Assignment 2
These are my final animations that I uploaded on youtube.
Animation Strategies Blog
This assignment was quite a challenge to say the least because we were actually working on 3D models, not just a simple model with feet. That is why it was really challenging, but with the help of lecturers, peers and youtube guides. I have completed it successfully.
For my animations I wanted to aim for something that I will enjoy doing and something that will help me capture the emotion or personality of the character. I am thinking of using many references that will help me with that.
We got introduced to our animation assignment at week 6 and it was really interesting to see what we were going to be told. Alec introduced us back to the animation and how we will be able to work on our animations later on.
We talked about the assignment itself and that we will have to do 3 animations of your choice and what ever you really want. He said there is many methods of doing it, so you are able to pick the way that works the best for you and really there is ho restrictions when it comes to that. I instantly thought of dragon ball z and how I will want to imitate some of its animations. I really like the movement in the anime so I will try my best to work them out.
We then listened to Alec talk about animation principles again and him reminding us how important they are and that we should really follow them throughout us working on our animations. This is because we are working on a whole 3D model and we will have a lot of parts of the model to move for each of the frames. That’s why I have to be very careful and take my time with the animations because you can mess them up pretty quickly and I don’t want to do that.
We did some of the exercises in Maya with the simple ball and tried to just animate it differently, while considering the speed and the progression of the ball as well. You can see in the screenshots it was looking something like that. We all just moved the ball to the side and gave it a quick animation and practised different tools and techniques again. This was a really good reminder and a warm up that helped us all become familiar with the 3D animation again.
We also had to try to give it a little progressions, not just straight up animation. So, when the ball gets to the end slow it down a bit through the graph editor to give it that smooth landing to the animation. We played around with it for quite a bit and practised our muscle memory to remember the things we learned before.
We talked about the mechanics of animations as well and how you need to make sure you’re using them properly. We were told that breaking your animation down is probably the most important before you start doing anything else. Posing everything that you’re doing is vital to your animation as well. They mentioned that this is the important part when animating 3D models because if you have a great setup and have the right poses for each of the key frames you should be on your way to an amazing animation.
We had to pick our own rig from all of the ones we were provided with and it was really interesting seeing what rigs is there to choose from. I really liked the Azri rig instantly so I picked her out for my animations.
This was the lecture that stood out to me by Alec, because he drew out the most important parts of animating and it something we should always have an eye on while we work on our animations throughout.
It has a lot of things about planning and prepping for your animations and then the techniques and the methods that you might want to use as well. I really loved this presentation because it was really clear and easy to understand. It something that I will be using along with my work.
We watched a video of Alec also showing us a simple rig and a certain reference image that he looks at and imitates the same pose onto his model. It was really interesting to see and we got to try it for ourselves as well.
We watched how Alec worked on his model and how you can make it turn and twist a certain way to make sure it’s the right pose. This is because it’s important that your key poses for the animation are perfect. It is really hard to go back and fix your animation later on when your key poses are messed up. We were told to be careful about that and develop your poses with care.
We then got to try to pose out something ourselves and just explore the model and see what we can come up with.
I used a little statue in my room for referencing and I think it came out pretty well. The reference itself was holding a crossbow so I tried to set the pose as if it had a crossbow and it was about to shoot. Alec looked at it and he said that it was really nice and simple, he also mentioned that I should be careful with the leg movement so I played around with the feet and the legs a little more. It was really fun exploring the different poses you can come up with this certain rig and I was looking forward to starting my own animations.
Walk Cycle
For my walk cycle I decided to just look at some of the examples of DBZ animations and the walk of the character Goku. I also had to consider everything that was said by Alec and Sarah in the tutorials that I have watched. Since I am very out of time and I didn’t manage my time properly for this assignment I had to get straight to the point and do not play around. I had to try to do my best in the amount of time that I had left.
