Animation Strategies (Week 9)

Animation Review

Now that it is coming up to the end of our semester one and assignments and deadlines are just round the corner, todays lesson was just Alec going over some of the classes walk and run cycles and giving feedback on their work, as well as with the body mechanics. Classes like this are really helpful and are a great way to spend the classes time, as in these last week’s everyone is just working away tiring to finalise their work and sometimes having classes that maybe are teaching us new things. Can sometimes leave people feeling flustered, as they want to be working on their assignments, but are also trying to find the time to keep up with their classes and learn what their lecture is trying to teach.

Today because I had been busy working on the assignment to do with creating an environment in Unreal Engine, I had honestly forgot about the other assignment where we had to animate a walk cycle, a run cycle and a body mechanic with either a 2D or a 3D character. This was solely my fault and I was lucky that I got a reminder with this class today and that I have a long enough time to complete my assignment for both subjects. I know it is always good to start the work early rather than later and allow time for error and working through problem to create the best work that you can, and this is something I need to take away from this semester.

Alec had been working through everyone animations which they had sent in and helping people with any issues that they may have had; I was not able to send my work in and I know that I would have benefited greatly from Alecs help. However, I was able to learn from the problems that Alecs was fixing for the other students and take down some notes for advice he had to common problems people were facing. I instead took this time to watch on with the class, but to also get a start creating my own animations, which I decided to use Maya as this is the software, I am most familiar with. In regard to animating the cycles and mechanics in 2D or 3D I would like to maybe animate the walk and run cycles in 2D and the body mechanic in 3D using either the ARZI rig or the Jill rig.

I think animating in both 2D and 3D would show my abilities and if I decided to add these animations to my showreel, a varied portfolio of work and showing the employers the range of animations which you could do, could be very beneficial.

In thinking about the logistics of animating in both 2D and 3D and whether or not I would have to time to do so. Depends heavily on how I am going to manage my time with all the assignments which I have to do and if I complete them in time for deadline week. It will also depend if I am finding it easier to animate and draw up a 2D cycle or if the bit by bit moving of the body in a 3D character is working a lot smoother for me. If I find myself with less time than I would like to complete my cycles, I will probably result to just animating in 3D, but using two different rigs just to show a little bit of variety in my work.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/8535eb_ecd85ff0b930459085304e146382aa5d/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This week I was going to get straight into trying to animate my cycles in Maya, as last week I had worked on gathering some research for when I needed to animate. Research which I gathered was looking at some tutorials on how people began in an animating their work and the steps they took in order to make the animation. I had taken some points that a lot of people worked in stages when animating and had began with key framing a starting pose, an end poses and a middle pose which is just the opposite of these two poses. They also had taken some personal videos and photos of themselves recreating the action which they wanted to animate, as well as re-drawing those poses and gathering some more references from sources on the internet.

Following all these steps before you decide to begin your animation will really help you have a clear view on how you need to position your character for each shot and what way to move their body to run smoothly. So last week to help me do the best I can for my animation I decided on what cycles I would like to re-create such as a feminine walk cycle, a normal run cycle and a body mechanic of the rig skating with a skateboard and took some self-images of me doing those actions. I made sure to take photos of me doing the beginning, middle and end pose and laid these all on Procreate and began drawing my cycle.

I started first with my run cycle, as I already did a walk cycle last year and thought the run cycle may be the more difficult one of the two, so I could benefit from getting a head start. I started the run cycle on the rig Jill just so that I could get a rough idea of the first poses I needed to key in and how-to animation would run, I’ll decide if I will keep this version of the cycle or if I will transfer to 2D later on.

The beginning and end pose of my animation I started with the runner taking off with their right foot planted on the ground, I positioned their right arm back and left arm forward and swapped this move for the middle pose. In my entire frame I set it up to be 1 to 17, so set the middle pose at around 9 and just positioned the runner the opposite from the other two poses. After this I worked on the positioning of the arms and legs for the middle poses between the first have of my cycle and the end half, making sure the heel was bending at the right angle and the feet were touching the ground and with a smooth movement.

In creating a very basic run cycle I think this was a good way to start it off, then beginning to consider and move the runner’s hips, torso, head and show how the body twists and turns and squashes and rises to each time it hits the ground and takes off running again. Once these are all smoothed out and are a closer representation of the run, I am trying to animate, a cool thing that I learnt was to go to windows and use the animation, graph editor.

Each time I make a cycle on Maya it seems to be close to how I want it to look, however moves either too quick and jumpy or has a sluggish feel to it. This graph editor is a great way to sort out the final tweaks of the animation and you can go in and select each part of the character and make sure it is moving correctly.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/8535eb_2f8a694b5fea4c9387e357cec8741d8a/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This method of making a cycle and different animations on Maya seems to work smoothly for me and can be used to create both the walk, run and body mechanics. The body mechanics will have a bit more movement and although I am planning in animating a skateboard scene, if I changed my mind and did a jumping or lifting scene this would result in a lot more body moment. This practice session today was a good start to me animating for my assignment and making myself familiar with the process again, I am going to work more on this run cycle, the body mechanics next and then hopefully when I get the walk cycle, I will be a bit more relaxed coming to the end of my assessment and can have fun making the walk cycle a little bit different to a classic walk.

Giving that today’s class was just Alec giving everyone an assessment on their cycles and body mechanism, there wasn’t a lot else discussed or going on throughout the class, however there was some discussion on next year and whether or not we were going to apply for a placement year or go straight our final year.

When I first applied for this animation course in Ulster University, I had chosen the opportunity to not take the placement year I thought it was going to be a waste of time and put me back in my progression in my career. Looking back, I had made that decision without thinking about it carefully or fully taking in what a placement year included and what it might mean for me. Thinking back, I made an important decision without discussing this with anyone and having to knowledge of what I was taking about. It wasn’t until I actually went to university and in our classes, we were able to talk to other students who where a year or two above us and had already gone through a placement year or were currently applying for their own.

Also giving that this year is our last year before we finally spilt off into either final year work or a placement year, we have been given a lot of talks from speakers who have gone through a placement year and our lectures who are going to help us apply for what we wanted to do next year. All of this new information and understanding about what a placement year means for us, has meant that I decided to change my mind about going straight into final year and will be taking a placement hopefully in either Derry where I am from or Belfast which I am currently living in. I hope to apply and obtain a placement in a studio that works either solely or a little bit with stop motion animation. I decided to take a placement year and use this to work within a studio so that I could gain some professional experience within this year and get an idea of what it would be like to work in animation or at least the art sector for a full-time job.

I could have also had the opportunity to take a year a travel around to study, but I think I have studied enough, and I am ready to pursue a career within a studio. I also think that it would be more worth my time to work in a studio over this year, as it’s a really good time to learn some new skills as I have never worked in a studio before and hopefully when I do finish my placement and want to apply for an actual job out of university, I would have added some cool and interesting stuff to my showreel. I am both really excited and looking forward to the year ahead as I know working an actual job is going to put me through some amazing but also difficult times, but I am hoping to remain positive, really grow as a person and an artist and get a taste of the real animator’s career.

I think we will get more information on how to apply for our placement year going into the second semester of year two and we have already got some planning done already in our class professional practice, with making a CV, cover letter and business card. So, I think in the next semester we will actually be looking in to and applying for places, I just hope it is still able to go ahead during this pandemic, with either our placements being in the studio and socially distanced or online instead.

I am looking forward to finishing up our assessments and starting to progress to year three.