Ogre Animation

Here's a scene I've been working on for the last few weeks. It's the story of a fierce ogre who's a gentle thespian at heart.

Making this scene has taken some time as unlike many of my other shots, where I have used sound clips from film and TV, for this scene I wrote the dialogue and found an actor to record it for me.

When I started this shot I was going to use a piece of dialogue from Modern Family where Cam (a camp gay man) finds himself in a situation where he can finally play the role of his dreams and switches from himself to the character.

"I see myself in the role I was born to play... STELLA!"



The reason I chose this clip was the change in character and the thought process during that change. I felt it would make really interesting and entertaining animation to see the characters journey in head.

The original idea was a beast set in his personal quarters in hell. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror before running out onto the balcony and screaming at the top of his lungs to a crowd of minions.

Early on in the process after sharing the idea with peers and lecturers I decided the change would be more believable if it was the other way round. If the beast was fierce and scary in public then once behind closed doors he was his gentle self. We changed the idea from Hell to a castle and I started blocking out the animation. I made a pre-viz animatic to play around with acting choices.





We had a visit from Louis Cook, a director at Aardman, who's comments were positive about the idea however he felt the change in character and the acting choices. These comments came at a good time as we were still just blocking and I completely agreed with him, so I started working on a way of making it all clearer and stronger. Unfortunately with this change I felt the audio didn't quite fit as well so I spent a short while trying to find a clip that would.

While I work I like to listen to podcasts from animators and while I was working I heard an interview from a Samy Ficeh and animator at Dreamworks. One thing he said really stood out that was always find your audio first so you can get to the heart of what's being said and who the character is before you work out a scene and environment.

As I was working as part of a team and the environment was already being modelled I couldn't just switch the whole idea so instead I felt like the best option would be to come up with something myself. I knew the character and what I wanted to express so I tried out a few lines of dialogue to best portray his feelings but also add a bit of energy and comedy at the end. I was really pleased with the line I went with. Not only did it have one opportunity for a change in character but it also had a second at the end. Going from fierce, to emotional and finally to comedy.

I put an ad on Spotlight in search of a voice actor and had a handful of replies, some were great and I picked a guy called Omri Rose as his reel was full of different styles of voices including cartoony sounding stuff that would work well for animation.

By the time I had chosen the voice I had already animated the first shot. Originally the character was just going to roar at the crowd below but after watching Robert De Niro's character in Stardust I felt he needed to be more scary than just a roar. De Niros character is a vicious pirate captain bu behind closed doors is a camp cross dresser. This was great reference and one thing I noticed from the cliup I watched was the how they showed him at his worst, throwing somebody overboard to their death, before revealing his character. I felt this is what my guy needed so I added a severed human head which he holds up then throws into the crowd.

I put together a video reference animatic made up of many different takes and acting options. I spent a long time acting out this shot as I kept having bright ideas and re-shooting. Unfortunately my favourite take couldn't work though as the rig was too large to get into the correct positions once I started blocking so I went back with that in mind to re-shoot again! I was also hoping to do the change in one long shot however while animated I was struggling to get the movement working and started getting frustrated. So as a bit of a cheat I broke it down into 4 quicker shots to make my life easier. I think I lucked out though as it still works with the cuts, especially the final reveal.

Here's an vid ref animatic and a below the first try as a single shot.




Once again I went back to the vid ref to try out some different options using the cuts. Now I'm just waiting for the final textures and lighting to be added and here's a couple of images of how they'll look. Changes that I might make are I think the inside should look a bit brighter and happier to help show that change but apart from that I'm happy with it.

 I had a lot of fun doing this shot it was great to do something from scratch and write my own dialogue. It was like a making a very short film! In terms of workflow and animation the video ref worked well for me on on this scene. I didn't just roto it which is tempting, instead I took the little moments I could find and pushed them as well as adding completely new actions and acting choices. I'm also speeding up a lot, the final shot was done from start to polish in a single day which makes me feel a bit better about being able to keep up with production schedules in the industry.

Now that you've seen the work gone into it here it is again. As always feedback and comments are welcomed!