Exercises

Week 7’s class started us off with blocking poses, using either the Jack, or Jill rig. Blocking the keyframes is very important, so it was a good exercise to refamiliarize ourselves with rigs.

Ballet Pose

I thought I’d try a simple ballet pose to begin with, using a few ballet and high kick references, but modelled particularly off of this image. It seems like a simple forward kick, but looking closer her body and arms are all rotated in different ways, there’s a lot of strain in her legs and the balance she is keeping may be quite tricky to get right.

I think I was able to get the rotations and joint positions quite close, but as expected getting the balance to look convincing was harder. Looking at it now, the Jill rig’s upper back and shoulders should be leaning much further back, I could fix this by firstly rotating her hip joint, or torso joint and then rotating the chest and shoulders back.

I think I got quite close to the reference with the feet, as close as I could get with the 3 point foot rig! Though, the leg looks sort of stiff, I think if I had an extra joint at the knee I could bend it backwards to appear as double-jointed as the ballerina in the reference image.

The hardest part about this position was getting the connection between the thigh and hip correct, it looks very awkward and unnatural in the rig. I think I would have to rotate the thigh joint more and spend time tweaking the rotation of her leg joints.

Fight Pose

There were a lot of references available for fight stances, I particularly focused on the two references in the photos. Since one of the references is a drawing, I only used that reference to see how the torso would rotate. I am quite happy with this pose, however it needs a lot of work. The heel raised up, while I thought this would help show weight, doesn’t work as well as I hoped and her center of balance doesn’t really make sense. Though I think the pose closely resembles the drawn reference, I feel as though she needs to be lower to the ground, and hunched over slightly/have her hip joint lean back. Another thing I found hard was getting the rigs hands to close into a convincing fist, but I tried to get it kind of curled!

This one I spent the least time on, since at the time I thought she looked fine, but looking at her from different angles I can see she needs more time put into the subtle poses.

Bashful Pose

Unlike the other two poses, this one didn’t have a reference for me to go off. I tried looking up different things to find what I was looking for, a kind of dreamy, bashful sigh (like the ones you may see in older animated shows!) but it was surprisingly difficult to find references. As well as this, trying to move Jill’s hands to be sort of clasped. high up and her shoulders to be high and hunched was also difficult and required a lot of time maneuvering the joints. For a pose without a reference, I think she looks fine! If I could have her hands higher up and properly clasped, and maybe if I undid the rotation in her body and hips a little her pose would be more discernible and exaggerated.

Boxing Animation

Alec provided us with an unfinished animation to breakdown and polish. Firstly, we had to time the keyframe: I had a lot of trouble with points from the keys breaking, in particular the IK and FK switches in the left arm that I wouldn’t select properly and end up breaking the keyframes apart in the dope sheet, and causing issues with the timing.

After everything was properly timed, we had to add more inbetweens to help the flow of the animation, and add more convincing movement; more rotation in the body after the hit, more force with and fall back from the punch, and time put into blue Jack’s fall.

This is where I learned about properly setting up my shelf, I found using the script editor to add my controls to the shelf very useful and kept my dope sheet much more organised.

I didn’t have time to fully finish this, I haven’t done anything with blue Jack but I timed and keyed a few frames for red Jack’s punch. What it needs is more keys and references and time put into it: maybe a faster pull back on red’s fist, a slower arc before the pull back after the fast punch, some body bobbing movement like how you see actual wrestlers move. For blue Jack, a harder fall with a bounce after he hits the ground perhaps, similar body bobbing, a better first pose that looks more like he’s about to strike, and when he falls having his legs fly up in the air and move a bit once he’s on the ground (maybe a few rotations, rotate his head a bit to the side), or he could fall more dramatically in a full spin. I think I will keep working on this one for fun, hopefully finish it one day!

Full Body Mechanics Animation

My first idea for the full body animation would be a simple heavy lifting animation, I feel that while they’re generic they’re useful and would be a good exercise to begin with to show an understanding of weight, but still I thought it to be too simple.

My second idea for this mechanics animation was a diving board jump, where the rig would lose confidence and flail a bit, or slip on the board before falling! I thought this one would be more interesting and fun than a regular lifting animation, it would still show weight (but from the rig and board) but I would need to figure out how to make a wobbly diving board. I also had some ideas to include smear techniques, which I think would really add to the animation’s flow.

I wanted to do this one in 3D, as this animation would be the most complex out of the 3 so having the tools to easily tweak and quickly review the animation would be much easier.

