The window into your soul - the important part of eyebrows and eye animation

It's funny people just don't know how true it is when someone says "I don't know, his eyes just spoke to me". Though it is both the eyebrows and the eyes that play such a important role.

Eyebrows show feelings

Eyebrow mirror the what eyes are trying to feel, the eyebrows are what makes the eyes crinkle up in a smile since the cheeks are being pushed up the eyebrows push down. It makes a pleasing shape that the other person  can just looks and knows what they are feeling. Have you noticed a "fake" smile before? the eyebrows are nearly neutral, they often say that "his eyes don't crinkle at the corner". People that shave their eyebrows off or have botox injections to this part, people find that they seem "expressionless".

Eyes show thought

Eyes mimic what the person is thinking, not so much the feeling. Why should they? they have the eyebrows to do that job. 

Eyes can tell you a lot about what the person is trying to talk about (the cogitative thought pattern for most people is this "he's talking about that", they have to dive through their memories to find a conclusive match to what the person is talking about and then say "ah, yes I had a trip to Canada once" even if the person is talking about their recent trip to India, the most relevant memory that the person can dredge up is going to Canada) So you will see their eyes dive around in their memory, it might be a simple "flick" and then back to the talker again if the memory is not that long ago, a week or so. Would be longer if the memory is quite awhile ago, the person might remember going to Canada but trying to remember what they did there .  

It can also be the deciding factor when you first meet someone if they seem to not maintain eye contact and their eyes are roving you might say "I didn't really like that person, his eyes are shifty". 

Though usually is just because he might be shy and remembered that he left his lecture notes at home, panicking about it and thinking that "did he feed the cat before he came here?"

They say that it is more likely that the person that is trying to keep more direct eye contact with you even if they are finding it more uncomfortable is the liar, with the appropriate body language of course.  

Eyes are important in role of  sight, but out of the two pupils in the picture do you find more attractive?

Good for you, you chose the larger pupil... It's a trick question, you know why? We are designed to find larger pupils more attractive because of the one thing. 

It shows attraction, if the person is in shock or disgust the pupil shrinks to a pinpoint and if the person loves something that or is showing interest/attraction in someone the pupils dilate to might even be nearly to the outer edge of the eye. 

You can see if someone remembers and recognises you from this, their eyes will get bigger. 

The impact of arcs.

Tracking your arcs are important, life has always has arcs, the joints move in a pivot or hinge motion leading to natural arcs. Muscles move in away to support the skeleton structure, making sure that all movement is stabilised.

Found a free plugin to track your arcs in Maya, if your tired of drawing on your screen Download here

Learning about muscles

Skeletal muscles are the ones that really concern us and are the muscles that cover the entire skeleton. Without them we could not move and they make up around 50% of our body weight.

Each muscle can only be contracted, and so can only move in one direction. Every muscle has an opposing muscle which runs either side of the bone, and works in unison. When one muscle contracts, the other relaxes.

• In concentric contraction, the force generated is sufficient to overcome the resistance, and the muscle shortens as it contracts. This is what most people think of as a muscle contraction.

• In eccentric contraction, the force generated is insufficient to overcome the external load on the muscle and the muscle fibers lengthen as they contract. An eccentric contraction is used as a means of decelerating a body part or object, or lowering a load gently rather than letting it drop.

• In isometric contraction, the muscle remains the same length. An example would be holding an object up without moving it; the muscular force precisely matches the load, and no movement results.

• In isotonic contraction, the tension in the muscle remains constant despite a change in muscle length. This can occur only when a muscle's maximal force of contraction exceeds the total load on the muscle

Websites:

http://www.bodybuildersguide.com/how-muscles-work/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_contraction

Educating people to the world of "Animation"

It's funny how fast peoples eyes glaze over after you tell them that you are an animator,
 though saying that, they do sometimes ask the question.. do you do hand drawn animation?... or they say "oh, that's great my kids love pixar/disney"

It's funny how fast people dismiss the art that we call our own, it is like the magician "oh we seen this trick before, he just hides it up his sleeve".
 People are easy to dismiss something that they think is easy "you just sit there in front of the computer and move the character around and that takes you three weeks or so to do 10 seconds ???"

