Once I had all of my shots blocked out I could then go and start adding the fun animated parts. The things that would really bring fidget to life and start to make her feel real.
Shot 1-2
So I went and started with my assigned section, which was the first two shots. I didn’t really approach this methodically like I had planned to, I got too excited into adding her little hop so I started with this instead of blocking out her body and then her arms.
I went and added the ear movement and some of the facial rig to this little hop, trying to capture that shock and surprise in her face. I think this is probably my favourite moment in the two shots so I was so happy to see it being animated, as it gives her this cute little moment.
This is a little close up on this animation, since it is a bit more in the background, for clarity. I think it is pretty cute and I am actually having a lot of fun animating facial movements and small nuances.
Squash and Stretch
I also went and added in some squash and stretch, just to see how it would work with my model, and yeah I didn’t like it at all to be honest. There’s something about the stiff game piece that works better for what I had in mind.
Body
I wanted to add some body movement to break up the stiffness, but unfortunately the pass I did on this wasn’t great so I actually went and deleted these keys to try again later on.
Hair
I wanted to get some nice hair bouncy movement with my character’s hops. To do this I went through and keyed in the hair controls going up and down, and off setting them to create the effect of drag. I liked the effect that this gave, but I thought it felt just a bit too stiff.
To correct this stiffness, I thought it would be cute for the hair poofs to go in little circles. To achieve this I went in and added keys, as the hair went up I brought them in together and then as they went out they separated far away.
Ears
I knew I also wanted to have a subtle bounce on the ears as she hoped, since they were so wide I thought they would be susceptible to this flappy movement. This was my first pass on capturing this, and it was just a bit too subtle for me, so I made a second pass on this.
My second pass on this is also a bit subtle but I think you can see it a bit better than my first pass.
With these smaller movements I think I will have to do an adjustment pass on these, especially when I add in things like the body movements and head movement. The best approach of animation the other sections is to definitely sort out the body and head and bigger components and not rush ahead to the more intricate and albeit more fun parts.
Eoin’s lighting
Before I could continue on with my animation, Eoin had asked if I could send my current file to him so that he could add on his torch animation and lighting. This was something that I was really looking forward to seeing, so I went ahead and sent it to him to add on. Once I got the file back I went and rendered it out just to see what it was looking like.
I really liked the lighting and how he was adding another layer of DnD nuance to the film, but I did inform him that the hallway ended up a bit too dark. I went ahead and tried to fix this in my file by adding an area light, but it wasn’t really working out for this. I informed Eoin and he went about fixing this up for me, pretty quickly too!
Body and Head Pt 2
With the majority of the minor personality things done, I now had to get started on the bigger elements, the body and head. For some reason I really struggled with getting into this as a task, I think I had been telling myself that it was only going to come out wrong so I was a bit delayed into starting it off. However, I managed to get started on this by telling myself ‘it is fine if it looks bad, if I get started on it sooner it means that I will have time to go and fix it if needed’, and so with that I was able to start.
The first thing I did was add some rotation at the start of the cave, as if she was looking around and then I went and made it so she would gaze upward, all as rotation keys on the spine, neck and head. Then I went and tried to add some body movement into the second shot but this wasn’t looking right so I went back and edited this.
I then went and added in some more rotation on the spine and neck so that with the turn it would look a bit smoother, as well as on the hops there would be some downward rotation to mimic some impact (since this was a faster pace I was trying to mimic this idea of more force therefore more reaction).
I then went and adjusted the graph on the spin a bit to slow it down, as well as rotating the body better. I also went and added a lean back to accompany the lean forward movement I had going on and offset these to my keys so that it had a bit of back and forth as she would hit the ground. I’m not entirely sure if this movement reads well, but I kind of just wanted to get this done for now, to the best of my ability so that I could move on and get some more bigger work done on the other files.
