http://youtu.be/_R-VEqN36gk
ok thats the best sync i could get!

http://youtu.be/dn17Vw4W4bE
And heres a quick playblast of my simple walk, because i was struggling with that too

http://youtu.be/_SiO_KCWxXI
 I'm having problems getting my sound to sync up, because theres supposed to be a 50 frame pause at the beginning! but here it is to prove i have it.

http://youtu.be/G-JnzPBqrBM
Sorry, i put my lip sync in twice!

http://youtu.be/3Fh7-s5F93I
Box and ball

http://youtu.be/zwoXJ3r9UA0
Character walk

http://youtu.be/3Fh7-s5F93I
Lip sync

R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

Ok! Finally I’m up to my Rap and Clap!

I chose the song “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, which was a good choice because I found soo many references for it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=G5Bsy_XsS0o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wiWy5O1KfOk

I also found a whole bunch of other refrences-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DZ3_obMXwU&feature=player_detailpage

Aretha herself on stage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kjelInvb8LI

for bad lip syncing, attitude poses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=brR-cgsk3D0

good lip movement reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rja-SwX002E&feature=player_detailpage

better lip movement ref

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8XLHvo1TXLY

Carlton Dance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlxjbhB9HE&feature=player_detailpage

Over all, I found this one allot harder than I thought I would, compared to the first lip sync.

But again I built my animation up in layers, starting with the jaw movements, then lips.

Next I blocked out my key poses. This was the part I found really hard, choreography clearly isn’t my strong suit! But I did my best to compensate with strong key poses.

These are just some attempts at getting my opening key pose to look its best

I'm also quite pleased with my final pose.

 

(These were some of our green screen shots.)

I was having trouble getting my play blasts to stay in sync with the animation, so i decided to just weight until i rendered it out.

Overall I was quite proud of this. I wish I’d had time to go back and tweak the arm movements a bit more; it took me a while to figure out, as this was also my first attempt at block animating.

Getting the actual lip sync was (surprisingly enough) the easiest bit here. I think I spent most of my time on the additional gestures and getting strong key poses.

Sorry it's a bit quiet, to be honest, the lighting and rendering were mostly guesses and bluffs. But considering I was learning as I went with this, it’s not too bad!

Lip Sync Key Poses

The opening pose is only held for a split second. But it still isn’t very strong. I think I’ll show him bending down at first, and then jump up into shot when he gets freight. 

This is probably the strongest pose in the scene, so i bookended it like this. The character looks sheepish knowing he’s been caught out. But whilst trying to talk his way out of it , he slips up, before jumping back into this pose at the end. 

It’s only for a second, but i wanted his apology to be the kind a sullen child might give. So I gave him downcast eyes, hunched shoulders and a little head flick, to show that he doesn’t really mean it.  

This is reinforced when quickly followed by a cheeky grin as he explains what happened. He gets less worried and more exited whilst explaining. 

it’s hard to show with a single frame, but I’ve added a nice little blink and head flick as he gestures over to the chimney. I’ve never animated a blink but i think it worked out nicely. I just followed Richard Williams’s guidelines.

 I wanted him to have a nice hand flick, head roll thing going on as he says “my old brain...” but i haven’t quite fixed it yet. I just need to smooth everything out.   

i really exaggerated the “what the hell” gesture, arching his back and throwing his arms up in the air.

  He then holds this pose to emphasise his mistake and add anticipation. I have also animated his worried eye flicks and a subtle little flinch as he realises what he’s done.

I then contracted the timing of the frozen pose with the speed of his reaction, whipping his arms behind his back. I also gave him a cheeky little, “i hope they didn’t see that” look.  

He forces a smile to try and salvage the situation but I added a pause to show how fake it is. i included two frames of this because i like the first better, but it ends on the last, which I intend to change. 

One thing that i have learnt from this is to get my timing more precise, i was quite happy with the way it all worked together. But it was difficult for me to find a nice frame to illustrate each part. I’m sure if I have things working in precise timing my overall animation will be much tidier, easier to follow and therefore more effective.

Lip Sync Refrences

I took loads of references, just sitting in my room, because every time I got a little less reserved, and more into it. But I limited the ones I would include here to two since there all pretty much the same.

Mostly what I took away from this was the small gestures you make without really thinking about it.

For example the way my eyes kept flicking back when talking about chimney. It also made me think about limiting the amount of movements he makes. At first I was thinking about the pose he should be in for each part of the sentence, but that was too much for me to even act out deliberately. So in the end I just kept acting it out trying to do what felt natural.

