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Valerie Kagehiro

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Progress Blog

SDGM560: Production of Drawn Apart

This blog will record the progress I make throughout the duration of the SDGM560 class in SCAD Spring Quarter 2018. The class will focus on the animation production of Drawn Apart.

Day One

We kicked off the first day of class by gathering with the other production class of Drawn Apart. I am in the class that strictly focuses on animation while the other focuses on all the other aspects of the film including lighting, texturing, modeling, etc.

We briefly reviewed the 3D animatic from last quarter and then sifted through some of the texture, modeling, and vis dev work that was made last quarter as well. It was a nice refresher and the SDGM family had grown to include even more students that had not seen any of the work we had produced yet.

After talking about what was expected of us this quarter--a finished film being the ultimate goal, we regrouped in our own classroom and looked at shots we'd potentially like to animate. Professor Webber encouraged us to select three sequential shots so we'd get a better grasp on the character at that moment and have something nice for our demo reels as well. I was hovering between two potential sequences I'd love to animate, so we'll see next class which one I was assigned.

I am super excited for this quarter. I absolutely loved being a part of the pre-production side of the story. It was such an enlightening experience and very rewarding to be part of an amazing team. Now I get to continue to see the progression of this film all the way to the end!

Let's go make a film!

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Day two we discovered which shots we were going to be working with. There was some confusion since the 3D animatic and the shot list had different sequence numbers since we cut stuff out from last quarter, so the shots we requested didn't really line up for some of us but I don't have anything to complain about with the shots I got! They are all Paperson, so by the end of this quarter I should be an expert at animating paper! It's a super cool challenge and I can't wait to get started.

On Saturday we met up to discuss the gameplan. Before we start animating, we need to revisit layout with the finalized city the modeling team had designed. We divided up the workload as fairly as we could and walked through the workflow and pipeline for files and organization. Working alone on a project I might not have thought that designated folders for finished files was a big deal, but in a setting like this with twenty other animators working with a class of twenty other students, a method of organizing files is key!

We also did some little tests. I worked with Emma on a very rough 2D and 3D blend with the paper to see how everything holds together. It works in some respects, but in others it could use a little work. For example, the rig's normals are a little crazy but this was also a rig test for me to see how far I could push it. In the future, I'll probably have to dial it down just a little to accommodate the rig a little better. We also discovered that the 2D animators would have to work with us in supplying some of Paperson's movements. While they can animate it moving side to side, going back and forth in perspective on a still 3D page looks odd. So, the animators doing the 3D side will have to coordinate with the 2D animators and figure that out.

Day Two

Above is a rough pass of 3D blocking after Emma did a pass of 2D Blocking for me to match. We applied a rough texture of the key poses of Paperson to see how it would translate on a moving 3D background.

Day Three

On day three of production, we started the class off with reviewing the layout and camera work we had done for our individual shots. We had struggled to come up with an efficient way to view all the individual files, and after a bit of fiddling we viewed them all but Jonathan volunteered himself as editor for the next time we had dailies.

For the remainder of the class, we got back to our seats and our professor began to look one by one over our shots so we knew that the cameras were working or weren't working. While he viewed other student's shots, we had time to talk to our 2D team and figure out the plan of action. Since all my shots are of Paperson, I need to communicate with Emma a lot for this quarter. So far it's been pretty awesome! She has a lot of neat ideas and brings a lot of character into Paperson's movements. I'm still testing out the rig at this point as well, so any animation test she does I try to translate into 3D.

We also agreed on a time for our mocap meeting this weekend so I can help clean the data. We'll need all the help we can get but I'm excited!

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Above is a playlist of the shots I was assigned. I did a rough layout for camera and paper placement for each of them in order to help Emma and the other 2D animators get an idea of what camera move to match/animate to.

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Day Four

Today, we briefly went over everything we had to show in dailies before the animation team gathered back in our classroom and continued our review of the cameras for shots.

