Wednesday 27 April 2016
CoP Creative Response - Final Response
This is my final outcome of the two animations put in to one showing the differences between motion capture and keyframe animation and if the Uncanny Valley appears within that animations. This links to my essay because in my essay I talk about how films and animations are effected by the Uncanny Valley theory, and also how the theory can make us feel towards characters that unfortunately fall into the Uncanny Valley. It also links to my essay because my animation shows how motion capture can be used to capture realistic movements but without using a character that looks realistically human like using CGI, and in my essay I talk about how if an animator uses CGI looking humans they are more likely to fall into the Uncanny Valley but if the animator just uses motion capture for the performance they can be even more creative. The performance of a character is important so the animator also needs to be able to act and know how the human body moves.
I feel like my animation relates well to my written work and I enjoyed working with motion capture I feel like it is very useful to use if the animator is going for a realistic performance however keyframe animation allows the animator to act and exaggerate so much more. So they both have there advantages and disadvantages to animation. The one thing looking back at my creative work I would change is a part of the character which is his hand because I'm not a huge fan of how they look and I don't really think that they fit in well with the subject matter, I'd change the hand so that the character would have four or five fingers instead. I also feel like this relates well with my essay because they both involve motion capture and how it can effect the persons opinion and emotions to an animation using this software.
CoP Creative Response - Putting Together and Editing in After Effacts
After finishing in Maya I then had to batch render the animations which renders the animation out as an image sequence, so then I have to import the image sequence into After Effects and make it in to a video. When I placed the image sequence in to After Effects I also added in some text explaining what the experiment is and ask the audience if they can see the Uncanny Valley theory in the animations. I also edited the image sequences as well by tweaking with some of the colours to try and make the lighting look the same in each animation.
With the lighting I added an effect called 'Brightness and Contrast' which allows me to tweak the lighting so that the colour will be some what similar to one another. Doing this lowers the chances of the audience being distracted by the light changing brightness in between animations and make them focus more on the actual animation itself.
I also created some fade transitions in between each animations and the text so that it would not be a hard cut, also it's more pleasing to the viewer to watch.
Whilst editing this I also thought about if I should add any audio to it and if it should have sound effects in it. I decided to add some music to it just so that it wouldn't be silent and it'll make it a little more interesting to watch, however the music to me was very hard to choose and I didn't really know what kind of genre of music or how to make the music fit into the animations. If I could have more time to choose the music I would be that just down to me having poor time management.
CoP Creative Response - Creating One Last Thing
I had one last idea and that was to give each character a punching bag so that the characters aren't hitting the air and looking a bit strange doing so. I made the punching bag really simple and easy to animate because it's not the main priority to the experiment, I made it by a cylinder and a sphere in Maya and combining them together and then adding a bent handle to it so that it will bend when the character hits it. I then placed a simple texture on it making the top red, the pipe silver and the base black just so that it won't draw your eyes away from the characters.
At the end of each animation the punching bag gets thrown across the floor as like a finishing move and for a bit of exaggeration. the punching bag wasn't hard to animation but again it was all about the timing of when the bag needed to bend and then how much it needed secondary motion because if I didn't consider any of this the punching bag would look so out of place and it would ruin the animation.
In the motion capture animation I had to keyframe the punching bag because I thought of this idea after I had done all the motion capture filming so I though it might just be easier if I keyframed it instead, plus I don't think it looks bad in the animation I like it, but if I what thought of this idea sooner I feel like the animation would of been better with a motion captured punching bag as well.
CoP Creative Responce - Tweaking Up in Maya
For this I wanted to add a couple of things to the scenes in Maya so the the characters aren't just in an empty space punching the air. In each scene I added a floor and two light and ambient light to just light up the area and then I added a spot light to highlight the character, plus I made the floor a bit reflective so that it looks like a proper wooden floor.
Mocap Character
Keyframed Character
Unfortunately I was unable to get the same lighting in both scenes because the motion captured character scene is so much larger than the keyframed character scene so that means the lighting will reflect differently on the characters and on the floor as well. I think another reason for this is because I couldn't position the characters, lights, cameras and floors in the same place in both scenes because they are in two completely different files and I can not copy and paste the attributes from one scene to the other. However, the scenes don't look that much different and you can still understand whats going on in each scene, plus they won't be playing at the same time so you won't really tell that much if the lighting has changed.
You can probably also tell that in the images above one of the characters has no hair and the other one does, this is because I initially started off with the character having no hair and being bald. But I had the idea of giving the character a five o'clock shadow but on the top of his head, it turns out that this was harder than I thought it was going to be because when I added the shadow onto the head he just looked like a quails egg, so I gave him proper hair and I actually preferred it so now the character will have hair as well.
