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3D Animation 2 - Lip Sync Group Assignment

What worked?

Me and Kevin were able to work together to create different personalities and characteristics between the two characters interacting such as the colour of clothing they would wearing or, instead of Malcolm just sitting there, he would do small things like looking around to show that he is having his own thoughts and conversation with himself.

In my second shot when Malcolm is shocked, instead of him looking at Jerry, I thought I would try having him move his glasses a bit because I wanted to show a bit more of his personality and character.

When I am animating, I like to exaggerate a lot while Kevin goes for more subtle and small movement. So, me and Kevin tried to find a common ground so when transitioning to the other person’s shot, it would look the similar. I would not exaggerate as much on the poses while Kevin would work on more exaggerations and adding arcs to his animation part.

 

What didn’t worked?

There were still some parts of my animations that I think did not need as much exaggerations, such as when Jerry says, ‘…America’s PAST TIME.’ He would rise up with his arms in the air. This in my opinion is a bit too much movement and exaggeration and does not match the tone or the audio.  

What me and Kevin did in order to give each other feedback was every Sunday we give each other feedback and updates on how our animation is going. Whenever, I give feedback to Kevin, majority of the time, it’s the exact same feedback I give, ‘character whole body is frozen except hands’ or ‘arms is too straight’, he rarely applies the feedback I give him to his animation.

In my final shot, Malcolm’s hands and arms, its looks too flowy because of the size of Malcolm hands as well as I add too much animation into his movement than necessary.

What to improve?

What I would improve is experiment more on camera shots so one person is on screen instead of two so both character can have the same detail in animations than having two characters on screen and applying more detail to one character than the other. Also, I would also have made a new reference so both the gesturing and the audio of the lip sync makes more sense.

Final Playblast (My Part)

3D Animation 2 - Pantomime

What worked?

From my previous animations, I was not able to fully apply arcs within my animation because I did not know how to create or produce the arcs in the first place. What I ended up doing was using ‘SyncSketch’ and drawing lines and guides so I can get a better understanding of the position of the arcs and what the new animation would look like if I used my guides.

During my portfolio presentation, Simon gave me some feedback on the movement of the character’s eyes. He said that a person does not roll their eyes around, they dart meaning the eyes snap looking from one object to another object. This did improve on the parts of the animation such as when the character sees the guns and instead of the eyes slowly rolling, the eyes dart from one gun to another. In addition, Rose also mentioned that eye brows and eye lids also move along with the eye, which adds extra detail to the eye movement.

  

What didn’t work?

Comparing my reference and my animation, the way the character sneak walks towards the diamond is different. I initially wanted the character to have a bit of a bounce similar to my reference so she has a bit of a personality as if she is happy to have found the diamond. However, I was not able to apply this to my animation and it ended up being a simple sneak walk towards the diamond.  

Before the character grabs the diamond, she does a little hand gesture. In my reference, I was able to see the fingers move fluently however, when applied to my animation frame by frame, it’s very quick so I tried to delay the time, but it still had the same result.  

What could be improved?

I would improve on how to animate hair because while there are some parts of the hair animation I am happy with, other parts do not have the same detail compared to another part. I initially went frame by frame on one hair control and changed direction opposite of when the head turns. This ended up making it difficult when applying weight and overlapping since the keys are in difference places in the timeline.

Furthermore, I would improve on the uses of squash and stretch. It did help with adding exaggeration to expressions such as accomplishment and being shocked but the way I used them did not work well with the way I animate.

Final Playblast

3D Animation 2 - Parkour Group Assignment

This was the very first assignment that we are working with a teammate and I was kind of sceptical since I prefer to work alone because if there is a mistake or something is behind schedule, I know it’s my fault, but when working with someone, sometimes you either have to wait for them or they have to wait for you. I knew it was going to be a challenge especially working with another person but all in all, this was an interesting experience.

What worked?

Me and Raja (Isk) didn’t really communicate at the beginning which I prefer, although had consequences, I thought that Isk knows what he is doing so he should be fine and we only talked when the time came or if there was an issue. For example, the girl running away, we both had completely different references and styles of animating on how someone runs.

While my animation looked like she is stomping away and having a tantrum, Isk animation look like she was jogging like nothing was chasing her. We ended up asking someone to redo our reference so we can compare our mistakes and errors. When I animate, I look at my reference and immediately exaggerate my key poses while Isk find reference, replicates it and exaggerates later.

We were able to communicate, give each other feedback and find a common ground and compared our work so we don’t go over the top with our styles, such as I tried to constraint how much I stretch my poses and arcs while Isk added more arcs and stretch to his animation. We also, divided the work load so Isk finds/models building for our layout and I texture the layout.

Chris’ feedback on the cyborg jumping down and cuts to the girl already scared and shocked helped a lot when showing the impact and cut from the girl think the cyborg is gone to her reacting when the cyborg lands. Also, his animation had some stretch which me and Isk applied to our animations.

Another thing that worked was the ending shot when to girl leaves, it is more realistic. While working on it, I didn’t really have any reference because me and Isk initially wanted an ending where to cyborg gives the wallet back.

The feedback I got for the last shot was to get reference and when recording the reference, I realised that I needed to change the anticipating pose completely since its more cartoonish and also, I used my left leg to anticipate back instead of my right leg.

What didn’t work?

Although, we resolved the issue later on, at the beginning me and Isk didn’t really communicate until later on and before had different references and styles of animating a run.
In my animation, the cyborg has more detail compared to the girl. I was more focused on the cyborg since they are on screen the most compared to the girl that I needed to fixed a lot of errors mainly on the girl. Also, the girl running does not show as much fear as I hoped, yes, she is running, but I do not see as much fear as I have hoped she would.

