CAGD 493

Final Blog Post

Reflection



Goals This Semester
My goals this semester were to practice my animation skills in Maya and create some short animated sequences using reference videos. Originally, I had planned on working on animating a character to speak, but my focus shifted to a practicing quadruped walk cycles instead. I put many hours into creating and researching my two types of walk cycles for the rig I used, the Eevee rig, and I believe that I have achieved my goals this semester to the best of my ability with a full schedule and work. I think that practicing the walk cycles of a four legged animal are not only extremely difficult to conceptualize, but also the order of the movement of each leg of the animal changes depending on how fast they run or how slow they walk. I wanted to animate a cute little jump with this rig as well as the idea of a sad walk, but I just found that I did not use my time wisely. I decided that I should polish what I had completed because adding a new cycle would mean that it would probably not get a lot of polishing. 


What Worked and What Didn't 
There are several reasons as to why I changed my project's focus mid-semester. First, I could not decide on a creative topic that would match with the audio that I chose. Everything started to go wrong once I lost sight of any sort of plot within my short animation because I would re-animate the arms and legs over and over so many times that I forgot what I was trying to make the movement be. 
Another reason why it would not work is that I was already creating an even more complicated lip syncing project with a scene of two characters for my other portfolio class, and I would often confuse the movements that I intended for each project when working on that project and this one simultaneously. I figured that if I had a choice for this class, I would want to sharpen my skills working on another type of animation, that can be more simple, but it would also mean that I can make it look way better.  
As for my actual outcome from this class, I think what really worked for me was following reference videos closely. I also liked how some of my animation has subtle movements in the head and fur, it is not over the top nor is it unnoticeable which I think is a success. I had trouble with the spine movements, but I think I worked those out to the best of my and the rig's abilities. I dislike the way the trotting animation loops, I think that the trot could be polished a bit more. I also did not mess with the side-to-side rotations all that much on the gallop, which may have improved it a bit. 

What I Would Do Differently
I think if I went more into the rig's attributes I could find a way to have it blink or move its face a little because Eevee seems sort of like a toy to me. It is a small thing though. I also could have added a background to these, it would have been an interesting and new challenging exercise. Perhaps in the future. 
I also think I would manage my time better and create at least a third animation. I could have in the beginning narrowed my scope of what I could and could not do with my current animation skills and motivation. I aimed too high, but now I know to be more reasonable. Perhaps I can do a lip sync animation for my next project classes, but I would have to work more on the concept and what exactly I want to animate.  


Weekly Blog Post 14

Eevee Walk Cycle: Run/Gallop and Trot Cleanup

This week I took critiques from the last session and finished polishing the gallop. I created a motion trail for the tail on the gallop so that I could visualize the motion and fix slightly some jerky motions. I am working on the polishing of the trot, but it may have been missing some frames because it looks odd and skippy. I think that this walk looks less like the dancing-like cycle from last week. I also plan to simplify the ear and tail motions more. Next week I will perfect these cycles hopefully, and maybe work on a quick last cycle if I am motivated enough. 





Weekly Blog Post 13

Eevee Walk Cycle: Run/Gallop and Trot Cleanup


This past week consisted of polishing more of the gallop and creating the trot cycle. The gallop needs a little more polishing, because I realized that I had not moved one of the ears, and I will animate more of the mane also. 
The trot was created using references from the video about four legged walking cycles and from videos of dogs walking. My intention was to make the walk cycle more playful, so I will try to reference videos of puppies  and achieve a more bouncy attitude to the cycle my adjusting the COG. It also needs more polishing because I think the animation may be timed too fast, and I want to work more on the secondary ear and hair animations. After I will work on a slower walk cycle, and then work on a cute jump. 




Weekly Blog Post 12

Eevee Walk Cycle: Run/Gallop

I worked on a new project this week because I could not wrap my head around what the previous animation would turn out to look like and I felt that the concept was pretty weak. I thought that I had lost sight of the material that I had referenced and it was too complicated to come up with a new reference with the critiques that I received. I decided that a lip sync was really complicated for me, and this complicated and time consuming type of animation would clash with workflow of my other production class which also involves a complicated lip syncing animation. In some cases, there is a point for some complicated projects where I just don't even want to open the project anymore. So, I decided that I should focus on polishing my run and walk cycle animations with this adorable rig I found. I have some ideas to make some playful jumping cycles with this type of rig and the formulaic simplicity of this model allows me to experiment more with concepts. Perhaps I could incorporate a different rig such as a human rig running on all fours, if I have time, it would be a fun concept. 
I am referencing dog, puppy, and kitten videos for what I have in mind. I started with a simple gallop type cycle. Next, I will work more on the x and z axis for this gallop, as well as polish it more. I have already started a "trot" type walk, and have been referencing the advice of an animator from a video that Mark recommended. I would have made more progress on the basic poses of the trot so that I can polish both animations around the same time, but maya kept freezing in the middle of my work today and I had to restart a couple times because of it. I will reboot my computer and try again tomorrow. 




