Context of Practise 3 - Bertie Reference and Tests

 Context of Practise 3
Using References and Testing for Bertie

• This week:

• I started drawing rough tests for Berties' character animation
• What went well:
• After talking to Ben about my ideas and showing him my progress so far, he suggested I try filming animal references, to understand animal body language and how this could help my body language analysis. Furthermore, he noted about animators using actors as reference for animation, so I wanted to try doing this also, such as using a mirror whilst I animate to understand facial expressions and video reference.
• I had recorded some footage of my boyfriend’s Papillon, Luna, who served as a good reference point for a smaller dog, like Bertie. I started my tests by following the footage side-by-side with my animating, which I found helped with body movement and proportions quite well.
• Here is the recorded footage:

• I was able to take this footage to make an initial quick test, using Luna’s body movement as a guide. I used a lower framerate of 12fps to try focus more on the movement and posing, rather than the fluidity of the motion. This helped me think more about the acting.
• Here is the first test:

• I found that this first test felt quite stiff and didn’t really show much personality, as I was relying too much on the reference of Luna, who actually isn’t acting. It doesn’t make sense to completely use the footage frame-by-frame, so for the next test, I took the idea of Bertie reacting to a ball. I was able to use some of the footage of Luna to help with posing, but I found the acting to be more effective when I didn’t focus too much on the references.

• What could be improved:
• Despite these being just initial tests, I think that for my final rough I need to consider the acting more than focusing on the references. Whilst the references did help in understanding animal body language, these are specific characters with traits and personalities that might not be reflected in the references I take. This is something I will keep in mind in future tests and the final rough animations.
• Next time, I would try flesh out the posing more, and try making the movements a bit smoother, rather than just key-frames and breakdowns. This will help the acting and feel of the character a little bit more, however I will stick to using a low frame-rate as this forced me to think about the characters’ acting more than fluidity.
• Next time:
• I will follow this method of recording references and animate some tests for Sal and Mimo.