In week 12 of the animation course it was all hands on deck and using my day off I set to work on doing a stopmotion version of the lifting heavy crate exercise. Previously I had looked over all my animation exercises both stopmotion and Maya, a majority of the exercises had been done in Stopmotion while some like pushing, pulling and sitting down standing up were in Maya. I was worried I hadn't done all the exercises in Maya even though Johny told me not all the exercises needed to be Maya I was still skeptical on recent information.
Never the less, I set to work on doing the stopmotion exercise I used the bar-sheet from the Maya exercise to map out the key poses, but I added a few things along with it including clicking the fingers on the armature or lack there of. I acted out the action before I executed it on the armature. In this animation it seemed the perfect chance to try the 3 frame capture settings, for slowing down scenes in the animation. This was used in knelling down to lift the crate. I applied it a bit early as I was feeling worried about the speed of the animation. To show the weight of the box I moved the legs far apart and tried to curve the spine of the armature.
The legs were far apart when it was walking slowly. This was inspired and referenced by a scene in The Simpsons episode Homers Phobia where Homer is lifting a heavy jar of coins this seemed like good reference material to communicate the weight of the crate.
In the walking I used the rigs, to best balance the rig as it moved one foot forward, and it helped in showing the weight of the figure. In doing the movements I did try to make the movements slightly far apart but not to far enough to communicate realistic movement, as I felt that some of my past animations didn't seem to show realistic movement as I played them back. I had the armature communicate its exhaustion when it leaned on the pile of crates and held his back, and the ending frame was him leaning down giving up. This was also done still on 3 frame capture, and I saved this animation and had it rendered. Removing the rigs didn't take as long as last time, given I didn't use them except for elements in the walk.
However later when I was on my mac getting ready to convert the piece, the AVI file wouldn't be converted. I was getting anxious and worried as this was looking like a repeat of what happened with the lens cap bowling ball back in 101 which ended in me doing the animation again. I didn't want to risk that as I had other modules to work on for the hand in date, so I tried another computer but it didn't work. However miraculously I remembered what Johny said about how Stopmotion pro saved the frames from the camera and how it could open a previous production shot.
I went back to the suite and thankfully no-one was using the computer I used and the frames were still saved. However I felt I needed the rig and non rig animations but it only had the none rig frames. The editor however still had a record of the rig frames before they were edited, but were hidden so all that was needed was to hide the edited frames and unhide the rig frames. The two were rigged but this time I rendered it in the Media Encoder on the computer so that I could play it on my mac having it encoded to H.264 which was the requirement for quick time player.
Looking back on the animation I would think I did a very good job of showing the struggle the character was going through lifting and moving the heavy crate to the pile. The animation in general moved at a steady pace using 3 frames instead of 2. If I had time I would've seen if I could improve one of my other animation attempts, using the 3 frame capture to see its effect on animations such as the walk cycle for instance. In hindsight I should've accounted for the speed at the start of the animation as it seemed rather fast and I should've retaken the frames to see the difference in timing. In conclusion though I am satisfied with the outcome of my work and its overall performance.
As one of my favourite illustrators Mark Crilley once said
"You need to breathe life into your character." Mark Crilley
Over the course of next year I shall experiment with the three frame captures to see how it would impact the movement of my animation to see if it delivers a realistic walk or performance.
Never the less, I set to work on doing the stopmotion exercise I used the bar-sheet from the Maya exercise to map out the key poses, but I added a few things along with it including clicking the fingers on the armature or lack there of. I acted out the action before I executed it on the armature. In this animation it seemed the perfect chance to try the 3 frame capture settings, for slowing down scenes in the animation. This was used in knelling down to lift the crate. I applied it a bit early as I was feeling worried about the speed of the animation. To show the weight of the box I moved the legs far apart and tried to curve the spine of the armature.
The legs were far apart when it was walking slowly. This was inspired and referenced by a scene in The Simpsons episode Homers Phobia where Homer is lifting a heavy jar of coins this seemed like good reference material to communicate the weight of the crate.
However later when I was on my mac getting ready to convert the piece, the AVI file wouldn't be converted. I was getting anxious and worried as this was looking like a repeat of what happened with the lens cap bowling ball back in 101 which ended in me doing the animation again. I didn't want to risk that as I had other modules to work on for the hand in date, so I tried another computer but it didn't work. However miraculously I remembered what Johny said about how Stopmotion pro saved the frames from the camera and how it could open a previous production shot.
I went back to the suite and thankfully no-one was using the computer I used and the frames were still saved. However I felt I needed the rig and non rig animations but it only had the none rig frames. The editor however still had a record of the rig frames before they were edited, but were hidden so all that was needed was to hide the edited frames and unhide the rig frames. The two were rigged but this time I rendered it in the Media Encoder on the computer so that I could play it on my mac having it encoded to H.264 which was the requirement for quick time player.
As one of my favourite illustrators Mark Crilley once said
"You need to breathe life into your character." Mark Crilley
Over the course of next year I shall experiment with the three frame captures to see how it would impact the movement of my animation to see if it delivers a realistic walk or performance.
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