CoP Creative Response - Keyframe Animation in Maya
Animating the keyframe character was harder that I expected because I had to make the movement look human like and try not to exaggerate the actions too much or else there would be no point in this experiment to see if the Uncanny Valley appears in the movement of a character rather than the look of a character. The whole process took me about a full day to complete, it was a bit stressful at times when the animation wasn't doing what I was wanting it to do and there was a lot of tweaking with the graph editor (this helps smooth out the animation and moves keyframes about) so that the animation looked smooth and not robotic. I think the most stressful and hardest thing I had to do while creating this animation was thinking about timing and placement because thats the key to any good and realistic performance.
This is just a playblast of the keyframed animation and not the real rendered out piece, this is just to show you how I animated the character and to show you the performance with the controllers on. I feel like the performance is good, however there are bits that stick out to me which I'd like to change, for instance the second punch the character makes is a bit slow and I feel like the timing is wrong on it, but it is hard for me to change the keyframes on it without changing all the others after it. The one thing I do like about this is the kick at the end because it look convincing enough and I got the inspiration to do that from the film 300, but it was hard to get the positing or the arms right and to go in time with the kick so that the arms look like they are helping give momentum to the kick.
CoP Seminar - Planning and Structuring an Essay
In this seminar we got taught how to plan and structure are essays in a professional way, we also got taught how to use harvard referencing in are essays so that we don't playgoers anything by accident. This helped a lot because I wasn't a hundred percent sure on how to harvard reference but now I'm more confident in how I can product a good quality essay. Here are some notes that I took down in class.
After are lesson had finished I thought it might of been a good idea to type up my notes so that when it comes to start writing my essay I will have a good idea of where to start and how I would go about writing it. However, my essay might stray away from the plan after doing more research into the Uncanny Valley theory and I might only be able to talk about one or two films what have become victim of this theory as well. I think I'll have about ten or twelve different sources in my essay to help me evidence my conversation throughout my essay.
I feel like I will make some good points in my essay and I am feeling confident writing it up because I know how I'm going to go about structure and knowing what topics to talk about, the only thing I'm not to sure on is writing 3000 word because I'm not the best at writing and English so this will be had for me to do.
CoP Creative Response - Recapturing My Performance
I had to recapture my performance because the first one that I captured was to still and would of made no significant contribution to the experiment of this creative response because the movements were to simple and boring and they had no life to them, which would lower the differences between the two animations and have an effect to the Uncanny Valley theory.
I reshot my performance at home using my own computer and a free trail of the software IPI and I went out and got two kinects to that I could capture my performance in a better environment. In my performance I acted out boxing and tried to put a lot of exaggeration to the performance and I also tried to put a lot more life in to it so that when it comes to doing the keyframe animation there will be a big difference to both there performances.
After I did my motion capture I added it again in to Maya and placed the data onto the character to see what the movements would look like and how the character would look performing and this is what the result was.
I feel like this went better than before and that the performance has moulded itself well on to the character in Maya, however there are a few things I'd like to change which is the hand at the end shakes a bit which could be to some errors in the data capturing the performance of me. The other thing is I'd like to change some of the weights on the character because some bits of the body are sticking to the wrong bit and it show in the performance. Other than that I really like the outcome of the motion capture character and I would happily do this technique again for another animation.
I reshot my performance at home using my own computer and a free trail of the software IPI and I went out and got two kinects to that I could capture my performance in a better environment. In my performance I acted out boxing and tried to put a lot of exaggeration to the performance and I also tried to put a lot more life in to it so that when it comes to doing the keyframe animation there will be a big difference to both there performances.
After I did my motion capture I added it again in to Maya and placed the data onto the character to see what the movements would look like and how the character would look performing and this is what the result was.
CoP Creative Response - Rigging Character for Motion Capture
For this I had to go back a couple of stages in my character build so that the character does not have any controllers and a skeleton because in Maya you can apply a prebuilt skeleton to your character and then with that skeleton you can import the reference footage data from the motion capture and and place it on to the prebuilt skeleton, this then acts as the controller to the character. This is what I captured using the IPI software and the kinect cameras.
As you can see this is what it looks like when you import your motion capture data to the skeleton, your character imitates the reference skeleton. However, I did go back and reshoot my motion capture because I was not to pleased with the first outcome because I was only able to use one of the two kinect cameras at college because at the time they couldn't fine both cameras.