Lip sync!

Ok so I’m going to come back to the Character walk in a bit, once I figure out how to fix the textures.

So, on the Lip Sync!

We had a choice of 3 sound clips to lip sync our characters too. The clip I went for basically consists of an energetic cockney male voice saying “Blimey, sorry! Christmas Eve on a rooftop, saw a chimney, my old brain just went, what the hell?”.

I chose this clip because it’s upbeat, kind of funny and, I had a story in mind for it almost immediately.

A young thief breaks into someone’s house to go “shopping” for his girlfriend’s Christmas present.

Upon being discovered he gets a freight and apologises, trying to laugh it off. 

I like the idea of him shrugging and raising his arms to say “what the hell?” only to revel the stolen present in his hand.   

I decided to use the Moom rig again for this exercise, because he has that cheeky look about him, and I already know all the controls pretty well.   

It was recommended we build up our animation in layers, starting with the jaw opening and closing, then the lip movements, and so on.

One again, my saviour Richard Williams has provided instructions...

 

Detailed Character Bio

One of Ed Hooks tips was to think about your character in as much detail as you can, before you animate them. I should have probably included this earlier but I forgot. Oh well, the main thing was for me to have it before I started animating!

(from "snog, marry, avoid"s hall of fame)

Cougar Lady A.K.A- Alice Kelly-Johnson-Aired

Female, 48 years old, (birthday July 10^th)

Currently living in Chicago USA

Works at the Mac cosmetics counter

Growing up she was middle child of three sisters

She’s straight, and was always popular with the boys.

married her first husband at 19, divorced at 24 (she cheated)

2^nd Husband at 31, divorced at  38 (he cheated)

3^rd husband at 42 divorced earlier this year

And now she is determined to find her true love.

Has one grown up daughter from her first marriage.

Recently moved into a one bedroom flat after her latest divorce

She got quite a large settlement but that mostly went on her lawyer fees.

Raised a Catholic, but no longer attends church

Takes her horoscope, and other mens star signs very seriously.

Favourite movie- Legally blonde

iPod mostly filled with up to date dance music and cheesy 80s stuff

Hobbies (if it counts) she loves to give herself makeovers and pamper days

She drinks allot on nights out with the girls (and occasionally on night in alone)

She has more drinking buddies than friends, but her sisters and grown up doughter are always there for her.

Doesn’t have a style icon, but pays attention to the fashion trends.

She often mistakes “going too far” for “making an effort”

Texturing Woes

I’m having serious problems with the textures. When I apply them too the face they look fine in the viewport, and it responds when I chance the textures. But when I render it out, the face texture just isn’t there. So the model and background are fine, except for her big black blotch of a head.

I’ve gone back to an older version of my animation and it works fine, but I’ve since put in hours of work on it that I’m not willing to loose.

I’ve tried changing my textures to various formats, and downloading the textures that came with the rig, and a bunch of other things, but I can’t figure it out.

I think it might be a glitch in ether the rig or Maya, because I can’t see why they would all work except one, when I haven’t changes any of the settings. A few people seem to be having the same problems as me, so I’m going to leave rendering until last in case someone comes up with an answer.

I suppose I could try blacking out all the textures and submitting it as a silhouette walk cycle, if nothing else works. But she looks super scary when she takes her glasses off!

In some older versions I saved, the face and hair are less broke, but still kind of weird. I kind of want to use the bald one, just because it looks so funny!

In an attempt to work around the problem, I tried leaving all of her skin black and just texturing her clothes, I also put her in a dark set so that it wouldn’t look so obviously wrong, but you can still definitely see that she just isn’t textured properly.

Play blast

Here is a play blast of my character animation. As you can see, I have given her a lot of hip swish as she places one foot in front of the other in that girly way. I also gave her quite allot of body rotation and a subtle boob jiggle.

Some of the little gestures I found myself doing most when I was acting the walk out myself, such as the hair flick and chin lift ended up in there, but I was careful not to have too much going on at once.

I still really loved the way Meryl Streep whipped off her glassed in that reference I found, so I ended on that motion.

To be honest I’m not quite happy with some of the little gestures, but I honestly couldn’t see what I needed to change (I’m sure I’ll kick myself later, when I look back) And all in all, I’m, really quite pleased with it!  

Character Poses

First of all I did some more pose exercises, partly to help me test out the rig, and partly to generate ideas. (As you saw earlier, at the same time I also went back and redid my original pose exercises, because I thought this rig would be perfect for it)

  
I wasn't really intending to use any of these as part of my animation, so I didn't worry about how they were going to fit into a walk cycle. I just thought that it would be a nice little extra thing to do, and would help me explore the character.

