The Basic Walk

For the last project of the class, I animated the full rig of Buggy in a basic walk from one platform to another, starting and ending in a resting pose. At the end of second platform, was a red button - Buggy needed to press this button. All of the previous techniques we learned had to be present in the animation. However, there was emphasis on certain ones such as the curve progression on the COG and spine joints, as well as silhouette. I also made good use of traditional animation elements which included, slow in/slow out, follow-through, squash and stretch, and anticipation. 

How am I going to approach this?

I started off by blocking my key poses: first came the contacts, then the passing, and the the up and down poses. Afterwards, I added the blockouts of the turnaround and the button press. After making sure those were all looking correct, I tweaked the arm swings during each pose (I particularly found this part to be the most difficult/tedious). Once that was done, I added the blockouts for the anticipation for both the transition from resting to walking, and the button press. During this time, I tried to get in as many critiques as possible to make sure the foundation of my animation was strong. After fixing some issues I overlooked regarding curve progression in the spine joints, I switched my tangents in the Graph Editor from Stepped to Auto, and began working on the foot roll. It was during this part of the project that I came to truly understand the Graph Editor (which made me very pleased with my rate of growth in the 3D animation world).

The eyes are very important for conveying the characters emotions/intent.

After my animation was close to complete, I went back and added follow-through elements to things like the hands and antennae. I also added a blink to the character and he anticipates to press the button. Afterwards, I got a couple more critiques and made all the changes that were suggested to me. I was very excited to know that I was doing well with my animation and time management. Here's a look at my final submission for the last project.

And with that, my last stretch of Computer Animation was over. I have to say though, this class really made me consider putting more attention to animation over modeling. I learned so much more about Maya, animation and even how people's bodies react to certain movements from this class. As a student in Game Art, I hope this isn't the last of animation for me.

PS: I will be adding some posts of what I did in previous classes. :) 

Pre-Pro & Strong Poses

The second portion of the class revolved around the importance of pre-production in 3D animation. One main point that became clear to me this month, is that no matter what medium you specialize in - be it 2D or 3D - you're going to have to spend time working on the other medium at some point. 2D animators will eventually have to learn 3D (and the highly feared Graph Editor), while 3D animators will have to work in 2D to create pre-pro. In my case (the latter), creating good pre-pro was extremely important. It makes an animators life so much more easier when they transition their ideas over into a 3D workspace. The goal of my pre-pro was to explore as many dynamic poses as I could to prepare to transition to 3D.

The focus of the second half of the project was creating strong silhouettes using a sample rig in Maya while using my thumbnails as a reference. The rig was basically L'eggy's rig except instead of the egg half, it was a complete upper torso of what appeared to be an ant. I had so much fun with this part of the project (maybe too much fun).

He wasn't having as much fun as I was

I was instructed to pose the rig in seven poses which were supposed to read as; relaxed, fear, angry, happy, sad, disgust, and balance. After countless tweaks, I felt I was finished with my second project. However, I do feel that I could've made the last balanced pose a lot better at storytelling. Here was my final submission.

Computer Animation (L'eggy Walk)

In my Computer Animation class for this month, we have been working on learning the fundamentals of animating a character walk on Maya. Although I'm not aiming to become a full-on animator, I was very excited to learn more about animating in Maya, and any bit of knowledge counts.

The first portion of the class focused on animating humanoid legs during a walk, and understanding the different poses and physics that went into it. The order of poses (in animation) that occur in a walk are as follows:

• Low Pose
• Passing Pose
• High Pose
• Contact Pose

These will repeat in any which direction the character decides to move until they are at rest. After understanding these poses, the next step was understanding how the legs and rest of the body naturally interacted with these poses. For instance, the hip - in this case 'Center Of Gravity' (or COG) follows by rotation in X - the back-most leg. Afterward came mechanical tweaks such as the foot roll, which is making sure at least one foot is flat at all times, and curve progression. Curve progression is the representation of movement in the Graph Editor that dictates the overall flow of assets in the scene. My goal in the first project was to make sure that the COG was progressing in a realistic manner through rotations and translations.

This is good curve progression for the COG during a walk

And with that, my first project of Computer Animation was complete. Here's how my final submission turned out.