Hypercinema 10/20/22
Wobbly
Mary Markhivida and I have partnered up on this AR character Hypercinema assignment. Right now our character is a bit of a work in progress, and our stand in model is… me!
Our discussion about the kind of character we’re going to create began with talk of how we’d go about achieving a certain visual style and the type of character animation we wanted to do. I suggested that maybe we create the character out of photographed elements a la character sprites in the game Doom, which then led to talk of using pixilation instead of photographed models or handdrawn elements.
Mary introduced the idea of marionette-like animation. I think this should be doable (if a little finicky and labor intensive) and I really like the idea of ultimately leaning into this 2D animation style as we bring the character into 3D with AR. The constraints of a paper marionette/puppet will hopefully be useful as we construct and animate the character in After Effects.
For now we’re thinking we want our character and animation to express tension rather than comedy or silliness. This may end up changing as we continue animating and refining the character. At the moment, using photographs of myself, it’s hard for me not to see it as a bit silly.
I’m wondering if we’ll be better served looking for some kind of After Effects rigging/IK plugin, especially one with some basic physical simulation behind it. Right now the process of working with keyframes both takes a lot of adjusting and it’s hard to imagine how we might portray the character slumping or collapsing. If we do push in a silly direction it could be beneficial to have some physics similar to those in QWOP to play with 2D ragdolling.–10/27/22