The focus of this weeks session revolved around catching up on animation work that we've produced both in Maya and Stopmotion pro and to remember the importance of keeping up with our work otherwise later in the course it could have consequences. In this course it was important to time manage our work to make sure that everything was up to date and completed by the designated deadline as if we left things to the last minute it would make us panic and not get the desired grade. In the next semester of the course time management was crucial as its important to schedule our work to meet a deadline this was also important in the industry and how it was important to meet a deadline for the work otherwise it wouldn't be used if late in submission and we would lose the job that we had. Thankfully we had sessions in week 11 & 12 near the end of the semester we would have sessions to look over our work and see if we could make any alterations at the last minute or over the next week. If we had any problems we could talk to Johnny or Joe about it so they can help us work through it and possibly find a walk around.
This was the very reason we do these exercises and review them.
We then looked over some of my work in Maya, such as the graph editor that I photographed for my animation to see how I could correct it to smooth out the animation. Johnny showed me some advice on how to handle this particular problem decaying the power within the swing of the pendulum. The wave form of the animation was the key focus such as the wave getting lower and lower in terms of degrees, I couldn't make sense of some of this but what I understood was the way Johnny described the way I should approach this problem and try and go for a more circular effect in the waves which was what was happening within some aspects of the graph except some lines went up after some areas. The response from the group seemed to agree from this observation and the control handles seemed to show that the key frame is off not in the peak of the line, and how we want the handles to be level within the keyframe.
This was when my attention was directed to a feature that could help me with this particular over shooting of the key frame. Said symbol was a squiggled line within several cubes and this somehow created a link with Adobe illustrators pen tool and how we use it to create polygons. The key was to play in maya to get acquainted with it and try and see how you can improve the understanding of the control handles to get confident with how they work. This was when we moved onto one of the aspects of the next module which was walking which was in its own right a rite of passage for an animator to give more weight to the character and how this theory would be applied to feet.
This was something that we could use as a guide line in stop motion, when producing the stop motion version of this exercise. We took a look at the end product and compared it to the image of the graph editor to compare the movements and the points in the editor. We were then brought to the attention to a very skilled person named Bruce Yeany who created something called fractal design which was like a pattern that resembles water or sound waves which I thought could be considered an art style in the right eyes. We were then shown some examples of walking cycles done in Maya by next year students and they seemed very life like even if they were blocks. This was something we would learn later on.
The key to the pendulum was the weight of the cube itself slowing down and building up the right sort of speed, to do with time and distance. One other aspect was thinking about a ball on a string, or perhaps an apple on a string. We were shown examples of pendulum movement in videos from youtube and some even seemed rather amazing and ambitious and wondered if the multiple pendulum movement was possible to think bigger in terms of the animation and its even got me thinking about future animations.
We then showed off some of our work to the group to gain feed back and so I showed off my refine work on the pendulum and anticipation and movement. Joe commented that I needed to work on the tilting of the cube as it didn't seem to show the movement going backwards and the ending movement also applied to this particular feedback and I could understand where Joe was coming from. I then showed some work that I did in both slow in slow out and the latest pendulum movement, I did explain there were potential bugs in the animation such as the skipping element of the slow in slow out and I explained that I was on a clock with use of the equipment and didn't have time to go back and fix it. Joe understood and explained to me that the slow in slow out was really the A-B movement, that we covered many weeks ago.
In regards the pendulum, he motioned the lack of speed in the animation and I mentioned how the string seemed to extend slightly near the end of the stop motion, and mentioned taking in the advice given to me last week as regards anticipation and movement. This was only natural as we learn more from failure than we do from success and that these feedback sessions were for isolating flaws and how to learn from our mistakes to further refine the animation product, maybe not the same as the tutors may do this. Johnny mentioned that our tutors our essential our employers who tell us what to improve. This was something that I was familiar with from my work feedback from AWAH when I was doing comic book illustrations for them. It was much like learning a new language if we repeat a certain phrase 6 times the word is literally engraved into our minds allowing us to remember it.
Looking back I decided to use this feedback to refine the pendulum stop motion later in the afternoon and so I booked some equipment for later on. We then looked at other students work and it would seem that some of them have gone further ahead in the exercises such as block interaction or took a creative approach to the pendulum movement in terms of the models that they used. I wanted to try the block movement this afternoon so I talked to Joe about this matter but he said I was getting too far ahead and that it would be explained in week 6 so for now I needed to focus on the pendulum movement.