This is what it looks like with the new motion capture footage data when applied onto the character. There are a couple of thing wrong with the character which are the polygon count in the character is to low for it to fully imitate the reference skeleton but this can be fixed. The hardest part of this process was attaching on the prebuilt skeleton to my character because I had to rescale my character to the skeleton and then I had to position the skeleton to the right dimensions of my character and then I had to bind the skeleton to the character and hope that there were not problems with the character moving around. I had to do this a couple of times because it kept messing up or my computer crashed, but I did it in the end.
CoP Creative Response - Character Building in Maya
Building my character was a hard task to do but with the help from my tutors previous tutorial videos on how to build and rig a character in maya it didn't take me that long to do, I'd say the whole thing took me about two days to do, a day for modelling and another day for rigging. The reference images I drew helped a lot however I had to make the arms up because in the reference image the arms were down by his side where as I needed them to be in a T pose.
Rigging the character was straight forward I just followed my tutors previous tutorials to help me through it, the most hardest bit was painting the influences on the body for the controls because I kept having to redo bits that I'd already did. After rigging the character he moved fine and I was now able to animate my character.
However, before I started animating the character I wanted to put the texture on it so I had to grab the UV texture editor and took a snapshot of is so that I could take it into Photoshop and add colour and texture. This below shows you what a UV texture map is and how I was going to colour him in.
CoP Creative Response - Character Design
I didn't really look at any other character designs for inspiration for my character because I already kind of knew how my character was going to look. I wanted my character to look kind of comical and not really fit the fighting abilities the character will be performing. My character will be a man who is a bit over weight and who has a big bushy beard but also a bit bald, this has nothing to do with the theoretical side of the animation I'm just doing this because I wanted it to be amusing as well.
I actually took inspiration from one of my own characters that I created earlier for another module and then tweaked the character a bit by making him rounder, shorter and changing the clothes. I did this because I really liked this first character design and how in-proportionate he is to a humans body. I also did chose this character because of how simplistic the character is which will make it easier to build in Maya.
For these characters I drew them out front ways and side ways and tried my best to make them the sam hight, so that I can import them in to Maya and use them for reference when I build my character. I haven't bothered colouring them in and doing final design sheets because I didn't think they would be necessary, plus I'm colouring the character in on photoshop so that I can use that for the 3D models texture but the colour will be on a unfolded net of the character.
I feel like the hardest part of modelling this character will be the face because of the beard and how I'm actually going to model that, I don't know if I'm going to model that separately or model it as part of the face itself.
I actually took inspiration from one of my own characters that I created earlier for another module and then tweaked the character a bit by making him rounder, shorter and changing the clothes. I did this because I really liked this first character design and how in-proportionate he is to a humans body. I also did chose this character because of how simplistic the character is which will make it easier to build in Maya.
For these characters I drew them out front ways and side ways and tried my best to make them the sam hight, so that I can import them in to Maya and use them for reference when I build my character. I haven't bothered colouring them in and doing final design sheets because I didn't think they would be necessary, plus I'm colouring the character in on photoshop so that I can use that for the 3D models texture but the colour will be on a unfolded net of the character.
I feel like the hardest part of modelling this character will be the face because of the beard and how I'm actually going to model that, I don't know if I'm going to model that separately or model it as part of the face itself.
CoP Creative Response - Research into Human Movement
I researched into human movement and actions so that when it comes to me doing the keyframe animation I'll have references into what poses I can place my character in to. What I did was I gathered loads of images and references off of the internet and created a moodboard of different human poses and key boxing positions and where the weight is transferred between each punch.
I started off by looking at human movements and frame by frame layouts, I then moved onto looking at fight poses and how the body moves with the action of punching. I've got references from video games, life drawings, sketches, photographs and from the animated survival kit book, so that I can see how the human body changes is different forms of media and technique.
These reference images will also help me for when I come to do my motion capture because for one thing I'm not a boxer so I will have to figure out how to act like one, and two I will be able to look at these and find poses that will influence my in my performance while I'm boxing in front of the cameras.
This will help me figure out how to position my character, however these reference images will not influence me in my character designs because they are too life like for what I was wanting to do. My character will look more cartoonish but will act and move like a real human.
These reference images will also help me for when I come to do my motion capture because for one thing I'm not a boxer so I will have to figure out how to act like one, and two I will be able to look at these and find poses that will influence my in my performance while I'm boxing in front of the cameras.
This will help me figure out how to position my character, however these reference images will not influence me in my character designs because they are too life like for what I was wanting to do. My character will look more cartoonish but will act and move like a real human.
