13/12/2015 - Final Submission Post

Week 14

Final Submission

Playblasts:

Jump Stream:

This is my final playblast for my jumping stream animation:

https://youtu.be/5SPcu_xZq-8 

This is the animation I am most pleased with. Although I struggled with animating the character in the air, I surprisingly enjoyed that particular challenge.

Magic Spell:

This is my final playblast for my magic spell animation:

https://youtu.be/tSoV1R4t3Qg 

The magic spell is another one I enjoyed animating. If there was something I feel I could improve on given enough time, it's the smoothness of the arms as they move around. I used FK for them in this animation but I believe not using IK wasn't the issue. Its was around have way through rendering that I actually

Run Into Object:

This is my final playblast my running into an object animation:

https://youtu.be/6GtoSM8u_L0 

I enjoyed this one as well but I had a problem with the FK arms. If i was to do it again I would definitely pay a lot more focus on the impact the character has on the wall. I am happy with the exaggerated run though.

Sword Swing Part 01

This is my final playblast(s) for my sword swing animation. The reason is has been split up is because I had some issues when animating the actual swing and my work on it somehow managed to influence my characters hands in the first part of the animation. I was not able to fix this in the same save so I decided to open up an earlier save where the beginning was of a much better standard, that explains the two playblasts.z

I found the sword swing the most challenging of the four animation. I had numerous attempts at getting the swing right but they all looked awful. I believe part of the prob;me was the rig and the way I had parented the sword to his wrist controller. It was this that was the cause of all my problems, along with the lack of a global controller. I am happy with the first part though, I was successful in my attempts to make the character believably pick up a heavy sword.

https://youtu.be/eSU2b9Klugg 

Sword Swing Part 02

This is the second part of my sword swing animation. This is where things got away from me a bit. I found it extremely difficult to get the sword for a start to have a nice arc as it curved around, the wrists also were a pain and messed themselves up at every opportunity.

https://youtu.be/hFWKVdmDVec

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am happy with my end results. Apart from the second part of the sword swing, there isn't a bad animation as a whole. One thing that I picked up and learned was how to use the graph editor. This helped me improve my curves and the way in general that I animate. I'm now confident in using the graph editor to clean up any issues in my animations but I'm also confident I can use it to improve my animation. I feel my poses have also grown during this project. I found it fun setting my key poses for my animations.

I'm not entirely sure if 3D animation is what I want to do after university, I feel I am only into it since my first experience of the creative industries was on an animation course at college, so I'm not sure if I will stick with 3D animation for my own brief in semester two. I do enjoy it but I also would like to create visually striking work like digital paintings or 2D animations with interesting styles employed. These are of course thoughts more for next semester. 

02/12/2015 - Animation Update

Week 13

Animation Update

In the past week I have managed to get the spell and stream jump animation almost complete and the sword swing animation is close behind their progress.  For next week I will have those three animations close to ready for submission with only requiring minor adjustments. The aim is to keep tweaking them until the last few days before submission. Newt Wednesday I will begin the running into an object animation and hope to have it blocked out  which will leave me just under a week to focus on it more than the others. 

I have received good feedback about my animations in class and have been working a part of the day implementing them or at least trying things out to experiment with my animations.

25/11/2015 - Animation Update

Week 12

Animation Update

Sword Animation Update

Below is a link to my sword swing animation update.

https://youtu.be/pgyDc-_mwvc 

Today I got feedback on both my animations from the lecturer and the above video is after I have taken this feedback on board. Some of the feedback I received referred to the swing of the sword, it was suggested that I should make it one smooth swing as opposed to the way it was before with a pause to emphasis the character pulling on it to bring it back down. I have also made the legs less stagnant during the whole thing to bring a more natural feel to it.

Magic Spell Update

Below is a link to my sword swing animation update.

https://youtu.be/N4eXs2bgpfI 

Feedback for thios was to again, do more with the legs and add some follow through when the character claps his hands together, this is to emphasis the great power being expelled from his hands.

Both of these animations are near to completion and I'm happy that I'll have 4 completed show reel animations come the end of this project. 