 (Believe me, I know I had a stint as QA games tester, I always wanted to kill the people that used to say " all you do is sit there and play games, and you get paid for that??
No, you check that user can play the game, that means playing the game over and over, checking that the walls and floors don't have areas that you can fall through, that you are collecting the right trophies and communicating the bugs encountered back to the right department with right wording.)

It's time to fight as Animators, to educate the general audience. next time someone comes up to you say that your a "animation control technician" explain how hard it is "trying to control the outcome so that the product is realistic to the public" that it, the product "has to go through rigorous Quality Assurance (critiques and directors) and that you are personally in charge of your section of the product and that you have to put in the hours even overtime to put it out there" and that sector that you work in " invests and makes millions of dollars per year with these products"

If they ask if they can see the product, just say "oh, yeah sure I think one is showing at the local cinema"

Understanding body language

Found this great little site called "Ultimate Body language" the have a great page on what our face reveals , also interesting The need to know basics and Body Emblems but there is some really nice stuff on this blog so go for a trawl not just read the ones I have pointed out to you.I love this little excerpt, so true "In our personal opinions, the feet are the best tools for reading body language.  And the reason for this is that we are all so conscious about our torsos, arms, face and voice that is it often difficult to read what they are thinking.  However we all seem to forget about our feet, which can show boredom, who they fancy, deceit and where they would rather be." 

Overlap and Follow through with Alison Sanders

The new Animation Mentor newsletter had a great video with Megan Sanders explaining how to use Overlap and Follow through.

Not getting lost while your animating.

The thing that I find when I'm animating, is how fast you can go from knowing where you want to go to five minutes later getting completely and utterly lost in you're animation.

Then you're stuck and you can't go forwards or backwards because you might of lost part of your "really, really awesome" blocking but you have in turn made some "really sweet" poses or keys later along the time line.

Firstly did you do your planning? is there anything to fall back on when your stuck, lost and alone in the middle of your animation. Video reference? did you take it more than once so if a pose doesn't work you have more of an idea how you can lay out other poses. How did your character dialogue sound? have you written out what you thought the character was feeling through their dialogue. Expressing thoughts by thumbnails, writing out or expressing the major beats in timing on pieces of paper. This is your map, take care of it this will be the decider between whether you will be able to get to your destination on time or you will be in a highly stressed, fully caffeinated state and crying in front of the computer while your deadline starts being a thing of the past and you really have to work to catch up.

Secondly does it feel real to you? It's like watching a really bad soapy on tv and asking yourself why it's not believable. The actors seemed forced, the emotions seem not genuine and the actors really don't care (they seem to only be there for the paycheck). Does your character make you laugh, do they make you feel like crying? Gestures need to be consistent, timing needs to be consistent to the character's emotions (what if you argue that you are trying to animate a robot, go and watch the "Iron Giant" or "Wall e"see if you don't pick up that he has feelings). Try your scene on someone else, the better is someone that doesn't know how to animate because they are not looking a frame 48 since the character has not got offset "eye blinks", they will pick up straight away if the character is not showing any emotion. It's "like there stiff, moves too much, too jerky" or my favorite "something looks wrong". Do not, repeat do not re animate over your scene, take what is good and weed out the bad if you have problems at this stage you have not done any of what you need to do first, if you haven't got your map, it's your fault that you have got lost.


