I have complied all my exercises into my showreel. I made my own template for the showreel and I only looped my climb, dialogue and short twice because of the length of them. I added royalty free music to it. “Chill Wave” by Kevin MacLeod.
Overall I found the module challenging, some areas more simple to than others like the walk over the wall climb. There was times where I got frustrated at rigs not working and being unable to produce what I had in mind. My favorite animation was the wall climb, it took the longest out of all the animations but I like how it turned out in the end. My least animation was the short story, not because of the animation but because of the rigs that wouldn’t work or break when I tried to work with them. There are many things I would improve on if I had time. The one that I would add the most to would be the dialogue as it seems the most bare out of all of them and are so many ways to improve upon it. I would also alter the short story, I feel that is not the best it can be and I’m not sure if it’s the story or the setting or it’s just the fact I was frustrated with it. I might redone it completely different.
For the short story I planned out the character. He is very nosy and always wanting to know what people are doing and why they are doing it, every moment of everyday, and to do this he sneaks to look in his neighbours windows. He does this so often and that one of his neighbours has had enough and tells him off. Once I had this in mind I found the audio clip.
‘Wait, why does Johnny have so many soaps in the first place?’
‘Mind your business David! Why you worrying about it? It’s my life. Damn!’
I found this perfect to use as it is relevant to the situation but also adds humour to it. To start off I quickly made a rough storyboard.
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Then made it into an animatic to test the positions, plan out timings and overall feel of the animation.
The initial idea was when the nosy neighbour comes over the other is hiding in a bush waiting for him. I looked into paint effects in Maya to do this, I did find bushes but I found them not dense enough to be effective, so I changed it so that the neighbour would appear on the other side of the window. I thought this would also be good as it would be clear that it was the neighbour shouting at him and not just a random person.
I needed to model the set first so that I can made the rig interact with it so I started modelling with the Malcom rig for scale.
For the Malcom Rig I had tested the rig by moving the joints and such but once I had finished modelling and I went about animating the rig. I keep getting errors when scrubbed on the timeline.
I tried another rig, Morpheus, and found part of its face was broken.
The next ones I tried was Max and Blake but both couldn’t save due to script errors.
I then tried a female rig, Merry, but between key frames the knees and elbows broke. Bending backwards without any provocation.
Finally, I found the Walter rig which worked…until I added another model, but it was something I could overcome. The indicators for the different parts of the rig stopped being able to alter the skeleton, I had to go into the outliner window and into the skeleton group to move them.
If I had more time I would refine some of the steps with the toe bending and add more finger movement.
“I thought…. that if I could help him in some way, get him this, uh, this girl that he loves… that maybe, you know….. *sniff* ….things would ch… change for me.”
For this dialogue I wanted to do it 2D as I have been using Maya as my made mode of animating so far. The character in this animation is a overworked man in his late 20’s who is trapped in a repetitive cycle of work and sleep. He has become bored and tired of his mundane life. His friend wants to get with a girl and asked for his help in asking her out. He sees it as a opportunity that if he can do this he can get himself out of his funk. But he has messed up and his other friend is confronting him about his meddling.
First I planned out the general motions in a storyboard, focusing the gestures more than the face.
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Then I used Toon Boom Harmony to animate it, importing the storyboard then fleshing it out, once the body was done I added a basic face with lip sync and expressions. I found this harder than Maya but that could just be due because I haven’t practiced 2D in a while and have slowed down in my production rate. This made it frustrating for me.
However if I had more time I would redo the hands as I struggled with them and just made them as the rough gestures. I want to add more facial frames and perhaps some hair with physics and clean it up.
The emotions I wanted to convey from this was embarrassment and self-consciousness, with a hint of sadness, rather than just having him sad. The idea behind this was that this person was crushing on another and summoned enough courage to ask them for a date but was rejected. They are embarrassed, of course, and their confidence hurt. Touching the back of their neck signalling that they are uncomfortable, abashed, and grabbing their elbow in nervousness and trying to reassure themselves.
I made the reference footage by recording myself acting out the actions.
After, I examine the footage and got the key frames that I thought were important, creating a storyboard from them.
Then, I created an animatic to test the positions and timing. When animating I plan on extending the length of this, making him hold his neck for a longer period and grab his arm much slower.