I worked on a walk animation before so I was a little familiar with some of the poses for the legs and the feet and spacing them out was reminding me of the rig that only has legs. It was definitely interesting looking back and applying the techniques for spacing and timing that I have learned before.
This is the main reference that I have used for my walking animation and I tried my best to make it seem as best as it could. I started by remembering all the principles like timing and spacing because I needed to have that in mind before i start placing the frames.
I have used what I learned throughout and its that it’s important that you have everything planned out and that you get your posing right as well. So for this animation I did just that because I wanted to see how it will turn out for my first time animating a 3D model. What I did was just upload the rig onto Maya and then just put quite a few poses for many of the frames that I will want to have in this walk cycle. Good thing about it was that it’s just a walk cycle and it’s nothing complicated in terms of other movement in the body.
For this walk animation I revisited the videos that Alec has put up for us for the walk cycle because I wanted to see how everything is done properly. While watching these videos I have noticed that he would always use the image for referencing the key-poses, so I did the same for my walk cycle because I wanted it to be smooth and not have any mistakes. I also kept looking at my own reference, which is the DBZ video because I wanted to make sure that I give my own feel and emotion to the walk cycle. I wanted to try to try my best to give my animations a personality. I approached a serious, yet simple walk cycle and I think it worked out perfectly.
Alec’s guides for the walk animations helped me so much, seeing how he put down key poses and spaces everything out so nicely. I really enjoyed learning from his guides. It gave me a clear path of what needs to be done with these animations and what the workflow looks like. I will definitely be using them when it comes to my other animations.
These are some of the screenshots I took while doing the key poses and spacing out my animation. You can see that I wanted to make sure that I have the right placement and spacing for each of the feet and the other parts of the body throughout.
I really enjoyed manipulating this rig because it was more challenging since it had so many parts that you had to consider animating. For feedback for this walk animation, I would never have it ready for one of the lecturers, so I used one of my group peers to take a look at the animations and give me some improvement tips. For the walk animation I was told to space out my arms a little more and make sure that they are not swaying too far away from the body itself because it looks a little weird. I did change the space between the arm swing and it worked our. So the feedback from a peer helped me a lot when it came to this one just because I didn’t get one of the lecturers to take a look at this one.
I got feedback from Philip on my sync sketch that one of the knees pops so I lifted it up a bit to help with it for my rig. I gently lifted it up to make it appear more natural and nice. He also said that the feet don’t turn too fast, so I changed up the positions of the feet a little while it is walking. Oisin said the same so I changed it up and made it rotate a little faster and nicer.
Run Animation
For a lot of the time while I was working on these animations I was also working on different projects and I didn’t plan my schedule properly, so I didn’t really go into methods of thumb-nailing my animation perfectly and then do it, instead I just went head on and using references I would pose my most important poses. This is important and always will be when it comes to animating 3D.
One of the weeks we got a class where this time Alec has went over the running animation and how you might want to go about it, so I watched the recording multiple times because it was important that I know what is different and how to go about certain parts of the run. I was a little confused about the actual body and the sword of the Azri rig and how I might want to continue with it later on.
I really liked the way he was spacing everything out and I knew that i will be have to play more with the other parts of the body, not just the legs since when you are running the other parts of your body run along with you and put out a certain motion. Alec showed us him working on a certain run cycle and how he has his hands up all the time while running. He also talked about how we might wanted to be careful while we are moving parts of the body like the head or the torso, since it’s easy to make it confusing for yourself. That is why I took time with my run animation since I didn’t want to run into any difficulties.
I knew that it will be much more different for me because my rig is carrying a sword so I had to make sure I am moving it while the character itself is running as well. That is why I took the extra time to do it and I run a little under schedule while working on it as well.
These are the main picture references that I was using while working on the running cycle, I had to bounce back between these references and Alec’s tutorial because I wanted to see what methods he is using to set the key poses and the frames as well. I really liked this cute little run this character is doing and I wanted to try to capture that. In the video he is running pretty quickly and I wanted to slow mines down a bit, so I did just that.