Thirdly, Believe in yourself. You are the animator, you are the master and commander of the scene. Sure you might be doing the animation for someone else but unless you have the producer/director sitting there animating your scene, it is your own to express. You are always going to feel like you can make it better, everyone does. But it is up to you to take your mistakes and learn from them. Don't be scared of getting lost if you know that you can get out, then it can be quite exhilarating to understand and experiment with your map. That's how you get better, understanding why you did it in the first place and how to avoid it next time your animating. Even better is if you can learn from other peoples mistakes as well as your own. Don't be afraid to ask questions and learn more about "humanity" the one animal as animators we are always trying to imitate.

Are you animating the Head to tell a story?

It's interesting... another post :) please comment if you find any of these posts interesting.

Another thing I have noticed recently... do you have your head to tell a story? do you know that at least 90 to 80% of our communication is done non-verbally i.e body language. That is heaps of body cues, micro expressions, and general posture that we as animators are able to communicate to a our audience.

The first we look at humans, is straight at their faces, we try to seek out eye contact although then we move on to their nose or mouth to avoid staring at them straight in the eyes, which we find extremely uncomfortable .. (unless we are trying to avoid them altogether by averting our gaze and turning our bodies away from them). but the usual the pattern we create is this one:

So most of our first impression as well as when the person is talking, is of this triangle, although when you get in a more of personal relationship, you maintain eye contact with them longer and for an increased period and the triangle that you create with your eyes becomes longer taking in the whole torso.

 And that animators... is why we need to turn the head into a home field advantage, this is where you have to explain that your character is in fact "real", it feels and also has human moments, and in turn you create empathy in the audience with for your character.

Timing is important in this endeavour, if you make your blinks or your eye movement too slow the audience will wonder if your character is half asleep or just not quite there. The eyes are a tracking tool, defining movement, making out shapes. Try to watch someone's eyes, the eyes stop for a couples of seconds and then with nearly like a "flick" they are moved again. Blinks are when the brain is trying to process the information, or to keep the eyes moist and to protect them from harm. In some cases when someone is extremely stressed or tired the blinks become longer as the brain is trying to give the body a "rest" from the world.

The normal human emphasises their speech with their heads, it curious to watch but it is so much  fun to watch someone's head to bob and weave to what they are saying. Sometimes they have subtle head shakes and head nods like they themselves are disagreeing or agreeing on what subject that they are talking about.

The head leans to the side or toward the speaker if the subject is quite interesting to them, you can tell if it is not, the head remains in the straight up and down or propped up with a elbow, this also works while someone is talking on a telephone although the person is not there. The head if one the hands is close to it, the head will lean in that particular direction if it is trying to support the body language that the rest of the body is giving off.

The head also can show the "positive" or the "negative" of the characters thoughts, if sad or depressed the head as well as the rest of the body slumped like they cannot or don't have enough energy to support themselves, the head might be nearly resting on their chest if it is "nearly the end of their world" and the head might drag, timing wise behind the body movement.

Angry the head is nearly in a straight up and down position, it is going to react like the rest of the body in a "choppy"  movement like the body is a blade trying to hack away whatever's is bothering them, the head might do two things, lead if the person is really lost it (I suggest running really fast) or be constrained in movement, if the person is trying to control their temper.

Happy or in Love (just think of "singing in the rain, you get the picture), the head will be trying to levitate the rest of the body closer to the sky, it will be turned upwards and it will be trying to lead the rest of the body, the body will be dragging the body behind it and you could do some really nice work with feet nearly on tip -toe with the vitality that the character is feeling.

Now... I think I have done enough, writing, animators don't do well with reading, they like pictures. But before I finish. Still remember that there is the rest of the body to animate and that is going to support what head is trying to tell the audience, also know that people after they look at the character's head are going to take in the rest of the body, be warned.

You might be missing out, by animating only the big bits.

It's funny since it has been awhile that I have actually posted my own points. But here it goes...

I'm going to put this in Big and Bold
"You are missing Bit's that need animated!!!"


Unless you one of these people already,  there is a myriad of thing's that you forget to fill into your animation...

