Advanced Chracter Animation

Here's the link to my Rocket storybaord: click here

To start off my research, I first brainstormed an idea from the brief and decided to start looking online for some inspiration to use for my story. I used Pinterest to start collecting some character designs, emotions, facial features, and the orientations of how they would look in the scene. I did this so that I could use this material to help me out when drawing out the basic look of how I want my characters and to then use those sketches to build my storyboard . I made sure that I got a range of reference images so that I could think about how I can design my characters, which also allowed me to think about how I could express their emotions to the audience. So, I decided to do some facial expressions based on how I designed the characters and just did the main expressions I will use, with a few other emotions so that there’s a range. Overall, this stage helped me to come up with some of the traits that I will need to refer to when I start modelling the characters and animating th...

This silhouette of this character is shown to be angry and quite determined whilst in the state of running. This is seen with the way his face has the eyebrows down; the eyes are focused straight forward with his eye lids slightly squinting and then his teeth are shown in a frowning position. Then his body is quite stiff with his hands clenched inwards into fists and his body parts being straight instead of being quite floppy/ curved, which adds to the emotion he’s feeling. From a side angle you would see that there is some line of action from the head to the right knee bending upwards and there’s a slight line of action between the elbows of the arms too. Compared to more traditional positions for the line of action of a character, this pose expresses a more firm or stiff force towards the audience and allows them to understand the emotion through how the character moves. If this silhouette was to be used for a story, I would say that the character is chasing someone and he’s so focu...

When modelling something for animation, for example a character, you should make sure that you know exactly what you’re modelling and to use reference images to get the most accurate outcome. This ensures that the model doesn’t look out of place, which helps to keep the form of the character and it also allows the character design to be as how you envisioned it from your reference images. Whilst modelling, you must also check how the topology of the character is and to have edge loops where necessary so that the body can deform correctly when you’re animating it (includes joints, facial features, and other areas). By doing this, it will help you during rigging the character so that you can stretch/ squish/ bend certain body parts without breaking the faces and then you won’t have issues to fix before the animation stage. Poly count is another important factor to be conscious about during modelling, which will affect things like file size and render time so it’s best to keep it at a re...

Here's the link to my storyboard: click here

Here's a link to my calendar I have made a basic outline of what tasks I will do as part of my final project for the module and I've allocated the times I will set aside for them to be completed by. I will use this as a guide to follow so that I can keep a steady pace with the project and to look at how I'm progressing during the weeks to come. I have thought about the possible times where I might fall behind on tasks and have given myself some extra spaces to use for when I still need to work on one type of task, before moving onto the next one.

For this exercise I followed this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS426Cw2GoE My blocking animation The tutorial was more of an exercise for how to produce good poses for the character whilst doing a pose-to-pose animation. The person talked about how you should make the character express their emotions through the poses you make them do and you should make sure that the audience recognises this so they can empathise with the character. He also mentioned when working with the camera, you should get used to the ‘line of action’, which is where the different limbs of the character follow a line and different camera angles help to capture this. With this information, I went into the ‘Max for Maya’ scene and did five different poses myself (including the T-pose) and expressed four different emotions with them. I feel as though I got some strong looking poses, which clearly show how the character would be thinking in the scene and I was also able to express this through ...

A good storyboard includes expressing an idea on paper, with clear drawings of the key frames in the story and a caption underneath to explain the actions of the frames. You should be able to visually show what the character/s are doing or thinking in each key-frame and then to add a small description of their emotions/ thoughts or the motions that they’re doing in that part of the story. Another thing to make sure to do in a storyboard is to show how the camera moves between the frames and this will help with the staging of the scene, which will allow the main action to be in the centre of the camera view. Audio can also be incorporated into a storyboard with when you want to cue the music; the pauses you want to add for anticipation and when the speech might be said during the frames. When creating a storyboard, you should think about everything that’s included so that your idea can be fully solidified on paper before starting the production of the animation and this will also help ...

Pet struggle animation The animation involves two characters, a large cube and a small sphere. The camera is first focused on the cube jumping along this wall, which then stumbles upon the small sphere attempting to jump over the wall and so the cube acknowledges this. After looking up, he decides to help the sphere by crouching to give it a platform to jump onto and then to give it a push so that it can climb over. During the story, the sphere was cautious about the cube being there and bounces back when they first meet; but then when he sees that the cube is trying to figure out the solutions to its problem, then it becomes jittery and jumps a few times before bouncing onto the crouched cube. I feel like the animation had some great parts with the way the camera follows the characters and how the movements of the character work with what they feel/ think in the different parts. Also, the use of blend-shapes was very useful and worked well for the different poses of the character...