I have really enjoyed animating in Maya again, as frustrating as it can be, there's nothing better than seeing a character I've animated move across the screen or imitate a character from a film.
I found rigging and skinning a rig quite challenging but I want to keep practicing this so that I can animate my own characters.
I have found this module very useful as I can keep practicing my timing and then apply this practice into other projects I will be doing. This module will also be helpful for my third year project where I can make replacement heads for my stop motion characters.
I could also practice the movements and camera angles on pre-made rigs to see how my stop motion scene will look. This way I can see how a scene will look and make sure the timing is correct without having the timely process with a stop motion character. This could effectively be used as a line test.
Overall I think that my character was rigged quite well, with a lot more practice I think I could rig the character I made in CGI: Modelling and Texturing.
The only problem I faced was with painting the weights on the right leg. As it looked fine while painting the weights but when I came to move the leg it was still being left behind, it must still be weighted to another part of the body.
Animation
A subtitle interaction between two characters.
For this I chose a scene from Ace Ventura - Pet Detective.
This scene has two contrasting characters, one that over exaggerates his movements and the other that only has small, slight movements. The third character in the scene only has very slight actions and doesn't interact with the main character.
This clip is long but a lot of it is just movement of the camera while the main character does an over exaggerated, slow motion walk cycle.
First I recorded the sound, so that I could use it for the timing of the character movements.
I then downloaded and set up the 3 rigs and put them into the scene.
Animating the camera.
I didn't animate the characters before doing this because they don't move very far within the frame. This way I only need to animate the parts of the character shown in the camera window and not the whole movement the character does.
Storyboard used to animate the camera and will be used to position the characters within the frame.
While animating the main character I came across the problem that when wanting to position the character in the right hand side of the frame so I could have the walk cycle go from right to left, the camera needed to be moved, this then lead to the other characters being in the shot.
I then had to move the other two characters further away, causing me to have to move the camera angles for those character's scenes. I'm guessing this is similar to when filming live action, when the actors film their dialogue separately and then the editor brings it all together in post production.
Animating the characters.
Following the reference video I animated the characters movements, this was a lot easier to do when in the camera window, as I only needed to animate from the waist up. The main problem I had was when the main character came into contact the other one. When he spins round I had to be careful that his arm didn't pass through the other character. I also tried to keep the third character in the background slightly moving just keep the scene natural, as it would look strange if the character didn't move at all.
I think the animation has gone well and reflects that of the reference video. Once I have animated the lip sync I may come back to the arms and over exaggerate the movements a bit more to make the character seem more lively.
Lip syncing.
Main mouth shapes for lip syncing.
If I position the mouth into these shapes in the word, Maya will be able to fill in the in-betweens, the harder part of this will be over exaggerating the shapes and holding them, without it becoming too unbelievable because the actor (Jim Carrey) who is speaking is over extending the way he is talking and on a rig this might not be as believable or humorous as it is in the live footage.
As the actor in this video has very vivid, broad facial expressions I researched into changing the expression on the rig's face.
I looked at Richard William's book The Animation Survival Kit. He explains that just by moving the eyebrows from one position to another can suggest that the person is thinking or has changed thought.
This will help with the second character as he doesn't have any dialogue, I can animate his expression changing to show what he is thinking without having to verbally communicate it.
I noticed while watching the main character do the speech at the beginning of the video he only seems to move the bottom half of his mouth, mainly his jaw. This made the lip sync easier to get the main open and close poses. As he speaks so fast it was hard using Maya's timeline to determine where the mouth was to open or close.
This is the finished version of the scene with the lip sync. Unfortunately I could only render using Playblast as I couldn't get Mental Ray to work.
A character negotiating a path through an obstacle course.
I took inspiration for the obstacle course from television programs such as Total Wipeout, Ninja Warrior, Worlds Strongest Man and Takeshi's Castle.
Most of the obstacles in these programs use moving equipment or material to climb. I will be just using the more simplistic of the equipment, this way I won't have much modelling to do in Maya.
First look at my obstacle course layout.
After reviewing my obstacle course I have decided to shorten the amount of stepping stones as it was too much of the same.
I have also replaced the rope swing with the boulder lift from World's Strongest Man as I can over exaggerate the size of the boulder or the strength of the man.
When creating the course in maya, I tried to use mainly cubes but for the slope I needed to create a flat plane and curve it up to fit the cuboid I had previously made.
Finished course.
Video of the character climbing up onto the first stepping stone and preparing to jump.
I think that he jumps too quickly to the next post, I have tried to fix this without slowing the jump too much.
Adding the second jump with a bit of a stumble at the end, I tried to slow this jump down to show the movement of the legs but I think this is perhaps too slow.
Jumping from the post to the floor, I tried to include the spring from the supporting leg, which would push the rest of the body forward.
When landing I've made the character fall forward onto their hands and then get back up, this shows how high the post was and the force the character landed with.