18/11/2015 - Animation Update

Week 11

Animation Update

Below is a link to my update, it is a playblast from Maya.

https://youtu.be/nJ5USGB-3Ck

So far I have struggled with the sword animation, it is almost complete though and I have begun the magic spell animation.  I am finding it easier this time around because I have looked up tutorials on using the graph editor and although I'm not getting the best results I believe I can achieve from the graph editor, I have seen a cleaner side to my key framing techniques which is positive and much needed. I believe that my following three animations will be smoother and better constructed.

Next week I aim to have the sword and magic spell animation 90% completed and have started one of the other two animations required of me. 

11/11/2015 - Animation Update

Week 10

Animation Update

Below is a link to my update, it is a playblast from Maya.

https://youtu.be/CGftU09wX_I

So far today I have taken my 3D animatic for the heavy sword swing and I have added further poses at the beginning and also the timing has been sorted out. For the end of today I am aiming to have the whole animation fleshed out and in the proper timing, I fully expect there still to be a lot of tweaks left to make but I'm going to do each of my four animations one after the other in terms of weeks, I have five weeks till submission, the next three will be my following three animations and then that leaves me two weeks to finalize them and submit them.

The animation as it stands is going well, I have managed to get good animation for him limbering up before lifting up the heavy sword. The only problem though is that his feet don't move, that is something I will look into.

04/11/2015 - 3D Animatics

Week 09

3D Animatics

These are my 3D animatics below, I have found it a much more enjoyable experience doing animatics in 3D, it has given me more freedom to put the character in the poses that I desire with out having to focus on the drawing aspect of it.

The story in these animatics hasn't changed from the 2D animatics, it is more just the poses I have changed to help me visualize my final animation better.

Heavy Sword 3D Animatic

Below is a 3D version of my animatic of my character swinging a heavy sword 360 degrees.

https://youtu.be/1DojBViOvS8 

I am reasonably happy with this animatic but I feel that when I am doing my actual animation there will still be more opportunities for me to add exaggeration. I need to make the sword lead the character as it is being swung towards the floor. I also need to make the start more believable, I like the neck stretch but the arms stretching backwards doesn't quite work, that pose is something I will need to work on. I have the option of working with IK or FK for the hands and it is something I will discuss for each of my animatics. For the sword swing I have decided to use IK for the hands because I want to make the sword lead the arms which will be easier using IK's.

Run Into Object 3D Animatic

Below is a 3D version of my animatic of my character running into a wall and being knocked back. 

https://youtu.be/9EiFIJNWVfE

There isn't much I have to say about this animatic, the character runs into a wall and gets knocked onto his back. I will be using FK for the hands because the characters chest will be leading the animation when the character is bouncing off the wall. The hands will be following the body towards the ground.

Jumping Small Stream 3D Animatic

Below is a 3D version of my animatic of my character jumping across a small stream.

https://youtu.be/qzRD1QQ-Bm4

There again, isn't much for me to say about this 3D animatic. This 3D animatic process has been extremely beneficial for me to get the poses as close to what they will be in my final animation. I will be using IK for the hands for this animation because it will be easier for me when the character is struggling to get up and his hands will need to be planted on the ground.

Magic Spell 3D Animatic

Below is a 3D version of my animatic of my character casting an epic spell.

https://youtu.be/aGKWxl-khfw 

The inspiration for this epic spell cast has been more from martial arts and the Haka, (a battle cry/dance performed by ancient Maori tribes in New Zealand). I will be using FK for this animation because the hands are not needed to hold anything or even stay in the same place where the character puts his weight on them.

Feedback:

I have already covered feedback for each animatic earlier in this post that was given to me by the lecturer. Now I am moving onto animation. Hopefully for next week I can have a rough animation of one of my show reel pieces.

28/10/2015 - Animatics

Week 08

Animatics

These are my animatics for each of my four required actions for this module. A general theme here is that I prefer to work loosely with my animatics because my 3D animation skills are much better than my drawing animation skills so I find it difficult to convey the correct posture/camera shot in my storyboards, therefore I prefer to have a less strict approach with them allowing me to do the more creative side of things in the 3D package. I see storyboards more as a guide where as my previous knowledge of storyboards was that they need to be exact and you can't really deviate from them. This may be the case in a team project but since I am on my own I think my method is justified. After all, they are called storyboards, so the quality of drawing isn't scrutinized as much.

