Month: October 2021

This week I kept working on my walkcycle and have my final idea approved and discussed with the tutor. I kept animating and improving my animation, made another playblast and realised there was still a lot of things wrong and I keep trying to get ahead of myself. Time management is key in these sorts of important projects and deadlines.

Referencing was always something a bit tricky for me to understand, but honestly the best way to get that out of your list of problems is to stop being afraid and try it. So Raptor was my guinea pig and it went well, as I knew the theory behind it all.

Another thing I keep trying to find is a name for my character, Alan came up with ralph the raptor and it’s getting in my head. But I do need to see more of what I can do animation related in order to give him a good name.

Playblast 3:

This one was after I finished the tail experiments and changed the arms as they did not look natural, they needed to be more loose. I keep trying to improve the animation I have without finishing the blocking of it all. All of these controls and extra limbs and controls that need to be animated too are getting in the way of my comprehension of its body. The same happened last year when we started animating humanoids.

Good reference is key to increase producivity and I haven’t trully figured out how to properly get it with creature animation.

My final idea is:

Ralph, the raptor takes 3 steps forward and stops, sniffing the air to the right and left. When turning left a high speed ball is thrown in the raptors snout and it hits him hard, still dizzy and getting angry he looks around, grabs the ball and throws it but it is pierced by his nail. Looks in the direction in which the ball was thrown frustrated with the pierced ball.

This idea was discussed with Alan and now I do look at it as a more doable project, not as impossible as my previous ideas. The ball animation is one of the tricky parts, it will be done initially with just a ball mesh and animate it as a reference and use alembic cache to reduce project weight. I might get a rigged ball or even rig one myself for this purpose.

Environment:

This all started with a master scene, that is not going to be used, at least in this project. I did consider using no environment at all, but that is a risk that I don’t think I want to take at this stage of my project.

As we all hear in this industry: “less is more” and this project has to be one of my best for the showreel. I will invest in quality.

Playblast 4:

This was a test to see if I could do the sniffing the air part and getting the spine fixed, but it looks super weird. My methods will need a change.

Last week I did build a master scene and got my idea for the final project straight (so I thought) and was trully proud of it. It was exactly how I imagined my master scene to look like. Although I tend to spend too much time on details that end up unused because ideas are constantly changing and this industry suffers a lot from this.

We had our first class from term 4, I did go to the term 1 class as I was so excited and luke asked me to go there and introduce myself and perhaps give them some advice on the course. It was exciting to see all those students in the same spot I was last year, the nostalgia of it makes me love this course even more. Anyway, it was amazing to be back in the building along with all the energy of the new academic year.

I spoke to one of our new tutors, Alan, and it was very helpfull as it made me see that I was doing to much, over ambitious… again. So all my script and story suffered some changes. Alan asked me what was my goal with this project: Creature Animation.

Based on this, I should really just focus on that. We don’t have that much time to finish everything, so it’s better to have a good animation that a big unfinished one. I took two ideas home: animation with an object and animation to express the personality of the character – the interpretation of an animator towards a character. What do I see in it?

When we had the first class with Nigel, one of the slides of his presentation said exactly what I was supposed to do when trying to show the personality of a character.

I stuck with the raptor rig, and before any major decisions or changes in the script I tested the rigs. Raptor had a lot of issues, like one of the feet did not have a control, the knee control was almost inside the skin of the character and the textures were not being recognized.

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As I know nothing about rigging I reached Kamil and he fixed the rig for me and sort of saved my project. I really want to use this rig, his expression is something I believe I can work well with.

Script Changes:

My first thought was to do about 2 or 4 shots, 2 with an interaction with an object and 2 without. After a bit of thought I decided I could do one shot with a good polished animation, with and without an object.

That was something I wanted to discuss with Alan before making more work that will not be used and kept on testing my rig. The basic walkcycle was my choice, but not basic at all. It is so much harder than a humanoid character, there is not a perfect reference for it, which also makes it interesting and a good challenge.

The reference I looked up was from ostrich, meerkat, pigeon, even raptors, to see how some animators got to it and understood their movement.

Playblast 1:

A lot of overlapping is involved in this sorts of animation, plus the fact that is a cartoony style rig, so more pressure on that matter. I did try to block all, but I always end up doing everything by steps (1st the hip and legs, 2nd spine and neck, 3rd arms). The tail was also something I did spend a lot of time to understand as there are so many animals that move it differently.

Playblast 2:

This 2nd playblast was just an adjustment to the neck and spine.