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSLnoT01GNQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySeKwLHWruE

For future reference if I was to do a lift animation, I like these videos as they all play up the toony behaviour, which is something I wanted in my own animation. I also like how weight is shown in these, especially in the second video with the man and stone ball (0.17-0.34) this would be a good reference for a ball instead of a box, it sort of differentiates the animation from the many other lifting animations. I also think it would add character and be quite funny to have a small Jack rig scrambling to get a hold of a boulder!

Key References

This reference is particularly helpful, it has all of the elements of the lift I would like, just before the stumble! I was particularly focused on how his feet, hands and spine move and bend to accommodate a heavy box. I found a few slip references as well,

This video has a multitude of good references for falls, in particular 0.15-0.20 ‘banana peel’, when my character falls I would like to incorporate the toony slip shown here! I also started to consider adding smear frames by simply stretching out the geometry (for example, when they slip their leg will fall fast and arc through the air, I could add an inbetween from the highest and lowest point of the leg very stretched out (vertically) to aid the look of speed. Or, I could add 2D smear lines, or a blur on top of a slightly stretched out leg.

Diving References and Inspirations

There weren’t many useful references, but these 2 animated dives I found to be very interesting; both videos had a process clip which was so interesting and helpful. Later on, when I was polishing the frames of my animation I knew something wasn’t right in the slip so I went back and reviewed the clip of the keyframes from ‘Stu and the diving board’, which gave me an insight into what I was missing (it was having the front foot touch the surface completely before sliding off, before just the heel hit the surface).

In AnimatorEdward’s video he mentions that the key to a natural looking movement is having certain areas, like the limbs, delay behind each other. Like when the diver in his video raises her arms, ready to jump; one arm moves before the other, but they both reach the same destination. I wanted to use my graph editor to try this, or at least key out the frames where I could use this (I would add it to the arms/shoulders and feet).

The last reference was a diving video I found funny, and although its a bit strange to study this poor man slipping I found the way his body contorts when falling quite interesting! The video quality isn’t great, but I kept tabs on certain times in the video where I would reference the flip.

One of my immediate thoughts was of Tom and Jerry ‘Salt Water Tabby’, I grew up on these cartoons and still love how the animators choreographed the movements. From 0.30 to 0.40 is a sequence I really like and relates a lot to my idea; I got my inspiration for Jill’s confident pose from here when Tom does the same. This whole episode has a lot of good references, Tom and Jerry dives a few times, I slowed the videos down to look at the frames.

It was hard finding proper animated references, ones that come from a published show or film, some others I looked at were from Clarence (2:45), Wile E Coyote, and IT (the cliff jumping scene). These aren’t very detailed, the Clarence clip is simple but it could help with key frames before a jump, whereas the Wile E Coyote compilation would be good for the flail and fall. The IT scene is more useful, it has a different perspective and still shows a bit of a flail.

Actual diving videos helped the most I feel, there are many How-To tutorials on dives, and clips from competitions, and fail videos (particularly 4:27 and 5:30) that all helped a lot with the positions. Again I slowed these videos down and studied the moments before the dive and the fall, there weren’t many with a reference for the beginning.

Smears and Duplicates

I love the idea of adding something more interesting to my animations by adding smear effects, I think it would be a good opportunity to explore and learn this technique so I can use it later on. I love the look of 3D with dups and smears, Into The Spiderverse and Mitchells VS The Machines come to mind of having wonderfully animated smear sequences.

I used size smears in my running animation, on Jack’s hands as he sprints and I found this technique looked very good. I love the look of the duplicated limbs (although sometimes it can look janky) but for my animation, I wanted to stick to size smears; maybe as Jill falls her outstretched leg thickens, or her body/head stretches when she slips, etc. I studied the first video more because of this, as Skitty focusses on this kind of smear.

Getting Started

I decided to go with the diving board slip, I thought it would be funnier still if Jill didn’t even get a jump on the board but just slipped immediately after getting confidence!

(Really) Rough Concept

This is not timed yet, only roughly so as I could decide which areas would need more time, and which would be faster; naturally, the hesitance in the beginning and the look around would last a while and so would the anticipation of her being flung by the board- for some drama. Of course, the actual slip and fall would be faster.

I decided to go for the straight ahead method, I had a rough Idea of what I was wanting to do so I keyed all my ‘main’ frames (very rough frames, I wanted to see how long my timeline should be beforehand) but changed them quite a lot as I went frame by frame. I actually began focussing in sections; the hesitance, the walk, the slip, and the fall.

I figured out how I could make the board, it was very simple actually: The shape would just have a bend modifier on it. It took a while to actually figure out how to get the bend deformer handle in the correct place so as the plank would bend from the ends. To keep the end of the plank from bending I just toggled on the low bound.

