First Maya Workshop

Well last Tuesday we had our first Maya workshop which I really enjoyed. I have used Maya before so I did know most of the things he was showing us but I still learnt a few extra tricks. I think the fact I had used the software before also helped me understand what he was saying a lot better and I found it to be helpful. I was also happy with the pace at which he went through the workshop and he covered a lot of key principles in quite a short period of time. I really look forward to learning more as I really enjoy using Maya and believe you can achieve some really great looking work using it. Of course now I have previously done the 2d workshops I am looking at it in a slightly different way. All the CGI animations we saw at Bradford were badly animated and modelled and I really want to push myself to create high standard animations using Maya .But since the last workshop I do feel I have a better understanding for modelling and feel that now I am able to visualize how to make a model slightly better. Well look forward to tomorrow’s session.

Interaction

Well I have finally finished my animation of the two characters interacting, and I am quite happy with the results. I think I have managed to use all the rules we have learnt quite effectively in this. One thing that I do need to improve is my pauses to allow the audience to register what is going on as well as the characters. For example when the smaller character kicks the ball at the larger character, the larger character gets up immediately to go over to the smaller character. Where really he should be looking around first to see what happened and then get up once he realises. Another example is when the smaller character starts crying the larger one almost immediately goes to scratch his head where really he needs time to register that the smaller character is upset and then scratch his head in guilt. So really I just need to make sure I space my animation a bit better in future. Otherwise I am happy with the movement of the characters, I really like my smaller characters’ jumping when he first comes into the scene. It was made up from some really nice poses. Another good thing that I find I am doing is starting to draw out the frames a lot quicker , they do look a bit rough but I think it still works. So overall I have found these sessions to be extremely useful especially in learning the principles of weight, anticipation, stretch and squash, volume, balance, staging and timing. I also think they are going to be extremely helpful when animating in Maya to stop it looking too stiff and lifeless.

Angry Man Animation

So last Tuesday we carried on with 2d animation, and we had a choice whether to animate an angry or happy character delivering a box on set. I chose to do the angry character as I always find it more fun to show anger. Now the character is a box man with a circle for a head so no facial expressions. The challenge was to portray how your character was feeling through his movement alone. So I decided to have my character slam the door open when he walked into the room, kind of stomp over to the table in the centre of the room, and then slam the box onto the table. He would then look at the camera start to argue and then out of rage kick the table resulting in the box falling onto the floor and then my character would chuckle at the situation. Okay, now all I had to do was animate it. Well first thing I learnt was if I want my door to slam open I mustn’t be afraid to bend my door out shape to really exaggerate the force at which the door was being pushed. Another thing was that my door would slam open and hit the wall behind it so therefore it should also bounce back from the wall. Well taking this into consideration really helped with the impact of my door and I was really happy with the result. Next my character had to get to the table so seems he doesn’t have legs I had him shuffle his way across the room with the box under one arm. Now my character would slam the box down onto the table. To begin with I had my character hold the box directly in front of him lift the box up over his head and then slam it down to the left. The problem with this was that it created an awkward unrealistic movement as it didn’t follow the correct line of action, so I changed this to have him bring the box to his left then lift up over his head and slam down to the left , and this created a much smoother movement. This also worked well as it prevented the character from holding the box directly in front of him and rather have him in profile to create a much more interesting pose. So in the end I was really happy with the result of my animation and I learnt some great tips from this exercise. I think that in future projects I will try and push myself to come up with more interesting scenarios.