 This one is allot more subtle, but I think it still gets across her personality really well.

I had fun with these poses, and decided to use this one for the beginning of my walk cycle. It may not be the most effective as a single pose, but i could really visualise how she would sashay off from this position.

Character Rig

So I signed up to a good website - http://www.creativecrash.com/ - that has a load of free rigs to download.

The rig I chose is called Alice 1.9.0 (there is a newer version but I went with the one that had all the good ratings).

I just picked her because I liked the look of her, I didn’t want her to be super skinny, and I also liked the look of some of the texture options. I had been hoping for one that looked older, but I couldn’t find any better ones than Alice.

More Found Refrences

I some of the best references I found were from TV and movie characters such as Wilhelmina from “Ugly Betty” and Meryl Streep in “The devil where’s Prada”.

Allot of characters from “Ugly Betty” had useful walks to look at, as most of the shows jokes are drawn from characters with superficial confidence. This is exactly the kind of thing that I wanted. A confident walk that’s comically overdone. I have also been advised by few people, to exaggerate a cartoon character walk more than you would a live action character.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-EAMzSd-0iA

Amanda montage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=REh3oFDlYzE
Wilhelmina montage (I really like this one)

Meryl Streep does this brilliant gesture, when she takes off her sunglasses and flicks her hair a little. That simple movement is such a strong parody of the characters confidence in how fabulous she is.

I would love to end my walk with her simply walking up to the camera and whipping off her glasses in that way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zicgut4gpwU

Walk refrence from home!

We also took some reference videos at home. This is my favourite of the bunch, Emma has an awesome stow strut. She made it nice and comical by adding a little extra bounce and leaning back. I also really like the hair flicks and the way she kept one hand on her hip. I think I’ll incorporate some of these gestures into my final animation.

P.s Sorry its on its side, but i don't know how to flip it.

Cougar Lady walk!

I didn’t really feel that my green screen references were that good, and I couldn’t really find any additional references ether. I was worried that nobody would get what my character was supposed to be doing. So in the end I went with a simpler, but also fun idea.

I used the same character that my green screen references were based on, but set it earlier that day before she went out clubbing,

Enter- Cougar lady!  A 48 year old woman, strutting her stuff on her way to the salon. She spent all morning doing her makeup, and tonight she’s going clubbing with her daughter. She carries her power centre in her boobs of course! And has an awful lot of swish in her hips.

I was able to find loads of great references and ideas for this scenario.

I found lots of good tutorials on how to walk in heels, how to walk like a runway model, how to show confidence through your walk etc

http://vimeo.com/1747155

This is one such "how to walk in heels" video, it’s a bit weird but good for my purposes anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqoLpUmPcs&feature=player_detailpage#t=14s

This is just a woman acting out an over gone confidant and jaunty walk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px69eKV5lWk&feature=player_detailpage

This is a proper tutorial on "How to walk like a runway model"

I took some notes on the bits I'd like to copy

Keep back and neck straight - she could be looking slightly up as well to seem more arrogant

face straight ahead and keep body still as possible.

some models also lean back slightly.

place feet down in front of the other- this would also be good for exaggerating the hip swish

some models also lift their knees higher than normal, to emphasise this strut

Avoid swinging arms too much- maybe she should keep one and on her hip.

Pausing to pose at the end of the runway, jutting hip out to the side.

I'd love to have her standing striking a pose before she moves off. Maybe she should pose at the end too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ9nOX4wuIY&feature=player_detailpage

This video drags on a bit but is a good reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aat1TRzKTOQ

I also wanted to look at some female rappers walking with attitude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZWnkNZp0lCY

It could be good to have a very slow, saunter. But then the hip swish and boob jiggle wouldn't be so overdone, so I'm not sure which I’ll go for yet. Also the angry lady doing the commentary on this is really funny!

 writing)

(by the way the images in this post and the last aren’t mine, i just stuck them in there to break up all this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4n1LqsAhgY8

Green Screen Videos!

So it turns out that I’m a terrible actor! (which is why I only included one of me) It was also a more difficult theme than I thought it would be. I liked the idea of her getting up really gingerly,  and trying to steady herself, keeping the weight off the balls of her feet. This is mostly what i was trying to get across in the video.

i took a few versions of this, but chose this one to include because of all the extra little gestures i was thinking about adding in. This is a good exercise to do for any animation, just to work out what feels natural and to think about what little nuances to can add. I also like the way i was talking to the people off screen at the beginning, it wasn't deliberate, but it could have been good to show her talking to friends or something.  

