Animation Body Mechanics and Performance

 

 

 

I was given the task of making three animation to show my albitites of body mechanics and characters performance. These animation were,

• Lifting weight,
• Run-and-jump animation.
• Lip sync 

In this blog I go over all the steps I went thought to achieve my animation attempt of the three tasks and how I went around it. I show my research that I did and what I did to improve each render.

 

 

 

Lifting weight

 

Lifting weight refence video 

I went and searched for a lifting videos for me to use and ended up using this video from YouTube. Title of the video: “340kg /750lbs Deadlift @100kg” It shows multiply times of how a human person lifts a very heavy object up and over its own head. When creating my animation sequenced I used the clip of 0:54 to 1:15.

 

Lifting weight 2D  

From my refence video i stared out by look how my animation would look like it and blocking it out. I did this to be able to think about my character performance and practicing my timing and see if I would look. I did it in 2 s and was a quick animation test. I also made optional weight movement to show weight mass bending down as a way to show weight.

Lifting weight 3D  

 

First attempt

First attempt was good. Just a quick view of how it was going. The arms were too stiff and stop too fast. The guy didn’t feel look like he was lifting something with weights up.

 

2nd attempt

In this second render I improved it slightly by looking at the last render. I also happened to mess up the Material roughness and made him shinny in the render but fix it in the next render. I also felt the drop was missing a bounce.

 

Updated – looped version

The final lifting weight render is completed. Happy on how it turned out and I think I got that extra bounce of the weight hitting the floor right.

 

 

 

Running Jump 

 

Jumping refence video –

Refence video i grabbed online. I like how he lifts his front leg up as high as he could to get as high as he could and thought at the time it was good to get for a long jump animation.

Edited Refence

The video refence I use a later go and use a software to slow it down. I edited it to make it slower version because it was a bit hard to follow at the end. I did plan to make a quick animation on loon doom and animatie this in 2D before working on 3D but felt that a simple sketch would be fine and i might need to swap jump if I had to if needed so i didn’t waste my time on it. I did later on sketch what the jump and movement i wanted to go following the 3D environment.

 

 

Running Refence 

I used this YouTube video of how someone would run after a long distance run or short sprint. I used the slow down edit and study how the body weight and hand movement. It was very handy to use.

 

Running jump 2D Planning

when starting my run and jump and thought why my charther would be running. I thought that it was running to be able to jump a really long jump and i thought to make my charther land on the edge of cliff and pull itself up or jump up.

2D sketch with the 3D environment from Blender

 

Running Jump 3D 

This was my first render of my run and jump. I played around on the surrounding walls colours and I played with the camera movement that I liked. I tried to make the scene a action scene from some kind of a superhero scene landing up and posing for the camera. However, I obviously made some mistake with the first render run and I went back and smooth the leg movement later.

 

Updated

I was very happy with this updated run and jump render. I however realised that I had not made plans in making into a loop animation and now had to go and add a sequence that will show her constantly jumping up a new edge, over and over.

 

Loop sequence.

My first Render of now making my Run and jump a loop sequence. I couldn’t be able to make a seamless transition from landing, to standing and then running again. The cut was also very hard to make it seamlessly in the loop animation.

 

Update loop sequence 

I decided to update the surrounding environment to hide the cut and I feel like it worked a lot better. I added some pillars where the camera would run behind for a spilt second and there is where I cut the animation to loop back to the start. I did notice some small mistakes and went back and fixed those with the character.

 

Final loop render 

The Last render of my Run and jump Loop animation. I feel like there could have been a few small twickes needed but overall i happy on the animation looping smoothly in the end

 

 

 

Lip-sync 2D 

The video clip of the phone call is from a famous and funny TV show called “An idiot Abroad:” Where I Simple a clip off  YouTube of one of my favourite episode. In this clip there is 27 seconds of pure dialog of someone talking and we see the reaction of the person listing. I used this clip because the tasked demanded I get audio where I don’t see the the person face who is talking. This was done so i can creatively think of what i can do and that i can push my self into think how his lip movement went to make it believable that my animation is talking.

 

The clip of pure dialog.

I later went and edited down audio of the jungle noises down and did cut that the amount of “ummm’s” the guy said in the call. I also cut down the aduio in my final animation render down to 15seconds from the changes and speed up bits.

 

 

2D lip Movement 

Paper spread refences that I used to help me make the lip movement to create the viola movement of the words. It was very helpful in this task.

 

I also used this animation in how the character eye darts around the scene. The eyes for my scene was very important tool to express his fast pacing emotion and incite to what he is thinking. (or what I imagine he was thinking when he called his friend) I feel like I quickly understood this and got a good movement in the final render.

 

 

Lip-sync animation Final Product

This is how my lip sync turned out and i am very happy with it. I initially had a earlier render of my first attempt and how it looked without colours and how rough it was animated. However, I lost it in the files.

Anyway I had solved problems such as the discord noise that managed to get stuck in my audio clip that I didn’t intended and instead of recording again the audio clip i kept it. I decided to keep it in by adding a computer that shows a message pop up to explain the noise. I also think it created life to the scene instead of a random man on a desk. I think I got the emotion and the comically effect I hope to get. I also hope that it was clear in the animation that the guy is talking to his friend who has been caught by a trap in the jungle and his friend hires “locals” the tribal people to go and get him to rescue him. But happen to mention that they are cannibals so to be nice and careful.

 

In my Portfolio Blog of “Portfolio of Animation Body Mechanics and Performance” I show each of my Final renders tasks in full and fully looped three times. If you want to see more of the final renders you can click the link to my synic sketch – https://syncsketch.com/invite/ZTFhNDA2MT

Thank you.