How to Film Animals for Live Action Reference

In this guest blog, Escapee Paolo Amadini explains how to film animals for live action reference.

Using live action reference to inform your animation is one of the key skills we teach at Escape Studios. Live action is important for character animation acting shots, and also for creating believable animal and creature animation.

In the post below, Paolo explains how to go about capturing your own live action reference, how to do it all on a budget, and how to use the reference to create great animation.

The secret to animal & creature animation
The secret to believable animal and creature animation is “all about finding great reference”. Whether you’re going for a cartoony or a realistic style, grounding your work in reality allows you to capture the finer characteristics of your animal's typical way of moving.

YouTube 
While there are plenty of reference videos are readily available on YouTube or on specialized sites such as GreenScreen Animals, it can be hard to find the right shot.  The best way to breathe life into your animation is to get to know the subject in the field, just like a painter would study en plein air.

Location
Interesting places to find and film animals may be closer than you think. Researching your local area is key, and even if you live in big cities, you may have access to nearby sanctuaries, farms, and parks, often with friendly staff who would be happy to advise and help out.

When you are planning to work with the help of local staff, in the best of cases you will usually need two days, one for scouting and finding the location, and another one for the actual filming. As weather can be a factor, and the availability of people and equipment may vary, alternative plans to use online reference should always be considered if your project has a short deadline.

A few farms are easily accessible from the Escape Studios campus in High Holborn. With the help of student Natasha Ivania Fernandez Di Maggio, we’ve been able to arrange a 30 minute filming session at Mudchute Park and Farm on the Isle of Dogs, setting up two cameras to film Misty, one of the farm’s horses.

Camera Settings
You can achieve good results with a variety of equipment, from a cell phone to a professional camera. Depending on how far you will be from your model, you may need a tele-lens.

The most important thing to remember before filming is to set a high shutter speed, or enabling the equivalent “sports mode”. You can test it in advance by recording your hand waving, in similar lighting conditions as your final environment.  If the resulting frames are blurry when the video is paused, you may be losing an opportunity to get good reference that is easy to use later. High shutter speeds may result in darker or less detailed images. If you can record with a high frame rate, like 48 or 60 frames per second, definitely make use of this possibility, especially if you are planning to use the reference for realistic animation. It can be invaluable for finding the right in-betweens and tracing the arcs of movement, especially for fast-moving parts such as paws or hooves.

Another reason for using a high frame rate is when you have more than one camera. At 24 or 25 frames per second, you may end up with footage that is not synchronized, and you may find during fast actions that you’re unable to use both angles at the same time, as the poses are too different.

That said, be also aware of the length of the video you can record. The higher the frame rate and resolution, the less time you may have. It may be better to limit the resolution, rather than lowering the frame rate or having to pause the recording too often.

Filming
Having a good action plan in advance of the filming day is important. When scouting the location, take note of the possible camera placements and the path or area where the action will occur. Be prepared to record different gaits, like walks, trots, and gallops, as well as some quieter actions.

A tripod is always recommended. This will reduce the need for stabilizing the footage once you are back in the studio, which can be a time-consuming process.

That said, you have to be ready to pan in order to follow your model across a wider space. It is useful to have a few elements in frame whose position and distance you know, for example the poles on a fence, so you can use them later if you need to align the footage in the virtual space.

Gabriel Arnold from MPC, during our “Evening With”, made three key points about filming for The Lion King (2019), and they are valid even when you are on a low budget:

• Use multiple cameras from different positions, as some angles may be unclear from a single point of view.
• Don’t stop recording, as the most interesting actions may happen unexpectedly.
• Be ready to edit very short clips together later, in order to create the continuous action you want.

If you’re filming with multiple cameras at eye level, you want them at different enough angles, usually 90 degrees apart. However, if you have the possibility, try to have an additional view from higher up than the ground level.

Each time you start a new recording, it may be a good idea to clap your hands in front of the cameras as a synchronization cue, although the audio track recorded by the camera or phone is often good enough by itself.

Footage Selection
Now you’re back in the studio, and if you’ve done things right, footage selection will probably be the most time consuming part of the process before you start animating.

You may want to adjust the brightness and contrast of the image to enhance the silhouette. Images are more likely to be dark or noisy if you’re using fast shutter speeds, but this is not an issue as long as the silhouette is clear.

With more than one camera, you will place the footage on different video tracks, and synchronize the clips before you start splitting them. You can use cues like sound and claps first, then you may still want to verify that the key poses match, for example using the moment when one foot touches the ground.

You can then remove all the times where the subject is off-screen. However, don’t dismiss clips when the animal is on-screen outside of your planned actions! In my finished animation, the most interesting action was created by some playful interaction of the horse with a dog just outside the fence.

If you have a lot of footage, you can also tag different clips to find them more easily. In Adobe Premiere you can do this with colour-coding, for example to distinguish planned actions, close-ups, and unplanned moments. This will make clips much easier to select, if you want to combine them later, as suggested by Gabriel Arnold and also described by Oz Gani from Framestore.

Research
Before you start animating from the reference you have gathered, it’s very important to know the range of movements that a particular animal can do in reality, otherwise the poses can be misinterpreted.

Stuart Sumida provides very valuable high level tips. If you are looking for more comprehensive reference, then books about animal anatomy and drawing can be great resources for animators, including:

• The Artist's Guide to Animal Anatomy by Gottfried Bammes
• Animal Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form by Eliot Goldfinger

Animation
Once you have your video reference, you can use it in many different ways. On one extreme you can just study it to generate thumbnails, on the other you can do precise rotoscoping, where your animation window shows the original footage in the background and your character is a transparent overlay.

These techniques have been extensively covered before, such as in Paloma Zhu’s Parkour tutorial, and here you can find a few additional tips.

If you are rotoscoping, it will be easier if you choose a realistic rig that more closely resembles the proportions of your model. You may even need to adjust the proportions slightly to make them more similar to the individual you filmed.

If you took note of the placement of your cameras in the physical space, you may be able to build a “virtual set” with basic geometry, and use it to align the cameras. If you do this, you will be able to overlay the rig precisely over your reference from two angles at the same time!

One way of overlaying the reference in Maya is to use a camera-linked image plane, then you can simply use Maya’s standard Xray mode to see both the footage and the character at the same time. You can also assign the complementary colour of the real animal to the default material, and make it transparent. If you then set the view to use only the default material, you may have a bit more clarity compared to the Xray mode.

You may also need to track your reference points by setting key frames on the cameras, if you had to pan or zoom during filming. If you’re doing this manually, it is quite important to set these camera keys as precisely as you can, otherwise your character may wobble or you may find it more difficult to trace the key poses.

Finally, if you filmed in high frame rate, you have a choice of animating at the standard of 24 frames per second or at the frame rate of your film. While you are searching for key poses and basic in-betweens, working at the same frame rate as your film may help with finding the best moment where you can set a key pose, for example the exact moment where a paw or hoof touches the ground.

Conclusion
While I had good footage of walks and trots with a static camera, the most interesting actions were unexpected, just as Gabriel Arnold anticipated. I ended up using these clips even if they required more work for camera tracking, as they enhanced the storytelling element.

Filming in open air is a great activity that can often be done individually in your local area, without the need for travelling, and can supplement your classroom work or enhance a remote learning experience. It can also bring more originality to your work. Quoting Ed Catmull from Creativity, Inc.:

You’ll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar.

---Paolo Amadini

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link.  To apply for MA in Storyboarding and Previsualisation, visit this page here.  For the next 12 week animation course, click here.