Snow simulation in Premiere

Due to the issues faced creating realistic snow simulation in maya I was forced to look at alternate methods. Maya was unable to successfully render snow with Arnold. I first turned to nuke and tried to create snow in this. I have experience in this from a previous module but this simulation looked too regular with very little realism. I then turned to Premiere pro editing software. Using the screen edit overlay interpretation, I was able to add snow effects which can be found at this link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhD5WwCo44

Week 13 progress

         This week seems to have gone quite well, I am still polishing the animation in places with renders adding to the success of the week, User testing has proven that the animation is becoming more emotive and powerful with elements starting to show of some work that I am very proud of. With the pros, however, must come a series of cons, the first of these being the university servers crashing two days in a row, crashing every item of software.

     Secondly is the issue that I have had with adding fluidity to the speaking elements of the animation. The sound has been edited better in other places though and I feel that I just need some time to think through the best possible characterisation and go from there. The audience needs to feel the character's emotions from this.

      Finally, the snow simulation issue is still in place with the rendered shots. I will continue to look into this but it seems like post production snow simulation, via Premiere Pro or Nuke will have to be the way to go.

Here is the week 13 progress. Partly rendered. Partly playblast. 

Words appearing on screen

I'm still having issues with the shot where the character speaks to himself and voices what is going wrong and how he feels. This shot needs to be strong, powerful and full of emotion allowing the audience to understand the character more.

I have tried a few methods to get this shot to work and as of currently it still feels out of place. At the same time however, it is necessary to create the transition from the icy scene to the therapist scene. As of currently, it just doesn't fit. Further feedback and suggestions are required from testing and audience/supervisor feedback would be greatly appreciated at this point in order to create better fluidity.

More test renders week 13

This render is very nice and looks like a cold snowy area where the shadows are cast accurately and the lighting puts the sun at a low level which nicely replicates the low sun that would be in the Arctic.

On this test render the snow looks realistic but stylised and really makes the character look  small highlighting his isolation and loneliness.

Rendered image test

I am very happy with this render. The water is visible with slight reflection as is the ice. The noise that I left on the mountains thanks to lowering diffuse in render settings and texturing has added a more snowy and grainy effect. The sky is fitting to the environment well thanks to the HDRI image that I used for the physical sky.

Here is a link as reference to the HDRI as it is not my own image

http://goodstock-live-images.s3.amazonaws.com/images/db/3698/MK_04302016_001_hdr.jpg

The only issue that I have found is the snow simulation not coming out in the render. I have tried fixing this issue in render settings and with lecturers but in the end regardless of particle size, I have been unsuccessful. The plan now will be to render further and look at possibly creating the snow in post production, using either Premiere Pro or Nuke.

Production schedule update

As of the final week of semester, the production schedule has managed to work quite well. I am currently ahead of the production schedule that was outlined in week 1. I am happy with the overall progress and have managed to successfully animate to a standard that I am comfortable with at this stage. I will now do some more test renders in order to get the environment the way that I want it to be.


 

User testing week 13

What is your Degree Program?

Interactive systems and video game design (3 Year)

What do you think the story is about?

Originally, I thought it was about some sort of tragedy, then I watched further and realised it was mental health. However, I did not expect OCD. This may be because I do not suffer from it more than the animations fault, but it clarified mental health issues.

Comments on the environment and overall timing & pacing of the story?

As I previously said, it was not completely clear until the end of the animation what it was about. I also am slightly unsure the environment is the best choice, the ice was a good idea giving the feeling of aloneness and a feeling that everything around you is falling apart, however the whole setting being in the icecaps, disassociated me from the feelings, as it did not identify with the subject on a personal level and thus didn’t feel the full impact. The idea would be better if you expanded the feelings the animation portraits, to people who do not suffer from OCD, such as starting in a neutral environment and eventually the environment turns to the snow environment

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

Yes, it made me think about how it is to have OCD

Other comments and feedback?

No.

This feedback is interesting as up to now the feedback has been mostly positive, saying that the message has been conveyed clearly. This one does however state that the message was not entirely clear until the end of the animation. This is part of what I was going for, that sudden shock factor at the end but this user found that the icy setting took him out of the emotional aspect of the animation. This contrasts with everyone else. I suppose that is just an element that not every piece can reach every audience.  

