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.