Friday 4 December 2009

Animating my own walk.

As it gets closer to Christmas we have been set our last task of the term. To animate our own walk, which was a lot harder then it sounds.
We had to video our own walks and then study them to animate them in both 2D and 3D. I have never really looked at my own walk before so it was strange seeing it on video.
I had to time the steps and look at the weight of my walk.

I think that my 2D animation turned out fairly well. I think that I managed to get the arm movements right as i don't move my arms much when I walk. I also don't have much of a bob in my step.

I timed myself walking and found that I took a full step every second so I knew how many frames I needed to draw. I then looked at my walk and worked out the key poses.




I found the 3D walk a lot harder and spent a lot of time on it. However i still thinks that it looks a bit robotic. I tried adding more bob in the step but it didn't look right when I did that as I don't have much bounce in mine.
I think that I am going to carry on working on it over Christmas to see if i can get a smooth natural flow to it.

Walk Cycles.

This week we were asked to animate a basic walk cycle in 2D and a walk in 3D using a rig we had been given .

I felt that the 2D walk went quite well and i think that i managed to get to grip with the basics of creating a walk. I did come across some problems during the process of making the cycle though. It took me three attempts to get it right as the first two he was jerking backwards and forwards.
I was pleased with the final outcome although there were a few problems with changing volumes in the legs, I think this was due to me over exaggerating the bob as he walked.





With the 3D walk we were given a rig, I think that my walk looked a bit robotic and lacked realism. I think that if i added another key frame for the down position it would have looked more realistic.



Experimental animation.

We were asked to look at some experimental animations and then create our own animation.

Here are some pixelation animations that I like.







I decided to create my own animation using office chairs moving around the campus.

Anticipation and interaction

This week we were set two tasks both to include interaction between the cubie character and another character.
The 2D assignment was to have a small and a large cube character. The small cube had to jump towards the larger one and the larger one to react to it showing some emotion.
I decided to have the smaller one jump and roll into the larger one, then the larger one to look angry and have the smaller one shuffle off looking depressed.
I liked how I managed to add the emotion of depression on the smaller cube but i think that i could have added more anticipation to the larger one when the smaller cube crashed into it as it looks like he just moves back.

2D Cubes.



For the 3D assignment we were asked to have the Mr Cubie to interact with a sphere. I wanted to have the cube sleeping and for the ball to crash down waking him up. I think that I needed to add more movement in the cube as the body doesn't move up and down when he is breathing.
I think that some of the movements are a little too slow and lack anticipation, However I was really pleased with a couple of the movements in the animation.
I think that I should have added some squash and stretch in that ball as it hits the floor.

3D Cube and Ball

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Mr Cubie

We were given a 3D cubie character to play with this week. Equipped with a tail for secondary animation we were asked to have a play with him. I decided that I wanted to set up a small assult course to see if I could move him in a few different ways.
I started off with him taking a breath in which added some emotion like pride. I then tried to make him run through tires, but I think it's a bit too slow to look realistic. He then jumped up onto a rope, I tried to add anticipation on the jump so I had him squash down before the jump, he then jumps off the rope and scrambles up a wall.


3D Bouncing balls.

We were given the task of creating two animations in Maya, both of bouncing balls, one heavy and one light.
Working on this is helping a lot with learning Maya, using the tools within it and getting to know some shortcuts and how to use the graph editor.

LIGHT BALL.





HEAVY BALL.