Mime Trapped in a Box

The craft of acting is the action of a person willfully pretending to be something (an animated object or an animal) or someone for a limited period of time in any circumstance for any purpose. On the other hand, the art of acting is the use of the craft of acting for artistic purposes for example, acting used in a theater context and in some forms of storytelling. (Taylor, 1997) This discussion will be based mainly on the art of acting without props with reference to the use of mime and how it can be applied to animation.

Jeff Taylor states that, the craft of acting always has some element of communication as part of its purpose in any given instance and has highly subjective communication which deals in those regions of our humanity that are best shown and felt rather than described. An example I can give in support to Taylor’s argument is found in miming. Mime is one of the oldest forms of theater which expresses the dramatic art of representing scenes from life through bodily and facial movements. This can be seen in a pantomime, which tells a story in movement and gesture and normally consists of short comic acts. As the mime tells a stories, the movement of the hands and body help viewers picture the characters and actions in the environment. This can be applied to animation when creating key frames in order to depict strong actions which would make the animation effective and easy to read.

When looking back at pantomime in Greece, they often took the form of mimetic dances, which was the art of gesture called orchesis, were the word orchestra came from, a Greek term for dancing place. Romans also were especially fond of pantomime, sketching plays often as afterpieces to written plays, or even between acts. Two famous players (both freed slaves), were Pylades and Bathyllus.

“The turn of the century saw the most astonishing burst of creativity that marked the beginning of modern day mime. Mime was popular in vaudeville, music halls, circus, and Ziegfeld Follies. Rudolf Laban, teacher and theoretician of mime and movement, trained some famous dancers, several of whom incorporated mime in their dance work. Angna Enters was truly great, the first popular concert hall mime. Charles Weidman often used literary sources, like Thurber and Beerbohm, for his serious and comic work. Kurt Jooss' anti-war piece, The Green Table, became immortal and is still performed today.” (Rensburg, 2003)

Under silent film, comics played in motion pictures for the most part, because of their many actions and facility in physical expression.

“France was the innovator, with Georges Wague who saw film as a continuation of mime, and music hall star Max Linder reeling off one-reelers beginning in 1905. Charlie Chaplin saluted Linder as his "professor"; then followed Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon, and others. At first they simply improvised before a stationary camera, but soon learned that film was different from the stage, and developed the techniques that made them world famous in a few short years.” (Rensburg, 2003)

In conclusion animation can be aided through the role of acting without props, by the emotional amplification of the body movement in order to enhance action in communicating a series of expressions.

References:
Taylor, J. The Craft of Acting, the Art of Acting and their Relationship to the World of the Work. 1997.

Vanessa van Rensburg. The History of Mime. 2003.

Texturing a Pre-modelled Environment

Texturing refers to the use of additives in paint to give depth and texture to the surface being painted. (Gillette, 1999) This essay discusses the difference between 2d and 3d texture mapping techniques, including the way they are mapped. When looking at 2d mapping, one has to take into consideration the coordinates in the U (horizontal) and V (vertical) axis which go from 0 to 1. A texture map is applied using the coordinate system to match each 3D point on the surface to a 2D point on a texture (any regular image). This is called UV mapping, because the 2D surface consists of a U and V axis.

While 2d texture mapping consists of a flat 2d bitmap image on a flat or curved 3d surface, 3d texture mapping computes the texture color by mapping the object's 3d location in a space directly into a color using small C language procedural texture functions. 3D textures may also be locally and globally transformed just as with cameras and basic geometry.

The three methods of mapping 3d objects are:
1. Automatic mapping
This method yields the fastest mapping results and is used before any other mapping tool, because it maps the whole scene regardless of any mapping procedures already performed.

2. Unwrapping
Is fast yet has high quality mapping of complex shapes

3 Unwrapping using the Interactive Mapper
Has the highest quality results for planar, spherical, polar, and cylindrical shapes, mapping different parts of the models separately available in real time interactive mapping environment.

There are bump map textures that change the way light interacts with the applied surface, these come in two types, grayscale and RGB (Red, green and blue). Bump maps change the depth of the rendered pixels and are only available in 3d viewpoint. On the other hand height maps are useful for rivets, screws, gashes and stuff that is not complex. Normal maps are RGB images, depicting where change in the angle of rendered pixel occurs. This is useful for rendering folds, wrinkles and complex surfaces like the face and body.

