Final Character design retopology process/ bow and arrow model development.

During the course of several weeks I have been retopologising my character model of Fletcher, preparing it for texturing/ rigging and the final render in Unreal engine 5.

I have had some experience with retopology in my previous year and I remembered it was quite tedious and I have to say I was able to do it quicker and more efficiently however it is just a time-consuming process regardless of experience.  By far the hardest part of the retopology process definitely was the hands due to having to not only structure the hands so that they would move correctly when rigged while also avoiding the use of triangular polygons which in several places in the entire mesh could not be avoided but I tried to keep them in places where movement would not be common so that they would not get in the way of the main movement points of the model, especially the face as that’s where the most intricate movements would occur. I do have some aspects I want to improve with this model’s retopology and join up any N-gons that may be present, which is most prominent on the top rims of the gauntlets where there is a massive N-Gon I want to correct.

Aside from completing the retopology, I then began working on Fletcher’s Bow and arrow. I used the digital reference drawings I developed right at the start of the development process, I created the basic shape of the bow using Bezier curves and cylinders. Then I developed the arrow which was put together quite easily and using basic cylinders, cubes and cones. Thanks to some feedback I am aware that it should be made slightly bigger as it would not allow for the arrow to be properly drawn back due to its length. But in any case, I’m satisfied with my current process and I hope to keep the development process of my character at this same pace to ensure its completed on time.

 

 

 

  

Animation Strategies Assignment 1 Reflective Post

This post will act as my final summary of my Animation strategies Assignment 1 “Animation Walks and Runs”.  For the general summary of my activity during this assignment, in the week prior to the assignment’s beginning I decided to take a few practice attempts at creating walk cycles because I am aware that walk/ run cycles are some of the most important animation principles for animators to learn due to how frequent we will be animating characters walking and or running in the industry so I just wanted to get a head start especially since before the semester began I invested in a copy of Richard William’s “Animation Survival Kit” (Faber and Faber 2001) thanks to recommendations from my lecturers. So, I created a pair of prototype Walk cycles using the principles from the survival kit, in retrospect I can now say that these pieces were not structured correctly. For one, When I sketched out the frames, I was not only planting the foot and arm placement purely by eyeballing it, I also used a framework that was simply too complicated which lead to me making more mistakes than creating something more fluent. another aspect that is a downfall for the first two walk cycles is that I only animated the core keyframes on twos, this makes them look more mechanical and faster than they should be.

 

Another slight hardship I encountered towards the beginning was a transfer in the software used for animating the walk and run cycles for the final submission, prior to this module all 2d animations I developed were created on Krita due to me becoming accustomed to its tools and how the software functioned. But one of the key parts of the curriculum was to develop animations on professional software used within the industry, in this case Harmony (or toonboom). I honestly found the transference tough at first as I could not fully understand the properties of this software and was also under-pressure to finish everything in time for the deadline. However, I reasoned that the only way I was going to improve with using industry software, was to experiment with industry software. So, I developed a prototype walk cycle to get a feel for how Harmony worked and in hindsight it was a very rough outcome, this is primarily due to me not fully understanding the properties of the software. So, following the first attempt, I practiced a new method of traditionally sketching out the keyframes and then importing them into the Toon boom files as a reference to draw over and I also exercised the use of in-between frames to improve how smooth the final animations were.

 

Using this method, it resolved many of the issues and difficulties I had with the previous attempts I made at animating walk cycles, the cycle I developed was an animation with emotion in the form of a character walking while crouched down. Although I was quite impressed with the outcome of this practice, my lecturers had one main point that could be improved and that was the leg movement in relation to the torso’s positioning as it was described  as being too low to the ground in relation to how much the legs were moving which in retrospect I can see their reasoning for this feedback and I had every intention of improving upon this feedback with my future animations.

 

After I completed all of these practices and prototypes, I then began work on the finalized run and walk cycles. The first final attempt I made was on an emotive walk which in this case was basically a strut while carrying a sword over the character’s shoulder, for this and every other final animation I have done for the assessment, I developed a simple character design based on the framework I had developed for my final animations to keep it consistent. The methods I used, the sketching processes and referencing I used can be seen in the individual blog entries which I have created for each of the finalized animations as well as the prototypes to show their entire development processes. The first finalized walk cycle I developed turned out to be quite successful and seemed impressive. However, its first rendition was not perfect, the biggest problem was the amount of waist movement as pointed out by my lecturers which was too distracting, I would rightly correct this problem and I can say I’m satisfied with the end result.

