Reflection overall:

For the start of this module it was intimidating because things were going so fast it was hard to tell if I had understood anything and would be able to reach the deadline with all four animation done in time. I decided to think ahead, and test out which medium would be easier to use and get to the deadline in time and realised I faced a common issue in 3D animation that I did not in 2D which led to my choice. The main issue was the legs kept on bumping weirdly at the knee, which I found very hard to get rid of and made me feel the animation was imperfect. Eventually I knew it would take me longer to get a hold of it and decided to work with what was faster based on our deadline. I would rather take my time with 3D animation without a set deadline to understand it better.

Although animation is far from being my strong suit or comfort, I see improvement from what I’ve worked on last year and the tests I did over the summer break. The lecturers did a great job at getting us to understand the principles of animations when it comes to the cycles we worked on: Key poses, in between, breaking arms, overlap, silhouette issues and making sure we have arcs.

Feedback from lecturers and my peers in class is something I valued a lot and made sure to always ask for because it helped me step back from my animations and reveal mistakes I couldn’t have found on my own specially in moments when things looked off and I couldn’t tell what was wrong. Getting different perspectives really helped with problem solving, it helped me avoid being stuck on a problem and helped guide me to the solution. I’m glad I don’t shy away anymore from asking for help.

I mostly struggled to understand breaking the arms, silhouettes and arcs. Although the videos the lecturer provided us with and Richard Williams survival kit, I couldn’t wrap my head around how to break the arms until I asked my lecturer in class and he explained it by creating the movement with his arm which reminded me of a ribbon and that stuck with me. It was extremely helpful, but it took some trial and error. While for the silhouettes I’m still struggling to get it right, but I feel if I had more time to restart my cycles, I would have done it differently. Finally for the Arcs I remembered what our lecturer said about using joints to help us with arcs, so I made them visible by drawing circles, it seems simple, but it really helped me visualise them specially with a bright red colour. I feel, for a start I have resolved these issues and I’m quite pleased with the small progress I’ve achieved.

Although we had such a short deadline that felt pressuring, it really helped me organise myself and make wiser decisions on how complex I could go with my animations to challenge myself slightly without causing me to fall behind or hinder me from understanding the principles first I see myself continuing to do these practice walks in 2D to apply this new knowledge I have and redo the work for myself and calmly focus on the 3D at my own pace to get the same amount of confidence I now have in 2D.

Reflection on my animations:

For my vanilla walk cycle and run cycle I feel like I have come to a point where I understand the principles and I am able to apply them to a basic character, keeping in mind the issues I had on this assignment.

As for the walk with personality I feel is where I did the best out of the other three, there’s still room for perfecting but as of now and with our deadline I feel like I did well, I would maybe make the arcs a little more exaggerated next time.

My Run and jump cycle is alright, do feel had I had more time I would have tweaked it a bit more to exaggerate the bounce in the character almost like a very cartoony bouncy ball.