A Quick Jump

Having worked on and off over summer on a full character rig with facial animation and morphs in 3DS Max, I decided to take a break and quickly edit it to just focus on body animation so I could do some tests to reacquaint myself with things before getting back to uni.

Also this simple rig will help me produce some examples to coincide with my research project on body dynamics.

This is just a quick jump animation I made as a test.

Dojo Fight Scene

Late as this is, this is my finished piece for my final 2nd year university project, recreating the Matrix dojo fight scene.

From working on this I have a much better idea to focus on timing and weighting in my animation as it has a major effect on the whole animation.

Rig Used (Eleven Rig): http://elevenrig.blogspot.co.uk/

Back to Basics

Having taken a long break from any animation or work with any Autodesk software I decided to start with a few simple tasks to get back to grips with it.

This second walk cycle was also a bit of experimentation for my university research project looking at telling a narrative solely through body mechanics and facial expressions. The main focus was posture and body language trying to convey the sadness of the character.

For both of these I used the Alfred pre-rig that can be found here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/alfred

This quick ball bounce was to help me explore the squash/stretch principle and look at animation beads in Maya.

In The Style Of - Finished Animation

 For the past several weeks I having been working on my second, second year university project, producing a trailer for a reboot of an old childrens animation - Roobarb, using the style of Studio AKA's Lost and Found.
Whilst I really enjoyed this project and learnt a lot about organic single mesh rigging and animation I am sad that in trying to achieve the style of Lost and Found, I spent more time focusing on modelling the character and environment, reducing the amount of time I had to actually animate it.

Having a challenging character, a quadruped dog, as my first experience with using the CAT rig and its animation tools was another drawback that took away from this project for me a little. Tinkering with the rig envelopes constantly during that stage, trying to find the balance between each bones control zones was difficult and in the end still resulted in stretching and/or clipping of areas in the final animation.

 Although I don't intend to work more on this project as I feel I have learnt what I can from it, I wholly plan on working much more on this, most likely starting with a simpler bipedal character to better get to grips with the basics.

 Commenting on my final animation, I am happy with the finished result and even with the very noticeable clipping issues, I have learnt from this and will be able to put more consideration into my characters requirement at the design and model stage to allow for a much smoother rigging and animation process. I'm also glad I was able to include audio into this animation because, even though subtle, adds a lot to it when watching it.

And finally, my finished animation.

Walk Cycle Test

Started to do some extra animation work when not doing my university project.
This is a simple walk cycle I made using a pre-rigged model available here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/ultimate-bony 

This being my first ever attempt at animating a walk cycle or doing any animating in Maya, there are some details that will need work on to improve them, however I am happy with the general result.

In The Style Of - Final Idea and Character Designs

Whilst not having posted anything over Christmas I have made good progress with my latest university project.

The project titled 'In the Style Of'' requires me to produce a 1 minute promotional trailer for a revamped version of a children's cartoon in one of three styles.

The choice of cartoons were: -Paddington Bear;
                                             -Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; and

                                             -Roobarb and Custard.

Having the least knowledge and personal experience with Roobarb and Custard I decided to choose this one as it meant I could approach it in an unbiased manner and focus purely on what I found in my research.

The styles we could choose one were based on animations produced by Studio AKA and Passion Pictures.

-The Lost Thing

-Lost and Found

-Varmints

Of the three styles I loved the look and feel of 'Lost and Found' by Studio AKA. 

The bright colour tones and painterly look makes some of the scenes really vibrant and the general emotive way the music and story work together drew me towards in when I was choosing.

Whilst the visual style might not be as abstract as the other two options I like the fact nothing has straight lines in a scene and each element has its own unusual look to it that takes it away from fitting into the normal world.

With both initial choices made and research into them completed I did a lot of deciding for a suitable story or route for my animation to take. Originally working with the concept of having both the dog and cat characters with a much more humanoid look to them, designing them with this in mind.

Even though I liked the look this character had to him and felt he was very defined, after furthering a suitable story line I had to redesign my characters with them being quadrupeds  having my story being a prologue to the cartoons of Roobarb and Custard being a puppy and kitten.

New character designs with them as quadrupeds.

Initial Model of Roobarb Character

Steampunk Project - Complete

With the deadline just a couple of days away I have finished my first second year university project with time to spare.

Even though this was my first foray into 3D animation I am extremely pleased with my finished result as well as astounded at the ease with which I was able to animate after laying all of the groundwork and rigging my character.

Having entered my second year unsure of a more specific area of the industry I wanted to head towards, I am much more confident after completing this project that animation is definitely something I could easily see myself continuing with in the future.

Whilst I find some parts of the animation pipeline tedious or time consuming I understand their importance as well as how having one aspect of an animation be weaker than the rest can still bring down the entire piece.

I can say without a doubt that the most enjoyable part of this project for me was the animating and bringing the model I had made to life with the simplest of movements.

Here is my completed animation.