I made these attempts whilst still thinking about how to do my animation, I was mostly just trying to get the hang of using Maya. Here i was wondering about animating the box, and just trying different ways of doing it.

But in the end i decided not to have too much going on, and kept it simple.

Its surposed to be good to include your mistakes, and show how youv'e learnt from them, so you should love these dismal failures!

Here's my first pass at my box and ball animation. This was when i was still just trying to find out how to use Maya. I didn’t know about universal/object transforming, so i was stumped when i keyed a transform and then found that it was stuck like that all the way through. So i constantly fiddled with it until I ended up with this mess and decided to start again. Ah well, at least it’s funny to watch!

http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/applying_the_12_principles_to_3d_computer_animation_by_disneys_isaac_kerlow

This is just a link to an article from the CG Socioty about the 12 principals of animation, specifically for 3D. I thought it would be useful to looik at as we only really learnt about them from a 2D perspective last year.

a few of my Box and Ball Storyboards

Above i was just sketching out and developing my idea. I was thinking of ways to show the ball panicing ontop of the box. I did like the idea of showing it peeking over the edge, and doing a little nervous jig. However i dont think that the "loony toon" style stop in mid air would have worked very well in such a simple animation.

And heres my final storyboard for my animation. As you can see i kept it quite simple in the end, so that i could just focus on animating the ball well. I also tryed to keep in mind some of the 12 principals of animation, whilst planning this. For example, I have sketched out the squash and stretch of the ball, and specifically marked out where there will be anticipation.

So my first version of this little story was to have a small and energetic ball bouncing around wildly, until it manages to get on top of the much bigger box.

Unfortunately it’s scared to jump back down from such a height, and begins to bounce around nervously. The box is understandably irritated with this, and eventually just boots the ball off. 

After discussing it with some friends, I decided that it would be more effective not to animate the box, and simply have the ball bouncing around happily, minding its own business, it then comes across a tall box and decides to see if it can bounce all the way on top of it. A simpler animation would allow me to focus more on the believability of the ball animation. I was also weary of having too much going on at once. Showing the ball bouncing frantically, as well as the boxes reaction to this, would be too much for the viewers to take in at once.

Task 1- Box and Ball Animation

It probably seems like I’m taking a while over this, but that’s because i want to have everything in a nice clear order. I’ve got a messy blog to keep track of everything, and a neat one that I’m going to submit.

So! Task 1!

“This task lets you explore some basic principles with the simplest of models. Animate a ball or box with particular physical properties; such as being light or heavy, big or small. I would like you to explore how such a ball might move. The balls and or box should have personality and a sense of purpose and must be self-propelled, ie move under its own steam. The balls should have some sort of texture or marking to show rotational movement.

Duration: up to 10 seconds"

We came up with a few ideas to talk about in the lesson. Allot of people (including me) seems to have something along the lines of "a speedy little ball racing around the slow moving box". I found it interesting that most people also characterised their box as young, and the ball as old because of this.

Because of this trend, i decided to use my idea which didn't give the ball the upper hand

it might have been better to contrast the materials, and go the opposite way ie. a cannon ball and an empty box or paper lantern etc. However that would have been too difficult, considering that this exercise was partly designed to introduce us to animating using Maya.

http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2009/01/important-things-when-posing-character.html

just a link to an professional animatiors blog, its mostly him answering students questions, and its got some nice tips in there too.

Here's a repost of my pose sketches, with some extra annotation

Thursday, 3 November 2011

We were asked to build up a collection of pose sketches, from observing people behaving naturally.

My first attempt at this was a bit too much of a detailed sketch. But then i realised that it was better to build a large collection of poses. Having said that, I quite like the background, and the pose could be used for plenty of things.

My life drawing class was really busy so i couldn't see when the model did a lying down pose. So I drew the people on the other side of the room instead :) These poses are quite nice, i like the relaxed way they are perched on the desks, i wish I’d had more time to spend on them. 

 

 I particularly like the girl on the right. She has a nice curl to her fringe. But I did find it quite hard to get the anatomy right, drawing the crossed legs under the sketchbooks.

 

 I think there’s a nice selection of poses here. My favourite is the guy sitting with his legs really far open just because it was funny to draw. I also like the line of action (for want on a better word) on the guy slouching in his chair. The girl at the photocopier also has a nice shy pose. The other two didn't work so well, simply because i didn’t capture them well enough, for want of time.

the far left is probably the nicest sketch- but I’m also quite fond of butt girl- she really should wear longer tops with those leggings thou.

Jesus Nerd! We did an exercise to sit and draw the same person in various poses. Our group chose some guys playing with Magic Cards in the SU, because they looked like they would be there a while. But the problem was that they didn't really move much at all! Saying that- i really love the "flicking his hair back like something off of Baywatch" pose!

 

These are some more sketches from a cafe'. i really like the two girls in the top right corner. There so expressive- you could clearly see that they were cold an tired at a glance. i also like the possible braking up couple, felt kind of sorry for them thou. I also like the posing of the guy sitting with his legs crossed.

 I quite like all of these. The guy leaning over the table could be good for an intimidating gangster type character. Also, i got quite a nice sequence of movements from the guy trying to sell something; and multitasking guy was pretty cool just because he made me laugh!

last but not least- burly guy and high shorts girl. i wanted to do some more poses of them flirting but they left, and i don’t think these poses express it so well. 

Sarting fresh!

After the getting feedback from Siobhan on my blog today, i decided to start again so that i could get everything in order and get rid of the things that wern't relevent.