I recently started learning Blender, which has been interesting as it is similar to Maya in many ways! However the shortcuts on the keyboard are different, so switchin between the two has been challenging, but not impossible. Here is a short animation of a dummy jumping. I tried to incorporate some of the 12 principles of animation into this clip- particularly appeal, anticipation, staging and secondary action.

I began working on an animation of a rat for my animation jam submission by watching videos of rats running. I also watched a video specifically for animating a 2D rat run cycle. I looked at the key frames and sketched out basic drawings of these key frames on post it notes. I later added the number of each key frame, so I could copy and paste them in sequence in order to create a longer loop.

Looking back at this animation, there are plenty of things i would change. For instance, it is not as fluid as I would like it to be, and I think i should have made the distance between the front legs shorter, and the distance between the back legs wider. However, he’s still cute, and I can clean up this animation when adding it to the jam clip.

This week we were tasked with creating a short story board for a jumping flour sack sequence. I drew mine out on post it notes. I wanted my flour sack to open the sequence by tapping his foot on the ground, and finish with a pose where the “arms” would look like muscle flexing. I also watched this video to better understand staging.

I also found this video on how to use the camera sequencing tool in maya incredibly helpful! I watched and paused to copy each step, which worked well.

I took this assignment as an opportunity to learn how to pose cameras and create camera sequences. I enjoyed this aspect, and pictured are my notes taken at the time- I wrote down how long I would like each camera shot to last in frames before creating the shot. This was to save time when entering values in the options box as I created the shots.

The finished playblast is below. I was happy with how it turned out. I would definitely like to revisit this scene in the future to add more aspects to the animation, also I feel that in the last shot, I panned the camera up too quickly, and the viewer can’t really see the final pose. However this was a fun exercise in working with camera angles.

This week we were tasked with creating a bipedal walk cycle featuring a secondary action. I attempted to do this using the squirrel model. I enjoyed creating a large area for the squirrel to run around, and I tried to capture the fast paced motion and character of a squirrel. However, creating a secondary action (aside from making the tail bob up and down) was difficult.

I then looked to animating the female figure I had downloaded for using in my animation jam clip. I tried to make her walk in a feminine and elegant way whilst blinking and smiling, but I found this rig quite difficult to navigate. I couldn’t figure out how to make the top half of the rig “parent” with the ground, so her shoulders and head *frustratingly* sway from side to side with the leg and hip movement, instead of staying still! However this was still a good exercise to get some experience in working with various rigs.

I started today’s session by making simple feet movements with the Azri model. They were very static, so I tried to give her very fluid and feminine movements. I watched a video on YouTube of catwalk models walking in heels at 0.25x speed to try and pinpoint the exact movements.

Progress so far on the walk cycle from today’s session. Sarah recommended that I add head movement to make the walk cycle more realistic, which is shown in the video below.

So I began my flour sack task by making a sad character that would then cheer up and start dancing… but Maya had other ideas and decided to crash half way through! Luckily I had taken a quick recording of the computer screen on my phone before this!

After this I decided to start over with a totally different set of movements- I really wanted to see this flour sack dance!

The final animation I made today was the most successful. I wanted the flour sack to tap his foot like he was bored, then move into a sassy dance animation. I couldn’t help but stick a song over it, which although not exactly necessary, I feel it is the cherry on top! I’m looking forward to learning how to render and export my animations!

Below are some videos I watched when working on this task, in order to fully understand the concept of appeal in animation!

In our first class we started by looking at the 12 principles of animation. We then learned to animate a bouncing ball. I decided to try 3D animation, as I would like to work in video games development. and this is what really draws me to animation.

I began by looking into what “squash and stretch” meant, and brought this technique into my work. Below is the video I watched explaining the principle of “squash and stretch”. I also looked at various diagrams of bouncing ball arcs.

I felt more confident after producing this second bouncing ball. I felt that I was starting to get a hang of animating in Maya, and starting to have fun! I tried to give this one more character with the stretch and squash movement, and I felt that this worked well. The ball pauses before rolling away. If I was to animate this again, I would put eyes on the ball and have it look left to right before rolling away.