Animating the Hallway

We needed to animate a lot of shots in the corridor room. These were the hardest scenes to animate. The first scene involved the poet walking down the corridor towards camera, to his door. This was incredibly difficult to do as his body (in particular his legs, which were screwed to the ground) were unable to hold his weight in positions beyond standing, and without a rig we had to find ways around holding him in place. We resorted to tying a string around his head that was attached to the ceiling because this would need the least amount of painting out in post-production. The walls he was standing between were also very narrow and quite fragile. A couple of times, we accidentally knocked the set reaching over, and were unable to restore it so had to start again. Our main intentions with this was to keep the poet's head in line at all times as this made his walk cycle more steady. I was happy with the end product that we eventually managed to produce. In future I will consider the rigging of the puppets more thoroughly. 

The next scene involved the painter coming out of his room. This was surprisingly more advanced than I had anticipated as you could see him through parts of the door and so the painter had to be animated even behind the closed door. We then animated him bending under the door frame. Once again, without a proper rig, this was hard to achieve. We somewhat got the painter to prop himself up on the door with one of his hands, however was still very unstable and the final animation could have been slightly smoother, but with the materials we had, I was very pleased with what we achieved. Once or twice, the door frame was jogged and that meant we had to start again as we couldn't line it back up well enough.

The poet's and painter's speech was helped once again by the lip sync plans Harry made beforehand. It meant we didn't need to focus on the timing of the mouth but instead could concentrate on their body actions. These were the best animation sequences we had made yet as they flow very smoothly and they sync very well with the voices we recorded. There was some flickering of the light in one of the shots, however this can be removed in post-production. We also needed to switch around some of the walls where the new camera angles revealed beyond the set. Animating with the characters has become a lot more natural. 

The final shot with the poet walking into the painter's room is one of my favourite scenes. I was especially pleased with the animation here, which runs very smoothly and I really like the shadow cast across the floor and far wall. We had initially not planned for this shot to be included, however the door test that we made above persuaded us that it needed to be included.

What Went Well

• The characters have a lot of personality in their walking and movements
• The swinging of the door is very realistic and emphasises the painter's carelessness
• Details like the blue lighting on the floor adds to the atmosphere of the scene
• As a team, we are working efficiently and dynamically
• The lip sync plans are crucial 

Criticism

• We need better rigs for next time to properly stabilise and control the puppets. The screws were not enough
• The more complex scenes are slightly more jumpy than the scenes in the poet's room
• Some of the scenes were more advanced and took longer than first anticipated
• We had to be very mindful of the set as jogging it meant we would have to start again
• The hair and clothes of the puppets jitters but it's only noticeable in scenes with small movements and this is hard to avoid