Week 7: Homework Progress

This is the Robot Arm assignment and the progress so far.

Week 7: Storytelling Poses for Robot Arm Assignment

This is a drawing of the storytelling poses of my animation.

Week 7: Robot Arm Video Reference

Here's two reference videos of robot arms in action.

Week 7: Pose-to-Pose & Straight Ahead Action

One of the 12 Principles of animation is Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose animation. it almost seems like the two are similar to each other but contrast a bit.

Straight Ahead Action is when a scene is drawn out and animated from beginning to end with subsequent scenes drawn out as well. This creates a more fluid and fuller scene in terms of movement of what's being animated, therefore, creating more realistic action sequences. This Straight Ahead Action method is used for fast and wild action scenes. However, with this method the scenes tend to lose size, volume and proportions can look a little funny. But with computer animation these issues are of little to no problem.

Pose-to-Pose animation differs from Straight Ahead Action in while straight ahead action is drawn out from beginning to end of a scene pose-to-pose animation is done in inbetween sequences and poses. In a way it's kind of like storyboarding but not storyboarding. It's more thought out and carefully planned. This method is used a lot for dramatic and emotional sequences. Pose-to-pose is like a blueprint of what the secene is eventually going to look like when it is completed and the missing pieces are filled. Pose-to-pose is somewhat like connecting the dots. The animator draws the main poses and sequences (create the dots), and then fills in the intervals later to make it complete (connect the dots).

A conbination of these two methods are often used when creating animating.

Creating Concept Vehicles in Maya

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=3733&autoplay=1

Here's a link to a tutorial on car modeling using faces, vertices and extruding.

Ease In Ease Out

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=28831&autoplay=1

This tutorial shows how to use ease in and ease out. The animation is a little advanced but still explains well ease in and ease out and it shows how it all looks like in the Graph Editor and how it works in the animation.

Midterm

This here thing is my midterm project. The mission was to animate this little fox creature up to 150 frames using the techniques we have learned in class so far. The most challenging part was the tail.

Reference for Flying Fox Midterm

Here's some tail movement reference of a squirrel for the Flying Fox midterm.

This is another reference.

Pendulum Homework Assignment

This is my pendulum homework. It was more challenging than I thought it was.

Pendulum Homework Progress

I could not load my Pendulum file of the work I've done so far. I'm not sure what happened but I get this message everytime:

"Errors have occurred while reading this scene that may result in data loss. Please check the Script Editor for details."

I'm not sure what this means or what to do.

Week 4: Keith Lango

This is a three part tutorial of artist Keith Lango talking and explaining what overlapping and follow through means in animation. In this first part uses a simple animation just like the Pendulum homework assignment for this week and tells what overlapping is, which basically means something that drags behind when something moves. To me, the first thing that comes to mind is the tail of a flying kite. I agree with Lango that this is difficult to comprehend and even though I still have some trouble translating this fully to my assignment I also agree with him that it's so simple. Lango goes on to introduce the Breakdown Drawing and how this simple thing is the key to everything and defines how to get from one extreme (drag) to another extreme (overlap) and the combination of the two. This drawing is of three key parts; the drag extreme, the overlap extreme and the breakdown (combination of half drag and half overlap). I also learned that if you animate the drag too much it creates "a pop". The shapes are key. It's not really about timing but more on how the shapes move.

This second part continues with the breakdown drawing and when the animation makes a stop the breakdown almost forms an 'S' motion (easier to understand in Graph Editor). And the breakdown lessens everytime it goes from one extreme to the other extreme. Lango explains that if the animation is a little stiff on the back and forth movements it means that the extremes need to be more extreme and overlaps have more overlap.

This final part, Keith Lango basically explains how the Breakdown Drawing concept applies to things like tails, ropes, limbs, spines, etc., and applies this example to a simple character animation. Although Lango animated much of this by keyframes I think this becomes a little easier to understand by looking at the Graph Editor.

First Bouncing Ball Homework

This is my bouncing basketball homework.

Boucing Ball Reference

This is a video of various balls bouncing off concrete. There's an exercise ball, a basket ball that's not completely inflated, a plastic ball, a softball, a baseball, a tennis ball and a weight ball.

This video is of a bowling ball bounce.