Been a while since I posted, but figure it's at least time for an update.
A friend had been down from england for about 6 weeks to work on his animation. Was a good experience and a lot was learned by both parties. Hopefully he can go home with some knowledge and skills that will help him land his first job in the industry.
I on the other hand have decided to put animation even further on the back burner than it was before and focus on my present career. Being torn about career paths I've noticed doesn't really help productivity for anything. Animation and my work seem to suffer when I try to make time for both.
All that aside I did animate a couple things while he was down.
I did a demo for him on a couple things, but the one i'm going to post was a wolf walk I did.
Here is the link.
Wolf Walk
In keeping with my previous posts i'll discuss a bit about the process.
I started it much like I would my standard human walk. I did the up and down of the main control. Than the up and down of the upper body. I did the front feet with the contacts coming 2 frames before the down extreme. Just animating the z axis of the feet, and the y. I copied that animation onto all 4 feet and worked out the gait. I was doing a fairly slow dog walk and my reference showed when a dog walks slowly his back foot starts moving forward first which than leads the front foot of the same side forward. So I set that up and finished the feet off.
Worked my way up to the hips. Did contraposto in the upper body. Worked up right through the neck to the head and the ears. Than used the same timing to resolve what was going in the tail.
The greatest challenge was definitely figuring out the gait for a walk so slow for a dog. Also the rig had some quirks to it but worked it all out in the end.
Cheers for now.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Thursday, 10 January 2013
3rd animation
Well my time being able to spend animating/days being able to hasn't quite been what I'd hoped for. So I think i'm changing my posting titles to be based on the animations I've done.
So following my initial list of what I wanted to get done, I have gone ahead and animated a pretty generic jump up and down. Just like what I had planned based on the ianimate stuff. I'm enjoying animating atm, but i'm really not enjoying the lack of character coming out of these tests.
I honestly can't remember how to embed videos on this things. So I guess you guys are going to have bear with the droplink box if you are wanting to watch. Come the end of this I will definitely upload all my shots together in a reel format. So until than :P
Side View of Jump
I'm going to bypass the steps I did to get here, and just talk my way through it today.
I started with the bouncing ball. Worked out the timing and squash and stretch.
Went into the rig and mimicked that onto the root. From there I worked on the squash and stretch and the spine. Posed in the legs, posed in the arms after that. I than cleaned up the curves of the posed arms and legs and left it at that.
I wanted to do a quick test on squashing and stretching the controls so you may notice 15-19 and and 37 and 38 have some s and s on them.
I noticed as I was working on this shot, that the ball timing wasn't working out like I had wanted it to. I added 3 frames of overlap at the peak of the jump. I also deleted a frame from the initial squash before the jump. It's not perfect, but it works, and i'm looking forward to moving into a more character driven piece.
You may also note that the rig is no longer in its generic look. It's hard to tell from this shot, but he now has a mustache and a tie added.
Cheers for now
So following my initial list of what I wanted to get done, I have gone ahead and animated a pretty generic jump up and down. Just like what I had planned based on the ianimate stuff. I'm enjoying animating atm, but i'm really not enjoying the lack of character coming out of these tests.
I honestly can't remember how to embed videos on this things. So I guess you guys are going to have bear with the droplink box if you are wanting to watch. Come the end of this I will definitely upload all my shots together in a reel format. So until than :P
Side View of Jump
I'm going to bypass the steps I did to get here, and just talk my way through it today.
I started with the bouncing ball. Worked out the timing and squash and stretch.
Went into the rig and mimicked that onto the root. From there I worked on the squash and stretch and the spine. Posed in the legs, posed in the arms after that. I than cleaned up the curves of the posed arms and legs and left it at that.
I wanted to do a quick test on squashing and stretching the controls so you may notice 15-19 and and 37 and 38 have some s and s on them.
I noticed as I was working on this shot, that the ball timing wasn't working out like I had wanted it to. I added 3 frames of overlap at the peak of the jump. I also deleted a frame from the initial squash before the jump. It's not perfect, but it works, and i'm looking forward to moving into a more character driven piece.
You may also note that the rig is no longer in its generic look. It's hard to tell from this shot, but he now has a mustache and a tie added.
Cheers for now
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
Been a while since I have had time to animate. HOLIDAYS!! Gaaah
Well they are over now, and today we finally got the house back in order, so tomorrow i'll be back at it again. This time I will be tackling a jump and hopefully will have some work up to post here.
I made some new years resolutions.