Heavy Sword Animatic

Below is my character lifting heavy sword and swinging it 360 degrees animatic:

https://youtu.be/5n_365APSV4 

The basic story is that the character is trying to pick up a very heavy sword and swing it around their back. There will be opportunities for a good amount o exaggeration with them picking up the sword and also when they are swinging it around their back, I could just imagine the great strain on the characters back when the sword is pulling his arms down behind it.

Running Into Object Animatic

Below is my character running into an object and being knocked back:

https://youtu.be/dFgYQX9htzM

The basic story of this animatic is that the character is running and runs into wall, getting knocked back in the process. I don't see much opportunities for exaggeration in actions here but there is the possibilities of exaggeration in performance, for example, when he hits the wall he might slide down it unrealistically.

Jumping Small Stream Animatic

Below is my character jumping across a small stream:

https://youtu.be/HXo47b5RkK0

The story for this animatic is that the character is simply jumping across a small stream. The possibilities of exaggeration here, are again good.There will be a lot of anticipation in the build up to the jump and there will also be a lot of follow through on the landing. 

Magic Spell Animatic

Below is my character casting an epic spell:

https://youtu.be/mkl9v03KYhs

The story for this animatic is that the character is casting an epic spell. There is a great deal of exaggeration I can deploy for this animation with the arm flailing the most obvious place. The performance of the character is something that could also be exaggerated. 

Feedback:

After feedback from the lecturer on my animatics, I am to do a 3D animatic. We established that I had some strong key poses in my animatics but some fell away towards the end and that my drawing wasn't strong all the way through. That is why its been recommended that I do a reiteration of my animatics but in 3D using the rig I plan to use for the final animations. This way i will be able to get the key poses the way I want them to look without having to worry about the perspective of the character. 

23/10/2015 - Media Test/Art Test 03

Week 07

Media/Art Test 03

Run Cycle 03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuj7s2NnOk

This is the run cycle that i submitted for the art test, the reason I submitted this one is because the other one where the character is holding an axe, the frame range is wrong and he looks like he is sprinting like an athlete. So, I decided to take the first walk cycle I created (the one where I didn't give him secondary movement) and edit it so it was more plausible as a run cycle. This was my best result as a run cycle, even though I could have made it better given enough time, I still feel that my process improved greatly and I managed to keep things clean inside of Maya.

22/10/2015 - Media Test/Art Test 02

Week 07

Media/Art Test 02

Heavy Attack

This is my heavy attack animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Caa9tTxqM

My earliest attempts at this went far from smoothly, I had a particular problem with my characters arm where the interpolation between two key frames was well off and the arm did no react the way I was expecting. I tried solving this using the graph editor but to no avail, in the end I just deleted the two arm controller key frames and re-keyed them and that sorted it out. This makes me believe that the problem was the way I had key framed my controllers, it may have been the way I highlighted everything and key framed it...or it could have been something else. After all this...the rest of my key framing went smoother as I was more efficient with them and I kept things organised. This problem with interpolation has been a problem for me in the past and I finally feel like its something that I can identify early on and fix.

I feel that I have achieved a good sense of anticipation before the character slams down his axe although I would strictly keep this comment related the upper body. I didn't manage to do much animating on the legs although I did try, but anything I did looked off and made my animation look worse so I did away with the key frames on the legs. Given more time I would have liked to add a sort of step forward as the character is lunging with his axe.

21/10/2015 - Media Test/Art Test

Week 07

Media Test/Art Test 01

Run Cycle

The task I am undertaking is to animate the character, Axe, from Dota 2. 

The two animations I need to do is a run cycle and a heavy attack animation with him.

The link below is my first test at a run cycle with this character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0d6yn_xk0k 

I decided not to complete this (no secondary animation) because I worked on this in my usual fashion and I faced several problems where the graph editor was not able to help me. So I decided to go away and watch some tutorials on the graph editor in Maya and also run cycle tutorials and the link below this paragraph is of my second attempt after watching several tutorials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DfSfgx8hKo&feature=youtu.be 

This is a more fleshed out run cycle although the characters hips are limited so I was not able to animate the way I wanted to. I have managed to gain something of a better workflow with my animating which has been extremely useful. 