This is the video link to the reference images that I gathered as well. It was super useful and really helped me capture what I wanted inside my run animation.
When I was starting to capture my key poses and making sure that I place the rig everywhere properly, I knew that I was going to be careful because my rig has a sword and my reference doesn’t. What I did was, I captured all the key poses for the body itself because the hands of the reference were always moving up. For my animation I then went back and adjusted the sword accordingly. So while I had my key poses done, I also made sure that the sword was also matching the running and that it wasn’t making it look weird.
You can see in my animation that I placed my key poses as they are in the reference, little goofy jumpy legs. This was definitely my favourite to work on because of the legs movement. I wanted to give my animation a goofy feel, while also being excited about finishing the race just like my amazing reference. I think I succeeded when it came to giving it emotion and character. I was so happy with the result, even though it took extra time to finish it I was really happy.
Some screenshots of the key poses that I did for certain keyframes that I had in this animation. You can see that the spacing is quite big, but I didn’t want to go too small and spaced it out properly just like the reference. In this final video you are able to see how goofy and wide the run animation is, which I am so happy with. It is definitely something to be proud of because it was definitely very difficult getting used to the work chain of animating again.
What I found interesting that the graph editor because I never really understood it and never really got into it, but this time I used it because I followed the tutorial Alec has gave us and I tried out and It worked I am pretty sure, it made my animations smoother and just look so much better in general. I still have a lot to understand about it, but me just trying it out and following each of the keyframes made it work for me. Changing it up does different effects to your animation, so I had to make sure I have different copies saved. I did that and it worked out. I am happy I did it because it’s definitely an useful tool.
We have also looked at other people’s animations through out the week and so I saw a lot of peoples work and it inspired me. Everyone had so many great ideas and their work was really smooth and simple. I was glad I took up an original ideas for all of my animations. One of the peers gave me feedback on sync sketch stating that the hand without the sword moves as freely as the hand with the sword and I ment to make it look like that to show how powerful the character I am portraying is.
I understood where they were coming from, If I was to make the the character more realistic I would most definitely slow down the arm and make it look organic and natural. It was a really good piece of feedback.
I really liked this feedback from my peers and I changed what I considered to be an improvement from their feedback. i didn’t agree with the hip rotation because I felt like the run itself is okay as it is and it’s supposed to be a little goofy. I really like that they mentioned the feet as well because I wanted to improve them a little myself so I changed it up a bit. I really ran out of time at times throughout, but I improved what i believed made it look better.
Lifting a Sword out of the ground
This one was also a real challenge and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at first because it’s something to showcase weight motion. So, since I was using DBZ for all references I decided to do it one last time and see what I can come up with. I decided to use one of the main character lifting a heavy sword out of stone, and since my rig had a sword this was a perfect opportunity for me to do it. So I did it and it worked out better then I ever thought it would.
As you can see I really like this anime and I wanted to use one of the scenes for my referencing as well. I really got lucky with this reference because it has a sword, just like my rig and I was able to portray a physical ability, which is lifting a heavy object, This is because in the anime, that sword is infused with strong power and only the strongest warriors are able to pull it out.
I knew I had to be careful with the actual key-poses throughout since it’s a very delicate animation and I was under a lot of pressure to get it done. I have stayed up multiple nights to get it right and made sure that I put in as much effort as possible. I really mis calculated the time and how long it actually takes to animate from a reference and that is something I want to work on in the future. For one of my first key-poses I had the sword stuck into the ground and the rig itself looking down on it preparing to pull it out. I have provided some screenshots to let you know what I mean.
When I was working on this animation I had to get the sitting pose perfectly and then timing it with pulling the actual sword out. I wanted to make sure I capture the struggle and the impact when the sword has been pulled out of the stone ground. I did I captured that If you take a look at my animation. I wanted to make sure that there is struggle and that the head itself shows the signs of it as well.
