Character Animation

Ok so the character animation project was a real challenging one which I really enjoyed. Animation is a field which I would really like to get into so it was great having a chance to focus on portraying character through an animation. We also had to do some lip syncing which is something I never done in 3d before so I really looked forward to giving it a try. The first thing I attempted to animate was my character skipping towards an oven. The character I want to get across was that of a child so I did want to try and portray him as being 0energetic and full of fun. The skip was a lot harder than I thought and I struggled to get it looking fluid and bouncy. I’m not too sure if it was due to the angle that I was looking at it from, but it just didn’t work. The next part the character would look realise there was something in the oven, look hungry, check the time and realise the food was ready and get the tray out the oven. This piece didn’t work either. I think the real problem was that there were too many emotions put in a small amount of time which really wasn’t realistic or needed. This is something I need to work on in the future, I tend to try put too much into my animation where using less would look make it more believable and a lot smoother. Next the character walks over to the oven and gets out the tray, reacts to the food being nasty and then sighs and walks off saying “I may as well go back to making noodles”. I think this part of my animation worked a lot better and the lip syncing even though not that visible seemed to work. The weird thing is that I spent a lot less time on the end bit than the begging and it seemed to work a lot more. Overall I really enjoyed the exercise and need to push myself more to do more character animation. I need to concentrate on second reaction animation and need to act out and time what I am animating to get better timing and more believable actions.