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Week 01 - Week 10
Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Advanced Animation / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
PROJECT 1: PRE-PRODUCTION
Table of contents (Jumplinks)
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
2. LECTURES
Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4 - Week 5 - Week 6 - Week 8 - Week 9
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Ideas
3.2 Thumbnails
3.3 Storyboard
3.4 2D Animatic
3.5 3D Animation Block Out
4. FINAL PREP
5. REFLECTION
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
There is no Module Information Booklet for this module; however, we have four separate Projects:
1. Fundamentals of Animation - Practicing and understanding 3D animation starting with the fundamentals.
2. Project 1: Pre-Production - Choosing an 15-30 second existing clip from a movie or any media and to plan out the animation via storyboards, animatic and block outs.
3. Project 2: Production - Continuing animation progress from Project 1. Ensuring the flow of animation is believable.
4. Project 3: Post-Production - Final refinements of animation. Compose and editing shots of finished animation with possible sound effects or voice overs to be an entertaining end result.
2. LECTURES
Week 1
I came 30 minutes late to class today and unfortunately missed the brief about the first couple of projects. But I still got the gist of it despite missing the core parts. I was somewhat relieved but also a bit bummed to hear that we were still going to use base Maya instead of 3DS Max since while I did have experience with Maya from a previous module, I was still not confident with my skills. I am still looking forward to this module though since I can start honing my 3D animation skills!
Week 2
We were given a demo of creating a bouncing ball animation as an introduction to Maya since some students used Blender for their previous 3D Modelling classes and some were only about to do the 3D Modelling class this semester! Which I thought was crazy but moving on; after given the basics of the ball rig, we were tasked to do four types of ball bounces.
Week 3
Mr. Kanaan showed us a quick demo for a sack of flour animation that we'd be doing as the next exercise and told us that we should plan out our scene first with a short storyboard first before we did any animation so that we aren't just jumping the shark without a plan and end up making a very "out of place" animation.
Week 4
This week, went further into our sack of flour animation.
Week 5
This week's class was held online. I happened to have prepared a rough storyboard for my Project 1 so I got feedback for it. After that, we started on our walk cycles with the help of Mr Kanaan's demonstration; we started with the leg animations first then only the rest of the body followed suit. The demonstration was only of a default walk cycle though so we were tasked to do a walk cycle that had a bit of personality.
Feedback:
- Storyboard is alright
- Add background details to give depth.
- Be wary of how many character's you are planning on animating.
Week 6
We learned more about Maya's animation UI. Mr. Kanaan showed us the animation layer where we could add any additional details to our animation in a separate layer where it wont affect the original animation layer. I applied this to my walk animation after a quick feedback session.
Week 7
We learnt about constraints and how it can help when a character wants to hold an object or even lift one.
Feedback:
- Yes, you can add the 2D Animatic to the submission.
- Can maybe push some shots a bit more.
Week 8
This week's class was held online, Mr. Kanaan showed the technical parts of rigging whereby he talked about bones and demonstrated it in Maya. We also got a demonstration of a model throwing a ball using constraints.
Week 9
We learnt about the basics of rigging and also more on constraints and locators. Early in the semester, I was aiming to rig my own character but alas, because of time crunch, I'm choosing to focus more on animation.
Week 10
This week's class was held online, where it was mainly a feedback session for our Project 1. Near the end of class, I asked for feedback for my facial animation and got a greenlight from sir.
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Ideas
When choosing the clips I wanted to animate, the first clip that came to mind was the "Can you pay me in advance?" scene from Spiderman 2.
I was so fixated on this idea that I actually went into creating a storyboard for it.
File 3.1.1 Rough Storyboard
But after gaining some feedback, I went back to the idea board because the thought of animating 3 characters in one scene began to sound absolutely mind-numbing to me.
The next idea was to animate this one scene from How to Train your Dragon.
This is again a multiple character dialogue which scrambled my brain a bit but that wasn't what threw me away from using this clip. I wanted to ensure I found a good rig to fit with the characters' voices but I unfortunately did not find any good contenders. And so, I went back to trying to find a good clip.
And that was where I rediscovered a musical that I used to enjoy when I was younger! Heathers: The Musical is a definite rollercoaster ride but they have some really catchy songs. The one I had in mind was Candy Store! Although I only took the snippet at the beginning since that was more dialogue than song.
I cannot state enough how motivating it was to finally find a good clip that I would most likely enjoy animating.
3.2 Thumbnails
I started by drawing out thumbnails. This was a stage that I learned from Film Studies! The thumbnails were categorized by the line of dialogue since I felt if I split one line if would feel a bit chopped together.
This was honestly really fun to do because I got to play around with angles and perspective with the freedom of not being too detailed. Plus it was fun to be able and choose from the sketches I made for some shots.
3.3 Storyboard
After the thumbnails, I moved on to place all the chosen thumbnails into a storyboard and adding descriptions under like the dialogue and shot composition.
I sourced the storyboard from : https://boords.com/storyboard-creator
File 3.3.1 Rough Storyboard.
Then, I cleaned it up and added depth to the panels.
File 3.3.2 Refined Storyboard.
3.4 2D Animatic
Before creating a 3D
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3.5 3D Block Out
Before I went to animate, I recorded myself acting out the different scenes which was a definite new experience for me since I am quite awkward in front of a camera. But nonetheless, this will serve as a good referenced for me in the future anyways. I used a tripod to create the different angles.
Video 3.5.1 Acting.
Before I went to animating, I went to find suitable rigs for both Heather and Veronica.
Preferably, I would've loved to stay true to Heather's blonde ponytail, but I made do with this really nice Waitress rig by Santiago Calle.
As for Veronica, I managed to find a black haired girl rig on animato. The name of the rig is Diana and was created by Luciano Munos.
For blocking out the animation, it took me a bit to get used to it since the program automatically animates the inbetweens of key poses so I started off with a lot of sliding animations; but a quick fix of keyframing the first key pose frame exactly before the next key pose made it proper block out.
4. FINAL PREP
Storyboard
File 4.1 Candy Store - Storyboard.
2D Animatic
Acting
3D Block Out
5. REFLECTION
I had a really fun time with this project! I was initially a bit burnt out when it came to ideas but when I was reminded of a musical I listened to when I was younger, that rush of motivation came back in.
I think most of the tedious part was actually during the 2D animatic. Mainly because I found that Photoshop wasn't the best for working on animation, simple or not. Recording myself was also out of my comfort zone, but I surprisingly had a lot of fun with it!
Overall, this project was a good time for me when it came to getting more used to animating on Maya and also on having a better animation workflow.
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