Today we had a lecture from Becca, who graduated from Ulster University 4 years ago. She worked on production work, graphic design and 2D effects, and worked in Feed Me Light in London. She did VFX for four to five months, where she networked and made friends, and worked in the Blue Zoo Animations 2D department, where she did Pitch work and worked with clay on Adventures of Paddington, and also did freelance work for the Lego Company.
Becca moved to Montreal to do VFX work in a VFX studio, where she worked on the Paw Patrol Movie, and also did freelance work with OrangeComet, where she now works full time,
I also worked more on my bat’s textures, adding eyes to it and then exporting all of the textures into Unreal, creating a new material to house all of the textures and then implementing them onto the FBX model after that got imported to Unreal. I found using Unreal a bit less alien this time around, as I followed a tutorial on how to create materials and exporting models into Unreal. I then plugged the textures onto the model in Blender.
And here is the model in a beta scene in Unreal Engine
Today we did another excercise in Blender, adding in betweens to an animation that Alec did.
Istayed in a lot longer than usual today, as NI Screen came in at 4 to show us a pipeline masterclass that will start 22nd January. This is good, as this will help me learn about the pipeline to making 2D animations.
We delved more into Substance Painter and making an environment in this class. Remembering how my Laptop chugged when Unreal Engine 5, I decided to log onto Substance Painter through one of the University computers, making sure to copy over the most current model onto a hard drive. I had used Substance Painter before, when I was at Belfast Met’s E3 Campus, to do a creature for Nike advertisement. The creature was an Uwabami snake and if I remember right, all of its textures was done on the one layer. However, now that I have knowledge of using multiple layers for certain parts, I applied that to texturing my new character, and used various layers and masks for each of the bat’s parts. I still have yet to bake the textures in to the model, but I have done a lot of progress on bringing the character to life.
These are the texture maps I created in Substance Painter, along with the UV map I exported from Blender.
We did another exercise in Toon Boom Harmony, this time a long jump. Following a live action reference for a long jump, we each made an animation of a character performing a long jump. But we were told that we had to make personalised versions of both the weight lifting and the long jump animations, along with a lip sync using any character. So I have to consider what character to use for these tests. Since I am more experienced with 2D than 3D, I will draw out the characters in 2D. I do have some ideas for who to use in the long jump and Weight lifting submissions, and another for the lip sync.
This is the Long jump test I animated in Toon Boom, and below is the reference used.
Today we played around with Unreal Engine 5, getting into its UI and functions. We fiddled around with a pair of projects in Unreal, creating nodes to render a plane with many different textures and normal maps, and sculpting a forest scene. When I used Unreal, I found that my laptop chugged when it was open, and it came up with messages like ‘expect extremely poor performance.’ It was annoying, as I upgraded my laptop about a year ago with the highest specs, and the teachers recommended I use the PCs for using Unreal Engine next time.
In our class with Aodhan we broke down a live action ref of a man weight lifting and animated our own version of it. When looking at the ref, we broke it down into Staging, anticipation, weight and timing.
We learned that wen doing an action, people build themselves up, prepare themselves to do the action. The timing and spacing determine how heavy or light the object is, and there will always be a sense of resistance and pull back from the object.
With one of the examples were were given, the body builder undergoes a lot of acyions:
his feet are shoulder width apart, this shows the anticipation
his back curves as he’s about to lift
as he lifts his back curves the other way, this sells that the object he’s lifting is heavy
there is struggle as he’s lifting, and his feet is lifting off the ground, and he is shaking as he’s lifting the weight
the timing and spacing is slow to really show the weight of the dumbbell
We were then asked to animate a version of our weight lifting ref and then submit it. Here is my version.
In our class with Henry we looked at ways to sculpt hair, and there are similarities to blocking out characters with blocking out hair. We can use BDM brushes or customised brushes and do not need to sculpt hair. There are also techniques we can use when we need to and where we can avoid retopology, and sculpting hair overlaps with character design principles.
To start sculpting hair, we should start with the general shape and form of the character’s hair, and it should be a basis to follow the overall shape, and don’t think about individual hair strands. Unless the style of the character allows it, don’t think about the hair as a single block. The key is breaking down the form. Using the different meshes and sculpts on top of the form can help make a more interesting silhouette.
We can make hair using Paths in Blender and converting them into meshes. Looking at a reference is food for creating sculpted fur/hair can help break down any realism in the reference to make it more abstract and stylised. Excessive symmetry can make your hair sculpt boring, so be sure to add slight variations to make it more interesting.
