Ok I am ready script and looking at layout and have a question Scarecrow has a crow landing on him in this scene

Script says
" Just then, two CROWS fly over to land one on each of SCARECROW’s shoulders"

layout has only 1 crow which I like better having one one each shoulder is going to be hard to fit and I am wondering if I should or could turn off hat dynamics and strictly animate the hat manually? Seeing I am just blocking this scene this needs to be decided sooner than later IMHO. should I have the crow land on shoulder than we have to manully animate the rim of hat for rest of shot and shots tell crow leaves. OR should I place crow on top of hat and constrain it to hat then we can animate the crow reactions to SC motion once that is finalized.

Thinking out load any thoughts?

My thinking was the same as yours hence I just put the one crow in there.

That's a great question Mark. How about having one crow on his shoulder and one crow on the top of his hat? Turning dynamics OFF on the hat, and hand animating it, sounds like a good idea.

Ok Holmes I do my best at that thanks for the reply.

Just blocked out SC key poses for this camera move I have not added lip sync yet I will start on that tonight when I get home form work. the crow enters later in this scene incase anyone is wondering were he is.

Good start... You slide right into the stream of things.

(Forget the 2nd crow - one crow gets the point across.)

It's weird not hearing Robert's voice for Scarecrow. Who's the new voice?


George

hee hee - that's a great voice -

Pssst - the answer lies in the preproduction status report pdf on the svn (page 17).

My lips are sealed.

I wondered that too.

Nice start. The poses look good.

OMG, someone actually reads that thing! Cool!

NO WAY! It isn't is it? It's quite a good imitation of the previous scarecrow voice. Well done then.

I am about 1/2 through the facial and lip sync of that 1st camera angle. I leaving This friday morning Aug22nd for vacation and I be back Sept 2nd. This is my last week of Vacation for 2008 I do not have AM at cottage but I have internet so I be stopping by a bit but you will not see any WIP's tell I get back.

Hey I'm going away on the same day! Have a good holiday!

you too Ken!

Ok need to ask question about these actions for lip sync. I was planing on doing all facial and lip syn in these actions but they are times to wave file. So in chr time frame 4:14 Trots talking starts on frame 0:00 on action ok but in this scene there is a camera cut were the camera goes too trot and bill with no dialog from them. Scare crow is talking so I need them to react to scare crows talking. If I try to do all facial animation in action then can I animate in negitive time frames? and If I animate in chr and in action for face I know I going to mesh my self up? Any thoughts I want to work within this system we are trying just not sure how.

I really can't understand doing any non-lipsync movement in an action. Every thing they're reacting to is happening in the chor. It's one more thing to fight in the persuit of an overall performance. Keep it simple I say.

I find even doing lip sync in an action to be non productive to me at least I have been trained for two years now to get the body motion/ language working first then do the lip sync last. It is personel preferrance I simple trying to follow Martin instruction for this blocking of this scene. I realize that this is an experiment and I trying to give this method a fair try. I thought I just do a rough lip sync but I finding that to be taking me a long time and I know if I do this scene I just end up redoing hte lip sync to match the final aniamtion at the end anyways? this is my instructions for this scene.





So I thought I do all facial stuff in these actions but they are timed to wave file and unless hte character is talking I have to mix chr and action motions somthing I not too sure how to do?

Mark, would you be more comfortable doing an InBetween assignment, and let people who know how to use Action files do the Keyframing?

I am just asking a question hoping to get some insite in how we are going to handle this situation?

Do I do the non dialog in chr which I have already started so I assuming that is what needs to be done. This is going to be posing the mouth and face. When I get to the action with dialog should I try to copy paste facial poses of chr into action then animate from there? or do i use the bland/add/replace setting and if so how.

What I would more comfortable with is to complete this assignment the way you want it and hopefully once you have it edited work on Animating it totally start to finish. I have it all planned out in my head what I want to do this scene and this is what I was taught that keyframing is the planning and timing stage of animation. Handing this over to another animator seems wrong that is why like you said some people perfer to do the Inbetweens with the key framing it's a package deal.