Weekly Blog Post 11

Some Spline

 

This week I worked on the splining and adding holds to the animation. So far, I am struggling against the slidingness of the holds and making the animation more readable and less complex. I haven't made a ton of progress because this week and last week were very busy working on other projects. My motivation is lessening on this project, I may need to add some goals to improve the animation so that I can want to work on it more often. 




Weekly Blog Post 10

Blocking Refining

This week I worked on making the animation more simplistic and containing less complex movements from critiques last week. I began this by changing the arm and leg movements first. I will work on these movements and reshoot a reference to assist in making the movements in the animation feel more natural.



Weekly Blog Post 9

Blocking Refining


 
This week I refined some of my blocking poses to be more dynamic. I've been working hard on trying to make the poses based on arc and have smoother transitions between poses. I have to work on the cup and its placement next, but I wanted to focus on blocking the main body first. I think I will change the hands to IK and create a location for the hands to clasp onto the cup. 





Weekly Blog Post 8

Blocking Plus Plus

This week consisted on working more on blocking. The first thing I changed was the angle of the camera, according to class critiques. Next, I worked on making the blocking portion of the animation look more professional. I realized after splining my animation that I needed to add some more work on it, including both blocking for the lip syncing as well as add more much needed exciting movements to places that needed it. I do not think that my blocking is completely finalized because I see strange over exaggerated paths of action every time I rewatch the animation over again, and the lip syncing is only in its basic stages. There needs to be some editing, but what I have now is a big improvement from last week's I think. What I need to do next is to polish the movement so that the animation looks less strange and work more on timing the open and closed mouth movements to the audio. 


Weekly Blog Post 7

More Blocking



I feel more confident in my ability to finish this animation. I started very ambitious with over 10 sec of audio, but now I have decided to cut that time down to about 5 seconds, a much kinder goal, and it does not interfere with much of the audio. I think with this shorter time I can make more progress and not feel intimidated by the complex workload combined with the rest of my classes. This new rig is also amazing technically, meaning really easy to move and no glitch issues so far.  

This week I am still working on perfecting the blocking parts of the animation and getting more comfortable with the rig. I made a few more keys at places where the rig holds a pose too long and exaggerated more of the existing poses by moving the head, shoulders, and waist. There still needs more of this with some existing poses as I watch the render again. Again this was a busy week, but I think I will get to spline it by the end of next week and work on cleanup. I am looking for some sort of feedback on my blocking though perhaps. Feedback can also be given during the middle of the splining process though. 

I think the most difficult part will be moving an object that I made, the red solo cup, according to the FK hands of the splined animation. It may be difficult to animate in FK instead of creating a rig attached to the cup, but I will see how difficult it may be and if there is too much clipping I might consider just using IK. Given how short the animation is now, I think I can clean up the movement of the cup pretty easily. This rig is really cool and sophisticated and I am growing more and more attached to its technical components, not really its aesthetic components sadly, but hopefully I get time to play with the squash and stretch mechanisms included with the model's rig handles. 


Weekly Blog Post 6

Reference Video and Beginning blocking


First (Finished?) Blocking
 

This week, I accomplished blocking the movement of the character. I also changed the character rig because I was having a lot of difficulty moving the Ray rig, and it is also a very ugly man to look at for hours while editing. This rig, while appearing to be a simple human rig, is highly complicated because of the strange addition of squash and stretch rig rings around the arms and the legs. These extra rings not only got in the way of the animation, but moved on their own without my prompting. I could not directly deal with this rig after editing and troubleshooting for a long while, and soon the rig completely broke itself. I changed what I can in the animation editor, but I still do not understand why the rig moved on its own. It was too frustrating after a while, and I lost motivation to work on the project at all if it were with this strangely made rig. 
Instead, I am now using the Thep rig, and I am seeing much more positive progress. I think the rig is a lot easier and more of a simple rig to use, and aside from a few strange movements, it moves as it is intended to move. However, because of the more cartoonish style of the new rig, I hope I can still get the mood of the audio across. I really, really like this rig though, and I hope to use it for other projects in the future. 
As for the blocking, I wanted more of the audio to be animated, but with my workload, I had to cut a lot of it, which is fine, but a little strange out of context. I think less of a duration to animate will allow me to polish the animation better. 