Contrast is key to make things visible. When using certain software, the black and white filter will be showing different variations is software. If an image has similar colours, then the objects within the object will all blend into one another.
Consider this image for example.
When we grayscale an image, it reveals the contrast between the different colours used in the image.
When we want to make a Black and White Filter, we need to set it to:
Red- 30%
Yellow- 89%
Green- 59%
Cyan- 70%
Blue- 11%
Magenta- 41%
Apply these colours and it will get out the true brightness of the black and whire image, and give a good idea of what your contrast is.
We learned about the personality of walk cycles and breaking them down so we can animate our own animated cycles. When it comes to looking at the walk cycles, we looked at:
Personality- What they might be feeling/thinking
Technique- Contact Poses may be more extreme or different
Speed- An angry walk will be faster, a slow walk might be someone who is drunk.
The technique of a walk can greatly affect the timings of each pose, like a strut or a march. The arc your arm moves in might be different or you might bounce while you walk.
Most walks follow a similar structure. If we film a live reference, we can pause it at intervals and break it down, find a each of the poses that go into the walk. We also have to consider what format we do the cycles in, if we use a 2d reference for 3D walk cycles, the posing in 3d will be different to what it could be in 2D. 3D is also a more natural walk, so step size should be short, and contact poses closer together.
2D cycles do not have this issue, so you could get away with extra elasticity.
I finally managed to complete all the cycles I was required to do for my submission for coursework during our study week before the deadline. I used Toon Boom Harmony for all 4 of them, which was an interesting animation software program to work with. I found using Toon Boom Harmony to be fun to use, and when it came to creating the final line art for them, I found using the Pull-along brush tool incredibly useful in creating smooth lines I can simply trace over the construction lines for. When I first used Toon Boom Harmony, I was a little alienated by the UI, as it was vastly different from Adobe Animate, an animation program I’m more familiar with. but once I really started using it, I realised that it was a lot easier to use than I thought. All of my animations were animated in 2D in 2s and feature different characters from different franchises.
Over the past few weeks I was hard at work trying to create these four cycles, doing a great deal of research on how the character moves, following Richard Williams’ walk cycle ref and Preston Blair’s Run reference and filming my own live action references as an aid for my personalised walk cycles and breaking them down to get an idea of how to animate them.
I put construction lines of the body, the legs and the arms all on separate layers. The body is animated first, then I draw the legs touching the ground (I make a shape layer to serve as the celling and floor) and then animate the arms, either following Richard Williams’ walk cycle or Preston Blair’s run cycle or a live action reference, which I used for the personalised cycles, and then created a layer for the line art that is traced over all the construction lines that is then coloured, making sure to make the left legs a shade darker as they were behind the right leg. I chose four different characters to animate 2d walk cycles for, and originally planned to do 2 of them in 3d, but while doing the personalised cycles I realised I was much more comfortable doing 2D walk cycles rather than 3D, as when it came to using rigs to animate I have to consider how to animate the bones in a way that doesn’t look wonky, whereas in 2D I simply have to add a new frame of animation to make an animation look more fluid and less choppy.
Ecolo was chosen for my personalised run cycle. As he was a being made of space matter and being a mischievous and playful creature, I had to think about how he would be in the air a lot longer than the others, as he was lighter than all the other characters I chosen. During development of his walk cycle, my teacher said that to really bring out that Ecolo was as light as he was, I should add more frames where he’s up in the air after his foot pushes him off the ground. Ecolo’s cycle has a mischievous and curious feel to it, with one hand behind his back and the other close to his face, a unique pose that I hadn’t seen videos for on the internet, so I filmed a live action reference of Ecolo’s cycle to get an idea of how the torso and arms moved as the character was running.
The reference was a great help to me making Ecolo’s walk more realistic with the torso movements, and I was surprised by the additional movements to the legs. The teachers liked how I added the overlap on his head, and how I played with the timings of the ups and downs, making him seem mischievous. When it came to the legs, they seemed to stay in place for a little bit longer, and the feet seems to change in size as the animation progressed. Since Ecolo was a light character who stayed in the air for longer, that meant adding in more poses of him being in the air. Overall I’m very happy with that I’ve done with Ecolo’s cycle.
