Pascual Animation Process

Below is a link to Ruel's animation process. He covers planning, stepping and cleanup in Maya.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Assignment3 : Drink Box Animation

Assignment 3 : Drink Box from randolfd and Vimeo.

Ball bounce 2

Below are notes, fixes and difficulties experienced by students from the previous assignments.

Things to watch out for regarding the two ball bounce.

5 frames for first drop of heavy ball.
Keeping overlap to compensate.
Remember forward momentum to represent forward motion.
Rotate ball after coming out of first squash.
Watch the X move more than the rotation (sliding). **
Flatten tangents in order to stay on surface.
Watch for steep arcs, keep arcs rounded.
Spacing of stretch before 1st squash, and stretch after 2nd squash frame be different. The second one should be greater.
Squashing before it hits the ground – squash starts too soon.


DRINK BOX ANIMATION

Animate box, show one emotion. In order to switch to another emotion, there must be conflict, then switch to second emotion. Watch gesture and timing. Remember bouncing ball timing. Anticipation before the move forward. Keep emotion in objects. Make believe that they are thinking.

Happy
Angry
Sad
Surprised
Excited
Anxious
Inquisitive
Embarrassed
Drunk
Confused
Abused
Tired
Loved
Depressed
Irritated
Constipated
Inspired
Annoyed
Disturbed

Conflict: Makes the scene more interesting and engages the viewer. It is marked by a struggle or confrontation. This usually follows a story arch. Conflict. There are three types of conflict. Conflict with Self, Others and Situation or environment. Suggest Conflict to make it more interesting, in this assignment. It may be interesting to have the conflict offscreen. After the conflict, be sure the character fails or succeeds. The box experiences conflict and then will either fail or succeed.


Timing of the exit of the character is different than entrance

As an exercise, see if you can sketch out a gesture pose for each brick emotion mentioned above.

IDEAS:
Standup Comedy Act – Cube appears. Tells a joke and bombs. OR succeeds. Spotlight
Guarding the doorway. Sees and intruder and goes to warn.
Drunk > cube falls >

DRINK BOX MODEL
Use locator to bring up channel box.

Be subtle

Be sure box has animation either hop or walk in order to travel across the scene.

Success of animation depends on:
Timing
Spacing
Squash and Stretch
Story
Posing
Gesture
Emotion

Success and clarity comes from the contrast of two emotions.

Contrast your timing and rhythm throughout the piece in order to prevent monotony.


ASSIGNMENT PARAMETERS:

6 second max.
720 x 486
Set up a camera and don’t move the camera.
Plot arcs.
Sketch it out.
Plan.

Staggering, Drag and Overlap requires 12 frames to show overlapping action and the die-out.

Stepping: Select your keys > RC > tangents > step

Interview Questions

Below are possible questions posed to professionally working animators to gain insight into their methodologies and work methods in animating emotion.

Background:

• Where did you study animation?
• What are your top 3 favorite animation DVD's? And what reasons do you have to make them the top of your list?
  
• Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny? If neither, who?
• What is your primary animation platform?
• What toys do you have around your work area?

Influence:

• How long have you been animating and where do you currently work now?
• Do you have a favorite animator that you continually draw inspiration from?
• In learning animation, did you have a favorite animation exercise? Please describe.

Industry Questions:

• Do you specialize in a particular type of animation (i.e. character, realistic, inanimate objects, animals)?
• How much footage do you choose to work on at any one time, and how long do you give yourself to work on this footage?
• Before you jump on to the computer to animate, and realizing that you have approved storyboards, what type of personal planning do you do to prepare before animating?
• Animation is a complex process, what types of questions do you ask yourself in order to clarify what you are about to animate?
• Describe your animation process?
• Is there a feature inherent in the software that you are using that you just love and that you cannot live without? What does it do?
• In what ways do you see the animation industry changing?
• What is the most difficult part of animation?
• What do you love most about what you do?
  

Animating Emotion:

• How important is emotion to your animations?
• Describe the process you would take to get the best results?
• Have you ever animated something, only to find that people felt something else other than what you had originally intended?

Advice to Students:

• What is the biggest downfall students make when it comes to presenting their portfolio/demo reel?
• What type of advice would you give students currently entering the animation industry?
• The animation process is long and tedious, and its not unusual for the mind to wander. What do you do stay awake, sharp and focused on your work?

The Graph Editor

Adjusting handles in the graph editor:

By default, the handles in the graph editor are not weighted. Make them weighted so you can extend them.

• Curves > Weighted Tangents.

From here, you can choose the tools circled below to break, combine or manipulate tangents.

• MMB to translate.
• Shift to contstrain.

Assignment 1 :: Bouncing Ball

Assignment 1: Ball Bounce from randolfd and Vimeo.

In this assignment, I skipped the first task of animating a bouncing ball in 24 frames and it ended up shooting me in the foot. I tried to do a 450 frame animation of the ball, bouncing in and being excited caused him to jot in and out of the frame 3 times. Afterwards, he was supposed to slowly come in and deflate to represent an exhaustive state. The task was too much. I had not felt warmed up. I'm sure I could tweak the animation I completed, but it might be best to just start again. Doing the single ball bounce in 24 frames is a nice ease into the remaining assignments. I just completed it and I feel much better now. I will return to this assignment once I have a better idea/concept.

Below are some common mistakes and fixes made by other students in the class:

1. Stretch of ball on descent happens too early.
2. Incorrect contact with the ground plane.
3. Add an extra frame of squash, keep it here at least two and at the most three.
4. Punch or Pop occurs after squash. The distance between the stretch and the last frame of the squash should be greater than the distance between the first squash and stretch frames.
5. Tops stop too abruptly. Flatten out tangents.
6. More keyframes at the top of the motion than at the bottom.
7. Be mindful of the frame count and height. If the height is shallow and there are a lot of frames, the animation will play slow.
8. Practice flat and linear keys.
9. Keep things simple. Plan your keys (70%). Animation = 30%.
10. Cameron Myazake bouncing ball animation.
11. Check out Richard William's tips on frame count.
12. Soft landings. Create linear tangents to create impact.

List of Emotions

Below is a list of common emotions that when animated, will give you a good variety of assignments. To add additional variety, try animating them in different intensity levels from subtle (realistic) to exaggerated (cartoony).

The following emotions are:

• Shyness
• Disgusted
• Fear
• Surprised
• Joy
• Happy
• Anger
• Inquisitiveness
• Sadness

Hooks, Ed. "Acting for Animators". Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 2000.

Maya 8.5 Service Pack

Had problems firing up Maya 8.5 on my mac. Looks like there is a service pac and an unistaller patch that we have to use to get it to work. Thanks Ron.

I'll give it a try.

The link to both the patch and service pack can be found here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=9627807&linkID=9242259

Starting Back Again

This week was the first week of teaching at Ai after a nice vacation to Huntington Beach and San Diego. This quarter, I teach three Beginning Maya classes and I'm also sitting in on Ruel's 3D Character Animation class.

The character class will be the focal point from which to create my acting curriculum. I will be engaging in lots of the exercises I have planned for in my thesis. I'm looking forward to improving.