What is your Degree Program?

Interactive Systems and Video Game Design (3 Year)

What do you think the story is about?

At first the Animation starts of with an individual walking across a frozen lake and enjoying himself, then the ice begins cracking and the man becomes distressed whilst he attempts to flee from the danger. He finds himself trapped on both sides and after all of the ice cracks and separates leaving him isolated and panicked on a small floating section of ice. He begins wallowing in self agony as the scene transitions to him sitting dejected on the step of an OCD Mental Health Clinic with a Doctor/Nurse reassuring him that he'll be OK. The scene transitions from that to narrated texts and ends on a final text line.

Personally I didn't expect it to head in this direction although the Title "Cracked" conveys a shattering on the mind like how the ice splinters and fractures. I'm not sure exactly what conveys this as OCD as I saw this as more of an Anxiety Attack and the feeling of helplessness the protagonist has in his situation makes it seem more so.

Comments on the environment and overall timing & pacing of the story?

The environment design was decent the background to the tundra looks good. I think the Ice he's walking over could be more translucent to convey to the viewer how fragile it is and the dangerous water underneath, The show Particles look very square and pixelated and square I think a larger snowfall density and a better pixel resolution would improve this aspect.

I think the facial features on the man are well done, they are exaggerated to the point where they convey the emotions probably but not to a point where they become overly cartoon-like. The animations on the man also fall between a nice area of partial exaggeration but grounded in a reality. Another thing I like was the camera following the ice as it cracks and the scene transition from the man's thoughts to outside the clinic.

Another issue I have is with the Audio. The ice cracking sound is very clearly a plastic noise, it lacks the crunch Ice has as it breaks. Also the voice lines that are said seem too quite to be heard properly mainly on the male voice lines, this could be an issue with the Earphones provided but it warrants a check and maybe a re-recording of those line to be more audibly clear and if too loud can then be reduced during the editing process

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

I think there are decent context clues to what is been conveyed but I personally would've have diagnosed his issues not as a form of OCD but rather another form of disorder that causes anxiety and feelings of uselessness 

Other comments and feedback?

I think having him fall into the water and him having to drag himself out of the water and onto the ice island he ends up on would've make the danger of the situation more real to the viewer. Overall I'd say it's pretty decent especially in the character modelling and animating department but I think the theme wasn't conveyed to me as well as I expected

This feedback is great. Lots of depth and adds great context to the animation as well as people believing it to work as anxiety as a whole.

Task list update week 13

Week 12 update

Still some issues that I plan to fix but here is the week twelve progress. Coming to the end of semester, it is all about polishing the animation, making sure the character come across nicely with the story and that the technical aspect is of a good enough standard.

Test Render final scene

Here is a test render of the final shot. I like the lighting and have made the sign smaller, the characters also look good in the shot. Maybe the buildings are still slightly out of style than the rest of the animation. I will take this up again with my supervisor.

Ground texture reference

Image reference for this texture taken from Unreal Engine. The texture is T_Grounds_D.tx    This image is used to create the ground texture in the final scene.

Fixing the little things

As the ice rotates in the following scene, it is subtle. This sort of subtlety also needs to transfer onto the character. In this scene, the rotation tool was manipulated slightly in order to create a subtle character rotation on the ice block giving more of a realistic flow. The shot in question is pictured below. The polishing process continues with fixing different issues.

Aside from this, I have also manipulated the shot where the ice cracks and the character quickly lowers. It felt too slow before with the timing and pacing being off. Having now fixed that, it will be presented in the week 12 progress for supervisor feedback to carry it forward from there. 


The next step will be to fix the shot where the character is looking at the ice cracking in the distance.

Following on from the issue and moving onto the next one, I was able to add some smaller slighter movements in the shot where the character pose was far too static. This now allows the character to have a much more natural feel to it.

Inspirational quotes

Looking through the following websites, there are some very interesting and powerful quotes about OCD.


 http://www.ocdaction.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf-precompiled/inspirational-quotes.pdf

http://youhaveocd.com/2009/08/27/insparational-ocd-quotes/

https://themighty.com/2015/10/what-ocd-feels-like/

(Just some of the many sites relating around anxiety inspirational quotes.)