As other students were getting their shots reviewed, the mocap team met up and went over the workflow for cleaning the data in vicon. We are all going to meet up this weekend to have a cleaning session which will be nice since I predict I'll have quite a few questions to ask them. We won't really get to touch motionbuilder until after clean up is done in Vicon, so one thing at a time. I'm hoping we can get the data cleaned quickly. It will be nice to begin populating the scenes with background characters and testing the data on our rigs!

Above are two videos of the uncleaned version then the cleaned version of the mocap data I was assigned. The Happy Female Walk is on the left and then the Male Tourist Walk is on the right. It was a nice challenge to take on another program to learn, but I'm super happy I did! I feel a lot more comfortable with Vicon Blade after using twice now. I am looking forward to learning Motionbuilder next!

Day Five

Over the weekend, we met up to go over our progress. I got some good feedback on my sequence of shots. Slowly but surely it's getting there!

In class, we re-evaluated the theme of the film, and made it a little more focused on Phoebe's self-consciousness in her artistic skills rather than herself as a person. This helped punctuate the effect it has on Paperson as well as she is the literal representation of her skills as an artist.

We also received more feedback on shots, particularly the cameras. We are working towards getting all the cameras locked down as soon as possible so that the environments team has time to set dress and render out some of the backgrounds.

Below is the rough blocking I have for my sequence.

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Day Six

Phoebe's model was finalized today! After many iterations, Tia Flower (our hero modeler) did a wonderful job in getting her finished! Now we can look forward to getting the finalized rig and see Phoebe in action!

In addition to that exciting news, we also were visited by our sound department. We had two composers sit in and watch the animatic and start to get a feel of the ups and downs of the story. I am beyond ecstatic that all the pieces are starting to fall into place. Now I just need to focus on getting the best animations I can in time!

Below is the updated sequence and the vicon data for the dance motion capture sessions.

Day Seven

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Today in class, we took a look at the current cut of the updated animations. We were told to shave off frames wherever possible to help out with the rendering and the length of the film. There are definitely scenes where I could afford to shed some of the frames off to help with the timing and the length of the film. Other shots, however, felt as though they needed a little bit more time to let the emotional beats seep in but it will all be refined when Phoebe's acting is a little more nailed down.

We got some notes back on our animations. Most of mine were just ironing out the paper's silhouettes and making the peel feel more like a peel and less like a roll off the wall. We also thought that the paper's run could be a little bouncier with some added hang-time to make it more comedic.

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Day Eight

Today we are pairing up with a render partner to render three frames from every shot. I'm excited to see how the lighting looks over the course of the film! It'll really help express the character arcs. We also were introduced to the concept of alembic files for the rendering process to ensure that none of the animation is changed when the lighters are working.

It's a bit of a learning curve as the alembic files seem hit or miss for some of the rigs. We've had problems with the paper returning to the origin instead of staying in place.

Day Nine

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At this point, we have started the process of populating shots. This will be important to see the shots composition.

I've started the process of cleaning in Motionbuilder. It's a slight change from Vicon's workflow, but I like the familiarity to Maya. It's a fun challenge taking on a new program, but I'm learning tons about the process of taking motion capture and bringing it to Maya.

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Day Ten

Today we reviewed our animation shots again today. We have a goal to spline our animations by Monday, so this weekend I'll be working to get these animations closer to finished!

Day Eleven

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We reviewed our shots again today and we all felt my cameras could be improved some more. We decided that instead of having a downward shot for shot070 of the paper peeling off the wall, maybe we could change it to be more profile and cut out the zoom out from shot 060 entirely. I like the result a lot better and I feel like it makes the camera work a lot more concise and tighter.

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Day Twelve

Progress is still being made on my Sequence 200 shots. They need to be done for the rendering team by next week, so I'm going to try and finish them up by Monday to get one more round of feedback before they are due.

I'm trying to get as nice shapes as I can out of the paper rig, especially for the run part. The silhouettes will be very important to express Paperson's emotions. It's been a fun challenge to try and tackle, and I'm pretty happy with the results thus far but there is still a lot of polishing to get done.

