Category: Animation

Playing around with reference footage really opened my eyes to some key things. I found that keeping my camera angle consistent between my reference videos and Maya scene makes a huge difference. I ended up setting up my camera on the left view and front view just as I had planned it out, which let me work through the poses step by step without second-guessing myself.

Rather than just working with basic poses, I started experimenting with this really cool proxy rig technique – essentially creating a simplified version with basic boxes to nail down the core movement before getting into the detailed character animation.

The biggest revelation was how much easier it is to focus on one thing at a time. I’d set up these basic box shapes to represent different parts of the body, animate those first to get the overall motion flow, and then transfer that data to the actual character rig. It’s like having training wheels – you can focus purely on the big picture movement without getting bogged down in all the details of arms, hands and feet etc.

The jumping poses are pretty straightforward, mapping out that anticipation crouch through to the landing. It’s capturing those key moments of weight distribution that’ll make the difference between a solid jump and one that feels floaty. As you can see, I paid some attention to the compression in the legs, which is going to help sell that force.

Looking at these now, I can already see where I might need to push things in Maya. Some of these poses could probably use more extreme angles, especially in that anticipation before the jump. The timing might need some adjusting too – might play with holding that compressed pose a bit longer to really sell the force of the jump.

These would translate pretty well into blocking. Main beats are there, timing’s mapped out. Should save some headaches later trying to figure out where the key poses need to be.

This week focused on understanding body mechanics and the importance of proper planning in animation. We went over how the body moves mechanically – all weight shifts, foot placements, etc that come together to comprise a whole piece.

Rather than just copying movements, we need to understand why they happen – like how weight shifts as someone walks, or how the body prepares before jumping. It’s interesting how much detail you miss until you really break down a movement frame by frame.

I learned about the proxy method too – starting with basic shapes to figure out the main movement and timing before getting into the details. It reminds me a bit of the pendulum exercise, where simplifying things actually helps you understand the core mechanics better.

For our assignment, we need to create a body mechanics shot, choosing from things like:

• Getting up from a chair
• Jumping over something
• Walking up or down stairs
• Basic jumps

There’s a lot of reference material available – from motion study websites to YouTube channels. The trick will be finding good, clear examples that show the mechanics I want to capture. I’ve noticed in my animations that movements can look stiff when you don’t understand the underlying mechanics, so I’ll be spending time studying references before jumping into Maya.

I’ve been paying more attention to smaller details in my animations, and want to learn more about how intricate movements of fingers and subtle shifts before and after a major action can bring a whole piece to life. By looking deeper into references, I want to start to analyse these interactions at a deeper level.

Getting feedback has been crucial for spotting areas that need work. Having someone look at my animation has been a lifesaver, honestly. When you’ve been staring at the same animation forever, your brain kind of stops seeing the rough spots.

This walk cycle is still not to the best standard and needs a lot of attention. I plan on cleaning it up before I submit on the 10th.

Here we go over key aspects of polishing a walk cycle, and in this blog entry I will be going over what I had produced so far and what I want to improve on.

Although it has decent posing, the movements don’t feel like they have much weight to them. I have some of the toe roll mechanics down which looks good, with the toes and feet reacting to the movement imposed on them with swings and anticipation.

Here I am instructed to pay close attention to the curves, ensuring that the rotation is and stays consistently fluid. Tz is a little too jittery and betrays any sense of fluidity wheres Ty needs to be more clean and smooth. I snap the feet to the floor in order to give the movement weight but am instructed to use toes in order to create the same effect but in a more subtle manner.

The knees are a good indicator of momentum, as is evidenced in the video above. How knees sweep past each other communicates intentional yet relaxed movement and is key to a realistic, believable walk cycle.

Pointing out the knee and producing a wave-like cohesion will produce better results. The character is moving in 3d space and even though this may look okay from a side angle, I should push to develop a solid overall set of movements here.

I try to draw a figure 8 with the walker’s middle point here, in the front view. It still looks a bit unnatural and robotic due to how I have everything set up. Right now, the animation is also quite rigid. I’ll integrate a squash and stretch to convey weight, making it so the body reacts more to when the feet are planted on the ground.

Overall, it looks good but not perfect. Iterative improvements and self analysis is key.

This week we explored weight shifts a bit further and also started work on our walk cycles, two key components to a good character animation! Weight distribution and timing are aspects that must work together in harmony in order to give a character life.

A structured pose-based blocking approach helped me visualize how my character is going to walk across the screen. Making sure that the knee controllers were placed in a way that didn’t cause them to pop during the movement was a challenge I didn’t expect, but helped me understand anatomy and physics that comes into play.

Subtle hip swaying can leverage otherwise insignificant aspects of a simple rig in order to convey personality, I’m making sure to keep things simple for this exercise though. I intend to utilize parts of the rig I overlooked such as the toe roll in order to give it a better and more refined look.

