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1999 to 2002 - Nintendo Gamecube action/adventure game Working for Rare in England - Position: Senior Animator
Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one,
I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes.
There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I
spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world,
bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue
what
to do with them when I started, but one of the things I remember
doing was imaging the lead (later to become Fox McCloud) as
Harrison Ford from Indiana Jones. I needed this to gauge
what he was thinking at any particular time. I wanted to know
how he would react to everything that was thrown at him, whether
that was a 200 tone monster or a brattish kid who doesn't know
when to shut up. This was a long time in development, beating my
years in University and my next longest project "Two Face Tabby"
into a cocked hat. And in all that time I had the opportunity to
work with a staggering number of character types and throw them
into so many situations, it was like a trail by fire for my
skills as a film maker.
Last time I checked there were over 1,830,000 copies of
Starfox Adventures out there.
On this page there are links to 25 minutes worth of the
sequence work I did on Starfox Adventures. It may seem like a
lot but there is actually about 3 hours of cut-scenes in the
final game, although it's not that easy to time it since some of
those are interactive branching scenes and many will obviously
only be seen depending on your performance and choices in the
game. Be warned, there are plot spoilers in here.
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The Face
 Fox meets Tricky - The mischievous side kick makes his first
appearance. Read on for an explanation of my work with facial
animation and lip-sync...
Dialogue
This is just one of many hours of scenes containing facial
expressions and lip-sync. When you're doing that much footage
you tend to develop a system. I've forgotten the subtleties of
mine but I guess I started out by laying out the dialogue on the
time line. I made sure that I gave natural sounding gaps between
the lines while keeping it as tight as I could since I didn't
want to bore the viewer with anymore screen time than was
absolutely necessary.
Blocking in
Usually I'd have a loose plan of action for the action of the
scene within the environment and start blocking it out with
character positions and camera framing. I'll jump ahead a little
here so that I can focus on the facial work, so with all the
animations in place and queued up against the dialogue it's time
to hit the lip-sync key... Ok so it wasn’t that easy, but there
was a process that I'm not at liberty to discuss here. However
this process only roughed in something that made it easier to
make a start.
Simplify the curves
I went through the animation curves it generated and started
ripping out all the detail. Your mouth moves in a way that
smoothes out the motion of what you would expect to get from all
the changes in our language. So you don't have to open and close
your mouth for every single sound, it just depends on what comes
before and after the sound. Frequently you will be able to make
the sound with only a deviation in the mouth’s shape on its way
to a more extreme shape. So you only really have to accentuate
all the most obvious sounds and the rest can be suggested with
subtler actions or, occasionally, nothing at all.
Mouth shapes
I worked with mouth shapes that needed moving around to sync up
with the sound. Each shape would have an in point that would
start it blending, and an out point at which the shape would
have fully formed. Obviously it took a lot of tweaking to make
it really work, but you'd be surprised at how much you could get
away with, then just modify the disaster areas (after all, who
really knows what a fox looks like when they talk).
Eyes
Next: the eyes. I simply shifted them around, remembering
to... wow, I almost forgot. You have to move the head. I could
move the head on top of the library animations and when I added
the eye movement it really began to sell the fact that these
were living beings. I made the eyes look ahead of the head
movement and then correct themselves to centre onto the target
that I wanted them to look at in most cases. Most of the time
your eyes will move very quickly (2 frames can be enough), so
don’t let them linger or you won’t sell the effect. Leaving the
eyes in the centre (not focused on anything) can be one of the
worst things you can do, it gives the character a vacant or
surprised look which is uncommon in real life when you are
talking, so be careful not to over use it. Of course sometimes
you want to make the character seem inwardly focused so that's a
good time to let the eyes wonder slowly without fixing on
anything in the environment, leaving large amounts of white
around the eyes on all sides. Moving the eyes all the way over
to the side, top or bottom will give the character a much more
believable look if you actually want them to look at something.
But remember that people rarely fix their eyes on someone they
are talking to and keep looking without looking away, so the odd
flit to one side will make it much more believable.
