Dungeons & Dragons - Update #2

Good afternoon folks. So it's the second week of work on this side project of mine, Dungeons and Dragons. In which I'm trying to animate character 8 of 9 - Lump Beefbroth.

This picture should provide an approximate overview for those unfamiliar with the project. Though the values are a bit out of date, I'm afraid:

It's actually pretty difficult to quantify how far through I am. Or how much time remains. I've actually taken to creating a spreadsheet in order to track scenes, estimate how much remains, and ensure that nothing important is missed.

I'll be sure to finish that before wrapping up the project at least. To at least get a good idea of how much time is required.

But over the last week and 2 days, I've been able to complete 4:13 out of 24:35 minutes. It's pretty tricky, truth be told.

To explain the method I'm using in gif form, here's a breakdown of scene A14 as it was being made. Initially I start with the previs - a collection of literal png pictures made to move with simple position, rotation and scale keyframes in Adobe Premiere:

Next I try to identify which "compositions" are required in each scene. Effectively pictures of pictures, within which all layers are stored. These are the things I'm asking the commissioned artists to draw.

Here they are replaced by coloured rectangles, so you can see how the scene is made up of them:

The artists go away and comes back with something like this (exploded for the sake of clarity). A whole bunch of poses for the body and face. Along with mouth shapes and facial expressions.

This lets me build up a sort of "puppet" in After Effects. In which each piece is parented to the one above, inheriting the properties. Animating the hand doesn't need you to move it every time the arm moves. It will go wherever the arm goes. And likewise, the arm will go where the body goes. Same with the head, helmet, shield, etc.

An advantage to doing this is I'm able to build up a small library of repeatable actions. Saving them into a sort of 'puppet master file'. So when a puppet isn't talking, they can revert to a series of idle animations. Saves quite a lot of time.

That also means that if I want to change something later, I need only change the specific layer. And every puppet in the video is automatically updated.

With scene A14, first the rigged Lump puppet is imported:

All of the broad motion is controlled by a "Null Controller" - an invisible square I've made. And properties such as position or scale are all kept isolated on this Null for consistency. Once I'm happy with it, I lock it to prevent mistakes.

After that, specific momentum motions are put in and placed onto the "body" part of the puppet, translating down to all limbs. These are for the parts where the character might be putting emphasis on certain words, or is leaning into a conversation, etc.

The Null is moving it around the scene. The puppet is moving around to follow it.

Next, the most complicated part. Lip phonemes. Here I potentially risk a controversial opinion.

Cartoons are drawings. And therefore they need to work harder in order to have the viewer suspend disbelief. Therefore it's absolutely crucial that lip motion needs to roughly match the words being spoken.

Yes, maybe you can cut cutting corners if your animation has lots of action focus. But in scenes with close ups, you better have been making sure those lips close on the hard P sounds. Or teeth gently come together on the long eeee noises.

There's a myriad of well regarded animated films out there that I find utterly unwatchable because the animator has the characters mouth an O shape that changes size repeatedly when the dialogue plays. It drives me nuts!

So, lip motion:

It's tedious and takes ages. But for something like D&D, which is mostly dialogue between players, it's an absolute necessity.

After that, eyes and eyeline. Another critical element of all cartoons.

The artist has also been kind enough to present me with numerous brow shapes, so that just like the lip shapes, I can customise the face to match the emotion of the dialogue.

Also technically I usually put the eyeballs in last. But here it is once the eyes are fully applied. Blinking included, either as a repeatable idle animation. Or custom set to the dialogue.

With all of that out of the way, the supporting limbs can be animated.

These move as the body moves and inherit the motion through parenting. But also need to move generally in casual conversation. We move our arms almost constantly without realising. And this sort of motion is quite important to having the puppet look alive. Either when talking quietly, or emphasising points.

Then lastly comes a finishing phase, in which things that might be clipping are properly masked. Objects that are not firmly attached, such as armour or swords or wands etc, must have their own motion.

That motion is also slightly offset by 2-3 keyframes. To create the illusion that they are separate objects with their own weight. The heavier the object, the greater the offset. And the final stages of the video will involve a sound effects pass in which armor is supposed to clank, jewellery is supposed to jingle, etc.

Also in this phase, any inappropriate layers can be swapped out for more situational specific ones.

Would he have his sword out in this situation? Probably not. Therefore it should be sheathed (in fact, I've just noticed an obvious mistake in the gif. He's not got the "sword sheathed" body layer on. Whoops!)

Does the character turn around as dictated by the Null Controller? Yes? Okay, then the right arm needs to switch on when turning to face the viewer, showing the dented face of the shield. The opposite for the broken horn on the helmet. That needs the layer where it's turned away, activating briefly.

The little things.

And then with all of that complete, acknowledging that it's still to go through quality assurance and some more tweaking, that's the bulk of the animating done for A14. At least for Lump:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwkkl2tdht0slj8/A14%20pre%20QA.mp4?dl=0 

So that's what's going on. Scene by scene, Lump is being given a similar treatment to the other characters. And Cyanide's character follows immediately afterwards.

I'll do this for a few weeks then get back on with another bullshittery. Hope you're all well :)