Animate the...

ANIMATION!!

This is the planning stage, something every one should/must do before starting anything at all.

In this case we already have a known “story” we need to make this character lift that object, and it must be heavy…….DONE!

No, wait a second!

How is the character like, old, young, strong, happy, sad, etc?

Is he human, animal, curious, angry?

Is he only going to lift it and drop it? Walk with it, keep it, put it someplace? Will something happen from his actions?

I guess we need to plan this a little bit after all.

My lift animation:

After testing different characters I found an alien type to be the most fun to work with. Not just a standard boring rig. Will catch more interest.

Since this is a alien character I got more freedom for what he can do.

The character is suppose to be almost as ordinary as a common human. (just better looking)

I want him to be curious since he’s some kind of creature and doesn’t quite know what this round object is. This I want to force my self to make a better anticipation state in the start of the animation, because I know I have bin bad on that part in previous animations.

  

 So Character is:

Alien

Male

Good looking

Curious

No special abilities except his tail and antennas.

Now how is the happening going to take place? I want him to move toward the ball, looking around him self to create a bit unsecured state. Then let him prepare himself for the lift. The lift going to be a standard lift with nothing more or nothing less. When he got the ball up he going to walk with it before he needs to pull it up again since it slides down in his lap. After giving it a extra power push. He throws it up on a shelf. Were it knocks some other round stones and they all fall down.

With that story I think I got it all.

Anticipation in the start, telling what his state of mind is. Doing the lift as the assignment is about and giving it a little interest when his about to drop the ball but gets it up again. And a reaction to the ending to put some fun inn to the story as well.

For this animation I did not make a planning sheet were I time what to do over the two weeks we have at our disposal. I dint find it necessary to a miner animation like this.

Now when I have the character and the story ready, its time to the second part of the planning.

And that is were do I go from here.

Every one have there own way to get from a to b to c to d to f and so on.

My way is like this.

Thumbnails

After the idea was typed on to paper it was time to draw the story in thumbnails, were I only add the most important frames, that tells the story. Also called Key frames. I’m not a drawer, but that’s not the most important at this stage.

“This is what I ended up with after restrictions from my teacher. Maybe not restrictions, but advices. “ Shorting it down helps me get the lift in focus instead of all the things around.

Animatic

This is a part animators usually do after the sketching to get some basic timing and get the whole story in a quick little animation. No need for this at this assignment so we jump to the next one.

Pre-Viz

Also something we jump over at this one, jump along!

Blocking

Here comes the funny part. I love blocking, that’s when your doing pose to pose animating. This part is really easy if you have made a good thumbnail sheet. Because then you put the first thumbnail pose in the first frame. Then jump a few frames aahead put the next pose. Jump along and another pose and just keep plotting inn the poses from the thumbnails. This part is so giving since already now you can see this coming to life.

  

“Technical”

In my animation, I animate with auto tangent on, because I like to set the step keys on in the curve editor. I also selected the whole rig and added keys on each “Key frame” to avoid getting slides and silly walks when I turn the step keys of later on. I also did a difference of 10 frames for each key pose, giving me a bit more room then every 5 frames. After placing out all the keys I started timing them.

 

Rough

This is also a really giving stage this is when you start plotting inn the in betweens “key frames” were you make sure, like arm movements don’t go trough the body from pose 1 to pose 2 and so on. This stage is also really important for timing because here is when you start moving the “key frames” from the blocking stage to make sure the in betweens you make now have good timing between the poses. Keep your tongue at bay now, because this stage must be correct or ells you get a rough time later on.

“Technical”

Here I started moving the “key frames” from the blocking stage and kept clicking the play button to see the timing, I also made sure the step keys were off and everything were back to auto in the curve editor. So now it was just to put in poses and animation between the other ones to create overlaps and in-betweens. Fun enough since there is still not enough keys on the table for you to mess it up quite yet. A little thing I also did was doing a “reduce key” function in the curve editor removing unneeded keys. Cleaning up after the block.

Fine animation.

Here comes the pain. After the block and the rough your starting to see some animation on the table, you get really exited and want to putt in the last effort, unfortunate you now got a ton of keys down there, making it a pain to navigate, time stuff. Bones and animation starts overlapping MORE then you actually want. Timings get off. You start moving something and the animation loosing the grip of the ball.

BUT! And yes it’s a but. If you have done everything clean and good in the previous part, this should be no problem if you keep focus. Because this is were you get the fine details inn. Like fingers scratching, tails waving, and all secondary animation. Its like putting a big awesome turbo smooth all over the animation, at least that’s what your aiming for at this stage.

“Technical”

This is the stage I failed a bunch of times, I came to this stage 4 times, lost my motivation and went (file- reset scene) and did the WHOLE thing over again. So I become really good at the blockings after some time. Finally I came to this stage with a ok key system, things looked ok so I manage to move on. I added secondary motion on the tale, antennas, fingers. Made some timing adjustments and gravity to the loose parts. Kind of hard to explain the keying system here since it was a lot of back and forth all over the place, but I got good use of the curve system that helped me layer out the different parts of animation.

Happenings

If you have read the above text you might think this went really silky smooth, well it dint. As mentioned it restarted this like many times. But I think I have earned from this, and have learned a lot from doing the same things over and over. Seeing what works and what don’t. The teacher also helped me retain my creativity. Shorting down my animation and telling me ”mats, your bad at this, don’t go up the mountain only to fall down on the other side” Well that’s not truly a quote from her, but something like that. And that was an eye opener, because shorting down on the animation and the ideas, like not adding the last happening of all the balls falling down, gave me time to tweak other stuff. Also not adding that long start gave me enough motivation and less keys to work with, so I actually manage to get past the “fine stage”

So the “deleted scenes” and ideas that weren’t created was the anticipation in the start telling his state of mind. Also removing the ending and letting him go more right on the act of lifting the ball “since the lift is the core of the assignment”

What I wish for.

For later animations I wish to get more time to actually put a deeper meaning to the animation and give the character more personality and emotions then I got in this one. Also a face would help for that in the future. I also hope that after all this I will in later animations manage to go from A,B to C instead of A to B and back to A to B and back to A and to B and back to A to B to C.

Overall this was a good assignment, giving us a more advance one would only makes people like me confused and maybe not even capable of finishing it.

Animation raw from 3ds max.






Final edited Animation