In week 9 of this module it was time to review and look at what we'd done so far in terms of the animation exercises and by now we should've completed the bouncing ball exercises and as a bonus we could work with using an armature to do a waving at a tennis match exercise. We also should've been honing and finalising our stop motion and Maya work even going back and refining our previous animations using what skills we had learned and the advice given to us. Johnny and Joe informed us that we needed a certain numbered figure in order to pass the course be it beyond forty or one hundred percent and that in order to achieve the best mark possible we needed to do the exercises.
The exercises in animation as Johnny had mentioned to us before were what the animation industry was looking for one example being the ball bouncing exercises in Maya, 2D and Stopmotion Pro. What the industry also looks for is studying a reference for the animations much like what we've been doing with our ball bouncing to get an idea of speed, weight and travel. This would later be the making of portfolio pieces in elements from the future aspects that we may cover on the course and that in our work we needed to experiment animating with timing, story telling, weight and performance and when working in the industry Joe told us that during our time we would be moulded into people that can produce their style of animation be it in art or the animation principle.
We were reminded that we must read the brief given to us before we proceeded with the exercise as much like a script it was our "animation bible" giving us an idea of what to do and when to do it by, this would also aid in getting better grades. In terms of the bonus armeture exercise though it was optional I thought it may help prepare us for the next semester which was the general idea of the exercise. Johnny said that it was a good idea to get feedback on the waving/tennis match movement so that we could prepare for the walking movements that would be covered in the next semester of the course. Johnny then showed us a model in Maya which I thought looked impressively detailed and must've taken the student months to complete and even render in Maya. This was a clock pendulum which seemed very accurate but it wasn't just a pendulum it could also be a UFO or even a mace which did seem to put the idea of using different balls for the bouncing ball exercise into perspective.
What we were being shown was that we had to animate this along such as using the weights inside the pendulum would move in the correct position and that we just needed to animate the top controller of this model. However Johnny told us not to worry too much about it right now as we would possibly be looking at this later in the last week of the semester/term. For the time being we focussed on looking at another example of maya animation and it was in fact a basket ball bouncing piece that I created late last night using methods and tips shown to me last week by James and whilst it was good it did need some looking at to make it as Johnny put it perfect. Fortunately learning from previous lessons I had the insight to bring the maya file with me in the event of this particular scenario. What we were looking at were the bounces within the film itself and how we may improve them in the graph editor and the key to this was speed and travel and how some of the bounces in the arcs needed to be altered in terms of the ending or starting bounces.
I watched carefully at what was being done such as a straight tool to straighten/ sharpen some of the contact bounces within the animation. One element that I picked up on was what Paige pointed out about the speed and how some of the frames should be brought closer together to increase the speed and I saw how this could be done using a selection tool for the selected nodes in the end section which could be selected by dragging the cursor over the frames and then move them closer towards the arcs in the bounce therefore increasing the speed slightly.
I was then asked to try and apply some alterations but I was honestly a bit nervous as I was putting some of my skills in animation and maya on display to the group and I didn't know what I was doing was right. Thankfully though the moment passed and During the break, I decided to try this on my bouncing ball animation and whilst not saved which was the point I could still remember some of the processes. Joe soon came over to see what I was doing and he advised that I should look at my reference video that I was looking at for this animation and to look at the bounces as the first were rather slow but near the end the bounces were small but fast and was about nine bounces and Joe suggested improving this by widening and shortening the longer bounces so that they wouldn't hover for too long.
This was true as the bounces at the start did seem to hover, and so I widened and sharpened the bounces and the arcs within the graph editor and I realised the ball was moving before the start of the animation so I decided to try and correct this by moving the movement key frame at the start to when the ball falls to the ground as it began to move along. However I did hit some problems when working in the graph editor such as the nodes not moving or responding as I touched them. It was when I was making the end bounce key frames closer together that I realised it had something to do with the setting I had it on and so I selected a dotted setting on the graph editor which helped to make the nodes selectable so that I could scale the nodes and arcs within the bounces both start and end. I played it through to see how it was doing but the bounces went through the flattened square and so I selected the bottom nodes and placed them on the bottom line on the editor and this did help with the base element of the animation.