Point.. 1 the Neck
People don't notice how much your neck does, it alone moves your head and supports it and in turn it is only made of 7 spinal bones from C1 to C7. if you miss out animating the neck your character will look like it has a floating head and also you miss out a vital point of your line of action, also you can make it counter react the body with the head and neck turned away from the other character, making the your character not seem to be interested in the character and more interested in something else.

Point.. 2 The shoulder blades
If you have controllers for the shoulder... use them it makes the the character move more realistic. The shoulder blade moves freely in space, it is not tethered other then the point at the clavicle. It then in turn holds in place the head of the shoulder in place.That is why is can achieve so much moment, don't think that action starts at the shoulder think of it like the movement starts at the shoulder blade.

Point ... 3 the wrist.
Now this is what really gets me, the wrist has some great movement in it. I'm not saying that spend your allotted time on it but know that is there. the wrist is rotated by the two bones in the lower arm and by the tendon's that originate from the elbow. The movement is constricted from the shape of the bones and the the two bones being rotated. Don't just animate the fingers, remember the wrist.

Point... 4 the ankle... the last thing I will include in this post I promise.

The ankle I love it. It braces and supports the body but it also can show attitude (just think how much it does on a sneak). it is also like the wrist in the way it is controlled by tendons that are part of the muscles of the lower leg. You can also see a lot of different walks because of the ankle sometimes getting weak on one side so the body has to compensate with turning the leg inwards or outwards and if it has been going on for a long time the body will have curved the spine to the side that is weak to support the balance of weight.

So before cleaning up, adding eye moment, arcs and lip-sync. Just remember have you thought of the easily forgotten areas of the body that can give you attitude?

Head, Ribs and Hips

Nice post on Mark Kennedy's blog, the Temple of the Seven Golden Camels about how much expression is in the body from the things we take for granted, Head Ribs and Hips part 1

Body Language, Micro expressions, Eye contact

I found while I was looking for something awesome to post a couple of blog posts from John Suler, and before you ask about it no, he is not an Animator, in matter of fact he is a photographer. You could ask why have I put up links to this, I will tell you that in fact a Photographer's work is much harder that being an animator. Just think of taking your own work squashing it into a one Frame and then expressing what you wanted to say... it's hard right??

But he had some good posts on:
Body language, Visualizing and Verbalizing, Eye to Eye (please note that you usually don't get a animated character to make contact to a viewer), Facial Asymmetry and "Character, Micro expressions, S lines and Psychological lines. 


And before you leave to have your cup of coffee, here is some really interesting Q.A. from Richard Davidson taken from The "Salon" interviewed on Emotions and how that affects the brain, his book “The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live, and How You Can Change Them,” .

There’s been stigma around the study of emotion in the past. Some people still frame emotion as pointless metaphysical leftovers that result from physiological processes. I think that your work has really come to show that that’s not true. In your view, what are the evolutionary and practical purposes of emotion and does it have intrinsic value?

I think that emotions are such an important part of our experience and behavior.. They came about over the course of evolution for a reason; to promote survival — to facilitate the adaptation of organisms to their environment. Emotions evolved to solve specific kinds of problems that arose over the course of our history. They wouldn’t be such a robust part of our experience if they didn’t have this deep evolutionary origin. Having said that, it’s also the case that we now live in an environment that is vastly different from our evolutionary origins. So some of the emotions that played a very important role in our past can be maladaptive when they are triggered in response to stimuli in our current environment. This is why developing strategies to better regulate our emotions may be particularly important for us now.

In the beginning of the book you lay out a theory that each of us has a certain unique Emotional Style, split up into six components. What are these six emotional dimensions?