Weekly Blog Post 5

Reference Video and Beginning blocking


Reference Videos:

First Take: 

Second Take: 


    This is a still image from the beginning of the blocking process. I had just come over my cold but only managed to put my character into one pose so far. I think though, my reference is really solid, so I will not have that hard of time to position the character. I am working in IK for the arms and hands of the model, but this proving to be kind of difficult to position, but I thought it would be useful to animate using IK because of the somewhat odd position on the knees that I just could not achieve using non-IK methods. I think I need to be less precise with my positioning at this moment and look at the reference more. The animation blocking is still very much in progress, but I have finished at least a couple poses at this time, not including the lip sync. I think it is possible to insert my homework into this schedule, I actually do most of my best progress during class time because that is when I am most motivated. Perhaps next weekend I will make a lot more progress since the next weekend will not be busy for me. 

Here is a short playblast of the blocking progress:



Weekly Blog Post 4

Setting up Scene and Rig Positioning


Rig: Ray Rig

I decided on this rig representing my chosen audio because the character rig falls into the more advanced rigs when it comes to the mechanics of the face and showing emotion. Since my animation will focus more on the movements of syncing to a voice, I believe that this rig will do the trick nicely. Most of the runner-up models were not human, and did not have or need advanced facial rigs. I thought it would have been funny if the character would be a goofy animal like a seagull or something, but a human rig will work fine.

Maya was being very slow with this rig, so what I completed this week so far was cutting the audio using Premiere, creating a Maya scene, importing the rig, adding some basic items for a background, and posing the character out of the unnatural default pose into a more comfortable starting pose.

Scene

                                                    Rig's face and position are started

I started thinking about how I were to go about making a video of myself for reference, and will probably accomplish that along with beginning of blocking next week. This week I also unfortunately caught a cold because of the change of weather so things have been going slower than I expected. Hopefully there will be some animation progression throughout the next week.

Chosen Audio: 




Weekly Blog Post 2

Gathering References and Rigs


possible video references:

slim reaper

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR5HpKQ5/ 


bad wedding speech 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR59LLSo/ 


German coast guard 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR59ePv8/ 


skunk shows life hack 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR5H3cQ7/ 


skunk meeting

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR5HsBJy/ 


Rigs:

Anthro Riger

Malcom

Bonnie Legacy Rig

Ray Character
  • from https://animationmethods.com/rigs.html
Thep

Ghoul

Kaju Rig

Seagull Rig

Ruby Rose Rigged Model

https://milio-serrano.gumroad.com/l/fYxkK
Mew two
My idea for this project will be to complete an animation based on an audio that I like and display a creative twist. The purpose will be to practice lip syncing and my general animation and character interaction. I am favoring the slim reaper skit and the skunk meeting skit. The rigs I was thinking of for skunk would be the seagull rig and a grim reaper rig for the slim reaper skit. The other rigs would have been used for the wedding speech etc.

 Weekly Blog Post 1

Intentions and expectations for this class
I expect to have time to work on and receive criticism on a demo reel that will match up to industry standards. I also am interested in creating a different workflow that will fit into my busy schedule. It has been difficult to try to find time in my day to practice animation. What often gets in the way is that starting a new project takes a lot of effort and lots of creative power. To overcome these concepts of difficulty, my mindset needs to be more concise in what I need to accomplish every project. I can do this by breaking down time limits and my goals to accomplish little pieces of an animation in one day. Creating a calendar or time schedule using Google Calendar might help me make the use of every day I need to work on something. When I write down my ideas for what I need to do on a calendar and how much I can do towards it, I will become more motivated to at least start a project on my own. What might also be helpful is creating a space where I am surrounded by other people who are highly motivated in animation. I work best when I have someone who is going along with the journey with me. It does not have to be from a group project, but rather a space where everyone is motivated to create their art and animation. It has been really difficult to find peers because of online learning which takes out the collaborative classroom setting. I feel like lately I have not been given the chance to branch out completely. I will have to improve my social skills in the classroom so that I can become motivated to compete and collaborate with my peers. I may have to accomplish this though clubs rather than online class. 
This class can help me dedicate this sort of time into class time and shift my focus into some well needed practice of animation. 

Objectives and goals I want to accomplish and when:
  • find an audio that I have a personal connection to and am motivated to animate to 
    • by at least Sept 9th
  • find rig(s) that I think fit with the theme of the audio 
    • by Sept16th
  • record a reference of myself with the audio I want to animate to
    • by Sept 30
  • create a blocking based off of the reference video
    • by at least October 30
  • polish 
    • for the next couple weeks
  • Finish animation 
    • by winter break


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