I think this girls actual walk was better than mine, because i was trying to walk too carefully, which made me keep my upper body too still. Whereas hers was much more comical and bouncy. Hers is also good for showing her talking and laughing with friends.

it was also hard to find any sore feet walk references from the internet or TV. I was worried that my animation wouldn’t be very convincing so I decided to change my idea a little. I had the same basic character in mind (cougar lady) but instead of walking home, she would be going to the salon, before going clubbing, to find a guy.

Starting my Character walk

Ok so now i can make a start on my character walk!

We were asked to come prepared to the green screen room with 3 character walks in mind. We were also told to give our characters depth, and consider their personality traits, as well as their story.

My story ideas were-

 

6 year old girl has just got some new shoes and admires them whilst walking.

 She would have her power centre quite low down as she bends to admire her shoes. It could have been fun to animate her looking at her feet and lifting her them high in each step. I could also exaggerate the way she treads very carefully, so as not to scuff them.

It would have been so cute to animate a child in her mommy’s shoes! But I probably wouldn’t be able to get any first hand references, and finding a good rig to use might be difficult as well, so I opted out of that plan.

Grumpy old man- walking to the corner shop.  Perhaps he sees some youngsters that irritate him? Maybe has a bad back? Or uses a cane? This afternoon he’s going  to feed the birds in the park. His power centre would be quite high up, but he should also be quite hunched over and move slowly.

Drunk woman sits on a wall outside a nightclub to rest her aching feet. She’s taken off her heels and hobbles home.  She would be bent over slightly, with her arms out, trying to place her feet carefully.

This is the character that I chose for my video references in the green screen room, it seemed like a fun one to act out and animate. 

James Finlay

James Finlay! That was the name of the guest lecturer I was talking about before. He's a pretty cool Freelance Character Animator.
He’s worked on things like Happy Feet, The Wild and Hercules, but focuses more on games animation now.
In his lecture, he went through animating a jump with us, step by step.
One of the nice little tips he gave us was about using opposite actions. Balancing out your movements and make them look more believable. For example when you prepare to jump, you bend forward and your elbows go back, and the same thing happens when you land.

Anyway, it was his comments about needing to be a fast animator that made me go back and try doing my original simple walk again. Even though I still got too stuck in the details to be as fast as I could, it was a good exercise.

http://www.jimfinlay.com/My_Website/James_Finlay___Demo_Reel.html

The play blast lags a bit, but it should be fine when I render it out.
As for my actual animation, well, it looks a bit robotic. But since it was only meant as a simple exercise, i won't worry too much about it. I’d rather concentrate on my actual character walk and everything’s in there that should be.

So the basic things a walk cycle requires (aside from the obvious arm and leg movement of course) are:
Defined extreme key poses
Knee bend/ head dip
Hip rotation/ tilt
Shoulder rotation (opposite to the hip rotation)
Then we need to make each step swing out and then back in
Rotate the foot angles/ spread
Add in the weight shift
And lastly, to make sure all the steps are the same size, before cycling.

http://walkingmoom.blogspot.com/2011/11/introduction-to-walkcycles-using-basic.html
And that’s a link to Penny’s tutorial, going through all that.

Final walk cycle...

And here's my final walk cycle. It's not very exciting, but it does everything it’s supposed to and I can build on this exercise later.

Whooo! So now I can start on my walk cycle!

Brief from ICA- “Using your chosen rig, animate your character first doing a basic walk, then a walk with personality.

It is important that your character moves forward. Marks will be deducted for a walk cycle on the spot. “

“Duration max: 10 seconds each walk”

There was also a tutorial we had to follow.

Now as you know I'm putting this on my "Neat Blog" long after i started the actual work, so I've got a few attempts of my first walk to show you before i finally got it right. 

Although it said was should do a basic walk first and then add to it to make it a character walk, I did mine on two different rigs. (Penny said this was fine, because,  at the end of the day, I’m just doing more work than required)

So here’s the basic walk, before i cycled it.
I actually did sooo many versions of this, but kept failing and starting again. At first I was making the mistake allot of people seemed to; trying to get my walks right and then dragging from the hips for movement. But in the end after creating some dismal cycles, i went back and did the whole thing again in around an hour.