 

After this, I would develop the default walk cycle to show my basic understanding with the mechanics of how a walk cycle must be animated, so I was able to develop this animation easily and the only thing I would improve is trying to keep the body proportions consistent between frames but I’m sure this will improve with more experience. Along with the basic walk cycle, I decided to develop another personality walk, this time I went for a more defeated or sad walk, I had quite a bit more experience with developing walks at this point and felt more confident when developing this walk cycle, but that does not necessarily mean this cycle had no faults. The main fault that is present with the defeated walk is that between 3 of the frames (Towards the left foot contact stage of the walk), the left foot seems to go out slightly too far and then quickly snap back into place. But aside from this slight error, I was satisfied with the outcome.

 

As the three walk cycles were being developed, I also simultaneously began work on the two run cycles. Due to being a bit more stretched for time at the point where I began the development of the run cycles, as well as having past experience from the walk cycles I had developed, I felt I would be okay to translate the skills I had got from the walks I had developed to then work on my run cycles. This time around I started with the basic run basing it on the key-frame references once again found In “the Animator’s Survival Kit” (Richard Williams/ Faber and Faber 2001) and I found this to be quite easier than the walks as both the runs were done on ones, using only the key-frames so I was able to crank them out quickly, The end result of the basic Run was satisfactory with the only adjustment being needed was the placement of the legs being differentiated slightly from each other to make the run look less mechanical and mirrored But after that I was satisfied with the outcome.

 

When I began thinking about what I could do for my run with personality, I was immediately reminded of a specific animation found in the video game “Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam”(Nintendo 2015). In this game there is a specific run cycle which I wanted to try and recreate as I thought it was a perfect example of a run with personality and emotion behind it (More details can be seen in the individual posts). I was able to sketch out the key frames easily following the sketch I developed for the basic run with some slight adjustments to the leg placement as well as a complete reworking of the movement of the upper torso. I then got the initial framework as well as the final animation created relatively quickly and was quite satisfied with the result. The only thing I wanted to improve was the arm movement, because at one point in the run cycle the arms reach the same position at around the same time between two frames, this was easily fixed thanks to a suggestion of simply adjusting one of the arms a bit to differ their placement between the two frames and this seemed to fix the problem I had with the run cycle which concluded  my coursework development for the assignment.

 

If I was to try this assignment again, the main aspect I would do differently would be to experiment more with various types of walks and runs which differ quite substantially from each other in terms of; posing, speed, weight, personality etc. This would naturally give me a bit more experience at creating more individualized walk and run cycles for characters and obtain a more versatile understanding of the theory behind creating run and walk cycles and how I can adjust these mechanics to convey personality much more effectively. I intend to perform further experiments with developing run and walk cycles following this assignment, as this is a mandatory skill for the animation industry, On top of this, I may also try to experiment more with developing run and walk cycles through other animation medias particularly 3D animation, as 3D animation generally, is something I need to work on quite a bit and I want to improve my skills with animating 3D character rigs which will better my chances in starting a career in the animation industry due to having a more versatile skill set in both 2D and 3D animation.

 

 

 

Williams, R. (2001). The animator’s survival kit. (Pg:177) London: Faber And Faber.

 

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015). Nintendo 3DS [Game]. Nintendo, Japan

Final Run Cycle with Personality progression

For the last finalized run cycle I had to develop a run with personality, I had an idea of creating a sort of scared and frantic run but I didn’t fully know how I would approach this until I remembered a specific animation from the video game “Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (Nintendo; 2015) where Luigi does a Frantic and scared run where his upper body hunched forward and his arms are stretched outward and flailing. As a reference, I ended up finding the sprite sheets from the game through the “Spriter’s Resource” website which has an entire database of the sprites used in the game for all the characters. So, I took this as a reference on how to animate the upper torso and then I slightly reworked the keyframes I had made for my basic run cycle which I got the reference from Richard William’s “Animator Survival Kit” with a few adjustments to the foot-placement on the contact poses to differentiated it from the default run cycle. The reference, initial sketches and final animation can be viewed below too.

Overall I think the end result was quite impressive I definitely have  one aspect I would like to improve in the future and that is the differentiating between the left and right arm movements, I have found even in the final animation the arm movements are so close to each other and so fast that the all gel into one and it doesn’t feel like the two arms a separate from each other but overall as my first attempt at a emotive run cycle it is a good result.

