Empathy in animation

[DaddyMack]

Hey Stu, how ya doin?
Empathy is like the holy grail for me...It's the base human emotion that ties all interpersonal relationships together...also it's one of the best ways to hook an audience

I'm sorry mate, I didn't really feel for either of the characters just yet... Maybe make the girl more the focus (if she's the one you want the audience to 'feel' for) by using more shots that put us in the males head when she's talking to 'us'...sorry dunno yet...

[StuartVarrall]

Hey Robert, I completely agree with you about the empathy, which is why I wanted to look into it for this project.

Thanks for taking a look, and at the moment I do agree with you, it's not there yet.

I've purposely tried not to focus on either character in particular, leaving it up to the audience to decide who they can best relate to. As it is only a short piece I didn't think it was necessary to pick a protagonist, maybe that was a mistake?

Anyway, little update with more of the breakdowns in for the male character.

breakdown02_svarrall.mov 4.42mb (http://stu.hopto.org/files/ppr/breakdown02_svarrall.mov)

Cheers,

stu

[DaddyMack]

Hi Stu, watched it all a coupla times more and I think maybe some over the shoulder or character pov shots at pivotal points in the conversation will really help, like a closer shot earlier on, looking up at the boy puffing on his ciggie, just before the girl says 'hi'-(camera pans to reveal more of girl)
also I'd use Hi & Lo camera angles. I think the character animation is coming along fine.
Interesting piece...Keep it up:thumbsup:

[StuartVarrall]

funny you should say that because that's almost the exact shot that I used to have in but changed it because the angle wasn't working. :banghead: I've got a few ideas for the cameras, like framing some of the shots tighter, so I'll have another play with that shot especially.

Mainly it depends on how good the facial expressions look close up. Unfortunately I haven't made the morph targets yet, and so I'm not convinced they'll get as much care as they probably deserve at this stage.

Thanks for the feedback, as always it's great stuff!

stu

[StuartVarrall]

i've been working hard on transforming this piece into something that resembles an animation piece. Unfortunately there's still not any of the facial stuff, or any improvements to the set. That's all still in the pipeline but until then here's the animation so far....

inbetween04_svarrall.mov 4.72mb (http://stu.hopto.org/files/ppr/inbetween04_svarrall.mov)

I've mad a few subtle adjustments to the cameras, but nothing much. I tried playing around with some different shots, but nothing worked quite as well as the first long shot, isolating the male... :shrug:

The keys still mostly linear, but i hope you get the idea of where this is going. As always any advice is much appreciated, i'm starting to miss things after looking at this for so long :)

thanks,

stu

[StuartVarrall]

Another update, this time there's a lot of changes....

animation06_svarrall.mov 4.83mb (http://stu.hopto.org/files/ppr/animation06_svarrall.mov)

There's the start of some basic facial stuff in there but there's still stuff to fix with the animation.

Sorry about the lack of eye textures, it was either no eyes, or half transparent bodies because of the skin shader i'm using.

Should have some pretty renders soon...

Thanks,

stu

[lostfilez]

Well, I know it's still early on in this project, but here are my thoughts. It seems as though you are attempting to create empathy through the mood and camera shots of this scene. While a well chosen shot can emphasize a particular feeling or action of a character, it's never going to create empathy on it's own. With animated characters, I feel empathy through believing that the character actually exists, or truly feels the same as what I hear in the dialogue. It's in the expression on their face, and the expression of their body, and probably 100 other things too. It's not an easy thing to do, or nail down what creates it.
Right now the characters are speaking and moving with the dialogue, but I don't think either are expressing what I'm hearing. For example, when she stands back up, her movements are kind of slow. And as angry as she sounded, I imagine she'd walk to the door much faster, rather than just kind of slowly pace over to it.
Also, I assume you chose to have these two smoking, because it's a good way of having them both meet outside. But I don't really believe that either of them actually smoke. There's a few spots where they take a puff at an odd time, and overall it seems kind of forced. Just a few thoughts though, hope it helps, and keep on working on it :thumbsup:

[cvdG]

Beautiful movie, wonderful pick as something to use for inspiration.

I agree with lostfilez, the camera angles and what not are an enhancer to the emotion portrayed by the characters. Its coming along very nicely...perhaps exagerrate certain movements to make them feel more alive.

And I also agree, when the girl walks towards the door, she should approach it aggressively, cause shes irritated, then has a moment of pause where she realizes she's overreacting...maybe glance over her shoulder before she turns around to sit back down...that sort of thing.

The camera moves are nice, its comes off like a movie, which is cool.

[Chris Bacon]

For me empathy is what makes a animation work its that magical thing that gives it life the more moments of it you have in a animation the more sucessful it will be. thats why even though Im doing CGI my fav animation is the Iron Giant. its the only animation that has close to tears for the right reasons.

[StuartVarrall]

Thanks for all the comments, there's nothing i don't agree with...

Unfortunately I've got to leave the piece for now because the deadline has passed, but I've noted the suggestions and will strive to improve the piece in the near future.

For now here's the latest animation...
svarrallAnimation.mov 9.62mb (http://stu.hopto.org/files/ppr/svarrallAnimation.mov)

The facial expressions are something i want to really improve as i didn't get a chance to do them properly. There quite a lot of brow movement especially, but due to the lack of eyebrows, and poor morphs it mostly goes unnoticed leaving their emotion a bit dilluted.

Thanks for bringing up the smoking. At the time i wasn't comfortable leaving the characters simply doing nothing. But now I've noticed that making them smoke so much has unfortunately had more of a detrimental affect on the flow characters actions and has become too much of a distraction.

The walks in general were quite rushed and didn't get as much attention as they deserved. I feel that I've missed out on a chance to show the personality of the female through the way she walks at the different mood points throughout the piece. I had to decide to leave the general timing as it was towards the end of the project so didn't get a chance to adjust the 'angry' walk back. This is definately something that will get updated.

The main thing I've learnt from the project is how difficult it is to bring all the different aspects together of acting, body language and animation and create a believable character. There's definately a lot still to learn, but at least I feel I'm heading in the right direction!

Thanks for the feedback, hope you enjoy the 'final' [for now] animation...

stu

[mimo8]

i think you didnt chose an easy task here, but that´s good, teaches a lot.
overall animation is allready telling the story, only critique could be the last part, i agree with cvdG that she should look over her shoulder, perhaps take more time at the door and then go very slowly and shy but in a straight line to the point where she sits down beside him.

another imortant thing will be the face expressions. had a great workshop with kyle balda, where he stretched out the importance of indivdual eyelid controllers. that means having a seperate controller for each lower and each upper eyelid, or even better for the lower left side, the lower right side, and so on.

not that you have to have a gollum like facerig with hundreds of controllers, but specially the eyes, the eyelids and the eyebrows will help you express this subtile emotions.
when we look at a character, real or animated, we mostly concentrate on the eye area ... but perhaps you know all this allready ;)

looking forward to follow this thread as you go into detail.

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