For this assignment, I delved into learning how to animate in 3d. I used previous knowledge from 2d animation and adapted the 12 principles to work in a 3d space to create 2 animations. One that is to show a body mechanic and another to show emotion.
Body Mechanics Animation
I began with the body mechanic animation as I thought it would be a great learning experience before moving on to something more complex like the emotion animation. I decided it will be a video game jump as I like the extra movement and grace in it. I took into account the presumed weight of the walker rig as well as the way gravity works, anticipation, and timing. I did some research for references and inspiration and found these videos.
Before jumping there’s anticipation that is needed, so the knees bend slowly in and then release fast to launch the character upwards. The character stretches before it reaches the potential energy at the top so before the maximum height, the character slows in, remains there for a couple of frames, and then slowly descends before speeding up again before reaching the ground. After that, the character squashes downwards with the knees bent and slowly gets back up to the idle position. I noticed that one leg rises and bends first and lands while the other leg follows closely.
With all that in mind, I began roughing out the whole move in a set of a few keys with the pose to pose method with the ultimate walker rig. Fixing up any timing and movement issues before smoothing it out. Once I was happy with them I went on with smoothing out the movement in between the keys. Made the spherical part of the rig to presumably look down before the jump and look up when rising to add extra realism to the movement and when I thought the movement looked natural enough I moved on to the next step. However, the animation needs to be in 24fps so working on every single frame proves to be too time-consuming. This is where the time editor came into play. I added the clip into it and used the scale tool to give more in-between frames for a very smooth jump, baked it into the scene, and voila. In the end, I made a few last tweaks and used playblast to export it into a video.
Emotion Animation
For the emotion animation, I decided to make the character clumsy. Sneakily trying to walk through a place but it gets something on its foot and tries to shake it off, stumbles and lands on hot coals making a whimsical and exaggerated reaction of pain. I’m also using the Monty rig for this one as I thought he could convey more emotion with its rig.
For the sneaking, I got inspiration from this very useful youtube video.
However, it didn’t completely satisfy what I was going for. He is more on the tiptoes and seeming almost scared while I wanted a more crouched sneak with the legs slightly crossing. I realized that the sneak animation from the game ‘Skyrim’ is similar to what I have in mind however it was a little stiff. So I took a video of me sneaking from the front and side and I chose to use that as my point of reference.
For the part where the character gets hurt, I looked into some whimsical animations that use pain for more comedic purposes, like Tom and Jerry. They use a lot of squashing and stretching and movement to exaggerate the impacts and the pain the character feels so we the viewers can feel it too.
I went onto Krita and made a short 2d animation of the basic scene for my clumsy ninja character. Thinking about the timing, anticipation, squash, and stretch in the process to make it easier for me later on when working in 3d. I also noticed how the head bobs up and down when walking to add the feeling of weight as well so I included that in my animation.
I went with a pose to pose style with animating this scene as I felt it would help me have it planned out more. I posed the character in the movements of the whole scene, not worrying about the timing just yet. However, I still paid attention to the reference videos and my rough 2d animation. With my present keys, I played the animation and saw it move at a very fast pace but the overall movements were what I wanted. I realized that I should’ve spaced my keys apart more but that’s an easy fix with the time editor later on. I went into the model of the Monty rig and squashed the eyes using the transform tool to make it look like he’s squinting for that extra sneaky character. For a more realistic extra touch, I made the character slightly bounce every time he took a step by squashing the head which was like a secondary action in this rig’s case.
When the character jumped in panic, I also stretched the head when jumping upwards, slightly squashing at the maximum height and then stretching when descending. These were done more exaggerated at the first jump as it was the strongest and highest but was slightly weaker in conjunction with the jumps’ energy, where the last jump was a lot lower. I tilted the head towards the legs when the character was flying backward after slipping and one leg rose higher than the other as well as trailing upwards when falling for extra fluidity (that’s also how people slip when they step on a banana peel). Then when the clumsy ninja collapsed on the floor I squished the head on the ground. Then gave the character another bounce going back even more and slightly returning into the original shape in the air and then squashing back and sliding on the ground before coming to a halt. The character looks around and then the legs go sidewards to anticipate a launch. And then he launches and is exaggeratedly stretched for immense speed.
I changed the idea from hot coals to lava and the small object he steps on is a droplet of it. I put the clip into the time editor and used the scale tool to extend the length of the animation which also made the movements a lot smoother and more to what I expected. However, the one speed didn’t work for me so I split the clip into a few parts to change the different speeds of them for the effect I was going for. The walk I scaled even more for an even slower sneak as I wanted, I extended the slip as well for more realistic weight. Everything else more or less stayed the speed from the first scale I made. Then I grouped all of the clips into one.
I had a problem with one frame in which one of the legs moved drastically in one direction, so I baked the edited time into the scene and fixed the frame. Now that I got more or less the animation I wanted and the right timing I went with adding some tweaks to make it extra appealing. I noticed I was missing something and came up with the ninja looking around slightly at the beginning so he’s not just walking looking just straight forward, making him seem curious and cautious. However, looking around is what made him miss the lava droplet on the floor.
For some fun, I thought it would be great to add some lighting and objects to set the scene and context fully, a ninja trying to get this precious floating ball and try to evade the traps.
Here is a multi-angle view of the finished animation.
In Conclusion
I found this assignment very fun and I learned a lot about movements and also conveying emotion through them in a 3d workspace. As well as that I continued practicing on previous knowledge of aspects of animation that I’ve learned. The process of making both of these animations was relatively smooth and I didn’t find much trouble or get stuck in many areas which resulted in a pleasant animating exercise. I thought this was a great start before moving on to more complex animations in the future.