I have to admit that part of the reason I did it again, was because the guest lecturer, freelance animator guy (I can’t remember the name of right now) was saying being a fast animator was helpful in getting jobs. So I decided that I’d see how quickly I could do this now that I kind of knew what I was doing. In the end it still took me like 30-45 minutes but that was probable because it was rounding off all of the translation and rotation numbers, so that my cycle wouldn’t mess up.

It was the most satisfying thing when I didn’t have to do a thing to my cycled walk!  

Pose Screenshots

So this is my "troubled by result" pose. The guy has just handed in an exam, knowing he has no hope of passing, and slumps over in despair. I think this one works nicely. I kind of wish i could have got more control over the back, to make it sag down. But overall i like the effect; i think you can see he’s pretty fed up!

Here’s my Japanese fan girl, who’s very "pleased to see" someone.  If i have time, I'd like to do some more of these later, because they were allot of fun, and i have allot of ideas for them. There are a few things I'd like to tweak on this one, a viewer might not get that she’s a fan girl, but she does look pretty pleased to see something.

And last, but not least- "what’s under there?!"

I think that this pose has the potential to be strong, but as it is, I'm not that happy with it. Whilst it does look like she’s jumping away from something, I'm not sure how clear it is that it’s something low down. Aesthetically I also struggled to get the arms right. I would also like to revisit this later and make some improvements before the final render.

Body Language

http://www.wikihow.com/Read-Body-Language

this site is geared towards judging someones mood, but the traits still apply to animating charicters.

In the lectures we already covered things like open and closed body language but I was just browsing through some more tips.

 I like looking at sites like this to give me ideas for simple little details. For example, showing someones eyes "glazing over" simply by moving them to focus further away and maybe relaxing the expression very slightly. This would be a very effective way of comunicating boredom (perhaps mid conversation) without changing the pose.
This would be more relatable to the audience, because most adults are more accostomed to feigning interest inorder to seem polite, rether than sprawling about like a child.

This has given me a nice little idea for a comic short animation based on being trapped in a one sided conversation you don't want to listen to.

Mirroring- was another interesting idea. people pften adopt the same pose as you if they like you, are engaged in the conversation or are trying to establish a rapour etc. This is an unconcious gesture but would read really well in an animation.
People also often point their feet (or sometimes knees if there sitting) towards the odject of their attention.

some other nice little tips from this wedsite were that your body language will shift over time to whats more comfortable, so changes in body language are actually more telling.

Also another nice tip for subtle animation is that closing your eyes briefly, but for longer than it takes to blink, comunicates emotional pain or stress etc without having to have the charicter wince or frown too much (because i find that i empathise less with overacting charicters in both films and animation, unless its part of their mannerisms all the way through)

i feel like i'm stating the obvious here, but without reserching this stuff my chariters would forever be robots.

Mytho Loguque!

While were on the subject, here's another Esma student animation I like.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=U5Bo04Uuh4M

I love this one! The character designs are really cool the environments are pretty and frame the actions. the theme is interesting and informs the story. It’s really funny and there are a few nice little twists, as well as attention to detail.  

I suppose I should really talk about the animation part thou. So, towards the end, when they are building the anticipation/tension, just before he learns to lie (about 4:20) I really like the subtle way they express tension in his eyes by shaking his irises, before dilating them when the idea occurs.  This is also a good way to avoid over-animating and moving them too much. (They also do this nicely with the enraged big horse guy the first time he appears)

Also keep an eye on Zeus, he has some awesome expressions. As does Bibiche at the beginning as she gets steadily more irritated.

I just hope one day I can produce something as good as these guys have!

Mau

Ed Hooks made a point in his lecture that reminded me of “Mau, an Esma student’s animation that I watched recently.

He had been talking about cluing in the viewer on how to react, using the overall appearance and feel of your animation. And this piece, despite being very good, caught me off guard a bit.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae2T4utxxPw&feature=player_detailpage

As you saw, the story is about two stray cats in ancient Egypt. One of them, Kiphy abandons his responsibility’s to live a life of luxury in the palace.

The other cat is enraged to find that now Kiphy has the power to help the others he deigns not to, and confronts him. So far the story felt smooth and entertaining to me.

However Kiphy’s charge of heart is a little too abrupt when he gives his place in the palace to the other mangy cat. But the bit I found most jarring was the twist that the cat that is now taking this place in the palace is immediately taken away to be buried with the now dead pharaoh.

I also felt that the story could have been more compelling, had there been a definite sign of betrayal when Kiphy chose to leave. I.e. if they had both been trying to carry the milk and he dropped it to follow the pharaoh. The viewer would have felt more solidly behind the skinny cat.