14/10/2015 - Run Animatic Tests

Week 06

Animatic Tests

The link below is to my "run test animatic". This is the first run cycle I have done in 2D and 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3EE49CijxY&feature=youtu.be

I have done storyboards for a lot of projects in my last three years of college and University and I have loathed them for as long. For this project I decided to try something different for my storyboards. My process doing storyboards before this year has always been to use a physical template to draw 4 16 x 9 rectangles on an A3 sketchbook and repeat that for however many storyboards I required. After that i would painstakingly draw my storyboards which I have never enjoyed in the past. After that I would scan the pages in and crop them and place them in Premiere Pro to then be exported as a video file. After knowing though that I would need to be doing storyboards for this module (and another!) I decided to have a think about another approach I can take for them, that's when I decided to try out doing them straight in Photoshop and exporting them from there. That is how I created the animatic test above. I really enjoyed doing them this way because undoing a bad brush stroke is a whole lot easier than having to rub it out (which just makes you work hard to get rid of your mistakes). That is one of the main reasons I found this way superior, in the past I would get annoyed easily at doing storyboards, but, in Photoshop I just undo the action and i'm back where I was with great ease. The 'onion skinning' feature in Photoshop is also extremely helpful and takes out the guess work of trying to match up the compositions of traditional storyboards. 

14/10/2015 - Moodboards

Week 06

Moodboards

These are my moodboards for this project so far. I have just done one for each of my actions as a bases for my animation and to also give me reference for my animatic.

1 - Picking up a heavy sword and swing it 360 degree's

This moodboard is showing characters lifting/swinging heavy swords. I can see when characters are lifting up a heavy sword that the shoulders seem to take a lot the weight while there is also (of course) a lot of weight being spread out by the legs and the stance the character assumes. Another obvious observation is that a realistic heavy sword will require two hands to lift up. 

2 - Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious

I strangely struggled to find images of people running into objects, so this was the best I could find (without actually running into objects myself). I think this could be the toughest to draw and might actually require me to watch boxing clips of knockouts as reference for my character falling down. One thing I need to make a decision on is whether or not the character knows he is going to hit the wall...my original thought was that he didn't and I think that would give me the best results. 

3 - Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing

This moodboard is for magic spells, because these images are static it is difficult to see the true action that the characters are making, so, while animating I will need to find some reference footage of some characters actually waving a spell which shouldn't be too difficult. Magic seems to be (in film) a sort of magic that is inside the character and when they do a certain movement, the magic is released in the way they intended. So I will approach this animation as if the character is in a dance and is channeling the magic up through his body and out through his hands.

4 - Jumping across a small stream

This is my last moodboard and is for jumping across a small stream. To get over a small stream you will almost always go over with one foot leading...I know this from experience as there is a small burn I have to cross to get to University and I almost always jump over with one foot. Jumping across this burn could prove vital research for this animation. 

Overall, these moodboards, even though perhaps they are lacking, will provide me with the reference I need for my own animations. 

07/10/2015 - Visual Research 3

Week 05

Visual Research:

"Dum Spiro" (Cailly, Guenole, Hardion, Lemoine, Wackowiez, 2012)

Can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/51478122 

This is the animation I am going to analyse for my own project research, "Dum Spiro". I acknowledge that I have taken quite a few screenshots so I will refrain from writing too much on each one but group them together for relevance. 

1:

2:

This is from the first scene in the short animation. Both of the screenshots show a great amount of exaggeration as the main character is taking the message and leaving the scene. This short is 3D so if I found the right rig then this is something I could experiment with. I love the way his arms and even his body go all wavy and in the animation itself there is an extra sense of movement added with it. Its worth pointing out that this animation makes use of the "rubber hosing" technique used early on in animation. You can see what the term "rubber hosing" means just by looking at the second image.

3:

4:

5:

6:

In all of the screenshots above there is even more examples of exaggeration with the character. Most of these screenshots show frames that are gone really quickly but they still manage to add an extra sense of movement like the first two screenshots. There are some really nice arcs added to the exaggeration which  combine two key animation principles, arcs and exaggeration. This combination works great in this animation and it has definitely given me something to test out when I start animating or even when I do my storyboards. 