Feedback gave me a helpful look into some aspects I didn’t include in this attempt, rotating the body downward to better portray its intention and weight while moving ahead, and also progressing the animation slightly as the knees pass each other in a swinging motion will communicate a sense of momentum.

Raising the heel as the character moves upward adds spring to the movement, and acts as overlapping action with the knee raise.

I notice that the right knee here doesn’t look right, I think I mean to convey a sense of weight shift but it ended up looking unnatural and pop-y. This will be changed in the next iteration, the character also moves too straight for it to look at all relaxed and natural.

Here, I focused on the main poses and had the character move between them. By playing around with the keys and changing a few of the poses I intend to make this weight shift a lot more dynamic and realistic.

In week 5, we learned about the fundamentals of weight shift. The key principles here are anticipation and overlapping actions, and through starting off with blocking techniques, we established key poses and timing.

One notable thing I learned from this session is the importance of balance/ symmetry, in the introductory presentation there was a part which revealed how characters could be split in the middle and show a balance on either side of the split. This struck me as something both benign and highly influential to the way a character is displayed in any medium, both invisible and so visible. I love aspects of art and design like this, things that most people wouldn’t even notice yet plays such a massive role in what makes a good artwork.

As you can see, the ball makes a small preparatory movement downwards in anticipation of the step. As it rises again in order to move its leg out for the movement the rest of the body catches up, creating a feeling of lag which fits with the overlapping action principle.

• Neutral standing pose.
• Prep pose with the ball squashed and tilted.
• Step pose with one leg extended forward and the ball leaning over it.
• Follow-through pose where the back leg pushes off the ground.

Upon analysis of my blocking, I can see that I’m not utilising the rig to its fullest potential, and also made a few errors in this animation. For one, you can see a foot is not staying at the same spot on the Y axis, I want to implement foot rolls to add bounce and life to the animation in the next iteration. Integrating foot drag would also add to the overlapping action.

Another aspect to this class was making realistic poses using principles touched on in our previous session, I opted for a character sitting on a bench with their elbow raised over the backrest. I chose this pose because I want to get better at creating relaxed, life-like animated characters.

Here is the feedback from our animation tutor, emphasizing the importance of flow. I notice how the annotated pose is a lot more wavy, creating a line that starts from the head, flows through the torso and continues down to the legs. The upper body also shows a more dynamic tilt, by having the torso back and the head leaning a little forward. This seemingly creates more tension and interest in the pose. The arms are also a lot more exaggerated, with waves instead of straight lines – I notice this feature is lacking in my life drawing too actually. I tend to make my human figures seem like mannequins which is something I’ve been trying to work on through frequent practice. The legs are also more dynamic here too, with a stronger tilt and rotation in the lower leg and ankle.

I initially thought my posing showed signs of relaxed ease but it only shows how much there is for me to learn.

I want to experiment more with more exaggerated movement, we covered how you cant portray a character’s personality through the way that they move and the idea of exploring that further is exciting.

This week we went over the ball and tail animation, exploring the importance of secondary motion to produce more lifelike and realistic movements. Follow through, overlapping action and essentially just the relationship between primary and secondary elements was the main focus here.

Maya’s motion trail function made it a lot easier to see each component and how they moved, creating sets of different curves on the screen. It was a little difficult to make sense of, which I guess will get easier as I put more practice in. By looking at real life references I was able to build on my current understanding of motion, observing curves and other consistencies in movement. George guided us toward achieving fluid movement rather than mechanical precision in our work.

In my initial experiment, I did a simple, non wavy set of movements on the tail, just to see what it would look like. I changed a few things here and there to make it look less mechanical though. It was simple and looked alright but it only made me more excited to see how the application of wave principle will improve everything.

I then created a more natural sequence. Using reference footage helped me understand how the tail should respond to the ball’s movement. The relationship between the two elements became clearer as I worked.

Getting the curves and keyframes right took some trial and error. The tail’s timing needed special attention during follow-through moments, which proved tricky with the rig setup. Still, adjusting the animation curves helped me achieve the movement I was looking for.

Through analyzing reference videos and applying feedback, I refined the final animation. The exercise revealed how timing between moving parts can create complexity in a simple concept. Each adjustment brought more life to the movement. (You can see at the end there the tail doesn’t follow the correct curve, I did not complete this task to a standard I’m completely content with but I will endeavor to keep improving)

Starting with fundamental principles and working through each challenge helped me grasp effective animation techniques. The process of receiving feedback and making improvements showed me the gap between initial attempts and polished animation. These first weeks have helped me develop a stronger approach to animation.

In this week, we dove into the essentials of animating a “ball and tail”. Using the principles overlapping action, follow-through and secondary motion, and utilising the lessons learned from week 1’s bouncing ball, I strove to produce a fluid and lifelike animation.