My biggest one that affects my animation is to start journalling my time. Hopefully this helps me be a bit more productive and I will be able to find ways to utilize my time better.
Happy new year everyone!
Well they are over now, and today we finally got the house back in order, so tomorrow i'll be back at it again. This time I will be tackling a jump and hopefully will have some work up to post here.
I made some new years resolutions.
My biggest one that affects my animation is to start journalling my time. Hopefully this helps me be a bit more productive and I will be able to find ways to utilize my time better.
Happy new year everyone!
Monday, 17 December 2012
Day 3
Wasn't a very productive one, animation wise. Had to get some work done and had several other things interfere. I did manage to plan out some animation for my jump. Looks like i'll be able to start up again come Wednesday.
On the plus side, I did get to watch this video of what they have put together at the games department of Ianimate. Can't way to start tackling some similar shots to this!
http://vimeo.com/55754215
Wasn't a very productive one, animation wise. Had to get some work done and had several other things interfere. I did manage to plan out some animation for my jump. Looks like i'll be able to start up again come Wednesday.
On the plus side, I did get to watch this video of what they have put together at the games department of Ianimate. Can't way to start tackling some similar shots to this!
http://vimeo.com/55754215
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Day 2
Well I kept some momentum from yesterday! Woot....
I was hoping to get a bit more done today, but work called and I was away for a bit longer than I wanted to be.
On the plus side I did get a run cycle almost finished. Hoping tomorrow I will be able to sit down and really polish up what I did yesterday and today. 2 days of actually animating stuff in a row, has got me pretty stoked for tomorrow to do more animating.
I wanted to get something cartoony under my belt before moving on to some character related things, and I think today I managed to accheive that.
As I promised myself I would journal my workflow and here it is.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wcg0mkebm4amyz/run_01.mov
Started again working the up and down and the timing out to a bouncing ball. I didn't go to crazy as I wanted a lot of room to play with.
Here is the product as it sits after a few hours of animating away.
Heres a side profile, as it's the view I worked the most in.
I approached this run different than the walk. Instead of doing both feet at the same time the whole way, I just did the 3 frames on the ground, and then I started posing away. I wanted to go really stretchy and cartoony with these legs, so I planned it around 2 really cartoony poses for the passing positions. The rest of the frames were basically used to sell the stretch and cartooniness of the leg movement.
Challenges and Struggles
Again I wanted a lot more from the arms, and in the end due to my workflow I always end up there last. So again I'm left wanting here. Id love to have added some hand animation like I was grabbing something as I ran, and also to loosen them up a bit more.
The legs I think I could have stretched them a lot more, but in the end I had to start moving forward, if I do have time I would love to come back to this run and add that extreme stretch.
The up and down of the root was pretty tricky to really nail, In the end I had to go back after doing the legs to sell the push off and add an extra frame of down movement to really feel the weight of the contact. But I must say in the end I was really happy with the up and down for a 6 frame cycle.
The feet and the arcs I really struggled getting an arc I was happy with, so I had to create a motion trail for them both, and it took a lot of finessing to get to a point I was happy. I do love maya 13 and how when you make a trail for something it only shows it when that object is selected. It makes it super efficient to have a trail on every object in the scene, and really helps when polishing. In the future I will definitely not hesitate to add a trail very early on in the scene now on pretty much every control! Really nice how they work now compared to past versions.
Day Summary
Really enjoyed animating today, a lot more than yesterday. Really looking forward to tomorrow and I'm hoping to start having more time in the day to get shots to where I have less regrets at the end of the day. I'm hoping with this journal, I won't forget what I want to change and come the end of this, It should be pretty easy to go back to shots and know what I want to do :D
Also I am hoping I have finally learned how to upload better quality videos! Fingers crossed when I post this it works.
Well I kept some momentum from yesterday! Woot....
I was hoping to get a bit more done today, but work called and I was away for a bit longer than I wanted to be.
On the plus side I did get a run cycle almost finished. Hoping tomorrow I will be able to sit down and really polish up what I did yesterday and today. 2 days of actually animating stuff in a row, has got me pretty stoked for tomorrow to do more animating.
I wanted to get something cartoony under my belt before moving on to some character related things, and I think today I managed to accheive that.
As I promised myself I would journal my workflow and here it is.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wcg0mkebm4amyz/run_01.mov
Started again working the up and down and the timing out to a bouncing ball. I didn't go to crazy as I wanted a lot of room to play with.
Here is the product as it sits after a few hours of animating away.