I eventually settled on this one as it spoke to me more that the others. This was chosen in week 9 but it is only now that I have decided to use it to the best of it's ability.

"The biggest obstacle you'll ever have to overcome is your mind. If you can overcome that, you can overcome anything."

I decided that this quote would be by far the most powerful in my mind from the quotes that I read and even though it seems to stem from a more religious area, this quote still works in relation to anxiety. It appears to be credited to a Marc and Angel and I DO NOT OWN THIS QUOTE. I did originally have a different quote, "You don't have to learn how to control your thought; you just have to stop letting them control you."

This proved to be unsatisfactory and didn't work so I plan to use the new quote and narrate it myself for a more personal approach.

What would a therapist say?

Looking next at the mannerisms of a counsellor/therapist and the speech patterns. "Don't worry, everything is going to be alright" is something that a therapist would not really say. I actually talk to a counsellor on a regular basis and so asked her for her feedback on how a therapist would act.


Response
A therapist would try to maintain professionalism and not try to get too close. They would say something reassuring rather than something definite so as not to give any false hope.

This is interesting as the therapist character therefore will need to say something profound but still not anything that would seem out of the ordinary or unusual.

Image reference: https://aviaryrecoverycenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/see-therapist-after-treatment.jpg
   

Week 12 new sign test

This playblast is to test the layout of the sign in the final shot of the animation. according to the supervisor, the sign could work better on the door rather than be so big and on the top of the building, above the door. Having looked at the shot and the angles at which the shot takes place, the sign doesn't appear so clearly on the door as when the camera pulls out in the original shot.

The sign that i'm using is not mine and can be found at the following link  https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_200_200/AAEAAQAAAAAAAANXAAAAJDNjMDgxYWI0LTAxZGItNGY2Zi04YWYwLTI2YmQ3NGFlYzI1MQ.png

I TAKE NO CREDIT FOR THIS IMAGE


Due to testing this shot and seeing how it doesn't quite work in the areas that highlight proper storytelling, i think that I will continue to have the sign above the door but make it smaller in order to still grab the audiences attention but not be so large to affect the cinematography of the scene

Sound effects week 12

At the start of this week, I met with my supervisor and learnt that the inclusion of wind effects would add to the overall tone and understanding of the animation. So, I plan to use this wind effect for the animation.

Here is the link and reference:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDJ835k4RbU

Howling polar wind SOUND EFFECTS

Morgentau

Published on 2 Mar 2015

Rendering without a watermark

This week I made a discovery. The university has had issues with batch rendering without a watermark due to a licencing issue. It turns out though, if you render using a render sequence rather than a batch render then the render bypasses the watermark issue. The next week will include some further render tests to confirm the rough render time of each frame.

User testing week 12

What is your degree program?

Electronic and Computer Engineering

What do you think the story is about?

A person trying get over their anxiety problem

Comments on the characters and environment

Environment is very suitable for the mental battle going on in the main characters head.

Overall timing and pacing of the story?

Timing was pretty good. Some of the crackling noises didn’t sound right when they were played.

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

I think the message was conveyed properly

Week 11

Here is the video for the Week 11 progress.

Female Voice for Therapist

This week was important in fitting a voice for the character of the therapist. A female voice was needed to create a consoling nature to help the main character. This statement needed to be simple yet powerful and effective.

Here I decided that the perfect line would be,
"Don't Worry, Everything is going to be alright"

The voice actress manages to convey an emotion of sympathy for the main character and seems like she is genuinely fitting the role well.

I will add my chosen clip to the week 11 animation playblast.

User Testing Week 11

Here is some new user testing based on week 11 feedback

What is your degree of program?

·         Bachelor degree on Mechanical Engineering

What do you think the story is about?

·         In my opinion, the story is about a man suffering from depression. As he is walking on an icy surface and every step he takes, it just cracks. This is a metaphor for the struggles in his life and the difficulty upon taking a decision, fearing that it will be a wrong decision. After the cracking, the protagonist ran away, in this case the cracking symbolises the problems and struggles of his life. He was unable to face his problems by running away until he could, which is represented by the water. The water can also being seen as suicide as the man glanced at it and was not able to do it for any longer, shook his head. The facial expression of the man illustrates sadness and loneliness and the body language demonstrates his despair.