A clue that the dark twist was coming, with some ominous music or something might also have been good.

Although I was caught off guard by the twist in this story, I really liked the overall idea. This is still fantastic piece of student work!

The Awsomeness of Ed Hooks!

Coming up, my final poses! (Exciting stuff)

But first, I thought it would be good to include the notes I made from Ed Hooks Animex lecture on empathy. Getting the audience to relate to, and care about the characters.

Although it was geared towards the games side of things, allot of the points he made were still relevant…

• It’s kind of difficult to sum up what empathy is but he defined it as a reaction to emotion in others (So it’s different to sympathy, but you can still feel both)

He also laid out the thought processes in a nice neat way, which I found really helpful.

Thinking >leads to> conclusion

Emotion  >leads to> reaction

So to a certain extent this is a nice little formula for working out the differences between animating involuntary and voluntary motions in my characters.

• You should always think about showing the characters reaction to their emotions, not just that they are feeling a certain way…

If a character is simply sad, there is nothing in that worth watching. You have to show them reacting to their feelings, and encourage the audience to wonder “why?”

• Next point. We are all born with the capacity for empathy, but first we need to develop a set of values, in order to react this way. So attempting to get an audience of 5 year olds to empathise with a characters sadness wont work.

(However in films such as Lillo and stitch etc, they still include this element to attract older audiences)

The 7 basic emotions we empathise with-

Happy

Sad

Angry

Disgusted

Contempt

Fear

Surprise

If your character is experiencing any of these things there is an opportunity for the to engage your audience.

• A sociopathic character is unable to feel empathy towards others -

And so the audience is unable to feel empathy towards him.

Hooks made a really interesting point about players not feeling for their game characters, because they control them. They aren’t recognised as human.
(even on a story telling level) 

Inorder to have the player feel for their character they have to have an element of unpredictability to give them a sense of “life”

He told a story about a guy playing Sims, and trying to kill his character by locking her in a room until she starved to death. This was fine until the character started crying, and he couldn’t make it stop. Because of this element he couldn’t control, (even in a game all about controlling people) the character became more “real”. Which made him feel bad and eventually let her out.

• The aesthetics of the character. How they look. Is a very important tool for telling your audience what kind of story to expect, and how to react.

For example, if you were watching a cute Disney style cartoon you would accept it as just that, and enjoy the light hearted adventure. And if one of those cuddly critters is then brutally and graphically murdered, you would be caught off guard and not be in a position ready to feel for what is happening to the characters.

• This final point is just a little side note that Hooks talked about, but I thought that it was a lovely point, that I hadn’t really thought about before. We have learnt about the mechanics of blinking, but not why/when we blink.

Apparently, (and I’ve tested this out and found it to be true) we blink at the conclusion of out thoughts, NOT for emphasis.

So I would think “oh I must tell him that-“ Blink- and tell them

The other person hears and as they understand- Blink – and reply to me

• Lastly, he also gave us a link to a website called “cultureogempathy.com”

Which is basically just people talking about empathy in all walks of life.

Refrence Pictueres!

These were so much fun to take, thank you Emma, you're an excellent poser!

I took more photos than these, but most of them weren’t very good; ether because they involved jumping or crawling. As you can see there’s a definite follow through with our silly jump/raised leg poses and my final idea though. I should definately use a worms eye view for this one.

The Japanese fan girl “Kowai” poses were allot of fun! (which is probably why we took so many) I still can’t quite decide which my favourite is, I like the camera poses at the top, as well as the leaning one on the bottom left. I don’t think I’ll use the leg lift ones though, simply because they are a little too similar to my “what’s under there?” pose.

The "Face-plant-desk-in-despair" troubled by result poses! I think these are all pretty expressive, but the bottom right has to be the best. I think it’s the floppy arm that does it.

Last but not least, here is my pose plan for "whats under there?"

Sketches...

Here are some quick sketches; i did just to get a feel for the poses. This is the one I’m having the most fun with, the fan girls for my "pleased to see" poses
Because fan girls seem to travel in packs i also sketched out some poses grouped together, this makes it easier to see what’s going on, but i would rather concentrate on doing one really good pose, than several not so good ones. I particularly like the second pose in from the right, but it could also be fun to show them holding a camera.

This is just a quick look at how my "troubled by result..." pose would go. The story is that they have just finished an exam that they know they have done terribly in. As you can see i already had a pretty good idea for what i wanted with this one, and just adjusted my sketches slightly to make it a little more effective.