Assignment 14 or 12 : Gear Change 2 or Animating 4 Emotions

Animating 4 Emotions from randolfd on Vimeo.


This original assignment was to animate a second gearchange different from the first. In all of these assignments, its extremely easy to get too carried away, and to animate more than is needed. Its by far the most difficult thing to overcome that I think will get better through experience. The most simple way to prevent this is through planning.

For this assignment, instead of two emotions, the character is now experiencing 5 emotions: sadness, surprised, fear, inquisitiveness and happiness, followed by pain. I was too deep into the animation before I realized I had done too much. I think its a good example of the 4 emotion assignment that I am supposed to undertake in the next few weeks.

Some tips for this successful completion of this assignement:

Research:
Think of a funny incident that has happened to you, and act it out in front of a video camera. You will use this as reference, and you will watch it step by step so you can get a realistic idea of the timing involved, as well as little nuances in the acting that will give the performance variety and realism.

Planning:
Be sure you are clear which emotions are being portrayed, write these down and stick to them.

Stepping:
Pose your rig in the timeline, making sure that you hold each pose by placing two identical keyframes to hold the pose. 48 frames is a good duration for a pause. Shorter pauses should be 24 frames. These pauses act as periods in the performance which gives the viewer a split second to understand what is going on. In Maya, step these performance so you have a rough idea of timing.

To step your keyframes:
Shift + LC drag you mouse over the frames you want (they should be highlighted red) > RC > Tangents > Stepped.

Animating:
After posing, begin to animate the spine and center of gravity from one emotion to the next. In traditional stage drama, it is part of an actor's training to express oneself from the inside out. In animation, we'll do something similar, let's animate the spine and center of gravity first before doing the limbs and head. This technique adds a natural moving pause to your movement (moving pause link here).

After you have animated the spine, torso and center of gravity, begin to animate the limbs and head. In animating the arm, animate the upper arm first, followed by the elbow, then wrist rotation. At this point, you are animating follow through and overlapping animation, which will make your piece look more realistic.

At this point, its essential to remove the stepping from your playback so you have a better idea of how things are turning out.

Finishing Touches:
Be sure to check your work and seek feedback to improve our work. After more finishing touches, use the graph editor to smooth your animation and to refine your arcs.

Tip:
One thing to keep in mind while animating, is to add a variety of speeds in your animation. Mix fast movement with slow movement. This adds contrast and visual interest to your piece. A good example of this is explained in Victor Navone's blog on Animating 3 speeds.

Click the link below to explore more:
http://www.navone.org/blogger/2007/09/3-speeds.html