Looking back at this animation it seemed to be an improvement over the last version and it helped to refer back to my reference video to get a better perspective on the bounces and arcs.
Animation
Animation: Anticipation and follow through remake.
Looking at this completed animation I decided to do a remake of one of my animation exercises anticipation and follow through as I originally wanted to add tilting to the cube before and after it moved. However now I knew what I had to do I decided to do a remake which was what Johnny suggested we should do if we wanted to put new found knowledge to good use. I began with doing a simple backwards and forwards motion to show the anticipation of the movement then do a forward and back motion as the movement ended at the followthrough. The key frames were in place so it was time to do the tilting and learning from last week this needed to happen at the key frame it would happen and so I set it to the in-between frames after the hold and before the move across the screen. I remembered to include a lowing key frame to make sure that it wasn't the tilted cube throughout the animation.
The same applied to the end frame and added the tilting frames by applying a key frame at rotate X and created a tilting motion as the cube reached the end of the animation. I played the animation back again to see how it performed and when playing it seemed to work well except the cube tilted back too soon and so in the graph editor I moved the key frame a little further along the line and this seemed to make the animation more finesse like much like Johnny would say about the animation. I was impressed with this improvement over my last approach at this animation exercise showing that Johnny's theory of revisiting old animations and improving upon them with new skills rang true the evidence this maya animation that I'd created.
Animation
We had a mini recap on what we learned in todays lesson and we even looked at Kira's attempt at the bouncing ball after seeing my work and it seemed she had improved upon what I'd created based on the bounces and the effect of squash and stretch which was amazing an area that I hadn't even approached yet but may do over the weekend. The graph editor was also an impressive use of the different elements of her ball bouncing exercise and I was slightly jealous about how well she had done it but it just showed that we had a lot to learn on how to create the squash and stretch in Maya. Johnny drew our attention to Black board which showed it had the check list of animations we needed to do in Maya, stop motion and 2D animation, as well as, the specific balls we needed to look at for the ball bouncing exercise.
Looking back at todays session of Animation 101, I would say that I've learned a new feature about Maya and even thinking about experimenting with squash and stretch in ball bouncing on Maya animation, which I may approach like the tilting and bouncing at certain frames before the action happens. I feel that I was on the right track and may look at my brief and check list to make sure I wasn't straying off course or even do a remake of one of my mix media animations such as the throw and catch or to attempt something new. This may seem ambitious and too much but sometimes to succeed we must test our limits and think outside the box looking for a new angle on our tasks.
The exercises in animation as Johnny had mentioned to us before were what the animation industry was looking for one example being the ball bouncing exercises in Maya, 2D and Stopmotion Pro. What the industry also looks for is studying a reference for the animations much like what we've been doing with our ball bouncing to get an idea of speed, weight and travel. This would later be the making of portfolio pieces in elements from the future aspects that we may cover on the course and that in our work we needed to experiment animating with timing, story telling, weight and performance and when working in the industry Joe told us that during our time we would be moulded into people that can produce their style of animation be it in art or the animation principle.
We were reminded that we must read the brief given to us before we proceeded with the exercise as much like a script it was our "animation bible" giving us an idea of what to do and when to do it by, this would also aid in getting better grades. In terms of the bonus armeture exercise though it was optional I thought it may help prepare us for the next semester which was the general idea of the exercise. Johnny said that it was a good idea to get feedback on the waving/tennis match movement so that we could prepare for the walking movements that would be covered in the next semester of the course. Johnny then showed us a model in Maya which I thought looked impressively detailed and must've taken the student months to complete and even render in Maya. This was a clock pendulum which seemed very accurate but it wasn't just a pendulum it could also be a UFO or even a mace which did seem to put the idea of using different balls for the bouncing ball exercise into perspective.
