Well. Following the maya tutorial was pretty easy. the instructions were quite straightforward. Mr Ken was explaining about the differences between the two different rigging skeletons IK and FK.
Inverse Kinematics.
And
Forward Kinematics.
In this exercise we created an IK rigging, where we set a bone along the robot arm. The way IK works, if I remember correctly is faster to animate an object. Its quick to set up and use.
Apart from their different sizes, it is obvious from Luxo Jr. that the big lamp is “older” and that the small lamp is “younger”.
How is this communicated by the animation? Give at least THREE examples.
Energy of Movement: Well one of them I believe is the movement of the lamps. The older one moves with less energy and the younger obviously has more energy like a young hyperactive child. He jumps around and wiggles on the spot excited and happy.
Gestures: The older one likes to tilt it’s headlamp to one side as if its thinking. This gesture combined with the fact that he inquisitively nudged the ball forward out of the scene; Shows that he is older, because, for a child, he would think and then immediatly play with the object with a lot of enthusiasm. They are more accepting of new and unknown things. Its just the opposite for the older generations.
Do NOT say because the small lamp is playing with a ball, or that its name is Luxo Jr. – you should be looking at the animation, how the lamps move and emote (emote means to express emotions).
2) Give an example from Luxo Jr of how timing is used for comic effect. Explain how the timing decisions contribute to the humour.
The part where Luxo Jr jumps onto the ball and starts to squash it by bouncing up and down on it is one example of timing.
As he jumps on, we just know that the ball might give way soon or something might happen. The timing for the playtime is just right then when the ball pops, the audience immediately feels sympathy for the fella.. I know I did 😡 The process of the ball deflating added some comic effect in that Luxo Jr could only look around and wonder what happened to the ball as he “floated” down to the ground.The timing of the ball deflating was stretched a bit, I’m guessing, to put more emphasis on the deflation and Luxo Jr’s reaction.
As he swivels back to check the ball. The timing of Luxo Sr coming in to check as well gives him all the more the model of the older lamp.
3) When you create a joint chain, these form a hierarchy, with the first joint at the top and the last joint at the bottom. Explain why this is necessary for the joints to work properly.
Because of the way Inverse Kinematics works. When you create an IK rig, the way the “bones” move is sort of how our arms move when we want to point at something for instance. The hand sorts of directs the rest of the joints.
Yes and no? Maybe it really depends on what is the purpose of the animation.
That said though, one of the 12 principles of animation, appeal, states that all characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute.
To create a simple animation for fun, nope you don’t really need to have to draw well to create a good animation. In my view having a better skill at drawing allows you to accomplish more and create a higher quality of work. After all people still want to look at stuff that appeals to them.
[I’ll update this post as I go on till the last week.. I feel like my view would change as I progress.]
I think here I’m saying yes because in my mind, I view 3D animation as a level above 2D animation. Although, I am a fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies and I really truly enjoy them all even though its in 2D. I guess having the skill to draw really well, could mean a much more flexible planning stage? For me, the skill to draw as an artist, animator or whatever is critical because you’ll use it to express your thoughts, ideas and inner vision. 3D being complex and time consuming, you’ll want to get your characters or objects to look right in 2D first and then model them because when they are in 2D it is much easier to edit. yes?
Hmmm this is a tough one.. well the obvious would be how realistic it is. And with what I’ve learnt so far in IN3D, whether it has applied any of the 12 principles of animation. Not that applying one will make it a good animation though. I guess I’m really basing whatever I say on the animation films that I’ve seen so far up till now. Hayao Miyazaki, Pixar, Bluesky, Dreamworks and other 3D animation TV series like Jimmy Neutron.
I can’t stand Upin and Ipin. Just making a point 😡 I really don’t want to watch it. The movements are so fake and the characters are sooooo stylized that it is very unrealistic. I guess they should have made it a 2D animation instead. But perhaps its just me. hahahaha. oh! I seem to have gone off topic eh.
Ermmmm to really surmarise I would look at the level of detail, smoothness(realism) of movement, inclusion of music and its effectiveness to the scene.
Hmm you could say that you can approach the project with a more slack than compared to 2D animation work. Because to edit frame after frame, it is quite taxing on the brain. Using the graph editor I can change the value of a point in the animation and Maya would do the inbetweens for me. Isn’t that great!