CoP creative Response - Research Into Different Motion Capture Techniques
For my creative response I've researched into motion capture and the different techniques to which I can capture my performance and I have also researched into how the human body moves so that I can get the best quality performance out of the key framed animation.
There are many different ways in which I can capture my performance, these include using Optical Passive which uses retro reflective markers that are tracked by infrared cameras. Optical Active uses LED markers connected by wires to the motion capture suit. Video / Markerless does not require markers, instead relies on software to track the subjects' movement. And finally Inertrail is a technique that does not require cameras except as a localiser tool, Inertrail sensors are worn by the subject and the data is transferred wirelessly to the computer.
I feel that for my motion capture I will use the Markerless technique because for me it is the easiest to use and unfortunately the college aren't equipped with the industry standard equipment for motion capture. However, for what I'm wanting to do with the motion capture the Markerless technique will work perfectly well. For this technique I've been shown a software by one of my tutors called IPI, which uses two Kinect cameras pointed at a 45 degree angle towards the subject.
The software is a free download program provided by IPI soft LLC, for capturing, playing back and processing video recordings from multiple cameras and Beth sensors.
http://ipisoft.com
I feel like this will get me a good result of what I'm wanting to capture which is me performing as a boxer because I'm not moving my feet as much so I'll be in a stationary position.
There are many different ways in which I can capture my performance, these include using Optical Passive which uses retro reflective markers that are tracked by infrared cameras. Optical Active uses LED markers connected by wires to the motion capture suit. Video / Markerless does not require markers, instead relies on software to track the subjects' movement. And finally Inertrail is a technique that does not require cameras except as a localiser tool, Inertrail sensors are worn by the subject and the data is transferred wirelessly to the computer.
I feel that for my motion capture I will use the Markerless technique because for me it is the easiest to use and unfortunately the college aren't equipped with the industry standard equipment for motion capture. However, for what I'm wanting to do with the motion capture the Markerless technique will work perfectly well. For this technique I've been shown a software by one of my tutors called IPI, which uses two Kinect cameras pointed at a 45 degree angle towards the subject.
The software is a free download program provided by IPI soft LLC, for capturing, playing back and processing video recordings from multiple cameras and Beth sensors.
http://ipisoft.com
I feel like this will get me a good result of what I'm wanting to capture which is me performing as a boxer because I'm not moving my feet as much so I'll be in a stationary position.
CoP Creative Response - My Idea
For the CoP's creative response I wanted to try and create an animated piece that would demonstrate the visuality of using motion capture and keyframe animation. This means that I would be exploring the different ways of animating and how using different techniques will effect the outcome of my animations.
Because my essay is about the Uncanny Valley and how motion capture is one of the main reasons why the Uncanny Valley occurs, I will be trying to create an animation that shows the differences of using motion capture and keyframe animation and see if the Uncanny Valley will appear in both animations. I'm boing this because with the technology society has gotten greater, so people in the animation and film industry are wanting to try and make the best visuals in extraordinary places and use CG humans so that they can do so much more, however CG humans can be every hard to create and therefore if created badly they will fall into the Uncanny Valley theory. So I'm wanting to create is a character that doesn't look like a real human but using motion capture its movements will hopefully look human like, but also see if the Uncanny Valley will appear in the characters movements.
To create my animations the tools that I will use will be the software Maya, which is a 3D animation software, and another piece of equipment which uses 2 kinect cameras to track a persons movements for the motion capture side of this creative response. With the kinects I will use the software IPI which captures the data from what the kinects record and then I will be able to transfer that data to Maya and apply it onto the character that I will create. The character will be modelled and rigged in Maya by myself and then I'll animate it using keyframe animation.
Because my essay is about the Uncanny Valley and how motion capture is one of the main reasons why the Uncanny Valley occurs, I will be trying to create an animation that shows the differences of using motion capture and keyframe animation and see if the Uncanny Valley will appear in both animations. I'm boing this because with the technology society has gotten greater, so people in the animation and film industry are wanting to try and make the best visuals in extraordinary places and use CG humans so that they can do so much more, however CG humans can be every hard to create and therefore if created badly they will fall into the Uncanny Valley theory. So I'm wanting to create is a character that doesn't look like a real human but using motion capture its movements will hopefully look human like, but also see if the Uncanny Valley will appear in the characters movements.
To create my animations the tools that I will use will be the software Maya, which is a 3D animation software, and another piece of equipment which uses 2 kinect cameras to track a persons movements for the motion capture side of this creative response. With the kinects I will use the software IPI which captures the data from what the kinects record and then I will be able to transfer that data to Maya and apply it onto the character that I will create. The character will be modelled and rigged in Maya by myself and then I'll animate it using keyframe animation.
