3D Character Animation

Choosing a sound Clip

In my third week of the animation project I had to choose one of three sounds clips, these short six second sound clips were sampled from various unknown movies. When selecting a sound clip I wanted to choose one which I thought was different and gave me more room to get creative with the context of the sound clip. I decided to use sound clip three, my reason being is the first two seconds of the clip had no dialogue, and faint footsteps could be heard.  I decided with the first two seconds of sound I could build anticipation with a scared looking character, carefully and wearily sneaking along. 

With the remaining four seconds of sound, the dialogue “There coming to get you Barbra” I wanted to tell the story purely by the expressions and actions of the character Barbra, rather than introducing other characters to react with.  I felt that by only animating Barbra meant I could focus on just her actions and make her character the centre of attention, rather than spending time animating other characters and shifting the attention.

 

Creating a Back Story

Before I animated even the first frame I knew that it was essentially to create a back story behind the animation. When creating a back story, I thought what could make the animation more interesting, and what story could I create that would focus just on one character (Barbra).  I wanted a back story that would have some context to the sound clip, but would still provide an unexpected action that would create appeal and anticipation. 

Back Story

First two seconds of animation – The Nervous Blind Walk (No Sound)

Barbra is navigating her way through a tight corridor of a poorly lit crypt, with one hand outstretched and a forward poised posture, she stumbles along in the darkness with every sense heightened.  As Barbra walks along she becomes more and more anxious and nervous with only her belief in God to Guide her.

Remaining four seconds of animation – A Startled Barbra followed by screaming and running

(There coming to get you Barbra!)

Barbra suddenly stops on the spot and frantically checks behind her, frozen with fear, her hands start to shake, her lip quivers, and her body tightens up in anticipation. Without another seconds delay she turns to her faith, going down on one knee she closes her eyes and begins to pray to God to save her. Barbra’s prayers are answered and she feels Gods presence lift her up and away to the safety of heaven.

Story Boarding

After creating a back story to my animation and the character Barbra I knew it was time to storyboard. Remember the importance stressed by Richard Williams in "The Animators Survival Kit" I knew a storyboard was essential to the planning of any animation. When storyboarding I took the main points of action and interest of my back story, and put them in to six scenes of a story board.  With the actions of each scene planned I then draw an accompanying image. 

Animating a 2d and 3d Ball

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My first 2D Ball Animation

After extensively researching the principles of animation it was now my turn to animate, for my first animation I animated a simple 2d ball using CS5. In my first 2D ball animation it was clear I did not use enough in-betweens as my ball bounced to quick lacking timing and motion.  Also I did not plan the positions of the in-betweens, as a result my ball fell at the wrong speed and there was too much squash and stretch.

Refining my 2D Animation

After watching my ball animation back it was clear it needed allot of iteration before it fulfilled the basic fundamental principles of animation. In my first week I researched the 12 principles of animation, finding good and bad examples. But when it came to my first animation even though I knew what the principles were I did not know how to apply them. For this reason I then went and researched animation further, finding the Richard Williams and "The Animators Survival Kit". In the “The Animators Survival Kit" Richard Williams explains exactly how in-betweens work, showing how using numbered grids can structure an animation. 

I decided the only way I could achieve a good timing and motion/squash and stretch is if I planned each frame of my animation using a numbered sequence that showed the position of the ball though the entire animation.

    

Final 2D Ball Animation

For my final 2D ball animation I carefully went back thorough each frame and checked the positioning of the ball in relation to its numbered grid position. When I started the animation my aim was to animate a ball falling in off camera bouncing along and rolling to a stop. I feel my animation achieved its aims and fulfilled several of the main principles of animation such as timing and motion and squash and stretch. However I do feel my animation lacked appeal and due to the poor proportions of the ball, the animation was not as smooth and following as I would have liked.     

My first 3D Ball Animation

Animating a 3D Ball with Maya has been my first experience of using 3D Animation software, because I have not used 3D Animation software before I found Maya very confusing at first. I found that because Maya had quite a lot of controls and options it was easy to get lost or to choose the wrong feature. At first I struggled to get to grips with key framing, I found that there were some movement in-between key frames. I also discovered that certain key framing controls had very sensitive values, for example the squash stretch values were very sensitive and it took allot of trial and error before I was using the wright value and achieving a realistic squash stretch.

 

Final 3D Animation

After allot of trial and error I had familiarised myself with the controls and key framing system used to animate in Maya, I found the keyboard shortcuts especially useful as they allowed me to perform certain actions quicker than if I had to select them  from the control panel . When it came to refining my animation I found it difficult to achieve a smooth bounce, even when using more key frames. To smoothen out the balls bounce I had to go into the hyper graph section of Maya, once there I had to break the tangents and smooth the key frames position on the graph. I feel my 3D ball animation achieved its purpose of familiarising me with the animating process involved when using 3D animating software like Maya.  Below is my final 3D ball animation, I kept the animation simple having the ball just bounce up and down on-loop.

Bad Examples - The 12 Principles of Animation

Introduction

To further demonstrate my understanding of the twelve principles of animation, I have searched for a bad example of each. I have looked at animations that do not use, or poorly executes the twelve principles of animation. When watching bad animation it was clear when a principal was not being used, or was being used incorrectly, often a single animation would poorly use many of the principles, or not abide by any.

Squash and Stretch

This amateur ball animation is a perfect example of a poorly executed squash and stretch, in this short three second clip the ball can clearly be seen distorting in the wrong point. Because the size and proportions of the ball change from frame to frame, the ball seams to shrink and grow in size. In this animation the squash and stretch does not simulate the contact point of the balls bounce, but instead highlights the disproportions of the balls size and shape.