Planning/ Research
For this assignment we were tasked to create two 3D animations. One had to be a study in the weight of motion and body mechanics. The other was a study of emotion / personality of a character. We were given the choice between two rigs, The Monty rig or the Ultimate walker rig. I chose the Ultimate walker. After doing some research and looking at references, I started making animatics so I could get a rough idea of what my animations would look like. Below are the animatics
Animatic for Animation 1- Emotion
The idea is that walker would look suspiciously behind him as if he had heard a noise, He would then turn back around in a resting pose. A box would then fall beside him, startling him. He would lift his leg to and use his foot to cover his head. He would then slowly move his foot so he can see the box, place his foot down then slide up to the box. He slowly moves his foot towards the box and hesitantly pushes it. He stops to see any reaction. Another box then falls on his head and knocks him out.
Animatic for Animation 2- Weight
I wanted to keep the weight animation short so I could focus on getting the timing and positioning right to be able to effectively show to weight of Walker. So my idea was walker would throw his leg forward causing him to slip on to his back. He would then use one of his feet to push him so that his feet would be pointing to the sky. He would then push both his feet out and use the momentum to lift up and land back onto his feet. I used the following YouTube video as reference for the ‘Kick up’.
Development
I first started with animating the weight task and then the emotion task, as I thought expressing emotion would be harder and as this is my first time 3D animating, starting with the weight would give me more practice. Both of the animations were pretty straight forward to animate. I had some problems with the timing of the keyframes, were they were either too fast or too slow in certain areas which hurt the flow of the animation. With time and manipulation i was able to smooth out most of the timing issues to a satisfying degree. The final animations are below which have been rendered with the Arnold engine.
Animation 1-Weight
Animation 2- Emotion
Conclusion
Overall I really enjoyed working on the 3D animations as I prefer it over the 2D style. I definitely see some areas which need improvement. I feel the animations still have a little bit of a floaty feel to them, which gives the impression that they don’t carry any weight. I also found it a bit hard to convey emotion with a character made up of only a ball and legs; with no face. However I enjoyed the challenge. I think I done an alright job with the rig we were given to convey emotion but looking back I believe I could have used specific movements and used timing more effectively to better express emotion. I can also see some clipping in both of the animations. But I think with time more practice I will be able to Implement more weight in my animations and overall improvement my 3D animating skills.