Jax was chosen for my personalised walk cycle, having watched the pilot of the show he hailed from, The Amazing Digital Circus. as GLITCH Productions already posted his 3d walk cycle online, I was able to use that as a frame of reference, along with my own live action reference, to adapt it into a 2d space. I also added my own personal touch to the animation, in the canon pilot Jax’s ears barely moved while he was walking, so I animated his ears going down and up while he was walking, and moved his right arm on his hip following my live action reference copying his Glitch Productions walk cycle. Trying to adapt Jax’s walking style from the pilot to 2d was a bit difficult, because the 3D reference was more a less a diagonal view from the front. So I made a live action reference from the side for Jax’s walk cycle, to aid in animating the walk cycle. I found that much like in the Ecolo run cycle the torso twists from side to side, so I made sure to follow the reference and break it down into frames, such as contact, passing, up and down poses to adapt to Jax’s walk cycle.
When Andrew reviewed my walk cycle for him, he compared it to the original 3D walk cycle and pointed out how in the 3D Cycle Jax’s head has a delayed reaction, showing an opportunity for more overlap. In addition, His left arm gets a little bit stuck in space. Otherwise, Jax’s cycle is really good as is.
The live action references I made to aid my personalised cycles were a great help to me, as they helped me learn how the torso and hands move as the character runs. If I had neglected to do the references when I did or couldn’t find the time to rip them off the camera, I would probably have not been able to finish the two personalised cycles.
The vanilla cycles, both which were started when the personalised cycles were nearly completed, were much easier to do, as I only needed to follow Preston Blair’s run cycle guide and Richard Williams’ walk cycle guide to help me.
Anon from Snoot Game was the character I chose for my vanilla walk cycle. He is an asocial and withdrawn person who moved to Volcaldera after a major incident at his old school. I found animating him to be quite enjoyable, as his featureless face meant I did not need to worry about animating eyes or mouth, simply his nose and ears. Taking what I’ve learned about the torso twisting as the arms moved from side to side, also animated the clothes Anon wears moving along with his torso. As I was doing a vanilla walk cycle for him, I chose to make his feet movement remain close to the ground and animated his arms in a a nice, simple arc. During the creation, because of my copying and pasting previous frames for the line art, I realised that Anon’s hand was twisted 180 degrees, so I redrew his hand in the arc to make it consistent and less jarring.
Sig was the last choice to use in my cycles, being used for my vanilla run cycle. I had animated him before, so I was more familiar with the forms of Sig’s body, such as his hair, his arms and his legs, and with my being strapped for time on choosing and animating someone and being stuck in an art block, I chose Sig so I didn’t have to worry about animating a brand new character.
In addition, I got a lot of feedback from my teachers over my walk cycles and what I could do to improve them, but considering how close the deadline is I have the option to leave them as they are, not to mention I had been so focused on my practical work I didn’t consider writing up the written work until now. The teachers also told me I need to be careful about where the foot pivots from as it’s going up, they said I could bring the foot forward a little bit on the down pose and then bring the contact pose forward, and if I wanted I could add overlap on the foot as its coming down.
The teachers, Aiden and Andrew, were very helpful in pointing out any flaws in my walk cycles. For example, Aiden talked about how in one of my cycles, the hand moves in a natural arc and then jumps, or I could put a bit of in-between to help with the spacing between the arms. They also praised my attention to keeping the cycles realistic to how we naturally walk, with keeping the feet close to the ground.
When it came to animating the run cycles, I used Preston Blair’s reference, especially for the vanilla run cycle, do aid in animating them.
Overall I found animating my walk cycles to be a lot of fun, as I was really able to think about how to make the characters move fluidly without too much clipping. Animating these characters will certainly help me think about how to animate more complicated scenes in the future. Animating my walk cycles also helped me stopped myself from being too lazy, as it was something I genuinely wanted to do, and I had focused all my effort into doing my 4 walk cycles, rather than procrastinating. I also learned a lot about making a good walk cycle, and how to improve upon it, such as having the arms always operate in some form of swing as the character is walking or running, unless, like in Ecolo or Jax’s cycle, they are set in place such as on the side or behind the back.
When I first started doing coursework for this subject, I was unsure of where to start with my walk cycles. I was originally planning on doing them in 3D, but the rig animations always came out awkward when I followed the 2D reference. But when I tried doing them in Toon Boom Harmony with different characters, I found myself really enjoying using the software to animate them. I do hope I can get to do more 2d Animations like this later on in my second year. Below is a link to the Syncsketch file containing my finished pieces.
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZTlkOWRmMDM0/
Welsome to my blog! This documents my Journey at Ulster Uni from 2022 to 2024
Over the past few weeks I was hard at work trying to create these four cycles, doing a great deal of research on how the character moves, following Richard Williams’ walk cycle ref and Preston Blair’s Run reference and filming my own live action references as an aid for my personalised walk cycles and breaking them down to get an idea of how to animate them.
