Animation 102: Evaluation:

Looking back over the course of Animation 102, it has been a significantly different, and more challenging than it was in 101, and there have been a few good and bad things about my time on the module. I would think that the aspect of using armatures was a very insightful task throughout the course of the module. Whilst the exercises may have started out being very simple they have overtime become a challenge. What I enjoyed most about the module was doing the walking and lifting boxes exercises, as in the reference footage we could record it ourselves and do some acting which I found to be most enjoyable especially if we did it as a group taking turns.

When recording the reference footage I tried to make it as simple as possible and that it was real as I like realistic action. However, in some exercises such as the sneaking and run and jump I could exaggerate a few things such as the position of my body or the scene that I was acting out. This was communicated in my exercises even including things that weren’t in the reference footage such as the shocked look at the end of the sneaking animation. Much like the box exercises there were times I used reference from the internet such as in the lifting heavy crate where I used some reference from The Simpsons episode Homers Phobia to exaggerate the weight of the crate and the leg positions when walking.

My favourite moments of the module was just animating the armatures in general, practicing and moving the rig/armature and learning how to use the armature Getting to use the stop motion armature was a great experience and has broadened my horizons on the movement of the rig in a stop motion and the different frame capture settings we could use. One of my favourite exercises would have to be the short story animation. This was a chance for us to use what we’d learned and make it into a short animation. What I liked was getting to make actual props that I could use and it best tested my model building skills in the makerspace. I chose to do the irritating insect as it was a chance to do some comedy storytelling. Writing and communicating the story was rather hard and I wasn’t sure which scenes to include but I enjoyed animating it.

Getting to see other students work to see how they approached the exercises was very insightful as we got to see and comment on their work and how best they could improve upon what they’d done. At the same time the person showing the work would get feedback and advice on their work and it was especially helpful for me and some issues I was having with Maya in this particular module.

What I found challenging was the Buckid rig in whilst it appeared simple enough to use it was rather difficult to position the limbs and make him do certain exercises. This I found out in the start of using the rig for the sit down stand up exercises. I was feeling at times that the rig just didn’t seem to work with me very well. One instance was setting the right key frames on the right areas of the rig, as it was comprised of many moving parts and it was hard to define each one and highlighting the rotate and translate key frames did help it also wasn’t helping on the timing of animations such as the lifting exercise and sit down stand up exercises as the wrong limbs moved at the wrong moment.

The rig in general was hard to use and at times it kept breaking, and other times I wasn’t sure how to do a certain action in animation.

 However there were some exercises where I enjoyed the challenge it offered and that was doing the walking exercise getting to do it over and over again learning from previous attempts until reaching a refined version even when using the handouts given to us.. Truthfully, I did have some doubts in my ability to use Maya and the armature given how difficult some exercises were proving to be, and it did cause me a lot of stress. However I pushed those doubts to the back of my mind and persisted none the less, and found a way to overcome those obstacles in the rig.

I feel that in this module I’ve made more use of the bar sheets in my exercises than I did in Animation 101, as they’ve helped me to improve on planning out my animations specifically in the stop motion walking as it was hard to map out the arm movements.

In hindsight I would think I was more comfortable of doing stop motion in the exercises rather than Maya as it was something I was familiar with and something I could handle physically. Though learning to use Maya in character animation was a new experience for me which I did enjoy it, wasn’t working well with my skills as an animator, and there are some aspects of 3D animation that I still don’t understand. One of which was getting the character to perform and move at the right pace as some of my work was very slow and unrealistic in action and performance showing that I would need to improve on my timing and spacing in my animations.

Though the bar sheets were of help in the exercises I was spending most of my time looking back at the reference footage. This was an instance in the walking, sneaking, lifting and pushing exercises as they proved rather hard correct.

Animation 102, has been a rather interesting module to work with, but much has been significantly harder than 101 given we were working with rig based animations which was more of a challenge than using simple wooden cubes, but it has been an exciting and rather stressful adventure in animation so far on this high academic course.

If I had this module again I would possibly do some things differently. One of which would be to attend Maya workshops in future to get a better grasp of the software so that I wasn’t stuck or get stressed over how the rig didn’t perform the way it should. In hindsight I should’ve done this from the start which could’ve aided me a lot in the crates and the sit stand exercises. However given this first year was about assessing our skill and testing our limits it was only natural to find a skill I just wasn’t good at doing. However I do feel that doing 3D has shown me what animators go through when animating in computers even game designers wouldn’t be able to be good at animation on their first try.

In conclusion I rather enjoyed the module in general, being able to use different media, learn the aspects of character animation in 3D and getting help and advice in our feedback sessions to better grasp what it was I was using. Out of the two methods of animating an armature I would think my best strength is in Stop motion animation as I produced more refined exercises using the armature and enjoyed using it the most, and if come next year we get to choose what animation we want to use I would like to do more stop motion based animation in this course.

However, whilst there were a few moments when I was doubtful, stressed and unclear about certain elements the support and encouragement of the tutors and classmates helped me through the most difficult times. I did enjoy the module none the less, and it’s shown me my strengths and weaknesses in some areas of animation. I am looking forward to the future challenges we may face on this course and to next year’s module on defining characters in animation.

In future in what animation media we work in or learn about I shall take tutorials and workshops in how to use them and possibly ask for further support in 3D animation. I may do some more practice with the Maya software in animations, but otherwise I am overly satisfied with my work that I’ve produced over the module and look forward to doing more stop motion based animation on stories or exercises.

 

I will use what I’ve learned to create animations over the summer to better prepare me for the challenges of next year pending on what animation media we’d be using be it Maya, 2D or Stop motion, I may try to do some walking and character based animations in 2D using what I learned from Stop motion animation as they are slightly similar and different at the same time. I may even try doing some more Maya based animation work to try and see if I could improve over the module exercises and get a better grasp of 3D animation should the need arise.