Overview of the Exercise:

In order to simulate realistic motion that complies with physical rules, the ball with tail animation assignment requires animating a ball that is attached to a tail. This practice emphasises:

• Overlap and Follow-Through: This technique shows an understanding of momentum and inertia by animating the tail to follow the ball’s movement organically.
• Secondary Action: Adding delicate tail motions to the ball’s primary action to give it more depth and realism.

As well as being an appendage that trails behind a body, moving tails in animation should convey a sort of lifelike quality. This can be done through the use of anticipation, but being careful to make it not look like the tail is propelling the body forward.

Here is a rough sketch of my plan, making note of how the tail should be positioned at different stages. The tail was innacurate which I realised after my review session with George, being that the resting state should be in more of an S shape than a C shape.

As you can see, the tail movements weren’t as exaggerated as they should have been, prompting me to conduct further research into how a “wave action” should work.

I recognised that even though we are at the blocking phase, the animation should clearly explain the intended action, even without frame-by-frame detail. To improve my understanding, I did additional research on wave motion, hoping to depict a more dynamic, genuine movement in the tail. Additional anatomy work helped me improve my knowledge of realistic motion. This iterative approach underlined the significance of successfully stacking animation principles, with the goal of creating an animation that is both structurally sound and visually appealing.

This week, we covered pendulums and how applying essential animation principles like overlapping action, counteraction, drag and breaking of joints can produce a convincing pendulum animation. This exercise helped drill in the importance of timing between moving parts and how it reveals complexity in an otherwise simple concept.

I began by focusing on overlapping action, having different parts of an object moving at staggered intervals. First, I selected all the joints and rotated them so that they moved in unison.

Then, I experimented by just shifting the keyframes accordingly to give a clean, yet oversimplified look. The main principle here is that the motion of each pendulum ball or joint doesn’t stop simultaneously but rather follows a hierarchy. This staggered approach, drawn from the Animator’s Survival Kit, makes the motion more feel organic and dynamic.

Counteraction was another principle that I wanted to apply in order to maintain balance and realism in the animation, the ball is weighted and therefore will act on the joints in a way that cannot be replicated purely by artificially staggering keyframes. I used this reference below so that I can understand this better, being that the root of the pendulum is moving, as is the animation I want to produce.

My first attempt was intentionally completely done frame-by-frame, ensuring that I don’t rely on oversimplification and applying the breaking of joints principle to a higher standard. The main crits were that the waves were inconsistent and unnatural. I intended to do this by eye and not to rely too heavily on animation principles, apply constructive feedback, and adjust my perspective accordingly in order to produce a better product.

By further analysing the reference video and applying feedback, I improved and finalised the animation. Ensuring I utilised all the appropriate principles and engaging critically both on a micro and macro scale.

By starting with a study of animation principles, analyzing reference videos, and instinctively trying to capture the right feel, I began to understand what makes animation effective. Incorporating feedback and applying these principles more rigorously helped me close the gap between my perception of good animation and what good animation truly is. These first weeks in the MA 3D Computer Animation program have been valuable in helping me identify how I learn best and in developing a structured approach to improve my skills.

In today’s animation session we studied the 12 principles of animation, where aspects of good animation were isolated and expanded upon. Today’s session was primarily focused on Squash and Stretch, Timing, Arcs and Weight. The goal was to create a realistic bouncing ball animation.

Maya’s motion trail feature made it easier to visualize the animation at a glance, more closely resembling the planning I did on paper.

By observing real life references, I was able to strengthen the knowledge I already had on the nature of a bouncing ball. George, our tutor, clarified that he was looking for a ball with the same or similar properties of a tennis ball.

In my initial experiment, I opted to create an animation where I used my knowledge of how balls have behaved in the past, interacting with an imperfect surface, having imperfect and erratic bounces and rotations. This was in order to attempt to expand on my animation experience, but proved somewhat challenging.

I then kept it simple (the miraculous KISS principle) and, by using knowledge garnered from references and other bouncing ball animations, created a simple yet effective short clip.

Adjusting curves and manually key-framing allowed for meticulous control over the animation, emphasizing the realistic feel I wanted to convey in this exercise. In the tutorial, we were encouraged to introduce rotation, with the ball spinning 180 degrees on each bounce, I thought this to be fairly unrealistic so I chose to have it rotate 90 degrees instead, but this was challenging due to the nature of the ball rig. It’s possible to do so, however, by stretching instead of squashing and vice versa, since the rig maintained its volume.

Bouncing Ball:

So, initially I followed instructions. I found a reference online and drew up a small plan.

• The X and Y axis were mapped out
• The X axis is essentially the number of frames, labeling the frame number at notable parts of the movement