This is a compilation of the animation tasks over this semester. First we had the blendshapes task, below is a recording of my attempt. I found it really convenient, and I utilised this for my model’s mouth, eyes and eyebrows.

The next was a parent constraint exercise, I already had some experience with parent constraints due to the start of the semester when we had to do the cactus animation. It was a cool little exercise that can come into use with our animation.

This is a very fundamental animation exercise to understand movement, arcs and squash and stretch. We used the ball bounce to look at timing along with other key principles. Animating in Maya is very strange for me as I’m primarily a 2D artist, but the idea is very similar, and applying the same principles results in animation that is more visually interesting. If I were to do this again, I’d not make the squash and stretch so dramatic, but I do like the fluidity of the movement.

The next exercise was trying constraints to create a wheel. I had to use an orient and point constraint. I animated it after to show that the constraints work.

The last exercise was using a provided rig to create a jump animation. The first two recordings were my blockout phase. It caught the general timing and movement that I was looking for, but I wanted to make it more natural with better anticipation. The last playblast is my final animation, I think I could do better, it could have more build up and some more ease in and out. In general though, I think it was a good first attempt!