Looking back on this lesson I would say that I learned a few things about how to perfect the pendulum in Maya and that it could be the final link in the chain, of finishing the pendulum, and could be of use in future works. One other element I could take from this is its got the creative cogs in my head turning and thinking about what animations I could do make them more ambitious maybe even make an attempt at doing a combination of methods to attempt a first try at our possible final outcome in terms of the waving tennis ball outcome on the brief just a rough idea but maybe worth approaching at home education and even learn about the software in terms of limitations or even going beyond its potential.
This was the very reason we do these exercises and review them.
We then looked over some of my work in Maya, such as the graph editor that I photographed for my animation to see how I could correct it to smooth out the animation. Johnny showed me some advice on how to handle this particular problem decaying the power within the swing of the pendulum. The wave form of the animation was the key focus such as the wave getting lower and lower in terms of degrees, I couldn't make sense of some of this but what I understood was the way Johnny described the way I should approach this problem and try and go for a more circular effect in the waves which was what was happening within some aspects of the graph except some lines went up after some areas. The response from the group seemed to agree from this observation and the control handles seemed to show that the key frame is off not in the peak of the line, and how we want the handles to be level within the keyframe.
This was when my attention was directed to a feature that could help me with this particular over shooting of the key frame. Said symbol was a squiggled line within several cubes and this somehow created a link with Adobe illustrators pen tool and how we use it to create polygons. The key was to play in maya to get acquainted with it and try and see how you can improve the understanding of the control handles to get confident with how they work. This was when we moved onto one of the aspects of the next module which was walking which was in its own right a rite of passage for an animator to give more weight to the character and how this theory would be applied to feet.
This was something that we could use as a guide line in stop motion, when producing the stop motion version of this exercise. We took a look at the end product and compared it to the image of the graph editor to compare the movements and the points in the editor. We were then brought to the attention to a very skilled person named Bruce Yeany who created something called fractal design which was like a pattern that resembles water or sound waves which I thought could be considered an art style in the right eyes. We were then shown some examples of walking cycles done in Maya by next year students and they seemed very life like even if they were blocks. This was something we would learn later on.
The key to the pendulum was the weight of the cube itself slowing down and building up the right sort of speed, to do with time and distance. One other aspect was thinking about a ball on a string, or perhaps an apple on a string. We were shown examples of pendulum movement in videos from youtube and some even seemed rather amazing and ambitious and wondered if the multiple pendulum movement was possible to think bigger in terms of the animation and its even got me thinking about future animations.
We then showed off some of our work to the group to gain feed back and so I showed off my refine work on the pendulum and anticipation and movement. Joe commented that I needed to work on the tilting of the cube as it didn't seem to show the movement going backwards and the ending movement also applied to this particular feedback and I could understand where Joe was coming from. I then showed some work that I did in both slow in slow out and the latest pendulum movement, I did explain there were potential bugs in the animation such as the skipping element of the slow in slow out and I explained that I was on a clock with use of the equipment and didn't have time to go back and fix it. Joe understood and explained to me that the slow in slow out was really the A-B movement, that we covered many weeks ago.
In regards the pendulum, he motioned the lack of speed in the animation and I mentioned how the string seemed to extend slightly near the end of the stop motion, and mentioned taking in the advice given to me last week as regards anticipation and movement. This was only natural as we learn more from failure than we do from success and that these feedback sessions were for isolating flaws and how to learn from our mistakes to further refine the animation product, maybe not the same as the tutors may do this. Johnny mentioned that our tutors our essential our employers who tell us what to improve. This was something that I was familiar with from my work feedback from AWAH when I was doing comic book illustrations for them. It was much like learning a new language if we repeat a certain phrase 6 times the word is literally engraved into our minds allowing us to remember it.
Looking back I decided to use this feedback to refine the pendulum stop motion later in the afternoon and so I booked some equipment for later on. We then looked at other students work and it would seem that some of them have gone further ahead in the exercises such as block interaction or took a creative approach to the pendulum movement in terms of the models that they used. I wanted to try the block movement this afternoon so I talked to Joe about this matter but he said I was getting too far ahead and that it would be explained in week 6 so for now I needed to focus on the pendulum movement.
Looking back on this lesson I would say that I learned a few things about how to perfect the pendulum in Maya and that it could be the final link in the chain, of finishing the pendulum, and could be of use in future works. One other element I could take from this is its got the creative cogs in my head turning and thinking about what animations I could do make them more ambitious maybe even make an attempt at doing a combination of methods to attempt a first try at our possible final outcome in terms of the waving tennis ball outcome on the brief just a rough idea but maybe worth approaching at home education and even learn about the software in terms of limitations or even going beyond its potential.
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