Category: Maya

Body Mechanics Polish

This week we are still working on our body mechanics animation. I fixed problems with timing and spacing which were still present in the previous version. I also paid attension ro the swinging after landing to make it look more realistic. On the final stage I also adapted where model’s knees and elbows are facing and added more offset keys to them to exaggerate power with which the model jumps and lands.

Project Proposal

Last week I had problems with timing and spacing, especially on the highest point of the jump. I also had to work with arcs more as they looked quite unnatural.

In this new version I tried to fix that slow and gradual fall. I moved arcs in order to recreate the lelenth of the jump.

This week we worked not only with blocking but with spline version. Blocking helped to put key poses because this animation is complex, whereas spline helped to make this animation smooth and gradual.

Body mechanics is what our body does mechanically in terms of weight shifts, feet placement, posture and movement.

While trying to recreate body mechanics in animation, it is essential to look closely at the reference. We should not copy the reference to every second but it helps us to learn from, and to gain knowledge and understanding of how your objects moves, whether it’s a human or an animal.

And here is the first raw blocking stage of my animation of the jump.

This week we continue to improve our walk cycle. This time we did animation in spline.

Baesd on the feedback, I had to space legs out more. However, because of that I had which to bring the overall translation y down.

This is how the new version looks like.

Hand Gesture in Animation

Last week we started discussing hand gestures, and this week we delved in this topic even more. Hands are very expressive part of our body, in terms that they tend to express our emotions while we talk or move. Hands always do something. In order to make hands gestures look good, you have to take into consideration clear and organic shape, inter – connectivity, leading finger, and grooping.

Assignment for this week was to pose expressive hand poses.

Critiquing Step

This week I received feedback on my step motion from the last week. The thing I need to work on is arcs while stepping from one leg to another.

This one is the new version where I fixed motion arcs while ‘hips’ are moving.

Walk Cycle

Now, when we finished with our steps, we can move to the walking cycle. I must say that this was hard but we made through it. The task was to animate basic walk so we could focus more on the focus on how the hip and legs work. This helped with better understanding of the hierarchy between them. We needed to animae the full cycle for a walk is the point from which one contact frame “cycles through” 1 time until it gets back to the first contact frame 2.

And this is my final animation.

Pose to Pose

The previous version of my pose-to-pose animation was too complex, thus, I had to simplify the action and make it more smooth.

P.S. Hand Poses

This week we swithed from the golden poses to the hand poses. I studied how hands and hands alone can impress characters emotions and their personality.

So this time I decided to use my own hand as a reference.

Weight Shifts

This week we are focusing on weight shifts while walking. However, for now we are working on hips movement and, thus, we animate the step motion.

I shooted a lot of references, but I decided to post this one as I consider it the most demonstrative.

Here is my sketch based on the reference.

And here is my final animation of the step.

Pose To Pose Animation

This week we are using our Franky poses from last week and connecting them into an animation. The idea is to make it go from one pose to another and make it smooth.

Overlapping Action

This week we continue to work with ball with tail animation. It appears that there is a big room for improvement. In my first version I messed up with not only tail motion but also with balls action. Thus I started from correcting the motion arcs of the ball itself. Then I focused on the tail’s motions and overlapping movement. What is more, I tried to add more anticipation before my ‘squirrel’ jumps. I animated a little flick of the tail before ‘squirrel’ starts to move.

Basic Polish

This week we polish our living boxes animation. Last time movement of my box which wakes up and tries to turn over looked very unnatural. It happened because I did not focus on the anticipation before turning over. Thus, it looked like, the box suddenly has enough power to jump from its olace with no swinging. I fixed this issue in the new version of animation.

P.S. Golden Poses

This week we make three different emotional poses and what can be more emotional than ballet?

Critiquing Pendulum

This week I received critique on my pendulum assignment. It appears I do not have to correct a lot of details. I need to put the chain a bit lower when pendulum stops and add more offset keys in order to make the chain more realistic when it slows down.

Here is the new corrected version.

Ball with tail

We continue to work with offsetting technique and now we are adding anticipation in our animation. Anticipation shows the so-called ‘backstage’ of action, preporation to do something. This principle helps to make more dynamic motion. Our task to practice these two principles was to animate ball with tail. As a reference example, I used squirrel jumps.

Here is my sketch based on the reference.

And this is what I ended with.

Anticipation and Basic Acting in Animation

This week we started to learn about acting in animation and what makes this acting believable. In order to make our characters more appealing, we need to give them goal which they want to achieve, personality which will define their actions, and visible thoughts process.

Do you remember juice boxes from the previous week? Well, it is time to start remembering them now because we will turn our inanimate boxes to the real heroes of their story. The case is one of the boxes suddenly wakes up after the fall and understands that it is alive.

P.S. Golden Poses

Our favorite golden poses are back.

Today’s challege is to show regret emotion.

Here is the reference and my model.