Assignment 2 – Animation Studies – 6th April – 30%
Reflection, Development, Reference and Research
For this assignment, we had to create two short animations:
- A study in weight of motion / body mechanics of the character – An action the involves the whole body moving – for example jumping.
- A study in conveying emotion / personality of character – For example scared / happy.
Initial Research and Animation Practice:
In class over the past few weeks, we have been given lectures and exercises to practice animating using both the Ultimate Walker and Monty Rigs.
We animated a basic jump exercise and the next week we animated a side-to-side hop using the Monty Rig which was slightly more difficult in figuring out the in-between poses.
These were both to help inform our technique for Assignment 2, and to continue to practice 3D animation.
These animations came out good. Not very effective but I was proud for my first attempts. I found the grease brush helped a lot to figure out poses and timing for the jump, as well as being able to create each keyframe easily.
Before getting into 3D animating for Assignment 2 or figuring out what movements and emotions I wanted to make, I decided to research animation and the 12 principles of animation and began looking over the The Principles of Animation as listed in The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston :
- Squash and stretch
- Staging
- Straight-ahead animation
- Pose to pose animation
- Follow through
- Slow in Slow out
- Arcs
- Secondary action
- Timing
- Exaggeration
- Solid Drawing
- Appeal
These were remind myself of the basics of animating and to reinforce what I had already learnt from 2D animation.
While thinking about what two animations I would make for this assignment I considered doing something related to but more complicated than a jump, to effectively show the weight in the character landing. For the emotion I considering doing an animation showing fear for the character jumping at the sight of something frightening then trembling, perhaps using an audio file of a well-known animated character shouting in fear as well. However, my capability for emotion was limited without hands or a face, as well as my basic knowledge of animating using a 3D platform, which I had not attempted before.
I spent some time researching and watching other Monty Rig animation examples on YouTube such as:
- Animating Character Walks in Maya 2018 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BCfkU0lDTk&ab_channel=AlexanderWilliams
- Basic Walk Cycle Tutorial – Part 1 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOVMibQc-KU&ab_channel=AlexanderWilliams
- How to animate a cartoon “Take” with Monty –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JIL7abE5O4&ab_channel=AlexanderWilliams
Styles/techniques of 3D animation (blocking & straight ahead etc):
Workflow Breakdown – Attack Animation (Zelda) by animator, Adam Turnbull:
I found this video and Alec’s tutorials really helpful for telling me what order to do each part of the animation process, and where to begin for making the animations.
Study in Weight of Motion/Body Mechanics:
For my first animation, I had decided to animate a more interesting and complicated jump animation, with a landing pose to build upon what I had learnt from Alec’s tutorial videos. I wanted this animation to be a way to ease myself into creating my own 3D animations and understanding the rig and controls even further.
I started by gathering references and watching YouTube videos of people doing interesting landing poses so I could ensure I would get the positioning and poses of the animation correct so that I may be able to manipulate and exaggerate it for my animation.
[YouTube vids]
How To Do The SUPER HERO LANDING –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNGPuvDcGLw&ab_channel=RonnieStreetStunts
Front Flips and Back Flips in Slow Motion – The Slow Mo Guys –
How To Animate A Superhero Landing | Let’s Animate! –
This video was really helpful for timing!!
I paused through the videos to then began drawing out various poses so I could know what kind of movement I wanted to create from the rig and how to translate these into the key poses for my animation.
Using Procreate, I then added some in-betweens to create a rough 2d animation of what I was going to animate later in 3d so I would know the basic timing and order of posing. These were done in the side view so I could use them as a clear reference for the Monty rig in creating the key poses clearly as my basis.
I was able to use what I already knew about animation from 2D to then add some in between poses I would need in the rough animation
I decided later on that I would like to do a jump and an interesting landing from as I had learnt the fundamentals of a jump animation from Alec and wanted to build upon that.
To understand how to achieve weight in animation I looked at the blog posts from Animation Mentor, that explains how to make weight believable in animation: https://www.animationmentor.com/blog/how-to-create-believable-weight-in-animation/
I also read though The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams and watched videos of people doing jumps. I was able to see that the subject becomes slower when it gets to the highest point if it is light. However, if it is heavy it would be pulled down faster, which would later become more apparent in my animation.
When I was animating, I noticed that I had created too many in-betweens for the spin in the air which slowed to animation down too much to feel the momentum and speed. The legs were the hardest part of animating this, as well as the timing, as it was hard to place how they would move exactly and what the timing would be. I had to tweak these a few times whilst re-evaluating the animation before polishing it.
I also struggled with understanding how to use the graph editor and had to use a few tutorial videos on YouTube to try and figure this out. Thankfully, Maya automatically generates in-betweens when you turn off Stepped Preview mode, and so most of what I had t do was go through, frame by frame, editing the motions.
Evaluation and Reflection:
I believe my finished weight animation was not perfect, however I think I achieved the pose and movement that I wanted clearly. This was the first completely independent 3D animation I created with very little experience with 3D animation until this semester. I think I did very well as a novice, and you can understand what the movement is. I am also proud of the landing of this jump, which was the main goal for this animation to show weight on the figure.