I animated this in Maya using the Bony rig, I found it walk simple to do as the legs just loop and the arms move. I would make the pace slightly faster, his feet heavier. Also, making the arm swing more. The feedback suggested that he should drags his feet, showing more reluctance. If I have time to update, I will add this.
For this exercise I went in search of a reference video of a child walking, I knew I wanted to have a toddler aged child as a toddler walk is very distinct. The video that I found and used as reference is this one.
From this I made a storyboard of the different key positions, I found that when children walk they are less smooth than an adult walking, it’s more of a waddle as they haven’t yet learnt how to properly balance. Their legs come higher up and they shift their weight on their legs rather than moving their hips. Pushing off with their knees to the other leg. I test the positions I put the storyboard into a small animatic.
Trying to time out the positions, not walking at a steady pace and have spacing on the frames between stepping and lifting the over foot.
Using the Bony rig in Maya I made the walk, adding a small stumble at the end to really show that unbalanced and childishness nature. I found this walk challenging as it was different from any other walk I have done because it seems so random, it was at a steady pace which is the usual walk.
But from feedback it was suggested that the child shouldn’t be able to push themselves but up from that stumble and that they would just falling over, I agree with this and would aim to correct this if I redo it.
My idea behind this walk was it to be a man who had been in accident many years ago and because of this accident he has lost the feeling and strength in his leg, and this is he walking to his crutches/wheelchair.
I made my own reference for this walk as I couldn’t find a limp that I found suitable for this walk.
Using the key positions I see that as all the weight is on the one leg the walk is very jumpy, when the man steps forward he literally falls until his foot catches him, sending all weight onto it. Then he lifts his body upwards to drag the other leg under him.
To test the positions and test the timing I made the storyboard into an animatic.
Then using the Bony rig in Maya I animated it. I found this walk simple to do as one of the leg didn’t need much movement expect on the x axis and some tilting. Then it repeats.
Feedback suggested was the limp looked more like a zombie limping rather than the man in my story, if the leg was completely numb the man should swing the leg around, twisting his hips and body to bring the leg in front of him. I would add this if I redid the animation.
Our first exercise for character performance is having a character run and climb over a wall before picking up an object and throwing it. Taking in account for the character’s situation and bio. For my character I design him to be a late teen to young adult age, to be not unhealthy but nor athletic, an average build. The situation is very calm, the reason he was climbing to wall was to retrieve the ball that had been lost while playing next door. I imagine the wall being the wall to an old abandon house, covered in vines and hence slippy. I tried to include suggestions to the situation by having his feet slip on the wall when trying to pull himself up and having him scan the area for the ball.
This is the bio I created for the character.
Name: Ed
Gender: Male
Age: Late teen to young adult
Build: Lean, average height, not athletic but not unhealthy
Where: Garden of an old abandon house
Why: Their younger sibling lost their ball while playing and being the older sibling, he has to retrieve the ball which has landed in the neighbour’s garden over the wall.
I got reference from these videos on YouTube of parkour climbing of walls. I watched for how they pulled themselves up and over the wall. Taking in account that my character won’t be as efficient or quick as them.
To start the animation I made a storyboard. Summarized the man looks at the wall, runs, jump, climbs sits, look around, drops and picks up ball and throws it. To test the poses I made it into animatic, also testing the correct timings.
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I used the Bony rig to animate this, I found the rig was simple and good to use as it had all the extra joints compared to the Bucket Kid rig, but I found a small inconvenience was that the rig slowly makes the Maya slow, causing lag. To fix this, I had to keep closing and reopening Maya, slowing down the production.
I am happy with the run and climb of the wall but if I was to redo this I would edit the ball, it seems to light and the bounce of it is off. From the feedback I was given it also stated this issue.
I managed to redo the animation and this is the improved version, now with the ball being corrected, added weight and altered the bounce to reflect on that weight. I still feel that it is slightly off but I am much more happy with it. I also made the wall semi-transparent so that you can see the climb more clearly.
Today was the briefing for Performance and Character, a module about the body language of the characters. It’s more focus on who and how the characters are moving, acting, to convey what they are feeling. There are 4 exercises to complete for this module.
Wall Climb
3 Walks
Dialogue Performance
Short Story
Every other week we are going to have a review week to get feedback about our animations so that we could improve on them later. I plan to do most of my animations in Maya as I know I most efficient in Maya but I also want to do some of them in 2D as well because I have an interest in it.
Artistic License 