Andrew McLellan N11218274 ---- KNB135 - Animation Aesthetics

Reflection

I think I made two effective poses, I showed them to my partner with no context to see if she could guess what emotion they were and she guessed correctly for both which is a good sign. One thing I could have done better is maybe exaggerated the pose a bit more, adding some more dramatic squash and stretch to give it more emotion, I think I stuck a little too close to human anatomy when I should have gone a little more cartoony.

Week 2 - Bouncing Balls

This task involved animating 3 bouncing balls of various weights. Once with the balls bouncing on the spot and then with the balls bouncing across the screen. This exercise utilises the animation principles of Squash and Stretch, as well as Timing, Spacing, Arcs and Slow in / Slow out.

References

Vertical Bounces:

Horizontal Bounces:

Vertical Bounce:

Horizontal Bounce:

Reflection

These animations were very difficult as it is my first time using the graphing tools to animate, I found that I knew what I needed to do in theory to accomplish the right look but I couldn't make it work perfectly in Maya due to lack of experience. But hey, you have to start somewhere, and I think these turned out pretty well. following along with the reference videos going frame by frame really helped nail the timing, arcs and spacing, but something felt a little off about the slow in / slow out and I may have overdone the squash and stretch in some areas.

Week 3 - Head Turns

This task involved animating two types of head turns, one with a shocked expression and one with a relaxed. The main focus of this exercise was to utilise the animations principles of Timing, Arcs, Anticipation and Moving Holds.

Practice:

Here I was learning about Animation Methodology, and applying it to a simple swinging pendulum. I used the Pose to Pose method, which involves keying your most important poses and then tweaking the graph tangents in order to get a nice, smooth swinging motion.

Reference for Shocked Turn:

Shocked Turn:

Reference for Relaxed Turn:

Relaxed Turn:

Reflection

I'm relatively happy with the head turns, as I feel like I was able to breathe some life into the rig with my animation. The poses and timing turned out well, though I could have made the Arcs a bit more pronounced as the actual head turning seems a bit stiff. I struggled a lot with the Moving Holds, I didn't really know what kind of movement I should animate for the guy just passively standing there waiting to turn his head and ended up making some weird ones that don't feel natural. The shocked one especially seems a bit robotic with him just rotating side to side before turning. In my second attempt in the relaxed turn I feel I was able to make the moving hold a little more organic.

Week 4 - Character Blink + Jumping Over Gap

This task involved using a facial rig to make a character blink loop as well as a ball bouncing along and then jumping over a gap. Both animations use on Squash and Stretch with the Bouncing Ball adding on Timing Staging, Arcs and Slow in / Slow out.

Blink:

Bounce Over gap:

Reflection

The blink animation was definitely the easiest out of all the animations so far, and I think I was able to make a good cartoony blink loop. The bouncing ball on the other hand was very difficult. trying to match the timing with the arcs proved troublesome. The rig itself was difficult to use when animating the decent of each jump as going from squash to stretch made the ball move up on the Y axis so I had to try eyeball where to move it so it didn't pop up which caused a bit of janky-ness to occur. But overall I think its not too bad, just has a couple of noticeable problems.

Week 5 - Pendulum + Ball With Tail

This task involved 3 different animations, One was animating a segmented pendulum moving back and forth, then the next was applying that same motion to a bouncing ball with a tail and having it loop. And finally combining everything we have learnt so far into a bouncing ball with a tail jumping over a gap. The animation principles used for these are:

Pendulum: Overlapping action, Drag, Follow Through

Ball with Tail Loop: Overlapping Action, Drag, Follow Through, Squash and Stretch.

Ball with Tail Over Gap: EVERYTHING

Reflection:

The pendulum animation was really hard to get at first, getting the follow through to snap like a real object would was frustrating, but after watching Keith Lango's tutorial I had a much easier time getting it to act like real world physics was applied to it and I'm very happy with the result.

The bouncing loop was a breeze after messing around with the pendulum for a few hours, it was essentially applying the same animation just on a different axis then adding some slow in / slow out and squash and stretch to make the ball feel alive. Again I think this turned out pretty well.

Lastly the 'Tail Jump over Gap'. Using all the practice and knowledge I have acquired up until this point and applying it all at once was a lot. But once I broke it down into the small steps it became much easier. Having already done the bouncing ball animation I was, at first, thinking of reusing that and then animating the tail on it, but I knew that I could make a better one now that I have a lot more experience. So I made the bouncing ball animation again from scratch and it looked a lot more natural, I was able to figure out the positioning for the pop not to occur on the downwards arc thanks for Keith Lago's video where he explained how to avoid popping with the pendulum. It was a simple rule to apply in order to fix it but I just didn't know about it earlier. After nailing down the poses and then the timing with slow in / slow out, I added some squash and stretch to give the ball life. In hindsight I may have over done the squash when the ball readies itself for the big jump, I just put the max value in but didn't stop to think if I actually should. Once the ball was fully animated I moved onto the tail and applied the same method I had been using for the pendulum animations making sure the overlapping action also followed through and had the appropriate drag. the only difference here was when the tail collided with the ground it flattened out rather then followed through as that would clip into the ground. I also added a little tail wiggle before the big jump for some anticipation and staging. Overall I'm quite happy with this animation and I can only see 2 tiny areas where it doesn't feel right that being the over squashing and the decent after the big jump not flowing perfectly with the arc.