Maybe it is a software thing as well though. Lets say for instance you’re using pencil for a 2D animation project. That would kill an average human being. *just kidding* (imagine that back then, they used pencils… O M G?) However, compared to flash CS5, its not that bad actually. You have the motion editor and you can also make tweens(inbetweens).
Maya does well in the powerful algorithms that it uses to create everything in the scene! I may get crazy enough one day to maybe do some reading on the brainchild of the geniuses/genius that came up with the software. Haha! I think Maya makes basic animation easy for us! I just started learning how to animate and I’m already quite familiar with the steps. Its frame by frame animation now. Setting a key frame is simple, just press the ‘s’ key. Don’t want to add unnecessary data to the frame? Just select the attributes that you don’t want. Right click, lock selected and you’re set! *as shown by Mr Douglas 😀
If we move towards the beginning when we all first touched Maya and now. I think we crossed mountains and jumped across rivers. *wonder if there is such a saying.. lol!* Anyway, Mr Douglas did say that Maya has a steep learning curve but once we get use to it, it’ll be cake. hahaha! Delicious cake! I do find that Maya is quite hard to learn at the start. If the developers could come up with two sets of interfaces perhaps, one for novice users and the other for expert users like the work spaces found in photoshop, flash or illustrator. That would definitely help in someway to lessen the steep-ish curve.
That said though, as a newbie, I can only say that Maya is hard to learn at first. But after that initial stage, it gets a little easier overtime.
With that I end my post 😀
Timothy
This is the video that we took in class! Its just a simple tennis ball that is released from some distance above ground. It was a very interesting lesson. Hope more animation related lessons are like this XD
Uploading a rough animation of the video soon.
YES! They’re up! I didn’t have to make the whole thing into a GIF hahaha thanks to the ingenuity of my friend Jia Qun. Hahaha! Just use your handphone la! she said. boy.. do one liners solve everything? hahahaha.
This is my very first bouncing ball animation in pencil! haha! It wasn’t easy using pencil because we were all using the mouse to do the animations. Squash and Stretch! the basic principle applied in this animation. Muahahaha. yupyup. Enjoy!
Heres another one that I did in my free time! I ma fan of stick man ya see. Yea.
Thats all folks!
Timothy
Well here it is! my bouncing beach ball! 😀 I have some other animations I would like to load up but I’m having some trouble with freemake and my own converter.. I’ll post them up as GIF images soon. Have a look!
Squash & Stretch
These are the timings in the video where I think one of the 12 principles of animation is utilized. Solid drawing and appeal is really a no brainier here 😡 no pun intended but yeah. 3D is soilid! And isn’t Po and the furious five appealing! XD
0.14- Staging
//The pots are placed there for Po to use to hide himself when he is in stealth mode. He fails completely though.. anyways, Staging is seen here.
0.18- Arcs
// His body bounces in an arc after he falls down. Maybe follow through and overlapping action is seen here as well where his body completes the fall and not just stops halfway with the result in Po rolling over. The overlapping action are his legs opening as he falls over.
0.24- Secondary Action
// Its pretty obvious here. His tummy! hahaha! it wobbles as his head hits the pot.
0.25- Staging, Anticipation and Timing.
// The set the noodles away from Po and its sitting on the stall that we all saw earlier on. Po is placed at an angle that fits our mental image when we see him move towards the stall from the previous scene.
//Anticipation happens when he goes gaga over the noodles for a short time. We anticipate that he will try to eat the noodles. The process of him trying to eat could also be considered anticipation because the audience would want to see if their hero gets to have a snack.
//Timing. I’m not really sure about this one. But.. the timing of the whole scene where Po is taking a bite is perfectly timed to give a sense of Po ignoring the danger around him to have a meal and it may have consequences.
0.33- Secondary Action
//While the goat was held up by the wolf her tail was also moving.
0.47-Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose
//I’m gonna just say that I’m not sure if the guys at Dreamworks did this. But! It seems logical to do it. Hahaha! SO!
//Key pose> 0.47 Eating the wolf
//Various key poses> 0.48-0.53 “Digestion”
//Key Pose> 0.54 “Shit”
0.48- 0.53- A lot of stretch and squash here!
//the dragon stretches and squashes as the wolf is passed through its digestive system. The movement is also greatly exaggerated to have a comical effect and the illusion of it being a real dragon consuming the wolf and then finally discharging it from its behind.
I know.. I agree with the rabbit. Haha! Anndddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Meow!~ thats all folks!
Fin- Timothy
TimothyOrangeShow IN3D 