Heres a side profile, as it's the view I worked the most in.
I approached this run different than the walk. Instead of doing both feet at the same time the whole way, I just did the 3 frames on the ground, and then I started posing away. I wanted to go really stretchy and cartoony with these legs, so I planned it around 2 really cartoony poses for the passing positions. The rest of the frames were basically used to sell the stretch and cartooniness of the leg movement.
Challenges and Struggles
Again I wanted a lot more from the arms, and in the end due to my workflow I always end up there last. So again I'm left wanting here. Id love to have added some hand animation like I was grabbing something as I ran, and also to loosen them up a bit more.
The legs I think I could have stretched them a lot more, but in the end I had to start moving forward, if I do have time I would love to come back to this run and add that extreme stretch.
The up and down of the root was pretty tricky to really nail, In the end I had to go back after doing the legs to sell the push off and add an extra frame of down movement to really feel the weight of the contact. But I must say in the end I was really happy with the up and down for a 6 frame cycle.
The feet and the arcs I really struggled getting an arc I was happy with, so I had to create a motion trail for them both, and it took a lot of finessing to get to a point I was happy. I do love maya 13 and how when you make a trail for something it only shows it when that object is selected. It makes it super efficient to have a trail on every object in the scene, and really helps when polishing. In the future I will definitely not hesitate to add a trail very early on in the scene now on pretty much every control! Really nice how they work now compared to past versions.
Day Summary
Really enjoyed animating today, a lot more than yesterday. Really looking forward to tomorrow and I'm hoping to start having more time in the day to get shots to where I have less regrets at the end of the day. I'm hoping with this journal, I won't forget what I want to change and come the end of this, It should be pretty easy to go back to shots and know what I want to do :D
Also I am hoping I have finally learned how to upload better quality videos! Fingers crossed when I post this it works.
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Day 1
Ok so a not bad start to my animation beginnings.
Got comfortable working with Malcolm today and I did a walk cycle.
As I promised myself I would journal my workflow and my successes and my challenges with it.
So here's a video and explanation of step 1.
Basically I set my timing to a ball. I was happy with the one ball, but I wasn't getting a sense of the spine, so I added another ball into the heirarchy so I could test out the rotations to get a feel of how it was going to look. Just in case anyone wants to know how I got the top ball to work like it is, I simply pressed insert and pulled its pivot point to the middle of the ball at the bottom.
So here is the front view after adding the feet, the arms, the spine and the head.
Basically I did the feet together in the side view, offset them by 12 frames and worked the front view independently. The spine was easy after I did the ball, I used the animation on the root, I copied it up the spine and scaled it back and posed it in the curve editor in order to get the pose I wanted.
The arms I could be more happy with, but I got to this point in the time I gave myself and i'm not to angry. I did them in FK, I was wanting to break them on the way up as they passed the body, but went a little more conservative. I tried to create as much drag as I could while still having the arms move together, and not be rubber hosey.
The head I found a bit tricky to work with, as the orient to placement option on the head turned him into a walking no, and with it not on it was flying everywhere. So I turned it on, and I basically had to copy the chest Y rotations onto him, and invert them to get rid of that no head gesture. I had to play with it a bit to make it work from there, and I hope it's not too noticeable now.
The side view was the first view I started in and it turned out nicely. When i'm doing a walk I always try and get a straight leg pose on the contact, looking at this video it almost doesn't read, I think there may be to big of a gap between the pose before the contact and the contact itself. If I do go back I would probly spend some time polishing these two poses and having that straight read better would be beneficial to the walk.
One thing I really liked about Malcolm that I would like to play with more, is the squash and stretch capabilities of the foot and the heel. I added a little, but when I do the run tmrw I am really going to try and push this. Perhaps each stride could have been a bit bigger as well.
To sum up, it was great to be back and doing some animating after so many years away. I am looking forward to tomorrow and can't wait to get to a run. Hoping I have time to start working on the mod so I can reference it on top of the animations I do!
But animation first and foremost.
If anyone out there is following this, I would love your feedback on my shots as I progress through my goals.
Thanks in advance!
Matthew
PS- Just thought of adding this at the last second, this is a clip of the beginning playing over top of the actual walk. Kinda cool I think.
Ok so a not bad start to my animation beginnings.
Got comfortable working with Malcolm today and I did a walk cycle.
As I promised myself I would journal my workflow and my successes and my challenges with it.
So here's a video and explanation of step 1.
