoided this issue by having him at a slight angle on the tree. So from the cameras angle, it looked as though he was holding onto it normally, but from behind he was floating in the air.

Animating Pigham from laying down to standing up was quite difficult. It took me a while to get the animation to look fluid enough to be believable. I also had to animate him walking off screen myself, as it is not possible to use footstep mode after the biped has already been animated. While I am pleased with the result, I am thankful that he walks off screen as quickly as he does, because my walking animation was nowhere near as fluid as the built in walking animation.

Character Personality:
When Pigahm lands on the tree, he has a shocked expression on his face to indicate how difficult it is for him to keep himself up. This is further reinforced by him twitching as he struggles to climb upwards, before falling off. I made his eye twitch again when he lands on the floor to show he anger as failing to reach the apple again. He also walks off screen in the same position as the angry woman from my body movement research.

Camera:
The camera closely follows Pigham up and down the tree, mainly focusing on his face, allowing the audience to identify how he is feeling.

Problems:
As my original camera was mainly all at one angle, the lighting was perfect. However, as the camera angles are constantly changing with the new camera, the lighting was bound to be off in some scenes. In this scene, the camera starts off at an angle which shows a little of Pigham's back. Due to the position of the camera, this side of him was almost completely darkened. I didnt want this in the animation, so I added another omni light behind him to lighten him up. While this did work, it does cause a slight problem with the next scene. The new omni light is not present in the proceeding scene, meaning that when the scenes cut together, there is a noticable lighting difference.

I did not get around to fixing this. However, when I do, I will simply add the new omni light to all proceeding scenes in order to keep the continuity of the light.

Nother major problem was the bleeding effect which i have mentioned before. Due to me moving Pigham's position between key frames, he would slightly move between every key frame. This meant I was not able to keep him perfectly still. I fixed this by flattening the movement line on the dope sheet.

Scene 4

Animation Procedures:
This is a short scene in which Pigham looks at his hands. There were no major animation procedures here. Mainly just moving the biped around.

Character Personality:
Pigham, still angry from not reaching the apple, looks at his hands in preperation for a jump. I wanted him to keep the angry expression on his face while looking at his hands because I thought that it made him seem determined to get the apple.

Camera:
The camera is a close up of Pigham, at a slightly lowered angle. This creates a dramatic effect which strengthens Pigham's determination when he looks at his hands.

Problems:
The only slight problem that I had was that this scene, as well as scenes 5 and 6 were all originally 1 scene. I had to split them up as I wanted to use different camera angles for each part. To do this I had to make a copy of each scene and change the position of the camera.

Scene 3

Animation Procedures:
In this scene, Pigham attempts to reach the apple by jumping. I attempted this in a few different ways. The first way was to simply move Pigham by hand and place key frames all over him to make it look like he was jumping. However, not only did this look awful, but it was also quite time consuming.

I soon realised that in footstep mode, there was also the option of jumping. So I used it and the results came out perfectly and I only had to edit 1 or 2 frames. In order to get him to jump at different angles, I simply dragged the footsteps on the ground to another position and the biped automatically jumped to that angle. To get him to stay in the air a little longer on the third jump, I just made the keyframes between him jumping and landing further apart.

Character Personality:
I made Pigham jump 3 times in a row, with each jump getting progressively higher. On the third jump, I made him float in the air while he waved his arms for a little while. Again, this is another cartoon effect. Cartoon characters generally are able to defy all rules when it comes to this sort of thing, such as being able to run off a cliff, and the run back again on thin air. I felt that allowing Pigham to do this as well would help strengthen his personality.

After the third jump, he becomes aware that he wont be able to reach it by jumping and becomes angry. I conveyed this by having him fold one of his arms, have one of his ears pop upwards and have him tapping one of his feet. This creates the impression of fustration. I also had his eyes slightly glance away into the sky in order show that he is thinking of something.

Camera:
My original intentionwas to have the camera at a set angle for the rest of the animation. I eventually changed this to create more cinematic camera angles. While I do like how the camera starts off at the height of the apple and lowers down to his level to show that he has no hope of jumping that high, I think that the old camera angle looking directly at him a few feet away was equally as good. This was mainly because at this angle, it looks as though he is putting more effort into jumping for the apple. With the new angle, it almost looks like he is just randomly jumping. However, I do think that the new one brings more atmosphere to the animation.

Problems:
I had no major problems with this scene.

Scene 2

Animation Procedures:
In this scene, Pigham's pupils change to apples. In order to get this effect, I created a copy of each eye and then placed a UVW map of the apple on the copies. I then made these eyes invisible up until the point when Pigham closes his eyes. At this point, his normal eyes become invisible, and the copied apple eyes become visible. When Pigham opens his eyes, it create the illusion of his pupils changing.

Character Personality:
Charcter's pupils changing into food, or love hearts etc is frequently seen in cartoons and animstions. I believe it even happens to the character Scrat in one of the Ice Age films, which Pigham is loosely based on. This, and the fact that his body is completely still emphesises how much he is concentrating on the apple and shows how much he wants it. The background was also left blank, which creates a blackened effect. This further reinforces how much Pigham wants the apple, as it is almost as if nothing else in the world matters.

Camera:
I wanted an extreme close up of Pigham's eyes in order to emphesise how much he wants the apple. I made the camera slightly pan across his body in order to show how he wasnt moving.

Problems:
It took me a while to a while to come up with a way of replacing his pupils with apples. However, I eventually remembered that I actually used the visibility trick in my animation last year and sloved the problem by using that.

Opening Title and Scene 1

Inlcuding the opening and ending titles, the complete animation lasts 1 minute 20 seconds. When editing my animation together, I classed every camera cut as a new scene, making 11 in total. I will be briefly discussing each scene, going over how I made them, any problems that I had and so on.



This is the opening title to the animation. I didnt want the animation to just go straight in to it, so I decided to include an opening title in order to introduce the character's name to the audience, and to allow the music to nicely flow into the beginning of the animation itself. I also used an apple as the dot of the "i" to hint to the audience that an apple will have some significance in the animation.




Animation Procedures:
In this scene I wanted Pigham to walk along the path and then stop in his tracks when he notices the apple. I used footsteps mode to get him to walk and luckily, most likely because of the compact nature of the biped, I didnt have to edit any of the frames.

To get Pigham's eyes to move around, I used a pointer, like how we were taught in Richard's tutorial. The eyes lock onto the pointer and follow it wherever it moves, so I just had to move it and set a key frame at every position.

Character Personality:
Pigham starts off with a relaxed expression at first just to show that he has nothing on his mind. He eventually glances at the apple and looks away, before suddenly realising what he's seen and looks back. When he looks at it the second time, his eyes fully open and his ears and eyebrows go up. This is a typical cartoony expression which shows that the character is concentrating hard on something.

Camera:
I placed the camera at an angle which gave a nice view of both the apple and Pigham. This way, it makes it easier for the audience to identify what Pigham sees.

Problems:
I had one problem in this scene, which I have previously mentioned on this blog. During the animation of this scene was when I found that that using prop as a bone was a bad idea, as it would always follow the position of one of the hands. So Pigham's snout wold move around with one of his arms. To fix this, I just moved his snout back and placed a key frame. After this scene, I removed the prop entirely and replaced it with an FDD box.