Thursday, September 27, 2007

Questions for Seminar Panel

We'll be moderating seminar next week (Oct 3). Please post your ideas for questions for the panel in this thread.

If possible, try to structure your questions in a way so that they can invite comments from all members of the panel.

7 comments:

chiachi said...

My question is (1)When you do a pair of dancers.Do you animate one dancer first and then animate another to match or do you animate both of them at the same time? (2)Science is a huge boundary.For an animation artist,it is hard to apporach science.I am curious is there any part of science we can approach easier? (3)What are your goals for your research project? (4)To do the computer animation,we need to use the computer to caculate dance and performance.Sometimes the dance looks stiff.How do you figure out a way to put emotion into the computer program to caculate?Can you make the computer action have more emotion?Or can you put emotion into the program? (5)Have you ever put your own personality into the Disney villains?(for Andreas Dejas )

Ryan Chen said...

Subject: Performance Capture

Maks -
1. Is motion capture a tool or a solution? (basic)
2. When tuning a mocap performance with keyframes, what aspects typically require tweaking?
3. In a "mocap film" what percentage of the film is keyframed by an animator?
4. Will Beowulf be the greatest animated film ever made or just the best mocap film ever attempted?
5. Looking at past mocap films like Final Fantasy, & Polar Express...are weak stories and disappointing box office numbers giving mocap a bad reputation? Is it the stories or the method?

Andreas -
1. Has there ever been a disney film completely animated on 1s?
2. (Follow up) Given that mocap is essentially animation on 1s, shouldn't the traditional animators of the world animate on 1s in order to stay competitive? Wouldn't this enhance the illusion of life?
3. When animating Scar in the Lion King, did you account for the character's breathing? If not, why not?
4. Do you have any appreciation for computer animated film's like Beowulf and do you have an interest in animating CG characters in the future?

Arjun said...

Ryan,

These are great - think about questions that could involve responses from multiple panelists - Kathy would like us to spur debate/conversation between the panelists.

Arjun

Arjun said...

Here's my questions:

1. [For everyone] Performance capture as a technology is based on 'sampling' an actor's movements hundreds or thousands of times a second. However, most people would say that performance capture is still not as believable as good keyframe animation. Is this because we are not sampling accurately enough, or is there a fundamental problem with the sampling approach?

2. [For everyone] Animators always stress the importance of posing in silhouettes. Does that mean that we are better at perceiving gesture in two dimensions, versus three dimensions?

3. [Margo] Since gesture has been studied and codified in great depth in dance, what can animators learn from dancers?

4.[Everyone] Character animators are taught to work from reference footage. Would it be useful for animators to be taught what gestures mean on a psychological level and how gestures can be deconstructed, instead of relying solely on reference?

5. [Animators] What's the hardest to animate? Why?

Re n' Re said...

1.(All)Animation techniques improves very fast. As an animation student, I get anxious about that those animation techniques can take place of animator's job. How do you outlook animation industry and character animator job?
2.(Andreas)Have you had any trouble working with animators in different generation? As a supervising animator, do you concern about young generation's taste?
3.(Margo)What's the biggest difference of robotic and organic choreography except softness of movement?
4.(All)Do you think animation is art or science, and why?
5.(Maks)What do you think of mocap technique's merit and demerit?

Ryan Chen said...

Group Questions:

1. When choreographing characters in a scene do you think of the resulting series of poses as an actual body language with each pose representing a word in a sentence? Is that the proper way to structure motion?
2. When...

You see where I'm going...I'll try to come up with more/better questions tomorrow morning. This is harder than I thought.

Tim G said...

My 5 Questions (that have many other questions within them:):

1) In dance instruction, are there particular techniques that are taught to dancers to convey emotion and mood through their movements and gestures successfully? How are these motions interpreted into what can be perceived as a successful performance. Are characters in animation judged on the same criteria? (Margo)

2)In capturing a dance-like movement, that is perhaps rapid or intertwined, Is it a more economical, speedier, and successful process to use motion capture to quickly capture the key poses or does the dance that is being captured loose "something" that is achieved through an artists manual rendering of how they visually see and draw the dance from observation. (open question)

3)Animation is now being influenced by motion capture systems to give characters more "realistic" movements. During this process, there appears to be a quality in motion capture that is not quite on, when it comes to animating characters for film. Is this because there is a lack of artistic influence to exaggerate and move the figure? and In translating dance, to robots through motion capture, are there similar struggles to fully capture and choreograph dance through motion capture devices? Is the dance not fully believable through robots as it may be perceived through an exuberant/energetic human dancer. (Open, with focus towards Margo)

3)How has mocap been seen in the industry or with co-workers? As a tool to replace character animators? OR as a tool to supplement and establish key frames for animators in a more time efficient manner, that can later be filled in by animators with inbetweens? Is the motion that has been achieved in past films such as Polar Express, LOTR, Final Fantasy and others seen as a astounding SUCCESS! by those who work on the films or are they motions that are a step up from the last film that are just "settled for".
(Open, focus on Maks)

4) Describe your feelings on Motion capture in regards to it being a tool to help animators. Do you see this as a positive step towards achieving a goal of more fluid motion or do you feel animated actions are better made exaggerated or executed by the animators own creative process rather then a computer doing the visual interpreting for the artist to mimic "realistic" locomotion. (Andreas Oriented)

5) With the recent surge of 3-dimensional computer animation, usurping the once dominant 2-d animated films. What do you think is needed for a resurgence in the popular demand for 2-d animation? New exciting story-lines? A new technology that supplements a flat 2-d look? or is it merely a matter of time before it once again achieves its status as the popular medium in film. (Andreas)