I was happy at this point and had my timing worked out on the ball. The nice thing about Malcolm and my work flow, I created the ball pulled it up to his root, froze transformations and by copying the animation onto the root it moved perfectly! Yes I actually used the rotations and the translations on the ball directly on the root.
So here is the front view after adding the feet, the arms, the spine and the head.
Basically I did the feet together in the side view, offset them by 12 frames and worked the front view independently. The spine was easy after I did the ball, I used the animation on the root, I copied it up the spine and scaled it back and posed it in the curve editor in order to get the pose I wanted.
The arms I could be more happy with, but I got to this point in the time I gave myself and i'm not to angry. I did them in FK, I was wanting to break them on the way up as they passed the body, but went a little more conservative. I tried to create as much drag as I could while still having the arms move together, and not be rubber hosey.
The head I found a bit tricky to work with, as the orient to placement option on the head turned him into a walking no, and with it not on it was flying everywhere. So I turned it on, and I basically had to copy the chest Y rotations onto him, and invert them to get rid of that no head gesture. I had to play with it a bit to make it work from there, and I hope it's not too noticeable now.
The side view was the first view I started in and it turned out nicely. When i'm doing a walk I always try and get a straight leg pose on the contact, looking at this video it almost doesn't read, I think there may be to big of a gap between the pose before the contact and the contact itself. If I do go back I would probly spend some time polishing these two poses and having that straight read better would be beneficial to the walk.
One thing I really liked about Malcolm that I would like to play with more, is the squash and stretch capabilities of the foot and the heel. I added a little, but when I do the run tmrw I am really going to try and push this. Perhaps each stride could have been a bit bigger as well.
To sum up, it was great to be back and doing some animating after so many years away. I am looking forward to tomorrow and can't wait to get to a run. Hoping I have time to start working on the mod so I can reference it on top of the animations I do!
But animation first and foremost.
If anyone out there is following this, I would love your feedback on my shots as I progress through my goals.
Thanks in advance!
Matthew
PS- Just thought of adding this at the last second, this is a clip of the beginning playing over top of the actual walk. Kinda cool I think.
So I finally have some time to start animating again. So i'm gonna blog it. I should actually say I have finally made the time to start animating again. Since waiting for free time hasn't proved very efficient.
My plan going into the year was to take some time off work when it got slow, and tackle Ianimates gaming workshop. But now that I have some time, I have decided to take myself through some of the exercises I have seen coming from their students.
I am hoping in the 3 months I have given myself to be animating to accomplish a few things.
1) Finish a series of shots.
- Walk cycle
- Run cycle
- Jump
- Forward Jump
- Walking in a scene out of a cycle
- 360 degree turn with a weapon
- Leap over an obstacle with a weapon
- 1 Pantomime shot
2) Establish a gaming character
I have decided to use the Animschool free character Malcolm for all of my animations. I do plan on turning him into a pool hall gangster type character. I haven't decided how to mod him yet, but all of the exercises will be using the same character and hopefully define how this character moves, and establish his personality.
3) Solidify my workflow
Over the years I have developed a way of working for myself. It's based off what I was taught in school by some great teachers, and based on ways I find effective to start getting results fast and easy, that in the long run save a lot of time. I will be journalling my workflow, and talking about the difficulties/successes from shot to shot, and how I continue to refine it. As I haven't had much time to test it since developing it, I am really excited to start this journal and see how it benefits me!
My plan going into the year was to take some time off work when it got slow, and tackle Ianimates gaming workshop. But now that I have some time, I have decided to take myself through some of the exercises I have seen coming from their students.
I am hoping in the 3 months I have given myself to be animating to accomplish a few things.
1) Finish a series of shots.
- Walk cycle
- Run cycle
- Jump
- Forward Jump
- Walking in a scene out of a cycle
- 360 degree turn with a weapon
- Leap over an obstacle with a weapon
- 1 Pantomime shot
2) Establish a gaming character
I have decided to use the Animschool free character Malcolm for all of my animations. I do plan on turning him into a pool hall gangster type character. I haven't decided how to mod him yet, but all of the exercises will be using the same character and hopefully define how this character moves, and establish his personality.
3) Solidify my workflow
Over the years I have developed a way of working for myself. It's based off what I was taught in school by some great teachers, and based on ways I find effective to start getting results fast and easy, that in the long run save a lot of time. I will be journalling my workflow, and talking about the difficulties/successes from shot to shot, and how I continue to refine it. As I haven't had much time to test it since developing it, I am really excited to start this journal and see how it benefits me!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)