Expressions
Then I just started dropping in the facial blend shapes. They
worked in pretty much the same way as the mouth shapes. The key
to making expressions work is that it's actually the moment
during which they change that makes the action work, not the
pose itself. Without movement there aren't many shapes that
don't look like they could just be the character's default
expression. So I made the shapes change when I needed to
highlight a piece of dialogue or show a reaction and I paid
close attention to how long each shape took to blend (it was
impossible to stop them from reaching 100%, I didn't have that
much control). This part of the face works very closely with the
movement of the eyes so I made sure that I complemented their
position. You can make the same expression have a completely
different meaning when it’s accompanied with eyes in a different
position, the same goes for the heads angle (forward, back,
tilted etc…).
Blinks
Finally I'd add the blinks, usually on key reactions or pieces
of dialogue to highlight something that was being said. There
was rarely the opportunity to drop them in randomly because
there was always plenty of more meaningful places to put them.
Face Summary
So that’s how I made over three hours of lip-synced facial
performances. Of course it only scratches the surface really and
in all honesty I actually generated over ten times that much
over the course of the project. As things changed so did the
dialogue and so did the performance. You could say I got plenty
of practice!
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Meet Drakor - My favourite Boss in the game. Although it may
seem contrived I'm going to use this sequence to highlight some
principles about animating flight. It isn't the cleanest example
of these rules because the thermals rising from the lava
affected things (and I cheated for dramatic reasons anyway), but
it's still a respectable example. Up and down
This is unbelievably obvious, but a winged creature will bob up
and down when it flaps it's wings (you wouldn't believe how many
people don't even get that far - or perhaps you would if you've
ever had to review many showreels). The amount of vertical
motion will depend on the speed of the flap and the mass of the
creature's body (amongst other things). A larger mass might not
bob as much as a smaller mass would if their wings were to beat
at the same rate. But most likely they'll beat slower on a
larger creature (assuming a larger wing span), which will in
turn create a larger vertical bob.
Delayed Bob
If you have a slow wing beat it's an ideal opportunity to
practice a technique that really sells the flight effect. As the
wings beat down they push the air down which, in turn, pushes
the body's mass up... with a delay. It's most important that you
avoid making the body bob in perfect sync with the wings (the
delay is there even on smaller creatures, it just becomes
extremely negligible).
Mathematical timing
Now to be honest, a good animator will be able to sense the
exact timing of the delayed bob, but if you're unsure it's
possible to be mathematically correct. Fortunately I tend to
work with computer animation these days so I have the luxury of
being able to see the graph of a character's motion (the curve).
If you are working with computer animation too, then bring up
the curves for the wings (otherwise just bare with me). As the
wing flaps down look at where in the motion the most speed takes
place (the steepest part of the curve), that is where the most
downward thrust takes place. It's here that the largest change
of direction occurs on the mass of the body, and so here is
where the downward motion begins to decelerate and eventually
becomes an upward motion. So effectively the steepest downward
motion of the wing will take place at the same time as the start
of the body's change of direction into it's rise. In a wing's
curve that looks like a stretched 'S' the centre of that curve
(usually the straightest part; because it's in-between a change
of curvature) will overlay in time with the end of the straight
on the the body's curve.
Flight Summary
Confused? You should be, it always sounds scary the first time
you hear it but it's just basic physics and when you can get to
grips with the principle and you understand it you'll be able to
start varying the rule for different creatures and even putting
them in more extreme situations (thermals, gliding, irregular
flapping, etc...) while still keeping the flight convincing.
Exactly the same principles can be applied to swimming
underwater or any other push against a liquid or gas, you just
tweak the motion to accommodate the changes. Hopefully you will
'get' it, and your character won't look like they are on an
invisible clothes line anymore! Of course once you understand
the rule you can begin to bend it and eventually break it in
ways that still work.
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How to make something out of nothing
Test of Fear - This was a part of the game designed to scare the
player. Basically they had to respond to scary random events and
keep control. My goal for this wasn't well defined at all. I
didn't have much of a brief to go on, I couldn't request
additional assets and I was running out of time to do new
animation so I had to improvise.
