Unit 2 : Phone booth

In this unit, we are exploring the fundamentals of mime and pantomime acting. This is to help add life and spirit to our animations and to display emotion effectively and correctly. Additionally, we learn how to construct this technique by using methods such as thumbnails and sketches, stepped curves, blocking out, in-betweens, and finalizing. It is also suggested to intensely and carefully imagine and process the story we are telling, from start to end, and consider the character and what they're thinking from before the shot to after the shot. The concept is to be able to present the character without dialogue and create subtext with subtleties and nuances from the body language and emotion.

We explored the realm of pantomime and mime, along with influences like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, whom I would consider pioneers of physical comedy, as well as understanding some fundamentals like the types of moods typically found in mimes, such as being upbeat and energetic.

With the task of creating an animation with a silent narrative centered around a "phone booth," and using techniques of mime or pantomime acting, I created thumbnails. It was suggested we use the rigs provided, but we were free to use any rig suitable for this task, and as I had used this rig before and was very impressed with the easy navigation of the controls, I went with the "Maxx" rig. Therefore, I based my thumbnails around this character and thought about how exactly this type of character would behave. I wanted this animation to flow with the style of this character and not feel like it had a random or forced narrative. I considered that as this character had a detailed face and hands, but the rest of the body was simple—not even having any clothes—I thought of this character in a more comical sense, almost like the 1977 Aardman Animation character "Morph" combined with Charlie Chaplin.

The premise of the story is a character is on the phone and reacts to the conversation. But the questions I asked myself were "What is the character doing before the phone call?", "What is the reason for the phone call?", "How would this type of character answer the phone?", "What is the mood?", "What happens on the phone?", etc. If I wanted to convey the intricacies and subtleties of the character's body movements, then I needed to know how or why they moved in that way. Otherwise, it would be a very robotic A to B kind of movement. It was also important that the audience would engage with this character.

Therefore, to enhance this shot, and as I had decided this was a comical "Morph-esque" type of character, I considered the environment. This character is an act; they're putting on a performance. It didn't feel natural to create a "realistic" set and a realistic telephone booth for a character that's whimsical. I decided to literally stage the shot. I found a theatre model from TurboSquid that was very detailed and well-modeled and added in some "props" that would resemble a theatre production. This felt more natural and would help add to the character's story.

I created thumbnails of the primary key poses to determine how many I would need and to visualise the motion flow. I spent a lot of time considering the story, which helped clarify what needed to be animated, such as:

1. Character is whimsically walking up to the phone

2. They're calm and smooth answering the phone, like they've got no worries

3. They're not sure what's happening on the phone; it wasn't the phone call they were expecting

4. They react to the phone, leaving them baffled and concerned

Thumbnails

The task is fairly simple, and as much as I wanted to create a more exaggerated shot, I also had to consider my own animation skills. As this is the second unit in this module, I am still understanding this process. I wanted this animation to be refined, polished, and smooth-flowing, and finished within an allocated time frame, so I was more confident in keeping it simple but effective.

In Maya, I created a new project and set up the scene by importing these assets and scaling them to fit. I placed the inanimate objects, such as the theatre, onto a display layer and turned it off so I could animate easily. I kept the phone booth on a different layer as the character interacts with it.

During this unit, we were introduced to two different tools. One being the parent constraint plugin called parentmasterplugin. I'm familiar with the Maya tool "parent constraint" anyway, but I wanted to use the plugin tool to explore my technical range. However, I had issues trying to install the plugin. Even though the instructions were very simple and easy to follow, I could not get the tool to work. As I don't find the Maya "parent constraint" tool difficult to use, I just decided to use that instead when the character's hand interacts with the phone. The second plugin called "TweenMachine" was more intriguing and exciting. It helped with animating the in-betweens and timings with ease, allowing you to favor which frame. I had issues with installing this plugin too. I tried several times, even redownloading the plugin and restarting Maya, making sure I was using the correct source code for the latest version and putting it in the correct folder, but was still encountering this error:

I decided to contact the creator of this plugin as there was a contact form. Unfortunately, Justin Barrett is no longer involved with the development of this code, and he tried to redirect me to the current person, but was unable to find a means of contact for him. Justin Barrett was very willing to assist with my problem and offered some advice, like checking if the source folder path was correct, which it was, and ensuring I didn't have an older version of TweenMachine, which I didn't. He couldn't figure out why it wasn't functioning. I know that others in this course have encountered difficulties sourcing this code, but their issues were different from mine, and they managed to resolve them. I looked online and found a person with the same issue, to which someone said it was because of Python 3 and the code (a code for a different plugin) not having parentheses in the correct place. It became very frustrating and I had spent a few days trying to figure out this issue, but I'm not experienced enough in Python to fix this issue. I decided to move onto my animation and come back to this issue at a later date, as this feels like a specific issue regarding my software and Python.

When I started working on the animation, I began by blocking out the key poses using stepped keys and timing the animation. I focused on keying every four frames, as I find this approach easiest for managing timings consistently and incorporating in-betweens. Since this shot starts with a walk, I referred to Richard Williams' The Animation Survival Guide: Walks to create an upbeat walk. I used the double beat walk method, similar to classic Disney animations where characters walk to the beat of the music, which I thought was appropriate. I applied a parent constraint to the phone with the hand and keyed it on/off at specific frames. I also used the book Drawn to Life, which had an excellent chapter on pantomime with some valubale advice such as "never make a movement or gesture without a reason" (Stanchfield, 2013, p. 78).

The next step was to block plus, meaning to create the in-betweens and flow from one motion to the other. After this step was finalized, the next was to block plus plus, meaning to animate on spline curves. I did this by simply selecting all the keyed frames and selecting the curve tangent. This created several editing issues, as now the curves needed to be smoothed out, as well as fixing the timing for the animation by holding certain frames for a certain time.

This took some time to edit as there were a lot of keyed controls. After this and doing some adjustments to the timings, I then needed to create some off-sets and additonal frames on certain controls, as realistically, they should not be equally timed. I would say this was the most time consuming part as each keyed frame needed to flow effortlessly into the next, without adding too many unnecessary and additional keyed frames. Throughout this process I was continuously thinking about the characters body language and making sure to not over-corrected or losing style and personality of the character, and still kept within my original concept.

The final animation

I found refining this animation to be challenging, and I recognise the need for more work to achieve a smooth and detailed outcome. I am still developing this skill, and I hope that by the end of this module, I'll be able to do it confidently and revisit this animation. I believe there are some story elements that could be adjusted. For instance, the character answering a public telephone is theoretically odd, as one would typically dial, not answer. Additionally, to give the character a more Charlie Chaplin-like quality, I could include a comedic moment. For example, after answering the phone and appearing confused, the character could quickly hang up, tip-toe away while facing the phone, and look at the "audience" with a scrunched-up face.

Further refinement -

I chose to revisit the animation, make some adjustments, and gather feedback from Alex Williams. The purpose of this exercise is to use stepped keys and display around six key poses to convey an emotion or narrative. As a result, I made changes by removing the walk sequence and simplifying the keyframes/poses for better clarity in this exercise.

Revisited final animation

I zoomed in with the camera and added a spotlight, which I think helped bring this shot together. I aimed for simple yet strong key poses to effectively convey the character's emotions while interacting with inanimate objects and constraints in this exercise. Moving forward, I want to incorporate more whimsical and exaggerated poses to truly capture the essence of Charlie Chaplin.

Bibliography-

Change Before Going Productions (2024). 1st Charlie Chaplin Films at Each Studio (1914-1918): Making a Living New Job Floorwalker Dog’s Life. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJy7kJTP-Gw [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].

Morph (2015). HOW IT ALL BEGAN | THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF MORPH | EP01. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrVkIsRSRZk [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].

Stanchfield, W. and Hahn, D. (2013). Drawn to Life : 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes : the Walt Stanchfield Lectures. 1st ed. Amsterdam ; London: Focal Press.

Williams, R. (2021). The Animator’s Survival kit. Walks. London: Faber & Faber.