Animation 102 week 3: Stopmotion suite: 16/2/18: Armature animations:

Capture settings for hold.

Upon completing the sitting down standing up task in Maya I went over to the stopmmotion suite with a booked camera and armature to start the stop motion element of the exercise. From this morning I knew I would need to use the wooden blocks as a chair for the character but I was told by Adam that the blocks wouldn't be tall enough. Fortunately I placed two together and tested it against the armature and it worked very well. I set up my camera and armature in a relaxed standing position and began the exercise. I didn't have time to use a bar sheet for this so I  worked from the reference video then translate it into the armature. The bar sheet would be
sketched later.

The animation started with a 25fps pause before I executed any movements. I studied the movements

of the sitting position by scrolling through the reference footage on my phone/ the computer, and

Camera settings for exercise.

translating the movements of sitting down onto the stool/chair. This was translated into the hip, legs and arms of the armature for sitting down. This was like isolating the key positions in Maya, however the difference was I could touch it physically. In the animation I added a 25fps hold in the character sitting down using the advanced settings in Stopmotion pro. The next element was standing up and the reference showed me leaning forward then using the hands to add pressure to the lift. This was translated into the armatures legs and spine.

However In terms of the hands I had them adding pressure to the side of the block stool, which was an improvisation. Upon completion a hold was added at the end of the animation, then saved to a memory stick. The next animation was the figure sitting down on the floor, and this was much different to the sitting on a stool. In studying the reference footage I paid close attention and translated the movements, one element of difficulty was getting the positions of the sitting

View of stopmotion

down in the legs and spine, due to the strength of the magnets and the feet positioning when sitting down. Standing up proved exceedingly difficult as it was hard to get the armature in the correct position.

One concern was the way the armature was standing up as it took its standing position, thankfully the magnets compensated. The animation was complete and saved and I was pleased with the outcome.

Animations.

Sitting down/standing up Chair

Sitting down/standing up Floor.

Standing on one leg

Feelings:

I was still feeling frustrated after the trouble caused by the Maya rig, but all tensions calmed as I proceeded to the task. Having done figure animation before with toys I felt confident I could perform this movement. However as I was positioning the rig I recalled how some pivot points were hard to position even Pom warned me how difficult the spine was to monomer. In trying to get the character to stand up and sit down I had some concerns about the way the armature when positioning it as it didn't seem in time with the reference footage. When played back however it seemed to play very well.



Evaluation:

Looking back on this task I would think that there were some elements worked and didn't worked. One of which was the fact I didn't have a bar sheet to record the timing of the movements, but instead I researched from the footage itself and recording it in the animation, this was a creative way to act on the situation. When I was having trouble with the fact if the animation was a good response to the task, but I decided to ask for a second opinion from Adam and he thought it was a good animation which helped a lot. This was in response to Joes advice about having a second pair of eyes on the subject.




Analysis:

In hindsight the fact of my mistakes with the Maya rig and my emotions at the time may've been hindering my concentration into moving the rig into position in terms of standing up the rig from the sitting down position on the floor. Perhaps I should've taken a short break before I moved onto the stopmotion side of the exercise, that way I would've been more focused on doing the armature movements in the body parts. The fact that I didn't seemed to hinder my concentration and execution of the exercise.



Conclusion:

In conclusion, I would think that whilst I did have some issues with concentration and positioning I was able to produce some clean stopmotion animations using past experience and from looking at the reference provided. Knowing how to use the armature from last semester was a big help in doing this animation piece as I knew what to expect from moving the armature and in using the magnets to hold the armature in place. I would've done somethings differently such as find the time to do a bar sheet earlier rather than later, and taken a break before moving to my next task. I have however produced a good set of stopmotion animations.

Action Plan:



In future I would make sure that before executing the stopmotion I take the time to create a bar sheet after studying the reference videos so that I would have something to work with on paper. It seems from this point forward animation tasks in Maya and Stopmotion are going to get harder as we progressed through this module I would need to work on strategies to handle this task or do further research into the matter to correct any mistakes that I made.