Sunday 17 April 2016
CoP Lecture - The Gaze
This lecture was about the 'gaze', and the many different definitions of this which are: to look intensely, in admiration, surprise or thought. In film theory the 'Gaze' is a technologic term which is now used to refer to the ways in which viewers look upon people or subjects with in a visual medium. This can also be referred to as a 'feministic cliche' where is which the way males look at women, and Laura Mulvey was on of the first to introduce the term. She is known best for her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinematic' and points out that in films, women are typically the objects of the 'gaze' and quotes "the control of the camera comes from factors such as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience from most film genres".
There are four different key forms of the 'gaze' which are intra-diegetic gaze, direct, look of the camera and spectator's gaze. Intra-diegetic gaze is where the main male character looks at the female character as part of the films story, this gaze is often created by a subjective point of view shot. Direct gaze addresses to the viewer so the gaze of a person in the film looking 'out of the frame' as if at the viewer. Looking at the camera is the way that the camera itself appears to look at the characters depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film maker. Finally the Spectator's gaze is the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person or animal, or object in the film.
The 'gaze' can also derive pleasure out of people from watching films and one way of doing this is Scopophilia and is mentioned by Laura Mulvey that nature desire to look, curiosity of others' bodies emerges in childhood. She then goes on to say that "at the extreme (scopophilia) can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other." (Mulvey.L, Visual Pleasure, 1975, pg. 162).
The film theory terms of the 'Gaze' definitely relates to the field of practice of my own work because as an animator we can use the camera to are advantage and use different camera angles and shots to divert our audiences attention. An example of this in the well known and used shot in cinematography called the 'Dolly Zoom' where this focuses your attention on the main character of the story but it also add a dramatic tone to the scene as well. This can be seen in the famous French film La Haine.
There are four different key forms of the 'gaze' which are intra-diegetic gaze, direct, look of the camera and spectator's gaze. Intra-diegetic gaze is where the main male character looks at the female character as part of the films story, this gaze is often created by a subjective point of view shot. Direct gaze addresses to the viewer so the gaze of a person in the film looking 'out of the frame' as if at the viewer. Looking at the camera is the way that the camera itself appears to look at the characters depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film maker. Finally the Spectator's gaze is the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person or animal, or object in the film.
The 'gaze' can also derive pleasure out of people from watching films and one way of doing this is Scopophilia and is mentioned by Laura Mulvey that nature desire to look, curiosity of others' bodies emerges in childhood. She then goes on to say that "at the extreme (scopophilia) can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other." (Mulvey.L, Visual Pleasure, 1975, pg. 162).
CoP Lecture - Censorship and Truth
This lecture was quite similar to the lecture we had in first year about 'photography as a document', however this lecture had a different tone to it. We explored the notions censorship and truth and how there qualities of photography can obscure this truth.
Ken Jarecke is a Photographer and captured a hard truth about war and was either censored or not even show to the public. This piece was called 'Death of an Iraqi Soldier' and there was a lot of controversy over it and whether it was acceptable or not. The picture was in colour so it made the image more graphic and disturbing to look at, which deemed too sensitive and graphic to the editors and so it went unseen in the US, however it was published in the UK by the London Observe but caused a fuss due to the nature of the photograph. Some publishers made the photograph black and white to obscure the graphic horrors the photo brought across in colour. What people didn't think about was that this is want the photo wanted you to feel and it wanted people to ask themselves if this is what they want from war and want to get involved in. Ken Jarecke shows this by writing a message on the photograph saying "If I don't photograph this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on T.V." so this proves that war is being hidden from the public and the truth is being obscured by censoring that we see.
Ken Jarecke is a Photographer and captured a hard truth about war and was either censored or not even show to the public. This piece was called 'Death of an Iraqi Soldier' and there was a lot of controversy over it and whether it was acceptable or not. The picture was in colour so it made the image more graphic and disturbing to look at, which deemed too sensitive and graphic to the editors and so it went unseen in the US, however it was published in the UK by the London Observe but caused a fuss due to the nature of the photograph. Some publishers made the photograph black and white to obscure the graphic horrors the photo brought across in colour. What people didn't think about was that this is want the photo wanted you to feel and it wanted people to ask themselves if this is what they want from war and want to get involved in. Ken Jarecke shows this by writing a message on the photograph saying "If I don't photograph this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on T.V." so this proves that war is being hidden from the public and the truth is being obscured by censoring that we see.