||| ** Assignment 2 ** |||

Week 6 & 7 - Weighted Objects

With the beginning of assignment 2 came the introduction of constraints, using this technique we were tasked with creating two animations with a character Lifting/Pushing/Pulling a heavy object. The animation techniques used for these were: Anticipation, Timing, Squash & Stretch, Follow through, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Reference for Heavy Lift (0:55):

Heavy Lift

Reference for Heavy Push:

Heavy Push:

Reflection:

I think these two animations work out really well, I followed along with the reference videos from Youtube and the one I made myself and that helped a lot when trying to work out the timing for simulating the strain put on the 'muscles' of the character to sell the idea of weight. I think I could have done this a little better with the lift animation as the rest of the body was still while the arms were straining on the lift.

Week 8 - Biped Jumping over Gap (Realistic, Blocking Pass)

This task was building upon the jumping ball animations from the last assignment, only this time we had a full body rig to work with. We needed to make the character jump over the gap in a way a real human would, but keep the animation in stepped tangents as a blocking pass. The animation techniques used for these were: Anticipation, Arc, Timing, Squash & Stretch, Follow through, Overlapping Action, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Reference for realistic gap jump:

Biped jumping over gap (realistic, blocking pass):

Stepped Tangents:

Reflection:

Much like with the previous weeks animations I followed along with the reference video frame by frame to get my break down poses. I did have a little trouble with one of the legs randomly popping forwards faster then other limbs even though there was no key frames on it but other then that it went smoothly and I think its pretty good.

Week 9 - Biped Jumping over Gap (Cartoon, Polished Pass)

To continue on from last week, this weeks task was to create the same jumping over gap animation but with a cartoonish style, and for it to be a fully polished pass. The animation techniques used for these were: Anticipation, Exaggeration, Arc Timing, Squash & Stretch, Follow through, Overlapping Action, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Reflection:

I didn't have a reference for this one so just sort of winged it, and acted out the motions in my room when I got stuck. I enjoyed being able to exaggerate the movements and build anticipation in an unrealistic/cartoonish way. While I think the poses and motion is good the flow is not as smooth as I would have liked to to be. I tried tweaking things to make it smoother but it seemed to just make it worse so this is as good as I could get it.

Week 10 - Character Idle

This week moved away from jumping and into loops, specifically a character Idle loop, that contains a secondary action added using an animation layer. The animation techniques used for these were: Timing, Secondary Action, Slow in/Slow out, Follow through, Arc, Overlapping Action, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Idle Reference:

Idle Loop:

Reflection:

This one was easy to animate, I first made up an Idle movement and filmed it for reference. I used knowledge gained from the lecture about shifting weight in a character an applied it here. The only problem I had was using an animation layers for the secondary action, I watched many videos on how to do it and eventually got it to work after an hour.

Week 11 - Realistic Walk Cycles

Continuing on with loops, the next task required the creation of two walk cycles, one using a leg only rig and the other using a full body rig. The animation techniques used for these were: Timing, Squash & Stretch, Follow through, Arc, Overlapping Action, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Walk Cycle (Legs only):

Walk Cycle (Full Body):

Reflection

This task I found quite difficult. I used the images of the break down poses and and blocked out the cycle then went back and smoothed the motions only to realise that I had the arms around the wrong way. I went and tried to swap them by moving key frames but that just proved to mess them all up so I deleted them and started again. I then had issues with getting it to loop smoothly. All the videos I watched on how to do it always said to have the first and last frame be identical but that ended up leaving 2 frames of the exact same pose and you could tell it stopped for a moment in-between loops. After much tweaking I decided to have it loop with the 2nd last frame being the last and that seemed to get rid of the jittering.

Week 12 - Unique Walk Cycle

The final animation is a fun one, we get to find a walk cycle from a game/cartoon and remake it ourselves. I decided to animate Dr.Livesy from the 1988 Russian animated adaptation of the book Treasure Island. The reason behind this choice is just the impeccable timing of it all. This scene below has recently become a popular meme right at the time I need to chose a character walk cycle. Its like fate chose this for me. The animation techniques used for these were: Timing, Squash & Stretch, Follow through, Anticipation, Exaggeration, Arc, Overlapping Action, Pose-to-Pose and Staging.

Walk Cycle Reference (0:35):

Unique Walk Cycle:

Reflection:

This was my favourite one so far, I had a lot of fun animating a meme and trying to sync it with the music as well. I think it turned out really well, I wasn't expecting to be able to get it so close to the original timing but I surprised myself which was nice.