Re-use cut material
Fortunately I had a library of animations for a few species we
had planned to use as baddies in the game but ultimately never
got around to implementing past the animation stage. So here I
had a model and a load of animations and a scene that was
entirely unfathomable. So I planned a set of increasing scenes
of fear that centred on all these cool ideas that never made it
in. At least that way the player couldn't expect what was coming
next. Yet they were all strangely familiar since they were all
based on elements in the game that hadn't been cut.
Feel the situation through your
lead character
It was up to Fox McCloud to react to these scary characters and
make the player feel like they are in danger. I didn't have time
to do new animations so I just used everything he had in his
library that was useful and layered on a lot of quick head turns
and reaction expressions.
The camera reacts
When you have very little of specific value to focus on and
you're doing your best to hide the seems it's amazing what the
camera can do to cover it all. By making the camera very twitchy
as if it were the viewer looking around reacting to these events
it pushed the sensation up a notch.
Summary
The truth is you can't appreciate what affect this sequence had
on the player when you are watching it out of context as a non
player. Obviously the player has something at stake and the
visuals in this sequence effectively served only to distract
them from maintaining their composure. It was actually a very
simple gameplay dynamic disguised as something more. There was
some cool bits in here, but mostly nothing of any value that the
player can walk away with since non of it was real... or was it.
The plant
There was one moment of truth in there that served as a prelude
to a later plot twist. It was virtually subliminal but part way
through you look through the eyes of Andross with a very
specific visual effect to signify it. The screen effect is
repeated at the end of the game so that when it occurs you
already have a strange association with it and you inevitably
search back through your mind trying to remember where you saw
it. Most likely you won't be able to recall it, which makes it
that much creepier. And thus, I lay the foundations for
something bigger to happen later on, without the player
realising that anything had changed.
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Iconic Imagery
Arwing Landings - A montage of sequences featuring Fox McCloud's Arwing space ship.
Highlighting your icons
I recognised early on that these sequences represented a core
iconic image that highlighted where this game was going with the
Starfox license, which was previously only a shoot-em-up. Since
Fox McCloud had spent most of his time in a space ship, a
sequence of him jumping out and landing on the ground was highly
evocative of what the game was about, and symbolic of the
character's development. After all he's a hero for hire
underneath it all, which can take's place in all kinds of
locations.
Variation is the spice of life
This sequence took place in numerous locations. Initially it was
the same scene, but eventually I had to make variations to fit
specific nuances of the gameplay. So the camera was moved, extra
characters got involved, etc...
Contrasting worlds
The landing on Swapstone Hollow specifically makes a big deal of
the natural, peaceful surroundings so that the arrival of a
space ship has that much more of a contrasting effect.
The hero shot
In one of the scenes, just as Fox lands from jumping out of his
Arwing, I caught a very careful glamour shot of his face that I
knew would be popular for use in the promotional material
(trailers, still images, etc.). I only wish I'd used it on the
original scene, then it would have been duplicated into all the
others. Although it's possible that it's all the more effective
for only appearing once in the game.
Animating space ships
It's astonishing how many animators can't make a space ship look
like it's flying. We all have a go at it at some point. The
principles of flight still apply, you just have to imagine where
the propulsion is coming from and how strong, in order to treat
it just like a bird (tips on flight).
Physics still apply!
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Dry Material
Queen Earthwalker - Fox meets Tricky's mum, but she's not in
good shape.
Staging
There's a lot of very dry dialogue in this game that has to
serve a function but isn't particularly entertaining in of
itself. So step one towards making it more interesting was to
figure out what assets I had to work with and stage the scene to
take advantage of them, then keep moving things around and
re-staging. That way the move to each new staging can be
something interesting that keeps the visuals interesting. Of
course the scenery was also pretty dull and there were dozens of
scenes with these characters in this cave, so it wasn't easy! I
made Fox seem bored and played heavily on the Queen's concerned
face, since the best asset I had to work with was... character.
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 The Homage
Scales threatens the Queen - The Cloudrunner Queen gets to see
how ugly Scales can get.
Subliminal references
The script read like the scene with Darth Vader torturing the
rebel soldier at the beginning of Star Wars, so that's how I
played it. If you're enough of a fanatic you'll spot numerous
references to that scene through the camera work and there's
even a homage to Vader's expressionless observation of Han Solo
being encased in carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back.
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