In animation, censorship is being pushed to its limit or even pushed over the limit, and even used as another form of media which might be acceptable to use when approaching a more controversial subject. A good example of this is the work of Michele Cournoyer and her animation called "The Hat", which is about an erotic dancer who recalls incidents from her past with an abusive male. This animation was quite inappropriate and explicit because Michele wanted it to show the pain the woman went through in the story. This is a tough animation to watch because it makes you feel uncomfortable through out but then again it's supposed to.
CoP Seminar - Establishing A Research Question
In this seminar we had to come up with a reasonable essay question so that we could then actually make a start on are essays. Our tutor started off by giving us all a hand out sheet which took us through how to find a topic to choose for our essay, and also how to develop from said topic we've chosen. On the handout sheet we got there where four questions we had to answer about the topic we've chosen, this helped by getting us to go out and find multiple resources to back up are essay question to make it substantial enough to write about.
So for my essay I knew I wanted to do something relating to 3D animation or Visual Effects because those are the parts of animation I would like to go into when I develop my practise further, however I had no idea what my essay question could be about. I was struggling for quite a long time thinking of what I could write about, even though I'm not the best at writing. Luckily I was surrounded by my peers so they helped me out by giving me ideas on what to write about, for example how visual effects can make the film industry lazy, the narrative power of visual effects in films, or how some animated films are taken for granted because people don't understand how much effort animators put into films. Looking back at these ideas none of them were really catching my eye so I thought about what I liked and didn't like about 3D animation and the first thing that came to mind to the Uncanny Valley theory and how 3D animation can fail at capturing human emotions realistically and just make animated figures horrifyingly creepy looking instead.
After thinking about this I realised I wanted to write about the Uncanny Valley in 3D animation and how 3D animation can escape from it. I'll do this by talking about motion capture and how it's changing 3D animation, the pros and cons about using motion capture for 3D animation, and if 3D animation can escape from the uncanny valley.
So for my essay I knew I wanted to do something relating to 3D animation or Visual Effects because those are the parts of animation I would like to go into when I develop my practise further, however I had no idea what my essay question could be about. I was struggling for quite a long time thinking of what I could write about, even though I'm not the best at writing. Luckily I was surrounded by my peers so they helped me out by giving me ideas on what to write about, for example how visual effects can make the film industry lazy, the narrative power of visual effects in films, or how some animated films are taken for granted because people don't understand how much effort animators put into films. Looking back at these ideas none of them were really catching my eye so I thought about what I liked and didn't like about 3D animation and the first thing that came to mind to the Uncanny Valley theory and how 3D animation can fail at capturing human emotions realistically and just make animated figures horrifyingly creepy looking instead.
After thinking about this I realised I wanted to write about the Uncanny Valley in 3D animation and how 3D animation can escape from it. I'll do this by talking about motion capture and how it's changing 3D animation, the pros and cons about using motion capture for 3D animation, and if 3D animation can escape from the uncanny valley.
CoP Lecture - Identity
In this lecture we talked about identity and how it is viewed today and the historical conceptions of identity. We started off looking at the different phases of identity, which are Pre-modern, Modern and Post-modern. Pre-modern conception states that personal identity is stable and is defined by long standing roles, like married, the church, monarchy, government, the state and work. Modern and Post-modern conception states that identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us, discourse meaning a set of recurring statements that define a particular culture 'object' for example, madness, criminality and sexuality. This provides concepts and terms through which such an object can be studied and discussed.
Identity can also be related to stereotyping, and a good example of this is by a woman called Tracey Emin and her art piece 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995)'. This piece was a tent which was lined with the names of people she had ever slept with, but often mistaken by people as being symbol of all of her sexual partners. At the first look of this tent many people would shame her for being over sexually active and would judge the piece and its value before stepping inside and finding out the actual truth about it. This piece is about all the people she had shared a bed with and yes most sexual partners are mentioned but most of the people mentioned are family members and friends.
Identity can also be related to stereotyping, and a good example of this is by a woman called Tracey Emin and her art piece 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995)'. This piece was a tent which was lined with the names of people she had ever slept with, but often mistaken by people as being symbol of all of her sexual partners. At the first look of this tent many people would shame her for being over sexually active and would judge the piece and its value before stepping inside and finding out the actual truth about it. This piece is about all the people she had shared a bed with and yes most sexual partners are mentioned but most of the people mentioned are family members and friends.