Day Thirteen

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Phoebe's bag is officially cut from the film a well as her cardigan! We all felt they were extraneous details that didn't add anything to the film anymore. Her cardigan was originally going to be an instrument we used to visualize her self-consciousness, but the film became less about her self-consciousness in her own self-identity and more about her low self-esteem as an artist.

I received more feedback for shot 080. Some slight camera changes and just fine-tuning the timing and poses.

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Day Fourteen

Today, we went over our shots one last time before they're due for rendering! Shots 60 and 70 were approved, but shot 80 needed a little bit more work. Emma and I collaborated on making sure the 2D and the 3D were matching up and we spent the next couple of days updating the shot.

Day Fifteen

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As we are closing in on animation, we were told to make some last updates for the newest rigs for Phoebe and Paperson. Andrea and I are both working on our sequence 500 shots and are certain we will be able to hand them off to the render team with no problem. I'm excited to finish animation and start rendering! I'm really interested in seeing the whole thing finished and edited together with sound.

Below is a playblast of sequence 500 shot 110. Andrea was responsible for Phoebe and I animated Paperson. It was a fun challenge working with another animator on two constrained characters. We definitely had to communicate a lot and bounce feedback off one another.

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Day Sixteen

Today I got some feedback from Professor Webber on shot 110 and also began working on shot 100 with Andrea. For shot 110, Professor Webber felt that the paper was a little slow to settle, so I'll have to tweak the timing and have it settle just a bit faster.

The shots are pretty simple, so they shouldn't take too long. The deadline is for the shots to be completed by midnight tonight. Below are the playblasts of shots 100 and 110 of sequence 500.

Day Seventeen

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Now with animation done, it's time to get the whole film rendered ASAP. The animators were assigned a few shots to start rendering. I was assigned shots 130 and 140 in sequence 100. One is short and the other has just over a hundred frames. I had been hearing there were some problems that came up because of alembic issues and pathways for files being automatically reset even when you manually change them.

I'm hoping we won't encounter too many problems, but we'll just have to wait and see.

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Day Eighteen

I've managed to render shot 130 and am now problem-solving shot 140. After throwing it on the renderfarm, it rendered all one hundred frames but the alembic for the paper was missing. I talked with our production team and followed their instructions. We're going to try and correct the pathways of the alembic by going into Notepad ++ and deleting the first section of the path. Hopefully then it will link it to just the renderfarm folder and the paper will appear.

I also decided to take on another shot in sequence 500. I've been applying all the hair and textures to about fifty background people.

Day Nineteen

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Today, I tried my hand at comping the final shot in the film. It was cool getting to work in Nuke again. I remembered a lot from my Digital Lighting and Rendering class, but I still had to ask the production class for a few tips. The most challenging part of the compositing was tracking the sky into the shot. The camera pulls out into an aerial view of the plaza, and the sky needs to follow accordingly.

I attempted several times to try and get the sky to move correctly with the use of Nuke's tracker node but it was still jittery. With the help of Tatyana, however, we were finally able to get a smooth move.

Day Twenty and Post Mortem

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For the last class, we did some last paint overs for renders that weren't rendered out correctly on every frame and we watched the film at its current state. This class had a tall order to complete, but judging from even the in progress viewing we had in class, I can say with confidence that we did a great job.

In retrospect, I think a lot of the problems we had were just because of crunched time. We had only 20 weeks to complete the film and pre-production had been split between two films, so we really only focused on Drawn Apart for 15 weeks. We weren't able to complete the rigs in the first 5 weeks, and that time had to be spent in this past quarter. The team worked their hardest to get the film finished--and we succeeded! But a lot of aspects had to be sacrificed to make it in time. If we had another quarter, I feel we could have done everything we wanted and more and to an even higher quality than we pushed for this quarter.

I loved the class and had one of the best experiences of my life being a part of the Drawn Apart crew. I learned a lot from it and I'm so proud we were able to accomplish so much in such little time.

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