I do not believe I was very good at using the graph editor and am not sure if I did a very good job at polishing the animation as I had to finish it early as I had to travel home, away from my computer and software for a medical appointment over the break. However, I was proficient at the dope sheet, and will attempt to watch more tutorials so I fully understand in the next assignment.
If I could remake this animation, I would try to be more accurate with timing and experimenting with squash and stretch further. I would also polish the animation further and learn how to use the graph editor much more effectively.
Study in Conveying Emotion/Personality of Character:
For my second animation, I decided I would try to create an angry reaction and overall grumpy character. To achieve this, I wanted to include a character walk cycle that would show this personality and also to try something slightly more difficult than my first animation.
I decided against my first idea as I saw a lot of people had decided to animate fear and I wanted to try and do an emotion and animation that was a little bit a more difficult than my last animation. I chose to do an animation showing anger and frustration in the character.
I understood how to create a walk cycle in 2d but not in 3d and so I could ensure I would get the positioning and poses of the animation correct so that I may be able to manipulate and exaggerate it for my animation.
It was difficult at the beginning trying to emote with limited expression on the Monty rigs face controls and only legs to move, however I thought if I made him a grumpy character and use the walk cycle to show an angry personality I could get around this.
I started by gathering references and watching YouTube videos of people doing angry walks and looked at animated expressions of anger from media.
Video References:
I found more video references using YouTube to help assist in my timing and posing for my animation.
I wanted to first look at how the game, Animal Crossing, created expressions in a simple, yet effective way and then, when I liked how the anger was effectively shown I looked further into angry animations.
- Emotions Reference: Animal Crossing New Horizons 44 Reactions with Label –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-9EnWDrMBQ&ab_channel=Jifry
- Top 5 Angry Moments in Animal Crossing New Horizons: https://youtu.be/8R15CpIyYVk
I then began looking at other artists and examples of anger and emotions in animation:
Angry Walk Cycle: https://youtu.be/vnNWnyDuNQI
This animation helped me understand how to roughly sketch out a angry walk for the characters and how a walk could show a character was angry.
Day6 – Angry Stomp by Ricardo Tena jr: https://youtu.be/fJsotA-jtug
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE – Animating Miles:
I have been very inspired by 3D animated feature films’ animation and I wanted to further study the animation and way expressions are created in Spider-verse.
I was inspired by the work of Nick Kondo who was the lead animator on Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse.
blob:https://vimeo.com/29606879-906e-44e2-98e1-00637150da77
I also looked at other expressive animations using the Monty rig to see how others were able to use the limited rig to show different expressions:
- Monty Rig – Sad Monty: https://youtu.be/rGwT4yj1oZ0
- Monty Spooked: https://youtu.be/soqQvwNOJCo
Another character animator I looked at was Paul Jarvis who works at Riot Games on Legue of Legends: http://www.pauljarvis.net/
I used a thumbnailing example by Takafumi Hori (@porigoshi on Twitter) that helped show how to draw rough thumbnails for your animation by creating a rough sketch animation first:
https://twitter.com/porigoshi/status/1142855743101554688
I once again used Procreate to create a basic angry walk animation, and then decided to add on a stomp, so I could have a rough idea of the timing and key frames for the poses.
I then began blocking in the key poses I had drawn on Procreate that I had figured out through the Animator’s Survival Kit and the YouTube references I found, which began my animation.
The walk cycle seemed to work well, however I had to adject the rig so the knees were spread in an angry stomp, and Monty would slightly squash upon impact with the ground for each step. These were parts I had not considered when animating in 2D.
I used the eyebrow/face rig on Monty to give his brows an angry tilt downwards which helped with the overall effects.
The hardest part of this animation was once again the graph editor which I did my best to adjust, but combining that, the dope sheet and computer generated in-betweens I was able to create an expressive animation I could be proud of.
Evaluation and Reflection:
For the second emotion-based animation, I think I prepared for the animation well and created the walk cycle and expression of the emotion well. Because I am comfortable with 2D animation, and I understood how to make a walk cycle, this part was much more simple to block in the key poses.
I was unable to fix the foot rigs for the final animation in time and I found it especially hard to show emotion without a face, however I believe I did well despite this.
If I could remake this, I would fix the foot rigs and foot rolls. I would also adjust the walk cycle to make the stomps a little more forceful and impactful to show the anger even further.
I learnt a lot of techniques and received many resources from my friends and classmates. I shared my work with my friends and tutors who gave me suggestions and formative feedback.
Overall, I think my animations were good? For having only begun 3D animation, rigging and using Maya only this year, I think I have improved a lot since the beginning on the semester.
When I completed both animations to the best of my ability, I then exported each out as a playblast and then uploaded these to SyncSketch and submitted my assignment on Blackboard.
Assignment 2 – Animation Studies – Tuesday 6th April – 30%
- Portfolio:
- SyncSketch:
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/c66c47727a87/?offlineMode=1#/4561121/5222146/f_0
- Blog:
Assignment 2 – Animation Studies – Reflection, Development, Reference and Research
- Maya file and Playblast:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K0PNoDKKIirzVSXTHoItlevT6y-POotv?usp=sharing