One is Resilience, which refers to how quickly or slowly you recover from adversity. The second is Outlook; the duration that a person’s positive emotion persists. Then there is Context, and that is the extent to which we modulate our emotional responses in a context-appropriate way. So for example, when we are with our boss we know that it’s not permissible to discuss the same topics we might discuss with our spouse. That’s called context modulation. The fourth is Social Intuition, the sensitivity to social cues, the extent to which a person is sensitive to facial expressions or vocal expressions. The fifth is Self Awareness, the extent to which a person is aware of signals within their own body, which are important to emotion. Finally, Attention, how focused or scattered you are. Attention isn’t often thought of as part of emotional style, yet our work indicates that it significantly contributes to a person’s emotional makeup. Is your attention easily pulled by stimuli in the environment or are you able to more skillfully focus your attention on what it is you wish to attend to.

Another study that I found really interesting and amusing involved women who had recently had cosmetic Botox injections. How did the results speak to this mind-body connection?

That’s a great example. Beginning with Darwin’s book in 1892, “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” we have known that facial expressions are very important for emotion, and recent theories suggest that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain and influence the emotional state of a person through that feedback. It suggests that if we eliminate feedback, as Botox does, we deprive the brain of certain signals that it uses to determine one’s own emotional state. The women in our study were getting Botox in the muscle just above the eyebrow, temporarily paralyzing it. That particular muscle is used in frowning and several different negative emotions. What we found is that Botox injections actually impaired their capacity to perceive negative emotion when they read negative sentences, and this suggests that we use our bodies to help decode the emotions of others by subtly simulating their emotions and mirroring their emotional state with mini-facial expressions of our own. If we can’t make those facial expressions because our face is paralyzed, then our ability to understand their emotional state is impaired.

Unique Acting Choices

Found another great blog, by Avner at Avenriginal.

What he says "A few years back I was fortunate enough to attend an animation masterclass by Andrew Gordon of Pixar. As part of the masterclass he was kind enough to take a look at some of my old animation tests and gave me some useful feedback on my work.
One of the main points he made (among many others) was about unique acting choices.Whenever we create performances and bring characters to life, we must be very specific and try to avoid the cliche. We need to know why the character is doing what he/ she is doing, or where she/ he come from, what’s their status, where are they going to etc, etc."

He has up there,  Unique Acting Choices Part one, Part two and Part three
I also like his post on The Power of Posing 

Miyazaki, with powerful words.

Found on Don Bluth's Animation Forum.

I love the bit when Miyazaki is asked "is it that they have the feeling and can't draw it? or they just don't get the feeling?" and he replies "that in both cases they are inadequate"

Learning the Concept of Spacing

 Spacing is the hardest thing in the world to learn and put into a scene. With a scene with dialogue you need to emphasise to "favour" parts of the scene with emotions, timing and poses and this is all Spacing.You can also understand some of the importance of it if you look at your video reference, why are you putting more emphasis into part of it into instead of another part, why does that pose, that gesture feel more natural to you then another that you have recorded yourself doing. Animation is not the process of doing it is the process of feeling and asking why? why push key frame on frame 36? why get out my comfort zone and actually try to process what's actually going around me (actions/gestures, emotions) as I get up to when I go to bed? Clue: its about becoming a better animator. 

One of my old teachers, Ian Lacey has put on his blog Animation Garden, about learning the concept of Spacing.


Overcoming hurdles for teaching and learning Spacing - Part1 and Part 2

Revisiting Spungella

If you haven't already been over to Jean-Denis Haas blog, Spungella your missing out on something great... If you have already got it in your bookmarks, have you looked at these posts?


What should I Animate? part one and part 2
And I can animate, now what? part 1 and part 2

Body Language in Animation.

I found a really nice page on Body Language in Animations. You can find it here.

Kenny Roy, 24 hours

Kenny Roy has on his site 24 hours of video tutorials free to view and download, If you haven't seen any of them yet go and have a look at the Marathon page

animation exercise ...do not take lightly

Animation is a art form with the freedom of bringing anything that you could wish to the life, unfortunately like anything you need to keep up the exercise or you don't get the results that you were hoping for.
Mini challenges... Through the 11 second club