After creating a run cycle and a walk cycle across the beam my character comes up to the boulder.
For this I needed to create a parent constraint so that the boulder moved with the character's hand and so I didn't have to animate the boulder moving with the hand separately.
For this I used this youtube video as reference.
Lifting the boulder.
Using The World's Strongest Man for reference, I made the boulder look heavy by having the character arch his back and be unable to straighten his legs while walking.
Finishing the course.
The timing needs to be corrected on the jump/landing parts as the character looks like he is floating but I am quite happy with the way this turned out because I think it keeps a nice pace and I think it shows the character pausing to assess his next move in the right places.
I have taken out the downward slope because the animation was already over 40 seconds and I think it would start to lose the audience's interest if it was any longer.
I next need to animate the camera to make this sequence more interesting for the viewer.
Storyboard For Camera Angles.
When watching programs like Ninja warrior, there aren't a lot of camera angles, the camera tends to stay in a mid shot and move along with the person. This is probably because the person is moving quite quickly. I am going to try and stay in wide and mid shots until the character picks up the boulder as this can show the emotion and struggle of the pick up.
In the graph editor I adjusted the timing so that the hips and feet hover and then move, I did this because when he drops down from the post he seems to drift rather than having the look of gravity pulling him down.
Adding the animated camera.
Unfortunately Mental Ray wasn't loading properly so I have had to use Playblast.
Overall I think this animation worked well and now with the added camera movement, it helps the audience keep up with the character.
If I had more time I would have liked to have added facial expressions and maybe having his legs and arms shaking when under pressure.
When a ball is falling the shape appears to stretch out and then when it hits the ground, the pressure of the impact squashes the shape down.
2Anticipation
Anticipation is the pause and wait for an action to happen to get a reaction.
3Staging
Staging is placing your character in the correct pose that is appealing to the audience and also tests that the audience understand what your character is doing. The best way to test this is by turning the character into a silhouette, if the pose can still be identified in silhouette form then this is a good example of staging.
4Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
The main key frames or poses of the character, for example the contact or passing poses.
5Follow Through and Overlapping Action
A follow through action is when a looser body part carries on moving after the main body part has finished moving. For example when moving your arm, the wrist will continue to move after the arm stops.
An overlapping action is the different movement rates, for example the arm will move at a different timing rate than the head.
This video is a good example of the different timing rates, the bag is moving at a different rate to the character and the arms and legs are moving at a different time to his head.
6Slow In and Slow Out
Slow in and slow out shows how the movement slowly gains speed into an action. For example and car doesn't pull off and is straight in at full speed, it eases into the action and gains speed and this is the same when stopping, the car will slowly decrease in speed.
This best visual example is a pendulum's movement.
7Arc
An arc is the line of movement, where there are arcs is usually showing the natural movements of the object, usually with ball joints.
The faster the movement the straighter the arc line.
8Secondary Action
A secondary action is a movement that accompanies the main action. For example two people talking would be the main action but the secondary action is that the person talking could be tapping their foot. The secondary action should only be subtle and not distract the viewer from the main action.
9Timing
Timing is the number of frames between key poses to give the illusion of life.
The the smaller the space between poses the slower the action, meaning more frames between poses. The faster the action the less frames between are needed.
10Exaggeration
Exaggeration is used to push movements further to add more appeal to an action. Exaggeration can used to create extremely cartoony movements, or incorporated with a little more restrain to more realistic actions. Whether it's for a stylised animation or realistic, exaggeration should be implemented to some degree.
If you have a realistic animation you can use exaggeration to make a more readable or fun movement while staying true to reality. For example, if a character is preparing to jump off a diving board you can push them down just a little bit further before they leap off. You can also use exaggeration in the timing as wall to enhance the different movements or help to sell the weight of a character.
11Solid drawing
Creating a solid drawing to showing weight and volume in an image. This can be created with the posing of the character, if they have their hands on their hips, have their weight transferred to the one hip and then twist them around slightly to create the illusion of being 3D.
12Appeal
This can be applied to many areas of animation, such as appeal in posing. The most obvious example would be in the character design. Making the character pleasing and relatable to the audience.
Twinning
Twinning is finding the natural movement when both halves of the body are mirroring the same movement.
For example when a ballerina is lifting both arms up at the same time, to show a natural movement an animator will have the one arm move slightly quicker or bend the arm further than the mirrored arm.
After viewing the reference video, I put my character into the key poses.
Creating a silhouette of my character allows me to see how effective these key poses are to the audience. If the key pose can be recognised in silhouette form then the animation will be better illustrated for the audience.
Taking out the step animation, Maya then filled in the gaps between the poses and after a few adjustments the animation flowed better.
Motion Trail
From my animation I created a motion trail, this can then be edited to make my animation smoother.
This image shows the motion trail of the right shoulder and wrist and these are the parts of the body that do the most movement.
In my animation I noticed that when the arm swings round it jumps up slightly and this can be seen in the motion trail.