Just my thoughts on how I would perfer to work But this is a group effort and I know we have to work in a workable fashion that we all can adher to.

So you are saying to only do mouth motions in action not facial?

Ok but what's the method we want to blend chr and actions together?

I do facial animation in the Action - so do other people - some don't. If you want to do your facial animation in the Chor, create a new Chor Action, name it "facial" (so I know what it's for), make sure it is always selected when you are doing facial animation, and pick the "Face" Camera to look through when you're doing it. Don't worry about "blending" - everything will work out without you doing a thing, (make sure the correct Action is selected when you're moving things.)

I recommend doing the facial animation in the Action - so that I, as Director, can move the dialog around as a unit if I want to (I did that several times in TWO), however, I can simultaneously move both the Action and the Chor Action almost as easily so do what is best for you.

This is interesting. Now that I've had more time working with my shot (that has a lot of dialog), I have to agree with Ken. I originally felt that I'd be better to do all the facial animation in the action As I did in TWO but after trying it out Ken's way, I've changed to all lower facial animation in an action but leaving eye lids, brows and eye movement to the chor seems to be the better way to reduce bone control conflicts and it does allow for a better workflow I think.

I couldn't argue with a guy who did a minute of animation in about a week

George

The problem is that when people do this, they don't use a separate "facial" Chor Action. That means, I can't slip the dialog if I need to. If you are going to do facial animation in the Chor, you need to keep it as a separate Chor Action and PAY ATTENTION to which Chor Action is selected when you're moving things.

Thanks that is what I needed to know

I am working on the crow now and I wondering do I dare try to fold his wings in once he is at reat on SC hat? I can not find a pose slider for it and I wondering just how a bird folds there wings and if I can manage that pose with this rig? I could keep the wings out but I feel about 1/2 through this scene he would settle down and fold his wings in. Any thoughts on this?

He'll definitely needs to fold his wings. I thought this was sorted. I'll make a pose.

Edit: OK I added a pose. It's tricky so it's not perfect but it should do the job.

Thanks I marvel at how fast we can get things like this done! If we were a company and all getting paid for this I would probably have to fill out a pile of paper work and send E-mails and chase this mater down for a least a couple of weeks

7 hours later now that is service!

Ok I am making some progress now after figuring out some mistakes I made. Thanks too all that helped me out I appreciate it.

I have an idea in this scene Scarecrows says this

"No formal titles, like 'Mr.'or 'Dr.' or some such for me. Brains I may have but pieces of paper I do not"

I want to introduce a prop for SC, a scrolled up paper that SC will pull out of camera view and hold a scrolled piece of paper and unroll it to show a diploma then toss it away or it goes off camera. I think this is a way to give this character something to do with his hands during this long Dialog section and If we do this right might bring a slight gag into the scene.

Do I have permission to see if anyone want to make such a prop?

Sure, but you can animate a pretend diploma. He holds it by the top, shakes it to unroll, uses the other index finger to scan down the invisible paper...

Ok look at timing on these post this a simple incredible!

So what do you think?

Fine. (Is that the one Robert's using for "We're Off, We're Gone"?)

Well Robert gave it too me so it might be not sure?

Looks good to me. Nice idea mark.

Ok I talked to Martin and I got some clarification on this Process and I needed to Animiate something badly (well hopefully the animation is not bad ) Just needed to do something other than keyframing this long scene so I worked on body motion between 3 key frames I need to sync lip sync I think that is 2 or 3 frames late but this is what I have so far. SVN for chr shows sc01 and sc02 but svn .mov shows sc01 sc02 and sc03 which is right?

Trying to polish the 1st 12 sec. and asking for some comments

I tend to watch faces pretty closely (I wonder if most people do?), and after watching that twice, I found it quite fluid & appealing. The non-symetry added to the interest.