7:

This is another screenshot for exaggeration, The character himself does not exaggerate but I believe that the way they have added a couple more limbs is a form of exaggeration as the character himself doesn't originally have that many limbs. This technique seems to be used to indicate that the character is frantically moving his arms and legs in a panicked fashion because he is falling. This is something I could replicate in my own animations by possibly rendering out the character with a couple of different animations for the legs and arms. 

8:

This is the last screenshot for exaggeration, I have put this last because I feel this one the most can be analysed for exaggeration and performance the most. Nobody in their right mind would run away like that with their arms flailing behind them like a scarf would, so in this screenshot I would argue that their is definitely exaggeration in the character but there is also an element of exaggeration in the characters performance. If you tried to run like that in real life you would fall on your back, that's why I consider his performance to be exaggerated since its almost impossible for someone to run like that in real life.

9:

10:

The two screenshots above relate to my analyses of exaggerated performance. In the first screenshot the character is preparing to run off with the letter he has been tasked with delivering to someone. This is clearly an exaggerated pose for someone about to run off, for one, it would actually waste time wrapping your body up in that pose before actually beginning to run but that is coming from a common sense/reality perspective. In an animation perspective the pose allows the viewer to clearly see that he is about to run off the left of the screen. This is more of what I have analysed before in previous visual research, but I find it helpful analysing exaggerated poses being used effectively in 3D animation because that is the medium I will be using for this project and different pre-rigs will bend differently which is important for me to remember when selecting my pre-rig. The second screenshot briefly is the character returning because he left the letter the first time, I consider this also to be an exaggerated pose because not many people in real life situations would contort their body like that, we can see his shoulders are raised an his head is lower while his knees are closer together, all this helps to convey that the character feels silly and foolish for leaving the letter in the first place.

11: 

This last image shows the character running from the cover of one tree in the distance to another tree closer to the viewer. As you can see, exaggeration has been employed again to help emphasise that he is running. Especially in this seen, it happen so fast that if he was not exaggerated then it would be difficult for most of the viewers to clearly see that he is running.

Overall, this is a superb 3D animation that both exaggerates the performance and also the limbs/movement of the character. This has been a good eye opener to what I can really do with the right rig on my side and has provided me with invaluable research of which to influence how I work.

30/09/2015 - Visual Research 2

Week 04

Visual research:

"Tako Faito" - Giant Ants (2015) http://www.giantant.ca/ 

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew-pick/tako-faito-by-giant-ant-118066.html 

This animation is only a minute long (including credits) but the exaggeration in it is mind blowing. That is why I'm going to analyse this for my own project. Even though this is 2D, I feel the exaggeration on show could influence my own work in 3D as it has helped open up my eyes to the possibilities there are with exaggeration. I will also do some visual research in terms of exaggeration in terms of 3D animation as well as that would relate more to my own brief.

1:

This is the first screenshot I have taken from this. It is but one frame among many but this one has so much exaggeration in it.  His leg shouldn't be that length...but it is and that's what makes this animation really stand out in terms of exaggeration. I feel that this plays a lot with perspective exaggeration as well. I'm not quite sure how something like exaggeration with perspective (when it comes to an actual character) would be recreated in 3D and is something I will definitely experiment with. I assume in 3D I would need a character that can stretch to allow the exaggeration.

2:

This is another extreme case of exaggeration but more with movement than perspective in this case. From the proportions of his arm to his leg, this frame breaks reality, but, in the style of the animation it fits. All this squash and stretch and exaggeration create the effect of him hitting the ground hard and fast as he lands in this scene.