Comments on the characters and the environment

·         The main character’s design is simple but effective to transmit the message of the story. The variety of facial expressions are mostly accurate to transmit the message and the feeling of the protagonist. The body language is correctly used to convey the purpose of the video. The environment choice is optimal for the story, as the cold environment shows the feeling of the character and the usage of the cracks on the icy surface to show the struggles and the decisions is a brilliant idea.

Overall timing and pacing of the story

·         The animation is short and its simplicity allows it to effectively transmit meaningful messages to the audience. Every part of the animation is well planned and it has a purpose. The pace of the story is rather fast and powerful so that it grabs the audience’s attention throughout the clip.

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

·         Depending on the audience, it could lead to some misinterpretations as I believe in the end that the video was about OCD however, I interpreted it as about depression because an animated clip, different people have different approaches towards it.

Other comments and feedback

·         Overall the video is very well presented, it raises awareness to a lot of the social problems that the teenagers and undergraduates have nowadays and this messages transmits a powerful message in order to help the people with those problems. 

I am very proud of this feedback as it has managed to hit a lot of the points that I have been aiming for in this project. The message seems to have been conveyed completely, this person having not been told the topic of the animation before viewing it but still picking up on the underlying metaphors. It does seem to be able to work with depression and anxiety as a whole rather than just OCD. Maybe that means that it is adaptable to other anxiety problems and therefore has more global appeal and scope for mental health awareness.

Anticipation of the ice cracking

"Give credit to the viewer."

The viewer knows the shot almost immediately but when a shot is too long and it takes too much time for a character to pick up the gist of the plot point then it can feel arduous and lengthy to the viewer. One such instance where this had become a problem was in the ice cracking segment. As the ice begins to crack, the character stays perfectly still and doesn't move bar a few seconds later when he looks down and then slowly looks back upwards before finally committing to the run. This is far too long and according to user testing, especially from my supervisor that when walking on ice, a person tends to drop down and react suddenly when ice cracks. The character would have his arms outstretched and be looking to keep his balance especially with a character as nervous as this one. 



    https://canadasafetycouncil.org/sites/default/files/tips_for_walking_on_ice_-_boston.com__2.png

Fixing the fall

One element of the animation that was a serious issue was the way that the character falls when the ice begins to shake. Taking some time for research and user feedback has been beneficial as I was able to take the shot and smooth it out, allowing for the character to impact with the ground a lot smoother and sooner. This works much better than before as the viewer can see that there is in fact gravity to the animation instead of the previous weeks falls having far too much of a pause before the transitioning drop comes into play.

Camera issues

The next step is improving camera angles and shots. The supervisor for this project mentioned that the animation needs to give credit to the viewer and not always point out the obvious. So, I have focused a lot on cinematography this week, trying to avoid zooming in and out on the characters too much in order to tell the story. Staging is important in animation and that goes as far as the position of the camera as well. Some of the shots such as the drawn pull back to birdseye shot at the 1:18 mark of the week ten playblast were daunting so I cut it out altogether in favour of a more solid still shot which looks much better in comparison. 


Before

After

Research for animation

The jerky head movements that help to highlight the emotions that the character is feeling in this animation needed to be improved on. Looking at arcs and follow through, I went back to the animations that I had watched and learned about in my first year and went back through the twelve principles of animation in order to better understand and create more anxiety in areas such as anticipation which will be hugely important to this anxious/nervous character animation.

 

                                      Brown Bag Films  

                                   Published on 24 Jan 2017

Text on screen: Font search

The character having his thoughts appear on screen for the week ten portion of the animation was suggested to me by an animation peer and so I decided to test it out and showed it to the supervisor. His response was one that suggested the text could work better with the addition of the dialogue from before but that it would need to be blended better with the overall musical elements of the animation. I plan to look at the font and speed of the animation of the words and add elements based on that.

Here is an interesting document that I read about the science of fonts and how different fonts can make people have different feelings. It breaks down the layout of a document, something that could be easily transferred to a cinematography point of view. It will serve as a valuable piece of information for my post production research.

https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/03/31/science-behind-fonts-make-feel/

Lengthening the beginning shot

As suggested, the opening shot was too fast and jerky in the week ten animation. Because of this, for week eleven, I have lengthened the shot, adding a few more subtle movements and making the camera move into the character as part of a transitioning pan shot before taking the next shot. Also as suggested by my supervisor, I cut the shots between the character walking and the title logo appearing.