Then when the sword is pulled out that there I am portraying weight by making it look like it’s heavy while my rig is holding it. Then I set the key frame where it made it look like the rig is releasing it closer to the ground because of how heavy it is. This was really fun to work on because I had to portray so many emotions in a short amount of time and I think I did it.
You can see that I was capturing the key poses and how they will look like in between each of the key frames. You are able to see it looking down, clenching down to grab on it and then lifting their out as the sword is very heavy.
These are my main key poses and it took a really long time to get these right because I kept running into issues with finger placement and manipulating the character head. I couldn’t decide how I wanted it to look. Fingers was quite a lengthy process as well since moving them properly on a sword and when lifting it was quite a challenge. When I understood the method and how to actually move the hands it wasn’t too bad.
What also was really hard for me was getting the right timing for this animation especially because I had to make sure that everything is looking realistic and that when the sword is pulled out that the head of the rig doesn’t bounce back too much. I timed it gently and made sure that It looked okay and presentable while I was working on the key frames.
I looked through all 12 principles of animation again and again to make sure I am hitting the right mark when it comes to showing that the sword pull is hard and that the sword itself is really heavy.
This tutorial above explained so much about the weight motions and how you might want to through each frame and make sure you have enough signs of struggle and preparation for the upcoming activity, which in my case was picking up the sword. Really useful tutorial for when you are trying t figure out the right key poses for each of the frames and portraying a heavy object and the user that is achieving it.
Some of the graph editor for the head lift/bounce was also useful because it just made everything smoother when I manipulated it a little.
While I was finishing this animation I also noticed that when the rig picked up the sword and almost dropped it onto the ground I didn’t really have much of a weight distribution there and I decided to make it look like the rig itself is stepping back a bit then down because of how heavy the sword is before coming back up. Really fun little advice and improvement that I have myself because I didn’t want to interrupt my lecturers since I was already behind schedule working on all the animations.
I still gotten some feedback from couple of my group team members that I have worked with on Assignment 1. When I showed the preview of the animation they also said that some impact of weight might be needed to end the animation. I did just that by making sure that the legs are a little clenched down when the sword drops on the ground. I am pretty happy that it worked out for me because taking feedback from someone and applying it can be difficult at time. I did apply it, but I
I know it kind of looks weird from the screenshots, but in the actual video it seems like its struggling to pick up the sword, but then also fall back when it picks it up. It makes it looks like its distributed properly across the body. I am happy with the result and it was really excited to work on something, so complicated. I did take the extra time to polish it because I saw other peers animations and I wanted mine to be up to the standard.
We were also told to look through different animators and how they work. I obviously picked Adam, because he’s one of my favourite animators out there because of how good his work is. He also works on animating League of Legends so I aspire to animate like him.
I watched the video and see how he is telling people to breakdown certain parts of the animation and how to make it easier for yourself. Key poses like sitting, hitting and swinging something are important to have and I used this for my animations as well. This is because I have to keep reminding myself that you have to the most important key poses right.
He also mentions that everything usually should travel in arcs and everything goes by smoothly because it makes it look more natural and organic. I did just that for my 3rd animation especially because I wanted to make sure that the pull part is especially smooth and really nice to look at.
Over all, this assignment was challenging yet fun, I had trouble managing both the assignment at the same time and in the end I had to ask for help from Alec, but I tried my best and came up with the best that I can. I really enjoyed giving character and emotion to the character, from different references that I was using. It was fun trying to express different emotions and actions through my animation. I think I succeeded at that. If I was to do this next time I would begin working on the animations sooner and getting more feedback as I went along. I still got some feedback from my peers, but getting professional feedback feels way better at times. In the end I managed to get a lot of feedback from my peers to improve my animations! I love all of the feedback because it was really good and constructive. Maybe I was wrong about professional feedback feeling better.
Mantas Macidulskas 