Component Assignment

Planning-

Because of misunderstanding, I started on a wrong track but, after my tutor's guidance, I builded a new concept. Idea behind this was to achieve different style of mood in single animation. I wanted my character to look really exhausted. I set up his mood and acted out a reference shoot.Clip was not coming up to the mark. With my tutor's and classmate's help, I managed to get a nice reference video.

Reference shoot :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXZJSw0_1Y

Stage 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEIVYppSG2E

I began with body blocking. In last walk assignment I learned that, animating one body part at a time works for me. I set method of animation after blocking, first I worked on body and it's weight. I found that when body weight is correct, animation is much smoother.For my second character i had clear idea in my mind. I wanted that character to be very attached to his owner. I love Simon's cat animation. The kind of attitude that cat has it's amazing. I was looking to imitated that character. These are some references which I followed :

Stage 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf53jgOt9NM

On this stage, I was clear what I am looking for in my animation. I wanted to have a camera change. I did two camera changes, one after character kicks his pet and second when he gets scared. I faced many technical problems in this assignment. Animation feature of Maya software was new to me, I was having trouble constraining one object to another. It took lot of time to solve. I referred plenty of videos on constraining feature of Maya. One of it listed bellow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spj8tRQ8bkM

This was not enough, some of the new problem were faced by me and couldn't find solution on them. But as I progressed, I found a way out. For example, in this animation the Busu (human character) who is grabbing a box from one hand and then he handed over it in another hand. Till there it was clear, but when he transferred that box to other hand, again I had to Parent him with right hand of the character. I decided to copy the same object in a same position and animate the second box with right hand.

Final Look...

I am really happy with this assignment's final output. I did some changes according to my tutor's suggestion. I got to learn lots of technical and animation facts. I had couple of ideas but, because of limited time period I could not apply them. For my next assignments, I want to add more expressions and eye animation in my work. My animation file was not getting rendered properly. Tip of Busu's shoes( human character) was not getting rendered for some reason. I used Google information for this, but in student version of Maya software it was not applicable. At the end, I did selection of all the visible objects and rendered them frame by frame. I was lucky to get help from my friend for lighting . Rest everything fell in place and I finished my assignment on time.

Life Drawing

Sketch Book

Sketches

Walk

Animator Richard William says, " walk are the most hardest thing in animation." There are lot of thing which we have to look while animating a walk. Every person walks in various way.

A old lady who walks on street has different walking style than a young guy.

To set a tempo before starting an assignment is very important thing. I wanted to do a normal guy's walk. He is walking in market place and sees a girl. While observing her, he bangs on light pole. Because of embarrassment, he tries to hide his face.

I prepared a story board for this.

Planning a walk was challenging. I went on street for finding variety of references. In very short time, I gathered interesting references for walk. For my walk assignment planed, I used studio shoot references.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifOBKyKZ40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MNKMwLljQY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=kfNe7Wocu-Q

I observe minute details of walk. I observed, how human body's weight shifts, legs and hand moves in opposite direction. There is a subtle movement of shoulder. Head reacts very slightly while a normal walk.

First Look of walk

I still want to achieve last moment where he feel embarrassed that, he hits a pole.

WIP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEZEini16iw

Last short is still in WIP stage.

Final Version

Pose 3

I really enjoyed this assignment. It helped to enhance my observation power. Even though, I am walking on street, I try to notice why and how things are moving even reason behind reactions of people.

Trouble

This is my plan for my third posing assignment. For a perfect key pose we should know one prior pose. Accordingly, I acted one extra pose for Pose assignment.

In above pictures, I did one act and my friend helped me to clicking photos.

Idea behind this is, one romantic guy went to propose a girl whom he really loved.I waned to have those expression on his face.He offers a rose with all his feeling.But after unexpected rejection he collapse on floor and gets upset.

Pose 2

Doing pose is less difficult than doing three story

telling pose. To convey story in three key poses was big task in this assignment. After having some idea from pose one, I decided to reintroduce the same situation in different manner.

What's inside

Person is curiously waiting outside, he want to know what exactly is happening inside the room.

He tries to overcome his curiosity he keeps walking to and fro.

But when he learns that he is alone, he silently tries to enter.

Poses 1

In pose assignment, I am aiming how to get Weight and Arc of the body.

Poses plays very important role in animation. For good animation, poses are very essential.

Overjoy

He is a expected father, whenever I observed such situation, person really dont know what exactly he is doing. Noticeable thing is, if a person is curious to know about something he or she will try and act very unexpected way.

I showed in this pose that he is not facing towards maternity room.

He is pretending to be like a normal person, but he can not hide his natural body language.

Weight of the body is on bench.In first pose he is nervous about what is happening inside.

Second one suggest that he heard some good news. Which leads no expression on his face.

Third pose is overjoyed pose. After hearing good news, he can not control himself and started to jump.

Ball With Tail

One leads other thing follow. Bouncing ball with tail is perfect example of Arc and 'Follow Through'. For this I am focusing on Follow Through and Arc of tail.

As above I want my character to be very joyful and impatient. I showed all expression by his body language.

This is the blocking stage of my assignment. For this assignment I took squirrel as a reference.

Squirrel's tail movement is a good match for tail. I imitated following reference to active the character.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzHqaP-Ce

v0&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2FAq8pQQa4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfDZUzzoMUw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2dOvsmyuBM&feature=related

second version of ball with tail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vbvvd6BglY

Tutor's suggested me to work on timing of the act.

I added anticipation before he jumps up on diving board in my final version.

This is my final render of Ball with tail assignment

I drew one digital painting just by inspiration of this assignment...

Pendulum

Pendulum

In this assignment, I learned how to apply 'Follow Through' in animation. When hanging weight moves from one place to another, we can see 'Arc and Follow Through', two very important

principles of animation.

There are some planning sketches of my assignment. I want weight to take some anticipation before it hits to the wall. In this, I experiment with last hit. Pendulum is going to hit the wall with the intention of breaking it ,but it effects on him. In result Pendulum starts wobbling.

Bouncing Ball_1st version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RgnXQFZ-j0

This was my second attempt to make bouncing ball. It is very difficult and challenging to do perfect animation of bouncing ball. Bouncing ball covers most of the aspects of animation, which includes stretch and squash, arc, anticipation ,timing ,staging, slow in slow out.It becomes quite tricky at the moment of timing and spacing.

I did lot of reference shoot for this and did sketches of it to get the idea how actually ball comes down where to put stretch and squash.

Stretch and squash principle is useful for all kinds of animating even if a person is jumping form one place to another first he will take antique before he jumps which is squash. Antique is follows by stretch, subject will try and stretch him self to to in air. there it will be most relax position, before he lands down. Landing pose suggest squash.

This was a jump example but in real life we can find many examples like t hat.

Ball lands in arcs. Scientifically the gravity and weight suggest arcs of the ball. If ball is heavy arc will be different than, light ball.

My main concentration was to get timing as close as real life.This are some references of bouncing ball shot by me and my room mate help me doing that successfully http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1nEFvCYBA4

I kept my assignment as simple as possible for focusing on basic principle like stretch and squash, timing, arc etc.