Here is the clip as of currently with the fixed elements. I am still not so sure about the fade to black segment before the titles but I will discuss it further with my supervisor. As for the lengthening of the opening shot, it definitely looks better as it works nicer with the music, flowing well into the story without the viewer being stuck watching something daunting straight off.

Emotional impact of the story feedback

Based on user feedback, the character seems to now be able to grab the viewer's sympathy over the course of the animation. The audience have given positive feedback on the emotional impact of the story.

I sent this question to ten students based on the week ten animation. They are registered on a variety of courses

"How do the story and character's actions affect your feelings towards the character?"

Here are the responses

1. I find the story to be a very sad one and I feel that the animation makes you feel sorry for the character.

2.  The story is sad and the character looks like he is struggling to cope.

3. The character has some very nice movements and as the ice chases him, I felt myself wanting to know about the character more and eager to know his safety

4. I thought that the character worked well as it enhanced my interest of the cartoon.

5. The snowfall added to the danger set up in the animation led me to feel bad about the guy.

6. I worried that the character would fall through the ice but i felt like the character needed more jerky head movements.

7. The movements are good and so I felt the realism of the character. This made me think about his actions more deeply and I could tell what was going on in his mind.

8. The bit where he sits down and covers his head really affected me and made me sad. The opening though was a bit confusing emotionally.

9. The end of the animation has a huge shock factor that builds on the already dramatic animation where you want the character to survive.

10. The story works as a piece. The character moves in a very anxious way and so as a viewer, I feel that he is unsettled and that makes me want to see him feel better about himself.     


Based on this feedback, the very important aspect of engaging an audience seems to have worked in this animation. The characters' actions and neurotic nature have had an affect on the emotions of the viewers. From this feedback, I also had some issues that I think would be best to fix in order to produce better work. These issues were also mentioned in earlier feedback and by my supervisor. The first of these is this, "The opening though was a bit confusing emotionally." This works on the basis that the opening is confusing, maybe even too fast or daunting in it's camera movements. Based on this, something that my supervisor also said, I plan to slow the opening movement and fit it better to the drama of the music. Secondly is the feedback, "I felt like the character needed more jerky head movements." This relates to the anxious nature of the character. From this, It is clear that the character does not yet move and convey anxiety as well as I had hoped. I will focus on this too in the week eleven process.   

Week 11: Fixing the crack

This week I worked on fixing some of the smaller elements of my animation, based on my supervisor's feedback. The first element that I needed to work on was the size and angle of the cracks that appeared in the birds eye view shot. Based on sketches that my supervisor showed me and I roughly replicated. The angle of the cracks wasn't working in a "T" style pose. Following the issue, it would have been better according to the supervisor to make the cracks more pyramidal in the shot. Making the necessary adjustments took some time but the process looked better. It was also a good choice to manipulate the crack that runs towards the character a bit more and make it wider so that the point is clearer and the character and crack can be seen better in the render.



Before and after sketches.

 Here we can see the before and after crack with snow simulation added.

Looking at it, the variety of the second improved crack looks more naturally asymmetrical and therefore adds more to the aesthetic look of the animation as a whole. Moving on from this, I plan to look more at the other issues that were found in my animation, both from a technical and a storytelling point of view. 

Week Ten Progress

Based on feedback from various user testers and my lecturer, here is my week 10 progress showing amended elements from the previous week. I have added more expressions and movements to the characters as well as fixed some elements of the ice cracking, sound effects and overall emotional impact and appeal of the characters.

Ice shot forward or backwards?

A look at the camera shot suggested to me by my supervisor. If the ice moves forward with the camera then it could add more suspense rather than the camera following the ice from back to front which it is currently. I looked at these two ice related movements and decided to speak to my supervisor some more about it because I really enjoy the movement of the camera in it's current state.

Here is how it looks currently

   

Test Render

Here is a render of one frame of my animation, in order to get a taste of the overall look of the animation. I noticed that the mountains do look snowy and that works very well but the ice still needs to be a little bit more reflective and look more like frosted glass. The HDRI snowy scene sky works well though and certainly adds to the overall feel of the animation.