Much improved, Mark. Track that nose.

follow that nose!

Click to view attachment

yes, very fluid and significant... i like! robert is propably right about the nose, even though i wouldn´t have noticed it on my own...

If you're going to do the "I don't know" shrug, really do it...

Click to view attachment

Ok Thanks Robert I saw those straight paths at start and arced them and I fixed the hand not moving into head when he points at head and I snaped the B and P of lip sync. I also altered the decide pose to be more dynamic so I going to call this 1st 12 seconds done and go onto next camera move.

Starting on next camera move I am just trying to arc the nose of Trot and inbetween the transistion of poses 1st ROUGH pass.

Ok Arced nose and Arced hands motion and added Facial to Trot next I start to work on Bill

Worked on arcing bill motion but i am wondering ig=f this motion is too large? Next I add some hand Animation for Bill

I don't think so. (Can motion really be "too large" in this situation?)

Ths depends on what character you want to be leading this shot. I thinking that Bill motion if to large it takes the scene away from Trot and I am thinking of what Bill Taylor told me is that a scene says one thing and one thing only. I wondering if each scene should also have one main charaters thoughts leading the scene. By this I mean Trot is reacting 1st and her gestures show annoyance to SC long talking sseelf proclaiming speach. Bill reats to this gesture of trot and agrees with trot but if bill responding gesture is too large it takes the audeinces attention away from Trot and onto Bill. Maybe maybe not? Any acting students out there? what are your thoughts on this?

I'm not an acting student, but these are my observations & impression of your last clip:

When I first viewed it, I didn't understand what was going on.

Now after reading your explanation of intent, it appears to me that both Trot's reaction to SC, and Bill's reaction to Trot happen too soon.

Perhaps it would read better if Trot waits until SC finishes saying "a superior quality" and then Trot rolls her eyes, as she turns to look at Bill (maybe shaking her head in a "no" gesture as she turns as well), and then Bill reacts to her, with some indication of agreement with her body language. As it is now, their reactions to each other seem to overlap, and the audience gets confused as to whom to watch, and why they are moving.

Good job, as usual Mark.

Thanks Nancy that's exactly the type of help I am looking for! I relook at this and see if that helps the one thing I might ask if you go farther back on this post to V85 that has 12 sec of SC talking and this camera shot (same Scene but different camera view) is of Trot and Bill reacting to SC 12 seconds long speach about himself. Would you please join that to this and see if you still read it the same way? I trying to keep the file sizes small so I doing just the parts I am working on at the moment. I look at this also and I like someone else opinion sometimes I get to close to things and miss stuff thanks.

Trot looks good, but to me it looks like she's looking at the camera. I would put a "bored" look on her face rather than a smile.

Bill isn't so good to me. His eyes move toward Trot, but his head doesn't turn at all. It looks odd. I think you'd get away with not seeing his eyes....the audience would know he's looking at Trot. I'm not sure what's happening with his hands but maybe you're working on it.

On the camera angle, I think it would be better to have it behind SC as he rambles on.

Ok. (I went to V83, not V85). Now I see that Trot's reaction is probably not too soon, as they've been listening for a long enough time.

My impression, and personal bias now, is that perhaps Bills reaction to Trot is a bit too soon (if he is reacting to her), and perhaps too much of a symmetric mimic of Trot's. Perhaps he needs to turn his eye, head towards her at first, as her movement would catch his eye.

But, if Bill were to be having an independant reaction to SC, then perhaps he could do something a little different, and the reaction timing would be ok? Maybe throw up his hands some as if in the wondering pose, to indicate some thinking as to "What is this guy blathering about?" and maybe not lean towards Trot.

What you've done works as it is, but it seems to me you want to work towards perfection. I personally would tweak only till I was happy or tired of it (which would probably be wayyyyy sooner than you).

I have a hard time critiquing others work in unfinished stages, as it's not always clear as to what remains to be done in the author's eyes.