3:

This frame is just crazy with exaggeration with perspective and body shape. The way his arm is right on the camera and the rest of him is so far away, it works perfectly but if you look at where his right foot is (on the left) it is really close to the camera that further exaggerates exactly where the character is in relation to the camera. Based on his hand and foot he is right in front of the camera, but, based on his torso he is a good distance away. I would put this down to exaggerated perspective as well in this frame. I feel obliged, before i move on to the next frame, to point out the right foot being in the bottom left corner with his leg stretching diagonally towards the centre is perfect composition

4:

This is the last frame for this animation, even though I feel I have analysed enough about the exaggerated perspective in this animation this is one shot i want to mention because upon my first viewing of this it blew my mind open to the possibilities with exaggerated perspective.  Looking at this frame closely and observing how close the tentacle is to the screen and how far away the character is, his arm in reality would be stretched so much just reaching the tentacle which further highlights the exaggerated perspective in play here. This technique is the same as taking a picture of you holding the Eiffel tower between your fingers in a sense. Here the viewer is tricked into thinking the tentacle is really big but its just a trick.

Overall this piece exaggerates perspective in a very effective way and is something i could certainly use to help influence the way i animate my 3D show reel for this module.

30/09/2015 - Brief Digest

Week 04

Brief Digest:

Here I have taken the brief I have chosen and highlighted key areas where I have further expanded underneath in the green and pick text. Project 2 Suited to students interested in practicing 3D animation skills. Animating Actions You may use a pre-made rig of your choice, the focus is animation. The client would like you to produce a series of animation playblast tests which employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance; with particular focus on exaggeration.  At the bottom of the document are some recommended rigs for you to use. The client would like you to plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests (roughly 5-10 seconds each) which show his vision in motion. To concentrate on the animation, you should use a pre-made rig. Your client would like to see video containing playblast of the following actions: 1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s. 2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious. 3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing 4 – Jumping across a small stream.

Challenge: The challenges I face in this brief is employing character performance into my animation. I take the term “character performance” as a convincing portrayal of the action the character is performing.

The other challenge I have in this brief is expressing “exaggeration”. Exaggeration can be something that is hugely influential in the way the character moves or it could have a minimal impact with just subtle effects on the character. The challenge here is how much I utilise exaggeration. I will have to experiment with different degrees of exaggeration when I’m planning this but based on other animation based projects I have completed, I will probably end up with a fair amount of exaggeration which will also inevitably add to my “character performance”.

Objectives: My objectives for this brief are, “to produce a series of animation playblast tests” and to “employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance”.  The brief also states that I have to “plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests (roughly 5-10 seconds each)”. These are:

1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s.

2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious.

3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing.

4 – Jumping across a small stream.

All this will require some visual research on my blog for exaggeration and once I have done that I will then also do visual research for each of the required animation playblasts with analysis on my blog to aid me. This will give me a good understanding of the types of exaggeration I can I can employ and also help with expressing the movements of my required actions.

30/09/2015 - Visual Research 1

Week 04

Visual Research:

"Man" - Steve Cutts (Copyright © 2012 stevecutts.com)

https://vimeo.com/56093731 

This animation is titled "Man" and is basically highlighting villainous, horrible humans who have no care for the planet and the other life on it. This of course doesn't represent all of humanity but it does do a good job of capturing  humanity in its inglorious nature. The reason I have chosen to analyse this animation is for the character performance. The way the main character holds himself is really well animated so that is what I will talk about under the screenshots below.

1:

This first screenshot is from the first walk cycle we see of him. I want to draw focus to the way his hands are clenched into fists which help to show his attitude, which is an over confident, arrogant individual. There are also subtleties in the position of his facial features which give him a menacing look. From the little smirk of his mouth to the little scrunched bits under his eyes, it all helps to give the character a menace.

 2:

This is the character a little bit further into the animation. Here he now has a fur coat and some leather snakeskin boots. I want to point out again, his clenched fists. They seem to add an uneasy, dangerous factor to his character. He still has his menacing facial features as well.

 3:

For this screenshot I want you to ignore the dead bear as I want to focus on the performance of the character. Not much has changed since the last screenshot but now he is in an action pose rather than solely a walk cycle. Here his eyebrows are pointed downwards as he smiles. This shows the mean streak in him as he holds the bears head (now we can acknowledge the dead bear!) while seeming proud of his accomplishments, but again, the smile makes this seem all that more sinister. He even has pointed teeth here which help to show his dangerous side.

 4:

This screenshot obviously is referring to deforestation...but that's not the important part of this, although knowing the context of which a character is in greatly helps to visualise the characters performance. The way he is now skipping through the forest, turning all the trees to paper as he skips along shows that he has no care for nature and his menacing facial features have not changed since the start. This scene is just him skipping and twirling through the forest zapping trees into piles of paper (with his magical wand), The characters performance here is malicious and carefree which is executed perfectly.

