Category: Character animation
Progress:
I originally plan to practice walk to sit and stand to walk actions, which are basic body mechanics movements.
But Ting thought it was too much workload, so I cut it to stand and walk only.
I studied the human shape walk cycle online and made my own version. I learnt deeper about how the human body can be performed as a bouncing ball.
Then, based on Ting’s advice, I made the character more cartoonish by adding more reasonable overlapping for different parts of the body. I understand that from root to head is a pendulum or squirrel tail, the leg and arm are also tails that the upper part will drag the lower part. And I come up with the idea by using the blue pencil tool in Maya to draw the overlapping guideline, and also the line of action that I want for root control. Here is what I got:
Categories
Week 7: hand pose
Hands always do something. They should always reflect what the character is feeling, help define their personality, and express emotion.
Shape: A strong hand pose features a clear, easy-to-read silhouette. Silhouettes should also be asymmetric.
Organic Quality: CG hands vs Organic hand
Inter-connectivity: All parts of the hand are linked; no finger moves independently.
Leading Finger: One finger initiates the hand’s movement, creating flow, direction, and natural rhythm.
Grouping: Fingers are “lazy” and tend to rest against each other rather than spreading apart.
For this project, I learned the importance of the order of making character animation. First, build solid and attractive key poses with correct timing and spacing. Next, adjust the COG to have a line of action( important). Then add more in-betweens for overlapping and secondary action. And the final step is polish the spline.
The goal is to create 3 emotional pose.
Guillermo del Toro: “Animation is a medium, not a genre.”
Stella Adler: “Acting is reacting.”
Core Principles of Believable Acting in Animation:
- Objective: Characters must have a clear goal or desire, and their actions should reflect efforts to achieve it—good acting highlights what the character wants and obstacles they face.
- Specificity: Answer “Why does my character move?” by linking movements to thoughts, feelings, or reasons (e.g., a thief stealing a safe, an archaeologist finding proof of Atlantis).
- Personality: Every movement should mirror the character’s unique traits and their relationship to the situation (e.g., a shy character fidgets; a proud character puffs their chest).
- Thought Process: Animation should “breathe”—characters appear to think before acting (e.g., pauses, eye movements, posture shifts convey inner thoughts) to build believable motivation.
- Key Elements: Clear Poses, Interesting timing, Staging, and the “Keep it simple” principle.
light & heavy box fall down:
Let them have a scenario (blocking):
Categories
Week4: polish juice box
I adjust the timing and spacing to give my two juice boxes a resealable reaction time. And I tried to exaggerate the movement of the juice box to give it a more cartoonish style. By finishing this project, I understand deeper about Anticipation, action and reaction in animation.
golden pose:
Norman McLaren’s insight—”What happens between each frame is more important than what exists in each frame.”
Timing: The speed and rhythm of animation, determined by the number of frames used for a movement.
Spacing: The variation in speed during a movement.
golden pose:
Animation clip analysis:
Categories
Week 1: Golden pose
- clear silhouette
- line of action
- balance and weight
- asymmetry
- (extra) EXAGGERATION EMOTION PERSONALITY
Analyze the golden pose from an animation:
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/FxIU0hVkcpPC
Try the golden pose:
Feedback from Ting: the first is fine. For the second one, the body should twist more to have an arc, for now, it’s straight. The supporting leg should not bend that much, because it will lose force and power.