In animation it also shows strong identity using stereotypes in character design, for example if a designer tends to a smart character they will give them glasses, a big head and a straight face, where as if they design a dumb character they will give them a tall thin body, big eyes and asymmetric facial features. This is portrayed in the animated TV series 'Dexter's Laboratory' where Dexter is very smart and has his own secret lab and his sister (the dumb one) keep annoying his and interrupting
his experiments. CoP Lecture - The flipped Classroom
The flipped classroom theory is a way of teaching that focuses on the students allowing themselves to take charge in their own learning. The teacher is on the side lines while the student is the centre of this theory, this allows the student to explore and come up with their own answers to their own questions. While the conversations and debates aren't being controlled by the teacher this helps the student explore a greater depth of topics, which can create more meaningful learning opportunities.
An example of this is in Jacques Ranciere (a French philosopher born in to the French revolution) book, where he mentions a teacher called Joseph Jacotot who was exiled from post revolutionary France in the Netherlands, working a job half pay. Joseph taught students in the Netherlands but they could not speak French and Joseph could not speak Flemish, his lessons were centred around newly translated copy of Fenelon's 'Telemaque' (1699). His students read the original text alongside the translation and were left to figure out the differences for themselves, this was an accidental pedagogical experiment which led to the principals of 'Universal Teaching'.
The flipped classroom theory does relate to my current practice, because as a student I am given briefs to work on and the teachers are there for support if needed. The whole briefs are self directed and as an animation students we a given loads of problems to solve and to create work that fit the briefs requirements. In a way I see where Jacques Ranciere is coming from but in my own opinion I feel like educators are necessary because they guide people in the right direction and can help people find success in there line of work.
An example of this is in Jacques Ranciere (a French philosopher born in to the French revolution) book, where he mentions a teacher called Joseph Jacotot who was exiled from post revolutionary France in the Netherlands, working a job half pay. Joseph taught students in the Netherlands but they could not speak French and Joseph could not speak Flemish, his lessons were centred around newly translated copy of Fenelon's 'Telemaque' (1699). His students read the original text alongside the translation and were left to figure out the differences for themselves, this was an accidental pedagogical experiment which led to the principals of 'Universal Teaching'.
The flipped classroom theory does relate to my current practice, because as a student I am given briefs to work on and the teachers are there for support if needed. The whole briefs are self directed and as an animation students we a given loads of problems to solve and to create work that fit the briefs requirements. In a way I see where Jacques Ranciere is coming from but in my own opinion I feel like educators are necessary because they guide people in the right direction and can help people find success in there line of work.
CoP Seminar - Animation and Authership
In this CoP seminar we read through a piece of text called 'The Death of The Author' by a writer named Roland Barthes, which in my opinion is a really complicated piece of text to read. Through the seminar we talked about what being an author meant, and them being like a film maker/artist in there own right. We took a closer look into the piece of text with our tutor, and he explained what some bits of text meant.
Death of the author came out to public in 1977, however it was written a couple of years before this. The Death of the author is about how the reader takes over from the writer and then in there own words tell other people what the book is about. For example in the text Roland Barthes quotes "The removal of the author (one could talk here with Brecht of a veritable 'distancing', the Author diminishing like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage) is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text (or - which is the same thing - the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent)." (Barthes. R, 1986, pg. 145).
Barthes believed that "culmination of capitalist ideology which has attached the greatest importance to the "person" of the author" (Barthes.R, 1968, pg. 143) this leads to the reader trying to understand the work from the authors point of view, instead of the reader trying to make sense of it there selves. Also once the reader has the authors work the author can not do anything to direct the readers opinions or thoughts but can inspirer them by the words and language they use in their work, "it is language which speaks, not the author" (Barthes.R, 1968, pg. 143) meaning the reader has the opportunity to make of it what they will with the authors work being the beginning of there interpretation. However, in todays society individuals are allowed to go on forums to comment on other peoples work and leave their own interpretation and this helps the reader to come up with their own perception of the world, as they see many perceptions of the world in one place. This completely cuts out the meaning the author gave to his work, and as Londow commented that "hypertext... infringes upon the power of the writer, removing some of it and granting that portion to the reader" (Landow.G, 1992, pg. 90) which both as giving of the impression that the reader is just as important as the author.
This also relates to animation because as the creative individual you have to let the audience react in their own way and have their own interpretation to the animation. As Barthes also mentions the nothing is completely original in the first place because more often or not the author/creative individual themselves have been influenced by someone else earlier.