Timing on the reference could be better. Most of the time, I need to cut up my reference and change the speed when editing which shows that I am not really good at timing my reference to my animation.

What could be improved?

I would either add the same detail of animation to both characters or next time just stick to one character. Also, find and recorded better references on the girl showing fear and running away like a chase scene in a horror film.
Another improved I would make is better communication with my teammate but not too much communication to the point I would seem annoying. Furthermore, cut out some of the parkour out so I do not have a lot to animate and find better references to work on timing.


All in all, this has been an interesting experience working with someone completely different on the style of animating and how you approach animating a scene.

Final Playblast (My Part)

3D Animation 2 - Heavy Lift

What worked?

What worked while animating a heavy lift, was how I exaggerated the anticipation when the character is about to lift the object. In my reference, the anticipation is very subtle, so I added my own exaggeration from my reference to my animation.
Another thing that worked out was my camera movement. The feedback from my first camera movement was that it was too fast, so I slowed down the camera so the viewer barely notices the movement.

Anticipation

Upper Lift

What didn’t work?

What didn’t work however, was when the character carries the bucket, the arms either snap of move in random directions. I was able to fix most of the snapping issues, but I felt like the arm does not match how I lifted the bucket in my reference.
Also, when the character steps back to look at the other buckets, the overlapping I felt was either too fast or too slow around the left arm and the hips.

Carrying Bucket

Stepping Back

What lesson did you learned and what could be improved?

What I learned and I would improve on is there is subtle movement even when someone is standing still and bends down to put a heavy object and also, it is better to parent constraint on an object without problems when animating to a control that is barely moving or noticeable such as the tip of a pinky finger. work more on the arms and clean up on the overlapping when the character turns.
To improve, I would add more swaying to the bucket as the character carries it.

Final Playblast

3D Animation 2 - Walk Cycles and Jump

Basic Walk

What worked on this animation was that I was able to get the basic key frames for the hips and legs and slowly adding my own style to the walk. Even though the walk looks good, its not a normal walk and looks more happy than basic. If i were to go back and improve on the animation, I would move the hip translate too high or too low. 

Personality Walk

When doing my personality walk, the animating portion of the walk was pretty simple with the flow of animating the hips and legs first then working my way up to the chest, then arms then head. With the feedback I got, I only had to work on the speed of my walk and how the arms are animated and overlapping.

Hips and Legs

Spine

Arms

What didn’t work was that I wanted to add a more paranoid personality to my character. From my previous reference attempts, it was more like she was cold than paranoid which was why I ended up doing a sneaky walk instead. I also wanted to add head turning to make her look around the scene but since this is a cycle, it would look weird on the character.

What I want to improve on is my overlapping on the arms and hands so it more fluent and also work more on the speed so it does not stop when the walk is cycled. I would also like to add head turn so it looks like she is looking around the scene while she is sneaking across the hallway.

Some problems I had rendering out the animation was that Bonnie had a few texturing issues such as pale skin having no eyes and the hair being black as well as when viewing and animation in the maya inter face and Arnold render, its normal however, when doing a render sequence, her eyes and teeth clip out while the head stays back. To fix the textures, I replace the blinn textures to aiStandardSurface and change the colour and style of Bonnie completely. When it came to the render, I check Bonnie’s geometry and notice that she had XY translate animation on the eyeball and mouth geos, so I deleted them.

Final Personality Walk

Jump

The jump animation was initially supposed to be a simple jump similar to my reference video, but I wanted to make it more than just a simple jump on a box so, I found a few reference videos of people parkouring off roofs. What worked in this animation was I was able to give the character weight when she steps or jumps off the ledge of the building.

I wanted to add a running start to the animation but ended up cutting it so the jump is more focused than the running start. Also, I wanted to add a roll to the animation however, I was not supposed to add turning or rolling in this assignment.

If i were to improve on this animation, I would add my ideas mentioned before and add a bit more overlapping and anticipation before she jumps off.  

Final Jump

3D Animation 2 - Advanced Bouncing Ball

Planning

Originally, I had chosen a Hand Ball and a Golf Ball for the animation. When given feedback in order to start my animation, I was told that both the handball and golf ball bounce very simpler and was suggested using a bowling ball with video reference.

While coming up with an idea for my animation, I simply wanted to just do a simple bouncing ball animation with the robot arm I made in first year as Rose suggested, however, when Rose said something along the lines of ‘… you can’t stop a light ball mid bouncing…’ and then I thought ‘well you can… you just need something to squash it.’ and then I had my story and asked Rose if I can animate it. I also wanted to add animation to both the robot arm as well as the camera so it shows both the impact and the reaction of the robot to show character.

Animating the Hand Ball

The issues I had when animating the handball, was how it stopped mid-air and basically made its own gravity. I was trying to make the impression that when the ball bounces mid-air, then next frame would be the bowling ball dropping down on top of it. It solve this issue, I made the arch in the graph for the hand ball while, on the bowling ball, made it drop while the hand ball was still making the arch. Since the audience does not see the ball inside, I thought this was not really an issue.

Animating the Bowling Ball

Using the video reference provided, I was able to get a good looking bowling ball animation, but, since the reference had a cloth as a surface for the bowling ball to drop, this made my animation not correct with the surface I’m working with. I only need to make it so the bowling ball rolled a little longer and stopped slower and smoother. Instead of simply making the bowling ball roll off the shot, I decided to challenge myself and see if I can recreate the bowling ball tilting, this was surprisingly the most frustrating as it kept looking incorrect.

All in all, although the animation looks a bit cartoony, I was happy with the final result of my animation.