Duik Tests

To learn Duik I went looking for a tutorial, as the official tutorials are expensive, on YouTube. First I found a video explaining how to work the body rig.

Eventually I found a video, unfortunately the video is in Spanish but I used the translate tool on YouTube and just from seeing what was happening I manage to piece together how to work the sliders.

Using this video I was able to make the assets for the body, basing them on the same system. To then test them I followed the video and rigged with Duik.

I also looked into Character Animator for live animating of the head assets, I created a small video of my character talking with me and tracking my heads. As well as adding physics to the hair to seem more life-like.

 

Head Assets

Using the turnaround of my character I have created my character’s head in assets. I found the process easy and quite calm to do, just time-consuming. Now that I have the assets for the head done I went ahead and quickly tested the layers in After Effects, loading in the file and making sure that when, e.g., the ears rotate they different clip though anything or it was obvious that they ended.

I also created the background in illustrator from the rough concepts, we decided that we should have the animals in a woodland setting because it made the most sense. This background is based on the concept of having the characters sat on a branch in a tree and the bat character is hanging from above. I based the colouring of the tree on the My Little Pony style.

Diving in Illustrator

For the asset creation we have found a program that we can use with After Effects that uses assets, Bassel Durik. It can created body rigs and face rigs in 2D to use in After Effects. To begin the process of using this we need to start the assets for the characters, we are going to be using illustrator to create them as it will allow the assets to be vectors, allowing us to scale without losing any quality. A member of the group did a quick look at illustrator as none of us had any experience with the program, then gave us the basic run down how they created their characters head. This started the asset creating processes, at least for the heads at this moment as we are unsure how the body needs to be separated.

Rejected Lover Walk

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.

Character Final Design

After I had the 3/4 full body angle of my character I looked into different colour schemes for her, I came up with 3 with the body colours being based on different kinds of owls. I did the main 3 and then just put in the last one as a last minute thought.

However, the grey colours seemed to be the most liked than the others, with the suggestion that the eye colour should be changed to a pink rather than red. With this I went forward and did the full turnaround for the character. Finalising her.

I have now I have the turnaround I can make assets for the head and the body using the sides as a template.

Animation Research

For the animation we know that we want to do it in 2D, preferably After Effects as every member of the group has have experience with the program. It was decided that using assets to do use to create the animation would be the quickest to animate but also be high quality. Research has started on how we can animate with assets in After Effects, looking into My Little Pony for their use of assets. We found that we could find information on the heads more than the body continuing to research about it.

Character concepts are being created, most of the characters are going to be anthropomorphic animals with only one character being a human in an animal mask. For my character I though that an owl would be fitting to represent myself, I haven’t drawn any type of anthropomorphic animals before but I’m getting some guides and tips from a other member of the group.

With that I manged to get a head concept for the owl, I’m going to continuing working on her design and colours.

 

Child Walk

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.

Limp Walk

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.

From Animation to Podcast

After we had our theme down to being related to the LGBT community we then went onto figuring out what we should do and how will would do it. Ideas for animations where generated but eventually a member of the group suggested that we do a podcast. Everyone liked and agreed to the idea, the theme was then narrowed down to be representation of LGBT in animation. Inspiration came from other animated podcasts like the ‘Ricky Gervais Show’ and ‘Cox n’ Crendor’. As the characters in the podcast would be animated but would use our voices we settled on using avatars in our place, being animals was suggested and it stuck with us, giving us a place to start the designs.

Group Brainstorm

In our group we started to brainstorm ideas about what we could base our animation on, for the initial ideas we focus more on society based problems rather than environmental which I think is the go to theme in the case of spreading awareness of something. We wanted to do something relevant and different. Jumping onto topics such as animal abuse, mental health and equality.

Eventually we narrowed down the choice to two topics, one being something LGBT related or male stigma, deciding on the LGBT theme as we felt that we had more to talk about with it and the fact that the member of the group are in some way part of the LGBT community we could directly relate to the theme and discussion and we would be even more passionate about it.