Line of Action

 

Lip Sync

As one of the final tasks for our module we where told to create a lip synced and animated scene. We were told to create whatever we wanted, so i got to work finding songs that i wanted to sync max too and i choose Lady Gagas Born This Way. 

Because of the time constraint, i only took the first 24 seconds of the song to lip sync and animate to. I started by cutting the clip to the right length for the sound and then i put it into maya with max ready to start. I listened to the sound clip looking at which frames words where spoken in from the sound. 

From this i created a dope sheet, writing the pronounciations that maxs mouth would have to take at what word. This would save me time when it came to lip syncing.

    

Once i had finished the dope sheets, i started to do some little sketches, mapping out where i wanted max to move whilst he was performing. These where only quick drawings with arrows showing the next stage of the animation, but it was all done to save me time when i was creating the scene.

      

Walk Cycle

 This weeks task was to create a  walk cycle using a reference. This has been my most favourite task so far. Much like the jump, i found a reference of an angry woman walking and took this as my main point of reference.

The same as before with the jump, i blocked out the movement of the model in the cycle. I began with the feet, moving them into place and then i finished with the arms. Once this was all completed i began adding in more detail, like shwoing the *high point* at the top of part of the cycle and shoulder and head movement. The hardest part was adding in the movement of the feet. They where a pain because of thier timing when rotating. Overal though i was pleased with the finished result...

      

Leg and Jump Cycle

This week, Phil showed us how to create a basic pair of legs, and how to make them "ski shuffle" to block out a walk cycle. Using the joint tool and I.K handles, we created some simple legs that had the same movement as what a rigged model would have.

Once these where created, we gave them quick keyframes and the start and finish of a 24 frame (1 second) animation and created a sliding shuffle movement. This was to help us get a better understanding of how to create animations with joints and skeletons etc.

Our task this week, was to find reference for a jump animation. The point of the exercise was to show that everything that moves has potential energy, and that people "prepare" or "build up" to a movement. This is particularly observed in a jump animation. 

I went on to youtube and found an animation reference of a man doing a crouching jump. I liked this as it showed alot of preperation.

 

 Using this as my reference i blocked out the jump, adding in a couple more squats to show more anticipation for the characters movement. Once blocked, i began moving the arm joints, changing the facial features, moving the torso to show the shift and balance and moved the foot and leg joints to get a smooth jump arc. The final result is below.

         

It was very difficult to get a smooth arc to his jump and i had to add lots of movement keyframes within the joints of the body to get a full natural swing of balance. The other challenge was the knees and feet, which change rotation when airbourne. It took me a while to smooth this out so it looked natural.

Obstical course

This week we were assigned the task of creating an obstical course which demonstrated some squash and stretch. I started by mapping out a brief sketch of how i wanted the animation to flow and annotated where the ball would squash etc.

  

Once i had completed this, i made the course in maya and began blocking out the animation, simply by inserting movement keyframes without adding any bounce. I decided to use the ball as the rubber foam ball that i used in the first ball task, as this would demonstrate the correct amount of squash and i already new the average bounce time for th ball of this kind. From here i then inserted more keyframes to make the arced bounce motions and i added in the scale keyframes to give the squash and stretch. 

The rest of my time after this was spent tweaking what i had trying to get as smooth an animation as possible, mostly by inserting more keyframes to create a better arc of the ball. Bellow is the final animation.

    

Ball Squash and Stretch

Last week we were using flash to create some squash and stretch animations, but Phil told us that we could create them using Maya instead. So i went about creating my basic ball animations. My first ball was a soft foam ball. I chose this because i knew i could demonstrate a better squash and stretch than with a harder ball.

I left the classroom with a stopwatch and timed the points where the ball bounced and the time inbetween bounces. From these times i then blocked out the animation by putting in basic movenment keyframes and began adding the right level of squash to the object. This was a little harder, as the ball was too fast to see the proper thickness of the squash so i had to estimate as close as i could.

   

For the second ball, i used a basketball bounce reference which i found on youtube. Compared to the previous ball, there was alot more resistance and very little room for the squash mechanic, however i followed the video reference and create a very brief animation, using the end of the internet clip as my main focus.

Here is the final animation.

This week sam introduced us to the basics of flash and explained how a flash animation works. It is basically a symbol or object that follows a certain path and has different pictures taken of it called frames that get put together to create the impression of movement. As a demonstration she showed us some of her work and some drawings that she had of drawings she had created for the goofy movie and showed us how each picture changes slightly to create a brief scene.

She talked about the aspects of squash and stretch. Everything which is made up of organic matter and un-solid material has a certain volume that must constantly be maintained. This is most obvious with cartoon characters. When something stretches, it gets thin and long and when something impacts or gets crushed etc. it must be short and fat. This principle is a key aspect of animation.

She gave us some tasks and gave us a different variety of balls to bounce and see the difference in volume with thier squash and stretch. I had a bouncy yellow childs ball and a ping pong ball. I bounced them and timed how long it took for each one to come to a standstill. The squidgy ball i threw at the wall showing external force and timed the rebound and how long it took to stop. The ping pong ball i just dropped.

I took a ball on flash and created a practice animation with an exagerated squash and stretch so that it demonstrated how it worked properly.

                 

After doing this as my first animation, it was alot clearer at which point the object squashes and stretches. From this i started to creaste some small animations to show the different types of ball and demonstrate the different bounces.