Arms
With my body movements majorly done I then went ahead to work on the arm movements, sine this was the last large part that would make my character come to life. I wanted to have a more leisurely swing as they slowly entered the dungeon, then a more jog run like motion as she hopped to catch up to the others. I left the bit as she looks at the can out for now, since I was juggling a couple ideas on what she could do at this moment ( I think I could have planned this whole movement out better, as an expansion from the storyboard to better approach this animation task).
I then went and worked on the smoothness between the arm swings, the right arm has added keys for smoothness while the left arm has no added keys.
Here I have both of them smoothed with the extra in-between keys
Then I moved on to the arms in the corner, I decided to go for this slightly raised arm as if she was reachign out to touch it, before moving her arm back and raising them up and out for the surprised jump. I decided to have these spread out like before because it gave this very exaggerated and noticeable moment, and I find a lot of my movements end up a bit too subtle, so this helped me define this moment. I also went about adjusting the graphs a bit to get a bit smoother of a movement, and while not perfect, I think it is passable and readable.
Then I decided that having this rounded movement in the arms looked bit more natural, so I added keys and looked briefly at the graph to adjust the timing (also slowing down that rotation), so that it looked better.
Details
With the larger elements done, I could now go and properly animate my little detail bits, things like the face, the jewellery and props.
I decided to work on the second shot first, since that is where we will see the majority of these details. First I went and added some movements on the piercings, these were super subtle so I didn’t need to edit these too much as my character is too far away for these to be really picked up.
I then went and animated the little hair curl on her forehead to sway as she moved.
I then added movement on her bag and dagger to sway and go outward in line with fidgets movements.
I then did a pass on her fingers, spreading out in the scare and curling in as she moves her arms forward in the jog.
I then did a facial pass, adding more movement at the start as she gazes in awe. Then I added some mouth movement to create the idea of breathy huffs as she quickens pace and then also raising and lowering her eyebrows for these as well. I did a couple passes on these to see what looked best, but just like before these are a bit harder to see so I went and adjusted it a bit before leaving it alone.
Then I just needed to bring some of these animated bits over to the starting shot, and this pass was all done!
Adjustment Pass
Then before I was all finished with my animation I wanted to do one last pass on all of my keys, looking to make sure all the movement was in arcs, since Fidget was an organic being and those move in arcs. Adjusting drag and overlapping animation, as well as making sure things are exaggerated where it fits.
One of the things I wanted to tweak was the ear movement, since her ears are so long the movement would have more drag on the tips, having them drag. I first tried to add this on the turning movement, but it wasn’t working right so I just went and deleted it.
I then went ahead and worked on the jump first, staggering the keys so that they had more drag, and adding some keys so that they moved in an arc instead of a straight up and down.
Then I tried to have the same effect by staggering the ear movements as she moved, but they were just way to subtle to be noticeable at all.
So I went and made these a bit more noticeable by exaggerating these movements, and then staggering them in the same way. I went and made both ear parts a bit more exaggerated here to mimic the more high energy moments of my character, in shock and jogging. I’m not entirely sure if this works too well, especially as she comes close to the camera it becomes a bit too much for me.
This is a comparison on how I had the keys for the ears before and after these tweaks.
So I just went and copied the general flow of the keys onto the first shot. With that I decided that that would be my finished animation for these two shots. I could definitely spend a lot more time refining out a lot of the movement, reworking it to make it flow better (and have some better timing, since we have a lot of action to try and get through in our limited time frame). This definitely isn’t the best but it works for this, and it allows some nice personality to come through. I think even though the movement feels a bit stiff you can see that I have tried to break this up a fair amount.
I have definitely learnt a lot about 3D animation by going through this, especially in terms of planning, and having a clear idea of what movements need to happen in a certain time. I think I could also benefit from having just a lot more practice, just general animation practice and I just haven’t had time to do this because of how much I had to work on other aspects of this assignment. For now, I will take everything I learnt from this to work on my other sections.