Primary Research - The Brothers McLeod

As part of my research for this project, I attended ASSF in York, and this proved to be really helpful. I attended the Brothers McLeod seminar on Animation Aesthetics, and afterwards I had the opportunity to meet with them and have a good long chat about the use of 2D and 3D character animation.  I felt this was interesting because The Brothers McLeod produce 2D animation, and after the seminar, their passion for it became even more apparent, so it was great to hear their point of view on the topic!

I had originally planned with them before hand to go for coffee,  however something came up for them, so we ended up chatting just outside of the seminar room where it was quite noisy. This wasn't an issue at all as we were still able to have a good chat, however the only down fall was that i was unable to record the conversation, however I did take a of notes!

Outcome

When I asked them why, in their opinion that 3D animation has become so popular and more "mainstream" than 2D, Greg gave the argument that it could be to do with commercialisation, and that it is easier to make toys out of 3D characters. We also went onto the topic of Nostalgia, and how that can have an effect on people's preferences of animation. They did mention that they are kids of the 80's, so they obviously grew up watching 2D animation. This lead onto the topic of the audience's age, this is when Greg mentioned that he has kids who love both watching 2D and 3D animation.

The outcome of this discussion was really interesting, because despite Greg's love for drawing and creating 2D animation, they did argue that it is down to the individual. This was actually a really refreshing conversation to have, because I came away feeling more enlightened and even though I didn't have a recorded discussion, I still felt I could use this as part of my research.

Rigging and Binding

After the set back I had with the UV mapping, I began to worry about keeping to schedule. I have rigged characters before, however I was feeling very aware that it would take me a while to do. I have experience with it, but I will admit I am quite slow. After looking back over my work plan, and after being offered help from another student who is very experienced and much faster at working in Maya, I decided that accepting this offer would avoid the rigging process from dragging out for longer than necessary and would help to keep me on track, especially since I had yet to animate all tests both in 2D and 3D.

Did This Help?

Agreeing to take this help turned out to be a very good decision, as it meant these characters were able to be animated within a few days, where as if I had done it, it would have ended up taking at least a week.  The controllers were the same as the controllers I have made for previous characters, so it was good to have this familiarity. 

This change in events was a useful reminder that sometimes there are issues that come up that can't really be anticipated. However this has created another really useful aspect that I can discuss in my dissertation when I am on the topic of my practical and the limitations and problems I have encountered in one medium that I wouldn't necessarily have encountered in another. 

UV Mapping - My minor set back..

When it came to the UV mapping stage of these characters, I had imagined that it wouldn't take too long, given that my previous experience with it had been smooth. However, with the character of Toby, after separating all of the parts and cutting down the middle so that he could be unfolded, for some reason it wouldn't work! I then realised this was apparent with my second character too. 

After getting help from my tutor, even he was confused at first by what had gone wrong. It turns out, on both characters I had some how managed to acquire faces of zero value. I was able to get help on how to correct this, but both myself and my tutor were baffled as to how it came about in the first place. 

Fixing It

This was fixable, however it did take time. The faces that were of zero value could be highlighted and then needed to be deleted, and then re-applied using the muti-cut tool. The fact that these faces were in different places all over the characters' body, meant that it was quite long process. 

This did set me back, however it did make me feel some what better to know that this wasn't a problem that could have been easily identified. After this was fixed, luckily the UV mapping did then work!