Barthes,R. (1968) "Death of the Author" in Image Music Text, (1977), London, Fontana Press
Landow,G.P. (1992) "Re-configuring the Author" in Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and technology, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Death of the author came out to public in 1977, however it was written a couple of years before this. The Death of the author is about how the reader takes over from the writer and then in there own words tell other people what the book is about. For example in the text Roland Barthes quotes "The removal of the author (one could talk here with Brecht of a veritable 'distancing', the Author diminishing like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage) is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly transforms the modern text (or - which is the same thing - the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent)." (Barthes. R, 1986, pg. 145).
Barthes believed that "culmination of capitalist ideology which has attached the greatest importance to the "person" of the author" (Barthes.R, 1968, pg. 143) this leads to the reader trying to understand the work from the authors point of view, instead of the reader trying to make sense of it there selves. Also once the reader has the authors work the author can not do anything to direct the readers opinions or thoughts but can inspirer them by the words and language they use in their work, "it is language which speaks, not the author" (Barthes.R, 1968, pg. 143) meaning the reader has the opportunity to make of it what they will with the authors work being the beginning of there interpretation. However, in todays society individuals are allowed to go on forums to comment on other peoples work and leave their own interpretation and this helps the reader to come up with their own perception of the world, as they see many perceptions of the world in one place. This completely cuts out the meaning the author gave to his work, and as Londow commented that "hypertext... infringes upon the power of the writer, removing some of it and granting that portion to the reader" (Landow.G, 1992, pg. 90) which both as giving of the impression that the reader is just as important as the author.
This also relates to animation because as the creative individual you have to let the audience react in their own way and have their own interpretation to the animation. As Barthes also mentions the nothing is completely original in the first place because more often or not the author/creative individual themselves have been influenced by someone else earlier.
Barthes,R. (1968) "Death of the Author" in Image Music Text, (1977), London, Fontana Press
Landow,G.P. (1992) "Re-configuring the Author" in Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and technology, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
CoP Lecture - Research and Epistemology
This lecture was all about the understanding and the meaning of what 'Research' is, and also how we can apply this to are modules, studio sessions, lectures, and seminars.
Research is often thought as the findings of facts new or old and understanding them, which this is right however, there is more to it. For Example research can be done by experimentations to find out if something works or not and then solving that problem, learning new abilities in creative practical work. Research also comes with failure so you kind of have to embrace that fact and get on with further research as this will strengthen you and your acknowledgement therefore promoting success in the future.
In the lecture Fred (the lecturer) talked about the different ways that you can do your research, whether your reading books or gathering information on the internet or even making a survey. The main methods of gathering research are through Primary, Secondary, Quantitative and Qualitative.
Primary research is where you have research that involves the collection of data that does not yet exist, or research that is developed and collated for a specific end use, usually generated to solve a specific problem. Secondary research is published or recorded data that have already been collated for some purpose other than the current study, and the analysis of research that has been collated at an earlier time. Quantitative research deals with facts, figures and measurements, and produces data that can be readily analysed. Measurable data is gathered from a wide range of sources, and it is the analysis and interpretation of the relationship across this idea that gives the information researchers are looking for. Qualitative research is generates numerical data or data that can be converted into numbers, the gathering and analysing of measurable data, research that is objective and relies on statistical analysis, such as surveys.
Research will always be subjective to an individual because when we research we search for things we don't know making us the centre of our own research. With research we have to remember we can start anywhere as long as we relate it back to are to our own practice so that we gain an acknowledgement.
Research is often thought as the findings of facts new or old and understanding them, which this is right however, there is more to it. For Example research can be done by experimentations to find out if something works or not and then solving that problem, learning new abilities in creative practical work. Research also comes with failure so you kind of have to embrace that fact and get on with further research as this will strengthen you and your acknowledgement therefore promoting success in the future.
In the lecture Fred (the lecturer) talked about the different ways that you can do your research, whether your reading books or gathering information on the internet or even making a survey. The main methods of gathering research are through Primary, Secondary, Quantitative and Qualitative.
Primary research is where you have research that involves the collection of data that does not yet exist, or research that is developed and collated for a specific end use, usually generated to solve a specific problem. Secondary research is published or recorded data that have already been collated for some purpose other than the current study, and the analysis of research that has been collated at an earlier time. Quantitative research deals with facts, figures and measurements, and produces data that can be readily analysed. Measurable data is gathered from a wide range of sources, and it is the analysis and interpretation of the relationship across this idea that gives the information researchers are looking for. Qualitative research is generates numerical data or data that can be converted into numbers, the gathering and analysing of measurable data, research that is objective and relies on statistical analysis, such as surveys.
Research will always be subjective to an individual because when we research we search for things we don't know making us the centre of our own research. With research we have to remember we can start anywhere as long as we relate it back to are to our own practice so that we gain an acknowledgement.
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