 5:

This is the last scene of the animation where the main character is sitting atop a big rubbish dump on a throne (smoking a cigar). The way he is leaning back helps to portray the character relaxed and happy with his success, which is a continuation of his arrogant ways throughout. We can see that he has no remorse for what he has done, or that he even realises the damage he has done. All this can be gathered from this one screenshot with his posture.

Overall I found this an enjoyable piece to watch with a really strong character performance from our main character "man". Everything about the way he moves and the way he holds himself gets his personality across without any confusion. 

29/09/2015 - SES

Week 04

Self Evaluation Strategy:

This is my own self evaluation strategy I will use for my work when assessing it.

23/09/2015 - Brief

Week 03

Briefs

On Monday past, we got access to 18 different briefs of which we had to choose one to work on.

In today's lecture I spoke with the lecturer and have decided that I will be doing the "3D Technical Art and Animation" brief. In this brief there were two projects to choose from, I have chosen project two. Below is the segment of the brief that is relevant to my project.

{:Project 2

Animating Actions

You may use a pre-made rig of your choice, the focus is animation.

The client would like you to produce (Objectives) a series of animation playblast tests which employ knowledge of animation principles and character performance;(Insight Strategy) with particular focus on exaggeration(Opportunity Insight).  At the bottom of the document are some recommended rigs for you to use.

The client would like you to plan and develop 4 short action playblast tests(Challenge) (roughly 5-10 seconds each) which show his vision in motion. To concentrate on the animation, you should use a pre-made rig.

Your client would like to see video containing playblast of the following actions:

1 – Picking up a heavy sword and swinging it 360 degree’s.

2 – Running into a stationary object and getting knocked back/unconscious.

3 – Casting an epic spell that needs a lot of arm flailing

4 – Jumping across a small stream.}

I have chosen this project because I am interested in furthering my animation skills this year.

16/09/2015 - People in Motion

Week 02

People in Motion

Today’s task was to go out into a public area and draw quick sketches of people walking by. The aim was to try and catch any number of things like, someone’s emotions, gestures and poses. 

My evaluation will follow these images:

Evaluation:

For this task I used my time efficiently, I managed to fill up seven sheets of paper in roughly just over an hour. Although I found this task frustrating at times I kept on drawing people. My drawings overall have not been that successful in my opinion but I do feel that my observation of all the different characters walking by and every little detail in their gait and posture was good. I could feel myself inspired by all the different people but most of the time I struggled to translate that onto paper. The same thing happened with the perspective task last week where I found that my ability with a pencil hindered my observational skills.

The skills I am evaluating in this part are “working quickly and fluidly”, “capturing sense of movement” and “capturing a sense of personality or character”. I managed to work quickly and fluidly for this task and I rarely spent more than five minutes on a drawing. I struggled with capturing a sense of movement in most of my drawings though which I account for my lack of practise and I found it difficult to actually get the legs in the right position oddly enough. I did however manage to capture personality more than anything else in my drawings. I find exaggeration an enjoyable experience and I find it extremely useful for expressing a person’s character.

Even though I found this task frustrating, I still feel that it helped me. It is great for capturing the essence of true movement which is hard to capture without plenty of practise. I drew a lot of mechanical stickmen (as pointed out by my lecturer) at first but I also populated my seven pages with some more fleshed out drawings spread throughout. One thing I found really difficult was trying to draw a person and then suddenly they would change direction and I would be left with a completely new pose. I was often unsure how to finish the previous pose and if I should try and quickly capture the new one. I don’t think I managed to fully adjust to this element of drawing people in public over the course of this task, I found it extremely frustrating and it made me feel like my drawing was poor, but after the feedback from the lecturer it became clearer that it wasn’t the final outcome but the method and the thinking behind it that was important for this task.

After today’s task I will definitely be doing quick drawing of people in public more often to train up my observational skills and my quick sketching. For another project I am focusing on character development and this sort of task could come in good use for designing characters and how they could move as imagining how a character moves is vital to their design.