Though we bid farewell to IN3D, this blog would serve as a record of our adventures 🙂 Thank you for teaching us, Mr Douglas and Mr Ken. Adiyos! Syonara! Bon voyage! Onward! to a new adventure :DD *special effects~~~ XDXDXD

Project 2 Animation Self Critique

Hello.. apparently this would be the last post of this blog.  Its been a great journey… ahem* back to the task at hand.. time for the 25th post of my blog 🙂

Right, this is my critique on my animation. I’m glad to say that I have almost, all of the principles in my animation.

So as usual I’ll start with a reflection..

I really think I’ve did quite okay. My main aim was to make people smile, or laugh even when they see my animation.. I asked my mum, sister, brother and dad, some of his friends as well to take a look and they reacted, just like how I wanted them to. I was really glad about that. I do find that I still need more practice because it wasn’t a smooth journey all the way.

-The negatives-
Parent Constraint was the one I had the most trouble with.

It kept on acting funny like not being able to let the cargo head pick the box up or allowing it to constraint a locator to the box for positioning.. a lot of funny yet frustrating mishaps.

I also didn’t really follow my storyboard fully because some scenes were sort of added in at the spur of the moment.

-The positives-
I learned how to use the graph editor and hypergraph: connections and the outliner and the hypergraph! 😀 Really satisfied with how I learned to use the graph editor for fine tuning my animation. Mr Douglas especially helped ALOT, during his last lesson with us where he showed us the Step function which will make the curves into a sharp step so that values changed abruptly instead of gradually. If I hadn’t learned this, I would definitely have had a horrifying experience while creating my animation.. Thank you Mr Douglas.

Ending Note

On a whole, I think I did well for this project. I loved how my ultimate aim of the animation was accomplished even if it was among a few of my relatives and friends. I really do think I learned a lot just from this exercise. I even caught a glimpse of other powers of Maya. Jiggle deformers, lattices(Mr Ken’s links were helpful and awesome!) and learning more about rendering(with wee meng’s help- another one I need to thank).. can’t wait to try them out! I do think I can get a good grade for this not saying it because I think I did a very good job or that I deserve it. But more like, because I learned so much and putting in the effort to make it a great one.. I really truly, enjoyed doing this project.

The texts below are detailed descriptions of the use of the 12 principles of animation. I included it to show that these really guided me through the process of animating.

12 principles of animation

Staging 
I positioned the camera and the cargo boxes such that it would give the robot arm some room to work in and also to show the action more clearly.

Stretch and squash

An example for squash and stretch would be my red box. However, I do fnd that the squashiness of the box isn’t as much as I wanted although the effect is still quite satisfying. I did try to use a jiggle deformer but it wasn’t suitable for the box because once I stop moving the box it activates and it will only stop when the box is in motion. The other way was that the box had to be moving at all times so that the deformer would be in effect, but in my animation sequence there were parts when I needed the box to be still and yet still wobble like a jelly. Therefore, using the jiggle deformer was a no no.

Though I must say, it was pretty interesting while I was testing it out. Hope to use it in the future. 😀

Straight ahead and pose to pose

Well this is pretty obvious with the use of storyboards. You can see most of the key poses that I drew in the storyboard. One bad point that should be noted is that I think I didn’t stick to the storyboard that I created. Some of the scenes in the final edition were added in and some were taken out. A big example would be the previously stacked cargo boxes. These were supposed to be off camera after the robot places the 2nd green box. In the animation, they are still there as I decided against using a different camera. Reasons? No time. And I wish to keep it simple so I can focus on doing a good animation.

Anticipation 

See how the robot looks out at the coming boxes, its anticipating, waiting for its arrival so it can stack it up. I used this principle to guide my animation and make sure that the timing is just right so that when you’re watching, you get a feeling of excitement or something when stuff is about to happen.