Different implementations of 2D texture mapping often can be distinguished from the method used to filter the texture. Since a 2D texture image must be shrunk or enlarged to match the dimensions of its projected area on a textured object, texture filtering is required so that no unusual artifacts are introduced into the final image.


Reference:
Gillette, M. J. Theatrical Design and Production: An Introduction to Scene Design and Construction, Lighting, Sound, Costume, and Makeup. 1999. Forth Edition. McGraw Hill.

https://www.okino.com/new/toolkit/1-11.htm

http://www.righthemisphere.com/support/tutorials/duv/User_Reference_for_Deep_UV.pdf

Secondary Animation - Take (Surprise)

Secondary animation is as its name implies, secondary to the primary movement. (Skidgel p.112) In 3ds Max 6 Animation: CG Filmmaking from Concepts to Completion, it is said to be any character-related movement outside of the skeleton and face and it's one of the 12 animation principles. (Fox p.382) Therefore secondary animation is the actions added to a character to bring life and to support the main action, which involves follow through and overlapping action.

Follow through and overlapping action allow a smooth flow from pose to pose, making sure that the motions are not distracting and robotic. The body parts need to overlap with a believable physics without overdoing it. In order to make animation believable, the motions need to have good clean arcs, in the wrist, elbows, feet, heel and toes as well as the head, hip and ankle. The line of action defines the clarity of the poses, therefore making sure that the poses are interesting and can be read clearly.

Another thing to consider in animation is the energy of the character. This manages the tension, energy build up and release in action. In the gun shot animation, the anticipation (movement begins slowly, speeds up, and slows down again) matched the subsequent action, which was the reaction of the gun shot by the character. The body language and gestures were synchronized with the sound which helps the animation to appear believable.

Keith Lango further suggests under silhouettes: "Make your poses read in an instant, not in an hour." This I achieved through the use of timing. In conclusion the acting done by the character matched dialogue intensity.

References:

Barrett Fox, 3ds Max 6 Animation: CG Filmmaking from Concepts to Completion.

http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/polish.html

Bouncing Ball

According to Scott Owen timing, or the speed of an action, is an important principle because it gives meaning to movement. The speed of an action defines how well the idea will be read to the audience.

Therefore when looking at the difference in timing when it comes to the weight of a bouncing ball, there are certain written principles that state that heavier objects take greater force and a longer time to accelerate and decelerate. For example, if a character picks up a heavy object, e.g., a bowling ball, they should do it much slower than picking up a light object such as a basketball. Similarly, timing affects the perception of the object size. A larger object moves more slowly than a smaller object and has greater inertia. These effects are done not by changing the poses, but by varying the spaces or time (number of frames) between poses. (Owen, 1999)

In How Things Work, Louis Bloomfield explains the physics of the bouncing ball, "When a ball bounces from a rigid surface, the ball's surface distorts inward and then pops back outward. During the inward motion, the ball stores energy--pushing its surface inward takes energy. During the outward motion, the ball releases that stored energy. But not all the energy invested in the ball emerges as useful work. Some of that energy is turned into thermal energy and never reappears. A properly inflated basketball returns a good fraction of the energy it receives while other balls may not. In fact, a bowling ball bounces pretty well from a hard surface such as cement. But when it hits a softer surface such as wood, the wood receives much of its energy and wastes that energy as thermal energy."

Squash and stretch is an animation technique that illustrates the effect of gravity and force on the volume and shape, creating a believable and interesting animation, which is achieved through maintaining a consistent even volume though the shape changes. This principle when applied in real life is observed in the flexing of the muscles, or when watching a rubber ball bounce. The arm in the muscle swells when the bicep is contracted and the ball flattens and widens as it hits the ground. (Skidgel p)














In conclusion the ball I chose to animate is a baseball. The weight of the ball is slightly heavy, yet the size of the ball is small resulting in it produces less bounces.

References:

http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/timing.htm
G. Scott Owen, Timing and Motion, 1999

http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/bouncing_balls.html
Louis A. Bloomfield, How Things Work, 2008

John Skidgel, Design Menus With Encore Dvd.

http://www.mattornstein.com/images/downloads/ball_logo.jpg