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.