 

 

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015). Nintendo 3DS [Game]. Nintendo, Japan

 

Sprite sheets Websites Reference

www.spriters-resource.com. (n.d.). 3DS – Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam – Luigi (Battle) – The Spriters Resource. [online] Available at: https://www.spriters-resource.com/3ds/marioluigipaperjam/sheet/74103/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2023].

 

Williams, R. (2001). The animator’s survival kit. (Pg:177) London: Faber And Faber.

 

Final Walk Cycle with Personality Progression.

After finishing my basic walk and run cycles, I then had to tackle developing a run and walk with personality. I started with the walk cycle, for this cycle I did want the shift the center of gravity with it and so I once again referred to Kevin Parry’s “100 Ways to Walk” YouTube Video and specifically used the walk titled “All is Lost” (Timestamp- 4:55) (Kevin Parry: 2018). With this reference I developed the sketches for a more slouched down low-mood type walk and the keyframes in terms of their foot placement differed quite substantially from the basic walk cycle where it was long and wide contact poses with a decent pace, this walk cycle kept the foot placement a lot closer during the contact poses and on top of this it was set at a much slower pace to convey that look of defeat and or exhaustion. Which leads to the main hardship faced with the development of this walk cycle, By far out of all 4 of the cycles I had to develop for this assignment, this one was the most labor-intensive animation to develop due to the sheer number of frames I need to create to slow this walk cycle down to the correct speed. Although I’m very impressed with this walk cycle I do have some aspects I would improve upon if I were to attempt this type of walk cycle again and that is how I handed the secondary action of dragging the sword which I think changes length as it moves up and down and I intend to keep this in mind with future animation practices, the progression from initial sketches to the final animation can be viewed below.

  

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). 100 Different Ways to Walk by Kevin Parry (Animation Reference with Music). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVjIqr8CTtQ&t=134s [Accessed 2 Nov. 2023].

 

 

Final Basic Walk cycle- Summary of progress

After I had developed my first final walk cycle, I was aware that it wasn’t exactly a default walk and since it is part of the module requirements to show a fluent understanding in the basic mechanics of walk/run cycles and I felt my first final cycle didn’t show the basic walk cycle correctly with having only having movement in the left arm. So, I decided to develop a basic default walk cycle to show my understanding of the core mechanics of walk cycles, using the lower torso keyframes I had developed from the previous walk cycle to get the correct foot placement. The initial sketch and final animation can be viewed below. Overall, if there was anything I would want to improve with this final animation It would be some of the unnecessary shape-shifting of some parts that don’t make any sense, The neck is a perfect example as it constantly changes thickness for seemingly no reason and once its noticed I can be quite distracting. I do intend to work on this aspect with future attempts.

 

Final Basic Run cycle Progression

After I finished The basic Walk, I then focused on developing my basic run cycle. As I had done with the walk cycle before, my main point of reference for developing my run cycle was specifically from of Richard William’s “Animator’s Survival Kit” (Williams, R. (2001)) From my past attempts of Walk cycles, I thought creating a run cycle would be quite difficult but I found the development of a Run cycle is actually less labor-intensive. Reasoning being is that although the number of keyframes is now Seven rather than Five, unlike walk cycles which usually require a set of in-between frames to slow down the motion. Typically making the motion as fast as possible is the aim for creating Run cycles, so unlike my basic walk cycle which required to be animated on twos along with having a full set of in-between frames to get the correct pace, my run cycle was developed by animating it on ones and only containing the key frames in order to get the timing right.

Overall, I found understanding the basic key-frames of a run cycle a bit more difficult compared to walk cycles as it relies on all keyframes being plotted correctly in order to create a smooth motion as opposed to relying on in-between frames to create a smoother animation like with walk cycles but I’m sure this is only due to this being my first proper attempt at a run cycle and I was purely using my experience from developing a walk cycle along with the key frame referencing from Williams’ Animator Survival Kit.

Another aspect that needed to be adjusted with my run was differentiating the movement of the left and right legs from each other to make the run cycle look less mechanical and mirrored when moving back and forth. To counter this, I decided to adjust the two contact poses to be stretched at different lengths for each side to differentiate them a bit and I found this helped my final result. You can see the progression of my final basic run cycle from reference to initial sketches to the finished animation below.

 

 

 

Williams, R. (2001). The animator’s survival kit. (Pg:177) London: Faber And Faber.