Timing 

Well I can’t even begin to say how common this principle is in my animation.. Its sorta.. everywhere? The timing of the magnet hitting the red box.. the timing of it throwing the box up into the air. There was a lot of timing involved in the whole animation. I used it most in the scene where the red box zooms past the robot and misses. You can see through the movement of the arm that the box is bouncing and suddenly goes awry and starts to fly towards the robot arm. The timing of the head movements and the dodging were just right to achieve what I wanted to show.

Follow through and overlapping & Secondary action

These were basically used to show the realism of the jelly like red box. After the robot nudged the box, it wobbles and slowly comes to rest.

Secondary action, This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. An example where I applied this principle is in the part where the robot turns to look back at the green cargo boxes. The primary action is where he turns (Swivel-base) to face the boxes, as he turns I made his head tilt to one side and rotate to give more life to the character. To show that he really is puzzled by the sudden-but welcome- appearance of the red entity. 😀

Exaggeration 

Well basically I exaggerated the motion of the robot arm. In real life, you won’t see a robotic arm moving like that.

Arcs 

The whole movement of the arm is in Arcs.

Slow out slow in 

Easing out and easing in were used in a subtle manner to make the scene more realistic. But I have to say that this part was not very confidently done. I didn’t really know, if what I was doing was right most of the time. I do find that the final clip is quite okay but it could’ve been better I guess.

NO

It’s possible to move ArmControl so that the mechanical arm fully extends to a straight position or orients itself to other positions that you don’t necessarily want. You can limit the range of motion of the arm to ensure that the IK system poses in a predictable manner.

In the following section, you limit the motion for the IK system as follows:

Lock the translation of the control object (ArmControl) so that it can only move in Y and Z.

By locking the X channel so it cannot be selected or modified, the arm will not be able to move from side to side.

Lock the rotations on the swiveling base for the arm so it only rotates about its Y axis, and not about its X or Z axes.

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html

Milestone~ I’m in the process of editing the rig of the robot arm.

IN3D Final Project Weblog Submission

My Chosen Scenario

There is a long line of GREEN boxes, as if on a conveyor belt.
The robot lifts the box at the head of the queue and stacks it in a pile at its side.
Once the robot has finished stacking a box, the rest of the boxes move forward one place, and the process is repeated.
Suddenly, a RED box appears at the head of the queue.
The robot appears confused – all the boxes are supposed to be green!

1. Character

The name of the robot is Olie. He just graduated from MCB University, Moving Cargo Boxes, and is fresh into the cargo box industry! He is the typical worker who is really excited for working but doesn’t really enjoy the actual process. Nevertheless he still works hard but if anything interesting can happen in his workplace, its definitely welcomed by this conflicted worker.

His thoughts:

Alright heeerrreeeeeee wee go.. again. This is really not what I expected the work to be. I wonder what the humans are thinking.. packing so things into so many cargo boxes. I hope they’re grateful * pauses to pick up a box* they should give me more oil.

Hums the robot arm oath as he stacks box after box.

*hmmm hmmm hmmm~ *

2. Storyboard

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3. Self-Critique

Not applicable currently.

Robot Arm. Lab exercise.

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.

Pixar’s First animated short discussion

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.

Questions and answers~

1)  Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 2D animation? Explain your view.

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.]

2) Do you need to be able to draw well to create good 3D animation? Explain your view.

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?

3) What do you think would separate a piece of poor animation from a piece of good animation? In other words, how would you go about deciding if a piece of animation is good or bad?

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.

4) In 2D animation, you need to be very aware of timing at a frame by frame level, using timing charts and other techniques – but for 3D animation, this is handled using the graph editor, which is more concerned with manipulating rates of change over time.

Does this affect how you approach your animation work? Explain.

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).

5) Give a brief critique of Maya as an animation tool. Don’t just say Maya makes animation difficult, or easy, or that you need to learn a lot of stuff to use Maya – explain what Maya does well and not so well in terms of creating animation.

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.

Pencil animation videos

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