3D Practice: Tail Ball

This was my favourite out of all the Maya exercises, not just because the little tail ball is cute, but it allowed me to practice my squash and stretch, tail movement and animal characteristics all in one! It was a lot of fun making a small obstacle course too!

The tail ball was really hard to animate at first, especially when trying to get my head around how the tail should move. I didn't do this, but I would watch how different animals tails move before animating them, to know if you want them to replicate that look or make it look completely different.

I was proud of myself for getting the squash and stretch right along with the timing of the tail ball, making him anticipate before jumping and moving his tail swiftly to make him look really happy! I also loved how I made him slide on the obstacle course (it looked really cute!).

One thing I would change however is during his brief pause on the obstacle course, he's completely frozen. I would have to make him move slightly in order to show he's still alive!

3D Practice: Mery Poses

 

Mery is a rig that you can use in Maya to practice on character poses and facial expressions. Here I didn't need to animate anything, but instead learn how to manipulate Mery into different positions, in which you can immediately tell how the character feels in one picture.

The five expressions I show here are (above to below):

Laughter

Anger

Fear

Sadness

Content

I believe I've captured the emotions of Mery clearly through her poses and facial expressions, making some areas exaggerated and cartoony and others more subdued to reflect a serious moment.

Stop Motion Practice: Character Walk

The difference between this and the basic walk from the last stop motion post, is how this walk reflects personality.

Live-action actors have the pleasure of showing personality through little movement. Animated characters show their personality through all of their gestures. This character walk exercise enables me to practice this.

The walk I chose showed a snooty personality, with the puppet looking down its nose and swaying from side to side without a care in the world.

I'm proud of this walk but I'm really proud of the first few seconds! Mainly because I remembered to bend the toes on the first step and it starts to look like a proper walk! I forgot to add the toes bends on the rest of the steps but either way, the walk appeared genuine and expressed the personality of the puppet.

My other problem is regarding the hands. Due to the hands of this particular puppet being unable to bend properly, the hands look stiff, and don't sway as smoothly as the rest of the body.

Stop Motion Practice: Basic Walk

Note: The camera moves slightly due to somebody knocking over the webcam, twice.

I had to once again follow the traditional rule of the walk cycle, and this time in a stop motion environment. I added small touches to the walk, included turning the puppet's head side to side to make her look like's she looking around.

The basics of the walk are there, but the extra things that make a realistic walk (toes bending, hands relaxing etc.) are not. The walk ended up looking like a creeper's walk, needless to say.

Stop Motion Practice: Throwing a Ball

Truth be told, this exercise looks stilted due to a technical issue I had on Dragonframe. Instead of taking 12fps, I instead put the settings onto 12fps which I was specifically told NOT to do! I can obviously see why now.

Regardless of the jolted movements of the puppet, he manages to show that he is throwing an imaginary ball across some sort of park...just very slowly.

The angle he's meant to be facing is also in the right position, a long with his arms, legs and where his head is pointing to.

3D Practice: Constraints and Parents

Constraints and parents in Maya are hard to get your mind around, but is worth the trick once you learn how to animate two objects. Constraints and parents in Maya is essentially having two objects connect to one another, or having one object control the other.

In this exercise, the human rig is the parent and the box does what the rig says.

Overall, I am proud of this exercise as I've never animated a full human rig before, and it looks decent! The character herself moves smoothly, and shows some personality in the little tilts I've added to the head and pigtails. The lifting of the box looks good too, even though it was hard making sure the fingers grabbed and moved the box at the right time.

My only complaint is that the movement of the body goes to farther forward as she begins to lift the box. If that happened in real life, she'd be falling over.

3D Practice: Monty

Monty reminds me of Mike from Monsters Inc...and that's why I like him.

Monty is a great way of practicing character walks as he has very little features to work with, so it doesn't cause a beginner animator to be distracted by hair, clothes, facial features or even arms!

I've only managed to create one character walk for Monty, and it was my attempt to follow the traditional character walk cycle in Maya.

It was a good attempt as it at least looks like a walk! But it's more of a character walk than a practice walk. The walk makes Monty look almost prissy, with his toes pointing as he 'bounces' across the floor.

2D Practice: Elongated Inbetweens

To give the effect of a character turning around really fast, elongated inbetweens is a way to show that. By turning the inbetweens into large distortions, a blur effect will appear for a split second show the speed of someone turning.

My simple practice of elongated inbetweens shows that the girl is turning from one side of the screen to the other at high speed. The inbetweens reflect the speed and the movement is smooth.

My problems are that she doesn't look like she's properly turning, just looking one side and then suddenly looking at the other. It is also worth noting that in order to emphasise the turning and the speed of the character, follow through of the hair and clothes and show that emphasis. Without that, the character looks very static and more robot-like.