The first time that I rendered this frame it took just two minutes but the snow simulation nparticles were not showing up in the Arnold render view. I did some research and found that setting an FX Instancer would work. Following this, I rerendered the same frame and saw that the render took over three hours and still didn't produce snow. I need to work more on figuring out the snow on anything to do with the render view. The three hour render is below and thankfully it contains very little noise and the lighting and texturing shows very well.

Next up is fixing the later shots.
   

sounds and music

I looked some more at sound and music to add to the overall feel of the animation. The score can be very important to developing the audience's emotions and understanding of the piece.

Here are some links to sounds that I felt would benefit the animation.

First of all, we have the sounds associated with ice cracking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JirLXTvgTD8

This one would work very nicely for the subtle part of the animation when the character first cracks the ice on the foot closeup.

Here is another one full of ice cracking sounds that could work for the longer cracking 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18069W2TbUI


dramatic music for the run list so far. I am working through these to decide what works the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE4PKjbzZmI

The music that starts from the 4:33 mark works well as I used it in the test animation for week 9's playblast. This worked well and was very dramatic.


Here is the reference for the heavy breathing used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSyIGm7dNb4  by Distorted Room, published 2 Dec 2013 "Heavy breathing Man sound- Man Breath sound effect ver.1"

I had originally attempted to get in touch with some composers who could create music for students. My supervisor gave me links to these people's emails but sadly there was an issue where most of them either didn't reply, didn't have time or resources or didn't know who my supervisor was. So, in this case I had to look further into just referencing music.
One thing that my supervisor suggested was a friend of his who may be able to get involved for composing. If this comes through, I may be able to change the audio to something better.

Meanwhile, the spoken audio that I recorded for the animation was not as good as I had hoped and didn't fit very well. I showed the animation to a friend who suggested the thoughts appear on screen as words in post production. I actually really like this idea and it adds a lot to the scene rather than making it disjointed based on the sudden change from instrumental to dialogue.

fixing elements, Ice Crack anticipation

In order to build anticipation, I followed the advice from my supervisor and animated the crack moving towards the character as he runs away. This definitely adds to the suspense of the scene and allows for the audience to gain a shock factor from seeing the character in a life or death situation. Hopefully from this dramatic addition that feeds nicely into the sliding shot that follows, I will be able to create more interest and emotion within the animation. I created this shot similarly to the previous one by using clusters and vertex manipulation to create the feel of cracking ice.

Week 9 user feedback with Audio

What is your degree program?

Digital Media: Animation

What do you think the story is about?

At first I thought it was about a traveller getting stuck on the ice in the artic. Then I realized it was illustrative of someone dealing with OCD or ANXIETY.

Comments on the characters and environment

The character’s poses have nice silhouettes at times, but the model doesn’t really lend to the expressions of the animation. The environment is recognizable but lacking in visual interest.

Overall timing and pacing of the story?

Timing was pretty good, there was a shock-factor at the end of the story. As for pacing, there are some opportunities to use overlapping action to make the animation seem less robotic.

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

I understood the meaning pretty well and I felt emotionally connected to the character. 

Week 9 progress

Here is the week 9 progress playblast. As of now, I have finished all of the scenes in the animation and from here plan to go back and fix small details and issues based on the various forms of feedback that I found throughout this process. In this version, I added some sound and music that currently is just placeholder music. The speech will stay as is for now unless feedback from user testing says otherwise.

I DO NOT OWN THE MUSIC IN THIS VIDEO and will reference it as such in the event that I use any of it for my final rendered animation.

some more feedback user testing

What do you think the story is about?

A meltdown caused by OCD

Comments on the characters and environment

The character is very easy to follow and you can kind of get a sense for what emotions he's going through while having this meltdown.

Overall timing and pacing of the story?

Timing and pacing of the story were both very well thought out and planned perfectly

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

Yes I do.

Update on task list

Feedback on week 9 progress

What is your degree program?

Interactive systems and Video Games Design

What do you think the story is about?

OCD Awareness

Comments on the characters and environment

The environments and characters are not at the highest standard but the simulation of snow is shown brilliantly as the contrast of colours also work very well with the tone of the scene. A standout piece of modelling would be the hood and the eyes as they work very smoothly with the animation and look great.

Overall timing and pacing of the story?