I just thought this looked funny;

This was the awkward stage, I had a timing I liked (not the fall off the board, that’s way too slow) but the animation wasn’t as fluid as I would have liked it. I wanted to have the pose of her curled at the edge of the plank to be much more exaggerated, like the way the real reference video shows the man flipping almost to his shoulders, here Jill only rotates back a bit. I would also have to edit the plank’s frames to match the body anticipation. Another thing, I would need the board to spring up and down rapidly right after it flings Jill, but slow down as the animation ends. From the reference video, this is very stiff but for my animation I may exaggerate it a bit more for more spring.

First Stage

In this render, nothing is polished yet and there are only my planning frames. This is timed roughly, I will probably make it a bit faster, and there are some extra frames just for myself to base the polish off. I took this render into SyncSketch, so I could annotate what I wanted to change;

SyncSketch Jill Body Mechanic – Revisions

Some issues I faced in this stage was getting everything in the right position, there were many times when I decided I didn’t like the previous pose, so I would have to change all those that followed; i.e. if the head was changed, all other heads should change to match. I experienced some jitters, but I feel as though most are fixed, and I really tried to use the graph editor correctly this time but there were moments where I was confused as to what I was moving by editing the points! It was useful though to be able to change all of the points and tangents to spline. Although keying all the frames in sections helped for the larger body parts, I should not have touched the hands; I had to delete all the movement so I could space it out differently.

On the topic of movement, the feet in the initial position are rotated to give a more natural look, but I didn’t correctly animate this. I should have waited until Jill’s feet lift to rotate the feet back to 0. Finally, I wasn’t sure how to make her flail in the air! I had to research other animations to see how they tackled this, a flail and arc through the air. I looked back to ‘Stu and the diving board’, the fall is very simple, I could try something like this?

Second Stage – Polishing

Once I had my revisions written down, I went back to Maya and started section by section; I had to delete basically all the hand and shoulder movement so as I could begin getting the arcs and positions right, I thought this was easier than trying to change what I had, plus It helped that this time I kept all the key sliders in the channel box at exact numbers. The first section was fixing the body positions and arm movements, I exaggerated the slouch, made the head rise earlier, pause and then fall faster. Then, I edited the timing of this section and the head turn which was too slow. I also added a bit of an ease in/out in the head turn.

The second section was the walk, I was able to fix the foot rotation pretty easy by moving the points over to when each foot rises. Unfortunately, because I deleted the previous arm movements I lost the action of her pausing with her arms up which is something I actually liked in the keys, I liked that some actions overlap others and the arms here were a good example. I didn’t realise it had slowed down until I was fixing the walk to a march, I must have deleted too many points or accidently merged the frames in the dope sheet. The march was fun to make, the walk looked fine but I wanted more of an emphasis on her first step, so I had her leg fling up in a kick, pause somewhat, and arc downwards; the toe rotation slider helped with this a lot and I liked how this looked! Only, when stretching her leg of course the foot extends too, so in the animation the foot arcs back a bit which isn’t ideal, it should land where the foot extended to. I added a frame just in between the extended leg in the air when she slips and the fall on her back, I made the leg and foot scale larger just for that added speed with a smear. This could have been more effective I feel if the leg was wider than longer, or if I added a second dismembered leg above the other, like in Wade Neistadt’s video.

After a lot of tweaks, I finally finished! There are definitely issues but I’m quite happy with this animation. I really enjoy 3D animation and I want to get better at it, this was my first animation with a more complex model. I also used the graph editor much more this time, I definitely deleted things I shouldn’t have but I feel like I got most of the very visible issues sorted. If I could go back and redo parts, I would try to speed up and exaggerated the beginning, and maybe have her limbs flail a bit more while she flies off, or maybe even add a bounce on the board. I tried different techniques with this one, I started with a straight-ahead method but shifted to polishing up the animation by sections, and I also tried to have more variety in the timings, like in some parts her arms move at different speeds or at different times, etc.

Final Body Mechanics Animation

Jill Dive: Side from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Jill Dive: 3rds from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

Jill Dive: Front from Megan McColm on Vimeo.

I had a lot of fun with this animation! I really enjoy the process, even if it takes a long time to get the frames looking how you want. I learned a lot from this assignment, next time I animate something I think I will key only the important things first instead of how I did this, which was try to set up all the little movements in the beginning. Still, I’m very happy with how this came out considering it was my first time with a more complex rig, my only wish is if I could go back, I would make the beginning faster perhaps and have her flail more in the fall.