What we were being shown was that we had to animate this along such as using the weights inside the pendulum would move in the correct position and that we just needed to animate the top controller of this model. However Johnny told us not to worry too much about it right now as we would possibly be looking at this later in the last week of the semester/term. For the time being we focussed on looking at another example of maya animation and it was in fact a basket ball bouncing piece that I created late last night using methods and tips shown to me last week by James and whilst it was good it did need some looking at to make it as Johnny put it perfect. Fortunately learning from previous lessons I had the insight to bring the maya file with me in the event of this particular scenario. What we were looking at were the bounces within the film itself and how we may improve them in the graph editor and the key to this was speed and travel and how some of the bounces in the arcs needed to be altered in terms of the ending or starting bounces.
I watched carefully at what was being done such as a straight tool to straighten/ sharpen some of the contact bounces within the animation. One element that I picked up on was what Paige pointed out about the speed and how some of the frames should be brought closer together to increase the speed and I saw how this could be done using a selection tool for the selected nodes in the end section which could be selected by dragging the cursor over the frames and then move them closer towards the arcs in the bounce therefore increasing the speed slightly.
I was then asked to try and apply some alterations but I was honestly a bit nervous as I was putting some of my skills in animation and maya on display to the group and I didn't know what I was doing was right. Thankfully though the moment passed and During the break, I decided to try this on my bouncing ball animation and whilst not saved which was the point I could still remember some of the processes. Joe soon came over to see what I was doing and he advised that I should look at my reference video that I was looking at for this animation and to look at the bounces as the first were rather slow but near the end the bounces were small but fast and was about nine bounces and Joe suggested improving this by widening and shortening the longer bounces so that they wouldn't hover for too long.
Looking back at this animation it seemed to be an improvement over the last version and it helped to refer back to my reference video to get a better perspective on the bounces and arcs.
Animation
Animation: Anticipation and follow through remake.
Looking at this completed animation I decided to do a remake of one of my animation exercises anticipation and follow through as I originally wanted to add tilting to the cube before and after it moved. However now I knew what I had to do I decided to do a remake which was what Johnny suggested we should do if we wanted to put new found knowledge to good use. I began with doing a simple backwards and forwards motion to show the anticipation of the movement then do a forward and back motion as the movement ended at the followthrough. The key frames were in place so it was time to do the tilting and learning from last week this needed to happen at the key frame it would happen and so I set it to the in-between frames after the hold and before the move across the screen. I remembered to include a lowing key frame to make sure that it wasn't the tilted cube throughout the animation.
The same applied to the end frame and added the tilting frames by applying a key frame at rotate X and created a tilting motion as the cube reached the end of the animation. I played the animation back again to see how it performed and when playing it seemed to work well except the cube tilted back too soon and so in the graph editor I moved the key frame a little further along the line and this seemed to make the animation more finesse like much like Johnny would say about the animation. I was impressed with this improvement over my last approach at this animation exercise showing that Johnny's theory of revisiting old animations and improving upon them with new skills rang true the evidence this maya animation that I'd created.
Animation
We had a mini recap on what we learned in todays lesson and we even looked at Kira's attempt at the bouncing ball after seeing my work and it seemed she had improved upon what I'd created based on the bounces and the effect of squash and stretch which was amazing an area that I hadn't even approached yet but may do over the weekend. The graph editor was also an impressive use of the different elements of her ball bouncing exercise and I was slightly jealous about how well she had done it but it just showed that we had a lot to learn on how to create the squash and stretch in Maya. Johnny drew our attention to Black board which showed it had the check list of animations we needed to do in Maya, stop motion and 2D animation, as well as, the specific balls we needed to look at for the ball bouncing exercise.
Looking back at todays session of Animation 101, I would say that I've learned a new feature about Maya and even thinking about experimenting with squash and stretch in ball bouncing on Maya animation, which I may approach like the tilting and bouncing at certain frames before the action happens. I feel that I was on the right track and may look at my brief and check list to make sure I wasn't straying off course or even do a remake of one of my mix media animations such as the throw and catch or to attempt something new. This may seem ambitious and too much but sometimes to succeed we must test our limits and think outside the box looking for a new angle on our tasks.
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