The overall pace of the animation is quite fast with quick camera movements but the animation itself, from the running and stopping holds together at a great timing. A standout piece of animation in terms of timing and delivery would be the stopping of the character when he is running.

Do you feel the message is conveyed clearly?

The message was conveyed in a very effective way and allowed the user to see everything very clearly. At an animation of 1:42 the story is told brilliantly and very effectively as it finds a great balance between both scenes. The story also holds very well to the meaning and wraps things up nicely at the end.

Other comments

Great progress, I would recommend adjusting the initial ice cracking animation done from the top view.

Female character

The next part of my animation involves the big reveal that the character is not really in the Arctic wilderness and that he is in fact just outside a therapy clinic. In order to further highlight this and look more into the concepts of OCD and focus on the help and support message of the animation, I needed to create a second character. I therefore created a female character, both for diversity and because it felt more suited to the role that was needed. This character could be a therapist or spouse to the main character or maybe just a friend. I hope to leave this ambiguous for the audience, as I hope that they make their own assumptions as to who this character is. The message here is not who she is but wht she represents, in this case, help, support, friendliness and guidance. She is there to act as a shoulder for the protagonist and act as a way of helping him. This uncertainty to who she is helps to show the point that we all have people in different forms who can help us in times of despair.

The character was modeled and textured with advanced skeleton being used for the rigging process.

 

Ice scene, Stranded

The next part of my animation that I chose to focus on was the scene in which the character becomes stranded on a block of Ice. I modelled some more ice pieces and tried to capture the character's emotions in this scary time. I tried to incorporate cowering as well as fear. This will be further highlighted through the use of blend shapes to form accurate and suitable facial expressions.

Here is a shot of the scene which includes a watery style texture to display the cold Arctic ocean.

Supervisor Feedback

Based on feedback from my supervisor, I want to write about some of the issues that he found along with the good elements. In doing so, I hope that I can better understand the areas which need improvement. He really liked the timing on the slide part of the animation as well as the step back following the cracking of the ice. This was down to the emotion that the character was successfully conveying. It made it so the supervisor could tell what the character was thinking. In my mind this is strong as it highlights good animation. He hoped so some smaller details to be added. He mentioned about camera angles and how certain smaller movements that were in place really added to the piece. Some angles could have been improved on and I noticed that the framing needs to be slightly lower as the character has not been properly centered in the shot.

     The supervisor talked about building anticipation as the cracks in the ice follow the character rather than just one ice cracking. He also said that the opening part of the animation needs to be clearer as it feels like the character is holding himself for no real reason. I decided that this week I would go back and fix some of those issues as well as continue with the animation process, hopefully getting the animation completed before going back and fixing the smaller details. 

Week 8 animation progress

Here is the playblast so far that I used for user testing.

Ice cracking fixed

I finally managed to crack the ice. At first, I had a lot of issues with the ice cracking, due to problems with booleans. After spending a while talking to my supervisor and reviewing the boolean difference options, I decided to go down a different route. I used multi cut to cut up the surface mesh before creating clusters for the crack edges. Following this, I created an ocean surface under the ice and animated the clusters. This solved the problem and I was finally able to animate the ice.

User testing Week 8

Today I did user testing on four people from the animation and games course in order to improve the progress on my animation. I showed the current progress playblast to them.


User 1 feedback    (Animation course)

 First 830 frames look really good. Timing looks so much better than in previous projects. I can see the thoughts of the character but I feel that the title sequence needs another second.

I also feel more snow would help to set the scene.

Facial expressions look good.

Torso, needs to move more to fit the body though

Impression of characters emotion:  relatively happy and then despair following the cracking of the ice

Ice movement: couldn’t really say but works well

I think you have improved a lot as an animator and modeller.

User 2 feedback   (Graphics for games course)

Flows very well

Weird camera transition at the start needs to be fixed.

Final idea sounds really interesting

Impression of character's emotion: Distressed. Happy for a few seconds. Conveys emotion very well. Maybe add mist or clouds to the scene to help with icy, cold effect.

Exaggerate the arms if you can. Texture to make it colder. Fix some speed of shocked section step back

Looking good overall and timing is really impressive.

User 3 feedback (Interactive systems course)

Timing looks very good. Needs a bit more work with hands but facial expressions seem to convey stress and fear very well. Texturing needs work. Overall seems to be working towards a good grade. A few tiny arm issues to fix.

