We were finally handed a biped character this week. Actually creating the character ourselves is something not yet in our grasp, so we’re simply attempting to animate it in a semi-realistic manner. From what I’ve learnt so far, the trick with character animation is to give the illusion of real-world physics, but to push the boundaries of those physics, making it hyper-real and expressing a degree of character through that artistic license.
After my short video for Intro to Digital Media this time last year, it seems that skaters are a recurring theme in my study. I decided to revisit the skater for the biped character because of the interesting possibilities in the movement of a skater. There are clear shifts in weight as well as plenty of anticipation, follow through and overlapping to get into the animation.
This clip is the well known intro for the Lakai Fully Flared skate video, directed by Spike Jonze. I posted it previously on our class forum and thought it would be a good basic reference for my first use of the biped character: a simple three keyframe animation.
Only using three key poses made any real movement difficult, so I focused on the pushing up from a board into a full leap. I tried to get as much expression of the energy transferring through the legs as possible (and finally a video from Maya, as promised)…
…I’m not totally happy with the result, but with the lack of a clear reference, I needed to let this one go before I went steadily insane. The next step should be far more interesting.
Filming a very basic skating sequence (push to ollie) from the front and side, this should come together nicely to make a cycling animation. Because of restrictions within the brief, there will be no skateboard, but I think that will create an interesting challenge of getting across the movement without a prop. And the skater obviously won’t be moving forward in space. This isn’t a real issue though, as a lot of animation is based on these kind of cycles (think The Flinstones, cycling legs in front of a moving background).
I broke this sequence down into five main key poses:
Standing upright on board
Push on board
Crouch in preparation for jump
Jump peak
Landing jump
I’m looking forward to getting to work on this one – it’s got potential to be quite a strong sequence.
The infernal bouncing ball, indeed. I stole that title from this excellent Idleworm page: a fantastic tutorial on how to get the bouncing ball look, through the eyes of a cell animator (warning, weird Flash errors might occur). It’s quickly becoming clear how important an understanding of basic animation techniques are before even setting foot in Maya.
Although totally out of my reach at this early stage, but something that fascinates me is the physics of modelling. It’s something I am likely to come across more and more, particularly in my work with Processing, so I had a little look behind the shades at a site that gives up some weird mathematical formulas to make you look like Tiger Woods, or something.
It doesn’t take long to see that there are a wealth of free resources out there for people interested in getting into 3D. It’s something I have noticed with most new media: it seems that there is a real culture of sharing ideas and experience with each other. Which of course, must be a good thing.
Work
I really worked hard to give my red, bouncing ball some character this week. I’m starting to get the hang of the controls within Maya (aside from the button on my Wacom pen playing up a bit – no idea if that’s Maya related, or to do with my pen), so i’m certainly started to enjoy working with the program more.
I’m starting to get a feel for both why CGI animation is so labour intensive and why there are still so many people keen to take it on as their full time job. This very, very basic ball sequence took me some time to get even remotely looking as though the ball had substance and weight, and I can only imagine how much more difficult this would be if I was dealing with a complex texture, like hair.
Having said that though, it’s like a little puzzle, that you need to unravel to get the ball bouncing properly. I’m a big fan of time consuming puzzles, so was happy to spend some time doing the homework for this week…
…yes, I still haven’t attempted to export a movie file from Maya, but fingers crossed I will have something a little less static next week, when we take on a biped character.
Inspiration
It was Disney that put together the 12 Principles of Animation and are therefore responsible for much of the style that we know as animation today. Obviously, their older, short animations are better examples of these styles, as they attempt to convey as much as possible in a brief amount of time. The more subtle uses of these principles, found in today’s feature length 3D animation films, are still indebted to their original concepts.
I don’t think there’s many better examples of our primary focus of squash and stretch, than this classic Donald Duck snowball fight (Disney characters and flying snowballs!)…
I should precede this post by mentioning that I really have mixed feelings about doing 3D modelling and animation as part of my course. At this point, i’m quite interested to see how my thoughts about the subject evolve over the semester and looking back on these early posts, what I will think.
In my mind at least, 3D is a tough business. There are a lot of young artists and designers out there that are falling all over themselves to get into the industry, making it competitive as hell. Combine that with some seriously complex knowledge required to be a contender and you have a recipe for zero social life. Take what we were introduced to this week when opening Maya for the first time…
…it’s as though the interface has been designed by the same people who are responsible for the Starship Enterprise. Which is another reason that a passion for 3D eludes me at this point: it seems to have a distinct audience. Most of the amateur 3D animation I have been exposed to in the past has been, well, amateur. It takes a lot of work to get it to the level where it gains a life of its own and therefore an emotional response. And even if there has been a lot of work put in, that emotional response isn’t always guaranteed – take Final Fantasy for instance.
However, my glib critique of 3D isn’t totally justified. As with most of these technologies, as the hardware required to produce 3D becomes more and more accessible, the end product finds itself in more interesting places. Whilst not a new film, the combination of 3D and cell animation in Princess Mononoke (1997) is the kind of joining of technologies that really excites me (of course in part because it’s where I appropriated my DJ moniker from).
Work
Bouncing balls, bouncing balls, bouncing balls. It’s a staple of animation, apparently. Far be it from me to argue, so off I went to do some research and YouTube dished up a beauty. More bouncing balls than even my immense mind could handle…
More seriously, there are some quality bouncing balls in that clip. So I whacked a loop of it in QuickTime and watched it over and over until my eyes started to bleed. Rather than simple, linear looped bouncing balls, I decided that emulating a ball thrown against a wall would be far more interesting. So, from there I quickly sketched a reference (keeping note of the important ‘squash’ and ‘stretch’ keyframes) before starting work in Maya…
Taking things into Maya had an exciting added layer of complication, due to my wrist recently starting to play up. Yes, using a computer all day starts to take its toll on the fragile body. So, i’ve been trying to use my Wacom tablet as much as possible to decrease any risk of permanent RSI. Maya is one of those programs which if you find yourself accidentally mashing the keys in a fit of white-hot fury (which I have been known to do, once or twice in my time), you will find that your work has disappeared forever. Or, if you’re luckier, you’ll find it again, but your happy, bouncing ball has now turned into one of the soulless lead characters from Final Fantasy. Every key does something magical. So using this alien program with a graphics tablet I am still coming to terms with was… testing.
It’s probably for the best that I don’t yet know how to export movies from Maya, so you’re spared the jerky result of my bouncing ball for the week. However, I am finding the process quite interesting, and am looking forward to getting a better understanding of the physics of an object like this, so be prepared: a bouncing ball of awesome is in the works. In the meantime, take a look at a very static ball…
…clearly, it’s just begging to be bounced.
Inspiration
This has been doing the rounds on YouTube for a while, and whilst it’s not 3D modelling, it is fantastic animation and a downright beautifully executed concept. The idea of combining our 3D work with video capture is also something that appeals to me, so you’re likely to find some more videos along this line here in the future…
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