User 4 feedback (Film production course)

Story flows well so far. Good camera movement but shaky in places, needs work in the area of the hands. Character looks scared. Well staged piece but needs a lot of work on smaller movements. Ice cracks are very well timed but need some more realism. More snow would be nice too.

Based on these results, I plan to edit my animation and conduct more user testing throughout the animation process.   

Animation progress

Here is a playblast of my current progress. First 42 seconds.

Survey Results

Here are the results of the survey that I started just over a week ago. The plan was to look at OCD and what people's perceptions and understandings were relating around the topic. I got fifty responses. Below are the results. There are some interesting findings.

 

Please describe below what you think Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is.

This was number 1. Answers varied from "Becoming so obsessive about a specific thing, like cleanliness of an object, that you think if you don't do something about it something awful will happen to you. I assume this is because of underlying anxiety that builds up over time"

to "Not being able to function without doing things or having things in a very particular way. Very methodical."

"OCD is a disorder where individuals must complete certain tasks in order to relieve anxiety and move on to the next task. It is not a choice (i.e. I like to wash my hands after petting the dog, but a compulsion - i.e. I must wash my hands 5 times after using the restroom). It presents in a multitude of ways from simple repetitions of certain actions (such as turning the door knob 3 times before entering a room), to having to check 5 times to make sure appliances are turned off before going to bed, or having to avoid certain people, places, or events in order to avoid specific triggers."

with other answers being less knowing of the topic.... 

"I think OCD is expression of some situation when someone is obsessed witb something too much that body doesn't follow brain's order properly. For example, when someone is too obsessed with video game, they even do not notice directly that their part of body (like toe or something) is burning."

and   

"I think it's a combination of anxiety and panic. The brain takes over but people need to snap out of it. It's used everywhere now as an excuse."

These questions show the age demographic as well as the amount of people who feel they have some form of anxiety. It is a good base to have but at the same time, I feel that I could have revised this to find a way of knowing the age of those suffering. I may have a slightly biased age demographic as Facebook, (where i posted the survey) goes to my friends, most of whom are in their early twenties or late teens.

4) If you answered yes to the previous question, Please describe below the feelings and thoughts that you have in times of anxiety

A huge flaw here was the lack of responses. Most people answered no and so skipped this question. Here are some of the yes responses.

"Panic, fear, an overwhelming sense of dread and sadness. Sometimes anger and physical discomfort, especially if I cannot complete the complimentary action to an obsessive thought. Such thoughts are all consuming and tiring."

"This box is not big enough."

"I suffer from OCD that manifests through germaphobia. My main triggers are trash, bathrooms, and dirty things (diapers of my young siblings, trash cans, etc.). I generally feel like I’m never going to be clean and that I can feel the germs crawling on me. There tends to be strong pressure on my chest and I breathe like I’ve just run a marathon as my flight instincts kick in and all I want to do is get to a safe place that is clean, calm and quiet."

I can use these emotions to better get across the anxiety and fear when animating my character, therefore making it far more relate able.

Q5

Export 

How do you usually calm down in these situations?

Answers included

"Deep breaths. I try to process: did I actually touch something “unclean?” If so, where did it touch? Can it be cleaned? How “harmful” are the germs - not bad (snotty nose, someone’s used plate, etc.) or really gross (bathroom trash, dirty diapers, etc.). I “wash the germs off” using soap and water. If needed I will wipe with baby wipes or change clothes. I always keep hand sanitzer with me to help mitigate the germ “exposure.”

"Alcohol and drugs"

"Breathe heavily in square count, distract mind with other thoughts"

If you experience OCD then do you feel that you can talk to someone about the anxiety? If so, Who do you talk to? 

"I talk to my parents or some of my friends, hoping they would understand me and help me cope with it. They try to give me other options on how to go about the situation so I don't feel as though I'm stuck on a single method that doesn't seem to be working."

"I have honest conversations with those around me about my triggers and how they can be avoided. For a year when my OCD was out of control and I felt like I would never be clean I saw a therapist who helped me objectively look at my fears and provided suggestions as to how to move past them."

From this survey, I feel that I have gotten a lot of useful information that I will use to strengthen my project.